Footfall

Rogue Trader: Drake Dynasty
GM
Adam
Dynastic Power
Character Level: 31,250 XP / Rank 8
Profit Factor: 43𝖕
Command Crew
Lord-Captain Drake Navigator Primus Mordecai Arch-Millitant Winter Astropath Solarus High Factorum August
House Drake Fleet
Aurea Albion Hound of Albion • Abhorrent Fortuitous Purpose • Penance of Iocanthos
Drake Trade Empire
Damaris • Scintilla • Kulth Svard • Dross • Aurum Sepheris Secundus • Tennenberg Killian's Rest
Drake Expeditions
Open Missions
Grand Endevours
Personnel
Magistrates • Retainers Militants Svard 1st • Stormtroopers House Drake Expeditionary Army
Assets
Materiel Aerospace Craft • Ground Vehicles
Armoury Wargear • Relics and Artifacts
Other Estate Secrets and Contacts • Awards and Honors
The Galaxy
Locations Calixis Sector Koronus Expanse • Periphery Subsector Personalities Peers of the Imperium Rival Rogue Traders
Utilities
Rogue Trader Timeline House Rules Guide and Lore

"You sir are a liar, and while you may command a flotilla of warships, the fact is that right here and right now there is just you and me and this hammer. So, let us hear no more of what you do not know and proceed to what you do know."

-Doronal Casius, "Prince" of the Kasballica, in conversation with Rogue Trader Hiram Suit

The settlement that was once Dewain's Footfall, and now simply Footfall, is a tethered network of hundreds of stone structures floating in Furibundus's voids. It is a mass of buttressed temples and plasma-pitted fanes whose towers jut out at all angles into the void. Most are linked by enclosed stonework tunnels and arch-bridges, in addition to huge steel chains. At the very center is tethered a huge macro-statue of the God-Emperor, larger than many warships.

Many of Footfall's buildings would not look out of place upon a planetary surface, while other spiral mazes and winding tunnels of unsupported stone would fall apart under the tug of gravity. Sections of Footfall have no gravity, and many have fluctuating levels of generated gravity. The few structures that have their own stable grav generators are highly desired prizes and are fought over by the most powerful factions, changing hands over the corpses and regrets of their prior occupants with alarming regularity.

Over the centuries since its establishment, Footfall has become a lair of villainy and intrigue, the descendants of its original population of stoneworkers and Rogue Trader vassals now far outnumbered by less-reputable newcomers. Here, religious fanatics rub shoulders with assassins, spies, fugitives from Imperial justice, narco-tribesmen, rowdy crew on furlough, and a wide range of disreputable merchants. Beneath this tumult of lawlessness can be found and an even more shadowy world: hereteks, cultists, unrestrained criminals, unsanctioned psykers, and worse. Here a thousand forms of deadly intrigue can be found, and anything from a starship to a human soul can be bartered in Footfall - for a price. It is for precisely these reasons that many great powers and factions from the Calixis Sector maintain secretive agents in Footfall: the Administratum, Battlefleet Calixis, the Great Houses of the Imperial Nobility, the disciples of the Dark Gods, the Ministorum ... and perhaps even the Holy Ordos of the Inquisition as well.

For the Rogue Traders and their agents, Footfall has many uses beyond those of a simple port. These individuals come to learn about competing interests, find an array of illegal services unavailable on Imperial worlds, send forth trusted crew to carouse, gather new recruits to replace those lost to the void, and participate in deadly intrigues to gain an edge in the exploration of the Koronus Expanse. It is also a place where a vessel can shelter to refit and repair damage in relative safety, provided a Rogue Trader can abide the thousand assorted scum who might flock about, or the dubious strangers who will swarm their injured vessel and toil upon its hull for a few thrones apiece--or the hereteks whose price is far higher but whose "no questions asked" expertise makes them worth the daemon's bargain to hire.

Footfall is a collection of man-made asteroids bound together and nominally administrated by the current Liege, Tanthus Moross (although he is heavily “advised” by fellow interested parties). Since it is not an official Imperial outpost, theoretically any Warrant of Trade could allow a Rogue Trader to claim ownership of Footfall, but those foolish enough to exercise this power tend not to survive the inauguration ceremony. The obvious ruler tends to just be the most murderous and foolheaded thug to reach the top for the time being.

Much like the position of Liege, the ownership of the various asteroids in orbit around Footfall tend to default to the usurper of the previous ruler. However there are some more stable regions in the system for the traveller, most of which are found in the twenty central asteroids of Footfall, anchored around the Macrostatue of the God Emperor.

Notable Locations

The Pit of Voices

Built into an asteroid, it appears to be partially collapsed dome and claimed by the outcast Astropaths. The interior much like a steep arena with a warren of passages and cells beneath its surface. A collection of statues, mostly gargoyles, pillaged from other sources stare down upon the inhabitants.

The Boneyard

A frozen sargasso of waste, unlucky corpses, and debris beyond the structures of Footfall. The area is picked over by scavengers in voidsuits, useless waste is propelled away, to slowly drift through the protective void shields into fiery embrace of the Furibundus star.

The Chapel of the Third Congregants

A freestanding structure not connected with Footfall proper, a collection of bastions, towers and leering gargoyles. Inside a multitude of statues, shrines, and places of worship. A constant stream of passenger-craft traffic goes to and from this structure.

Hab-Fanes

Large crenelated structures whose exteriors covered in crystal mosaics of saints grant them the appearance of ornate temples than the domicile of the poor, menials, and lesser outcast factions. The interior of the fanes is constantly shifting structure of metalwork and cloth in a seemingly vast three-dimensional maze.

Liege’s Court

One of the oldest structures, regal transepts, ornate halls, and vaulted ceilings where the current Liege receives those important enough to warrant such a greeting. The throne of the Liege is an elegant alabaster, an ancient masterwork depicting hundred’s of the God-Emperor’s victories – protected to by shielding to protect its delicate age.

Macrostatue of the God-Emperor

A vast statue that floats at the very center of Footfall, close in size to the largest grand cruisers of the Koronus Battlefleet, and linked by massive void chains to twenty structures, staring out across the void to realms yet to be conquered. The statue and its plinth are hollowed by chambers, by no one dares reside within. A place of pilgrimage for the faithful.

The Red Schola

An unadorned monolithic structure, the slave hold held by a group known as the Tutors. It’s within this sealed edifice that people are broken and by which slaves are created, from courtesan assassins sculpted to look like Imperial Saint or a mute slab of muscle brutes, the Red Schola can accommodate.

Shield Shrines

Three Mechanicus structures, cubic in nature and linked by long coiling umbilical cable to Footfall, provide the void shields that protect Footfall. Heavily defended and protected by servitors.

The Spire of Intoxicants

A tradespace given over to the collection of various tribes brought from the far reaches of the Koronus Expanse for the exclusive sale of nacro-tribe drugs, artifacts and rituals. Chemical fumes and strange sights everywhere.

The Xenosium

Built in a fashion to a prison fortress, thick-walled and psy-shielded, one of the few original structures of Footfall, an accursed place set aside for the Xenos species that Rogue Traders have on occasion brought back to Footfall, sentient beings. A human has not set step in the Xenosium in centuries and no one is sure for certain if it is empty or not.