So I'm helping my players with their character backgrounds, being that they are by-and-large 40k noobs and I'm a bit of a fluffer-nutter. That said, one of them gave me a stumper.

Shrouded House (Navigator) + Penal World + Savant.

Part of me wants to go basically a Navigator that worked on a Penal World in some sort of scribe capacity, but that doesn't really jive well. I can't seem to find much info about specific houses to get an idea from them, either. Any help would be appreciated.

A fallen line, the last of its scions to drudgery as an act of contempt by their enemies. As a result of being able to make people's brains dribble out of their ears they avoid the worst of the toil, and set to ensuring that the next generation have a chance to regain the House's fortunes.

White collar penal world with resort style prisons that churn out well-read indentures?

After having fallen to ruin the shrouded house noticed that the offspring of one of it's navigators seemed somehow less prone to mutation then normal for their line. It turned out that the mother of the children was a native of Penal World X who had managed to somehow escape that world. As the mother had already died by then they needed to find out whether or not this effect could be reproduced by other women from that world. As such they established an outpost on that world where they studied the matter. Several new scions were born there as a result of their forced "experiments", your player is one of them. As he grew up he joined the family study there, whether or not he was succesfull we'll leave up to you.

If I remeber right, navigator genes don't mix that well with baseline huma - it usually takes two navigator parents to sucessfuly breed one. Oddities might happen though. A possible tweak on Badlapje's version might be the penal colony in question had in the past some influx of navigator genes (maybe from a crashed ship' survivor putting himself as some sort of lorf through his psycic powers, complete with harem and the like to spred his genome around). During the experiments one of the involved navigators has some fun on the side, and didn't figure out the mother had jsut the right gene combo to give the resulting progeny navigator abilities. When he reaches puberty those genes hit with a vengenace, he gets spotted and admitted into the House.

This post got me thinking about Penal worlds, and I was only able to find reference to one Penal World in the Calixis Sector. That world is the penal world Kommitzar in the Hazeroth sub-sector. So that got me thinking that perhaps the Penal world has it's own ships that make the rounds of the Calixis Sector to pick up prisoners, much like The Black Ships do to pick up psykers. If that were true, then your Navigator could serve aboard a ship of the Penal Fleet.

"In 999.M40 a Navis Nobilite family was sent to an unnamed penal world by a High Lords' Tribunal for a crime they didn't commit. These individuals promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Koronus Expanse. Today, still wanted by the Imperium, they survive as a Shrouded House, guides to fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The Navigators."

Errant said:

The Eye Team!

Oh god how did I miss that

Nice! So does this mean you guys are going to stat up The A-Team using the RT rules? Maybe Hannibal as the Rogue Trader, B.A. as the Arch-Militant, Murdoch as the Void Master and Face as the Seneschal?

The Penal World could be a cage for something other then men. Something that would need a certain navigator house to look after.