What would a Space Marine legion who primiarily allied with rogue traders be like?

What would a Space Marine legion who primiarily allied with rogue traders be like?

How would a primarch even come to lead his legion that way?

That's a good question. How come Rogue Traders don't have a chapter permanently assigned to them, to act as boarding parties etc? A thousand marines can easily fit their base of operations on a RT cruiser.

Low tech ocean world planet Legion commanded by Aurum D. Barbossa.

Because the invesment in a SM chapter is beyond Rogue Traders reach, since it is not even money-based but Oath-based.

oh you!

you could totally have it oath based. either have the trader come to the chapters (probably) aid and they set down something saying that the chapter would repay the debt somehow, they do and the trader decides to try and one up them, and back and for they go, so over time they just keep helping eachother out until it blossoms into a semi-normal relationship.

or even it could just be them helping/being helped by dozens of smaller dynasties that they just happen to come across

One of the primarchs never made it to a planet, instead their pod was found by rogue traders who raised him as one of their own. He eventually became a powerful captain on his own, before being discovered by the emperor.

His legion would be specialized in void warfare, and would be entirely space based and spread loosely throughout the galaxy. it would make heavy use of terminators, as well as auxiliaries of both imperial and xenos. Of all legions they would be the most tolerant of xenos and are usually sent as ambassadors to "reasonable" xenos. The legion would probably have some questionable habits, like using unsanctioned xenos tech and fighting on the behalf of xenos.

You're thinking of Alpharius.

exactly, if alpha legions theme was based on the rogue traders instead of going all "i am alpharius" schemers on us.

That's too creative for GW.
They would call him Capitán Payrath Corsaro or somecrap like that.

Most likely Rogue traders are seen with a certain disgust.
Oh yes they might flash and charm but we all know them and their doings.

during the GC there are a number of Rogue Traders who are simply powerful enemies the Emperor basically exiles after their defeat; they get vast starships to live on and take detachments of his fine troops to watch over them, and fuck off into the outer darkness to spend their lives bringing humanity to the void - where they would find little familiar, and probably achieve very little, really hammering home how beaten they were

This. I actually use this as the background for my Rogue Trader dynasty with the renowned warrant perk - the Emperor, Himself, decided that the Solar system would be better off if my dynasty's great ancestor fucked off to the Ghoul Stars.

A big chunk of Rogue Tradering is exploration and shit. Although they are called traders, the Warret of trades big dealy in general is that they alone are allowed to push past or straight up leave the Imperium of man and strike out to boldly go. Even the ones who are more mercantile focused are... well, mercantile focused. Astartes chapters are singly concerned with the protection of the Imperium, specifically in a special forces way. They occupy totally different fields in the IoM.

I think the point of using private parties to do your work is that you don't have to expand governmental ressources in the process.

in the modern era, certainly with military contracting it's more or less the opposite - expending government resources, but excising "risk" in the sense of bankruptcy etc; the problem being that most of these contractors have a single paymaster, so if they start losing contracts, they go under and you end up bringing all of that back on-balance-sheet, so it counts against you at budget time, which leaves both you and your political opponents (who naturally don't want to be accused of wrecking the budget either) paying out and hoping you've got people doing due diligence properly

ultimately it's going to end the way the British East India Company did - bankruptcies and bailouts and, eventually, after about forty or so years, a nationalization of the remaining contractors which is simply a legal formality given how much they already owe in bailouts

people will still get rich, taxes will still be paid, services will still be rendered, but everybody gets to lie and say they got their own way

It's probably not that far fetched to have a rogue trader that's beholden to a chapter in some way. It's easy for me to imagine a writ of trade requiring occasional service to the imperial Navy or other elements of the imperium.

There's a thought though, a Renegade but not Chaos Chapter and a Rogue Trader might meet and realise there's benefits to working with each other.
The Trader has so much leeway that pretty much only High Lords can actually tell him to knock it off without also bringing something else to the table. It's possible he might be able to bullshit them as an obscure but totally loyalist chapter for just long enough that people stop thinking anything odd about it.
No, not sure what traitor marines you're talking about! Must have escaped. By the way, please do meet my new TOTALLY LOYAL marine friends I just made. No connection.

And then you have a chapter enjoying having pseudo-Imperial upkeep while still not directly beholden to the Imperium bedecked in the Trader's heraldry. Doing... profitmarine things. What would RT aligned marines even do?

You're not mitigating a lot of risks when you're giving them your best ships and soldiers.

Wouldn't it be easier to hypotheticize a Chapter of renegade (not Chaos) Marines deciding they'd rather pal around with a Rogue Trader on the off chance they'll get to purge xenos or pirates instead of a Primarch and his entire legion?

Like, for real, one of these things is totally doable and the other requires Dhalsim levels of flexibility to make those kinds of stretches.

Why are you talking about primarchs? They have nothing to do with Rogue Traders?

Hasn't been a Space Marine Legion in 10k years m8, except for the Traitor Legions, get with the times.

As much as I love this idea, the problem starts when the marines take casualties. Rogue Traders are given as much freedom as they are because they generally operate on the fringes of Imperial Space, and it ends up being more or less "out of sight, out of mind". If you have an entire Chapter of Space Marines that needs to get shipments of either geneseed or new marines, then all those little things the Imperium can overlook if the Trader doesn't rub them in get put into the limelight. You can get away with a Chapter sending a sort of honor guard for the Trader (hell, maybe even an entire 11th company), but having an entire Chapter based on a Rogue Trader's ship brings up some uncomfortable red tape.

Probably a lot like the Blood Ravens.

Reread the OP, and remember that Rogue Traders were already present during the 30th millenium.

They generally have to pay for those themselves, and equip and train them to be the best since they can afford fancier guns and veteran soldiers than your average regiment. When it's just a few ships worth of corpsmen you need, it's doable on a small scale. Rarely do they outfit enough soldiers as a entire hive world can produce, in which case the quality goes down because you can't afford to stock that whole planet with the best material and training.

Some powerful Rogue Traders might have a select few, if even only a single, Astartes under their employ, probably under some debt or another the chapter is paying them for a past action. Renegade chapters are probably targets of such high priority and traitors of such magnitude that they're either exterminated with a prejudice that supersedes even a Rogue Trader's influence, or they're captured and sent on Penitent Crusade or exterminated. Of course, Traitor marines are definitely not averse to working under a rogue Rogue Trader if it furthers the goal of Chaos.

That said, they might work together because they are working towards some common goal. The Emperor's Tarot told the Space Marines to head somewhere towards some horrible portent or mystery. Turns out the Rogue Trader is on the scene and is trying to find out what's going on as well. It's unlikely they'd be working under protracted circumstances because of the differences between them, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't ally themselves against a mutual foe, be it a threat to the Imperium or their profit margins.

In 40k, the Marines Errant sent huge portions of their Chapter out with House Ecale; in 30k, an example would be the Crimson Sons Chapter of the Night Lords Legion, who were pressed into service of the Rogue Trader Gotha after the Emperor granted him clemency. Both elements eventually returned from their postings, in the case of the Marines Errant, enriched by their share of the plunder taken in service of House Ecale.

These marines were gifted to us by their chapter, I swear!

I would assume if such an outlandish (lol40k) thing were to occur, it'd be as something of a springboard to rediscover and crusade on lost human worlds via the Rogue Trader's explorations.

The Rogue Trader finds places, the Marines follow behind to curbstomp into Imperial rule. Sort of like the early Age of Imperialism after the Americas were reached by that faggot Columbus.

That, or you could have a chapter of relatively rogue marines who love profit and filthy lucre gained in their fighting and follow along with Rogue Traders to find more and more exotic wealth.
>They would be Spice Marines

Rogue Trader user here posting progress on my crew. As the story goes, they're currently supporting an AdMech explorator expedition on the fringes of the galaxy. They're also accompanied by a Deathwatch Kill Team in case pesky Xenos show up.

It's the other way around.

Oh that big space vessel? A generous gift by the Rogue trader! The huge hoard of relics and useful obscure items? The Rogue trader had no use for them anyways and thus gifted them to us!

Oh, and the Rogue trader is sticking around because he is our honored guest and we have invited him for festivities.