The history of the Venturer

[Dragon Lord]

Just thought I would gather together some of the the discussion of the history of the Venturer and perhaps expand on it and put some dates to things for people to discuss.

M24? - The Venturer is constructed on Avellorn and sent out from Segmentum solar to a far flung region as part of a large colonisation and exploration fleet.  For several centuries (maybe longer/shorter?) the Venturer aids the exploration of the region and the colonisation of a number of worlds.
M24-25? - The war with the Iron Men, fighting breaks out between humanity and their mechanical creations, the Iron Men.  Attempts (partially successful?) are made to remove or isolate the AI of the Venturer after which it is asigned to second line duties running supplies to the human fleets.  Humanity wins the war and the Iron Men are destroyed, but the human empires are left in a greatly weakened state.  The Venturer once again takes part in missions of exploration and colonisation, though also spends significant time ferrying passengers and materials between the existing colonies.
c.M25 - The start of the Age of Strife, contact is lost with Terra and the other core colonies, the colonies that the Venturer helped to found are cut off and on their own, exploration is reined in and the Venturer redirected to maintain contact and trade between the worlds in the region.  Gradually the warp storms worsen until the Venturer is trapped in one system (or possibly a group of very closely spaced systems).
c. late M29 - early M30 - The Emperor's Great Crusade reaches the system containing the (by now possibly almost inactive) Venturer, bringing it into the fold of the Imperium.  The Venturer is inducted into the service of the Crusade fleets and participates in the integration of dozens of worlds.
c. early M30 - The cataclysmic wars of the Horus Heresy engulf the galaxy.  The Venturer is far from Terra and the most contested battlefields but is swept up in a number of smaller wars between factions declaring their loyalty to the Emperor and Terra and those giving their allegiance to Chaos.  (Possibly part of the crew of the Venturer convert to chaos and lead a failed mutiny against the captain, or vice-versa and the captain and  some officers convert but the crew mutiny.)  Once the conflicts have blown themselves out the Venturer remains in Imperial hands and is drafted into the massive effort to rebuild the shattered and broken Imperium.
M31-M36? - The Venturer is sold into the hands of one of the newly inaugurated Rogue Traders becoming part of their fleet and seeing use in a number of capacities from ferrying high-ranking diplomats to running illicit Xenos goods under a succession of heirs to the Charter.
M36 - The Age of Apostasy.  The crippling shipping taxes put in place by the Administratum/Ecclesiarchy under High Lord Goge Vandire upon any ship not running explicitly under the orders/oversight of the Administratum make it unprofitable for Venturer's owner(s) to keep it running, as a result of which it is mothballed (perhaps even given up to the Ecclesiarchy as part of a tithe or seized in payment of outstanding taxes).
M37? - After lying in mothballs for nearly a milennium the Venturer passes into the hands of a merchant.  The vessel then proceeds to pass through the hands of several other merchants and guilds.
470M41 - The Venturer finds itself in the Anargo sector in the ownership of [name] guild/corporation.

I know we discussed leaving a significant part of the history 'blank' to allow role players to create some of their own history for the vessel as appropriate to them so I have purposely left out much in the way of names of locations, etc and left the dates fairly vague to allow a considerable amount of customisation.
The dates with question marks by them I'm not sure about are definitely up for debate (I'm not even sure if the date I put in for the war with the Iron Men is sensible).

[CELS]

Nice work, I like it a lot. I only have a few suggestions on things I would like to see changed. It's just a matter of taste though, so not criticism as such.

Heresy - I don't like the idea of a mutiny onboard the ship as a result of the Heresy. A mutiny in itself is a very interesting idea, but for the Heresy it just seems like an unoriginal approach to representing the larger event in the galaxy. I think it would be more interesting and unexpected if the Venturer was actually in service of Horus' forces for a while without actually being corrupted by chaos. Whether it remained loyal to Horus' forces as a matter of loyalty to a specific faction (e.g. a Horus-aligned forgeworld or perhaps even a specific legion, such as the Thousand Sons) doesn't really matter, but I think it would be interesting if we showed the civil war aspect of the Horus Heresy, rather than focussing only on good vs evil and order vs chaos. Make it more like... Norwegian ships being pushed into service for the Axis powers by the Nazi occupation force. The majority of Norwegian people didn't support Hitler, but they were forced to serve all the same. And then you had germans who didn't really believe in the Nazi ideology, but found themselves fighting for Hitler as a matter of loyalty. Many german officers fall in this category.

Current status - I think it would be more interesting to put the Venturer in the hands of a vast galactic guild rather than one confined to Anargo. Of course, said galactic guild could still have a presence in the sector, but making it bigger would make the Venturer an appropriate choice even if someone wanted to use it in a campaign taking place in Segmentum Pacificus.

[Dragon Lord]

With regards to the ship's involvement in the Horus Heresy I take your point regarding a mutiny and I would be happy with a situation more like that in which the Norwegians found themselves during WW2.  In that situation do you think the crew would be followers of Horus or followers of the Emperor press-ganged into service?

Regarding the current status of the Venturer I am happy with either option, of the owning guild being confined to Anargo or a vast conglomerate with tendrils reaching into every corner of the galaxy.

[Kage2020]

As elsewhere, I feel that the solution to the current status of the Venturer is to have it as part of an Anargo guild that has links to something outside of itself, possibly one that involves the Nobilitas Imperialis.  It might even be a part of a "gift" to one of the guilds that will allow them to tackle the concept of a trans-Abyss warp route...?

Kage

[CELS]

Well, I'm hoping that someone will just pick one idea and run with it. I think Dragon Lord wrote a great foundation for the history of the Venturer. If someone expands up on this and writes a complete history (with a few open holes, but not too many), then the person/people doing the floor plans is going to have a better idea of what the ship should look like. We're probably never going to get everyone to agree anyway, so at some point someone just has to set their foot down and write the damn thing. Just like I will eventually just have to set my foot down and make some arbitrary decisions when designing the exterior.

Meanwhile.... <moves to the edge of his seat> 

[Totenkopf]

Current status - I think it would be more interesting to put the Venturer in the hands of a vast galactic guild rather than one confined to Anargo. Of course, said galactic guild could still have a presence in the sector, but making it bigger would make the Venturer an appropriate choice even if someone wanted to use it in a campaign taking place in Segmentum Pacificus.

One could also approach this in a different manner. I quite like the idea of this being a ship with a long and varied history, much of which is possibly not even known to the current owners.
Maybe both ideas for the owning guild could be realised by making it an anargo based trade conglomerate whose prime investment was in this old vessel. Ships cost more than cities in some cases, and just owning a vessel raises rogue traders to the level of planetary nobility. As such, a conglomerate wagering everything on the purchase of an ancient ship with a questionable history seems somehow appealing to me  Much like Black Beauty was in the end made to draw a hackney carriage and then almost turned into glue. The ship could still be found in other sectors due to its use as a tradesman, shipping produce from the anargo sector into farflung regions and vice versa. To spice up the sense of a proud vessel brought low, maybe some interesting events in its history could be fleshed out some.

[Kage2020]

I rather like the Black Beauty analogy, Totenkopf.  That appeals to me, so it would be nice to see something similar born out of the Venturer in the Dark Millennium...

Kage

[CELS]

It certainly has a nice appeal. Again though, I just want to warn against going too far down the route of Forrest Gump or R2D2, where the Venturer seems somehow involved in important historical events. In other words, it would be cool if the previously mothballed Venturer, only recently brought out from the drydocks, was once the flagship of a Rogue Trader's fleet or something. But I'd hate to see it as the former personal vessel of Sebastian Thor

[Kage2020]

LOL... I don't think that last is going to be a problem.

Kage