My acolyte team is about to take a 5-year in game hiatus to go their separate ways. During that time, one PC, a nascent psyker, will be willingly going to Terra for the right of sanctioning. She is a rank 5 Scum (Metallican Gunslinger). At the moment, I am trying to decide what in game effects to apply to her character.

I've decided to start with the "The Mind's Eye Opens" transition package from ascension as a starting point. But two specific questions come to mind.

Post sanctioning, which advancement scheme should I give her access to? Also, how should I handle her characteristic advances?

(Perfunctory apology for the possibility of a repeat thread and general complaint about the quality of the search function.)

Erm... it's not really something you just turn up on Terra for, the Inquisition would have to step in on her behalf, and that'd be no guarantee that she'd be found suitable for sanctioning (rather than just fed to the Emperor or turned into an Astropath). Also, unless the trip was exceptionally quick, getting to Terra, getting Sanctioned (which can and frequently does take years), and getting back wouldn't be possible in just 5 years (assuming your game is taking place anywhere outside of the Segmentum Solar, since it can take months to cross just one sector).

I understand all that. I simply left it out for the sake of brevity. She is being vouched for by the inquisition. (Lucky for her she has a lenient Inquisitor and has proven herself many times.) And I, as GM am invoking the power of plot to ensure her viability for sanctioning.

As for the time, I'm going to have to disagree with you, as I didn't just pull five years out of thin air. It does take months to cross a sector, yes, but in the warp, time to distance need not follow a linear ratio. In the Rogue Trader book, table 7-2 (Pg 184) Lists ~100 Days to cross a segmentum, and several years to traverse the galaxy. I think 5 years is a fine estimate, given that the black ships, however fast they are, are probably about as fast as imperial technology allows for. This is backed up by the aforementioned transition package which is, in a nutshell, what is happening. It specifically changes the age advancement for the sanctioned psyker trait, and lists 1d5 years as the amount of time the process requires.

You mentioned, though, that the sanctioning process can take years. That's something I had been wondering about, since I couldn't find anything on that. Where are you drawing that info from?

Beyond strait "as the crow flies" travel time and sanctioning time, one other thing to consider is method of travel. If she is taking a chartered/commandeered ship strait from what-ever planet she is leaving from to Holy Terra, then it might just take a year or so but a ship making a strait shot for Terra would require, again, Inquisitorial intervention. Most ships would make a hell of a lot of stops along the way (especially if it's a black ship) which would greatly increase the time. Of course, in the end, that only matters to her character and not to anything else. After all, the Warp is being used and, while rare, there have been instances of ships arriving before they left, etc. Heck, she might experience 20 years of hell, and rejoin the group five years after she left -it's really not an issue as the all important Plot Fiat has been invoked.

As for the original question, if it were me, I'd not only put her through 20 years of hell and time warp her just to make her transition to Imperial Psyker that much more profound, marked, and strange, I'd move her right over to the Imperial Psyker career complete with a random rolled psyker sanctioning side-effect. She'd start on the Psyker career at what ever rank she left Scum at, use the psyker characteristic advancement tables from there on out (note: any characteristic advances that she had already purchased as a Scum will remain and be counted, just the cost of any further advances will change), and any psyker rank that she has skipped over will be treated like a rank in a career that had been replaced by an alternate career rank for the purpose of purchasing prerequisites to skills and talents in the psyker career from the rank she joined at forwards. That is to say, any skill or talent from the rank she joins the Imperial Psyker career at forwards would be open to her, but any skill or talent from a rank previous to the one she joined on would cost 50 XP more and would usually only be open to her to meet the prerequisites of a skill or talent that is available to her at the rank she joined and latter ranks. Skills and talents from any rank she previously held as a Scum would, of course, still be open to her as usual.

Basically, it's like every rank from her current rank to the end of her career is being replaced by alternate Imperial Psyker ranks from the Imperial psyker career... or she had replaced all previous ranks to her current rank as an Imperial Psyker with alternate Scum ranks. That's how I'd handle it.

Edit: Oh, and she'd have to burn a Fate Point. After all, in most other situations invoking Plot Fiat to insure a character's survival costs the burning of a FP, it should be so for this situation as well... and, again, it would hammer home the massive change that her character has gone through and what she has had to indure was, indeed, unimaginably dangerous and taxing.

Graver said:

I see what you did there.

That's similar in most respects to what I was thinking. It's good to have my estimation confirmed, though. I hadn't thought about making her burn a fate point, but it makes sense, now that you point it out. I'm going to write up some colorful descriptions of things she encounters on her trip to Terra (She is going via a black ship that she will rendezvous with on Scintilla before it swings back to Terra) to give her a sense of how harrowing the trip was.

The Boy Named Crow said:

Sorry to be the next to be pointy about your plans, BUT...

if she is going via a black ship, she will travell in a special psyker-proof holding cell. That is what they do with the "prospects" there. No colourful encounters, no adventures. Perhaps some cell mates, but I wouldn´t be sure about that one either.

Even if an Inquisitor spoke out for this "traveller", as the Captain of a Black Ship I wouldn´t take no risk and put here into one of the cells rather then in the quarters of my crew. My freight and my mission would be to holy and to valuable to take any risks. After all, I the black ships fail, the emporer dies!

for sure, the "traveller" will be treated well, will be given good food and won´t be mistreated. But he will be locked up just like anyone else.

I should clarify, because, once again, I understand that. The descriptions are going to be colorful, not the encounters.

I'm going to describe, in detail, the grim foreboding atmosphere of the ship. The tortured anguished screams of the other passengers, clawing at the walls of their cells. The horrific nightmares that plague her through the entire multiple year journey. She may witness, from her cell, another psyker be brutally beaten, or killed, for just about any reason. In spite of her benefactor, or perhaps because of it, she could receive violent treatment at the hands of her custodians.

And so on. Not to mention that there are opportunities for more active encounters once she reaches Terra.

You know, you shouldn't feel compelled to keep defending yourself here - you're the GM, if you want her to get to Holy Terra riding on the backs of pixies, propelling herself through the warp by catching stars in a magical net, then that is what will happen.

As someone else said, I would have her roll up the side effects of her sanctioning just like any new psyker, then have her move from the Scum progression tables to that of the Psyker - though she'd have a lot of back buying to do in order to get the powers and talents she wanted. I would change her stat progression across the board, so the stats prices she once had cheap probably won't be so any more, while she'll be able to buy up other stats and a reduced price. Mind you, if you're worried about this being taken advantage of - or other players whining because it could be - then you could choose to leave the stat progression the same in all but Willpower, granting her the lower cost to raise that once stat, quite possibly at the cost of raising another. (Fellowship probably - the sanctioning process tends to leave one mentally scarred and as such less capable of relating to others)

Actually, if I remember right (And this is because one of our characters, an Adept is doing this) the book DOES shorten it to a "Instead of rolling xd10 years, just call it 5 and roleplay out what happened since then" because, I mean really, do you WANT your game to have to sit for nigh on 30 years to get a character back IC? Hell no. Granted, we didn't want to make the player start with a BRAND NEW character when he had been working so hard on this plot point, so he'd have something interesting for Accension/As a character in general.