Gangue is one of hundreds of systems visited, catalogued and passed over by explorers of Skylar's Lie.
Since Skylar himself, it has remained mostly unexplored or unexploited, mostly due to little immediate interest: sun-blasted worlds to its frozen reaches, only a smattering of looted ruins and planets ill-suited to colonisation.
It is also the prophetic resting place of the fabled treasure ship, The Rightful Remit.
Flickering Eye[]
A stuttering pulsar, bathing the system in hard radiation from its death throes.
Gangue Minor[]
A sun-scorched world closest to the star and scoured clean of life by its fiery breath.
A small burnt cinder of a world washed in hard radiation and scorching solar winds. From space it looks like nothing more than a cracked crimson orb, crisscrossed with glowing fissures and smoking chasms. So close to the star, life couldn’t survive on its surface.
A cursory examination from orbit revealed little beyond kilometres of blasted landscape and intermittent ion storms. The sensors of the Unbroken Resolve were damaged from the radiation, and the planet was considered not worth landing on.
Gangue Prime[]
A desolate wasteland with a dirty grey surface choked by clouds and dust. From orbit, a vast maze-like ruin covering many parts of the surface was detected, but little else.
Atmosphere is thin, you can survive unprotected for at least a few hours, although the caustic air will make breathing uncomfortable.
The centre of the hive was home to a colony of Feral Orks.
The alien hive[]
The hive spans much of the northern landmass, rising up above the great dust sea, with an ominous black monolith at the centre like a precious jewel. It was impossible to bring a craft within more than a few km of the mirror due to violent ionic and magnetic storm around it.
The hive is eerily empty - a collection of labyrinthine trenches and open pits surrounding the mirror like the carvings of a giant madman. They glisten with rainbow light as though oily, even as they crack and crumble with age.
The passageways are cramped for humans, and the hive mazes are empty, as though the xenos and their works simply vanished overnight. The only sound is the moaning of the wind as it blows through enclosed maze-spaces and across desert outcrops.
The monolith[]
An unsettling alien construction - smooth, black and cool to the touch. Inside is like standing in the centre of a sea of light, and you are unable to tell where the floor, roof or walls begin and end. Most disconcerting is the air seems alive with images spinning and dancing around your heads.
Read the information required spending time focusing on the swirling images to make any sense of them, the images merging and spinning until you are engulfed by an ocean of stars and planets.
With a little effort you can move events forward and backward in time, watching the dying star slowly flare back to life and the worlds once more teem with activity. It was here the Orthesian Dynasty discovered the arrival (and therefore location) of the Rightful Remit.
Gangue Secundus[]
A frozen jungle world with a thick, frigid atmosphere hostile to human life.
From orbit it appears as a cold, cloudy eye blinded by streams of thick vapour and moulting icy spores into space. The augers of the Unbroken Resolve read these spores as dangerous to human biology, and the Explorers decided there was nothing of value to be gained from the planet.
Shard Halo[]
Scattered across billions of km of space, the Shard Halo is Gangue’s glittering crown, a seemingly endless stretch of frozen rock and scattered vapour clouds.
The Rightful Remit[]
The twisted, broken wreck of the fabled treasure ship rests in the Shard Halo, trapped in an asteroid of ice. The ship was not alone - dozens of other craft seem to have been drawn here, creating an icy ship graveyard.
Once an impressive vessel, it has now fallen to ruin; its hull is stripped of ornamentation and its length is riddled with holes and scars.
The lower decks were a mess of twisted corridors and ruptured bulkheads. It is dark, oppressive and utterly silent.
Ship has little in the way of anything, no gun batteries, limited life support and no crew quarters. The core of the ship, where the bulk of the treasure lies, was locked away behind massive energy seals.
The Orthesian Dynasty battled with armsmen of the Fel Dynasty, lead by Lady Ash, on the bridge of the Rightful Remit for ownership of the treasure. After a tense battle, the Fel armsmen pulled back, leaving the spoils to Lord-captain Orthesian and his crew.
Treasures recovered from the Rightful Remit[]
Among the riches of the ship, a few priceless artifacts were recovered. The traits were generated using the Treasure Generator from the Rogue Trader supplement "Stars of Inequity" and fleshed out a bit, given unique purpose within the Nomad Stars.
Archeotech Lunde-pattern plasma drive[]
(Ship component, plasma drive, ancient miracle, imposing, good quality, unpredictable, trusty)
Wrested from the broken remains of the Rightful Remit, the Lunde-pattern drive is an ancient and overwhelming testament to ages long past. In the late 31st Millennium, Plasmasmith Elicio Lunde was at the height of his craft, dedicating his many centuries of service to the production of high-end plasma drives for escort ships.
His plasma drives burned with an intensity far greater than normal for their size, modulating their plasma wash into a variety of vibrant hues of visible and invisible light. Exhaust conduits spaced evenly across the outer hull reduce internal space, and can be harmonised to vent in impressive warning displays.
- This is a Good Quality plasma drive (same as is currently fitted) but takes up -1 Space
- It provides a +10 to Command and Intimidate checks made on board the ship
- Once per game, it can provide a +10 bonus to anything involving it
- When it passes, it gains an extra Degree of Success. When it fails, it gains two extra Degrees of Failure
Any attempts to repair it must pass a Forbidden Lore (Archeotech) test first
Demiurg carapace armour[]
(armour, carapace chestplate, alien techn, remnant of the endless, poor quality, dogged)
The Demiurg are a race of short, semi-humanoid traders and miners who maintain cordial relations with several xeno cultures. They are known to avoid Imperial space, making them a very uncommon sight, but the increased sightings of Demiurg artifacts in the Nomad Stars might signal a resurgence.
They have a high level of ionic-based technology, which it is understood they gifted to the Tau Empire - their close allies. Their name means ‘artisan’ in ancient Terran, and despite this armour being clearly designed for a shorter and broader torso, does not stop it from being exceptionally effective.
- 6 Armour to the body, 7 kg
- Wearer suffers -10 to all Agility tests
- Whenever the wearer is hit with a Melee attack, the attacker must pass an Agility test or suffer 1d5+2 E damage with the Shocking trait
- One way or another, it always seems to find its way back into its owners hands
- Any attempts to repair it must pass a Forbidden Lore (Xenos) test first
Nomad-pattern Razorchain[]
(Melee weapon, razorchain, ancient miracle, indestructible, vanishing, zealous)
A lightweight sword composed of a number of interlocking blades joined by a cable. At a moment’s notice, these blades can be separated, turning a sword into a many-bladed lash. In the hands of a skilled wielder, these are almost impossible to parry and can be woven past almost any defence.
Despite bearing irrefutable evidence of human construction, the Nomad-pattern Razorchain bears a striking resemblance to a choice weapon of Dark Eldar reavers. These similarities are hand-waved either as coincidence or adoption of superior human technology by feeble xenos minds. This particular model is wrought from a strange metal alloy that never seems to lose its edge and seems impossible to mark or cut with any device.
- Melee, 5m range, 1d5+4 R damage, 4 Penetration, Balanced (+10 to parry with), Flexible (cannot be parried), 2kg
- Cannot be destroyed by natural means
- It gains a +10 to Concealment checks to hide it about your person
- You can never have a bonus greater than +30 or a penalty worse than -30 to use this weapon
[]
(gear, navis primer, ancient miracle, compact, unpredictable, dogged, house rule: +10 to Nav Stellar)
Navis Prima are perhaps some of the most valuable items an Explorer can possess, as they outline safe routes through the warp, or at least as safe as warp travel can get.
This is a rare example of an already extraordinary artifact - created by the Magisterial Navigator House of Kornallis, who have been around since the dawn of the Imperium of Man, and are said to have stood at the sides of those brave explorers who first ventured into the Nomad Stars. This small, unassuming leather book, marked only with a humble embossing of a stylised House Kornelius crest, can slip inside a pocket or kept out of sight.
When opened, an interactive holo-display is projected in front of the reader, affording them complex - if cryptic - knowledge of likely warp routes and stellar phenomena in the Nomad Stars.
- It provides a +10 to all Navigate (Stellar) tests
- Search tests to find this item on your person are at -30
- During Step 1: Determine Duration of Passage in warp travel, you may re-roll the Route Stability before calculating.
- If using the Navis Prima for Navigate (Stellar) tests, or to re-roll a Route Stability during warp travel, increase any Degrees of Success by 1, but increase any Degrees of Failure by 2.
- One way or another, it always seems to find its way back into its owners hands
Any attempts to repair it must pass a Forbidden Lore (Archeotech) test first
The Widower[]
(Melee weapon, chain axe, cursed, deceitful, resplendent)
This chain axe is wrought of a dark iron, that despite bearing the hallmarks of human construction, still inspires a sense of dread when looked upon. Preliminary tests suggest that the iron used in construction been extracted from human haemoglobin, and that when the teeth of the weapon are in motion, look like the dark rays of a foreboding black sun.
Curiouser still is a hidden compartment in the axe head, that when activated from a rune on the hilt, fires a high-calibre shell straight and true at an unsuspecting target. These rounds are no different from common hand cannon ammunition, but something inside the weapon synthesizes a powerful venom to coat the ammunition before firing - something that is probably worth not looking too much into.
- Melee, 1d10+2 R damage, 2 Penetration, Tearing
- It can make a ranged attack as if it were a pistol - 30m range, S/-/-, 1d10+4 I damage, 4 Penetration, Clip 1, Full reload, Toxic
- It provides a +5 to all Charm and Intimidate checks, but Search tests to find this item are at +30
Reclamation Crusade Sallett helm[]
(Armour, reinforced helm, finely wrought, best craftsmanship, potent, dogged)
Despite it’s archaic, clunky appearance, this ancient helm is light as incredibly light and wearing it is like donning a second skin. It is finely etched with murals of the Troubadous Reclamation in the 32nd Century, when the Saint-Admiral Troubadous (a prominent disciple of Saint Drusus) swept through the southern stars of the sector, bringing primitive human tribes to heel and re-forging the Imperium under a single banner. After seeing the Onus region begin to swell with settlers and piety, he cast his gaze southwards to the Nomad Stars, a time before the Great Warp Storms sealed off the throat.
Saint Troubadous went missing somewhere in the Nomad Stars, and thousands of official funerals were held in his honour, but not before carving a bloody path through heretic and xenos, seeding countless worlds with humans and the Imperial Creed. The capriciousness of the warp caught up with his ambition, however, and the passage through the Great Warp Storms (now known as the Throat) sealed up, and did not re-open for another 8 millennia.
Mankind is left to only speculate what happened to the Saint-Admiral, his final crusade, or the worlds he left behind...
- 8 Head armour, 4.5kg
- One way or another, it always seems to find its way back into its owners hands