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"Lure of the Expanse" is the first supplement for Rogue Trader, and covers three adventures, "Eye of the Needle", "The Heathen Trail" and "The World Beyond", each one being just a part of the "Lure" plotline. They run one after another, but can easily be used as separate Endeavours in their own right with minimal work. It has a good mixture of investigation, combat and social/political intrigue, and is mostly driven by the choices of the Rogue Trader and his entourage. It also introduces several new planets, which can easily be used by a GM separately from the adventures in "Lure".
Overview
"Lure of the Expanse" is a hard-cover 144 page full colour book. The art, which starts off beautiful from the cover, continues the high standard that FFG have kept throughout the 40k RPG line, with the majority of the art being new, rather than recycled from other 40k book, though of course some fitting images from older books make an appearance. There are two maps in the book, covering parts of the book where there are almost certain conflicts, which covers most of the 'guaranteed' combat for the adventure, as most of the rest can be avoided by cunning Explorers. They are also put together at the back of the book, so it is easy to find them. The binding is sturdy, as with FFG's other 40k RPG books, which is doubly important for an adventure book that will involve a lot of flipping through.
The book is split into an Introduction (aka Game Master's Briefing), three Chapters (one for each adventure), and an Appendix, each of which I'll now cover in turn.
PLEASE DON'T CONTINUE IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS FOR THIS BOOK. INSTEAD, SKIP TO THE COMMENTS OR VERDICT
Contents
Introduction
This is a brief page-long briefing for the GM, covering the summarised plots of the three adventures. The basic summery is that the Explorers, through whatever means they have, find out about a long-lost mythical planet known to the superstitious as the "Dread Pearl", a planet of such wealth that whatever Rogue Trader could plunder it's treasures would be the envy of the whole Expanse. The warp-storms that claimed the Pearl are, however, soon to be lifting, allowing adventurers access to the planet for the first time in ten millennia. This has been foretold by the feared "Seven Witches of Footfall", a group of seers and wyrds, in a ritual prophecy. The only way, however, to be allowed to attend the final ritual and have the method of finding the Pearl revealed to them is to bid well enough at an Auction, attended by some of the most powerful Rogue Traders in the Expanse, for permission to be part of the ritual.
What follows from the discovery from the Foretelling will take the Explorers across the Expanse, into the distant and mysterious Heathen Stars, where they must piece together parts of the elaborate puzzle in order to find the coordinates of the planet they seek. However, they will be dogged from the get-go by their rivals, or possible allies, the entire way to the Dread Pearl.
And after encountering the eldritch Eldar, what the Dread Pearl represents becomes all the more enticing...
Chapter One - Eye of the Needle
This chapter starts off with an Overview of the adventure, going into more detail than that of the Introduction, and explaining how to get the characters involved with the emergence of the Dread Pearl, and how to go about using "Eye of the Needle" as a standalone adventure. It also goes into how the "Grand Endeavour" (the new type of endeavour that itself contains multiple smaller endeavours) that makes up "Lure of the Expanse" works. The explanation of the adventure is short, but thorough, and the reasons for the Explorers getting involved cover most of the basics. The section on how to use the adventure as a standalone is good, explaining several ways of how the adventure can be tweaked to remove it as part of the Grand Endeavour.
The next section is the Footfall Gazetteer, which is five pages long, and goes into depth on nine of the major sections of the void-port, which is spread out over dozens of asteroids and covers an area the size of a large country. These include The Pit of Voices, where the astropaths of Footfall reside, the Spire of Intoxicants, a huge trade-space where anything can be bought for the right price, the Boneyard, an void-open refuse dump where the detritus of Footfall, be it rubbish or dead bodies, is thrown, and the Xenosium, where aliens are allowed to reside, and whatever habitat they require is catered for, though it is rumoured that no human has stepped within it's walls for centuries. Also covered are some of the major factions of Footfall, such as the Black Brotherhood (an organised gang of hired thugs and thieves that make sure they know everything going on in the Expanse) and the Astral Knives, as well as the major figures of the port, such as Tanthus Moross, Liege of Footfall. This section covers a fair chunk of the more unique areas of Footfall, leaving the "average" areas where station-dwellers make their residence and general trade areas up to the GM, which gives you just enough interesting bits to work with, but enough left untouched for you to do as you will with the station. Overall, though, it helps portray the flavour of Footfall, as the first stop of freedom outside of the boundaries of the Imperium.
It then moves onto the adventure proper, moving from the crew arriving at Footfall, through discovering how to get access to the Auction, to the Auction itself, and the Foretelling (which is damn awesome, very creepy, especially the Seven Witches). It then proceeds through fights with Eldar ships and possibly rival RTs as they try to pull far enough away from Footfall to jump into the Warp and get on their way. However, once they arrive at the co-ordinates, they find that there is no warp-storm, and that the planet they have arrived at isn't the Dread Pearl. After questioning a Stryxis ship on it's way out of the system, the crew find that the planet they are orbiting is no paradise planet, but mostly verdent jungle, other than some scattered ruined buildings and a large wraithbone Eldar temple, the only significant sign of civilisation on the planet. They manage to make it planetside, possibly fighting with their rival RTs and possibly making some allies, and manage to get to the temple, where they must fight a group of Eldar Warlocks who seek to remove the temple into the Webway, and dash all hopes of the crew getting any further information as to the location of the Dread Pearl. Once the Eldar are defeated, the crew manage to decipher a map that will lead them to several other planets, each of which houses a part of the co-ordinates that are needed to find the Dread Pearl.
The descriptions of the rival RTs in this chapter is brilliant, each getting a full third of a page of backstory, motivations and character, all of which can be used independently from the "Lure" adventures. It really does help flesh out the various types of Rogue Trader out in the Expanse, and gives the Expanse a bit more flavour, since named NPCs for the region are almost non-existent elsewhere.
Chapter Two - The Heathen Trail
This chapter carries on from the last, going straight into how the Explorers can use the "Nexus Points", the parts of the puzzle that, through their psychic connection with the Temple and the Dread Pearl, will be able to lead the Explorers to their goal.
Since each of the Nexus Points' adventures are separate, and can be done in whatever order the Explorers want to do them in, and it's up to the GM as to how many Nexus Points the players have to gain access to before being able to divine the location of the Dread Pearl, they aren't set out in any specific order. However, this does mean that each planet is dealt with in turn, rather than jumbled together, and also means each of the planets covered get their own gazetteer before each adventure.
First is the Heathen Stars Gazetteer, covering the region of space that all of these planets reside in. This "subsector" has zero official Imperial presence, leaving it as a region of xenos, renegades, and undiscovered colonies from before the time of the Horus Heresy. Beggars can't be choosers, however, as those same xenos, renegades and undiscovered colonies are the only places from which supplies and repairs are available. There is a reason, after all, that this place, the furthest any human has travelled and returned to tell the tale, is called "The Edge of the Galaxy".
Also contained here is a brief description of each of the major places visited in this adventure. These are Dross, a feudal/feral world, covered in storms that reach up out of it's own atmosphere in a way unexplained by the Omnissiah's science; Vaporius, a barren feudal planet where the Priest-Kings rule the populace with the only supplies of water on the planet; Zayth, a war world where mobile city-fortresses, each nearly the size of a hive, travel across the ruined landscape, destroying or being destroyed by any other city-fortress they encounter; The Processional of the Damned, a place only accessible through an Eldar warp portal, a place outside of the Koronus Expanse itself, where dead worlds and impossible numbers of hulks of ships from every known race of the galaxy and then more, spreading across millions of kilometres; and the Light of Terra, a space hulk formally made up of the Battleship "Light of Terra", the greatest ship and spearhead of the Angevin Crusade.
Each of these are described in a few paragraphs here, but in their respective adventures, each of these places gets a 4-5 page write-up, giving enough detail for GMs to be able to run whatever adventures they want on the planets, but leave enough blank to allow those GMs who want to be able to customise them a little to do so. The adventures for each of these places are about six pages or so in length, set out as endeavours in their own right, in the same style as those shown in the Rogue Trader corebook. Whilst more detail could have been done for them, each of them is only really intended to last a couple of sessions of play, and they perform that role well, allowing the Explorers to quickly learn a lot about this Emperor-forsaken area of space.
This section also contains some more information on each of the other RTs involved in the adventure, describing how each would go about finding the Nexus Points, how they might react to the player characters in various situations, and, combined with their previous descriptions, help flesh out these characters a lot, showing how they deal with different situations and the stress brought about by the hunt for the Nexus Points.
Chapter Three - The World Beyond
This final chapter is the culmination of the "Lure of the Expanse" grand endeavour, the result of the Explorer's hard work. It starts with a quick description of the Dread Pearl and it's history (that it is an Eldar Maiden World), and the humans, cast from the warp storm onto it's surface millennia ago at the height of the Great Crusade.
It then jumps into the adventure proper, with the Explorers' ship emerging from the warp, the warp storms thundering before them, as a gap in the storm, through which beautiful starlight shines, appears, the way through to the Dread Pearl that the Seven Witches foretold. The Explorer's make their way into orbit, possibly fighting their rivals in the process. At this point, the book lays out a full two page description of the planet, the names of the major areas of it and the like. Since it's essentially a "mystery planet" MacGuffin designed for the purpose of being the goal of the Explorators, the detail it goes into is adequate for the game, since it wasn't designed to be a planet people would go to more than once.
Once the Explorers have landed on the planet, and possibly being harried by their rivals and Eldar Pathfinders that have arrived on the planet through the webway, they encounter the native humans, who have spent the last several thousand years believing they were the only humans left, and depending on how the Explorers act towards them, they might welcome them with open arms or order them to leave/attack them. Soon afterwards, an Eldar Farseer arrives through the webway, awakening the Wraithguard that had been standing watch, unmoving, since the planet was lost, and orders the humans, including the natives, to leave their planet or die.
Whatever happens then, with the Explorers leaving as asked, or killing the Farseer and thereby disabling the Wraithguard army, they have the chance to leave with whatever they can carry in their ship (though obviously, if they chose to just leave rather than fight, they only have a short period of time to loot before they have to leave or be killed). Either way, the warpstorm is closing back in, as the entrance to the Dread Pearl was only for a limited time, and the Explorers escape back through before the planet is claimed once again.
This chapter is probably the most linear of the lot, with it all leading towards the encounter with the Farseer, whatever the group end up doing. Given that this is the final chapter of the epic endeavour, however, it makes a certain amount of sense that that would be the case, and there are more than enough optional encounters to keep it interesting for any group.
The final part of the chapter covers the aftermath of the campaign, the possible consequences that the Explorers will have to deal with, and then ends with a page on the variables that can affect the group's profit gain, which explains it all in adequate detail, and leaves a lot up to the GM to allow him to give bonuses as he sees fit for his group.
Appendix
This is where all the NPCs and the like are kept. It covers stats for all of the rival Rogue Traders (with helpful page numbers for their descriptions earlier in the book), stats for the likely NPCs the player characters will run into during their adventures, and...
The Eldar. This bit covers Pathfinders, who are deadly at what they do (if they want to snipe you and you not to find them, there's not much you can do about it, they're just that good at it), Warlocks, Wraithguard, and the Farseer. Also included are the rules for all of the major Eldar psychic powers, such as Doom, Guide and Mind War, as well as rules for Rune Armour (which is tough as hell), Witchblades (which are just vicious), and wraithcannons (which can indeed, as it does in the wargame, cause instant death).
Then the various ships you encounter on your travels are described and stated, and as a nice little touch, each have their own ship portrait, which helps show you what each one looks like. Also added are Dragon's Breath Lances, which are archeotech versions of the Titanforge lances, though designed for close range fire support, and so have a shorter range, but a lot more damage. It also has rules for extra Void Armour for ships, to make them tougher, and the Gilded Hull component, which, at the expense of armour, makes the ship look so impressive that the captain, whether on the ship or in view of it, gains a bonus to all Fellowship tests. An Aconite-class Eldar Frigate, along with a page full of rules on Eldar spacecraft and components (such as Solar Sails, Starcannon Batteries and Holofields (which are just nasty, making most shots miss the Eldar ship due to clouded sensors and fake signals, but given they have no void shields as Imperial ships do, if they do get hit, they usually take a fair bit of damage)) are also included at the end of this section.
Finally, there are the two maps, which I mentioned earlier, and the cool Achievement Point Tracker, which is very useful whilst running the game.
This then concludes the book!
Comments
Though it could be said that I am biased (given my name is in the front of the book as a playtester), I think this book is a really good start to the Rogue Trader supplement line. Sure, it could use a few tweaks here and there, and as with all pre-written adventures, it won't cover half of the completely crazy ideas players actually come up with, it is a solid foundation for a brilliant campaign.
Thinking of the campaign, it is very balanced in that it mixes investigation, intrigue and combat in decent enough proportions to keep every sort of gamer happy, especially when half the combat comes entirely down to the Explorers and how they deal with the situation, as almost all of the combat can be overcome by diplomacy if that's what the players want. It treks across the Expanse, portraying just how big the place is, and brings in rivals, xenos, space battles... it covers everything it should for Rogue Trader and more.
Couple that with the gazetteers of Footfall (which was sorely needed, though ideally it'd have been in the core book, since so many games will include this freeport), Vaporius, Dross, Zayth, The Light of Terra and the Processional of the Damned, plus the Heathen Stars in general, and you have a solid foundation for any game. Really, this book is more than a simple adventure book, like Purge the Unclean, but is almost a sourcebook in it's own right. Even if you never planned to run the adventures contained in it, it'd be worth it just for the information and ideas it would give you for your own campaigns, especially if, like many people on the FFG forums seem to state, you don't quite get the hang of how to run a game or plan an endeavour in the Rogue Trader setting.
Not only this, but the campaign is entirely doable by Rank 1 characters. Obviously, by the end of it, it's likely you'd be up to rank 3, possibly 4, but it is absolutely possible for a GM to use this as the first part of a campaign for a new set of characters, which only adds to it's usefulness, I think.
Verdict
Personally, I would give the book 9/10 for style, as the art is just beautiful, the book is solid and sturdy, and the layout is really good, it's very easy to find whatever bit in the book you are after.
I would also give the book 9/10 for substance. The plot is a good one, and is solid enough to (probably) survive encountering the players (with all the bizarre and crazy stuff players tend to come up with, most pre-made games tend to fall at the first mention of a plan not covered by the book). It also contains a lot of cool locations, all ripe for plundering for other endeavours, and very interesting and characterful NPCs, in the form of the rival Rogue Traders. The Eldar, despite my original belief, work out very well, coming across as honest-to-God-Emperor xenos, both fickle and completely bewildering, and not just "humans with pointy ears". I can already see people ripping the NPC Eldar apart and plundering the bits for Eldar PCs, and there honestly is enough to work with for even a mediocre GM to figure out how to do it, if they wish to. The few extra details, including a picture, on the Stryxis are also more than welcome inclusions, given they are an entirely new race, brought into the 40k setting by FFG, and I look forward to seeing more in the future on these space vagabonds!
TL;DR - 9/10, good solid plot combined with awesome info on several interesting planets in the Expanse, including Footfall. Several interesting NPCs to include in future games, and ELDAR!
I would honestly suggest buying this book, it's worth it.
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