Rogue Traders - Rogue Trader Starships: To a Rogue Trader, nothing is more important or valuable than their starship. True, their Warrant of Trade provides them with unmatched authority, their resources give them power, and their matchless ambition equips them with the drive to accomplish true greatness. However, without a starship, a Rogue Trader is no more powerful than a planetary governor or general in the Astra Militarum.With it, though, a Rogue Trader can travel beyond the bounds of the Imperium, explore the unknown, and exploit it for their profit.  At a starship's helm, they can smite their foes with the fury of their macrobatteries and even invade entire planets. With their starship, a Rogue Trader can wield more power than any other single individual, save those in the highest strata of the Imperium.The void-faring vessels of the Imperium are far more than simple vehicles. With the smallest more than a kilometre in length, a voidship bears a striking resemblance to an Imperial hive city in miniature, with a population to match. There are the low-decks pressmen and servitors responsible for brute labour, the gunnery teams who man the ship's weaponry, and the armsmen who keep order amongst the crew. However, there are also galley-masters, artisans of all types, chirurgeons, and mech-wrights, for a voidship must be self-sufficient in all respects. Then there are those whose ties to the vessel are more...complicated.The tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus keep the enginarium as their stronghold but roam throughout the vessel to tend to its myriad devices. The priests of the Adeptus Ministorum wander the vessel as well -- to keep the souls of the crew free from corruption. Finally there are the Navigators, aloof within their sanctum towers. Though they obey the orders of the ship's captain, he is not their master. Over all this presides the Lord Captain, sole master and commander of their vessel. Small wonder that a Rogue Trader often sees their flagship not as a collection of tech-systems, but as a living, breathing community of their sworn servants.Those who serve aboard a starship see themselves set apart from the rest of the Imperium. Even the lowest press-ganged crew-scum will have the chance to travel to different worlds -- a privilege most Imperial citizens do not even know exists -- and they make that journey aboard a mighty vessel. When a master gunner fires a single broadside, he is unleashing city-destroying firepower, and the tech-priests of the enginarium control energies of unimaginable potency.It is little surprise that when a ship's crewman finds themself on the surface of a distant world, they are apt to treat those they encounters with condescension, if not outright contempt. After all, they will never leave their planet of birth. The crewman, on the other hand, has seen something of the wider universe and has a measure of some of its marvels -- and perils. It is also unsurprising that after many standard years aboard a voidship, a crewman finds it more familiar than the world he left behind.To a seasoned voidman, the rumblings and mutterings of a spacefaring vessel are as natural as birdsong and rain are to a planet-dweller. Starship crew spend standard years, even solar decades, aboard their ships without setting foot planetside. Eventually, fresh, cool breezes and the sounds of wildlife seem unnatural. Any true voidman is intimately familiar with the almost imperceptible vibrations of the ship's main drives, and can tell whether their vessel is at rest, accelerating, or manoeuvring simply by subtle changes in the background noise.Over this is the rattling of the air transfer-fans, the crackle-snap of static discharge, and, if the ship is travelling through the Warp, a  million sibilant whispers beyond the edge of consciousness. A voidman quickly learns which sounds are normal, and to react quickly when he hears something out of the ordinary.Interposed throughout this background noise is the chatter of vox-summons, ship-wide orders, and signal-tones. Aboard a starship where vital systems must be manned at all times, even simple concepts like "day" and "night" must be artificially regulated. Every ship master has their own preferred method of signalling shift changes. For example, Chartist-Trader Elizabeth Orleans prefers hymns of choral plainsong extolling the God-Emperor, whilst the master-privateer Ignace Zor has cherub servitors beat martial gongs.It is said that after the infamous Rogue Trader Travor Sebastian lost his sanity, he had his senior warrant officer ride a midget equine through the corridors whilst sounding a bugle to announce the watch change. However, no matter the ship--or its master--all vessels have an alarm so strident and soul wrenching that no one can ignore it. This is reserved for the three worst possible situations on an Imperial voidship; imminent combat, depressurisation, and Warp intrusion.In the 41st Millennium, a spacefaring vessel is rare and precious. Starships take solar decades, even standard centuries to build, if the builders have the required skills and knowledge base in the first place. It is rare to find a "new" starship -- most are hundreds or thousands of Terran years old, and some date back to the earliest days of the Imperium. Therefore, starships are never mass-produced, and even two ships of the same class are rarely alike. A Lunar-class Cruiser produced in the shipyards of Mars will be vastly different from another Lunar hailing from the docks of Port Wrath.However, regardless of class or configuration, all voidships share certain components and design similarities. All starships, for example, require plasma drives to propel them through realspace, armour and void shields to protect them, and a hull to contain these systems. Ships have many components, the various parts that make up the starship. Some of these are vital, such as the life support system and genatoria facilities. Without them the ship will not function. Others, such as weapons batteries or luxury passenger quarters, are useful but not essential.