Rogue Trader - Privateers of the Imperium

Owlcat Games has posted new lore on the Rogue Traders:

Privateers of the Imperium

“The armchair-admirals at the Navy academies will have it that combat in space is a predictable, scientific affair, akin to a game of regicide.
They teach that you should only engage your enemy at this or that range, that it takes a particular number of escorts to engage one cruiser and a hundred other such nuggets of tedious, received wisdom.
What do they know? These academics and experts who have never felt the rush of blood as you close on your foe, his plasma containment failing as he bleeds out into the void? Who among them has closed to ranges that make the ‘experts’ splutter with indignation? Which of them know the visceral thrill that is the bloody murder of combat in space?
I have felt the frozen kiss of the void as my hull split, and lived. I have hurled my warship at my foe as if it were a torpedo, and defeated him utterly. And I will do so again, a thousand times, until the Emperor or the universe decides I’ve done it once too often.”

–Rogue Trader Lucien Gherrit of the Clan Arcadius, at the victory banquet aboard the Wotan following the defeat of the traitor 88th Flotilla.

 
Rogue Traders

The Imperium is a vast, scattered realm, extending over almost the entire galaxy, impinging itself upon the more compact areas of alien settled space. The million or more inhabited worlds the Imperium controls are but a tiny fraction of the galactic whole. Then there are the fringes and halo zones, remote areas where the Astronomican does not reach, and where the only human settlers are renegades or pioneering groups whose ancestors were forgotten millennia ago. Most of the galaxy remains unexplored, unknown, and extremely dangerous.

The potential of new worlds, alien civilisations, and unimaginable resources made necessary a class of free-ranging Imperial agents known as Rogue Traders. Licensed and often equipped by the Adeptus Terra, the Rogue Trader is free to explore the far regions of the galaxy, the areas where the Astronomican does not reach, and those areas within its reach as yet unvisited.
Rogue Traders have even attempted to cross the voids of interstellar space, but over such distances even the Astropaths’ powers of communication are useless, and whether such missions have succeeded is unknown. Operating in isolation from the central authority of the Imperium, the Rogue Trader must decide how to react to alien cultures, new discoveries, and threats. If he judges a race to be potentially dangerous, he may attempt to destroy it or to gather as much information as he can so that others may do so.
If he decides a race may be of use to humanity, he may attempt to make contact and establish relations. If merely rich in technology or minerals, a planet may be plundered, and the Rogue Trader will return to Terra laden with the treasure of space—alien artefacts, rare and precious minerals, and undreamed of technology. 

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Thanks Redglyph!