Editing Setting:Cloudburst/Rogue Traders (section)

====Rogue Trader Dynastic House Rondlee====
House Rondlee is one of the ancient Rogue Trader Houses of the Cloudburst region, and often boastfully claims to be the oldest, although there is little evidence for this.  What is wholly certain is that House Rondlee has its tentacles of corruption, deceit, and outright robbery in nearly every conspiracy and backdoor deal in the Cloudburst Circuit.

The House is old; nobody could dispute that.  Its age has allowed it a certain perspective on the affairs of the Imperium in the Cloudburst Circuit.  It can see, or so its elders privately claim, the wheels of the Segmentum government turning.  The slow patterns of colonization, proselytization, exploration, and war that edge the border of the Imperium into the Circuit; the killings and disappearances that announce the Inquisition’s arrival among the criminal gangs that rule the outer borders of the Circuit; and, of course, the flow of money from outposts in the Circuit into the pockets of the Sector.  It has been happening, slowly and surely, for thousands of years, and House Rondlee has been there since it started.

The Warrant of Trade that House Rondlee holds was signed by the Chancellor of the Imperial Estate over four thousand years ago, although it is free of context.  Clearly, the House originates in Ancient Sol, the core of worlds near and around the Throneworld, upon which the Senate of the High Lords exerts direct control.  Other than that, no House Records state definitively whether their House were war heroes, ancient aristocrats, merchant kings, warlords that opposed the Imperium and were punished with becoming Rogue Traders Militant, or even Inquisitors pushed out of the way of their peers.  The House usually prefers to describe themselves as being mighty conquerors in the service of the Imperial Navy, elevated to Rogue Trader status in reward for bringing some collection of worlds to the light of Man.  In fact, they have no idea, and probably never will.

What else is known clearly about the House is that they take for granted several functions of the Imperium in their business dealings.  Their Warrant is very clear: they are to explore and pacify the Oldlight Proximate Circuit, now known as the Cloudburst Sector and Circuit.  Beyond that, few means are forbidden from their repertoire.  The House may trade in narcotics, sell explosives, run ‘indentured servants,’ traffic xenotech or even actual xenos, ally with heretics, and do more or less anything that they choose out in the Circuit.

Within the Sector itself, however, the House is a paper tiger.  In the past, certain members of the House have taken the fact that the entire Sector except Hapster is part of the former Oldlight Proximate Circuit to which they are tasked as authorization to do as they please within that territory.  A savage and public humiliation of the House patriarch and near-revocation of their Warrant of Trade by the Inquisition swiftly put those ideas to rest.  Every so often, a new House Scion with something to prove challenges the Inquisition on this, at which point the Celeste Penal Legions gain a new member.

The higher ranks of the Inquisition, especially Lord Inquisitor Hueng, view House Rondlee as a crime against the Imperium waiting to happen.  If the House weren’t protected by vast wealth and a Warrant of Trade, they would almost certainly have begun an investigation into the House’s senior leadership by now.  As it stands, the House is already on thin ice.  Just because the House is theoretically allowed to break the laws of the Imperium beyond its borders doesn’t mean that they actually do in all cases, of course, but Lord Hueng is personally involved in the issue because he suspects that the House has begun trafficking live xenos as bodyguards for Thimble nobles.  Warrant or not, enslavement, sentient trafficking, and xeno-harboring are crimes the Imperium does not permit on Thimble, and he is itching for the chance to take the Rondlees down a notch.

Aside from their rumored criminal activities, however, the House also has laid claim to several unnamed and uncategorized stars in the depths of the Cloudburst Circuit, far from the Sector border.  There, the family is rumored to be mining out rare minerals in huge quantities, for covert sale to Forge Worlds outside Cloudburst.  This would explain their growing wealth and their unusually friendly relationship with the Mechanicus, certainly.  As befits an ancient House, the Rondlee fleet is quite varied.  They have specifically avoided any vessels larger than a Battlecruiser, just for logistical concerns, but their flagship, the Auric Fists, has such extensive upgrades that it can fight toe to toe with a Grand Cruiser.  Presently, the Warrant-holder is House patriarch Lovis Rondlee of Celeste, who has a reputation even worse than that of his family.