While your missions exist to advance your Patron's goals, your character also has their own personal goals. These may stem from some event in your past or arise during the campaign. You gain XP by achieving your goals.
Choosing Goals
When choosing goals, look at your character’s Origin, Faction, and Role, as well as all the other details you know about them. A goal should be something that excites you to play, no matter what emotion your character associates with it. Your goal is up to you, but you should discuss it with your GM, and probably the other players, to make sure it fits into the campaign.
Short-term Goals
Short-term goals represent your immediate objectives. They are outcomes you wish to achieve within days and weeks, possibly sooner. Under normal circumstances, a short-term goal should take at least two or three sessions to complete.
Examples: Take revenge against a local gang member, uncover the criminal behind a series of thefts, or acquire a replacement for your shattered chainsword.
Long-Term Goals
Long-term goals are ambitions that you will need to work on for months or years to complete, and may never be achieved at all, perhaps taken more as a description of a primary motivation in your life than a realistic outcome.
Examples: Take control of a major criminal cartel, ruin a Rogue Trader Dynasty and acquire its warrant of trade, destroy a major cult of The Ruinous Powers.
Heresy begets retribution.
Achieving Your Goals
If you achieve your short-term goal, you earn 50 XP and should choose a new short-term goal at the end of the session.
If you achieve your long-term goal, you may either:
- Earn 500 XP and choose a new long-term goal at the end of the session.
- Retire your character — who becomes an NPC under your GM’s control — and gain a bonus of half the earned XP of your current character to spend on your next character.
Retired characters generally stay in place to take advantage of their achieved ambition. You can build them into the background of your new character, so that they may continue to help you.
If you want to reactivate a retired character, talk to your GM about how best to bring that into the current story. Retiring characters allows you to build a network across the Askellon Sector, and can be a great source of mission leads.