“Without the scratching of a tedious scribe’s quill there is no history. Events both great and terrible may pass unmarked and unremembered and so leave us only with scraps of what was. These fragments of memory are what fools call history and the wise call lies.”
–from The Lost Imperial Past by Sejanus Morn, 789.M41
Being an account of the valiant and mighty deeds, works, and strange fates of those famed Rogue Traders who have writ the history of Koronus, in brief.
What follows is the chronicle of signif icant events that mark the selected history of the Koronus Expanse, as it is generally known and agreed upon by scholars within the Imperium, with particular reference to the deeds of the Rogue Traders that have forged it. Within are accounts and records of the exp loration of the Koronus Expanse, and the strange and wondrous worlds found beyond the E mp eror’s Light. Few, however, who compile the chronicles of the Expanse have ever ventured there, and thus they rely on the accounts of others. The sources used by most scholars are the records kept by Rogue Traders and their associates. Such records are prone to inconsistency, embellishment, or outright falsification, and so claims as to the completeness or accuracy of any chronicle are best treated with suspicion.
M30-M31
The Great Crusade
Early M31
The Horus Heresy
100-600.M36
The Age of Apostasy
Circa 760.M36
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.
101.M38
The Koronus Fragments: During the preparations for a proposed Imperial Crusade to bring the volume of space known as 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. The few complete sections mark dozens of mineral-rich worlds, life-supporting biospheres and other areas for later exploration, which
presumably never occurred. Also missing from the fragments was any concrete data on how to reach this zone, rendering them effectively useless. Nevertheless, the Koronus Fragments were added as addendum to the Crusade data, and later served to breed the legend of a vast untouched spatial zone littered with (oft-overstated) riches just beyond the reach of the
numerous Rogue Trader vessels attached to the Crusade efforts.
322-384.M39
The Angevin Crusade 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.
589-591.M39
The space hulk designated Cauldron of Savagery appears on the fringes of the Drusus Marches of the Calixis Sector, purportedly exiting the Great Warp Storms on their edge unscathed and marauding through several border systems before seeming to disappear again from whence it came. Imperial Navy warships assigned to shadow and harry the space hulk are lost with all hands near the storm border. Later evidence and deduction seems to indicate that its point of origin was the Koronus Expanse.
878.M39
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 that there exists a 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. Despite the Navigator’s evident insanity, his proofs and arguments are convincing and spark something of a ‘gold rush’ of Rogue Trader’s and other ne’er-do-wells attempting to discover the route to his ‘safe passage’, drawn on by the lure of untold riches and manifest power in the years to come. Many die, few return, and others meet only bloodshed and poverty in exchange for their efforts in what becomes known in local parlance as ‘The Mistaken Age,’ but in doing so lay the groundwork for the various Stations of Passage dotting the extreme border of the Drusus Marches extending into the storm zone.
673.M40
The Cauldron of Savagery returns to blight the Drusus Marches, breaking forth from the Great Warp Storms during a period of unprecedented Ætheric turbulence which disrupts communication and passage within the sub-sector. A loose alliance of Rogue Trader vessels under the leadership of the infamous privateer Esme Chorda and a threadbare contingent of Battlefleet Calixis defenders confront the dread wanderer. The space hulk is bombarded and successfully driven into the primary star of the Pellucidan system before its nightmarish inhabitants can ravage Pellucida’s worlds. The Pellucian sun is said to be scarred for nearly three decades afterwards, vivid greenish stains burning upon its harsh white surface. The Rogue Trader line of Chorda is gifted freedom of the sub-sector in addition to its usual Warrant of Trade. Although repealed a century later for malfeasance, this benefice cements them as one of the most powerful Rogue Trader Houses operating out of the Calixis Sector.
917-924.M40
Port Wander is founded by the Imperial Navy: A large and heavily-armed space station designated Port Wander is built and equipped as staging ground to investigate the loss of many vessels and other incidents on the fringes of the Drusus Marches over the course of the preceding centuries. Using Port Wander as a base, Battle Group Trajan is assigned to carry out deep patrols beyond the bounds of the sub-sector. Nothing concrete is found and Navy ships are quickly removed to other duties owing to unrest in the sector core, leaving the station for the moment as little more than an oversized watchpost, heavily dependant on Rogue Trader traffic for its survival and protection.
995.M40
The Macharian Conquests
997.M40
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. Fated and cursed in equal measure in some quarters, Purity Lathimon’s crew returns largely too insane or troubled in mind to travel the
void again, and she barters her knowledge for vast wealth with the other Rogue Traders posed to exploit her discovery. Purity herself is said to have disappeared back within the Imperium after imparting her secrets to those who would follow her. According to some apocryphal stories she is said to have purchased her own paradise world outright and in others to have met a far darker fate.
999.M40
The Sceptre’d Rose, a Rogue Trader barque under the Lady Juno Dach’man and one of the first vessels to traverse the new route through the Maw, disappears in transit. The ship enters Koronus lore as perhaps the expanse’s first ghost ship but is far from its last. The vessel is sighted on scores of occasions in the centuries to follow, both visually and as an ‘auspex phantom,’ and is generally regarded as an ill-omened sight at the start of a voyage, and a good omen if sighted upon returning to port.
055.M41
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 the Calixis Sector politically.
101.M41
Kobras Aquairre passes through the Maw. Aquairre, a terrifying and merciless figure with a well-deserved reputation as a butcher of worlds, holds the nearly-unique position of possessing both a Greater Warrant as Rogue Trader and full Inquisitorial rank—a position of extraordinary power within the Imperium of Man. He will never again return to the Imperium and passes far into the depths of the Expanse at the head of a mighty fleet, tasked with rooting out those who have fled the God Emperor’s judgment and making war upon the xenos. His reports couriered back to Port Wander go to form the basis of much of what is known by the Imperium about the Koronus Expanse to this day, but it is believed that Aquairre reported far less than what he found to his masters. Even to this day, dead and ravaged worlds marked by his banner are still being rediscovered.
143-160.M41
The Gothic War
152.M41
The Rogue Trader fleet of Synbar Lockhart is ambushed by the treacherous Eldar in orbit of the dead world of Foulstone. The first confirmed contact with the ancient and malign xenos within the Koronus Expanse, the assailants are later identified as belonging to the Eldar faction known as ‘The Crow Spirits.’ A dozen human ships of varying sizes are destroyed in the ambush, and only the Menes Rhea, Synbar’s own cruiser, escapes intact. The Lockhart fortunes never fully recovered from this blow, and the Rogue Trader line maintain a bitter hatred of the Eldar to this day.
179.M41
Veronique Renuka is declared an outlaw for her involvement in an attempted coup on the Calixian hive world of Cyclopia. She flees into the region of the Expanse now referred to as the Unbeholden Reaches with a substantial fortune and a cadre of household troops.
151.M41
The death of Kobras Aquairre is proclaimed in Port Wander after more than a decade without a report from his armada, to the rejoicing of some and the lamentation of others. Some claim his ships lost with all hands to a fleet of pale-hulled xenos craft, while others say he was the victim of assassination from within his own ranks. Yet others claim that his fleet was laid to waste by an unexpected warp storm, but no facts or proof are presented. In the wake of this news, many other Rogue Traders are drawn through the Maw to seek their fortune.
161.M41
The final garbled transmission from Rogue Trader Abner Lo Pan’s cruiser is picked up faintly by astropathic relay at Port Wander. The transmission, although badly degraded and incoherent speaks of the vessel ensnared within the tightening coils of a great serpent of blood and glass. No sign of Lo Pan or his ship are ever found.
188-274.M41
Sebastian Winterscale, a cunning and able Rogue Trader rumoured to be the unwanted son of the ruling families of the distant Ophidian Sector, is granted a fresh warrant and begins to systematically establish and dominate an interstellar realm that bears his name to this day in the Koronus Expanse. Although still only partially explored, by any measure Winterscale’s realm remains one of the most well-traversed and well-established within the area of the Expanse, and a prize to be envied and perhaps desired as a target for conquest by many.
201.M41
Kobras Aquairre vanishes into the Rifts of Hecaton, a fact attested to by the last ship of his fleet, the frigate Elementis Vulpa, which returns to Port Wander later in this year. This small and already damaged vessel turned back on his order when the remainder of the fleet plunged into the depths of the rifts, with the expectation that they would meet their deaths within. Rumours in Port Wander begin to circulate of dead suns and lifeless darkness in the rifts, and that Aquairre sacrificed himself and his fleet willingly to prevent some terrifying threat they discovered to all human life. The Elementis Vulpa and her crew subsequently disappear, some say into the grip of the Ordo Xenos.
388.M41
Fenton Kail declares that he has discovered an intact Standard Template Construct on a dead moon circling twin red stars when he puts into dock at Port Wander, seeking backers and stating his intent to re-equip and hire mercenaries to exploit his find. A few days later, he is assassinated before he can mount his expedition and his ‘secret’ dies with him. His ship, the Malcontent, passes to the hands of his first mate by right of succession and is destroyed a few months later through the seemingly-accidental overloading of its plasma reactors. There are no known survivors of the ship, and Kail’s death ends his direct bloodline. The dead moon supposedly harbouring the STC described by Kail has never been discovered by other hands, although faked copies of ‘Kail’s map’ regularly appear on sale to the gullible in several ports.
397.M41
The Year of the Dreaming Depths: Quickly entering into whispered myth and legend among the voidfarers of the Expanse, in this year warp predations dramatically spike. A disproportionate number of vessels suffer incursions by warp entities during transit, and many ships—such as the ancient and justly famous battleship Duchess Iolanthe, long a cornerstone of the Winterscale fleet—are lost to the malice of the warp. Rogue Psyker activity on several worlds where the are those with the wit to know it for what it is increases and the entire fledging colony of Comenina on the edge of the Foundling Worlds dies in a single night.
410.M41
Rogue Trader Parsimus Dewain founds 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.’ It is believed that
some of his followers who question the sanity of such an order are put to death, sealed alive within the walls of the rapidly expanding void settlement.
422.M41
Waaagh! Gulgrog erupts from the depth of the Expanse and smashes through the Maw, laying siege to Port Wander with a fleet composed of hundreds of kill kroozers and crude roks. Many Rogue Traders simply stay out of the massive fleet’s way rather than be crushed by its vast numbers, while others demand exorbitant fees for coming to Port Wander’s aid. The siege is finally lifted with a massive counterattack by Battlefleet Calixis and the Adeptus Mechanicus.
443.M41
Balastus Irem and all his family are put to death by a cell of Inquisitors of the Ordos Xenos Calixis. The use of shapechanging murder teams by the Holy Ordos and the horde of xenos artefacts possessed by the rogue trader become the stuff of whispered tales between explorers and voidfarers, and former allies and servants of the Irem house quickly find sanctuary and new identities in the services of certain other unscrupulous Rogue Traders.
444.M41
The First War for Armageddon
498.M41
Parsimus Dewain dies in his bed of natural causes, truly a remarkable feat given the quantity and quality of his enemies. Footfall immediately becomes submerged in a struggle for political and economic control of what has become a wealthy waystation and island of relative stability for explorers passing into the Expanse.
499-503.M41
Vessels exploring the fringes of the Hecaton Rifts report sightings and indeed attacks by Void Kraken in alarming numbers.
499-500.M41
The Reign of Blades: Footfall comes under the brutal tyranny of Tarn Marvolus; a recidivist who had fled the Calixis Sector. Marvolus rose to be the Liege of Footfall through a campaign of assassination and the use of dark sorcery. Any who questioned the word of the soft-spoken Marvolus was later found sliced into quarters—one in each of the four most distant points of Footfall. This Reign of Blades lasts for over a year, owing mostly to the indifference of passing Rogue Traders, who little care who rules Footfall as long as it serves their needs, and the brutal alliance of criminals, witches and narco-tribesmen that Marvolus commanded. The Reign of Blades is finally ended when Marvolous, grown too bold and arrogant, demands that Rogue Trader Cassilus pay him personal tribute for docking. Cassilus replied that she would “pay a tribute of the kind she only paid to the greatest kings of untamed worlds”: The four quarters of Marvolous’s body were later found in the four farthest points of Footfall.
517.M41
Two Adeptus Astartes strike cruisers and several escort ships of unknown chapter and origin and sporting no heraldry appear over Footfall demanding tribute in supplies and information on pain of planetary assault if their demands are not met. The Liege promptly and wisely acquiesces to their requests and the Space Marines depart again to an unknown destination.
520.M41
The Rogue Traders Aton Marner and Cassius Sult clash over the exploitation of a mineral-rich asteroid belt near Falcon’s Fall Gamma, it what becomes widely known as the Battle of Embers, sparking a blood feud between them that carries on to this day.
528.M41
An Explorator sub-fleet under Magos Solus Kanceme enters the Koronus Expanse and scatters far and wide, spurning xenos worlds in search of pre-Imperial artefacts sacred to the Omnissiah. Little is known of Kanceme’s final fate, but his fleet’s arrival marks the first major mission of the Mechanicus sub-cult the Disciples of Thule into the area.
540.M41
Travelling from the far reaches of Winterscale’s Realm, Rogue Trader Elbor Winterscale reports being stalked by a ‘ghostly xenos ship with tattered sails.’ Though unknown to Elbor and his crew, it is believed this is first recorded appearance of the phantom ship Whisper of Anaris.
577.M41
The feud between Marner and Sult worsens when Aton Marner is killed on the deck of his ship in battle, following a daring ambush by a warship under Hyperia Sult’s command. This sparks a crisis of succession in the Marner line, which is ultimately resolved when the Marner Warrant passes to his granddaughter Cara on distant Fenksworld, who is acclaimed Rogue Trader
never having set foot aboard ship before.
633.M41
Master Gartrafal, an astropath noted for his abilities as a prognostic, famously dies in Footfall in a fit of screaming madness, babbling of “dark worms beneath a green-eyed star,” the “sea of molten gold,” and other half-formed and paradoxical terrors. A heavily adulterated transcript of his last words makes the rounds as a penthrift dreadful foretelling doom for the entire Koronus Expanse, and is quickly suppressed by the authorities on Port Wander, although its distributors remain a mystery. Numerous sources have supposed the “green-eyed star” to be a reference to the blighted world of Concanid in the Unbeholden Reaches.
703.M41
Erasmus Haarlock vanishes after systematically butchering all other scions of his house in a brutal purge following a succession war between the Haarlock heirs. Ranging from the Calixis sector to dread Mandragora and beyond, Haarlock’s purge also touches the Koronus Expanse, where he hunts down three of his kinfolk and destroys two other Rogue Traders who dare stand in his way.
713.M41
A previously unseen space hulk, designated Midnight’s Lair, is sighted by Exporator ships surveying the Unbeholden Reaches.
717.M41
Ember Nostromo, Navigator and refugee from the brutal Haarlock purges, betrays her new master, the outlaw captain Buros Han, and takes command of his vessel, a pre-Angevin Crusade relic named the Monarch of Whispers. Turning pirate and gathering to herself a coterie of warp-witches and killers from the hated Saynay Clan, the Monarch becomes one of the most
hated and hunted ships in the Expanse, a prize bounty of enormous price placed on her head by the Navis Nobilite for her treacherous perfidy.
The Lost Paradise
In 711.M41, tales begin to circulate, in both Footfall and Port Wander, that deep within Winterscale’s Realm lies a clutch of beautiful worlds hidden for millennia. These worlds are
said to all orbit a single bright star and each is said to be an untouched paradise of lush vegetation where the air is sweet and great grazing creatures roam in contented docility.
Some tales insist that the water itself is blessed and can rinse away any disease and gems the size of a child’s fist wash down from the rocks of snow-capped mountains. All tales agree that no one has ever found these wondrous worlds and returned.
Of course, none explain how anything can be known of a place from which
no one returns! This proves the danger of trusting in Rogue Traders.
718.M41
Roodmar Urussalin is reported slain by Orks by the survivors of his fleet’s expedition beyond the Cauldron, but reports of his fleet’s passage stir up Rogue Traders, who flock to the area to do battle with the growing greenskin menace.
741.M41
The Disciples of Thule discover data-vaults from a space hulk drifting through the void above the feral world of Dolorium. The Dolorium Vaults reveal details of the unexplored expanse that begin a rush of voyages into its far reaches. Many explorers disappear and much of the data proves inaccurate, or to have been rendered so by the passage of time. Whispers circulate that the Disciples of Thule have deliberately corrupted the information. Some go so far as to assert that they have kept some fragments secret from those outside their order.
742.M41
The Damocles Gulf Crusade
742.M41
The Battle of Agusia: In one of the largest naval battles of recent times in the Koronus Expanse, a combined fleet composed of ships from a more than a dozen Rogue Trader houses including Winterscale, Sult, Helfire, Lo Pan, Lockhart and Marner give battle to the archeo-pirates and renegades of the Amerat Union and their vile allies, the Cabal of the Bloody Libation. The vile pirates are betrayed by one of their own and ambushed in the star system of the cemetery world of Agusia where the Union’s heretek Jagerdamen hoped to uncover an artefact of unholy power. Losses are heavy on both sides after a fifteen hour space battle, and reports of a black-iron coloured vessel sporting the Aquairre livery assisting the Rogue Trader fleet during the worst fighting are later dismissed by all the surviving captains as “mere fantasy.” The Amerat are wiped out during the battle and their station-sized mothership breaks up while attempting to flee into the warp, while their Eldar corsair allies are likewise badly mauled in the engagement and scatter into the void.
745.M41
The First Tyrannic War Begins
746.M41
Following a vision by one of his numerous flock of zealots and holy mystics, Wrath Umboldt discovers the Processional of the Damned. From this moment on the pious man believes himself to have passed beyond the grace of the Emperor.
747.M41
A small but powerful force of Sollexian Adeptus Mechanicus Explorators from Haddrack in the Calixis Sector, having splintered from their fellows on doctrinal grounds, and led by Archmagos Ravana, enter the Koronus Expanse. They quickly prove their willingness to fire on and do battle with Rogue Traders and clash with other Explorators under the direction of Magos Kanceme and anybody else who would stand between them and their goals, but remain uncensored by Cult Mechanicus overlords. This earns them the mocking nickname “Ravana’s Bloody-Handed Cogs” for the crimson and gold Opus Machina graven on the hulls of their vessels, placing them in the popular imagination of the Koronus void-born as little more than sanctioned pirates, a reputation which has lasted to the present.
747.M41
Hiram Sult rediscovers the lost colony of Sunerisle unexpectedly on the edge of the Accursed Demesne, finding the settlement rife with the taint of the Genestealer. Sult barely gets off world with his life, though many of his crew are not so lucky. Sult bombards the colony settlements from orbit with every plasma warhead in his arsenal, just to be sure.
750.M41-present
The Time of Ending Begins
751.M41
The merchantman Malfian Princess arrives at Footfall three months overdue and with every soul aboard, some ten thousand crew and passengers, dead —nothing left of them but dust and brittle bones aged as if millennia had passed and her reactors nearly cold. The word ‘ragwitch’ scraped in the dust of the arm of the captain’s chair remains the only clue as to what fate befell the vessel.
754-761.M41
The Harvest of Reavers: Aspyce Chorda begins her campaign against the Chaos pirates of Iniquity. At first all those captured by her are crudely lobotomized and sent as slave-serfs to Chorda’s various domains. After a series of massacres and the corruption of a number of her holdings the practice is discontinued in favour of immolation. Chorda’s campaign ends
when debts and oaths to House Krin draw her back to Footfall to protect their interests.
755.M41
The Launching of the Sabb at Worlds Crusade
785.M41
The Claimant Wars: A short, destructive conflict erupts between the forces of Calligos Winterscale and Aspyce Chorda on Lucin’s Breath. The matter is unexpectedly settled with the signing of the Nephium Compact that divides Lucin’s Breath between Winterscale and Chorda interests.
789.M41
The Stryxis, covetous and untrustworthy xenos traders, already known as rarely-encountered wanderers in the Koronus Expanse, establish a permanent (if shifting) presence in the asteroid belts and lifeless systemson the trailing edge of the storm anomaly called the God-Emperor’s Scourge. Known among renegades as the ‘rust palace’ the Stryxis that trade there will strike any kind of deal and deal in anything, and only Eldar are unwelcome on pain of death.
789.M41
The space hulk Midnight’s Lair is sighted in battle with Ork raiders near the ‘Undred, ‘Undred Teef by the blockade runner White Sabre. The Orks appear to be faring worse in the engagement.
794.M41
The barbed vessels of the Chaos renegade Karrad Vall emerge from the Maw and bombard Footfall. The renegades are finally driven off by the fleet of Calligos Winterscale, but not before their boarding parties and surface raiders capture hundreds of souls. Their fate is to 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, said to have last plagued the Imperium a millennia before.
795.M41
A congregation of the Astral Knives comes to Footfall in the wake of their persecution by the Inquisition in the Calixis Sector. As well as serving at times as killers for hire, the Astral Knives’ see themselves as true servants of the God Emperor whose creed is to ritually assassinate those whom omens and the tarot indicate to be corrupt, so as to preserve the God-Emperor’s protection on those who must brave the warp. Since its coming to Footfall the cult has quietly flourished, and has gained a shadowy reputation as a faction both dangerous and powerful.
796.M41
The grand cruiser Gaunt Triumph is found drifting around a nameless world in the Unbeholden Reaches. The few survivors onboard the wreck speak of a vast and pale structure drifting through the void like the carcass of a creature picked clean by eyeless things in the depths of lightless water. They whimper of the glow of the thing’s deathly light and the voices of the dead wailing in your mind like the scratching of talons on the inside of a coffin lid. Some claim to have set foot within the thing, and tell of “echoes that sing” and “silver trees that weep blood.”
800.M41
A flotilla of Explorator vessels charting the Accursed Demesne are set upon by the dreaded Ork Kaptin Morgaash Kulgraz and his vessel, Da Wurldbreaka. Though much of the ships are destroyed, an unlucky few are scattered amongst the Demense to be hunted by ork Freebooterz.
803.M41
Covert forces of Ordo Xenos operating in the Koronus Expanse reveal themselves in force and burn Amphian Deed and his coterie for his role in the Halo of Darkness cult. Afterward rumours persist that scions of Deed yet remain unfound, and many who previously believed themselves to have been beyond the Imperium’s reach sleep less soundly than before. Much of Deed’s vast fortune in precious crystals and xeno-tech is thought to have been hidden somewhere in a secret cache near the Unbeholden Reaches, sparking a perilous scavenger hunt in the dangerous stars of the area by many lesser Rogue Traders willing to venture their luck.
805.M41
Rumours begin to circulate that the warp-worshiper Karrad Vall has founded a world somewhere Spinward of the Cauldron devoted to the dark powers he serves, and that he is willing to pay in savage arms and occult lore for any that will bring him a bounty in human lives to build his new kingdom of slaughter. Many pious Rogue Traders swear to discover this nameless
world and burn it to cinders, while Vall becomes the chosen target of sermons by preachers throughout the Expanse.
808.M41
Tanthus Moross succeeds to the throne of the Liege of Footfall by right of murder, and quickly proves a highly effective and diligently ruthless leader to wide public acclaim.
808.M41
Justinian Krin, leader of a powerful merchant’s factor operating out of Port Wander and a man with many enemies, is brutally and publicly slain by what onlookers describe as a “shining phantom” while attending a grand feast, his body swiftly dissolving to toxic slime after the attack. The Krin offer a standing reward of a great sum in thrones or a fully outfitted warp-capable frigate to the party who can prove beyond shadow of a doubt who is responsible for the attack.
811.M41
The Reef Stars Crusade
811.M41
The merchant brig Daughter of Regals and her escorts are lost with all hands to the xenos known as the Rak’Gol Marauders running between Port Wander and Lucien’s Breath. The alien race, known only in scattered reports over the previous decade, are seen by some as a growing threat to human domination of the Expanse. This attack, the latest in a string of escalating incidents, prompts large bounties to be posted on their vessels and knowledge of their origin by the rulers of Lucin’s Breath, fronting a cabal of other ‘interested parties’ who would see the species exterminated from the stars.
813.M41
The Strangling: The Great Warp Storms swell and the Maw snaps shut for the first time in centuries. No ships can pass into the Expanse from the Calixis Sector and Footfall in particular finds itself starved of the wealth and vital supplies that come with the ships of passing explorers. Hardship and starvation grip Footfall more strongly with every passing
day. Those that are able flee the slowly dying settlement and those that remain turn on one another in bloody civil war, and many old alliances are shattered and new vendettas birthed. Footfall is saved by a sudden easing of the Warp Storms near the turning of the year that allow craft to pass through the Maw once more, but the world’s population has been reduced by a full quarter in the intervening time.
815.M41
Relza Calzus claims to have sighted the Rift Hydra in the void of the Rune system. Few believe his claims, and instead remark that the Beggar Captain has so never so much as ventured beyond the void around Footfall.
816.M41
The space hulk Midnight’s Lair is sighted in the vicinity of the Heathen Stars. Several vessels also soon disappear in the area, and astropathic communication near the Heathen Stars becomes almost impossible.
816.M41
Current date line and the events of Forsaken Bounty, Dark Frontier, Into the Maw, etc.
++Sent via Astropathic Choir off the Dolorous Clouds, 040.816.M41++
Having recently obtained a copy of your writings, I was quite displeased to see you have left out many of my exploits, and consigned the glorious deeds of my ancestors to a mere footnote in your records.
I pray, for your sakes, that these mistakes will be corrected before the Emperor’s Vow arrives at Footfall and I make my displeasure known in person.
By my own hand this day,
Calligos Winterscale
Lead Developer
Sam Stewart
With Additional Development By
Ross Watson
Epoch Koronus Written by
John French and Alan Bligh
Editing
Alex Davy
Graphic Design
Kevin Childress
Cover Art
Imaginary Friends Studio
Art Direction
Zoe Robinson
Production Manager
Gabe Laulunen
Publisher
Christian T. Petersen
Games Workshop
Licensing Manager
Owen Rees
Licensing & Acquired Rights Manager
Erik Mogensen
Intellectual Property Manager
Alan Merrett
Head of Legal & Licensing
Andy Jones
FANTASY FLIGHT GAMES
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Copyright © Game Workshop Limited 2009. Games Workshop, Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer 40,000 Role Play, Rogue Trader, the foregoing marks’ respective logos, Rogue Trader, and all associated marks, logos, places, names, creatures, races and race insignia/devices/logos/symbols, vehicles, locations, weapons, units and unit insignia, characters, products and illustrations from the Warhammer 40,000 universe and the Rogue Trader game setting are either ®, ™, and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2000–2009, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. This edition published under license to Fantasy Flight Publishing Inc. All rights reserved to their respective owners. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Product Code: RTP4
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