Because it may amuse, some notes from the campaign I've been running for the last few months - so far well received, although I'm still awaiting horrible PC deaths. No doubt as they become more experienced with their characters the chances of them becoming fatally optimistic will improve, unless they all realise the true horror of their situation and throw themselves out the airlock first. My victims include -

Lord-Captain Leman van Baroque , Holder of the Warrant of Trade and owner of the starship Rose Tattoo . The van Baroque warrant was granted to his grandfather on the condition he conquered the fortress-world Merates Null Five during the Meritech Wars, but the effort nearly bankrupted him, and it's only now that the family has freed up enough assets to go exploring again.

His First Officer, the Tech-priest Casu Marzu , who is amazingly well-socialized for a member of the Ordo Mechanicus, and even gets on well with members of the Ecclesiarchy, although he spends entirely too much time plugged into the ship's cogitators. His brain has been so massively augmented that he can't fail most mental tasks, and his body so nearly machine he can ignore minor problems like breathing. By a strange coincidence his name is also that of a particularly obnoxious cheese. Can't think why...

Malakai Tubreau , the ship's officer responsible for the Munitorium, and maintaining the morale of the Rose Tattoo's crew of 16,000 press-ganged ratings, conscripted criminals, and borderline mutants. "The beatings will continue until morale improves."

Of course, any Rogue Trader worth his salt will dabble with smuggling, privateering, and trading with aliens, if he thinks he can get away with it, so it's just as well that van Baroque has one Jak Frost on board. And Frost *should* be adaptable, since he's an export from the a DH campaign we were in, who since the Imperium tortured him almost to death for something he didn't do, went to work for the Tau as a spy, found himself halfway across the galaxy, nearly killed by the Kroot he was travelling with, and has been nosing around the fringe ever since, as a highly capable Fixer.

There's also Astropath Adrik . "I'm an essential part of the away team - because I'm the only expendable psyker on board."

Van Baroque has been following up some centuries-old survey reports on the system 105 Anurahda, to see whether transuranic deposits that weren't worth mining then now are, and is annoyed to discover that somebody else beat him to it. But there's still a chance for profit, since the mobile refinery strip-mining the planet hasn't been resupplied in over a year and the crew are desperate to trade radioactives for food. Despite this chance to rip off a rival Rogue Trader - one Bel Ingeneri and his ship the Sycorax - the group are suspicious. The Lord-Captain orders a thorough scan of the entire system, suspecting an ambush. That at least gives me plenty of opportunity for purple prose (indeed, the whole setting does).

van Baroque : It's an old trader adage - if a situation seems too good to be true, it probably is.

GM : Your cybernetic senses are already more keen than those of mere organic flesh, but when you jack yourself into the auspex arrays you become Like Unto A God - you can watch as flares on the star's far side raise tsunamis of blazing plasma that sweep around the horizon, the glint of X-rays refracted off the internal facets of the distant asteroids, and the intricate curlicues engraved into the red-lit surface of the planet below, as the mobile mine grinds down mountains, fills valleys with its spoil, and stains the landscape with the smoke from its many processor stacks, caught by the perpetual winds flowing from the cold side.

The Lord-Captain eventually decides to send the rest of the PCs and a few armed crew down with some crates of food, prior to bringing the mine boss up to complete negotiation. The mine itself has a certain resemblance to this render of the ridiculously huge Bagger 288, somehow transplanted to a lava world - http://forums.gamespy.com/unreal_tournament_3/b67366/20052410/p1/ . Imagine that it was the bastard hybrid offspring of a petrochemical plant as well, though. A Satanic Mill indeed. They're not overly impressed when no-one but a few servitors come down to meet them, and actively alarmed when they discovered the wreckage of the mine's own flyer, the altered airlock records, and the fact that despite the voice on the vox the only living thing they can detect in the entire complex are themselves and the servitors. Which turn on them, leading to them being split up, attempting to make their way to the mine's bridge, as the rogue tech-priest they now believe they're at the mercy of rewires power supplies and machinery around them.

Up on the Rose Tattoo, Lord-Captain van Baroque has his own problems - because the various files and contracts broadcast up to him included some highly effective malware, now busily racing through the ships systems. He orders the crew into void suits and everything shut down, until the Tech-Adepts can exorcise the ship's cogitators, and prays the heretek doesn't have any hidden warships at his command.

Jak manages to reach the bridge, whilst the heretek amuses himself with the rest of the group. But the heretek, wired into his cyberthrone, is already dead. And by the looks of things has been for years if not decades - but somebody is still laughing at them from the vox, and the servitors are closing in....

Part Two : Trapped in a mobile plutonium mine, hunted by cyborgs, and being mocked by the voice of a long-dead heretek, Tech-Priest Marzu, Malakai and the astropath Adrik hole up in an intersection, while Marzu tries to break through into the power conduits, and Rosenkrantz/Jak Frost, busy up on the bridge, tries to decide what to do next.

At least they figure out why the servitors are cutting off their retreat, when the flyer they arrived in takes off, apparently en route to the Rose Tattoo . With Malakai and his beloved lasgun Josephine neatly blowing the heads off any of the rivet-gun and mining-laser-bearing servitors that try to come around the corner, Jak and Marzu frantically seize control of the rig's heavy-duty lasers and blow their only transport out of the sky. The voice on the vox pauses, apparently a bit upset by this development, and resumes control of the modified corpse in the cyberthrone to kill Jak with its baleful laser eye. Jak takes cover as the consoles are shot to pieces around him.

Several decks below, Marzu had been intending to cut off all power to the bridge, but then has a better idea, routing the entire output into the bridge systems instead. Circuit-breakers fail, the panels explode in showers of sparks beyond the wildest dreams of Gene Roddenbery, the corpse of the heretek Stylianides bursts into flame and a ghastly electronic screaming erupts from the vox.

After that, it's relatively straightforward for Marzu to re-assume control of the remaining servitors, and lead them up to the bridge.

Jak Frost : It's like some horrifying version of a mother duck leading her offspring.

And furthermore, Marzu's superhuman intelligence makes short work of the encryption on the heretek's dataslate. The contents will make interesting reading, but first everybody's attention is captured by another discovery - a production line for crude nuclear bombs. Marzu pauses his study of the heretek's research notes and dashes madly to scan the mine for masses of refined plutonium.

GM : What's the saying? 'If you see an ordnance officer at a dead run, try and keep up'

To their relief, the end product doesn't seem to be anywhere onboard. That's because it had been loaded onto the stolen flyer, that Malakai & Frost had just set out to salvage.

Sending the servitors out to do the salvage instead - after all, who cares if they pick up a lethal dose of radiation - they settle down to stockpile their new acquisition, and try and figure out what Stylianides and his associate Lord-Captain Ingeneri were up to. It makes interesting reading - apparently the Rogue Trader had found a source of archeotech, and had sought out Stylianides to test a cogitator apparently dating from the dawn of the Imperium, and get his advice on the best way to go back for more. But this 'X-I' unit, now in Marzu's hands, was no mere tame Machine Spirit, but a supremely adaptable and frighteningly invasive Artificial Intelligence - a heresy banned since the nearly mythical Men of Iron. After waiting a year it had taken over the mine, slaughtered the humans, and waited five decades for a Rogue Trader that never came back.

Thus, the group has a clue to immense wealth and danger, assuming they can find out out where 'Makybe's Veil' is. Hints among the mine crew's personal effects imply a heathen world. The mine itself is valuable, too, providing Lord-Captain van Baroque bribes the right people to get the salvage rights, and re-equips it with crew, servitors, and orthodox cogitators. Some of the existing equipment was way past its service date anyway, such as the late crew's pleasure-servitor.

Jak Frost OOC : Oh god, I can picture it all too well - C3PO with jubblies.

GM : I realise that Ingeneri carefully chose his mine crew from people that wouldn't report back to the Imperium, but you might want to replace them with people that know what they're doing. After all, you wouldn't want one of them to say 'What does this button do?' and you come back to find a large radioactive crater where your mine used to be.

Equipping the mine with extra defences might also be a good idea. After all if they've gone to all this trouble to bags it, they wouldn't want some other Rogue Trader doing the same thing.

Jak : What's with your obsession with big guns? You can kill people with your freak mind, can't you?
Adrik : No I can't.
Jak : You can't? Then why do we even have you along?

Thus, after some weeks of making absolutely sure that the X-I hasn't left any nasty surprises in the ship's datacores, the Rose Tattoo makes an uneventful return to the Imperial border outpost at Port Wander, with a long shopping list. Not least to replace the hundreds of crew killed because their compression drill wasn't up to scratch. Malakai and Jak seems to be developing a rivalry over the best ways to improve ship morale. Whilst it's a certainty that the Rose Tattoo's shipboard economy already includes representatives of the oldest profession, both feel the number could be improved. Jak thinks hiring on a complement of Port Wander's many doxies would be best, but Marzu thinks that dedicated pleasure-servitors would be a better use of the Lord-Captain's funds.

Tech-Priest Marzu : I can recommend the Roboslut 3000.

There is one surprise for them when the Rose Tattoo arrives at Port Wander - a spacecraft that dwarfs their own, heaved to a few hundred klicks from the space station. Clearly that of a Rogue Trader, since who else would have the ego and funds to have the prow re-modelled into a human face?

GM : The transponder can give you the ship's name and model, but it's not going to tell you which Lord-Captain runs it. After all, as far as the Ordo Mechanicus are concerned, the merely organic parts of a ship are the least important.

But as to who that Lord-Captain is, and what effect his presence will have on the van Baroque fortunes, will have to wait until next week.

Part Three - Wining, Dining, and butting heads with rival Rogue Traders. Lord-Captain van Baroque is not exactly overjoyed that Marzu brought the deadly X-1 unit aboard the Rose Tattoo, even if it is locked up inside multiple Faraday cages, and even Marzu doesn't go inside the cage with it.

Jak Frost : You're absolutely right, Lord-Captain - this cogitator is probably the most dangerous thing on the ship.
GM : Apart from Casu Marzu

As well as finding crew, brokers, and parts for the plutonium mine, the Lord-Captain must ensure that it's his lineage and his alone that gets the salvage rights. All this is proving more difficult than usual, since that huge and ostentatious ship they noticed previously belongs to one Lord-Captain Maximilian dePledge, a man of such insanely high wealth and influence ( even by Rogue Trader standards ) that his mere presence is skewing the economy. Large numbers of his crew, in actual uniforms and livery in the blue-and-white dePledge colours, and accompanied by armed guards - are touring the space station's many sights. The rumour mill has been putting in plenty of overtime - dePledge is here to expand his interests into the Koronus expanse, dePledge is here to buy an asteroid habitat in the Rubicon belt, dePledge owns three planets in the Scarus sector, dePledge is so scrupulous that he's never been charged with illegal trade, an Inquisitor once apologised to Maximilian dePledge, and much more. Although nobody believes that last one.

None the less, a request to meet the Administratum Master responsible for salvage claims is made, accompanied with a bottle from van Baroque's private cellar.

GM : As lubrication?
Casu Marzu : Speaking of lubrication... *oils his joints* clickclonk, clickclonk, clickclonk

This functionary turns out to be a vain, self-important art snob, very proud of his collection even though, unbeknownst to him, at least a third of it is counterfeit. Carefully not pointing this out, van Baroque ensures 'efficient navigation through the maze of the bureaucracy' by offering to put his new friend in contact with a renowned sculptor, and perhaps even commission a full-length of such a vital bureaucrat, or bas-relief of him surrounded by his small army of scribes, servo-skulls, and lexmechanics. It'd look good on the outside of the Administratum block, after all.

DePledge, on the other hand, has already earned the good will of the locals, spreading some largesse about Port Wander in the form of several megatonnes of fresh water, a valuable resource in the Rubicon system.

Lord-Captain van Baroque : Good idea. You can only drink your own urine so many times.
Casu Marzu : I beg to differ.

They have others tasks ahead of them in Port Wander too, of course - find out what Lord-Captain Bel Ingeneri was up to, fifty years ago, prior to his disappearance.

Jak Frost : I'll put out some feelers
Casu Marzu : He's an alien!
Lord-Captain van Baroque : Don't joke about that, the Inquisition has ears everywhere.

One of Jak's contacts is the Madam for a number of the better cathouses on Port Wander. They're delighted to see him again, especially since he inadvertently gives her so many excuses for double entendre. For example -

Jak : I'm an upstanding citizen now
Lady DeRessage : * smiles * Yes, my girls remember just how upstanding you used to be.

Jak : Well, I must be off
Lady DeRessage : * smiles * Do come again soon.

Eventually they hire a team of lexmechanics and scribes to explore the datatombs for anything they might contain regarding Igneneri and this mysterious Mykybe's Veil. At least the librarium on Port Wander is comparatively tiny, and they don't have to go into the Stacks armed, to protect themselves from the AIs that sometimes evolve from the data programs.

Jak OOC : *in tones of dread* We have to go to the 37th floor? Lock and load, people...
Casu Marzu OOC : That's awesome - I can just picture the kind of people they need
GM OOC : Conan the Librarian

The team return with a freshly-written 800 page folio edition biography 'Of The Life and Times of Lord-Captain Bel Ingeneri', complete with fold-out maps and Josian silk place-markers, and an almost as comprehensive literature search on the name Mykybe, and all the definitions they were able to uncover. When you can pay for the best, you get the best. The leader of the scribes is almost purring as he shows the Lord-Captain the fully illuminated manuscripts he prepared. If the information is accurate, the most likely Mykybe is one of the traditional goddesses on the heathen world Zayth, where city-machines crawl across the strip-mined surface, at constant war with each other. Ingeneri was last known to be establishing trade with Zayth, and it would certainly explain the source of the crew for the much smaller mining machine at 105 Andrasta, and why he set up the plutonium mine in the first place. But why would he have hired entire clans of salvage workers, and space salvage equipment by the tonne? Nonetheless, they have their clues, and prepare to leave for the extended trip to Zayth.

But before they leave van Baroque and guests are invited to dine aboard dePledge's ship, the Royal Privilege .

van Baroque : He's probably going to make us an offer he thinks we can't refuse
Casu Marzu OOC : Don't worry, Sir, my power fist has a middle finger.

Lord-Captain van Baroque, although not exactly pleased, does at least dress for the occasion - Squig-leather longcoat, with shoulder pads made from bronzed Ork skulls, a tricorn hat, a collar higher than the hat, Ork tooth buttons, a sash with every military medal awarded to the van Baroque warrant over the years, a brace of pistols tucked into his belt, a walking stick with a Gretchin's skull as the handle, and cutlass. Actually, compared to many Rogue Traders, this is under-dressed.

GM : That's Imperial fashion for you - lots of skulls.
Jak OOC : 'Hi! Like my desk? It's made of skulls. And every skull is made from smaller skulls!'

Although, upon arrival on the Royal Privilege, dePledge is bucking the trend. Indeed, the interior of his ship is more a combination of Versailles and the Sistine Chapel, with half the ship's volume wasted in vaulted corridors, with murals and painted ceilings, and discreet plaques identifying each artist that has so magnificently portrayed the many achievements and holdings of the dePledge family. The starship even has a garden, elegantly laid out, and a private balcony overlooking it where they will be eating. All the servants are servitors - lobotomised prisoners who have been cybernetically enhanced, surgically perfected, and dressed in expertly tailored lace and silk uniforms complete with dangling sleeves and flawless hosiery as they move in computer-controlled synchrony around the diners. Cherubs - cloned babies with heads full of circuitry and servo-wings - flit around the table serving drinks, and the entertainment includes a woman who since her conversion has been built into a living harp, her ribcage replaced with metal, extended, and strung to form the frame.

van Baroque, Jak, and Marzu :

After all this, slightly shocking even to Imperial nobility like van Baroque, it's not entirely surprising to learn that dePledge has heavily altered himself, as well. Resplendent in his exquisite white Josian silk outfit, gleaming with lace, seed pearls, and elaborate wig, dePledge has had all his visible flesh, and probably most of the rest of it, replaced with an intricate assemblage of white-enamelled metal pieces, that slide over each other as he moves, smiles, talks, and so on. A servo-skull hovers nearby, muttering financial news in the private dePledge cant - his own skull, removed and retrofitted once he got something better to house his brain.

He's accompanied by a human in an equally well tailored outfit, although his seems to be mostly close-fitting body armour, in various shades of black, with black skull-mask entirely covering his face, a tuft of black feathers behind his head, and the only visible weapon a pistol holstered blackly across his chest. He never says anything, but merely stands a little behind dePledge glaring at the guests as they dine on the utterly perfect meal, and delicate wines.

dePledge : *gesturing at his bodyguard* And this is my creature, Dragan.

dePledge : Yes, Leman, I remember when your grandfather was awarded the the Warrant of Trade. I recall saying at the time that he'd bankrupt himself trying to take Merates Null Five, but I've pleased to see that you've risen to overcome the shortcomings of your ancestry.

dePledge : A little bird tell me that you're planning an expedition in search of Mykybe's Veil? Now, I'm sure your ship and crew are entirely competent, but perhaps you should limit your reach to lower-hanging fruit?

van Baroque : Tell me, you're angling to become Governor of Koronus once it becomes a Sector, aren't you?
dePledge : My dear Lord-Captain, of course not! We Rogue Traders move in more rarified circles - better to leave such petty details to the born bureaucrats that are best suited to it.
van Baroque : Like the Calixis Governor, Lord Hax?
dePledge : *facial elements sliding into a smile* A good friend.
van Baroque (to GM) : I don't believe him - is he being sincere?
GM : How would you tell?
van Baroque : Oh, right - metal face, synthesised voice...

These apparent attempts to provoke Lord-Captain van Baroque don't work, although dePledge does seem amused by the way he couches all his plans in military terms. It's probably just as well that nobody on van Baroque's side tries anything, since Marzu notices that half the murals around the ceiling are actually holovids, concealing sniper bays. But then, all this sort of thing is entirely normal in the circles Rogue Traders move in, and they'll have to get used to it if they run into dePledge again. And, if van Baroque is right, running into him again is a near-certainty...

Part Four : The ongoing adventures of Lord-Captain Leman van Baroque and the crew of the Starship Rose Tattoo , as they embark for the heathen world Zayth, and the mysterious Mykybe's Veil, in search of Treasure!

Regarding that long-defunct pleasure-servitor they found on 105 Andrasta-A, and continued jokes about its value as loot.

Van Baroque : So let me get this straight - one pleasure-servitor for a crew of 18,000?
GM : That's not a problem - just limit everybody to 30 seconds each XD

The Lord-Captain finds a way to profit from the long voyage to Zayth, even if the clues to untold riches don't pay off - he can take a gaggle of priests from the Missionaria Galaxia, and a hold-full of improving texts. Even if he offers them a discount, getting in sweet with the Ecclesiarchy now will lead to other commissions later. No need to inform them that they'll be travelling in the quarters usually reserved for alien monsters.

GM : Ah, Zayth, where the city-machines are at constant war, the surface is scoured by strip-mining and pollution, * and * they are regularly invaded by Orks. And what is the best aid provided by the Imperium? Send missionaries!

Jak OOC : We've got monks in the air vents again - better put down some monk-traps.

The trip does not begin well - a few weeks into the long climb out of Rubycon's gravity well, the ship is overtaken by an asteroid that turns out to be a pirate vessel, deliberately tumbling to disguise its true nature until too late. Happily, Casu Marzu was suspicious enough to examine the 'rock' while it was still some 100,000 kilometres away, so the surprise wasn't total.

Nonetheless, the exchange of fire continues until Malakai and Jak can use the Rose Tattoo 's ancient teleportarium to lead a squad of ship's crew over to raise merry havoc, wrecking the other vessel's auger arrays, and leaving it to flee, blind, with the Rogue Trader in dogged pursuit, at least until it looks like they're being lead into an ambush, and they break off.

Jak OOC : Teleport Homer... Mmm, sweet heresy... *drools noisily*

And that's just the start of their problems - the Rose Tattoo's Navigator fails spectacularly on his entry into the Maw, and guides the ship straight into the heart of a violent hyperspatial hurricane, that has the Geller Field ringing like a bell, the ship's superstructure groaning, and the artificial gravity switching around at 80 degrees. Happily, having all those priests on board will save time commending their souls to the Emperor.

Navigator : * babbling * Storms like teeth, gnawing on us like the Great Beast, oh, the teeth are closing! The teeth are closing, to rend and destroy!

Frantic orders are bellowed, and Marzu is diverting all available power to warp engines and Geller field, since the fury of the storm is forcing the field closer and closer to the ship - and only the field can protect them from the entities that live out there. Which is when the other problem becomes apparent.

GM : ... and the ship's chronometer ticks forward one second.
Lord-Captain van Baroque : ... f***.

The crew spends a subjective five weeks at the mercy of the Maw, until the ship is spat out as indigestible, less than three light-years from where they left, 9 days into what should have been a three-day trip.

It doesn't get better, either - at the end of their next warp-jump, the junior navigators somehow fail to notice the presence of a sun in Real-Space, and the ship emerges in the middle of a flare. By the time the Rose Tattoo is finished its pilgrimage stop at the Hermitage, and jumped to the next pilgrimage stop at the Footfall asteroids orbiting the Wolf-Rayet star Furibundus, the Lord-Captain is heartily sick of Navigators, and orders Marzu to look into purchasing whatever archeotech or xenotech they can get to make the Navigators unnecessary. Dangerous, since the Navigator Houses tend to ensure 'accidents' befall ships that decline their services.

That may be why an assassination attempt is made on Marzu and Jak, while they are trading grav-plate repairs for a Void Abacus. Possibly this was a simple robbery attempt, but it will be difficult to identify the assailants since Marzu and Jak's retaliation left little of them above the hips.

Part Five : The campaign proceeds apace, with much excitement for all concerned, and assorted innocent bystanders. Somehow getting onto the topic of Girl Scout cookies

GM : Made from real girl girl scouts, I trust?

which led to

Jak OOC : Khornate girl scouts - ' Cookies for the Merit Baaaaaadge!!!!!!!!!'
Marzu OOC : I can picture them now, rushing forward, axes glinting in the blood red sun.

Jak's player : I could pilot a military vehicle but not a civilian vehicle? What the hell?
Adrik's player : No, it'd be like somebody going from an F-1 to my piece of ****
Jak's Player : Your car can fly??
Adrik's Player : .... I meant Formula One
Jak's Player : Ooooh, I thought you meant F-1 fighter

GM : If we're talking online games, how about World of Lovecraft?
Jak's player : Owwwww
GM : Yeah, can't see that one being a popular MMORPG, somehow...
Jak's player : ' I got killed by fish-men my first day out and I'm not respawning? WTF?'

GM : *holding ear* Ow. Tinnitus. 'neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-
Jak's player : I get that too.
Tech-Priest Marzu's player : Don't worry, that's just your brain flat-lining.

Anyway - Having just had their first officer, Tech-Priest Casu Marzu, nearly assassinated, the Lord-Captain feels that leaving Footfall in some haste might be a good idea. Joining the convoy to the planet Lucin's Breath looks like a good idea, and negotiations proceed.

Jak : Leaving Casu Marzu in charge might be a mistake. 'Where have all our crew gone? And why do we have so many servitors now?'

GM : There's one main problem with bringing the Lucinite Xenos aboard the ship - they thrive in temperatures that freeze carbon dioxide. Sure you can set conditions in the ship's Alienage to suit them, but you're already keeping those priests in there. You'd turn them all into pope-sicles

The Rose Tattoo 's Navigator continue to irk the rest of the command crew, and it's still possible he was behind the assassination attempt on Marzu. Before they depart for Lucin's Breath, the Lord-Captain calls him onto the bridge to threaten him with redundancy if he doesn't shape up.

Navigator : * smugly * I'm sure that the deep mysteries of the Warp are completely opaque to one who's ancestors have not been blessed by the Emperor, but how would the Lord-Captain propose to traverse the stars without the services of the Navigator Houses?
Tech-Priest Marzu : We replace you with machinery, just like we should with any other malfunctioning flesh.
Navigator : * glares * You may believe that if you wish, but I advise you to consult the records of all those other Lord-Captains who thought they could survive without our services. They met with so many unfortunate accidents.
Tech-Priest Marzu : Really? So far this trip you've caught us in a warp storm and nearly flown us into a sun. I think we should take the risk.
Navigator : * veins throbbing* Very well. The Navigator Houses are dangerous enemies.
Tech-Priest Marzu : You're pretty dangerous friends, too.

To the bitter unsurprise of the Lord-Captain, etc, Navigator Orpheus screws up again, on their entry into the Warp. The Rose Tattoo is caught in some current of the Warp not felt by the other ships, and is soon lagging far behind the rest of the convoy as they churn through the unnatural fires of the Empyrean. Casu Marzu saves the day.

GM : By diverting all power from such secondary systems as life-support, you soon have the Warp Engines howling - not only catching up but overtaking the rest of the fleet.
Jak OOC : Quick, fire all the starboard guns, that'll make a good turn signal
GM OOC : A headwind? No problem, just turn around and go backwards - no problem
Jak OOC : We've invented Warp Drifting
Lord-Captain van Baroque : I thought I said maintain position with the fleet?
Tech-Priest Marzu : Sure, but why achieve when you can over-achieve?

The Rose Tattoo arrives at one of the waystation systems hours ahead of the rest of the convoy. The livid Lord-Captain immediately has the navigator and his juniors brought before him, and declares him banned from the bridge - they'll be dropping him off at the nearest Imperial world as soon as possible, and the contract can go hang. Adrik wonders if the Navigator is demonically infested, but can detect nothing. Neither can Malakai, who's been using the weeks in the Warp to lead purging gangs through the ship's hull, looking for mutants. At least that is going well - the number of hullghasts is much lower than expected. Marzu is enjoying all this far too much, to the point of leaving the scanning of the system to one of his own underlings, whilst he enjoys the Navigator's impotent rage. Jak, elsewhere, is talking to the crew. There's been some disquieting murmurs that this voyage is cursed.

Jak OOC : Really, you guys, harden the **** up. This is 40K, bad **** always happens.
Tech-Priest Marzu OOC : I'll have a spoonfull of cement powder added to the daily rations, starting immediately. That'll toughen 'em up.
Jak : And besides, nothing went wrong this jump - we actually got here ahead of the other ships.
GM : .... and every proximity alarm on the ship goes off, because the lesser tech-priests have finally spotted the three pirate vessels bearing down on you.

GM : The three ships are broadcasting on all Vox-channels. 'Ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go, 'Ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go-oh....'
Lord-Captain van Baroque : ****. Orks.

Tech-Priest Marzu : Can I hack Ork technology?
Lord-Captain van Baroque : Only with an axe.

The Rose Tattoo flees towards the nearest of the red dwarf's three planets, with the Orks in hot pursuit. But the Lord-Captain has a plan! They're going to slingshot around the planet and head back towards the break-out point, hopefully leading the Orks back into the massed fire of the convoy, assuming they arrive in time. It works too - one of the Ork ships misjudges the turn and plows on in, another anticipates the trick, tries to meet the humans head-on and is reduced to a flaming shell in reply, and the third is just starting to catch up with the human vessel when the rest of the ships arrive and open fire. Unfortunately, the Orks don't seem to mind and simply ram one of the heavy freighters, breaking its spine, snapping off the bridge, and getting stuck in the wreckage, on fire.

Lord-Captain van Baroque : As the Ancient Admiral Nelson once said...
Jak Frost OOC : *Nelson-laugh* Ha-Ha!

The fight now becomes a boarding action, to rescue the surviving crew of the freighter, and kill as many of the Orks as possible. This goes quite well - most of the crew of the Rose Tattoo come from a world informally known as 'Goff-Morgue', and they relish the chance to kill some greenskins. Shuttling the stormtroopers over to the wreckage is complicated by the launch of dozens of Ork Fightas, most of them bizarre flying buzzsaws, with a Ork in a bubble helmet steering from the middle. The Captain simply teleports straight onto the enemy bridge, accompanied by his best troops, and Adrik hefting a heavy assault stubber. They hose the Orks down with flamers, grenades, massed fire, and harsh language, but this merely seems to annoy the Kaptin, a gigantic brute with heavy armour, chainsaws strapped to each wrist, and a circular saw built into the middle of his skull.

Lord-Captain van Baroque : He's wearing unfashionable black-and-white checks, isn't he.
GM : Oh yes. And the Goff Nobb turns around to glare at you with his little red piggy eyes, growls, and slams a big red button on each wrist, and on the side of his head. The three saws start up...
Lord-Captain van Baroque : This is going to hurt...

Adrik turns the stubber onto the Kaptin, hosing him down with bullets.

GM : The Goff looks at the tattered stump of his left arm, and the blood spurting from the severed arteries as they flap around, and exclaims "My zoggin' arm! " and turns his attentions on you. Millennia ago, back on Holy Terra, there were once animals called gorillas. Picture one of these in heavy armour, dark green and hairless, with a chainsaw in its one remaining hand, and a circular saw bolted to its forehead, pole-vaulting over the rail towards you, about to head-butt you with the circular saw, and bringing the chainsaw around in a sweep... it's anyone's guess which one is going to reach you first.... *rolls dice* which is when he manages to decapitate himself with his own chainsaw. * headdesk *
Players : LOL
GM : At least the head is still coming towards you!
Adrik : I knock it away.
GM : It lands on the floor, circular saw still screaming, and as the teeth bite into the deck it skids away down the corridor, still shouting "Oi! It's just a flesh wound1 You just wait you little 'oomie git, I'll be ba-"
Adrik : Well, I think we can say our decapitation strike on the enemy command structure was a success...

After that it's mopping up and salvage - and extensive repairs to the Rose Tattoo's teleportarium, because the Lord-Captain ordered Marzu to capture one of the buzzsaw Fightas intact, and some incredible failure of intellect had him teleport one aboard, right into the teleport bay, when it was still flying around. After it ricochetted around the chamber a few times Marzu was probably reconsidering the wisdom of this action, but the damage had been done.

Jak Frost : Why are we keeping this buzzsaw thing anyway?
Lord-Captain van Baroque : We can sell it to Imperial collectors. Like that Polonius family, they've got nothing better to do than surrender planets and ride strange vehicles.

So they come out ahead again - triumphing over three-to-one odds and now owed a favour by the immensely powerful and dangerous Lady Aspyce Chorda, since the freighter was still partly intact by the time they were finished with it. But Kaptin Buzzkill's head seems to have escaped somehow, and will no doubt be back to haunt them.

On Tech-Priests and their endless holy quest for Standard Template Constructs.

GM : Behold, the original Spork!

On dePledge's giant spaceship/monument to vanity

GM : Truck nuts the size of small moons
Tech-Priest Casu Marzu OOC : And hundreds of tech-adepts out there polishing them.

Lord-Captain van Baroque : So, how long until you get a colleague's brain transplanted into your chest?
Tech-Priest Casu Marzu : Nah, I'm going to install the X-I unit instead.
GM : gah... wah... * whimper *
Jak Frost OOC : Congratulations, you've broken the GM
GM : The scariest thing is that he could actually do it
Tech-Priest Casu Marzu OOC : I know

GM : So with those bonuses, a competent starship crew, under normal conditions, will only fly into planets half the time.

Introducing a new character, sanctioned psyker Xanthis Raythion, en route to the Heathen Worlds in hope of finding a force weapon of his very own. There are some questions as to why he's travelling alone, without a chaperone to blow his brains out if he loses control of his powers, but he has the money for the trip - suspicious in itself. Jak and a squad of stormtroopers are clearing out corridors in the wrecked freighter Whyteman's Burden , when they are swarmed by a mob of leftover Orks, many of them on fire. That's because they're fleeing from Xanthis, who is pursuing them with enough lightning flying from his hands to make Emperor Palpatine feel inadequate. His psychic abilities make him formidable in hand-to-hand, too.

GM : The Ork is looking a bit startled.
Jak OOC : Well, yes - I would be too if I'd just had my leg punched up through my shoulder!

Xanthis buys passage aboard the Rose Tattoo , despite the Lord-Captain's reservations. At least the psyker has previous experience making Orks die, something that the captain can appreciate. He even shows Xanthis the trophy room, with row after row of stuffed Ork heads.

Lord-Captain van Baroque : Pity that Kaptin's head got away. I would have enjoyed interrogating it for information.
GM : Well, you've still got the body - you can always skin that for another coat. Or Ork leather place-mats?
Jak : Yeah, and how did that Ork head manage to keep talking anyway?
GM : * shrugs * That's Orks for you - a sufficiently tough Ork can ignore little things like poison, radiation, breathing, or the laws of reality.

The crew enjoy a solemn victory mass in the Rose Tattoo's temple, complete with swinging censers and overly long sermons, before most of them retire to the lower decks to enjoy fermented rat, dancing on tables, and trolley races in the corridors.

Lord-Captain van Baroque : Don't mind me, I'll be in my cabin, softly crying.
Jak Frost OOC : 'Ork-skin blankey, you're the only one that understands me...'

Perhaps the string of rotten luck that has plagued the ship is finally over?

Yeah, right.

GM : You're a few days into the final leg to Lucin's Breath when the latest in your endless stream of disasters occurs.
Jak Frost OOC : Let me guess, the Navigator has just burst into flame
GM : Funny you should say that...The ship's chief medicæ has come to you - he wants to tell you some very bad news.
Jak Frost : Oh god, another disaster???
Navigator : .... why are you all looking at me?
Medicæ : I'm afraid I've had 12 confirmed cases of Munn's Pandemic Fever turn up.
Lord-Captain von Baroque : Pandemic??? How bad is it?
Medicæ : We're not sure yet - we'll have to wait and see how many of the crew spontaneously combust.
All :
Jak : ... wait, a disaster the Navigator didn't cause? I'm amazed.

GM : And what will you be doing, now the quarantine is in force?
Xanthis : Barricading myself in my cabin and shooting anybody that comes near. But don't worry, I'll fire a warning shot first.

The lethality of the Ignicoccus infection depends entirely on which strain it is - something beyond the Medicæ's ability to determine. It looks like the Rose Tattoo will be in quarantine for at least a month, until the pandemic has run its course. Of course, the disease had figured without Casu Marzu, to whom hellishly difficult problems are mere child's play. He swiftly determines that the strain is one of the merely dangerous ones, rather than conflagrational.

GM : So, not satisfied with humiliating the Navigator, you humiliate the medics too?

Van Baroque's player : What was the holiday in the Star Wars Special?
Jak's player : Life Day. F*** Life Day

Thus they arrive at Lucin's Breath with a hold full of loot salvaged from the Ork pirates - mostly the explosively flammable compound Nephium. This will be useful when they trade for parts to repair the teleportarium, and equipment for the psyker.

GM : You're lucky it didn't catch fire when you were shooting the place up. Or when Xanthis here was fireballing Orks.
Jak : And that none of the crew spontaneously combusted when we were shifting it

Socializing on one of the Lucin's Breath orbital stations.

Jak Frost : Do you even drink, Marzu?
GM : Sure he does - he can always filter out the methanol and run it to his fuel cells, after all. And see, he even has a curly straw mechadendrite

Of course, there is an ambush attempt on Jak, Xanthis and Marzu while they return to the Rose Tattoo, bit needless to say they finish with nary a scratch, after Jak shoots the ears of the bushwhackers, Xanthis blows them apart with psychoelectric potential, and Marzu descends on them like the wrath of the Machine God.

GM : You're doing almost as much damage with your power fist as Xanthis does with his bare hands.
Tech-Priest Casu Marzu : Oh look, one of my electro-digits has seized up. Guess which one.

The surviving prisoner doesn't prove very interesting to the Lord-Captain, who orders him humanely killed. Marzu interprets this as 'delivered to the Medicæ for organ harvesting'.

GM : They strap him onto the conveyer belt and after the whirling knives and power scalpels have finished working him over like demonic sewing machines, the leftovers plop into a bucket.
Tech-Priest Casu Marzu : *picks up bucket* I'll just run this down to the kitchens

Meanwhile, van Baroque is entertaining Lord-Captain Harlvesk with a meal, military anecdotes, and questions about the territory ahead.

GM : It's quite a good meal. The chef even managed to get some actual fresh meat from somewhere.
Jak OOC : 'Why does this rump roast have a tattoo?'

Part Seven : The Rose Tatto o, currently laid up in orbit around Lucin's Breath, is roused to action by a frantic distress call from the scoopship Archangel , harvesting deuterium from a gas giant closer to the star - they're being taken apart by something much larger than themselves. Lord-Captain van Baroque is in no state to command, having over-imbibed on amasec and anecdote, but Tech-Priest Casu Marzu is happy to assume control. After all, in his opinion the ship rightfully belongs to the Priesthood of Mars anyway, and the Lord-Captain is just one of those inconvenient meatbags you have to work around sometimes.

Tech-Priest Marzu : Go to Red Alert! You! Change the light-bulb!

Lord-Captain Harlvesk of the Emperor's Vow can evidently hold his liquor better, and the two ships lead the rush to assist. After all, the Koronus Expanse may be relatively lawless, but there is a standing bounty on pirates, and the authorities don't much mind what you do to the pirates themselves afterwards. Tech-Priest Marzu advises Lord-Captain Harlvesk to stay in position with the Rose Tattoo . Arriving ahead of any support may be unwise. Considering what happened with the Rose Tattoo a few weeks earlier, somebody on the Vow 's bridge finds this advice risible, before being politely cut off. Since the gas giant in question orbits a star busy turning itself into a planetary nebula ( one of the reasons it's so enriched in deuterium in the first place ) the radiation belts around it are unbelievably hellish, so it is not until they can see the Archangel and its attacker, crouched like a ghastly spider silhouetted against the cloud-tops, that they can even tell what they're up against.

GM : The main hull is standard Imperial, as far as you can tell. But the part of it that horrifies your Tech-Priest soul are the almost insectile limbs grafted onto the superstructure...
Marzu's player : * alarmed * Are some of those limbs claws?
GM : * nods happily*
Marzu's player : You ****er. You unbelievable ****, ****, **********, etc.
GM : You roll up a random ship, and gloat about how awesome and unbeatable it is, and you honestly believe I'm * not * going to use it against you? Hand over the data-sheet, I haven't familiarized myself completely with your design.
Marzu's player : That's why I didn't give it to you before, ********* >

The enemy ship is known to the Tech-Priests and the Imperial Navy as the Reclamator , and it has a long history of carving up other spacecraft all over the Calixis Sector and the Expanse, and harvesting the crews for conversion into servitors.

Marzu's player : Reclamator?!? That's what I was going to call it!! * froths *

It's believed to be a creation of the hereteks known as the Logicians, the same group behind the Meritech Corporation and cause of the war that earned van Baroque's grandfather his title. The Tech-Priests of the Lathe system have a reward for its destruction - freehold on one of an assortment of recently surveyed worlds. Casu Marzu is even more familiar it, since he was one of the few survivors of another attack by it, decades ago.

GM : There's a strange sort of strangled noise coming over Marzu's vox-channel, before a list previous known attacks starts scrolling up on all your holo-screens. It's a long list, even before you get to the section on *suspected* attacks.
Xanthis : I think I should have stayed back on the space station...
Tech-Priest Marzu : Excuse me whilst I unclog my digestive outlet vent.

This prior experience may give him a tactical advantage however, since he has some idea of where its vulnerabilities may be. Certainly it's currently busy harvesting the Archangel , but it won't be short on power, since it's unfurled superconducting cables hundreds of kilometers long, and is tapping the gas giant's ferocious magnetic field.

Jak's player : *Aghast at the list of the Reclamator's various abilities*
Marzu's player : I know! I looked at this and wondered what kind of piece of **** are * we * flying around in?

The subsequent battle is surprisingly one-sided, despite the Emperor's Vow proving incapable of hitting anything smaller than a nearby moon.

Jak : What are they *doing* over there? I picture a gang of morons flailing their arms and running into things."Hello, Mister Gumbyyyyy!"
GM : "Hello! My brain hurts!"
Jak : And they've just managed to suck the loading crew into the launch tube, instead of the shell. And there's Scruffy, pushing his broom and going "Hmm. Gonna have to clean that up."

The Vow does manage to hit the Reclamator once in the exchange - and achieves nothing at all ( four ones! )

GM : They really are firing their own crew instead of shells.
Jak : *strikes Superman flight pose* Hgngn! For duh Emperor!
Marzu OOC : *leans out porthole* Fly closer! I want to hit it with my sword!

Marzu flexing his cogitators and assuming control of the Reclamator 's torpedoes and turning them against their own ship helps. Although there are certainly some fraught moments.

GM : Two of the smaller limbs on the Reclamator are turning to point at your ships... and FLASH. Every auspex on that side of the ship whites out. A fraction of a second later, half the airlocks have welded themselves shut with arc discharge, the machine spirits for every sensor on the hull are screaming at you... and your void shield generators just burned out.

Marzu consults with his opposite number on the Vow .

Magos Lensiac : Greetings in the name of the Omnissiah, brother. I anticipate your enquiry - we, too, have just been struck by an electromagnetic pulse of approximately twelve hundred and eighty gigajoules... I am receiving reports from my Void Shield adepts... excuse me, Brother Marzu, I must continue this exchange of data later. A Situation has arisen.

That's because the Reclamator has followed up the EMP by teleporting hundreds of Murder Servitors into both ships. Jak is down in the laser battery, bossing the ratings around, when they become aware of this.

GM : There's a pattering noise, very like hot tropical rain on a rooftop back on Myen-Fio, or hail falling into a lake.
Jak : You don't have to piss yourself yet, people.
GM : The noise is getting louder.Glancing back down the long corridor leading to the rest of the ship, you see the lights at the far end go out. And then the next closer do... and the next...
Jak : I switch on my suits low-vision camera
GM : Swarming down the corridor, and the walls, and the ceiling, is a mass of combat servitors, human arms and legs replaced with a profusion of long, multi-jointed limbs...
Jak : Close the door! Close the ****ing door!!!!

Elsewhere, Primarus psyker Xanthis Raytheon is warming up his unnatural abilities as he waits for more of the same. Side effects include ghastly odors that permeate even void suits.

Xanthis : Whoops, farted in my spacesuit. Argh!
GM : The first wave of murder servitors comes around the corner in a wall of twitching, skull-faced metal.
Xanthis : I don't think that was * just * a fart.

However, he does fry the first few with a wall of psychoelectricity.

Xanthis' player : * rolls dice* I hit on everything there...
Jak's player : Hit *on*?
Marzu's player : Are you some kind of robosexual?

GM : The electrical discharge leaps down the corridor, arcing off every bulkhead and rivet, until it reaches the first rank of servitors, filling the intersection with acting tendrils of lightning, setting flesh on fire and welding metal.
Adrik : They're doing The Dance of the Electric Cockroach
Jak OOC : * sings * THUNDERSTRUCK!!!
All : *pose as costumed servitors thrashing it out on guitar*

Alas, the surviving cyborgs open fire.

GM : You and some of the rating manage to dive into cover, but some of you aren't so fast. They are hosed down with fire, but instead of the spray of blood and bodyparts you were expecting, they go 'What?' and start patting themselves down, where long needle-like darts are protruding from their armour. Roughly a second and a half later, they go into violent convulsions.
Adrik : Now they're doing The Dance of the Electric Cockroach too

The servitors are just as dangerous in hand-to-hand, what with the way all four wrists hinge back to reveal hollow steel spikes, but again, Xanthis' powers are sufficient to deal with the problem, and raise superstitious terror in the crewmen fighting alongside you.

GM : Your first strike severs the neck, and the second punches right through its chest and rips out its heart. You stand there, muscles flexed, its oil pump still clutched in your fist. Which now catches bursts into flame. HRARGHHH! *poses heroically* The crewmen, however, is staring at you with a horrified expression and looks like he can't decide whether to shoot you or the servitors. *shoots the servitor to no effect, cries* 'I should have shot him, he's got less armour!'

GM : After you've killed the last servitor, there's only you and one of the ratings left.
Xanthis : I kill him.
GM : ... why?
Xanthis : I don't want bad rumours about me to worry the crew.
GM : You don't want to disturb the crew.... so you kill them instead

Adrik and Malakai, however, teleport over to the Emperor's Vow with a squad of stormtroopers, to assist against the murder servitors storming their bridge. Eventually, the two ships not only manage to deal with the boarding actions, but they force the Reclamator to flee into the Warp, severely damaged. Marzu and the others want to borrow Harlvesk's Navigator, and pursue the enemy to where-ever they've fled. More comedic advantage is made of the Lord-Captain's absence.

GM : He's slept through the whole thing, apart from bellowing "What's all that noise out there? Keep it down, I'm trying to sleep!"
Jak as van Baroque : * snuggled up to pillow* 'I love you Ork-skin blankey'

I do, however, ring his player. He orders the crew to merely follow them, map the location, and get the hell out and call in the Navy. Under no circumstances are they to engage, especially given what has happened to other ships that pursued the Reclamator . These orders are promptly ignored.

Tech-Priest Marzu : I'm sorry, Lord-Captain, but it would appear the attack has damaged the communications system. And the door to your cabin.

The system the Reclamator has fled to is indeed swarming with enemy ships, but none close enough to save their crippled compatriot before the Rose Tattoo finishes punching it full of holes. Indeed, Marzu and the others have time to teleport over in attempt to find and kill the enemy captain, but even though they find a mannequin stuffed with a plasma bomb instead, escape before it goes off.

The Rose Tattoo embarks for the nearest Battlefleet outpost - not only have they found a Logician nest, the planet is itself a valuable discovery. Lord-Captain van Baroque is not impressed, and is understandably inclined to throw the other PCs out the airlock. If they want a planet of their own so much, they can walk there.

The trip through the Warp is much smoother than anything they endured under their previous Navigator, which is nice. And everybody ( apart from the Lord-Captain, and the relatives of the troops sent to board the Reclamator ) is in high spirits. Jak and Adrik escort Xanthis back to his isolated quarters on one of the lower hab-decks before he can disturb any more crew.

GM : Xanthis & Adric - you two are suddenly overwhelmed by a vision - a dark void, but one that as your perception adjusts is broken by faint red stars, pulsing feebly, and strands of darker red that you can somehow urge into new patterns. Beyond your immediate surrounds are thousands of red and distant stars, very like the ones to hand. But your field of vision shifts, bringing into view two much brighter stars, trailing fire like comets. One is a flickering actinic blue-white, the other a lambent golden glow somehow more painful to look upon. They rush towards you, or you to them - it's difficult to judge. Then you're both back in the corridor.
Xanthis : ... the hell? Did you just -
GM : Something hits the bulkhead six inches from your ear, hard enough to deform the plasteel. Then again, and again, as rivets and metal scream in protest. And you're all overwhelmed with gut-wrenching nausea at the sensation of something *unnatural* far too close to hand.

Jak, wisely, retreats at speed, while Adrik calls up Marzu to let him know that a demon has somehow got aboard. The four cautiously investigate, and find the cabin on the far side of that wall a place of charnel horror - the three families that bunked there methodically immobilised, and vivisected, blood and organs laid out in eye-twisting runes on every surface. There's a dead mutant too - extremely dead, almost liquescent - and a open wall hatch they suspect leads to one of the abandoned sections of the Rose Tattoo' s structure.

GM : Are you going to inform the Captain?
Adrik : That the hull mutants are in league with demons? Nah, he has enough problems.
GM : The same hull mutants that I've been saying for months now have been in surprisingly low number?
Adrik : .... **** .

The four crawl through the miles of ducting in pursuit - no point panicking the crew just yet - to locate which of the Black Holds it may be hiding in. That the Rose Tattoo even has such areas is not that surprising - even a conservative calculation suggests it has over 3000 kilometres of corridor - but eventually they emerge in a long abandoned compartment some fifty stories high, criss-crossed with rusting walkways, balconies, and slack cables strung like lianas across the dank and noxious darkness.

And they're not alone. Hanging in mid-air, some 30 feet up, is the figure of a ten-year-old girl, eyes burning with sick yellow-green flame. She looks down at them, tilting her head to one side with a ghastly grin, and purrs "Playyyy?"

( After-game notes : I made a few fatal errors this session, mostly not using to Reclamator to best advantage. Also, Marzu's player of course knew all the Reclamator's weaknesses, and knew the rules far better than me. Plus, it now looks like they want to get involved in a full-scale planetary assault, so I have a lot of work as a GM ahead of me to try and flesh out what was supposed to be a one-off encounter...)

Nicely done. It's always lovely to see the players get that "Ohhhhhhh crap !" look on their faces.

And yes, those wacky PC's will do a great job derailing your plots. Hey, they do it to me, too.

Cheers,

- V.

Nicely done. It's always lovely to see the players get that "Ohhhhhhh crap!" look on their faces.

And yes, those wacky PC's will do a great job derailing your plots. Hey, they do it to me, too.

Cheers,

- V.

Thanks - next session they'll be dealing with the demon (or vice versa ), meeting Stryxis, butting heads with the Navy, and realising just how gargantuan a task they've set themselves in trying to conquer a star system armed with enough heretical tech to make the Arch-Magi of the Lathes blow a circuit. Oh, and one more wrinkle that will hopefully have the players panicking.

Thanks for those reports - sounds like a great game, and please tell us more

DW

Traveller61 said:

will do - currently writing up the second half of last session - trading with dogfaces.

The Reclaimator! I must have it!

Errant said:

Tricky, now - the PCs blew it to bits, and the boobytrap blew it the rest of the way But essentially it was a large cruiser with murder servitors, teleportarium, disrupters, lux nets, salvage claws and a few other things Ian thought sounded neat.

No Jak this week, and the Rogue Trader's player has had to bow out indefinitely, so the session opens with a slight retcon of events between the destruction of the Reclamator , and the PCs going demonhunting.

Still crowing over their success, Marzu, Adrik, Jak & Xanthis are slightly surprised when Malakai and a troop of heavily armed armsmen turn up, with orders from the Lord-Captain to escort them to the nearest airlock. The Lord-Captain is there, and he's not happy. Indeed, since his spy network among the crew has already turned up rumours that Marzu locked him in his cabin because he was drunk, he's ****ing furious. Marzu pointing out that he was, in fact, drunk, does not do the Lord-Captain's blood pressure any good.

GM : You know, for a tech-priest you're supposedly quite personable - perhaps you had the ancient text "How to Win Friends & Influence Meatbags" hard-wired into your brain. And then, and then, you go and say something like that.
Lord-Captain van Baroque : Mr Raytheon, you served in the Imperial Guard, did you not? And you were raised on a voidship? Could you please remind Brother Marzu as to the penalty for disobeying the orders of a superior officer?
Xanthis : Ah, all crew and officers who participate in mutiny or disobey the orders of their commanding officers shall be executed by exposure to the Void?
Tech-Priest Marzu : Execution? I thought you were going to send us out to swab the hull or something.

The Lord-Captain's face goes an alarming shade of purple, and a few extra veins throb on his forehead. Then he gets a confused expression, his eyes roll up, and he collapses.

Tech-Priest Marzu : Um... did you have anything to do with that?
Xanthis : Nope?
Tech-Priest Marzu : I think I'd better apply some medical knowledge then.
GM : That would probably be a good idea.

The captain, it turns out, has had a massive cerebral aneurysm.

GM : Considering he was talking to one of your characters, Ian, I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often.

He is rushed to the medical unit, and into sus-an, since the Rose Tattoo lacks the facilities to repair such extensive damage.

Tech-Priest Marzu : Maybe I can make a servitor out of him.
GM : ... You want to make a servitor. Out of the Lord-Captain.
Tech-Priest Marzu : Oh, don't worry, it's be a neat one, with two Gatling cannons for arms!
Xanthis : Can you do anything to help him manage his emotions?
GM : How about a volitor circuit so his head explodes if he gets angry with you?

Leaving the Lord-Captain to the medic's tender mercies, and the ship's seneschal pouring over the minutiae of the Warrant of Trade for what options the crew has under these circumstances, we jump forward to the discovery of the demon on board, and confronting it in one of the Black Holds.

GM : I hope you won't hold it against Jak that he fled at the first sight of the demon?
Malakai : No, entirely human reaction. Demon? Hell yes, run like ****.
Adrik : But that won't stop us given him grief about it latter
Malakai : That's an entirely human reaction too
Adrik : 'Ha-ha, you ran away from a little girl'

To the horror of the explorers, the possessed girl shrugs off almost everything they throw at her, merely giggling happily at the hail of laser beams, heavy calibre ammo, plasma fire, and rocket-propelled grenades they unload at her. Indeed, Marzu, Malakai, and Adrik are soon scrambling for cover and firing positions, as the demon throws multi-tonne gastanks and the like back at them. Marzu and his servo-skulls are flying all over the place, too, trying to keep the creature spot-lighted and under fire until he can hover up to it and attack in hand to hand.

GM : Baron ****ing Harkonnen...
Malakai : But only half as disgusting.

Xanthis, on the other hand, is off sprouting extra limbs, wings, and armoured disembowelling spikes before he makes his own attempt. This is unfortunate, since it makes him indistinguishable from the mutants Malakai hunts, or from a psyker who has lost control of his powers and is mutating uncontrollably.

Malakai : Hmm... *takes aim* Well, demon trumps mutant. *Shoots demon, achieves nothing*
Adrik : Maybe you should have shot the 'mutant'

Eventually it's Xanthis who gets the critical hit in ( and narrowly avoids being gunned down in turn ).

GM : The girl's body comes apart into streamers of sizzling flesh, each fragments bubbling and writhing as the demon frantically tries to hold its host together, until it fails in the attempt, the fragments splatter and stick all over you, and the entity hangs for a moment as an anthropoid mass of yellow-green fire before dispersing utterly, the wave of unnatural energy hooking deep into the arachnid response somewhere deep in your psyche and leaving you all on your knees vomiting uncontrollably in atavistic revulsion.
Adrik : Ew.
Tech-Priest Marzu : Hang about, I don't eat, what about me?
GM : All your oil-pumps back up.

Returning to the marginally more pleasant parts of the ship, they learn that the Lord-Captain's illness is a severe blow to the ship's future. Under the conditions of the Warrant of Trade, the Rose Tattoo may next be shipping out under the command of a five-year-old, even if van Baroque's relatives don't all scramble to size control of the dynasty. Marzu decides that he'll burn that bridge when he comes to it, and has the bad news broadcast to the homeworld anyway. Also buried among the thousands of pages of the Warrant are other more promising conditions - such as their right to demand troops from any planetary governor they can intimidate, and their ability, as vassals of the van Baroque dynasty, 'to act in the Dynasty's best interest' when the Lord-Captain is otherwise engaged. Tech-Priest Marzu happily promotes himself to Acting-Captain, and orders the ship to rendezvous with an Adeptus Mechanicus fleet he knows about.

Malakai : If you don't mind, I'm going to the Temple of the God-Emperor. With Marzu as Captain, I suddenly feel the need to pray.
GM : Hey, this is what happens when your First Officer gives the Captain a stroke.
Malakai : What they do in the privacy of their cabins is no business of mine.

Adrik : OK - Lord-Captain - if you don't want us to conquer this planet in your name, nod your head.
van Baroque's life-support : beep...beep...beep...
Adrik : Rightio then.

GM : If you insist on going to war, then you're going to need troops. After all, standard Imperial Doctrine in these circumstances is 'Throw wave after wave of your own men at them, and clog their cannons with wreckage'. And you don't have that many men.

Malakai : I'm not against going to war. *pats his beloved las-gun* Josephine was getting hungry anyway.

Re-emerging into real space to take navigational bearings, Marzu soon spots the plasma drive of a starship making its way slowly across the star system. Indeed, as usual, the bastard passes the required test by over 100.

GM : * sarcastically * Marzu opens a porthole, sticks his head out, looks around, and says 'over there!'
Marzu : No wonder no-one else spotted it, they were too busy screaming and trying not to be sucked out the hole.

Malakai passes the relevant test by 40, a huge success by most standards. Marzu, however, passes the test by 100. Again.

Marzu : Tell me something I don't know.
Malakai's player : * headdesk *
GM : So now you've humiliated the Navigator, the Medics, the Lord-Captain, and the ships xenographer. Have I left anybody out?
Malakai : Will somebody tell me why we even bother having crew, when we've got him?
GM : Will somebody tell me why you even have other PCs when you have him?

GM : Right . While Marzu is off attempting the browbeat the Chief Enginseer into letting him tinker with the stardrives, Malakai identifies the ships as part of a Stryxis caravan. Not only that - by passing the test by 40 he knows that not only are they deviant alien scum that should be exterminated as soon as convenient ( like every other xenos race in 40K ), but the more nuanced facts that they aren't particularly ill-disposed towards humans, will eagerly trade all sorts of stuff, but occasionally go in for slave-trading and piracy when they think they can get away with it. Marzu gets a message about this "You have email!" and brings up a few jpegs - man-sized skinless dog-embryos with pug-noses four pupiless green eyes, in tattered robes - and additional facts on the species. Such as the fact that they're occasionally known to provide vat-grown soldiers for their customers.

Stryxis Trader : Honoured biped! Greetings, greetings! What may these humble traders offers such as yourself? I am Garrglegarglegargllle , you may call me Sire Blue Sun if you wish. The honoured Acting-Captain has such fine, upright friends! Are they for sale?

Negotiations proceed over dinner in the Trophy Room. Malakai, Adrik & Xanthis are extremely suspicious at repeated attempts by the Stryxis to invite the Lord-Captain aboard their ship to inspect the merchandise, and even more so when attempted scans of the caravan reveal nothing but homogeneous grey fog. At least their prices are good. They trade the current whereabouts of the Mechanicus fleet for an engraved palladium fork from the Lord-Captain's dinner set. Other bargains are perhaps not so acceptable.

Acting-Captain Marzu : I'm told that your species can produce soldiers by demand. I will be waging a war soon, how much for an army?
Sire Blue Sun : Yes, yes, honoured biped! We can grow you much meat, strong and clever as the Acting Captain wants! And all we would ask are the gametes of all your crew!
All : *clutch themselves protectively*
Sire Blue Sun : Think of the strong and clever meat we could grow from the Honoured Acting-Captain's friends!
GM : Shall I resolve the results of the mutiny now or later?

Marzu talks them down to 400 vat-brutes, in return for detailed scans of some 40 of his strongest and cleverest crew.

Sire Blue Sun : *holds up a small bottle and some scissors*
Marzu : No gametes!
Sire Blue Sun : *looks disappointed*

Crewmember : I'm really uncomfortable about this Brother Marzu. I mean, Acting-Captain.
Marzu : Hands off, man. Look at it this way - either you get measured and I get 400 expendable front-line troops, or you don't get measured and I use you on the front-line.
Crewmember : Well, since you put it that way...

Malakai : Will they settle for 'strong'? Intelligence isn't really a feature of this crew.

The Stryxis also gleefully trade with the stormtroopers Malakai risks sending across. One comes back happily waving an Eldar powersword he was given in return for a button. This is promptly confiscated.

Malakai : I'm sorry, corporal, but using Xenos tech is a heresy, especially once we're back within the Imperium.
Trooper : Aw. What about out here?
Malakai : I'll think about it. Hey, Stryxis! Got any Tau pulse pistols?

They do, and even provide some 'meat' for him to test it out on. All they want in exchange is his beloved las-gun.

Malakai : * bristling * I've had this this long-las since I joined the PDF. This gun has saved my life. This gun is my companion.
Sire Blue Sun : We are humble traders, we do not mind who the honoured biped sleeps with.

Marzu, too, ignores the dictates of the Imperium and tries for assorted heretical tech himself - navigational archeotech, alien filtration systems, and warp-detectors.

Acting-Captain Marzu : Got any Void Abaci?
Sire Blue Sun : Alas, if only the honoured biped had been here last week.
Acting-Captain Marzu : Carnelian Sievestones?
Sire Blue Sun : *waving hands apologetically* Out of stock.
Acting-Captain Marzu : Caged Songbirds?
Sire Blue Sun : Why, yes, honoured Acting-Captain! We have many caged songbirds. Or would the honoured biped like us to make him one? We could grow him any kind of flying meat he desires, perfect in every specification!

Examples of the latter are ferried across.

GM : The Stryxis have been busy - you've got a huge range of live, dead, plush and mechanical avioids to choose from. One of them is a homicidal thing with seventeen grapefruit sized eyes and foot-long claws. Another is eight feet tall and bright yellow.
Marzu : That's a big bird.
GM : And one of them is a little mechanical nodding thing that drinks water.
All : *Crowding around* That's so neat! How does it keep doing that?
Sire Blue Sun : I will sell it to you for its hundredweight in platinum.

The vat-brutes are delivered. Marzu wanted them equipped for war. They arrive in a patchwork of shoddy armour, carrying crossbows and spiky clubs.

Marzu : * sighs * I guess I should have worded myself more carefully. Oi! I said I wanted them equipped for war and easy resupply!
Sire Blue Sun : * looks innocent* There are many, many places where war is fought with such tools. And does the honoured biped wish me to sell him more spiky clubs?

Marzu : * after further negotiations * OK, if I throw in this magic floating skull machine, some of these clever injectors for making humans unconscious, and these boots that will let you walk around on the outside of ships, can I get some actual human-made heavy weapons and armour for these brutes?
Sire Blue Sun : Such clever, shiny machines!
Malakai : Errrr... *pointing out just one of the problems with this plan* Are you really going to given them one of our honoured dead?
Marzu : Not my honoured dead - I've got no idea who it used to be. It was the heretek Stylianides' lumin-skull before, after all. And look at that las-hole, you were the one that shot it down, anyway.

Trading completed to mutual satisfaction, Marzu orders the ship on it's way to meet up with the Adeptus Mechanicus fleet, very pleased with his personal bodyguard of 400 heavily armed alien monstrosities. There's no way THIS could end badly...

The set for the Black Hold section of the last game - if it had been strictly accurate, the set would easily have reached from floor to ceiling, but I couldn't find my old Necromunda bulkheads on time.

Stryxis are my favourite NPCs. Always.

Errant said:

They certainly are rather fun. Although I suspect my players are going to be rather annoyed with them before too long XD

I'd hope so. They've just bought some goons to invade a system. Aside from Alien Monstrosities alarming their allies, you've got to wonder who else the Stryxis have just sold to (someone close by)... I'd immediately have them face at least twice the number of vat brutes as they'd bought with the same loadout but have the Logicians equip them all with best quality shock carapace, hellguns, Subdermal armour, Void Skin and booby traps (explosive collars).

I'd also wonder who'd just bought all that stuff the Stryxis have just sold out of. In return well the Dog Faces hate the Eldar and if you had a bunch of handy Eldar corpses to trade....

MDMann said:

*nods happily* You've been reading my mind

Although I suspect my players are going to be rather annoyed with them before too long XD

My group are still in love with them; after trading the surviving crew of several Eldar vessels for the entire hold of a xebec, I got to have a bit of fun with loot. One of my most favourite bits of loot was a bolt-pistol that had it's magazine welded on, with "In the name of IDKFA" crudely scratched on the side. Naturally, it never ran out of ammunition

Errant said:

My group are still in love with them; after trading the surviving crew of several Eldar vessels for the entire hold of a xebec, I got to have a bit of fun with loot. One of my most favourite bits of loot was a bolt-pistol that had it's magazine welded on, with "In the name of IDKFA" crudely scratched on the side. Naturally, it never ran out of ammunition

Heehee

Slightly short on quotable quotes this week, since four of the six players couldn't make it. That said, I'm quite pleased with the session, since Acting Captain/Tech-Priest Marzu lead a fleet of seven cruisers into the Logician-occupied C-6751246 Ji Xiu system, and barely escaped with his life.

In the months it took the Rose Tattoo to catch up with the Explorator Fleet - their borrowed Navigator proceeding very cautiously through uncharted space, after all - Marzu had plenty of time to research possible weapons against the Logicians, and interrogate the deadly X-I Cogitator Unit that got them in so much trouble originally. Some of the weapons are rather heretical, but then Marzu has an alarming amount of sympathy for the Logician cause - the Adeptus Mechanicus' abhorrence of progress really is holding humanity back.

Acting Captain/Tech-Priest Marzu : When I'm in charge of the Cult of Mars, things will be different!

Very careful questioning and data-mining of the X-1 reveals secrets that are almost as alarming. Not only do time-stamps suggest is it dates from the time of the Hours Heresy or earlier, he confirms that it was once the core cogitator of a Man of Iron - and one specially commissioned from the Cult of Mars for an unidentified Primarch of the Space Marines . It's also almost completely full of image files of alien texts and documents.

Psyker Xanthis Raytheon OOC : Somebody downloaded a lot of porn then.

This is extremely worrying - not only can they not tell whether the robot was made for the Loyalist or Traitor factions during that apocalyptic war, they have no idea what these alien books are, why they are so important, or how it ended up on Zayth, or in the hands of the presumably late Rogue Trader Bel Ingeneri. Further reflection leads Marzu to wonder just what horrible surprises the Logicians will have in store for them, even assuming the Space Marines don't come down on him with both feet for stealing their most ancient of secrets.

Psyker Xanthis Raytheon OOC : What's that sound?
Acting Captain/Tech-Priest Marzu OOC : Could be impending doom.

Now properly paranoid, Marzu sets new orders for his erstwhile crew - open entering real space they are to immediately ready weapons and scan the surrounding void with a fine tooth comb. For one thing he doesn't trust the Stryxis not to have immediately run off to the Logicians to sell them the Rose Tattoo's destination.

Acting Captain/Tech-Priest Marzu : Anybody who fails to carry out these orders will be fired. From the starboard cannon.

During one of the more difficult warp jumps, Marzu takes Xanthis to one side to enquire exactly how a psyker manages to get this far into the Expanse without a chaperone. Xanthis claimed that the Orks killed them all the Whyteman's Burden. Certain doubts are raised about this story, by the three ghosts in Scholastica Psykana uniforms that stare and point accusingly at Xanthis from behind his back. Marzu has certain problems with similar warp phenomena, suffering flashbacks to his first encounter with the Logicians, and ends up shooting the hell out of one of the Rose Tattoo's corridors. All aboard are highly relieved when the warp storm clear enough for them to safely re-enter real space.

Psyker Xanthis Raytheon : At least we didn't have any more possessed ten-year-old girls to worry about.
Acting Captain/Tech-Priest Marzu : Yeah, I'm still picking off bits of the last one.

The Magos in charge of Explorator Fleet X-120-Rho welcomes Marzu aboard, and the two exchange pleasantries and congratulations.

Magos Vilchis : 11001010010010011100010010010
Acting Captain/Tech-Priest Marzu : 00010010100100100001010
Magos Vilchis : 10001000101110010?
Acting Captain/Tech-Priest Marzu : 11000C://
Magos Vilchis : LOL
Acting Captain/Tech-Priest Marzu : ROFL

Things get markedly less pleasant when Marzu hands over the co-ordinates of the C-6751246 Ji Xiu system, because according to the AdMech charts, that star has no planets . This implies that somebody high up in the Explorator Corps deleted the planet from the charts with nobody noticing, to ensure nobody had any excuse to visit the star.

GM : Much more believable than deleting an entire star system, but leaving all its gravitational effects in the chart. I mean, a five-year-old could see through that.

Meanwhile, Xanthis is making friends with some of the other people in the room - a bald and elderly man with kindly eyes and dull black outfit, accompanied by a small horde of scribes and bored-looking stormtroopers.

Man in Black : First time aboard an AdMech vessel?
Xanthis : Yes, I'm afraid so.
Man in Black : Would you like me to arrange some refreshments? I suspect our hosts will be at this for some time.
Xanthis : Yes, thank you, that would be nice. I'm Xanthis Raytheon, by the way. Pleased to meet you.
Man in Black : Where are my manners, I should have introduced myself first - Konstantin Lammergeier of the God-Emperor's Most Holy Inquisition.
Xanthis : F***

Inquisitor Lammergeier takes Xanthis aside for a polite conversation about how he got involved in all this, what he knows and thinks about all the officers of the Rose Tattoo, and what exactly happened to Lord-Captain van Baroque to leave Marzu in charge. Xanthis makes the fatal error of lying about some of it, to an Inquisitor's face. If you think he'll get away with this, you're as naive as he was.

Marzu distracts Vilchis from his new-found paranoia by bringing up the matter of van Baroque's medical condition. Vilchis agrees that rebuilding him as a servitor would be a good use of human resources, and suggests a few improvements to Marzu's design.

Magos Vilchis : The boltgun you intend to attach to his skull would cause unacceptable recoil - we should install two supplementary spines.

Marzu also makes his choice from the various surveyed worlds on offer for destroying the Reclaimator. He selects one with a primitive atmosphere, native algae, and highly radioactive natural nuclear reactors in every estuary. Such Oklo pools suggest valuable mineral resources.

GM : This other one is promising for colonisation, apart from being a waterworld.
Marzu : Does Kevin Costner live there?
Xanthis : We could film a terrible movie!

Lammergeier transfers himself and his acolytes to the Rose Tattoo. Given what happens to the AdMech fleet later, this is just as well. Upon entering the C-6751246 Ji Xiu system, Marzu surveillance spots two enemy cruisers matching velocities with the Reclaimator's hulk, now halfway across the system, and four raiders escorting a lumbering mass hauler trying to reach the breakout point on the far side of the sun. Unfortunately, they also spot the Rose Tattoo and the six AdMech cruisers, and the cruisers and raiders soon turn to fight. To the horror of the Imperials, the heretek cruisers blow two of the AdMech cruisers to fragments in the first exchange of fire, and the survivors are soon fleeing for the edge of the system before the cruisers can turn around and catch up.

Xanthis : Jesus Christ!
GM : That should be 'God-Emperor!' or 'Throne!'
Xanthis : Whoops, sorry.
GM : Yes, you're already in enough trouble with that Inquisitor.

Rescuing the utterly traumatised Magos from the wreck of his cruiser, and after consultation with the Inquisitor, the surviving ships jump back into Warp Space, circle around the system, and re-emerge to target that lumbering Mass Hauler - clearly the most important personnel are trying to evacuate the system. But shortly after re-emergence Xanthis, Adrik, and the Inquisitor's pet psyker all clutch at their temples, suffering a sudden psychic pain.

Xanthis : There's no content to the pulse...
Inquisitor : But that doesn't mean it isn't a signal...
Marzu : Orders?
Inquisitor : It's a trap. Get us out of here.
Helmsman : Captain? I'm getting a warp breakout signal.. make that two.. four!

The Imperial ships scatter, because a squadron of four Meritech raiders was in warp space just outside the star system, waiting for anybody who thought the mass hauler was easy meat. One of the Admech Cruisers, damaged in the fight earlier, is too slow, and is blown apart by volleys of vortex missiles. The Rose Tattoo manages to destroy two of the raiders in turn, before fleeing for the break-out point just ahead of the vengeful Logicians. But despite some damage to the Rose Tattoo, Marzu and the rest get away, having learned they're going to need some heavy reinforcement before they dare attempt a second foray into C-6751246 Ji Xiu...

Still haven't got the recording of the Cthulhu game off Ian for transcription, yet, sorry. Here's today's Rogue Trader game instead.

The first foray into the C-6751246 Ji Xiu system being an almost unmitigated disaster ( although Marzu points out it wasn't his ships that were reduced to burnt-out hulks ) the Rose Tattoo and the surviving Adeptus Mechanicus cruisers flee to the Lucin's Breath system to regroup and repair. They manage the trip in record time, thanks to the good fortune of Navigator Netzach Benetek being among the survivors of the disaster.

GM : He got a glimpse of the future, and he was already waddling for the salvation pods before the torpedos even launched.

Navigator Benetek : The House of Benetek owes the lineage of van Baroque a boon, for saving the lives of myself and my attendants. I propose this favour be my service upon one of the van Baroque vessels. Of course, I won't insult you by offering a discount.

Navigator Benetek : Please don't be too impressed by my family name.
Acting-Captain Marzu : That's OK, I'm not.

Although he should be. Benetek's personal analogy for the Warp is for an endless and treacherous ocean, and his spectacularly successful Navigation is imagined in suitable ways.

GM : Hanging ten off the front of a Hawaiian longboard, skimming down the front of a forty-foot wave, so fast that everybody else on board gets the eerie sensation that their souls just got pressed to the back of the ship by the acceleration, until the Rose Tattoo gets spat out into reality at the end of a half-AU long trail of Empyrean energy, and the three AdMech cruisers dragged along in your wake.

As implied above, Benetek is spectacularly corpulent - one of the mutations he enjoys in addition to the Navigator Gene that allows him to look unshielded into the Warp. After he'd huffed off to meet the borrowed Navigator and familiarise himself with the Rose Tattoo's Navigator Spire, and despite Navigators being among the oldest, richest, and most powerful families in the Imperium ( and the Beneteks especially so ), the other characters did enjoy a few jokes at his expense. Such as implying that the reason he has the attendants is to grease him up and squeeze him through doorways.

GM : squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Acting-Captain Marzu : POP

Malakai : I'm under orders to check into the Navigators' apartments every now and then, to make sure Benetek hasn't eaten the other one.

GM : He might not look it, but Benetek is a very dangerous man
Acting-Captain Marzu : What, if you get between him and his lunch?

GM : He's somehow manage to gain visibly more weight over a three-day voyage.
Acting-Captain Marzu : * stares * Are you going to get so heavy you fall out of the universe?

Acting-Captain Marzu : I know how we can deal with the Logicians - we just park in orbit and drop Benetek on them.

Acting-Captain Marzu : Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, FATMAN. He is the jelly that rolls in the night.

The fact that the ship is already on short rations doesn't help.

Acting-Captain Marzu : *to some crewmen* Good work. You'll get extra rations tonight.
Adrik : Do well, eat well.
GM : Don't do well, and we feed you to the Navigator.

Acting-Captain Marzu : Well done, I'm promoting you to Trophy Room orderly. You can clean up after all the birds. Try not to look the big red one with the teeth in the eye, it doesn't like that.

We also get further evidence of the power going to Acting-Captain Marzu's head, within seconds of their arrival back at Lucin's Breath.

Acting-Captain Marzu : *Looms over bridge crewman threateningly.*
Crewman : ... sir?
Acting-Captain Marzu : Remember what I said the first thing we do when we enter a system was?
Crewman : Uh, yessir, but it's hard to concentrate with you staring at me like that.
Acting-Captain Marzu : *starts to count off seconds*
Crewman : * hurriedly scans*
Acting-Captain Marzu : Good man. You get to live.

Malakai : We really ought to build a big boom outside the ship, with a bubble on the end.
GM : Why?
Malakai : Marzu can park his arse out there and look around for everything the sensors missed.
Adrik : Why do we even have an Observation Dome?
Acting-Captain Marzu : So you can all observe me being AWESOME

Acting-Captain Marzu : That's why we need so many crew on this ship. They open the sliding doors and make hissing noises as we go past.

The presence of Inquisitor Konstantin Lammergeier leads to some frantic running around among the officers, especially when his acolytes are noted asking lots of questions, and turning up in places that the explorers really wish they wouldn't. While the Rose Tattoo is laid up for repairs, Lammergeier takes the opportunity to invite them all to his cabin, one-by-one, for a little chat. He seems worryingly interested in the events surrounding Lord-Captain van Baroque's illness, and even more so at comments about the heretek on 105 Andrasta that Marzu somehow failed to mention at his own interview. Marzu removes the X-I Unit from the security of the Faraday cage in his private lab and hides it in an air vent, before anybody can come knocking with a warrant.

Marzu : Oh, that does it. The Inquisitor's cabin is going to be gaining a window.
GM : *raises eyebrow* You're going to kill an Inquisitor?
Marzu : Of course not. Decompression is going to kill the Inquisitor.

Most of the rest of the weeks of repairs is spent trying to decide what to do next. Even the van Baroque dynasty's fortune won't stretch to buying a half-wrecked starship to use a bomb, or even to improved weapons for the Rose Tattoo. The AdMech will no doubt send in more ships, to deal with the hereteks that deny the sin of Progress, but Marzu suspects that inviting other Rogue Traders to get involved will lead to more trouble than it's worth. And they daren't even replace lost crew or hire mercenaries, for fear of Logician assassins getting on board as well. And if they blow more of the dynasty's funds, they'll have the van Baroques sending killers after them too.

Acting-Captain Marzu : Like they'll be able to afford any.

Adrik : At least we know where we can get an Ork Rok we can salvage.
GM : You do?
Adrik : Yeah, that one.. oh wait, that was the Dark Heresy campaign.
GM : And the other end of the Galaxy

But they do get one moment of pleasure during the wait. Their former Navigator, the one that caused them so many difficulties, eventually gets in contact with a pointed inquiry about when he'll be able to resume duties. The explorers happily give him the good news. Even better, he's of a rival Navigator House to the Beneteks.

Navigator Benetek : But if you ever wish to learn how to Navigate the warp properly, I'll be delighted to add you to my retinue and give you a few pointers. After all, I'm sure any future employers you manage to find wouldn't want to endure the ham-fisted attempts you've made while you were on this ship.
Navigator Gazmati : *vein throbbing* And you are?
Navigator Benetek : Netzach Benetek, at the van Baroque's service.
Navigator Gazmati : A Benetek?!? You hired a Benetek?!? Oh, you'll regret this. I'll see you all burn in the Warp -
Jak Frost : Assuming you can find it.

Episode 11. Earlier instalments have been helpfully collated into a webpage by Olaf van Tol , Benetek's player. Acting-Captain Marzu's player was absent for yesterday's session of Rogue Trader, but that's OK. Marzu had a lot on his mind, not the least of which was Inquisitor Lammergeier's acolytes demanding access to his private lab, and the X-I unit missing from its hiding spot afterwards. Indeed, I ruled he spent most of the next fortnight in increasingly paranoid checks of the Rose Tattoo' s cogitators, in case it was trying to take over the ship. The other PCs certainly noticed this odd behaviour, but refrained from comment - only some of them knew the device was on board, and there are at least 6 people on the ship that would kill Marzu for it, and several hundred that would just kill him for having it. And it's not like Marzu can go to the Inquisitor and complain, even if it was them that took it.

Smart man, that Inquisitor - after all, his first move after Marzu and Magos Vilchis unwisely discussed the existence of high-up traitors in the Adeptus Mechanicus right in front of him was to transfer to the Rose Tattoo . Not only did that mean he was no longer surrounded by thousands of AdMech personnel, it also followed from Lammergeier's suspicion that the Logicians would target AdMech ships first.

But although Inquisitor Lammergeier and his acolytes have now disembarked at Lucin's Breath, so that he can return to Footfall and start preparing his own moves against the Logicians ( or not - after all, the Explorers have no idea what Lammergeier's motivations actually are ) there are other problems the Rose Tattoo faces. Such as replacing and retraining crew whilst avoiding the risk of Logician assassins getting on board. And gaining allies and military support for the second attack on C-6751246 Ji Xiu without getting rival Rogue Traders involved - after all, if there is any profit to be made from this war, the PCs want all of it. And then, of course, there was Marzu's transparent attempts to shift Inquisitorial suspicion from the Rose Tattoo to other Rogue Traders, especially Lord-Captain Maximillian dePledge. DePledge might not be annoyed when he finds out, but he may be mildly aggrieved.

But at least they can finally off-load all those missionaries, if they take a few months off for a run to Zayth. Secondly that gives them an opportunity to turn some attention back to the mystery of Mykybe's Veil, and good charts of a shortcut between Lucin's Breath and the Heathen Stars are valuable in themselves, particularly if the route avoids the ill-omened Valcetti's Quadrangle in the middle.

Navigator Benetek : Alright, everybody, prepare for transition.
GM : He's got into his speedos and is ready to surf the Warp.
Jak Frost : Argh, my eyes!
Malakai Tubreau : Don't worry, it's not as though you can actually see the speeds under all those rolls of fat.
Navigator Benetek : Actually I'm not going to surf this time, I'm going to hang one elbow out the window and nod to all the Deamonettes as we drive past. We ought to get a... what do you call those things? The roof rolls back?
Jak Frost : Sunroof?
Navigator Benetek : Something like that. So we can cruise around in a convertible.

Malakai Tubreau : You know what I dread? One day we may have to investigate Benetek's own Black Holds.
Navigator Benetek : If you ever want to smuggle something I've got a few hiding places...
Jak Frost : AIEEEE!

Malakai is still unused to having a Navigator that's actually competent, and indeed has become quote phobic about Warp Travel.

GM : But Benetek's first trip with you was made in record time, with no warp encounters at all.
Malakai : That just means we don't KNOW what went wrong.

Navigator Benetek : This next calculation is quite difficult - I have to take my own gravitational field into account.

Malakai Tubreau : His hoverchair must have forklift prongs on it, just to get him to lunch.
GM : Actually the forklift is to carry his pre-lunch meals. Surely you can't expect him to get all the way from the cupola to the dining room without some sort of preliminary lunch to tide him over and get his digestive juices flowing?
Malakai Tubreau : Elevenses. Just a small four-course meal...

But once again Benetek proves his worth, shaving 17 days off what even he thought would be a three week trip.

Navigator Benetek : Time for a snack.
Jak Frost : 'Send in the first Cuban child!'
GM : Actually I prefer Mexican for lunch.

GM : He's going to make you money just on the food supplies you'll be saving. On the other hand, you also have him on board, so maybe not.

Their current location, roughly halfway between Lucin's Breath and their destination, is the planet Solace Encarmine, almost unique in the Koronus Expanse in that it's actually a nice place to be. Indeed, there's a trio of Navy patrol ships in orbit, enjoying some R&R. Jak, however, resolves to press on to Zayth without delay, to the dismay of the other explorers and the crew.

GM : You could spend a fortnight here and still get to Zayth ahead of schedule! What are you going to use the ship's condom supplies on otherwise?

Astropath Adrik Starsson : I station myself in the Teleportarium with a heavy weapon.
GM : And growl at anybody that turns up with a suitcase, Hawaiian shirt, and hopeful expression?
Astropath Adrik Starsson : If I can't have fun, no-one can. And get rid of that ****ing shirt!

Jak Frost : Okay, time to get moving. Somebody wake up the Navigator.
GM : And hose him down. Just don't be within arm's length when you do, he wakes up hungry.
Navigator Benetek : HWWARRRR * flails * OM NOM NOM NOM

The next leg - all the way to Zayth in one hop - is likewise cut to less than a quarter of the expected duration, which doesn't help the levels of disgruntlement among the crew. At least Malakai can put it all down to the Will of the God-Emporer.

Malakai : Think about it - Lord-Captain van Baroque was going to have you all thrown out the air-lock, and he goes and collapses on the spot. And we wouldn't have met Benetek if Marzu hadn't ordered us back to that system. Clearly, the Emperor has a Plan for us.
Navigator Benetek : I'm an Angel sent by the Emperor.
GM : Just imagine the little cherub wings.
Jak Frost : AIEEEE! Eye bleach! Eye bleach!

GM : If there's one problem with the Rose Tattoo , it's with whatever idiot put the Observation Dome a kilometre from the bridge. But at least you have that little monorail running down the length of the ship. * sings * Monorail.... Monorail... Monorail... Monorail... Marzu's brain's all cracked and broken, Sorry crew, but Jak has spoken -
All : Monorail, MONORAIL, MONORAAAAAIIIILLLL

Sometime long ago something passed through the Koronus Expanse, killing and half-killing stars. But Zayth is an example of a murdered world, biosphere destroyed by saturation nuclear war centuries ago, oceans dried up, and torn by storm severe enough to overturn even the gigantic land-ships of the remaining Zaythi people - who are still at war with each other. Some of the landships ignore the Rose Tattoo's hail, others warn them off from approaching, but a few, including the Ironclad , welcome their arrival and invite them down to the surface. Jak flies the explorers and some of the missionaries down with panache, although his choice of call-sign causes some comment.

GM : Rainbow Dash?!?!?
Malakai Tubreau & Jak Frost : *Brohoof*

The Ironclad is significantly larger than the Rose Tattoo , and entirely capable of shooting the starship out of orbit should it come to that. So it's probably just as well the landship's Navigator-Captains are pleased to see them, and delighted to accept the missionaries along with a donation of that month's supply of food the Rose Tattoo won't be needing. Indeed, the second-in-command is more than pleased, and she invites Jak to her room for the evening. It could be Jak's charm, or the need to improve the landship's genepool after centuries of inbreeding.

Malakai Tubreau : The rest of us are just annoyed that he stops us landing on the pleasure-planet, but HE is still getting some.

Pillow talk includes some interesting information about the religious beliefs of Zayth - Mykybe was indeed a Zaythi goddess, of Love & Good Fortune, and her main temple used to be on the northern edge of Zayth's only continent. It might even have avoided being nuked into a glowing crater. Of course, Mykybe isn't the only deity from Before the Start of The War, and one of them - the Silver God of War, is still worshipped by the Zaythi even after all the centuries of genocide. Intriguingly, Jak's host claims that that god once descended to Zayth, clothed in human flesh, and nearly lead the Landship Indefatigable to a successful campaign of re-unification, before he was treacherously cut down and the Indefatigable sank back into almost total ignominy. All useful information to pass on to the missionaries before they begin to assimilate Zaythi beliefs into orthodox creed.

Jak : You know, this is the first time I've been in bed with somebody and we've talked about military tactics.
Dora : Oh, but knowledge of the great campaigns of the War is vital! It's the duty of the Navigator-Captains to protect our people from the vile scum of the other ships -
Jak : I didn't say it was a bad thing - it's nice to be with somebody that's that passionate about something.

The next day they fly out to the salt-scalded, fall-out encrusted ruins of the Mykybean temple complex, and are rather startled when the two psykers detect signs of life down in the ruins, in the wreckage of a merely 10-storey tall military support engine. Benetek stays on board the Aquila Lander while the others investigate.

GM : After all, I don't think they make a Void-suit big enough.
Astropath Adrik : A void mu-mu.

Mystery Psyker's telepathic whisper : Please.... do not be afraid. All who come to worship at the Temple are welcome here. I ask but one thing - show my people kindness. I see your answer, but also that I must ask. Show my people kindness.

There is indeed a psyker on board the abandoned warmachine - and she and her handful of relatives having been eking out an existence here for over 1200 years. Not surprisingly, most of them are appallingly mutated and inbred, and utterly terrified of Jak, Malakai & Adrik, although they seem childlishly delighted when Jak makes a contribution to the collection box one of them tremblingly proffers. The pskyer herself is little more than a skeleton covered in stretched-tight skin, although her hair in a long silver braid, and her eyes and flesh shimmer with moonlight.

Mystery Psyker's telepathic whisper : Welcome, you who have come to the temple. I have seen your coming, and welcome you. I see your purpose, and as the Last Priestess of the Goddess, I see it is my Duty to answer your questions...