I intend on running (at least the important parts) of Haarlock's Legacy with my Rogue Trader group.
Our Rogue Trader, Lord-Captain Jonathan Marshall, is in fact an heir of the accursed Haarlock bloodline. The player does not know this yet, I only asked him on character creation if he wanted to have a "dark and mysterious" destiny... and he seemed quite happy with it.

I thought I would begin the story with an official invitation to the auction in The House of Dust and Ash. At this point, the players (especially the Captain) should at least have an inkling about the dark story of the Haarlocks and their possible involvenment in it. This part should run quite smoothly as written in Disciples of the Dark Gods...

Part one of the trilogy, Tattered Fates, would already be harder. After the events at the auction, I would give the players some time following other adventures (maybe 2 sessions). When they return to Port Wander (or some other harbour) afterwards, the Pilgrims of Hayte would lay an ambush for the PCs. Maybe I would even give them the illusion that they can fight their way out of it, but according to plan they should ultimately go down after a few rounds of combat (stun grenades, webbers and possibly one or two psykers with mind-control should do the trick...). They would then be abducted and brought to Quaddis, where I would proceed with their escape from the Red Cages. The events later on would sure need some alterations. I could make things harder for them by not letting people believe that they are of a Rogue Trader dynasty (they solely operate in the Expanse until now, so their name won't be that known in the Calixis Sector...). Maybe they even find that the Marshall family has an ancient holding on Quaddis... rundown and abandoned, but with a stash of money and some useful gear. But overall, things will be like in the book.

Part two, Damned Cities, may be dropped altogether. The investigation does not really fit into RT, but I could make up something else that leads them to the daemon in the mirror. Could really need some suggestions here...

Part three, Dead Stars, will be the big showdown. During the course of the story, the Lord-Captain and the rest of the players should figure out that their answers will be found on cursed Mara. I plan on getting Inquisitor Marr involved into the story by that point, either as a mysterious ally or even as an enemy, depending on how "heretical" my players are by that time (oh, they like their little heresies...). They should also know about the "Mara Effect" by then, giving them an idea that bringing a small army to the surface of the moon may not be that wise. Of course, they could try, but it would be guaranteed that this will lead to a nice little massacre. They should go their on their own, only bringing some hardened bodyguards or some acolytes as support, if they are allied with Marr. They would then land (or better... crash) on the moon with their guncutter, while their ship is driven of by the sudden appearance of the Spear of Destiny, Haarlock's ghost ship. This could be quite fun for my players, especially since they like horror-flavoured game sessions. It would also be new challenge for them, running through the ice station for days, low on supplies and without support from their ship or their considerable wealth, while constantly stalked by the Pilgrims, Miss Books and things far, far worse. I would then write some "personal" futures for the Blind Tesseract and later present them with the choice of either stopping Haarlock or setting him loose.

Overall, I think it could work out quite well. Enemies sure need a little boost to be able to stand up against the quite powerful PCs (I expect them to be Lvl 4-5 by the time the legacy unfolds...).

Please tell me if their are any holes in my narrative I might have missed, ideas how my players could get the whole story off rail (they really like to do crazy stuff) or generally give me some input on how to run/improve the whole story for a Rogue Trader group.

btw a little backstory (if you are interested in it...):

Those familiar with Haarlock's Legacy know that Erasmus Haarlock was married and had a daughter. His wife was the daughter of Valerian Marshall, a fellow Rogue Trader and the great-granduncle of our Lord-Captain. So, after Haarlock's wife and daughter were murdered in the war of succession following the death of patriarch Albrach Haarlock, Erasmus started the bloody purge of his whole bloodline. Having lost his own daughter in the incident, Valerian Marshall joined Erasmus in his effort of wiping out every single Haarlock heir in the galaxy. In time, Valerian became kind of an executioner in Erasmus' retaliation campaign. Driven by hatred and revenge, Valerian put all of his considerable resources into finding and killing even the most distant heirs of the Haarlock bloodline.

One of these individuals was the illegitimate child of a Haarlock, a woman who Valerian had pursued for years. He finally caught her on a rundown fringe world somewhere in Winterscale's Realm. Despite her being unarmed and begging for mercy, he personally slew her in her living quarters, having grown cold-hearted after years of deliberate slaughter. However, shortly after commiting the deed, Valerian noticed a soft whimper coming from a dark corner of the room he was in. There, hiding inside a cabinet, he found a little girl not older than ten years or so. He instantly recognised the family likeness of the girl to the woman he had just killed. Though as he raised his sword once more to strike her down too, he realized that he just could not do it. Maybe the girl reminded him of his own daughter he had lost, maybe it was the last grain of humanity left inside his heart which stopped him from murdering a child in cold blood. In this very instant, Valerian finally saw what wrongs he had done, how much innocent blood he had spilled in the name of revenge. He fell to his knees, weeping and overwhelmed by guilt.

Knowing **** well that his "friend" Erasmus Haarlock would not have shared his sudden compassion for the girl, he arranged for her being hid away at the holdings of his brother on Scintilla, a respected merchant and owner of several manufactoria. There he hoped that she would be protected from Haarlock's wrath. Though Valerian could not foresee that this little girl should once marry one of his nephews and thus become the grandmother of Jonathan Marshall.

Valerian Marshall then intended to confront Erasmus, either talking him out of the madness he had started in grief over his wife and daughter's death or, if necessary, stopping him by violent means. But Erasmus Haarlock was gone. Unbeknown to Valerian, Haarlock had begun a quest to alter the very past itself and bring back his beloved ones by any means possible. After many failed attempts, he ultimately used the Blind Tesseract on Mara to enter Komus, the tyrant star.

Valerian too was versed in the arts of the occult and when he heard of what his former friend had done, he realized the full extent of the madness behind Haarlock's intentions and what terrible implications his planned return from beyond might have on the Calixis Sector, maybe even the galaxy as a whole.
Valerian knew he had to stop this from happening. Still, he did not know how, so he began to backtrack Haarlock's path into insanity, walking the surface of dead worlds, consulting with daemons and in the end paying the Dusk Hag's terrible price for a glimpse of her "wisdom". However, when he finally thought that he had found a mean of preventing Haarlock's legacy, Valerian just vanished with his ship and crew, lost to the endless empyrean seas...

Seventy years later, this ship should reappear at the edge of the Maw, intact but devoid of any life, the Marshall Warrant of Trade still on display inside a stasis frame in the late Lord-Captain's quarters. The ship was towed back to Port Wander, where the Administratum began an investigation wether there was a living heir for the Warrant or if it should be forfeit. Their cogitators finally spewed out a name after a decade of research. Jonathan Marshall, last known living member of the Marshall merchant house on Scintilla, after their estate in Hive Tarsus was attacked and destroyed by unknown assailants in 814.M41. Fortunately, Jonathan was off-world during the attack. On his return to Scintilla, he was shocked to find his family's holdings in ruins and their business seized by the Scintillan Administratum. To make things worse, the Ecclesiarchy had issues a decree branding him as a heretic for reasons not known to him. The inheritance of a Warrant of Trade just at that time was like a sign from the God-Emperor Himself, certainly sparing him a death on the pyre or even worse. The freshly appointed Lord-Captain chartered the next ship to Port Wander to take over his great-granduncle's voidship.

What he did not know when he took command of the newly christened ship, the "Arkh of Serenity", was that Valerian Marshall had never truly left his ship. Though his body was destroyed the moment his ship was swallowed by the warp, his spirit and mind were somehow fused with the very ship itself. Still determined to stop Erasmus' madness, his mind still clings to life and he slowly starts haunting his descendant's dreams, bent on making Jonathan fulfill his destiny as an heir of the Haarlock bloodline...

I have an Idea for the Dead Stars portion of the game.

The demon in the mirror is fairly crucial to the story so you should try to work it in. Your explorers should come into possesion of a shard of the mirror on hteir own and that can tie them into the whole investigation and rather then having your explorers do the investigation themselves they should be contacted by a team of acolytes or that splinter cell team or another faction on the planet and be drawn into the mirror that way. This could also be a first introduction to iquisitor mars, albeit an indirect one.

I'm curios though what the potentila for profit will be in the adventure? Throne agents are trying to save the sector but there doesnt seem to be much room to make money. What could a Rogue Trader see in this investigation?

I actually ran the beginning of Haarlock with my RT group. I started with the Tattered Fates adventure. Basically what I did was finished an endeavour/session and then when I started the next session, I just started reading from the beginning of the Tattered Fates adventure as is. I found that it left my players a bit lost (which was basically the point). They really loved it because then there was no sense of injustice from a "unending" assault. I let the players find their way through, offered some Intelligence tests, Willpower tests etc to see if they could remember how they got there. They found out they had been invited to a business dinner in Scintilla (they were visiting to finish a previous endeavour of trade for House Krinn) and that they had been brought a number of exotic dishes to eat and then woke up right where Tattered Fates starts.

My players loved the entire situation, they were wondering what happened to their ship and their crew (and their navigator, which I PC when one of our other players runs endeavours). They spent half the time trying to solve the Quanddis situation and the other half trying to figure out how they will get a message to their House. I did end up giving them a bit of a hand here, I just had the ship arrive about a week after they finished the adventure. And of course having had this much fun, they decided they would hunt down the Haarlock line themselves. Using this, they went into House of Dust and Ash themselves because they had put out feelers throughout their networks. Honestly, I found that all I needed to do for Tattered Fates was start them with "non-combat" dress and load out. They all had Best Hardened Bodygloves and fine clothes as well as some basic weapons. Using the business dinner approach meant I didn't have to steal their best combat gear as well as not necessarily having to up-gun the whole adventure.

After that we haven't gotten back to it because I moved across the state but I suspect that I will guest GM for them and run the further parts of it so beyond Tattered Fates and House of Dust and Ash.

thanks for the replies...

Solomon would really be a good place for them to run into Inquisitor Marr or his acolytes for the first time. Especially if they somehow unintentionally interfer with Marr's investigation into the Haarlock matter. Much fun for my more diplomatically inclined players...

I like your approach with the "poisoned" dinner, Khonrad. Though I would probably still need a way to knock out our Explorator... your typical Admech guy, sure he won't touch the food. Hm, maybe a well placed haywire grenade or a computer virus... could imagine it would be quite funny if suddenly everyone around him drops face first on their dinner plates while he goes all WTF ^^

Anyway, I will consider putting Tattered Fates before House of Dust and Ash... more of a surprise... btw the Lord-Captain inherited an old broken pocket watch from his great-granduncle, a real curiosity with thirteen digits... it may suddenly start ticking again

I ran House of Dust and Ash for my RT group a few years back, not much in the way of player knowledge either. The party was a bit higher in xp than a DH party should have been going in but frankly a DH party would have had more skills if less gear. I added a pile of NPCs with their own agendas, including a Temple Tendency assassination cell and a rogue archaeoxenologist looking for the <forbidden xeno artifact>.

If you want motivations besides profit, there is always vengeance and solving a mystery. Especially if there is also the possibility of profit and political connections to be made (the friendship of the inquisition can be a useful thing after all)...

Brother_Trahaerne said:

That would be a pity, because Damned Cities is about the best part of the campaign. You could enter your PC's by having them receive an Astropathic message from Sinophia Magna or (via the sector Administratum) that they (e.g. the Keeper of the Scrolls Eupheme Tassel) found an ancient text and some sort of supposed relic describing their Rogue Trader as the heir of that relic (i.e. one of the mirror shard in a sealed box). So, the Judiciary Court expects the Rogue Trader to come along to pick up the relic (besides wanting some off-world attention). When the Rogue Trader group lands on Sinophia Magna, proceed as usual, just that the PC's are not expected at the Adeptus Arbites outpost at the Folly, but instead in the Judiciary Court. When they arrive there, you could just jump into the encounter with Marshall Skamen in front of the Judiciary court scolding the clerk and the attack on the Clockwork Court by the Risen taking place. The box with the mirror shard is of course broken open and the inside stolen. The storm above Sinophia Magna could then make it impossible (or at least rather difficult) to communicate with the RT's ship in orbit and to make an atmospheric flight with a gun-cutter.

Thanks, Harkon, you really helped me out! ^^