Rogue Trader Timeline

Rogue Trader: Drake Dynasty
GM
Adam
Dynastic Power
Character Level: 31,250 XP / Rank 8
Profit Factor: 43𝖕
Command Crew
Lord-Captain Drake Navigator Primus Mordecai Arch-Millitant Winter Astropath Solarus
House Drake Fleet
Aurea Albion Hound of Albion • Abhorrent Fortuitous Purpose • Penance of Iocanthos
Drake Trade Empire
Damaris • Scintilla • Kulth Svard • Dross • Aurum Sepheris Secundus • Tennenberg Killian's Rest
Drake Expeditions
Open Missions
Grand Endevours
Personnel
Magistrates • Retainers Militants Svard 1st • Stormtroopers House Drake Expeditionary Army
Assets
Materiel Aerospace Craft • Ground Vehicles
Armoury Wargear • Relics and Artifacts
Other Estate Secrets and Contacts • Awards and Honors
The Galaxy
Locations Calixis Sector Koronus Expanse • Periphery Subsector Personalities Peers of the Imperium Rival Rogue Traders
Utilities
Rogue Trader Timeline House Rules Guide and Lore

Pre-history

M36

Circa 760
Haarlock’s Progress: Solomon Haarlock, scion of an infamous and (according to some) damned Rogue Trader lineage, successfully charts the area of space known as the Calyx Expanse and some say stray beyond the Maw as well.

M37

Circa 433
Auspicious Dinner: The Rogue Traders Marius Drake and Herman Krieg are both active in the Calyx Expanse and meet to share stories and barter findings and materials. Notes about their meetings are recorded in the Aurea Albion's datastacks.

M38

Circa 101
The Koronus Fragments: During the preparations for a proposed Imperial Crusade to bring the Calyx Expanse under Compliance, a number of apocryphal documents come to light in the vast data-stacks that house the Segmentum Obscuras naval records on Wykthorne Prime. These documents, which become known as the Koronus Fragments, are the degraded and incomplete logs of an Adeptus Mechanicus Exporator fleet of unknown age and provenance that purports to have discovered a stable passage through a vast swathe of warp storms at the edge of the Calyx Expanse.

Circa 375
End of a line: Jonah Krieg, last of the nearly bankrupt Krieg dynasty, makes a desperate gamble to locate the passage to the fabled Koronus region based on millennia-old family records. The ship is never seen or heard from again.

M39

Circa 322 to 384
The Angevin Crusade: The Imperium forges the Calixis Sector from the former border region of the Calyx Expanse, with great effusion of blood and the loss of many millions of lives. Several minor xeno-empires are crushed, dark powers cast down and lost human colonies either restored to the Light of the Golden Throne or purged from the stars, according to their measure.

Circa 878
Abenicus’s Theorem: Studying ancient pre-crusade reports, prophetic murmurings culled from dubious texts and the visions granted him by his own fickle gifts, the Mad Navigator Abenicus of House Benetek spreads his theory of the safe passage through the veil of warp storms that crowd the edges of the Drusus Marches and form a ‘natural’ border to the Calixis sector.

M40

Circa 197
The Discovery of the Maw: Rogue Trader Purity Lathimon succeeds where dozens of other Rogue Traders have failed and perished, discovering and plotting safe passage through what she dubs ‘the Maw’ to the Koronus Expanse beyond. Upon her return to Port Wander, she sells her secrets, liquidates her assets and dispands her crew. She's last seen as a sister-retired at Our Lady of the Lily convent.

Circa 733
Trail of Roses: The Sceptre’d Rose, a Rogue Trader barque under the Lady Juno Dach’man becomes one of the first vessels to traverse the new route through the Maw on a regular basis. Although the Sceptre'd Rose disappears with all hands during one transit, the waypoints Lady Dach'man established remain the standard for Maw navigation. A hundred years later, the first stories of a ghost ship matching the Sceptre'd Rose reach the ears of Port Wander. Reports continue to this day.

M41

Circa 055
Right of Trade: The Lord Sector Calixis and his heirs and successors are granted the right, within set guidelines, to issue Warrants of Trade pertaining to the exploration and domination of the Koronus Expanse by the writ of the High Lords of Terra. This leads inevitability to a steady rise in the numbers of Rogue Traders operating within the Expanse in the years to come, kept largely in check by natural attrition, and also serves to further bind the Koronus Expanse to then Calixis Sector politically.

Circa 071
Homefield Advantage: Angered at taxation and rising supply costs, a coalition of minor Rogue Trader houses petition the Administorm for the men and materials to create an independent Imperial colony in the Expanse. Their success leads to the founding of Damaris and Balwork orbital docking station.

Circa 452 Founding of Footfall: Possibly in search of a world on which to build a palace city, former Imperial Colonel turned Rogue Trader Dewain passes through the Maw with a small fleet of ships laden with stone, plasteel and iron. Becalmed on the far side of the Maw he orders the construction of "my grand palace in the stars." He dies without an heir, and in his final act bequeaths Footfall to "all Rogue Traders who have passed the Maw."

Circa 774 Chaos Reigns: The barbed vessels of the Chaos renegade Karrad Vall emerge from the Maw and bombard Footfall. The renegades are finally driven off, but not before their boarding parties and surface raiders capture hundreds of souls. Their fate is said to provide a libation of blood to the Dark Gods in thanks for safe passage through the Great Warp Storms for the infamous Vall, who is said to have last plagued other Imperial sectors for a millennia before. Chaos activity across the Expanse notably increases in his wake.

Drake Timeline

816.M41: The Young Drake

Heir Unapparent: Acanthus Regulus Drake, who knew nothing of his biological family's ties, is presented with the Drake Warrant of Trade. Within the hour there is another assassination attempt on his life. The Arbiters eventually conclude it was the work of a chaos cult acting on heretical divination practices. The cult is eliminated and the case is considered closed.

Legacy of Wealth: Lord Drake arrives at Port Wander to reclaim the Aurea Albion, the Flagship of the Drake Dynasty and his birthright. The ship is in a sorry state but, with the help of some newly acquired senior officers, Drake is able to keep the Imperial Navy from stripping off the last of the ship's armament. The Explorers then set out to reorganize the citizens of the Aurea Albion, fill out something resembling a functional ship's crew, and get the vessel sufficiently repaired and provisioned to set sail.

817.M41: Into the Maw

Cursed Bounty: Stuck with a green crew and hoping to gather some quick resources to help prop up the Dynasty's cashflow issues, the crew manages to secure the salvage rights for the Emperor's Bounty, a ship long considered lost but recently heard in the Maw waypoint known as The Battlefield. While the vessel is eventually found, the recovery operation is complicated by the ship's original Navigator, now under the control of a warp artifact. This chaos-empowered being contests the salvage using a force of psychicly animated zombies, endlessly recycled from the Bounty's crew. The Explorers finally defeat the Navigator after convincing the ship's core cognator to activate the Geller field, cutting off the majority of his power.

Dark Frontier: The warp artifact from the Emperor's Bounty lured a rating to carry it aboard the Aurea Albion, letting it distort the subsequent Warp jump and lead the ship to an unnamed Yu'voth system where they were trapped in a mysterious energy field. Securing deals with other survivors and negotiating the felty of Captian Lynara Cobolt, the Explorers were able to disrupt the planetary energy relay with the warhead from a Vortex Torpedo, although a chain reaction caused an enormous burst of warp energy. Unbeknownst to the explorers, this energy would reactivate systems in the long semi-dormant Whisperer half a sector away.

Footfallen: The dynasty, along with the newly retained Penance of Iocanthus returns to Port Wander to dispose of the salvage gained from the Emperor's Bounty, trading materials for ship upgrades. At the same time, the Albion's aged Navigator Prime departs, exchanging the position with the young Navigator Mordecai of house Ben'yam. Once the ship's new systems are installed, the explorers gather up fresh cargo and desperate colonists before making their first full expedition through the entirety of the Maw. Arriving through the storm intact, the explorers get their first taste of hive of scum and villainy that is Footfall. There, the explorers' morals, bodies, and good taste are challenged by intrigue, parties and a truly terrifying dinner menu.

818.M41: Whispers in the Dark

The Long Lost Lord: They Dynasty is approached by Lord-Captain Keel of the Navy about investigating the Aurinko system and the Drake colony of Svard. The exploration reveals a system frozen in fear of an insidious presence known as the "Whisperer". Spurred to action, Drake and company are able to affect a rapid reconquest of the industrial moon of Cog and use its systems to locate Silence and Installation 23. After a stop-over at Silence, they assault and capture Installation 23, then use its systems to discover a battleship-sized Ya'voth vessel hidden in the clouds. The creation attacks and is finally destroyed, though at a heavy cost. The dynasty spends the rest of the year bargaining, shipping, and investing (particularly with its close neighbor Damaris) to keep the recovered colony from collapsing under the strain.

The Foretelling: While on Footfall, the explorers learn that a conclave known as the Seven Witches will be holding an event known as the Foretelling, which will reveal the location of a fabulous treasure. Having no further pressing leads and hoping for developing a dramatic jump in the Dynasty's fortunes, they decided to remain and bid on attendance. While waiting on Footfall, they encounter a number of other Rogue Traders, each having come to hear the same Foretelling as Drake. The auction for attendance costs the dynasty dearly, but they successfully witness the psychic vision of the Dread Pearl. An alliance is forged with Madam Charlabelle of House Armelan.

819.M41: The Dread Pearl (1)

The Keystone: A long and surprisingly eventful voyage send the Explorers (and their rivals) to the marginally recorded world of Quppa-Psi-12. Ancient Eldar defenses made affecting a landing surprisingly difficult, forcing the explorers to walk the remaining kilometers to the temple. Once there, they encounter both a selection of their rivals and a coven of Eldar warlocks who are attempting to drag the temple into the warp to prevent anyone from reading it. The ritual is stopped, and the explorers get a good chance to look at the arcane map before departing.

War WIthout End: While not the closest Nexus point, the war-torn world of Zayth is the best known, with the dynasty's maps providing a rough route. There they find a world where great land-ships (an odd cross between titans, voidships, and hives) stride the across the world endlessly competing for survival and scrap. There, after successfully reading the nexus point, the explorers found themselves caught in a battle over a fallen Mechanicus shuttle. Learning the shuttle belonged to a rogue Mechanicus faction and was there to make a secret trade and support a regime change, the explorers reveal the plan to the ship's elder council and negotiate a profitable trade agreement.

A Priest-King's Ransom: On the desert world of Vaporius, the explorers brave the barren wastelands and defeat hideous rock-creatures to locate a nexus point that will help illuminate the location of the Dread Pearl. The explorers also take the time to visit one of the Priest-kings of Vaporius, where they experience the cleansing draught of the (psychoactive) Waters. Realizing there would be a market in such a liquid, they enter negotiations and in the end agree to deal with the ecclesial missionaries who are bothering the local ruler. They agree, but instead of destroying the missionaries, simply lure them to the other side of the planet with the promise of a proper church.

Storming Bastille: Lord Bastille, sensing the weakness of Drake's position, uses the Nexus of Vaporius as casus belli to engage the Aurea Albion. Inspired maneuvers by Tacticus and Drake's leadership, however, turn the tables on the elderly admiral, with Brother Winter leading a boarding action to first disable the Abhorrant, then hours later taking Bastille's flagship the Colossus. Both vessels are fitted with prize crews, and return with Albion to Footfall, where Bastille himself and the Colossus are ransomed, but the Abhorrant is retained.

820.M41: The Dread Pearl (2)

Ark of the Forsaken: With fresh supplies and fuel from Footfall, the explorers head for the most distant Nexus. There, in an unremarkable system without a terrestrial planet to its name, the explorers locate their prize among the icy rings of a gas giant. While en route, they are also hailed by the mythical ship Light of Terra, who appears to have been trapped in this system since the Angevin Crusade. They meet with the captain, who offers them a trade - restore power to the vessel and he will open the deepest vaults for them. Through cunning, might and diplomacy with the local crew-tribes the explorers succeed, and while the captain does keep his word and opens the vault, he also immediately starts the hour-long countdown to Warp translation. The explorers evacuate several crew-tribes and a few lighters of treasure before being forced to make a desperate escape by driving a Baneblade out of the airlock. The Light of Terra disappears into the warp with no apparent destination.

Land of the Sky-Father: On the storm-wracked world of Dross, the explorers first attempt to land ends in a devastating crash landing. There they discover tribal warfare over millions of crashed craft and a warrior-psychic by the name of Asira who calls herself the High Priestess of the Sky-Father. Charm, negotiation and some martial assistance see the explorers brought to the high temple, which is discovered to both be the Nexus and one source of the endless storms. The explorers convince her that they are emissaries sent by the Sky-Father to unite the planet under her, and if she follows their instructions she can part the sky and bring to her the Sky-Father's gifts. Their first "gifts" are shotguns and flak armor, to help unify the planet.

Damned Processional: Where the last Nexus is expected, the crew find only a steller anomaly - some kind of torn warp-portal the Nexus appears to have drifted through. Taking the Albion through, the explorers find themselves in the Professional of the Damned, an accretion ring worth of voidship wrecks surrounding a blacked-out star that seem to defy time and space. In addition to reading the Nexus, the Albion sweeps the rings for outcast survivors, ex-renegades who wish only a chance to escape. A handful of Carrion warlords attempt to block the Albion's return to warp-portal, but one truly stands out: a cruiser that appears to be the Aurea Albion herself, but covered with strange and disturbing markings.

The World Beyond: With readings from all the Nexus points the explorers know of, they are able to narrow down the location of the Dread Pearl to a searchable region of space. Careful astrography allows them to locate a peculiarly localized warp storm that appears to be the long desired planet. They find a few of their rivals already in high orbit around the warp-locked planet and are joined by several others before the storms eventually abate, providing a new chance to cut deals, strengthen alliances and taunt rivals. Running the newly opened gauntlet to the planet, however, leads to conflict with Rogue Traders and warp entities alike.

Eye of the Storm: Like the rest of the Rogue Traders, the Dynasty parks in low orbit and immediately sends down landers to exploit the planet's ready wealth. Among the idyllic islands, the explorers discover ancient Eldar structures including some frighteningly humanoid constructions. Concerned about the aggressive activities of their neighbors and potential Eldar activity, the dynasty begins gathering valuable artifacts immediately, particularly the innumerable gemstones. After several hours, the Explorers make contact with some rather unexpectedly human natives. Carefully navigating the conversation, they manage to convince the natives that they too are chosen to live on the planet. Sudden violence from several other competitors, however, strains the conversation, and the explorers are forced to adapt their story to a role of guardians and rescuers.

The Awakening: A short time later strange and unnaturally tough attackers - Wraithguard - began attacking edges and pockets of the expedition, eventually working up to attacking the Explorers themselves. To make matters worse, a new storm starts building akin to the one found on Dross, and it was starting to draw the warp storm closed again. Suddenly desperate, the explorers order their troops into a fighting retreat with orders to evacuate the natives and head off themselves to investigate the source of the new disturbance. They and a few remaining allies discover a coven of Eldar farseers and witches conducting an arcane ritual. The ensuing fight slows the storm but is too late to stop it entirely. Allies and enemies alike rush to their ships, with Drake recovering Armalon, who had lost her landers to wraithguard, and effect an escape through the closing pass. An Eldar ambush awaits the Rogue Traders at systems edge, though the greatest ship - huge with tattered sails - simply observes before fading into the void.