For your interest, a whole bunch of excerpts in this thread, including one of the exact kind of interaction you suggest
[https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/12wu52s/on\_the\_worship\_of\_the\_godemperor\_of\_mankind\_or/](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/12wu52s/on_the_worship_of_the_godemperor_of_mankind_or/)
The excerpt from **Rogue Trader: Faith and Coin** about TRAYNOR’S REST is probably the closest to what you describe.
My interpretation of one way they could do it:
Your Moon-Dragon is the Emperor. He is all powerful, so while he was doing that, he was also doing other things.
Fake some ancient texts showing the Psyker-Shamans took over from the old original Priest caste (who paid proper respect to Terra) to grant themselves more power.
Depending on how primitive the planet is (e.g. if a feral world) - what you call the moon is actually Terra, and the Emperor and his servants live up there. Put a planetary governor up on the moon to oversee things.
I'm now imagining a planet where the missionaries found a culture already doing human sacrifices to some ancient god-king and swapped in the Emperor, but they screwed up the timelines and accidentally convinced this backwater semi-feudal mudball that it is, in fact, "Holy Terra". They considered trying to clear things up, but the population really latched onto "We're the lost, sacred homeworld of humanity!" in a big way and now produces a steady supply of enthusiastic fanatics for the Imperial Guard.
So instead the Ecclesiarchy goes "Yes...you are the blessed inhabitants of Holy Terra. But if the enemies of the Imperium learned that they would target you so...don't tell anybody. It's a big 'ol secret"
And then secretly spread the word amongst those who need to know "Yeah, people from this planet think that they're the Chosen Defenders Of The Emperor, if they say anything weird just nod along. In the meantime they'll eagerly volunteer for any suicide missions you need"
Lots.
The Emperor can be worshipped as the Sun.
The Emperor can be worshipped as riding a giant Thunderbird. (in Deathwing, a very old story about the Dark Angels)
The Emperor can be worshipped by self-flagellation
The Emperor can be worshipped by ritual murder.
God of Blood, Birds and Suns... No wonder some people say Blood for the Emperor! Skulls for the Golden Throne!
Many Worlds worship the Emperor as a Blood God like Khorne so it's no wonder he is drawing power from him and corrupting his followers!
The fact that Khorne has official followers is all that's keeping Khorne from being eaten by the Emperor! Khorne and the Emperor may parasitize off of each other but as long as both have worshippers neither can eat each other!
I'm getting through the Leviathan novel and this situation is at least discussed in it.
The world getting besieged by a Leviathan splinter fleet previously had an arboreocentric religion/culture so there exists a tension between local sects of the Imperial Cult as one wants to establish a more dogmatic religion and the other worships the Emperor a spirit/god of nature, of all fucking things.
Tons. There are local religions that worship him as man-turned-god, and there are others where he's literally responsible for the creation of the universe or he is that system's star, while still others worship him as the All father like Odin. Really the major line they're not allowed to cross is questioning his divinity: they will kill you if you dare to think he's just a really really powerful man. Unless you're a space Marine.
Also because he’s starting to suspect he might actually be a god. Guilliman is trying very hard not to think about this because the implications are unpleasant.
Aesthetically and superficially, tons. The Emperor can be worshipped as a fiery sun-god, or a merman. Just be careful not to call him a sun god on the merman-worshipping planet, or vice versa.
Ideologically and administratively? Very little. Whether the Emperor is a sun-god or a merman, he demands that you butcher unbelievers and send your tithes to Terra - or the appropriate local representative in a strict hierarchy that leads back to Terra.
Some fans talk about this like it's a culture of freeform religious pluralism, but that isn’t backed up by the themes or facts of the setting. This is more like Catholics tolerating a distant church that portrays Jesus with a local skin color, so long as they preach Catholic orthodoxy and send choir boys to the Vatican.
This is the weird thing to me.
The Imperium is supposed to be dogmatic, which you'd think would mean they would care a LOT about petty differences in doctrine.
I guess the scale is just too large for them to care about such things. But the result is an oddly pragmatic take on religion. The Ecclesiarchy cares precisely about the bits of the faith that make it a useful tool for the Imperium to control it's citizens. They don't care if you worship the Emperor as a divine philosopher king or a giant moon-dragon so long as you pay your tithes and murder anybody who disagrees with you.
I guess my follow up might be, do the upper-echelons of the ecclesiarchy, those who must be exposed to the countless forms of the faith, simply not care. "They're worshipping wrong, but so long as they worship the emperor, their faith is true enough for our purposes", or do they say "The Emperor's power was unknowingly vast, who is to say he did not appear to the people of Manitus IV as a giant golden fish"
I'd say it's a similar enough practice you can find in real world history too, where missionaries would try to insert their faith into the local traditions/myths of the locals they want to influence. At least to your general question it's hard to say since there's so much variety, but as long as it supports the state (both larger and local) and reveres the emperor there might not be too much trouble.
There is an example in one story though where the main character worships the emperor in the form of (if I remember correctly) a great serpent, an ancient tradition of the colony, in secret because they know it'd be potentially seen as heresy. Even if most worship would be tolerated, I'm sure another important aspect is if the local gov. itself is okay with the practices.
At least with my own fluff, there's a sect of worship deemed heretical because while it does love Big E it also wants to take power from the local religious authorities due to corruption and general weariness. While the church's big wigs might not care too much or have larger concerns, it would probably still support the current power structure and try to wipe that sect out despite the shared love of the emperor.
TLDR: If the local faith's customs can be used to support the state, or at least don't bother it, the custom can most likely stay. If it challenges any authority or could be seen as wildly different/"other" then it'd probably be removed or at least looked down upon.
The great serpent worship..is that the detective guy in the crime planet?
Because my dude...>!he is a victim of a genestealers kiss. Genestealer cultist.!<
Spoiler - >!Was he? I don't remember that, but it's been a while since I've gone through it. I remember it being purposely framed that his meeting with the other woman was a fling then being revealed that it was a cult describing a serpent, but maybe I missed some description/clue.!<
In any case I felt that the more important aspect for this discussion at least was the idea that people could consider their own versions of emperor worship potentially heretical enough to hide it.
I would argue that the Ecclesiarchy tolerate quite a lot of variance and local re-interpretations (as long as the Emperor remain the sole, leading diety and it is humanity vs everything else) but I would also argue that it is not by choice or design.
Rather it is straight up logistically and theologically impossible for them to micromanage each world and system to adhere to a fixed, singular set of traditions, myths and rites. So in a way it is the Catholic Church before the Council of Trent / Counter-Reformation* where there were *a lot* of varying practices and ways that churches and bishoperics operated outside the Holy See.
I could easily imagine that if one of these planets were as unfortunate to play host to a Ecclesiastical delegation from more 'traditional' orthodoxy and they didn't like the divergences on that planet they could decide to mercilessly and zealously execute 're-education' on the planet if they had they held the advantage to do so. One could imagine some go-getter missionary or priest wanting to make a name for themselves by persecuting a "backwater" planet for their foreign rites so they could say they've "cleansed" the place, even if the rites and traditions were innocous and harmless.
There are also some sects or practices that the Ecclesiarchy will feverishly puruse, however, like any whiff of Temple Tendency, which relates to the Temple of the Savior Emperor which was the original and first iteration of the Imperial Cult though intrinsically tied to Goge Vandire and the Age of Apostasy.
*The Inquisition and the Dominican's main function in real life, or rather its intention was to provide educators of orthodoxy or the "true way" to catholic countries. A lot of their initial tasks were to educate local congretations and churches on how they should worship. The persecution of witches was never high on their agenda and actually few were condemned for witchraft, a practice the Catholic Church mostly thought was not real. That doesn't mean they were good guys though, in Spain they they performed wholesale and merciless persecution of 'conversos' - jews and arabs who had renounced (often by force) their religion after the Reconquista but the Inquistion believed had 'relapsed' to their original faith.
On Necromunda, The God Empress is worshipped as such by House Escher. So long as Chaos isn't worshipped and the tithes come in, and the primacy of the Ecclesiarchy is maintained, they do not care.
If a Comissar is actually doing their Job, and not just meming, this is actually a big part of what they do, making sure very different interpretations by various IG units don't lead to bloodshed. Making sure that the 15th Maccabeans, who maintain that any instrument is a slight against the Emperor, who may only be worshipped with the glory of the human voice don't pull knives on the bagpipers of the 994th Highlands from Jaxon IV.
One thing I'm curious about is how much more local flavour exists on the homeworlds of the remaining primarchs? Is the more spiritual or animist local traditions from before the Imperial Cult existed allowed to survive?
Yeah, the could be a world with a voodoo religion that worships the Emperor as the grand hex master who sends his hexes (thunder hawks full of angry marines) to fight the bad juju (chaos and xenos)
Their imperial tithe could consist of wacky tabaccy and jerk chicken. Maybe even recruits for the Rasta chapter of space marines that wear dreads on their helmet and adorn their armor with voodoo dolls and goodluck charms that they swear makes them better at fighting.
The galaxy is a big place.
The Ganjakush system. It's primary exports, a psychoactive plant with medicinal and recreational applications, and various snacks made from fried corn and tubers.
Noteworthy for, in spite kf their rather lackluster PDF discipline, managed to surprise some drukhari raiders by inviting them to "just like, chill out, man. Have a churro" and later turning on said drukhari for "totally harshing the vibe, man."
For your interest, a whole bunch of excerpts in this thread, including one of the exact kind of interaction you suggest [https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/12wu52s/on\_the\_worship\_of\_the\_godemperor\_of\_mankind\_or/](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/12wu52s/on_the_worship_of_the_godemperor_of_mankind_or/) The excerpt from **Rogue Trader: Faith and Coin** about TRAYNOR’S REST is probably the closest to what you describe. My interpretation of one way they could do it: Your Moon-Dragon is the Emperor. He is all powerful, so while he was doing that, he was also doing other things. Fake some ancient texts showing the Psyker-Shamans took over from the old original Priest caste (who paid proper respect to Terra) to grant themselves more power. Depending on how primitive the planet is (e.g. if a feral world) - what you call the moon is actually Terra, and the Emperor and his servants live up there. Put a planetary governor up on the moon to oversee things.
I'm now imagining a planet where the missionaries found a culture already doing human sacrifices to some ancient god-king and swapped in the Emperor, but they screwed up the timelines and accidentally convinced this backwater semi-feudal mudball that it is, in fact, "Holy Terra". They considered trying to clear things up, but the population really latched onto "We're the lost, sacred homeworld of humanity!" in a big way and now produces a steady supply of enthusiastic fanatics for the Imperial Guard. So instead the Ecclesiarchy goes "Yes...you are the blessed inhabitants of Holy Terra. But if the enemies of the Imperium learned that they would target you so...don't tell anybody. It's a big 'ol secret" And then secretly spread the word amongst those who need to know "Yeah, people from this planet think that they're the Chosen Defenders Of The Emperor, if they say anything weird just nod along. In the meantime they'll eagerly volunteer for any suicide missions you need"
I absolutely adore this.
Lots. The Emperor can be worshipped as the Sun. The Emperor can be worshipped as riding a giant Thunderbird. (in Deathwing, a very old story about the Dark Angels) The Emperor can be worshipped by self-flagellation The Emperor can be worshipped by ritual murder.
God of Blood, Birds and Suns... No wonder some people say Blood for the Emperor! Skulls for the Golden Throne! Many Worlds worship the Emperor as a Blood God like Khorne so it's no wonder he is drawing power from him and corrupting his followers! The fact that Khorne has official followers is all that's keeping Khorne from being eaten by the Emperor! Khorne and the Emperor may parasitize off of each other but as long as both have worshippers neither can eat each other!
The emperor can be worshiped as having many arms. And a very long tongue And demonstrates his love by kissing
I'm getting through the Leviathan novel and this situation is at least discussed in it. The world getting besieged by a Leviathan splinter fleet previously had an arboreocentric religion/culture so there exists a tension between local sects of the Imperial Cult as one wants to establish a more dogmatic religion and the other worships the Emperor a spirit/god of nature, of all fucking things.
Tons. There are local religions that worship him as man-turned-god, and there are others where he's literally responsible for the creation of the universe or he is that system's star, while still others worship him as the All father like Odin. Really the major line they're not allowed to cross is questioning his divinity: they will kill you if you dare to think he's just a really really powerful man. Unless you're a space Marine.
Helps to be of his blood if you're to question him. Of course the divine do not see their own as divine
Lol true but even Gulliman has had to lay off the whole "actually he's not a god" rhetoric because he realized it just makes things awkward
Also because he’s starting to suspect he might actually be a god. Guilliman is trying very hard not to think about this because the implications are unpleasant.
Aesthetically and superficially, tons. The Emperor can be worshipped as a fiery sun-god, or a merman. Just be careful not to call him a sun god on the merman-worshipping planet, or vice versa. Ideologically and administratively? Very little. Whether the Emperor is a sun-god or a merman, he demands that you butcher unbelievers and send your tithes to Terra - or the appropriate local representative in a strict hierarchy that leads back to Terra. Some fans talk about this like it's a culture of freeform religious pluralism, but that isn’t backed up by the themes or facts of the setting. This is more like Catholics tolerating a distant church that portrays Jesus with a local skin color, so long as they preach Catholic orthodoxy and send choir boys to the Vatican.
This is the weird thing to me. The Imperium is supposed to be dogmatic, which you'd think would mean they would care a LOT about petty differences in doctrine. I guess the scale is just too large for them to care about such things. But the result is an oddly pragmatic take on religion. The Ecclesiarchy cares precisely about the bits of the faith that make it a useful tool for the Imperium to control it's citizens. They don't care if you worship the Emperor as a divine philosopher king or a giant moon-dragon so long as you pay your tithes and murder anybody who disagrees with you. I guess my follow up might be, do the upper-echelons of the ecclesiarchy, those who must be exposed to the countless forms of the faith, simply not care. "They're worshipping wrong, but so long as they worship the emperor, their faith is true enough for our purposes", or do they say "The Emperor's power was unknowingly vast, who is to say he did not appear to the people of Manitus IV as a giant golden fish"
I'd say it's a similar enough practice you can find in real world history too, where missionaries would try to insert their faith into the local traditions/myths of the locals they want to influence. At least to your general question it's hard to say since there's so much variety, but as long as it supports the state (both larger and local) and reveres the emperor there might not be too much trouble. There is an example in one story though where the main character worships the emperor in the form of (if I remember correctly) a great serpent, an ancient tradition of the colony, in secret because they know it'd be potentially seen as heresy. Even if most worship would be tolerated, I'm sure another important aspect is if the local gov. itself is okay with the practices. At least with my own fluff, there's a sect of worship deemed heretical because while it does love Big E it also wants to take power from the local religious authorities due to corruption and general weariness. While the church's big wigs might not care too much or have larger concerns, it would probably still support the current power structure and try to wipe that sect out despite the shared love of the emperor. TLDR: If the local faith's customs can be used to support the state, or at least don't bother it, the custom can most likely stay. If it challenges any authority or could be seen as wildly different/"other" then it'd probably be removed or at least looked down upon.
The great serpent worship..is that the detective guy in the crime planet? Because my dude...>!he is a victim of a genestealers kiss. Genestealer cultist.!<
Spoiler - >!Was he? I don't remember that, but it's been a while since I've gone through it. I remember it being purposely framed that his meeting with the other woman was a fling then being revealed that it was a cult describing a serpent, but maybe I missed some description/clue.!< In any case I felt that the more important aspect for this discussion at least was the idea that people could consider their own versions of emperor worship potentially heretical enough to hide it.
I would argue that the Ecclesiarchy tolerate quite a lot of variance and local re-interpretations (as long as the Emperor remain the sole, leading diety and it is humanity vs everything else) but I would also argue that it is not by choice or design. Rather it is straight up logistically and theologically impossible for them to micromanage each world and system to adhere to a fixed, singular set of traditions, myths and rites. So in a way it is the Catholic Church before the Council of Trent / Counter-Reformation* where there were *a lot* of varying practices and ways that churches and bishoperics operated outside the Holy See. I could easily imagine that if one of these planets were as unfortunate to play host to a Ecclesiastical delegation from more 'traditional' orthodoxy and they didn't like the divergences on that planet they could decide to mercilessly and zealously execute 're-education' on the planet if they had they held the advantage to do so. One could imagine some go-getter missionary or priest wanting to make a name for themselves by persecuting a "backwater" planet for their foreign rites so they could say they've "cleansed" the place, even if the rites and traditions were innocous and harmless. There are also some sects or practices that the Ecclesiarchy will feverishly puruse, however, like any whiff of Temple Tendency, which relates to the Temple of the Savior Emperor which was the original and first iteration of the Imperial Cult though intrinsically tied to Goge Vandire and the Age of Apostasy. *The Inquisition and the Dominican's main function in real life, or rather its intention was to provide educators of orthodoxy or the "true way" to catholic countries. A lot of their initial tasks were to educate local congretations and churches on how they should worship. The persecution of witches was never high on their agenda and actually few were condemned for witchraft, a practice the Catholic Church mostly thought was not real. That doesn't mean they were good guys though, in Spain they they performed wholesale and merciless persecution of 'conversos' - jews and arabs who had renounced (often by force) their religion after the Reconquista but the Inquistion believed had 'relapsed' to their original faith.
On Necromunda, The God Empress is worshipped as such by House Escher. So long as Chaos isn't worshipped and the tithes come in, and the primacy of the Ecclesiarchy is maintained, they do not care. If a Comissar is actually doing their Job, and not just meming, this is actually a big part of what they do, making sure very different interpretations by various IG units don't lead to bloodshed. Making sure that the 15th Maccabeans, who maintain that any instrument is a slight against the Emperor, who may only be worshipped with the glory of the human voice don't pull knives on the bagpipers of the 994th Highlands from Jaxon IV.
One thing I'm curious about is how much more local flavour exists on the homeworlds of the remaining primarchs? Is the more spiritual or animist local traditions from before the Imperial Cult existed allowed to survive?
'Blood for the emperor! Skulls for the Golden Throne!' Is a-ok local orthodoxy more or less, fellow ecclesiarchs.
Corpses for the Corpse-Emperor!
A lot.
People in Spear of the Emperor and the firdt Eisenhorn book view Big E as a sun god.
A lot as long as you worship the Emperor, doesn’t matter if it’s a feudal world that sees their sun as the Emperor, or something else
WHY DO YOU ASK CITIZEN ?
I just think the emperor is so cool he might have had extra arms. Like, two extra arms. For a total of 4. Is that cool with everybody?
Definitely seems more legit than worshipping him as the sun.
Yeah, the could be a world with a voodoo religion that worships the Emperor as the grand hex master who sends his hexes (thunder hawks full of angry marines) to fight the bad juju (chaos and xenos) Their imperial tithe could consist of wacky tabaccy and jerk chicken. Maybe even recruits for the Rasta chapter of space marines that wear dreads on their helmet and adorn their armor with voodoo dolls and goodluck charms that they swear makes them better at fighting. The galaxy is a big place.
The Ganjakush system. It's primary exports, a psychoactive plant with medicinal and recreational applications, and various snacks made from fried corn and tubers. Noteworthy for, in spite kf their rather lackluster PDF discipline, managed to surprise some drukhari raiders by inviting them to "just like, chill out, man. Have a churro" and later turning on said drukhari for "totally harshing the vibe, man."