Funny / Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader

• At one point, when the party find themselves in Footfall's sewers, they find a gate leading to the exit. However, to open to the gate, one of them has to wade through the foul sewage and to the gate's lever. Unsurprisingly, nobody is eager to do it.
  Abelard: I'm too old for this sh...Ahem
  Cassia: I think I'm going to be sick
  Idira: Someone's gotta go and pull the lever, right? I propose our holy sister as a candidate! A seeker after spiritual purity shouldn't be put off by a little bit of ordinary muck, after all.
  Argenta: Hardy. Har. Har.
  • The Rogue Trader can volunteer to go into the sewers in lieu of any of their retinue. Their reaction to you, their ostensible employer, once you come out of the sewers is suitably "disgusted by the smell".
• After experiencing one too many ambushes, Pasqal barely restrains his frustrations when the party are once again ambushed by enemies upon arriving on a planet.
  Pasqal: (*Talking to a guard officer*) Do not fret, layperson. We have grown used to outrageous slovenliness among wardens of every world we visit.
  • The Rogue Trader can follow this up by summarily executing the poor Warden, calling him an "incompetent, inept, useless piece of grox shit" in the process!
• On the same planet, which is facing an open rebellion by the serfs, one of the Administratum representatives laments that "important paperwork is going unsigned!" as a result of the rebels killing nobles and administratum officials.
  Heinrix: The absence of a required signature is, of course, the most horrifying thing about this situation.
  Atilius Quint: Indeed it is!
  • Ironically, he may have a point. Imperial bureaucracy is notoriously inefficient (see below), and many things grind to a halt because of misplaced or unsigned forms with astonishing frequency. The Apocalyptic Log on Rykad Philia mentions the author was trapped because someone misplaced their tax forms for years and the interest built up without anyone telling him he owed anything. Atilius himself mentions that a great deal of ships are being prevented from launching because no one knows who has permission to send them anywhere.
• Jae's companion quest to become a Trader Representative involves dealing with the Adeptus Administratum. After going through the arduous task of signing multiple forms and travelling through a couple of different planets for the document's seals, the party are led to an enormous room where hundreds of people are waiting in queue. At first, Jae tries to be cheery about things. But when the wait takes several hours, she agonizes how torturous the wait is and reckons that they'll probably turn old by the time their number is called (the Rogue Trader has the option to blame Jae for their predicament).
  • Trying to hurry things up, Jae suggests several tricks to get people to leave their queue. One of which is asking Heinrix to use his status as a member of the Inquisition to scare people away. If he agrees, he's annoyed over having to use his inquisitorial authority for a trivial reason.
    • If you use Yrliet as a distraction instead, due to the novelty of seeing a Xenos in-person, she'll lament becoming a sideshow even as Jae is pickpocketing tickets that allow you to jump the queue.
  • If the player is being especially impatient, they can just throw subtly out of the window and create a violent scene, causing many of the citizens to flee, and then threaten the certification officer into signing the document straight away.
  • The player can also, with the suggestion from Jae, start helping people with their problems. One of them including making someone nobility on the spot so you can take their place in line.
  • If you bring along Cassia and ask if the Master of Seals knows who you are, she'll mention that the von Valancius dynasty has owed House Orsellio one gold crown for several decades, tossing Cassia one in order to mark the matter as resolved.
  • If the Rogue Trader decides to wait patiently (which grants an Achievement), they will miss the certification deadline by several hours. They can throw a fit... or accept their fate and, much to Jae's dismay, start the entire process over again, which includes traveling to another planet to get a stamp.
• After this, Jae arranges for a party on Footfall, leading to What Did I Do Last Night? - if the Rogue Trader is able to remember, they recall giving an obscene amount of money away to beggars, as well as riding a servitor "to Jae's unconcealed glee."
• You never find out Jae's real name, even when she tells you her real backstory on Commoragh.
  Rogue Trader: Is Jae your real name, at least?
  Jae: I swear on the grave of my drunkard father who sold me into the mines and on the lives of the eleven siblings I never had, shereen!
  [Awareness test succeeded:] No. It most definitely is not.
• While being held on Commoragh, the Harlequin Stranger will approach you with a riddle over what he wants from you. If you have a high enough Iconoclast ranking, you'll guess exactly what he means.
  The xenos stills and looks at you intently. He is not accustomed to anyone so adroitly and quickly navigating his verbal labyrinths, that much is clear. At last, you hear a low chuckle behind his mask and the xenos claps his hands slowly, saying only one word: "Bravo."
• This exchange between the Rogue Trader and Ulfar in what must be a Meme Acknowledgment on the Space Wolves' seeming obsession with the word "wolf"
  Rogue Trader: You Fenrisians seem to bring wolves into everything.
  Ulfar: (*Bursts into laughter*) You are not wrong there! Every other word out of a Fenrisian's mouth is wolf.
  • He can also quiz the Trader on what the most dangerous animal on Fenris is - a successful Imperium check can give you the prompt of "Wrath-badger", which halts his speech dead in its tracks as he asks why. You can either say that it just sounds funny, or elaborate that, since there's so little information about the creature, that hunters logically must be actively avoiding encounters with it.
    The giant warrior's chuckle slams into your chest like a strike from a sonic weapon. "Very good! I hoped to tell you about the black curse of the Wulfen, but your answer wasn't bad either! Wrath-badger, ha!"
• If you offer Marazhai mercy and a place in your party, Ulfar's response is hilarious.
  Ulfar: Ha! A fine jest! He is joking, yes? (Ulfar catches your eye, and the humor evaporates from his face) Troll balls, you're not joking!
  Abelard: (Abelard sighs and comments quietly) Welcome to our fraternity of the perplexed, my lord Ulfar! Get used to it. The Rogue Trader never fails to astonish.
• After scanning a planet and discovering that a Voidship's jettisoned trash is damming a major river, threatening local wildlife in the process, the Rogue Trader can order that the river be cleared so that the native animals have a chance at survival. Immediately afterward, a new Rumour about your being an Eccentric Animal lover pops up, stating that you have an "unusal fondness for bizarre rodents."
• "The silence is broken by a string of untranslatable but highly expressive xenos profanities: Marazhai has regained his power of speech and is now using it to curse someone's kin and progeny."
• When talking to Henrix, you can ask him what sort of duties he's been performing, he'll give an amused or unintentionally unsettling smile as he points out he obviously can't tell you that.
  • If you ask him if there are any other acolytes in the Koronus Expanse, he'll just sigh in disappointment.
• Idle chatter between Idira and Pasqal has her asking if he has any sense of humor. Pasqal responds with a quip involving a "layperson" and a tech priest entering an unblessed building. Or to put it in laymen's terms, two guys walk into a bar...
• On a meta level, Jae's talents allow her to substitute her Intelligence score with Fellowship for knowledge checks. This means that she can very easily outclass Heinrix, an Inquisitor-in-training, when it comes to her knowledge of aliens, the warp, and the Imperium as a whole, with nothing but her street smarts.