Editing Setting:Cloudburst/Dead Houses (section)

===Rogue Trader House Grenfoe===

At one point in the Sector’s history, the House Grenfoe was an institution.  Its huge central wealth concentrated in a vast bank, in which it was also the primary investor and customer.  The bank was named after the founder of the House, and located on the main square of the city of Civitavecchia on Celeste.  The House specialized in financing Imperial expeditions, to find new colonizable worlds in the Circuit and in the Oldlight Exo-zone.  Its early claim to fame was in sponsoring the passage between what are now the Subsectors Rampart and Nauphry, and thus enabling a whole new wave of Warp travel to those regions.

However, the House eventually ran into extensive financial trouble.  The laws of banking on Celeste may be stagnant, but they are not static.  Eventually, groups of less reputable business combines began to hide their earnings in the guise of legitimate business with the bank.  This blossomed into a full money-laundering scheme, one of which the House remained blissfully unaware.

When an investigation by a local journalism agency uncovered it all, embarrassed planetary government officials ordered the assets seized, which the startled House could not contest.  With the core of their financial system in peril, the House made a show of funding several expensive trips by explorers and traders into the uncharted places of the Oldlight Exo-zone, hoping to strike it rich.  They did not.  The subsequent loss of several of their brightest beneficiaries brought ruin to the House, which were only slightly alleviated by the House selling the rights to Combine to the Mechanicus.

Eventually, the Warrant of Trade for the House fell into the hands of its scion, Vilheim Grenfoe, who could read the changing of the tides as well as anybody could, and sold the remaining House assets to a rival mercantile concern, then retired to enjoy the Celeste high society unburdened by responsibility.