A Xenos Vessel that served as part of a Rogue Trader fleet.
A Xenos Vessel is a voidship of various possible alien origins sometimes used by Imperial Rogue Traders, its crew often hired as mercenaries.
Contact with xenos species is without doubt the habit for which Rogue Traders gain the most notoriety in the Imperium. Their trading missions necessarily take them to regions of space beyond Imperial control, regions where there is every chance of finding thriving intelligent alien cultures, even alien stellar empires. Rogue Traders can gain much of value and interest from these species and are certainly not above employing them as mercenaries when the situation demands.
Far from home, where the protection of the Navis Imperialis is but a hopeless dream, many Rogue Traders instead hire out alien vessels and their crews for protection. These vessels often provide much needed local knowledge, as well as the ability to overcome cultural or linguisitic barriers along with a healthy dose of sheer firepower where required.
Particularly bold Rogue Traders will, from time to time, journey back to Imperial space, still with their alien employees in tow, perhaps keen to make continued use of the exotic weaponry which their vessels provide. Rogue Traders typically favour vessels which make use of alien directed energy technologies, since the huge power supplies and impossibly difficult upkeep needed for the Imperium's own starship-based laser and lance weaponry generally makes them unuseable by Rogue Traders, isolated, as they often are, for standard years at a time, far from Imperial spacedocks.
Although Xenos Vessels are often considered to be armed with weapons batteries and lances, this is in fact simply a label for a whole gamut of alien weaponry such as Ion Cannons, Jokaero laser technology, fusion generators or other directed energy weapons of indeterminate origin.
Sources[]
- Battlefleet Gothic Magazine 19, pg. 6