"We are but simple caretakers of the Holy Mission. We are to take the judgement of the Emperor upon Earth to the stars. We are those who carry His mercy with us for our brothers. We are those who witness His signs. Blessed are we caretakers for if we fail in our duty so the galaxy with us."
- — Anonymous Imperial Missionary
An Imperial Missionary sets off to spread the word of the God-Emperor
A Missionary is a disciple of the Imperial Creed and a priest of the Adeptus Ministorum. Missionaries spread the Imperial Cult and defend it from the core worlds to the far flung edges of the sector. Missionaries spread their belief in the divinity of the God-Emperor to the different worlds of the Imperium, as well as to recently rediscovered human-settled planets. Sometimes they are known for accompanying the Adeptus Sororitas into battle. These men and women serve as the front line of the Ministorum, guiding the followers of the God-Emperor in their day-to-day prayers and observances. There are many types of Missionary: from the young, fervent hopefuls who spread the word of the Imperial Creed with little guidance and support from the Adeptus Ministorum, to the ancient, wise and toughened members of the Missionarus Galaxia. These individuals are at the forefront of the Imperium's expansion, accompanying the crusading armies as they discover new worlds, contact lost civilisations and push back the frontiers of the Emperor's holy domain, The oldest Missionaries are instinctive survivors. They have fought in battles against heathen and godless savages, and thwarted the designs of Chaos and Genestealer cults. A Missionary must survive the rigours of many years of Warp travel and exploration across Death Worlds, desert planets, prehistoric Feral Worlds and the freezing permafrost of Ice Worlds.
Role
"The God-Emperor lives in the hearts of all men; in the places they travel, the worlds they conquer and the shrines they craft in His holy name. Wherever mankind treads so too walks the Emperor, ever sheltering mankind in his divine light."
- — Missionary Jorus in his sermon to the heathens of Fyro III
Whenever a lost human culture is discovered or a new colony is founded, a missionary must journey to that world to take responsibility for its spiritual enlightenment, using whatever tools are most expedient. For some colonies, the missionary’s responsibility can be limited, as other servants of the Ecclesiarchy participate in the colonisation effort. For newly recovered worlds, the task is often far more challenging.
In these instances, the missionary must first absorb and learn the ways of the native society and its religion, if one exists. As he comes to grips with the culture, he must identify practices and teachings that can be refined to become consistent with the ways of the Imperial Creed.
A missionary's ultimate goal on any new world is to convert its existing populace to the Imperial Creed, but this is no trivial matter. Often, a missionary must work without any support. As the sole representative of the Imperium, the missionary serves as an ambassador to the entire planet. Given the scale of this task, many missionaries attempt to institute a gradual and subtle reform that can subtly gain traction within the planet’s culture rather than trying to violently overwhelm the local beliefs immediately by force of arms or raw charisma.
Missionaries frequently begin implementing such changes by integrating portions of the Imperial Creed into the planet’s native belief system. This might be a simple matter of substituting the Emperor and his saints for the roles of deities within the world’s pantheon. In other circumstances, a solution could require more extreme, violent actions or could take longterm planning. A missionary might have to design a system for a far more gradual conversion process. By placing facets of the Imperial Creed subversively into the culture, a missionary can help to lay the groundwork for his successor—sometimes one who only arrives centuries or millennia later. Ideally, the foundation the first missionary creates opportunities for future missionaries to exploit in the signs and prophecies the first leaves behind, ensuring that even if he cannot succeed in his lifetime, the Imperium will triumph long after his death.
The precise tenets of the Creed that missionaries espouse can vary substantially. Some are generous to a fault, granting the Emperor’s pardon for past crimes, while winning the population over with charm and assistance. Those who follow this path are often more dependent upon their impassioned speech and vast body of knowledge. Others pursue a more militant course, often with the assistance of particularly zealous converts or even the forces of the Imperial Guard. Missionaries who employ this pattern might initiate a holy war against the planet’s native religions or they might use the power of the Imperium as a tool while they ferret out threats to humanity. Still others work from the shadows, acting to subtly introduce the Imperial Creed so that the inhabitants never truly realise a change has occurred.
Missionarius Galaxia
The Missionaries of the Missionarius Galaxia are a special breed of Imperial servant, and although they operate under the auspices of the Cardinals Palatine, they are in practice a nigh autonomous body within the Adeptus Ministorum. The Missionaries are tasked with accompanying all manner of expeditions into regions of the galaxy lost or previously unknown to the Imperium. Whether it be aboard Imperial Guard vessels launching a crusade to retake a sector lost to alien invasion, or in the retinue of a daring Rogue Trader penetrating the dark, unexplored regions of the galaxy, Missionaries bear the flame of the Imperial Creed wherever they go, and with it kindle the faith of those long separated from the true faith.
Upon the discovery of a new or lost human culture out among the stars, it is the task of the Missionarius Galaxia to study all he can of its society and religion. He is ever watchful for ways in which the culture’s religious practices and teachings can be subtly altered, to bring them broadly into line with the Imperial Creed. Practices dubbed benighted or barbaric may be supplanted with more suitable ones, though often some symbolism is allowed to remain to lend a sense of continuity. For example, necrophagia – the eating of the dead – is a practise proscribed by the Imperial Creed, but when it is encountered in savage cultures it may be replaced with the symbolic consumption of a particular totem animal. Equally, the worship of a pantheon of multiple gods will be replaced with that of a host of Imperial Saints, each chosen because they embody something of the qualities associated with each of the deposed deities.
The men and women of the Missionarius Galaxia are supremely skilled orators and diplomats, and they must also be cunning and resourceful to survive contact with often barbaric or belligerent cultures. They have the skill to recognise when an impassioned sermon will change the course of an entire planetary history, or when they must instead retreat into the shadows and lay plans that will not see fruition in their own lifetime. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the Ministorum’s officers regard the Missionaries as mavericks and reckless adventurers, but the truth is that they are the bedrock on which the faith of multitudes is built.
Notable Missionaries
- Genevieve Almace - In the short time since her demise, Missionary Genevieve Almace's legend has already spread through many of the worlds of the Koronus Expanse. Her unceasing battles to destroy the xenos and the corrupt served as a powerful example to the uninitiated locals of the region. Through her shining example, numerous human civilisations were reunited with the Imperial Creed—and many others burned. In the process of restoring faith to these far-fl ung worlds, her mission also eliminated huge swathes of xenos and mutants, insuring that the faith could grow. Her valour and faith continues to hold sway among the citizens on the worlds she restored to the Imperium. In some places, the faithful revere her as blessed, hoping that she would someday become recognised as a saint. Agents of the Ecclesiarchy have even collected evidence that suggests some worlds harbour madly devoted cults of followers who worship her as a deity of war.
- Saint Castor the Obviate - The remover of obstacles and patron of truth. Legend has it that this missionary endured all manner of undignified public punishments upon the feudal world of Maccabeus Quintus, including five attempts to cut off his head. Each one failed until he pointed out an error with the guillotine's mechanism. According to the legend of his beatification, the people of Maccabeus Quintus were so impressed by his pious devotion that they rose up in support of the Imperial Creed, casting down their government to much rejoicing. Acolytes call upon Saint Castor to watch over interrogations, smile upon investigations and speed answers to the minds of researchers.
- Uriah Jacobus - Uriah Jacobus was a notable missionary who was declared Protector of the Faith in the 40th Millennium after delivering the people of Solstice from alien infestation. Having converted dozens of worlds, he finally died of a lung-destroying virus on the Death World of Gorang.
- Missionary-Abbot, Prelate Orland Skae - Leaving the relative comfort of his post in the high churches of Scintilla six decades earlier, Orland Skae felt his vocation to preach the Emperor's word. He eventually found his way to the Agri-World of Iocanthos. His slow but genuine gains have merited further promotion and support from his distant superiors, eventually becoming impressive enough to garner greater resources from the Ecclesiarchy. This, in turn, has been enough to allow for the establishment of Iocanthos's first cathedral. If Skae is successful, he will be named its bishop by his masters -- Iocanthos's first of that rank. But pride and burgeoning ambition, however, have been Skae's downfall. Drawn to an ancient valley in search for a site to build this cathedral, Skae was well aware that legend spoke of a former stronghold of the old gods. Determined to eradicate these so-called "old gods," Skae was slowly corrupted by a Daemon who called itself Tsylak, the Dancer at the Threshold. Whispering in Skae's mind, fanning the aims of his desire for greatness, the Daemone has eroded Skae's sanity, bending the abbot's own plans for the cathedral to secretly fulfill its own designs.
- Tablor Zul - Once a missionary, this faithless traitor became the self-proclaimed king of the moon Zul's Landing, located in the Calixis Sector.
Sources
- Codex: Sisters of Battle (2nd Edition), pp. 29, 34, 55, 62
- Dark Heresy: Core Rulebook (RPG), pp. 282, 361, 363, 378, 389
- Dark Heresy: Blood of Martyrs (RPG), pg. 17, 36, 41
- Rouge Trader: Faith and Coin (RPG), pp. 6-23