Greetings,

I've planed a rescue mission for my Deathwatch gaming group which includes boarding another ship and since ambition knows no bounds I got a copy of the RT core rulebook to get the necessary gaming rules.

So the Kill-Team received an emergency signal from a space ship and managed to get their with their own vessel. Now the question, which drove me to Rogue Trader, is: What can they learn from scanning the ship?

In the Rogue Trader Core Rulebook I found the action Focused Augury on page 217. I just wonder why there isn't anything mentioned about the crew? I had a discussion with a friend which says that WH40k is not like Star Trek where you can scan the whole star system with a click on the keyboard. But nonetheless I wonder if an augury unit is that weak to find - call it - biosignals? Or is it not intended to get a signal for 25.000 crew men.

The question arises becaus I want to know if the Kill-Team can get any information (number, position in the ship) about survivors just by scanning the ship. Or do they have to reach some significant areas in the ship? Does there exist something like internal augurys ?

Best regards,

TechVoid.

Given the amount of heat and radiation I can imagine being given off by a ship, and the fact that the hull will be a few feet thick, I don't think you'd be able to detect life on the ship from outside, other than by whether the life support was working, but that'd just tell you if there was a chance of anyone being on-board or them all being dead, not how many people there were.

Thanks for the response!

Indeed, WH40k seems a bit more down-to-earth and I can understand the argument about heat emssion and thick ship hulls.

But again a more detailed question:

In my Mission there occured some sabotage on the ship which made it lose its Gellar Field and leaving the Warp. Now I wonder how the saboteurs would survive it and and if they could manage to create a local Gellar Field. Does something exist in Rogue Trader? Something like a local Gellar Field Generator, maybe having a diameter about just 10 metres?

And again, could you detect it by Focused Augury? With the above argument about heat emission I would say no.

Best regards,

TechVoid.

There is no such thing documented in any of the books, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Also, just because a ship loses it's Geller Field doesn't mean it's instantly ripped apart by daemons, it all depends on what the area of warp you are in is like. If the area is a well travelled route, it's less likely to have lots of daemony evilness around than out in the wilds of the Koronus Expanse.

Again, if it's something that small, and the ship still has at least minimal power, chances are you aren't going to be able to detect something of that size.

It's also possible that the ship has a few saferooms that have been hexagramattically (spelling help appreciated) warded just in case.

Or the saboteurs are untouchables.

I'm afraid I'm not real familiary with Augury arrays, but given the general theme of WH40k, the technology is often not that much better than our own, and nothing of our own technology that I can think of would be able to detect 'biosigns' aboard a ship. Now, if the Array can see souls via the warp or something like that (Yeah, no clue if they even work in the warp) then that might be possible, but otherwise, if it isn't spelled out as possible, don't think it would be.

As for the sabotures surviving, I know there are a handful of items that send you into the warp for brief moments. One of them might possibly be used to get out of the warp while in a ship that is already in the warp. Perhaps use it while wearing a void suit and having a ship where you think you'll pop into real space to pick you up. Or maybe another ship with a teleporter could pull the sabotures off the damaged ship while still in the warp, or after using the previous method to get into real space.

Karoline said:

Interesting input. That is why I like discussing such issues with other people on the board!

The problem with the warp is that the saboteurs are working for the Tau. Hopefully I will translate my little mission into Enghlish these days and then we can discuss the whole mission in more detail.

So, the plot hook is the following: The Imperium is fighting a battle on just another planet with the Tau and has managed to save some essential technology from the Tau forces. For my understanding the Adeptus Mechanicus is quite interested in such technology because they can just reproduce old material but not invent something new for their own.

But as forces are rare they accept the help of a Rogue Trader to transport the technology back to a save haven of the imperium. Furthermore, so far as I understand it, some humans are also part of the Tau Imperium. So they managed to get some human saboteurs on board of the huge Rouge Trader vessel. And while they are flying through the warp they started there sabotage to stop the ship and make it leaving the warp. Now they send a signal to the Tau while the Captain of the ship just managed to send an emergency signal before he lost the control of the ship. Because the saboteurs have a highly skilled - I call it Tau Techpriest - on board who sits at vital part of the ship and overtakes it.

Thus as the Kill-Team arrives they have to fight little bastards from the warp which come back into realspace and the ship itself, since the Tau Techpriest oversees their every step and uses the Ship against them. And just when the Kill-Team thinks they have overcome the obstacles on board of the ship does a Tau vessesl arrive and they have to fight them back.

Best regard,

TechVoid.

Sounds like an awesome mission. However, I would like to point out that it takes tens of thousands of people to man a small warp-capable ship. How is the kill-team going to deal with that Tau ship? Boarding it? If you want the ship to be operational so they can fight back and leave, maybe you want to make it a servitor-manned vessel? Then you can have the servitors just wandering blindly and morosely through the ship, or maybe under limited control of the Tau mastermind (ZOMBIES!!!) Or maybe have pockets of survivors throughout the ship. These survivors could be cowering in fear needing to be rescued (and taxing party resources), or maybe have them fighting against the ship/demons themselves, creating temporary allies, or cinematic background fights. Then when the ship is back under control, the survivors come out of the woodwork, and need to be organized and motivated to get the ship operational again.

Also, just to point out that Tau vessels can't enter the Warp-proper, since none of them have the Navigator gene. They skirt along the edge between the Warp and the real world, unlike everyone else who jumps deep into the Warp. As such, the vast majority of Tau air-caste (those that fly ships) would have no clue whatsoever as to how to pilot a ship in the Warp.

Plus, as otherwise said, even small ships have crews of 20k+, and a "huge" Rogue Trader ship, depending on the hull, could have anywhere from 50-100k people on-board. How would the ship be piloted without them?

MILLANDSON said:

Not quite, and this is something that causes frequent confusion.

The genetics of a Navigator are not a prerequisite for entering the Warp - afterall, the Eldar and the Orks both employ Warp Travel (the Eldar only very rarely), and neither of them have Navigators, and humanity managed to travel the Warp long before the creation of Navigators. However, Navigators are an immense asset when it comes to improving the speed and safety of Warp Travel, particularly over long distances.

What Tau lack is sufficient psychic potency, and the knowledge of the interaction between psykers and the veil between warp space and reality to exploit that psychic potency, making them incapable of producing a fully-functioning warp engine (in spite of Tau interstellar drives being reverse-engineered from non-Tau wreckage found on one of the moons of T'au) and incapable of pushing fully through the veil.

The Navigator gene has nothing to do with it - that is unique to humanity and an artificial creation of human science.

Still, the fact that the Tau have no method of navigating through the Warp (they have no psykers for doing it, like Orks do and how Eldar do when forced to use the Warp, and they have nothing like the Navigator gene like humanity does) doesn't help. They did manage to develop full Warp Travel technology, but decided that the risks (everyone getting mutated, possessed or killed by warp creatures, and getting lost and never coming back due to no easy way for the Tau to navigate) weren't worth the positives (according to the canon produced by the Medusa V campaign).

Ah,

thanks again for the input. Honestly I must confess that I understand the question about piloting a large space ship. Even if it is considered to be small with only 25k people. But I always have that problem with WH40k. In every description in any novel or rulebook everything seems to be huge, great, marvelous and highly impressive. But then, if you go back to game terms you have to close something like a gap between description and game-mechanics. And after all you want to play a game. So again I am thankfull for every hint of a logic-gap. But I think we should not take it too far or the mission would be more 'realistic' than the setting itself!

Back to the points.

I agree, that the ship, its people and the arriving Tau ship gave me a little headache to.

First, that the Tau may have no warp travel is not a problem for me. Because that is exactly the objective the saboteurs have to achieve: Take that ship out of the warp. Maybe one could again argue that a rescue-team will arrive earlier due to warp travel than any Tau ship not capable of warptravel. That is exactly one point that the rescue-team has some time to secure the ship until Tau reinforcements arrive. On the other hand, I think one could also easily argue that the Rogue Trader vessel dropped out of the warp quite near a Tau outpost.

The next point about the huge ship and its people is somehow tricky, I agree. But to some extend not I must confess.

If you look into the introduction mission in the DW Core Rulebook then the primary objective is to secure the data and the second objective is to rescue the magos. So I think it is reasonable that the Kill-Team can easily argue to get the Tau technology from the Rogue Trader vessel and get back to their ship and leave. Why even bother to get the Rogue Trader vessel active again to fight the Tau. All they need is to fight the Tau boarding the vessel and then get back to their ship. From my understanding it would also fit with the theme of the grim darkness of the 41st millenium. But to take it a little further I think this is a nice roleplaying situation: The players have to make the decision if they want to rescue the Rogue Trader vessel or not. With all its consequences. Because other Rogue Traders will think about it cearfully if they will transport something for the imperium if they are treated like that in an emergency situation.

Best regards,

TechVoid.

I have started to write it down in English.

I have started a thread in the Deathwatch Forum:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=214&efcid=3&efidt=423842

Best regards,

TechVoid.