Chartist Captains

The Chartist Captains are the commanders of the merchant starships owned by the Imperium that are the primary commercial vessels of the Imperium of Man and belong to the Imperial Merchant Fleet. They are called Chartists because every captain and his ship must have a Merchant Charter granted by the Administratum in the Segmentum of the galaxy that their route takes them through. The space lanes of the Imperium are plied by huge, often ancient, merchant starships commanded by the Chartist Captains. Lacking Navigators or Astropaths to guide them through the Warp, these civilian craft take years to travel their pre-planned, circuitous routes between the stars, trading and bringing supplies to worlds which need them. The starships of the Chartist Captains are the only contact many worlds have with the galaxy at large, and to some primitive worlds their arrivals are long-prophesied events of great spiritual significance. Similarly, the reports of Chartist Captains are the only evidence that many worlds still exist at all. The route of each ship, set down in its charter written up by the Adeptus Terra, can take generations to complete and a Chartist starship is home to a spacefaring community of “Void Born” souls who can live and die without ever setting foot on the surface of a planet.