Windsor-2-Endevor

THEORETICAL, UNKNOWN YET

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Act 2 - Prelude to Unknown Causality

Conglomeration of Windsor Cadet Dynasty has just formed, and the Flotilla of Void Ships just left Greyhell Sector towards the Laurel-T Expanse, with only star-chart towards Kashasevo. However, a possible contract with the local Imperial Navy gave the Dynasty a small countermeasures of stable profits, by patrolling the area and preventing Heretics and Xenos from passing into Greyhell Sector (also, from Greyhell Sector to Laurel-T Expanse).

But for the ambitious young organization, such small coins are not satisfactory, and there have been a grand project to procure informations toward the unknowns.

Profit Factor: 18. Debts: 0.

Known Systems at Laurel-T Expanse:

Kashasevo (Burn-Reef Sub-Sector)

Clementina (Clementina Sub-Sector)

Protecting Perimeter (Meta). 1,100/400 Achievement Points, +0 Profit Factor

A contract regarding protecting the outer perimeter, the border between Laurel-T Expanse and Greyhell Sector, will provide a very minor profit, if performed diligently.

01: Defeat Heretics (Military): 200 Points

02: Defeat Xenos (Military): 200 Points

03: Internal Consolidation (Creed): 200 Points

04: Supply Lines Maintenance (Trade, Military): 300 Points

05: Patrol Area (Exploration): 200 Points

Establish Faith (Meta). 900/400 Achievement Points, +0 Profit Factor; A contract with Ecclesiarch to provide support on faithful and pilgrims, as well as hunting heretics, will provide a very minor profit, if performed diligently.

01: Defeat Heretics (Military): 200 Points

02: Internal Consolidation (Creed)

03: Escort (Creed, Criminal): 325 Points

04: Patrol Area (Exploration): 200 Points

05: Hunt Heretics (Exploration, Creed): 100 Points

From Inq.Openforte: 75 Points

Act of Privateers (Meta). 1,700/400 Achievement Points, +0 Profit Factor

A contract with Administratum in bringing back or destroying voidships for investigation, purging, or for rehabilitation, will provide a very minor profit, if performed diligently.

01: Destroy Chaos Ship (Military, Creed): 300 Points

02: Destroy Chaos Ship (Military, Creed): 300 Points

03: Capture Xenos Ship (Exploration, Criminal): 375 Points

04: Capture Mankind Ship (Military, Criminal): 200 Points

05: Capture Mankind Ship (Military, Criminal):225 points

From Inq.Openforte: 25 Points

From Inq.Openforte: 275 Points

Acquire Information of the Expanse (Grand). 1,825/1,500 Achievement Points, +6 Profit Factor

An aggressive Endeavour, in order to obtain as many information as possible, while securing the area.

01: Defeat Heretics (Military, Creed)

02: Defeat Xenos (Military)

03: Internal Consolidation (Creed)

04: Obtain New Starchart beyond Clementina (Exploration, Trade)

05: Obtain Another New Starchart beyond Kashasevo (Exploration, Trade)

06: Steal Starchart beyond Burn-Reef from a Rival (Criminal): 225 PTS

07: Sabotage Rival's Endeavour (Criminal, Military): 150 PTS

08: Safe Passage beyond Burn-Reef (Exploration): 200 PTS

09: Establish Order beyond Burn-Reef (Military, Creed): 125 PTS

10: Deliver Pilgrims and Colonists beyond Burn-Reef (Trade, Creed): 300 PTS

11: Counter Espionage (Criminal): 275 PTS

12: Establish Supply Lines beyond Burn-Reef (Trade)

13: Patrol Area beyond Burn-Reef (Exploration): 100 PTS

14: Assassinate Rival (Criminal): 150 PTS

15: Defeat Heretics beyond Burn-Reef (Military, Exploration): 300 PTS

16: Defeat Xenos beyond Burn-Reef (Military, Exploration)

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One the thriving hive world of Rivoli, Maquin's Tomb was compromised ten years ago by an alpha-class telepath named Maquin. Overloaded and driven insane by fifty billion busy minds, he seized control of the entire population and drove them to suicide over the course of twelve hours. Only a few ships in high orbit could protect themselves long enough to cast themselves into the warp and escape. The mass deaths distorted the warp surrounding Maquin's Tomb, and the escaping ships have only recently dropped out of the warp to inform the rest of the Imperium about what has happened. The industry and science of an entire hive world lay ripe for anyone who dares to to brave the wrath of an insane alpha-psyker hiding somewhere in the empty hives.

It's the Only Way to Be Sure

Grand Endeavor, 1500 Achievement Points, +5 Profit Rating

By Psychopomp

Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.

Objective 1: Load for bear.

Track down and buy potent hexagrammic wards, blessed armor, and relics of saints for psychic protection. Hire devout priests and even an Untouchable if possible.

Themes: Trade

250 Achievement Points

Objective 2: Pierce the strange Warp flux around the lost world.

Themes: Exploration

250 Achievement Points

Objective 3: Locate Maquin's lair.

Search the abandoned hives to find which one contains Maquin. Naturally, he will be in a hive the explorers check personally. His presence must be confirmed, so that there are no lingering doubts about his destruction.

This objective should be run as an adventure in its own right. Maquin's incredible psychic powers should be represented as environmental effects, rather than direct confrontation. This is an 'escape the haunted house' adventure writ large, as attempting to fight a psyker capable of forcing an entire world's population to their deaths is foolishness. Once Maquin begins to utilize the 'haunted hive' against the explorers, any psyker on the planet or in orbit can confirm his location - it is just then a matter of escaping back to the ship before he burns out the explorers' psychic protections.

Themes: Exploration, Military

500 Achievement Points

Objective 4: Nuke him from orbit.

Hold the ship steady against the massive waves of psychic force lashing up from the surface of the planet long enough to burn the hive down to its roots, burying Maquin's ashes.

Stat the hive up like a stationary ship. Maquin's madness has spiked his powers to terrifying potential, allowing him to force piloting checks to avoid the ship being thrown off course. Also, he can send clouds of psychic turbulence at the ship (counts as macrobatteries) or focus his insanity into piercing telekinetic beams (counts as lance shots.) Once the hive's hull integrity reaches zero, it's power cores have ruptured and it collapses, killing Maquin in an avalanche of collapsing debris and molten metal.

Themes: Military

500 Achievement Points

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KONQUER KASHAXEVO; JAXONIX; VA-SHANEX, UNTER GAUX & URIK-AMI

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Best suited for a more established (read, heretical) group.

Rosette and Warrant. (Greater endeavour, +5 Profit factor)

While in Footfall the party astropath gets a message, an Inquisitor seeks audience with the rogue trader and his inner cabal. What ever could they want, and... do you really want one poking around? Inquisitors and Rogue traders are in all ways polar opposites, one the guardian of orthodoxy, with near unlimited power within the borders of the imperium, the other almost expected to be heretics and with power limited only by their reach outside it. Where the two thus meet is incredible danger, but also opportunity.

Objective 1: Quick! Hide the herisay! (Criminal/trade/exploration/military) 100-500 achievement points depending on the depth of sin.

Such a request cannot be ignored, but might be usefully delayed. Even the most valiant warrant has its sins and secrets, they mist be hidden. A sudden urgent flurry of trade to convert the salacious into the sanctioned, of conflict as certain former allies or detractors are silenced, of exploration as new hiding places are found, ensues as the trader and his cabal seek to obscure their misdeeds.

Objective 2: Good works are hard works. (creed/criminal) 100 ap

But... the mere absence of misdeeds is not enough, good deeds and righteous actions must be either brought to mind once more, or invented entirely, if the traders are to be armored in indomable virtue.

Objective 3: One last lie (Creed/Military) 50 ap

The meeting with the Inquisitor is to be held in the maw itself, in the Temple, neutral ground. Conspicuously neutral. Here is where the lies of omission and redirection are tested as the entourages of the Rogue trader and Inquisitor mingle. If things go well, the Inquisitor will, eventually, confess that he contacted the trader concerning the need to extinguish warrants fallen to foul paths.

In this case, the warrant of a rival! Secure in the righteousness of those present he enlists their aid.

Objective 4: The Hunt is on! (Exploration) 500 ap

A Rogue Trader is a dangerous and wily foe at the best of times, much more so one who has fled into the expanse having turned his back on the God Emperor, he will have left false trails and glassed cites in his wake, cold trails and dead men, abandoning even the imperfectly charted routes of the expanse. Never the less he must be found, and swiftly as his lead grows with each passing day.

Objective 5: Good, bad? We're the ones with the warship ( Military) 500 ap

Having found the renegade, the greater task presents itself. Killing one. Depending on the group this may be a class of mighty ships, a planetary invasion, a running battle over tensely fought months across the expanse as the pursued drags the pursuit throug trap after trap strung across the expanse. It may even be all 3.

Objective 6: Cleaning the carcass (trade/Criminal/military) 500 ap

Having prevailed against the foe, leaves one final work. To profit from his misfortune before the scavengers lured by the hunt make away with the sweetest meat.

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Pacification of Melior 17

The ancient, decadent world of Melior 17 has long been a hotbed of treason, heresy, and darker practices. It is famous sector-wide as the favourite stopping point for Rogue Traders, pirates, smugglers, and renegades of all sorts. The Administratum has finally written the planet off and given the Imperial Navy permission to scourge the surface of all life so that the planet may be recolonised in a few generations.

There are individuals who will pay anything, anything at all, in order to escape beofre this happens.

Profane Salvation

Greater Endeavor, 1600 Achievement Points, +6 Profit Factor

Waste not, want not. The aristocrats of Melior 17 have a hell of a lot of money, and they really don't want to die when the cleansing wrath of the Emperor catches up with them. If the Explorers can manage to get even a handful of these decadent jerks to safety, they stand to inherit multiple staggering fortunes. The consequences for failure, needless to say, are dire in the extreme.

Objective 1: Negotiations (Criminal, 400 Achievement Points): The Explorers hear about the incoming purge and set up compacts with criminal syndicates and merchant guilds unscrupulous or daring enough to resettle heretical noblemen in the lawless Koronus Expanse. This needs subtlety. If anyone in the Imperial Navy (or, worse yet, the Inquisition) so much as thinks they hear a rumor about this, they'll drop the hammer on the Dynasty.

Objective 2: Purge Night (Military, Criminal, 200 Achievement Points): The Explorers get to Melior 17 through joining the purge fleet and "assist" the invasion of the planet. Meanwhile, their clients gather up their worldly possessions and await their rescuers. The Explorers need to fight their way through hordes of mutants, Chaos-worshipers, and just plain old desperate souls to get to the nobles. Once there, they need to get their high-paying charges aboard transports to orbit (and plunder everything of worth from their palaces along the way).

Objective 3: Flight of the Heretics (Criminal, Exploration; 300 Achievement Points): Then the hard part begins. The Explorers now need to get clear of the invasion fleet and into the Koronus Expanse. Unfortuantely, Melior 17 is in the core of the Calixis Sector. The Explorers need to get to the Maw however they can--perhaps they'll try to forge a new warp route through wild space within the Calixis Sector; maybe they'll use their criminal connections to ease their flight to the Halo Stars. However they do it, this leg of the trip ends at Port Wander.

Objective 4: Customs Inspection (Criminal, Creed, Trade; 500 Achievement Points): Unfortunately for the Explorers, the Imperium has already closed the borders for just such an occasion. When stopped at Port Maw, the Explorers' ship is inspected by agents of the Imperial Navy. Their purpose in going to the Koronus Expanse is picked over time and time again by the Inquisition, and all their paperwork is gone over (in triplicate) by the Administratum. However they do it (through bribery, diplomacy, or sheer brazen bullshittery), the Explorers need to convince the inspectors of their loyalty to the Emperor. If they can, they are allowed to pass--assuming they can keep their clients quiet and hidden; at this point, many of the nobles are probably dangerously close to losing their cool and doing something catastrophically stupid.

Objective 5: Home Stretch (Criminal; 200 Achievement Points): The Koronus Expanse is a haven for the lost and the damned. When the Explorers finally make it back to the frontier, their smuggled cargo suddenly decide that they're in charge. To make matters even worse, their criminal contacts in the Expanse simultaneously decide they want a bigger cut. The Explorers need to take control of the situation. Forcefully. Once any contract disputes are settled (most likely at macrocannonpoint), they're free to once and for all be rid of the insufferable nobles and to claim their vast fortunes.

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Catalog System P3X-451:

Lesser Endeavour; +2 Profit Factor

Achievement Point Requirement; 1,000 Points; +1 Profit Factor per Additional 100 Points

Requirements:

The 'Ebon Glaive'

The crew of the 'Ebon Glaive' have been dispatched by the Magos Wilcog of the Adeptus Mechanicus to investigate the system P3X-451, which was recently noted and discovered to be strangely absent from Port Wander's records. Magos Wilcog has requested that Lord-Captain Verata and her crew survey and catalog the worlds, both for the benefit of House Verata and that of the Adeptus Mechanicus in the unlikely event anything of note is discovered.

Objective I: 'Chart a Warp Route to System P3X-451'

The objective of this step is to arrive at the system relatively safely. If the Navigator is able to chart the warp route she takes after the fact such a chart could be valuable enough to warrant an allocation of Profit Factor on its own.

Objective II: 'Map The System'

Map the general system for large scale items of interest such as planets, star type, size of primary biosphere, etc.

Objective III: 'Survey Worlds'

Scan the surface of major planets, moons and other system features to include a reasonable analysis of the system and any potential inhabitants in the cataloging process. The more in-depth the analysis of a planetoid the greater the achievement points warranted.

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