"The Imperium's generals sat safely in the rear, thinking the knowledge their books had taught them could solve every problem. They thought everything that happened in a battle could be predicted and observed, like pieces on a chessboard with fixed moves.
All they knew was how to hide inside armored shells and press buttons, dispatching a specified number of ships to fight the enemy, convinced that frigates were designed to counter cruisers.
Dull, tedious, stupid. Those armchair academics would never understand just how complicated a battlefield could be.
Your enemy might not need to stop bleeding at all. It might spill more blood than its own body weight. Your enemy might grow two new heads the moment you smashed its skull. Your enemy might corrupt your Gellar Field and fuse your cook with your oven into one gigantic monster.
What the hell did those academics know? Had any of them ever charged straight into an enemy's face, into the ranges their generals forbade? Did any of them understand that instinctive thrill of slaughtering everything in your path beneath the boundless stars?
I faced the things of the void myself. I led my warship in a ramming attack against a Demon vessel and tore that Chaos Lord's face to shreds. And I intend to keep doing it, another thousand times, until the Emperor decides I've done enough!"
-Meyer Rothschild, head of the Rogue Trader Rothschild Dynasty, speaking at a victory banquet after annihilating a Chaos Fleet.
Rogue Traders occupied a unique position within the Imperium of Man. These armed merchants exercised the authority the Imperium granted them throughout the Milky Way in humanity's name. The places beyond the Astronomican's light-the frontier regions, the halo stars, and the darkness beyond the star domains-were where Rogue Traders truly came into their own.
New