Hey all,

One of the big perks of being a Rogue Trade is that you are allowed to interact and deal with the Xeno. But, how is that handled on the other side of your trade route? Buying alien wares is all good and dandy, but whom are you selling them to? Most xeno technology seems forbidden and/or blasphemous so the authorities would take a dim view on you selling that stuff to imperial citizens. Of course, raw materials are no problem, but what other xeno wares can be sold legally? Do you have any guidelines?

I was thinking about this exact subject.  I think Xenos wares are fine for selling as long as the arent being imported into the imperium but smuggling items in or selling them to cold traders is a definate way of getting more prfoit than making legal trasactions outside the borders of the imperium.

But thats just my opinion it isnt cannon or anything.

I think the Kasabasilica mission in Footfall (and port wander, too if I'm thinking correctly) tries their level best to buy up all things Xenos.  their competitors do the same.  so a Rogue Trader can hit footfall with a load of Xenos artifacts, sell it to one of the organizations that deals in that stuff and walk away clean.  no muss, no fuss and doesn't have to worry about the details of what happens next.

also - most humans won't know if something is Xenos make.  ignorance is bliss, remember?  as long as something isn't obviously creepy, weird or psychic odds are most humans won't know anything about Xenos gear or items.  it'll be different tho, which is a whole other issue.  but if you sell it properly you might convince someone they aren't buying xenos items, its really just some very very strange archeotech.

Yeah, selling in Footfall would be rather easy, as long as you always remember to bring serious looking men with bolters.

But the thing is: The Imperium sanctions Rogue Traders OFFICIALLY to deal with Xenos. So there must be stuff one can officially sell within the Imperium. Without backroom deals, or passing it off as archaeotech. But what could it be?

Would selling Xenotech to a Magos Xenologis be legal?

Definately as long as the Magos isn't a heretic.

Also, some Xenotech isn't proscribed. Digiweapons, for example, are exclusively imported from the Jokeareo space monkey population.

eBarbarossa said:

hmm.

well, at a guess I'd say that high ranking members of imperial society could legally purchase Xenos gear (so long as it wasn't TOO offensive and/or blatantly obvious).  Generals of the Imperial guard, various and sundry nobility, trading cartels looking to seem more impressive/fearsome.  Members of the adeptus mechanicus looking to rip apart Xenos gear to learn it's secrets and/or figure out how to destroy it's makers easier.  the Imperial Inquisition might want to legally aquire Xenos tech for all sorts of reasons that don't bear thinking about.  Then of course there's illegal cultists who might arrange to legal purchase Xenos items for their nefarious purposes - after all, why steal it when you can just BUY it?  set up a shell corporation, buy your various required items legally…and then disappear forever. 

eBarbarossa said:

Find the right (wrong?) members of the Inquisition who are radical enough to believe that the weapons of the enemies of mankind should be used against their creators, or Heretek Adeptus Mechanicus who seek to study their technology to see how it could be made complaint with STC patterns.

Although Rogue Traders have the legal right to DEAL with Xenos, that doesn't mean they have the right to bring potentially hazardous technology back to Imperial space. I think there's no legal market for xenotech in the Imperium because anything they make is inferior and/or heretical when compared to good man-made technology.

Erathia said:

See and that doesn't make sense.

"You are allowed to buy Xenos stuff on behalf of the Imperium, but you won't be able to sell it. And why? Because we're eeeeeeevul dogmatics, that's why!" That just doesn't cut it for me.

It might be a means to an end, so to speak.

I believe that the point is to trade xenotech with those willing to buy it outside the Imperium to aquire favours, objects and the like that ARE legal and highly sought after by the Imperium or somebody in it. Obviously, selling to Ordo Xenos or a Magos Xenologis would be perfectly legal (although I envy your contacts if Ordo Xenos buy stuff from you). You could trade that tech with a mercenary group as payment for their help in purging an ancient human city, where you get the dibs on all the cool stuff, or you trade an eldar tech for a document detailing the location of something or other.

Then, of course, there are the illegal markets, but that is not the subject of this thread.

I would imagine that there'd be a legal blockage in the fact that while selling to the Inquisitoon and Magos Xenologis is legal, just being in possession of it within Imperial space is not. I would imagine you'd still have to smuggle the goods to a forge world in order to "legally" sell it. Well, either that or arrange for the Magos to come personally pick it up outside Imperial space, which I doubt the Magos would consider that unless it is very valuable.

from my understanding; so long as the authority don't find Xenotech in your cargo hold, you're good to go.

It might also be that being allowed to "Deal" with them means speaking with them and negoitating with them, not necesarrily buying their technology.

http://buttersafe.com/2011/11/17/gold-planet/

eBarbarossa said:

Except that is the in-universe explanation  for 40K. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim and dark future, there is only war. Rogue Traders are meant to make contact with Xenos races, assess them as a threat to the Imperium (possibly through posthumous examination of the Rogue Trader's shattered hulk of a vessel), and then categorize whether or not they need to be wiped out immediately, or just sort of ignored and dealt with when the Navy has a moment.

Now there are a lot of radical Inquisitors, bored nobles and AdMech who will happily buy things from you, but they're not going to blatantly advertise that's what they're doing. The only real place where you can find a market where selling these things doesn't get you executed on site would be a place like the Koronus Expanse which is not technically Imperial Space. Even then though, you might face some pointed questions when you come back if you're viewed as having gone native.

The place where xenos technology is openly traded, analyzed and discussed is the Tau Empire. There are hints that there's a portal to the Eastern Fringe somewhere in the Koronus Expanse, so if you find that you could probably set up a market over there as well.

You wouldnt have to got hat far at all.  The Kronus expanse is like the wild west, it is wilderness space the imperium can't enforce it so they allow private intrests to develop it and assess it thus rogue traders.  Since your not in the imperium xenos technology is not proscribed and you dont have to worry about being prosecuted at all. 

This is why rogue traders are seen as dangerous by the rest of imperial society, while their brining the light of the emperor into the darkness they come into contact with dangerous and blasphemous things.  This is accepteable because as their warrant states they act as the voice of the emperor byond his realm and they can do what ever they see fit while their out there.

This is also why rogue trader wars are technicly legal as well.  Their petty squables are ignored by the imperium because it doesn't have the resources to enforce the areas of space the rogue traders operate in. 

Legal trading of xenos good can defniately take place just so longa as you dotn bring it to any imperial controlled planet so damaris is a no go.  But footfall or the breaking docks are fine.  In fact higher lelvels of imperial society proabbly like things this ay sincce it encourages development without any cost to the imperium itself.  By keeping illegal goods proscribed from imperial space it protects citizens from corruption while simulatneously forcing rogue traders out into undeveloped regions.

If you have access to it, I recommend reading the cold trade section of Hostile Acquisitions.  It addresses warrants that allow for trading with xenos.

Apparently it is legal for a RT who's warrant specifically states it, to sell xenos artifacts within the boarders of the imperium. It just that the trade is so profitable that those traders who's warrant does not allow them to to risk sanction.

HOWEVER, the inquisition will keep a close eye on any traders importing xenos artifacts, regardless of their warrant and will intervene if they deem the artifacts to be too heretical.