A disclaimer - I'm kind of new to this sort of after action report so I'm just gonna wing it and see what I get.
First impressions: the intro premise getting the players involved in the game could have used a bit more detail. I loved the idea (Chordia Aspice double dealing the players into doing her a massive favor and then paying them off with a 'white elephant' star system) but I added in a bit more skullduggery between Chordia and Caligos Winterscale: mainly that Winterscale hired the crew of the ToothKicker (and capt. Bolger) to go find what Chordia was doing in system and try to steal it for him. I suppose that's hinted at in the main adventure but I fleshed it out a bit for my group. Obviously, Chordia was able to convince the players to go to the system and retrieve the package for her.
additional complications: The Rogue Trader in my campaign is working for the Ordo Hereticus. his boss is a Radical (an Istavaanian to be precise) and gave him two additional missions/endevours: 1. locate a heretic known to have fled to the Grace system and bring him to justice (alive if possible, dead is just as good) and 2. scoop up/recruit as many survivors of the Grace disaster as possible and sort out which would make good shock troops.
Grace System: the description of the system was surprisingly good. bare bones, but enough detail there to make it easy for me to fill out the rest of the system to suit my campaign. My players were incredibly paranoid and made sure to come out of warp outside the regular shipping lanes. Running silent in system, they got lucky with a passive auspex scan and picked up the orc Kroozer hiding around Teardrop. the Navigator was able to put them on a silent course that brought them up behind the Orc ship and they unloaded a full two rounds of attacks on the enemy ship....and they've got an upgunned Firestorm class frigate loaded with archaeotech systems. A good solid surprise round of shooting followed by a second round of lucky strikes (to include a lucky critical on the enemy bridge) and the orcs were out of the fight before they actually got into it. Note to self - I have some extremely paranoid players...at this point I introduced the ToothKicker into the system. again, they were successful with a silent running action and spent time taunting Bolger via astropathic and vox communications (after taking suitable precautions first of course). Bolger spent time attempting find them but to no avail and they spotted the Widening Gyre while on approach to Grace Prime.
the mission to salvage the Widening Gyre went about as scripted. the command crew had some daemonic issues and had to deal with some warp style badness in the engine room, but they had no significant issues salvaging the vessel and recovering the logs from the ships main cogitator. they put a prize crew on board and prepped it for return to Port Wander. By this point they knew the location of the Dagger of Fate and that it was moved/occupied by the remaining orcs in the Grace system.
At this point the Captain decided now was the time to scan Grace Prime. Detecting a surface based auspex scan powerful enough to reach near orbit, they traced the signal to the estate of an augmenticist heretic and the remains of her Logician cell. Striking a deal with her for passage off Grace Prime to Footfall, no questions asked was fairly easy and she paid for her ticket in mildly heretical weapons (a modified long las with the warp quality, an Empyrian blade and ward and solid projectile ammo that could cause corruption/madness/mutation to it's targets). the crew also bartered information on possible locations of 'hell class' weapons: devices that could possibly exterminatus an entire planet, if used properly. they also learned quite a bit about local conditions on planet.
After making arrangements with the heretek to move her and her people to the ship, the captain decided to go fulfill his mission for his Inquisitor boss. A scan of the planet found a valley of unsurpassed beauty and lush gardens/fertile fields. On the flight into the valley, the astropath looked into the warp and saw...things. turns out that the heretics in this valley had successfully (?) used a copy of the Eris Transform a number of times. Artwork of unsettling beauty and an entire colony of 'beautiful people' in thrall to the slaaneshi cult of the noble who owned the valley. Approaching the manor house, the captain was successful in a charm attempt to allay the suspicions of the locals and arrange a meeting with the ruler of the valley (their heretic in question). By now you'd have thought that the astropath would have learned better than to mind read people in this valley, but...well, he picked up more insanity points. The arch-miitant also suffered a couple insanity points after looking at the artwork. the senschal and navigator started looking to steal anything not nailed down and the tech priest started calculating firing solutions for orbital lance strikes. long story short - they meet the heretic, find that he's got two possessed women as his thralls and get the drop on them. the resulting firefight burns down half the manor house and they have a running firefight back to the guncutter. as they leave the valley, they order the ship to commence orbital strikes against the valley, leaving none alive.
however...the orbital bombardment alerted Bolger and the Toothkicker to their location. he goes full burn and weapons hot to find them. At this point, the captain decides now is a great time to commence a hit and run raid on the Dagger of fate. they go silent running, but owing to their breaking orbit and Bolger making a good auspex roll, they fail to lose him. Deciding that if they can't shake him, they'll lead him into the orcs as a distraction. the Orcs failed to see the player's ship but easily spot the Toothkicker heading towards them on **** near full burn. Bolger doesn't see the orcs until he's almost on top of them, as the players were taunting him via astropathic communications. They then jam auspex/vox channels and astropathic communications and the orcs open fire on the toothkicker. while this was going on, the party ran a hit and run assault on the Dagger of Fate. Bad stuff happened, worse stuff happened to the orcs ,and the raid went off fairly well. the tech priest got to use his bolter with impressive results (his hatred of the orcs didn't hurt either) and the cargo was retrieved. end result: Bolger and the Toothkicker eventually destroyed the Dagger of Fate (he failed to disengage) while the players escaped the system and went to warp.
while in warp, the players decide to further investigate just what it is they've got. with some impressive astropathic scan rolls and a bit of research they realize that they've got Aspice Chordia's sister in cryostorage. With the help of the heretic they just picked up, they kit bash a rough cloning facility and force grow a clone of Anastasia. the astropath encodes a false personality into the clone (it's fairly easy to fake a sleeping mind after all) and the tech priest manages to wipe the logs of the cryo-machinery to cover up their tampering. they put the clone in the cryo box, pull anastasia out and put her in a regular status tube on board their ship, then turn the whole thing over to Chordia. the next phase of the plan is to wake up Anastasia, and see if she'd like revenge on her sister...all in return for a nice new Grand Crusier once Anastasia has the Chordia Warrant of Trade.
all in all, a good adventure. I improvised a bit as is my wont to do but I had great source material to build from. I highly recommend this for other players.
