Editing Ecclesiarchy (section)

===Missionarius Galaxia===
Not all of the priests tend shrines or preach at mass. One of the most well known functions of the Ecclesiarchy is bringing religion to the heathen humans beyond the territories of the Imperium.

Most of the missionaries accompany the Imperial Guard as they expand outwards, conquering or reconquering worlds, making certain that those who rebuild afterwards become loyal subjects of the Imperium.

Some Missionaries take it a bit further and don't even travel with Imperial Guard regiments, instead preferring to travel alone to hostile human worlds and bringing the light of the Emperor to them in more peaceful ways. These '''Torchbearers''' are expert survivalists and considerably more resilient than normal Ministorum Priests, having to live and prosper without any back-up at all.

Oddly, Missionaries tend to be some of the most tolerant and even tempered parts of the Ecclesiarchy even if their faith is beyond question and reproach and missionary lore as a whole is rather devoid of the usual grimdark and is instead...actually a really reasonable approach? As the Ecclesiarchy regards enforcing a single, consistent central dogma pure of any syncretic elements to be far too hard to do for too little reward in a rare example of common sense, Missionaries are instead expected to work with the heathens they want to convert and ease them into their new faith. Indeed overall the Imperium is far more tolerant of heathens then heretics and generally prefers an unusually soft and diplomatic approach to dealing with the former.

After all, a heretic or apostate is someone who knowingly flouts or abandons a faith like the Imperial Creed, but heathens by definition were never part of the faith to begin with; and so have a measure of innocence, especially if their heathenry was born of ignorance. And as part of this innocence and recognising the impossibility of enforcing a strict and singular dogma, the Missionary usually tries to modify the local faith into something more compatible with the Imperial Creed rather than tear their religion down and start from scratch.

In moves that are directly inspired by real world conversion efforts by monotheistic faiths throughout history, missionaries will look for the god or goddess held in the highest esteem by the local culture and then identify them with the Emperor. The other gods will then be equivocated to either aspects of the Emperor or to the most similar Imperial Saint in the canon depending on what works best. Often the Missionary will even study the theology of the local culture so in depth that they'll successfully argue that the Imperial Creed is a truer interpretation of the religion than what the established authorities are preaching.

They also try to preserve most local traditions as much as they can in order to make converting an easier sell with a few exceptions, which are usually traditions we in the modern world would find abhorrent like say; ritual rape or eating people. Cannibalism for example is strictly forbidden by the Imperial Creed <s>except when Space Marines eat people's brains apparently</s> and so missionaries usually try to abolish such traditions and replace them with more symbolic eating of flesh and blood like how at the catholic church the "body and blood of christ" you eat at mass is just bread and wine that stands in for eating the poor bastard of a carpenter. They do however, try to change attitudes towards psykers and mutants to be more in line with official policy; psykers should be compliant servants who will willingly accept being taken by the black ships to serve humanity in some way, not kings and lords ruling over normal humans/being left untrained and exploding into WTFBBQDAEMONS and that unstable mutants need to be culled, while stable [[Abhuman]] sub-species are officially sanctioned and accepted if not wholly equal.

Whether the missionary works from the top down by converting the powers that be who will then enforce the imperial creed on the plebs or from the bottom up by converting the masses who will rise up against their heathen overlords and create a new society depends on the missionary's preferences and what they feel is easiest. As bringing new souls and cultures into the Emperor's light is holy work, just about all strategies are allowed in the name of saving the souls of heathens from the dangers of their ignorance.

As missionaries usually want converts, not corpses; use of force is generally a last resort and even then it's usually said force is used non-violently like having a rogue trader's ship eclipse the sun over their location to spook the primitives or show off the power of the imperial guard. The main exception to this is when the local religion is found to be based around xenos, abominable intelligence, or chaos worship. At this point the missionary's expected task is to call in the guard, sisters, or some other available military force to crack some skulls.