Rogue Trader's Companions Are Trash (and Why I Love Them)

It's a common occurrence in role-playing games for the main character to have a party following him, strengthening his skills in battle and offering different perspectives on the world. Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is no exception; as the titular Rogue Trader, I can take an entourage anywhere. This could be a rare, trusted pair, or I could go wild and recruit smugglers, criminals, dangerous psykers, and mysterious xenos.

What makes this experience so delightful is that all my group members have two things in common: they suck and they all hate each other. I feel like a bus driver driving around a bunch of horrible students who are all fighting in the backseat, except instead of being students, all these people are incredibly deadly and blessed with high caliber weapons and brain powers.

It's a wonderful contrast Baldur's Gate 3, which features a cast of well-rounded and fully realized companion characters who slowly become more sympathetic over the course of the game. You start out as a bunch of hostile strangers, but eventually grow into a full-fledged adventurous party that stands shoulder to shoulder against the apocalypse. Sure, every Baldur's Gate 3 Companion has his own problems, and there are a few instances where they are at each other's throats, but deep down they all have the potential to have a heart of gold.

In A rogue traderEveryone starts out as an asshole and then suffers a trauma that makes them even worse. Let's start with my Senechal and the party's MVP, Abelard. As Senechal, Abelard is supposed to help me, manage certain parts of my void ship, and announce my arrival. There's only one problem. Abelard? More like Hard Enable. This man never says no, and if I take him anywhere, he will do my bidding without a doubt. If I think a man looks too proud and I decide the best way to humiliate him is to remove his kneecaps, Abelard will make sure I don't have to get my hands dirty. Very practical, but not very moral.

Then there is Argenta, a Sister of Battle. This religious warrior wants to kill half of the other people on the ship in the service of the God-Emperor. If Argenta were in charge, jaywalking would be a crime punishable by death by fire. There were several times during the campaign when I had to actively prevent her from putting a bullet in the center of another party member's face.

Heinrix van Calox, an agent of the Inquisition, is not much better. Every time I interact with xenos he's super crazy – something about heresy in the face of human supremacy, I don't know, I'm tuning in – and he's also pretty cool when it comes to accidental murders. I can actually go to him at any point in the campaign and ask him to get rid of certain party members, and he will happily do that overnight.

It says a lot that the most moral and respectable members of my crew are the villains – Jae and Idira are a smuggler and a psyker respectively, and they both have shady dealings. Despite their shortcomings, they are among the best at dealing with interpersonal conflict. Cassia, the ship's navigator, is also pretty cold… when she's not casually suggesting that I remove my crewmates' vocal cords so they don't bother her so much.

Finally, there is Marazhai, the Drukhari I recruited in Commorragh. It took some effort to get him into my party, which makes sense because it's extremely contrived that I would even want to recruit him. Marazhai is an antagonistic space elf who feeds on the torment of living creatures, and he is a major antagonist in the early parts of the game. Still, I went out of my way to not only recruit him, but also to romance him, because I was curious to see how the game works when you have such a dangerous companion on the player's side.

It turns out that's the way Marazhai's romance plays out extremely horny. Soon he will praise my Rogue Trader for being an obedient pet, and I have the opportunity to give him hunting grounds aboard my empty ship. Every now and then he kills innocent crew members. Everyone is giving me the big thumbs up for making this possible, but look, in the bleak galaxy of Warhammer 40K, I deserve a little treat. These party members are terrible, and the events of the campaign largely make them worse – and that makes them fascinating.