1d20 Sources of a Rogue Trader's Wealth
Work continues apace on Skulls Without Number, but in the meantime, I wanted to have some fun.
Rogue Trader houses are noble houses, and like noble houses, they are not made of individuals who work for salaries. They hold wealth in land, in capital, in bodies. They count not coins, but promises, assets, and privileges.
While most of a Rogue Trader's wealth will be mundane feudal holdings and boring stock portfolios, the nature of the 41st Millennium means that the source of a Rogue Trader's wealth can get strange. Below are 1d20 sources of a Rogue Trader's wealth, and complications which can threaten that wealth.
| 1d20 | Source | Complication |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The potash harvest from the ever-burning fire forests of Moebona's Hope. | The fires have ceased to burn in many areas, a welcome event for the sickly inhabitants but a looming economic disaster. |
| 2 | A fifteen percent stake in LOAM, the industrial concern which extracts spice from the planet Salusa. | The planet has been interdicted by the Inquisition. Rumors swirl of an alpha-level psyker and a "worm cult" controlling the spice. Nothing is getting on or off the planet. |
| 3 | The meager ten-Throne rent payment of the forty million inhabitants of the Grey Rookery slum in Hive Constadon. | Massive riots have broken out through the slums; needless to say rent collection is impossible for the foreseeable future. |
| 4 | One-tenth the starship output of the shipyards of Hypnran XIII, paid in cash or in kind. Either payment must be collected from the shipyard. | They've decided to pay in kind. What the hell are you going to do with the incomplete front tenth of a random starship? |
| 5 | Kindly payments from a smuggling ring for the use of certain family properties, where they store contraband, valuables, and the occasional dead body. | A witness squealed and now your family name is on an Arbitrator's list. |
| 6 | A continuing grant from the Ecclesiarchy for "the foundation of a Schola dedicated to furthering the learning of the mass in the Imperial Creed, and the ministering of faith to those in the voidships." It is even occasionally used for this purpose. | A Superior of the Sisters of St. Lovelace Numerate, an Adeptus Sororitas convent dedicated to monitoring Ecclesiarchal finances, has discovered that no grant reports have been made for a half-century and are sending a power armored bolter-wielding audit team. |
| 7 | Royalties from a lesser noble house incorporating your crest into their crest. | The noble house has been accused by the Arbites of High Sedition, by the Ecclesiarchy of Heresy Major, by the Adeptus Terra of Tithe Evasion, and by the local enforcers for violating sumptuary laws. It's probably all bullshit that will go away when the bribes are paid, but in the meantime your crest is in the pict-records. |
| 8 | A Governor's Patent on the use of starboard side impulse engines in the Dhenid system. Chartist and Free Captains must pay you licensing fees to use their full thruster complement. | Local techpriests have finally figured out a structural loophole, so all thrusters can be legally consider port-side and royalty-free. |
| 9 | A special, centuries-old "temporary" exemption from the burdensome window tax on Khuripit Diablo. | Empty coffers from financing interplanetary wars against a neighbor have forced the Governor to lift the exemption, and request back taxes now. |
| 10 | The proceeds of the duskapple harvest on the agri-world of Tolkhothrak, except for the portion given as tithes or distilled into the bitter parochial drink duskcider. | Duskcider has become the most fashionable and popular drink of the nobility of the Calaxis Sector, and Tolkhothrak can't keep up. Nary an uncrushed duskapple remains. |
| 11 | An ancient heritable sinecure granted to an ancestor by the Administratum. | The sinecure is held up during an extraordinary financial review by the Quaestor Superior Maximus. |
| 12 | A recurring payment for provision of prophylactic rubbers to the 86th Khyman Grenadiers. By some miraculous accident, the last shipment was actually made a decade ago, but the payment has continued despite the lack of actual supply. It's now pure profit, instead of the albatross it was. | The 86th Khyman Grenadiers is facing a baby boom, and the generals of the Spinward Front want to know why. |
| 13 | An ongoing bounty paid by the Cult Mechanicus for a STC blueprint discovered by your house: a three-person couch upholstered with corpse-hair fabric and framed with steel. This will no doubt lead to great comfort for all mankind. | A Magos has claimed, based on her reading of ancient cogitation banks, that the STC blueprint is a fake, and worse, might bear the taint of heresy. |
| 14 | Half the profits from Uncle Jehosephat's Most Honorable Company of the Traveling Amusement Show, a large troupe of entertainment servitors and jonglers run by your third cousin twice removed Jehosephat, who decided to forgo the path of the Rogue Trader. They travel through the Calixis Sector performing mystery plays and merry japes. | Ill-considered jokes were considered to be political satire by the short-tempered Governor Heleanyan Splintergorn of Viremona. Now Jehosephat and his servitors rot in the planetary prison, and it will take quite a large bribe or favor to free him. |
| 15 | Perfectly plucked plum peacock plumage, precisely packaged on Premaria III. | Perilous procreation produces preposterously pitiful pallid puce plumage. Possibly putrescene? |
| 16 | Rent payment by an Inquisitor for the use of several properties for "undisclosed purposes", and a further payment for "services rendered." | The rent has stopped coming. Surely this is something that can be resolved with a simple face-to-face meeting. |
| 17 | Fifty percent share of the Flavorium of Reznengicus, the primary manufactorum for adding flavor to premium corpse-starch rations and nutri-slurry. Over sixty different flavors, sold on over a thousand planets! | Cardinal Thane Mendastrof of Luggnast has declared that the Imperial Creed forbids any flavor of food beyond "mushpea", and has declared a crusade against "gluttonous salters", "recidivist sweeteners", and of course, the arch-heretics of the Flavorium. |
| 18 | Profit-sharing arrangement with the owners of the Fraternal Order of the Beige Monolith, a firm of accountants and clerks on the office-world of St. Jose. The firm performs contract paperwork and accounting for various merchant houses, industrial concerns, and even the Administratum. | The Beige Monolith has been raided by the pirates of the Crimson Accountancy, the most fearsome clerical buccaneers on all of St. Jose. |
| 19 | Twenty-five percent of the profits of the asteroid prison Boechei's Rock. The Administratum has rated the prison "High Security" and pays its "high security" rate for each prisoner, but the isolated location in deep space means that an inescapable prison can be run with a low-security skeleton crew, and the difference is pure profit. After all, no one can escape Boechei's Rock. | All the prisoners have escaped Boechei's Rock. The Quaestor Superior and Senior Arbitrator want to know why. |
| 20 | Ownership stake in a hive manufactory that uses a combination of lead and naptha-resin to make vast toy armies of the Emperor's Most Holy Space Marines, and on very rare occassions other Imperial servants or even enemies of the Imperium to fight. They are very popular with children, festering nobility of collapsing houses, and the lobotomized. | The introduction of certain female Imperial servants into the product line has created a great rancor among children, festering nobles, and the lobotomized. Sales have dropped precipitously. |