Author Note
I've been asked a few times to do a Warhammer 40k story, but it's not a universe I wish to find myself stuck in for any length of time, so I used the Rogue Trader CYOA to come with a setup that could lead to a ship and people from the 40k universe going to more sane dimensions thanks to a Dark Age of Technology drive. This drive was created shortly before the AI rebellion and the Warp Storm screwed over the most advanced human civilization that the universe ever knew. It allows the captain of the ship to go anywhere he can envision using some psyker power and cool tech.
So the SI has psykers powers he doesn't know about due to Inquisition's meddling, an IOM cruiser which might as well be unstoppable in some science fiction universes, a Guard Regiment of veteran soldiers who will obey the SI's orders and a warrant telling him that he can pretty much do as he pleases and the IOM won't try to stop him even if they could as long as he brings back nice stuff for the forge that supports him. He will have to return to the 40k universe for resupply and repair work, but that risk is manageable.
Due to his rank he has a lot more leeway when it comes to dealing with aliens than most IOM humans so he doesn't need to kill all the non-humans as long as he doesn't get too friendly. He has a battle harem, but they have real personalities so he might recruit skilled females for his crew or clone them if he doesn't mind waiting. Rogue Traders will often gather an entourage of hangers-on and companions, and this may contain alien warriors, mutants, and other undesirables unacceptable in polite Imperial society so he has options.
He can fight in wars, go after space pirates, destroy entire hostile Xenos races, and save humans. He can plunder whole worlds just to make a profit. He just needs to keep his coffers full and bring back some shiny stuff.
I have some ideas such as an Eldar Farseer seeking on board to try to convince the Rogue Trader to smuggle some of her people to another universe. Ending up with an Ork ship somehow following them because Orks do crazy stuff like that.
This little sample can serve as an introduction.
Please share some ideas with me either here or on my patron where I am also Gothicjedi666. I post draft chapters on that sight you might not have seen here.
Also if you have a character that could fit well into this story then go right ahead and let me know. I need a Lord-General for the Imperial Guard. Navigators. Astropaths. Preists and so on. Use your imagination.
Rogue Trader CYOA Story
100 TG
Standard Warrant - 10 TG
90 TG
Dauntless Crusier (Glorious Aspirations) - 20 TG
70 TG
Nine Weapons Slots
Three Forward Mounted
Light Marco Cannons
- 1 TG
Light Lance
- 2 TG
- 1 Power
Twin Torpedo Tubes
- 4 TG
Eight Torpedos
- 1 TG
62 TG
Three Port Mounted
Marco cannon battery
- 5 TG
Three Starboard Mounted
Marco cannon battery
- 5 TG
52 TG
Power 29
Naval Veterans - 5 TG
47 TG
Powered Hull Plates
- 1 TG
- 1 Power
46 TG
Power 28
Extra Point Defence
- 2 TG
- 1 Power
45 TG
27 Power
Heavy Void Shield
- 5 TG
- 4 Power
40 TG
22 Power
Warp Shield
- 5 TG
- 5 Power
35 TG
18 Power
High Power Auger
- 5 TG
- 1 Power
30 TG
17 Power
Fitted Crew Quarters
- 2 TG
28 TG
17 Power
Guard Regiment
- 1 TG
27 TG
17 Power
Palace Fortress
- 1 TG
26 TG
17 Power
Manufactorum
- 8 TG
18 TG
17 Power
Cloning Vats
- 5 TG
13 TG
17 Power
Ministorum Temple
- 5 TG
8 TG
17 Power
Luxury Yacht
- 1 TG
7 TG
17 Power
Juvenat Gland
- 5 TG
2 TG
17 Power
Gene Sculpting
- 1 TG
1 TG
17 Power
Battle Harem
01 Milla Jovovich
02 Angelina Jolie
03 Lucy Lawless
04 Sarah Michelle Gellar
05 Lucy Liu
06 Scarlett Johansson
07 Jeri Ryan
08 Amanda Tapping
09 Summer Glau
10 Natalie Portman
11 Lena Headey
12 Gillian Anderson
13 Claudia Black
14 Kristanna Loken
15 Emma Watson
16 Lexi Dogg
17 Claudia Christian
18 Daisy Ridley
19 Kate Beckinsale
20 Eliza Dushku
- 1 TG
0 TG
17 Power
Boon
Admech - Untested Warp Drive
Part 1
Forge World. Space Dock.
So here I am Lord-Captain Gothic a Rogue Trader, which is is a combination of freelance explorer, conquistador and merchant. given a ship, a crew, a contingent of marines or Guardsmen and carte blanche to roam the worlds beyond Imperial control. In their task of exploring and exploiting uncharted regions of the galaxy, Rogue Traders might come across worlds harbouring long forgotten human civilisations which will be incorporated into the Imperium. Other times they find empty or alien-dominated planets ripe for colonisation or exploitation. It rarely ends well for the aliens.
All Rogue Traders are highly exceptional individuals who are driven to success even though these exceptional people often have extreme character quirks themselves; some destroy entire worlds for the slightest reason, or include alien warriors and mutants among their entourage.[1c] Some are highly pious while others are no more than legitimised pirates.
Whatever their origins, all Rogue Traders are first and foremost masters of their own fates, and upon their shoulders can rest the success or failure not only of their endeavours and their bloodlines, but of countless future generations and, often, the fortunes of entire worlds. Operating in isolation from the central authority of the Imperium, the Rogue Trader must decide for themselves how to react to alien cultures, new discoveries, and threats. If they judge an intelligent xenos race to be potentially dangerous, they may attempt to destroy it or to gather as much information as they can so that others may do so.
The most valuable possession of a Rogue Trader family is a Warrant of Trade; an ancient legal document which describes the accepted limits of its operations. These charters are hereditary thus creating a Rogue Trader dynasty. These dynasties are granted a personal coat of arms identifying them amongst the Imperial elite
Now I'd joined their lofty ranks for something I didn't even remember doing.
There are good sides and bad sides to having a chunk of your memory removed. On the good side, I can't remember facing the forces of Chaos which I approve of if only because I don't want to recall such horrors, even mere exposer to the creatures of the warp can drive men man and I'd like to hold on to what little sanity I had left for as long as humanly possible.
The bad side is that I don't know how I got the scary Warhammer 40k universe or why I'd been working a dead-end job on sector capitol world when it was invaded by the enemies of The Emperor. As such if I'd gone through the stages of emotions you'd expect when finding a Warhammer 40k fan who had been transported into one of his favourite fictional universes.
Unlike a Star Wars fan or a Star Trek fan, who would be overjoyed to find themselves in the Star Wars galaxy or the Trek one despite the dangers you won't find many 40k fans who would even be willing to spend a day in that fictional setting because of how messed up and scary it is. As such, I'd cried, screamed and laughed while crying, all while hiding the covers of my new bed, which was part of a very nice bedroom.
Given that I'd turned the tide of a major battle for the IOM singlehandedly saving an Admech Fortress in the process I had to have some kind of superpower, like a game-changing power. I'd ruled out me being a lost Primarch or just a space marine hiding out with the mortals as the Admech had done some gene enhancing to my form so they would have noticed any odd DNA patterns and besides I wasn't six feet tall until after they'd enhanced me.
I could be a high-level psyker, but if that was the case the Inquisition would have killed or recruited me regardless of what anyone else had to say on the matter because it would be too dangerous to do otherwise. I also could be an Imperial Saint, as in someone who was directly empowered by The Emperor, but I only paid lip service to Big E because I knew he wouldn't want me to worship him. I even considered it possible that I had a shard of The Emperor within me, a bit of his great soul mixed with mine, which could explain the Saint like powers without me having any of the faith.
If Big E had given me some of his power than I didn't have to worry much about Chaos corruption as the golden guy could be considered to be anti-chaos and worrying overly much about corruption would just make things worse. Besides a lot of people in the Imperium don't even know that the Ruinous Powers even exist outside of stories they may have heard which means Choas should be possible to avoid.
It would also explain why people of all sorts were behind over backwards to help me. Even now members of the Admech were installing some sort of Dark Age of Technology Warp Drive that should be way better than the normal kind and while their reasoning had to do with my new ship having way more power than it needed, and therefore extra juice for this drive the fact that it was being entrusted to me had to have more behind it than me saving some relic while fighting Chaos warriors.
As for my ship, the Dauntless Crusier Glorious Aspirations, it had far less firepower than most Imperial Navy battleships due to having some of its guns replaced, but that just meant more energy for other systems, and I'd been able to arrange for a warship's crew to be placed on board thanks to the insane amount of money I'd given as part of my reward. I even had a Guard Regiment in my service, all of whom were willing to go off and fight for me. More proof that Big E, or some other great power, was somehow looking after me.
I had mortals watching my back as well. One of the services they offered on this forge world involved using more dark age of technology stuff to produce gene-sculpted superhuman warriors, not on the scale of space marines, of course, they didn't have power armour, but each of the twenty women had been enhanced for combat with the intent that they would serve as my personal guard and perform any other duties I required.
The machine involved in creating the battle harem as they were called, and that was their proper name, somehow saw my memories and then created the battle harem using women from my memories that I found pleasing to look at as a template for each of the twenty women whose looks were based on famous actresses even if they had no personalities of their own due having been programmed and created quite recently. The importance of them being 20 superhuman warriors at my command who were created using Dark Age tech was not lost on me.
I could not produce new members for my battle harem due to the rareness and high demand for such technology, which was fine as I couldn't recall all of the twenty I had now and with my cloning facilities I could replace anyone I lost. With the cloning vats, I could replace lost crew in a matter of years rather than have to wait for children to grow and take their parent's place. Something that often happened on a ship this big because they were more flying cities than anything else.
It wouldn't just be the crew who would make their own replacements if given enough time. The guard regiment on board, who were Cadian even if none of them had seen that world since they were children, were made up from single-sex regiments who had been merged and since this wasn't a military vessel it had more relaxed standards of behaviour so I could end up having a nursery and school onboard before long.
Lucky for me this ship was a city in space so we weren't exactly lacking for any room even with so much of the ships eternal space being used for some purpose as I'd made sure while paying for the upgrades that there would be enough room for the crew to be reasonably comfortable even if our numbers grew by a few more thousand. Perhaps this ship was more of a colony in space than a city as its people would be able to survive for months without making port as we had much in the way of supplies and the ability to manufacture replacement parts and equipment assuming that we could harvest the needed raw materials.
My own quarters made me feel as if I was living in a fortress/palace within a city as not only was it the height of luxury, it was very secure, and I had a number of elite bodyguards to keep me safe who were programmed for loyalty. Combine that with the checkpoints you needed to get past in order to reach this part of the ship then I was the safest person on the ship.
The sheer amount of luxury bordered on the silly and perhaps went a little past it. My private quarters, which was where I was right now, had a grand dining room, a ballroom, in case I wanted to entertain important guests with a party, my own swimming pool, training centre and a bedroom that had a carpet that was softer than any bed I'd ever slept on.
"Lord-Captain," said a voice over the vox "Please come to the bridge".
That message had been sent to me over the vox unit which was built into a servoskull, they were little robot things that flew around the ship performing errands and use to be part of a person who had donated their head to the Admech after death. I know that plenty of people back home were organ donors who would have their organs given to others after they died, but to donate your skull, that took a special devotion to mankind.
"I'll be there soon," I told the skull.
Before leaving the secure part of the ship I made sure that I looked the part of dashing Rogue Trader. I wore Light Carapace armour as well as expensive clothing since I wasn't a fool. Despite the cost for them, my clothing was plain black meant more for protection than style as the material was tougher than it looked. Aside from my belt which had a silver skull buckle and the rings I wore, one on each hand, I did little to display wealth. This was good as I didn't have much left.
As for weapons I carried a hellpistol, a more powerful version of the standard laspistol that many Imperial Guard and Navy officers would use. This along with a power sabre had belonged to the last captain of this ship who had served as part of the Imperial Navy before dying as his ship limped back to port. Once it had arrived the work had begun to refurbish it as a Rogue Trader vessel.
Once dressed I headed to the bridge, which required riding on a monorail, as while I had a Ready Room near the bridge the ship was just so big that needed many lifts and a whole monorail just so that the crew could get around.
Now sitting on the massive bridge of the Glorious Aspirations, a bridge so big that I had to yell for the crew at the edges to hear me, I looked around at the tech adapts who were finishing the upgrades to my ship, all of which I'd paid for one way or the other. When it was all done I would be able to fly my ship to anywhere I wished by communing with the Machine Spirt of the Warp Drive rather than relying on a Navigator, and again this had to be proof that I had my own psyker powers as only as psyker could hope to navigate The Warp.
As I looked over the stain-glass windows, which didn't look into space as that would be stupid, I looked a the images of the Emperor, in all his golden glory, and wondered if this dark age drive would get me out of this universe. After all, I'd read about crazier ideas online and this had all been set up for my benefits so why try to will myself somewhere else. If it didn't work then I'd die horribly soon rather die horribly just a bit later.
Sitting in my command throne, which served as a captain's chair and a way to interface with the ship's systems or the machine spirits that controlled those systems depending on how you looked at it. I began to plan out where I would go and what I would do while knowing that if the drive did work the way I suspected that it did then I would be to return to a forgeworld for resupply and repair work. I'd need something to trade for the work and the protection of the forgeworld, rare bits of tech and raw materials, and even then I would need to be prepared for the attention of the Inquisition and other parties so it would be good to have plenty to bargain with.
Perhaps the Emperor really was guiding me because I felt a strange level of confidence in this plan and with my ability to deal with the IOM factions. Only time would tell if I was right to feel this way.