Lady Captain Galateia "Gale" van Reynther, Rogue Trader's Log

Entry 1

Having been made the duly appointed Rogue Trader after the untimely demise of my aunt, Caritha Indari van Reynther, I have crewed Caritha's sword class frigate (the Tempest) with the left over crew of the last ship I served on (the Calypso). This left me with plenty of crew, but the command crew is distinctly lacking. I've decided to bring the assassin Ephriel as my seneschal and personal physician. That should give him plenty of cover and allow me to utilize his particular unique skills as needed.

I've scoured Caritha's logs, and found that she planned to go into the Koronus Expanse next, so have set course for the edge of the Calixis Sector. My main concern is the aging Navigator, Heinrich. His understudy seems confident, but Heinrich and his pupil know nothing of the warp passages in the Expanse, and frankly, I think Heinrich has to remind himself each day to keep breathing. I swear he seems older than dirt, and that is with all the gene treatments that I am sure have expanded his longevity.

We should arrive at Port Wander soon, I plan to look for profitable endeavours to undertake there, as well as see if I can find more senior command crew to hire on.

Entry 2

Being the last Imperial controlled facility before entering the Expanse, I wasted no time in throwing my weight around, and even managed to get in a fire fight. The Adeptus Arbites were most congenial when I produced proof of my station. We managed to find a fairly senior navigator looking to go back to the Expanse, and Jarvis (my head of security) found a very capable ex-guardsmen (I honestly did not know that such a thing existed, I thought you stayed in the guard till you died). It was a good thing too, as Orbest Dray (a van Reynther officer, marooned here at Port Wander for some time) had just given my a sealed gene encoded casket when we set upon.

A psykic bird entity of some sort snatched a black device (I was later told it was some sort of psykic encoded map) and several thugs came at us brandishing autoguns! We made quick work of them, and managed to recover the device, but I fear whatever that bird thing was, it had a chance to read the data off the device before we winged it. Seems that Dray has been holding the location of the Righteous Path, a fabled treasure ship for near a century, waiting for van Reynther representatives to arrive. Unfortunately poor Heinrich was caught in the crossfire, and expired.

I was able to convince the local Imperial authorities to give our new navigator some time with their charts, and he was soon able to narrow down the location of the Path to the Margoros system. We leave at once.

Entry 3

We arrived at the Battlefield on the way to the Margoros System via several intermediate jumps. We immediately picked up a salvation beacon of one Penitent Traveller, an imperial transport, that was highly damaged and drifting. Its vox array was gone, so we approached cautiously. Macharius (our new head navigator) picked up two raiders running dark, hiding in the wrckage of the Battlefield.

We came to and charge toward one, countering their trap before they had time to spring it. A leech mind hit us but even that could not save the raiders from the fury of the Tempest. We crippled the first ship, but it managed to limp off into the void while we dealt with the other one. This one I would not see getting away, so we boarded her and though its crew fought nearly extinction, they eventually succumbed to the inevitable. Unfortunately, Jarvis (my former head of security) died during the battle. Ziel (the ex guardman) proved himself very capable, so I went ahead and promoted him to head of ship security. My command staff is not feeling fairly complete.

I sent over a couple thousand voidsmen to crew the new ship (one Dark Fang). Orbest Dray was among them, and he soon reported that the Fang's logs showed another Salvation Beacon across the Battlefield. The pirates had intended on investigating it after they used the Penitent Traveler for bait in their current scheme. The Traveller was filled with pilgrims. We brought them on board the Tempest and offered to take them as far as Footfall. They set about blessing the ship and making themselves at home in out Temple.

We moved to investigate the beacon the pirates found, and sure enough, an intact imperial light cruiser floated amongst the wreckage. It was called the Emperor's Bounty. We managed to make a vox link to it, but there was no response.

Turns out the ship was infested with a warp entity of some sort. It had used the ships navigator to kill many of the crew, the few survivors left confirmed our suspicion that the thing they called the Worm would be weakened if we raised the Gellar Field. We were successful and Ziel led us into battle against the tainted navigator and his warp puppets. They were no match for Ziel's twin bolt pistols, or Ephrial's needle rifle. Soon the Emperor's Bounty was ours.

I was left in a tight spot at that point. We could have tried to crew the Emperor's Bounty, but it takes a massive crew of 65k to properly crew it. While I could eventually find enough people to get to crew it, I can't think that their quality would be anywhere near that I am accustomed to. I just don't have the funds to be able to acquire a large enough, well skilled enough crew for such a vessel at this point. We were able to salvage a good bit from it though, and many of the pieces we got will sell well in the Expanse or back in th Imperium, so I'm content to take my two smaller ships, for now. Once I get the van Reynther dynasty back on track though, I'm sure I will sit at the helm of a cruiser.

Now onto Footfall,our holds full of pilgrims, and ship parts from the Penitent Traveller and the Emperor's Bounty.