Rogue Trader

6th March 201824th August 2023

Meanwhile, on the Bench: Orthesian Dynasty Armsmen

With our Orthesian Dynasty Rogue Trader game well underway, the time had finally come to stop putting off making any cool models.

We had reached a juncture at the end of one session just before rolling initiative, and half the party were not present. They were being backed up by some NPC armsmen as I knew combat was coming and I didn’t want any players to sit out of dice rolling, so it was a perfect opportunity to assemble a few navybois for the upcoming session.

I’ve made a few different armsmen and House Guard in the past for different Dynasties – the Serafin House Guard are well-equipped, well-trained nobleborn soldiers with a stick up their ass, and the Zini armsmen are renegades with cobbled-together void suits. When those games fizzled out the models were repurposed as NPCs, so I needed something with a different flavour for the Orthesian Dynasty.

9th February 201824th August 2023

Orthesian Herald: session 4 – Welcome to the Nomads

Previous: Session 3 – Into the Throat
Next: Session 5 – The Flickering Eye
First: Session 1 – The Unbroken Resolve and All Those Who Sail Therein

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The star of the Telos system is a huge and primal stellar mass, far brighter and more energetic than any star should be. Its fires rage so fiercely that the cataclysmic energies unleashed within cause vast bulges of burning plasma to distend Telos’ form, writhing as though immense beasts fight within.

At a (relatively) safe distance away is a network of hundreds of stone structures floating in Telos’ voids, tethered into a clutch of asteroids by huge chains and protected from Telos’ fury by layers of void shields. This is the first and last port of call for anyone venturing into the Nomad Stars – Mercy – where the mighty rule by force of arms and the weak scrabble to survive.

2nd February 201824th August 2023

Orthesian Herald: session 3 – Into the Throat

Previous: Session 2 – The Last Bastion of Mankind
Next: Session 4 – Welcome to the Nomads
First: Session 1 – The Unbroken Resolve and All Those Who Sail Therein

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You near the warp translation point and notice a distinct change in attitude among the crew. They become hushed and pensive, going about their business without a word. Lit candles appear on the shrines at every corridor junction, and fresh wax appears dribbled across the Aquilas on all the airlocks. Red-robed Technomats scrutinise bulkheads and paneling with scanner-skulls for faults invisible to the un-augmented eye and morose war-hymns drift through the air-recyc vents across the ship.

Moments before translation, the ship comes to life.

Petty Officers on the bridge begin issuing orders to Deck Chiefs across the vessel, their consoles filling with green runes as deck crews report ready. The vessel shudders as massive adamantium shutters unfurl across all viewing ports across the ship, sealing up the guns and gracefully sliding down over the great observation windows of the bridge.

As the last light of Haimm’s baleful suns is shut out, emergency floor lights wash the bridge in a deep crimson. Tech adepts intoning in binary light candles and incense around the captain’s pulpit, flocked by clusters of illumination servo-skulls. Ministorum priests chanting hymns of salvation move up and down the rows of crews at their stations, their heads bowed in prayer.

The timbre of the plasma engine shifts up several octaves as power is sucked from the rest of the vessel and channeled into the arcane and impossibly powerful warp drive. You feel the collective psyche of every void-hardened crewman, rating, armsman and officer take a physical breath in. They hang on your word, Lord-Captain.

26th January 201824th August 2023

Orthesian Herald: session 2 – The Last Bastion of Mankind

Previous: Session 1 – The Unbroken Resolve and All Those Who Sail Therein
Next: Session 3 – Into the Throat

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We are in Haimm, an ill-omened system on the edge of civilised space, far out to the galactic west of Holy Terra. Twin white suns blaze fiercely here, their titanic gravity wells doing battle over the shattered bones of celestial bodies from a bygone era.

You have been travelling for several months from another part of the galaxy to seek fortune and glory among the Nomad Stars, as part of the remit of your newly-inherited Warrant of Trade.

Captain Tassa Zacherie Aphesius Orthesian has gathered a crew over 20-thousand strong to pilot the flagship of the Orthesian Dynasty – the Unbroken Resolve – and a staff of five advisors, counselors and warriors to act as the Dynasty’s eyes, ears and fists. (See here for the full run-down of characters)

Your journey has been long, and although no warp jump could ever be considered simple, it has been relatively placid compared to the adventures that lie ahead.

Upon arriving in the system, your deck crew have set a course for the only inhabited body and safe harbour to resupply before venturing forth: Port Impetus.

You barely have time to warm up the plasma drive for several days of inter-system travel when a Vox Officer informs you of an incoming message, encrypted in your dynasty’s personal cypher. You hear an old man’s voice, cracked with age:

”My Lord, I am Aubrey Luther. You do not know me, but I have been waiting a long time for a member of your family to return. I bear a message and a gift from your Great Grandfather, Lord-Admiral Thaler Orthesian. I would meet with you as soon as possible in the Court of the Dead, the biggest market square in Port Impetus, at the coordinates encrypted within this message. It is a matter, I assure you, that promises great glory.”

19th January 201830th October 2023

Orthesian Herald: session 1 – The Unbroken Resolve and All Those Who Sail Therein

Next: Session 2 – The Last Bastion of Mankind

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Welcome to the Orthesian Herald, a new segment on Dreadquill dedicated to a brand new Rogue Trader group sailing under the banner of the Orthesian Dynasty. The games are played fairly frequently, and these articles are going to debrief and dissect after each session – sharing some highs, lows, learning points and handouts produced for the game.

This will be the fourth Rogue Trader group I’ve started over two-ish years, so I’m looking forward to utilising what I’ve learned early on to try and deliver a kick-ass game.

19th December 201724th August 2023

Meanwhile, on the Bench: Chrono-gladiators

The station-complex of Mercy holds many secrets, accommodates many factions and houses many attractions to the denizens of the Nomad Stars. One such attraction is the infamous Bazaar Arenas, home to all manner of blood sports and high-octane races round its treacherous circuits.

In addition to xenos-beasts, execution victims and gangers trying to prove their worth, the arena fights are dominated by merciless Chrono-gladiators of the Death Clocks guild – cybernetic pit fighters with implanted weapons, vat-enhanced muscles and injectors filled with cocktails of lethal combat drugs. All have a death switch installed – a ticking time bomb attached to the heart that is only set back by the act of slaughter.

For a Chrono-gladiator, death is life.

10th October 201724th August 2023

Meanwhile, on the bench: Zini Dynasty Armsmen

Our games of Rogue Trader often involve group brawls with up to a dozen armed crewmen from our own vessel repelling whatever the eldritch horror of the day has snuck on board and is sucking down our crew like capri-suns. Our captain also has a penchant for giving them names, which never bodes well for redshirts. Rather than use dice as placeholders, I ordered some minis from the very excellent anvilindustry using their awesome 3d build-a-regiment out of all their parts combos.

12th September 201724th August 2023

Meanwhile, on the bench: Serafin House Guard

This is the first of a new weekly segment, Meanwhile on the Bench (or MOTB as it will inevitably be shortened to), a section looking at the many conversions and unfinished projects lying around (read: being worked on) the Dreadquill studio. Rather than shy away from public attention and treat my growing to-do list with shame and disappointment, it’s instead time to revel in the bits and pieces that go on underneath the layers of paint and swearing that make up the Dreadquill minis.

This week we introduce the first plucky bunch of Serafin House Guard, “the Glailwroth Few”, for use in our games of Rogue Trader. They are highly trained and educated field troops adapted to the brutal confines of boarding actions and void conflicts of the Serafin Dynasty fleet. They are few and far between, an elite cadre of warriors sworn to protect the Dynasty and its interests.

1st June 201724th August 2023

Expanded Warp Travel Encounters table released

We’ve all been there -you’ve been playing Rogue Trader and your crew is getting semi-decent at warp jumps and dealing with the harsh penalties the wild expanse throws at them. Either a jump goes off without a hitch, or you’ve played out the scant few encounters in the core rulebook so many times that translating into hell and madness becomes routine, and you’re often so busy juggling the rest of the game that improvising another new warp encounter is off the cards. Time to change that!

Here is an expanded table of 20 different warp encounters, appropriately balanced to the vagaries of the warp and definitely deadly if the dice gods are not smiling favourably that day. It will help keep your players on their toes whenever they’re traversing the Sea of Souls, and make them think twice about saying the fateful words “Oh that’s fine, it’s only one warp jump away.”

You can get the full table here.