Related Question:

Let's say that House Dumbjerks is one of the oldest in the Imperium. They even have a  Warrant signed by the Emperor. Then they all die.

Would the Imperium re-issue that Warrant the next time they want to create a Rogue Trader? How would General Steve of the Imperial Guard deal with the fact that his freshly issued warrant doesn't say House Steve on it? Do warrants even specify who they're given to, or do they just say "Whoever holds this"?

I believe there is a long, administrative process, where the would be bearer must journey to Terra, and beseech the High Lords to change it. The alternative is that, since NO ONE may countermand the orders of the Emperor, a Warrant with no applicable bearers would simply be nulled, and stored in a file on Terra. If Steve wants a Warrant, and is found worthy, they'll make him a new one, riddled with the controls later snuck into the Warrants to make the RT slightly manageable. They aren't made out of anything special, such as Unobtainium, so it's no more work to write up a new one, and almost guaranteed less.

This statement sort of moots some of my own story/commentary, earlier. If the Warrant must be hereditary, then no one else can get it, just another one, and work to eat up everything the previous Warrant owned. If the bearer can name successor, and it needs not be family, then the new RT would get the Warrant, and, if his name is different, the prior might be able to request that the Warrant be edited, which is less a slap to the Emperor's face. Otherwise, just adopt the newbie, and they must accept that the Dynasty has a different name; this saves on getting all the towels remonogrammed, anyway, and capitalizes on the name recognition already present in said Dynasty.

This is partly why I wanted my Dynasty to be the Silver Ravens, rather than House ________, which became House Korvallus in 708.M41. If Korvallus has no children (and at around 300, I don't expect him to start the practice this late), and the Dynasty is known by the Company name, rather than House X, it would be easier to appoint one of his cultivated Lieutenants to succeed him, without  all the hoopla of changing the Dynasty's name, or the Lieutenant's given name. Oh well, I suppose bits of this are the kind of stuff we just say "the GM says…", and let it work. GW isn't likely to show up at my house, and beat me with the new TT core book because I oopsed a bit, or slightly altered, their "established" canon.

Well the easiest answer is to have it be a bearer warrant that's passed down according to the organizations dictates. It doesn't HAVE to be House X, just that's the most common. My point is a hereditary warrant doesn't become a bearer warrant. If there's no one to claim a hereditary warrant it likely goes innactive. Now that's not to say that weird conditions can't occur but more often then not I would presume if the warrant doesn't have "The bearer of this warrant" then it will likely say "Spobodiy Necial and their descendants of the house of Necial." I don't think people edit warrants once their issued. That kind of goes against the purpose of a warrant as a inviolable document.

Now it is possible even likely considering the vast breadth of the imperium that a warrant could have been granted to an organization rather then a house and the rules for passing on the warrant within the organization worked right into the warrant of trade. I just think it's going to be the minority, that's not to say you can't build a campaign around such a minority.

Basically if it's an organizational warrant (similar to what probably empowers many guilds and noble houses though with much greater scope) it's different from a heredetary warrant and different from a bearer warrant. The Silver Ravens warrant could also effectively be their charter as much as their warrant.

susanbrindle said:

All warrants are written for a specific family, for specific reasons, with specific clauses and stipulations. It is unlikely that any warrant - written by the Emperor or not - would be "re-issuable", since the way it is worded and so forth would not apply. It's not as easy as to cross out an old name and write a new one on a piece of paper. Nevermind the fact such an old Warrant of Trade would likely be falling apart if you so much as glanced at it.

They might issue a new warrant entirely based on the old warrant, but it wouldn't be the same warrant, nor signed by the Emperor. Add to that the fact that not even the High Lords of Terra can change or countermand an order given by the Emperor, at least not formally - which is exactly what a warrant signed by the Emperor is.

And a warrant isn't really something you carry around with you, unless perhaps if it's an entirely fresh one, and as far as I know, all warrants are ties to a person or their family, and always hereditary. It doesn't mean that that is how it is in absolutely all cases in the vast universe of the Imperium, but I have never heard of it not being that way, so it's incredibly unlikely that it would work in any other way.

…which might suck for Space Marine Rogue Traders, I guess. On the other hand, such a Rogue Trader can live almost forever, I guess.. but yeah, whatever.

Fgdsfg said:

You are incorrect on this. Bearer warrants do exist in canon and have popped up in Rogue Trader materials. The one that comes most readily to mind off the top of my head is mentioned in Kronos Beastiary as locked in a sealed stasis doohickey presumably rolling around in a beasties gullet after it's last bearer got himself eaten.

Edit: Clarity and to make it sound less combat then it was coming off.

 For that matter, there are non-hereditary warrants made out to specific people as well- case in point being the Letter of Marque of Rogue Trader Hansard Rugolo. Really screwed over his son Maynard when Hansard died (which helped set up the plot of Eye of Terror).

 From what i have been told there is a copy of each and every legal warrant of trade stored in the vaults of terra in the event that an existing warrant is damaged or if there are claims of forgery. Also I have heard it theorised that some members of the Ecclesiarchy might actively hunt doen warrants signed by the Emperor, ether because they are holy relics to be preserved or because they are trying to suppress the fact that the God-Emperor was ever a "mortal" being in the first place.

truedragon5374 said:

Yes to the Ecclesiarchy hunting down Warrants signed by Him-on-Earth. Yes to preserve them as holy relics (and boost the coffers of whichever ecclesiarchal diocese that holds them); that formed one of the sub-plots of Matt Farrer's Legacy. Not sure if I've ever heard of an ecclesiarchal faction trying to suppress that He once walked around physically.

Matt Farrer needs to lay down some more Shira Calpurnia. Those are some of the best 40K stories I've ever read. The last one, 'Blind', had me thinking of the movie The Forbidden Planet.