Going through my campaign notes in preparation for Lure of the Expanse when I found a message one of the Arch-Militants left pinned to the remains of the command throne on a raider they burned:

Dear Karrad Vall,

I have destroyed this ship and killed Captain Robert.
If I see you or any of your pirate scum in my space again, I will crush you like a bug!

Love, Boris Reznov
xx

PS: I have your stuff.

In character, none of the other PCs know about this, and Boris, bless his Vostroyan heart, is not from round these parts, and so doesn't know of Vall's reputation in the Expanse. In fairness, he did burn the ship almost single-handedly (led a boarding team with a lot of explosives and incendiaries, and ordered them to burn a hole to the bridge). And he did loot several crates of high value stuff (once the fires had gutted the ship)- including a couple of arm-rings made of a greenish-black onyx with certain runes on them, and a glaive, apparently made of titanium, but somehow covered in …rust?

Unfortunately, the PCs were flying in a wee little sloop, and the raider they burned was not alone (and managed to get away scot-free).

Cut to roughly a year later (they had some bad warp runs), and the PCs have just been to the Cell to here the Witches' Foretelling. What did they bid? One of Vall's arm-rings (after having it identified as probably xenos, definitely pre-Imperium, possibly pre-human; with the only description coming from a kinebrach archaeology text: "…and He who wears it will be cursed with Life Everlasting, His Body perfect and incorruptible…" with the other one getting the description "…and from Him shall flow the Breath of Life. Where He walks, seeds sown shall sprout, where He touches, all shall be ready to be reapéd…").
To make matters worse, the PCs decided that they needed to outfit their new ship (a Repulsive Grand Cruiser, with many launch bays) ASAP before setting off, so Boris and two of the other PCs decide Money Is No Object, and burn the equivalent of Apple's gross annual income in Profit Factor, making sure everyone on Footfall knows their names, and the ships they're on, and have at least a clue about their quest…

Not asking for suggestions on how to mess with them (although they wouldn't be unwelcome), just raising it as an example dumb decisions…

Alasseo said:

Surprisingly, even the 40k/pen'n'paper roleplaying newb didn't want to touch the glaive. Probably just as well, there's a daemon of Nurgle bound into it. Ah well, not every party makes a bee-line for the easy path to damnation…

That just sounds like proper Rogue Tradering to me. How are the denizens of the Expanse meant to know and fear your name as a servant of the Holy Emperor if you dont remind them every chance you get?

In fact I think I did something fairly similar after storming one of Val's captains ships while it was docked at Footfall.

I didnt actually write up any of the taunting unfontunately…

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/dark-heresy-wgt/wikis/pirates

CaptainStabby said:

Servant's of the Holy Emperor? HA! My guys are pirates, pure and simple. Sorry, "pro-active salvage agents".

No Warrant, no Charter, no legal standing whatsoever, and only one ship that they actually own own. They've hired kroot, dealt in xenos artefacts, accidentally sold a genestealer cult into slavery to Krawkin Feckward, acted to defraud the Munitorum of the Adeptus Terra, stolen a Naval Grand Cruiser (ok, that one would be a legitimate act of salvage… if they weren't trying to hide it from a salvage court to keep it for themselves because, well, it's not often you get a fully stocked capital warship for free), impersonated members of the Holy Ordos of the Inquisition, committed acts of piracy and enslavement of pilgrims, harboured hereteks… We went through the short version of the high crimes in Hostile Acquisitions, and as far as I can tell, the only major ones they have yet to commit are worshipping or giving aid and comfort to worshippers of Chaos; fomenting insurrection against the Imperium of man and dabbling in Abominable Intelligence.
The Seneschal has stated the only ones he's not got on his personal To-Do list are the Chaos ones; the others are a matter of time…

Hahaha awesome. My group is trying to be like yours, except since I'm the RT I tend to steer them back towards being good… kinda. It's a grey area. I meah I've got an Ork, he's in charge of training a tribe of techno-barbarians we "recruited" from their homeworld, that will surely end well. Oh and a Battle sister on the run from her superiors with the shards of the mirror from the Haarlock questline (DH character port). Oh, and my Seneschal works for the Cold Trade guild that my ship is in hock to.

I'm going to have shoot them all out the airlock here in the near future I can just tell.

Oh and we just got a Joakero, this can only end awesomely.