Introducing the crew of the Cerulean, flagship of Rogue Trader Aurelia St. Lucia! Formerly one of the humbler ships of the St. Lucia dynasty’s flotilla, Cerulean is now its sole remaining vessel, as Aurelia is the sole surviving member of her house.

At the peak of its glory, the St. Lucia rogue trader dynasty’s flotilla was as numerous as it was varied. Among its numbers it boasted ponderous cargo behemoths, agile explorator vessels, nimble escorts, and potent “armed merchant vessels” to rival the warships of the Imperial Navy for size and power. At the flotilla’s core, eclipsing its fleetmates in size, grandeur, and prestige, the Azure, A Gryphonne Rampant Argent – an ancient Conquest-class Star Galleon, the beating heart of the rogue trader house whose arms formed its name.

Then came Noctis Aeterna, the dying days of the 41st millennium. The Cicatrix Maledictum sundered the galaxy – and in the fringes of that leering maw was snared the St. Lucia dynasty flotilla, at the time returning in triumph from an expedition to the far reaches of the Ultima Segmentum. Their current status is unknown; they may still be desperately striving to escape the labyrinthine folds of entwined warp and realspace – or they may simply have been lost to the Empyrean.

Aurelia St. Lucia is the dynasty’s sole known survivor. Twelfth child of Rogue Trader Octavia St. Lucia, she forsook the privileged but ultimately purposeless life of the trader’s youngest progeny – the key flotilla captaincies and high executive posts in the dynasty having long since been allotted to her elder siblings, Aurelia opted instead for a life of duty and honour as an officer of the Imperial Navy, a choice that estranged her from most of her family. It was a choice she rarely regretted, even when a hotly contested boarding action earned her high praise from Admiralty just as it cost her her left arm. It was also a choice that proved her salvation, as her post as executive officer aboard a Battlefleet Tempestus strike cruiser left Aurelia her family’s sole survivor.

The Cerulean was one of the dynasty’s older vessels, her age and spaceworthiness leaving it consigned to less ambitious trade runs among the Imperium’s inner worlds. Following the announcement of the Macragge Symposium, the Cerulean was tasked with intercepting the flotilla on its return, and redirecting them to Ultramar; the St. Lucia dynasty’s ancient prestige guaranteed it a seat among the Hundred. That summons would remain undelivered. When word of the flotilla’s loss reached the Cerulean, her shipmaster’s sealed orders – issued to all ships in the flotilla against the possibility of utmost calamity – led her at last to the Imperial strike cruiser Grim Duty, bearing word to the warship’s first officer of her ascension to the office of Rogue Trader, and of the downfall of her house.

Released from Imperial duty to take up her house’s Warrant of Trade, Aurelia took her mother’s seat among the Hundred at the symposium on Macragge – but where once her house would have stood at the forefront of those gathered there, the loss of the dynasty’s flotilla left Aurelia and House St. Lucia impoverished, and unable to join those obeying the Lord Commander’s edict to extend the ravaged Imperium’s borders.

She now seeks to gather up the few remaining strands of her household; her end goal, to venture into the abyssal depths of the Cicatrix Maledictum, either to recover what remains of her house’s flotilla, or at least to confirm its loss. In a sign of her resolve, she has struck the gryphonne from her house’s arms until she can recover the Azure, A Gryphonne Rampant Argent, the ancient flagship of her dynasty. Further, she has quartered her arms’ now-blank azure field with white, the mourning colour of the house’s homeworld, and garbed herself likewise. She will only resume her full ancestral arms when she has rescued what remains of her family – or mourned their total loss, and avenged their destruction.