ChiefA tired-looking woman of indeterminate age, clad in work clothes, breaks off from her task to greet you. She freezes momentarily, clearly unsure how to address you, then says simply, "Your Lordship/Ladyship, please excuse me, I don't really know your name. Welcome to our little colony. May the light of the Emperor be with you — and with us. My name's Reta Machsimova, I'm in charge here."
YOU"Would you believe it — well-spoken rabble! It is rather sweet in its own way. Go on, then, amuse me. Tell me about yourself and this place."
Chief"We just call ourselves Reta's Crew and this place is Reta's Camp, that's it. We're recolligers. Scavengers, in common terms." She does not speak the word "scavengers" with any kind of disdain — on the contrary, there is dignity in her voice, the kind with which one would announce their affiliation with a respected guild or family.
YOU"What do you do here?"
Chief"Right now we're gutting this old heap of junk, slowly but surely. That's a recolliger's life for you — they drop us off at some decrepit station or an ancient battlefield, and we just sit there for years on end. We look for working tech, or valuable materials, or whatever else might be useful. If we find anything, we sell it to passing ships. Not the easiest job out there — these wrecks are chock-full of all kinds of dangers. But, and I swear it on my plasma torch, it's an exciting one for sure."
Chief"This little bird's got all kinds of bells and whistles. Most of the tech is dead, but we do find working pieces now and again. We spent two whole months clearing out this shaft we found — finished just three days ago, actually — and we found this thing, a bit weird-looking but still functional." Reta's expression brightens a little. "Perhaps Your Lordship/Ladyship would like to buy this component from us? I'll bet that big ship you've got could get plenty of use out of it..."
YOU"I will buy the component."
Chief"Well, isn't this something! The Emperor Himself must've smiled upon us!" Reta makes a triumphant gesture. "I mean, uh, thank you, Your Lordship/Ladyship. You'll be pleased with the results."
ChiefHer mood visibly improves. "You know, Your Lordship/Ladyship, it's kind of embarrassing to offer you this, but over in that corner there, we keep things we don't rightly understand or can't really use. You could send some of your people to check it out if you'd like... clearly you know more about this stuff than us. You might find something useful."
YOU"What do you do here?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"It's unlikely, but I want to ask — you haven't come across any Imperial stamps in your 'searching,' have you?"
ChiefReta shrugs. "We definitely haven't found any stamps here, Your Lordship/Ladyship. I keep a record of all the bits and bobs. Then again... Hang on, Your Lordship/Ladyship. I just remembered something..."
Chief"Here you go, Your Lordship/Ladyship." Reta holds out a weighty seal. There are scratches on the handle where a coat of arms should be. "I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but we got this thing in a trade with some shady bloke years back. My father thought it was something important, so it's just been gathering dust until today. Take it as a gift — we have no use for it anyway."
YOU"What do you do here?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"It's unlikely, but I want to ask — you haven't come across any Imperial stamps in your 'searching,' have you?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You've got your own ship?"
Chief"No, not even close. A luxury like that? You could count the recolligers who got their own ship on one hand — an old worker's hand that got sucked into machinery three times and slashed by a plasma cutter twice."
Chief"We fly with whoever, mostly just taking our chances. Sometimes we hitch a ride on the promise that we'll pay with what we find later, other times we find some other means... Risky business, obviously. Five or so years back, a crew got dropped off at an abandoned station, but something wasn't right with the life support systems. The ship came back to pick them up two years later, and found nothing but bodies."
Chief"And about fifteen years ago, back before I had my first little one, a ship took three crews to locations and ran into pirates on the way back. The ships go out on expeditions for years at a time, so it was ages before anyone realised they were missing, and it was even longer before they remembered the scavengers, plus it took some time to find a ship that could check on them and pick them up. Long story short... all three crews had bought it. Yep."
YOU"What do you do here?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"It's unlikely, but I want to ask — you haven't come across any Imperial stamps in your 'searching,' have you?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You've got your own ship?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Can you tell me anything about this wreck?"
Chief"Not much, we're no eggheads, you know — we're manual labour. It's an ancient thing, pretty dangerous, and we don't really know much beyond that. Before we came here, some Tech-Priests had done their own bit of gutting... I mean ritualling, bowing to the spirits, all that. That lot don't tend to leave a whole lot of valuables behind, it's true, but it's way too scary to go in before them. And hey, we dragged a dozen of their broken servitors out of the mines after. The carcasses smell awful, but you can pluck a decent number of parts out of a servitor and sell them."
Chief"Doesn't seem like there's anything nasty living inside the wreck now, but the wreck itself is barely holding together. You go a couple of modules from here — and that's it, you won't take another step without fearing that a broken reactor might cook you alive, or a whole module might depressurise. Well, it's nothing we haven't handled before, so we're having a poke at it. But we don't have a clue what this ship is or who it belonged to."
YOU"What do you do here?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"It's unlikely, but I want to ask — you haven't come across any Imperial stamps in your 'searching,' have you?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You've got your own ship?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Can you tell me anything about this wreck?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You take pride in your trade, I see."
Chief"Sure do. It takes skill, and luck, and a good head on your shoulders. We risk our lives every day, crawling on top of these old buckets. If something goes wrong — we die, by the scores sometimes. One moment we're there, the next we're gone, kind of like worker ants. But you know what, Your Lordship/Ladyship? Our job also has something... how should I put it... poetic about it."
Chief"Hope you don't judge me too harshly and don't take it as insolence, but some people — even big people like you — think too highly of themselves. Let's say your ship hops into the warp someday and doesn't hop out of it in time. And around a thousand years later, another gal like myself, who needs to feed her three ankle-biters somehow, will be rifling through its remains, looking for anything good. That's just the nature of things — each of us comes and goes, but the way the world works stays the same. We all have our lot in life, and mine is just as good as any other."
YOU"Nonsense. There are those who are great and those who are nothing — that is the nature of things."
Chief"If you say so, Your Lordship/Ladyship. I'm a simple woman, living a simple life, having simple thoughts, and if I happen to blurt out some bunkum — that's just because I'm not that bright." Reta shrugs.
YOU"What do you do here?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"It's unlikely, but I want to ask — you haven't come across any Imperial stamps in your 'searching,' have you?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You've got your own ship?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Can you tell me anything about this wreck?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You take pride in your trade, I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I can take you from this place. It's not safe here, and sooner or later, it will drift somewhere so remote that nobody will ever find you again."
Chief"But this... this is our whole livelihood, Your Lordship/Ladyship! You take us from here, and what are we gonna do — sit in some hold, slaving away? Here, we've got our own colony, our own operation. No, this is our path, and we won't stray from it."
YOU"What do you do here?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"It's unlikely, but I want to ask — you haven't come across any Imperial stamps in your 'searching,' have you?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You've got your own ship?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Can you tell me anything about this wreck?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You take pride in your trade, I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I can take you from this place. It's not safe here, and sooner or later, it will drift somewhere so remote that nobody will ever find you again."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I see."
Chief"Your Lordship/Ladyship..." Reta falters, as if flustered by her own nerve. "Please don't take it as insolence, but it's not like I have much choice... It's not often that we get well-stocked ships around here, and we could certainly use more provisions and some warm clothes. If it's something you would be willing to provide, we would gladly barter for it with whatever we can dig up inside this here ship. It's just a respectful offer of fair trade." She bows slightly before stepping aside.
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Chief"It's been a pleasure to serve Your Lordship/Ladyship."
end of branch
YOU"I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You speak as if the world is set in stone and none of us can change anything for the better."
Chief"Those are some big things you're talking about, way outta my depth. Change for the better? Heck, that'd be nice..." Reta pauses to think. "If I was younger and didn't have three youngsters back home — maybe I would dream about stuff like that too. But as it is, I've got no time for dreaming — I've gotta work!"
YOU"What do you do here?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"It's unlikely, but I want to ask — you haven't come across any Imperial stamps in your 'searching,' have you?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You've got your own ship?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Can you tell me anything about this wreck?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You take pride in your trade, I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I can take you from this place. It's not safe here, and sooner or later, it will drift somewhere so remote that nobody will ever find you again."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Do not dare talk back to me. Another word about me thinking too highly of myself, and I'll leave you in no doubt about your place."
ChiefReta frowns, but nods cautiously. "As you wish, Your Lordship/Ladyship."
YOU"What do you do here?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"It's unlikely, but I want to ask — you haven't come across any Imperial stamps in your 'searching,' have you?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You've got your own ship?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Can you tell me anything about this wreck?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You take pride in your trade, I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I can take you from this place. It's not safe here, and sooner or later, it will drift somewhere so remote that nobody will ever find you again."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"There is something to your philosophy."
Chief"It's what my gramps taught me, he was a recolliger and a foreman too. He had some fancy-schmancy thoughts in that head of his, but he lived to a ripe old age with them — in our line of work — which means those thoughts weren't all bad."
YOU"What do you do here?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"It's unlikely, but I want to ask — you haven't come across any Imperial stamps in your 'searching,' have you?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You've got your own ship?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Can you tell me anything about this wreck?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You take pride in your trade, I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I can take you from this place. It's not safe here, and sooner or later, it will drift somewhere so remote that nobody will ever find you again."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"What do you do here?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"It's unlikely, but I want to ask — you haven't come across any Imperial stamps in your 'searching,' have you?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You've got your own ship?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Can you tell me anything about this wreck?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You take pride in your trade, I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I can take you from this place. It's not safe here, and sooner or later, it will drift somewhere so remote that nobody will ever find you again."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I see."continues where this line first appears above
Chief(sequence)
Yrliet"You are amusing, little mon-keigh. Your life is shorter than a moth's, and you spend it digging around in the carcass of dead, malevolent metal. But you speak of eternity and the stars. I like that. It is like seeing starlight reflected in a puddle."
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YOU"I can take you from this place. It's not safe here, and sooner or later, it will drift somewhere so remote that nobody will ever find you again."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You take pride in your trade, I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I can take you from this place. It's not safe here, and sooner or later, it will drift somewhere so remote that nobody will ever find you again."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Can you tell me anything about this wreck?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You take pride in your trade, I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I can take you from this place. It's not safe here, and sooner or later, it will drift somewhere so remote that nobody will ever find you again."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You've got your own ship?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Can you tell me anything about this wreck?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You take pride in your trade, I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I can take you from this place. It's not safe here, and sooner or later, it will drift somewhere so remote that nobody will ever find you again."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"This component doesn't belong to you. I will simply confiscate it."
ChiefReta pales a little but lifts her chin with determination. "We risked our lives to find this thing and pull it out. This is our trade, it's what feeds our families. We can't just give it away, that wouldn't be right — or fair."
YOU"I will buy the component."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"This component doesn't belong to you. I will simply confiscate it."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Think carefully now — are you sure you want to defy a Rogue Trader and all the power he/she has at his/her disposal? I need but give the order — and there won't be a single cinder left of your entire colony."
YOU[Attack] "You have the gall to oppose my will. I will not stand for it."
end of branch
YOU"I'm not interested."
Chief"A shame, that. But it's your call, Your Lordship/Ladyship."
YOU"What do you do here?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"It's unlikely, but I want to ask — you haven't come across any Imperial stamps in your 'searching,' have you?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You've got your own ship?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Can you tell me anything about this wreck?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You take pride in your trade, I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I can take you from this place. It's not safe here, and sooner or later, it will drift somewhere so remote that nobody will ever find you again."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Think carefully now — are you sure you want to defy a Rogue Trader and all the power he/she has at his/her disposal? I need but give the order — and there won't be a single cinder left of your entire colony."continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Attack] "You have the gall to oppose my will. I will not stand for it."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I'm not interested."continues where this line first appears above
Chief(sequence)
PasqalPasqal's vox crackles to life. Imperiously, he tells her, "Present the object, laywoman," but curiosity creeps into his voice nonetheless.
end of branch
Eogunn"First, present the object for inspection. It might only hold value in your eyes." Eogunn extends his hand with a sharp, commanding gesture of impatience.
end of branch
YOU"It's unlikely, but I want to ask — you haven't come across any Imperial stamps in your 'searching,' have you?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You've got your own ship?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Can you tell me anything about this wreck?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You take pride in your trade, I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I can take you from this place. It's not safe here, and sooner or later, it will drift somewhere so remote that nobody will ever find you again."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I see."continues where this line first appears above
Chief(sequence)
ChiefTossing a glance at Pasqal, she grimly adds, "And our work is all legal, even though your brethren have no liking for us."
PasqalPasqal stares dispassionately at Reta with a hint of disgust. Evidently, he has not even considered the possibility that replying to this creature's words could be anything other than heresy.
end of branch
ChiefThe woman grimly adds as she casts a glance at Eogunn, "And our work is perfectly lawful, though we are not popular among your fellows."
EogunnThe Manipulus fixes the woman with a calculating look, as though weighing whether she is a speaker worthy of his time. At last, he speaks: "I wish neither to confirm nor deny this claim."
end of branch
YOU"What is this place?"
Chief"We just call ourselves Reta's Crew and this place is Reta's Camp, that's it. We're recolligers. Scavengers, in common terms." She does not speak the word "scavengers" with any kind of disdain — on the contrary, there is dignity in her voice, the kind with which one would announce their affiliation with a respected guild or family.continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I must take my leave."
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Entry point 2 of 8
Chief"Your Lordship/Ladyship! What brings you here?"
YOU"What do you do here?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"It's unlikely, but I want to ask — you haven't come across any Imperial stamps in your 'searching,' have you?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You've got your own ship?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Can you tell me anything about this wreck?"continues where this line first appears above
YOU"You take pride in your trade, I see."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I can take you from this place. It's not safe here, and sooner or later, it will drift somewhere so remote that nobody will ever find you again."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I see."continues where this line first appears above
Entry point 3 of 8
Chief(no text)
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Entry point 4 of 8
Chief(no text)
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Entry point 5 of 8
Chief(no text)
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Chief(no text)
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Entry point 7 of 8
ChiefReta clenches her fists, her eyes narrowing slightly. Her gaze darts over your gear and weapons, as if assessing the threat. When she finally speaks, you can tell she is forcing the words out. "In that case... take it."
Chief"If that'll be all, Y'Lordship/Ladyship... you mind leaving us alone?"
end of branch
Entry point 8 of 8
ChiefIt is easy to tell by the gritted teeth and narrowed eyes what kind of battle is raging inside Reta — a battle between fear and pride. Pride wins. "No need to throw your weight around. We may be rabble, rummaging through old, rusted scrap from birth to death, but we value our labour."
YOU"I will buy the component."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"This component doesn't belong to you. I will simply confiscate it."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"Think carefully now — are you sure you want to defy a Rogue Trader and all the power he/she has at his/her disposal? I need but give the order — and there won't be a single cinder left of your entire colony."continues where this line first appears above
YOU[Attack] "You have the gall to oppose my will. I will not stand for it."continues where this line first appears above
YOU"I'm not interested."continues where this line first appears above
Chief(sequence)
Argenta"Disobeying those in power is apostasy. But depriving a poor person of the little they have is no good deed either. Forgive their insolence, [Name]! Let them keep what they have managed to scrape together."