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Hey my fellow Dakkanauts, I decided to finally write my own fluff for my Hive Fleet and Space Marine chapter but I'm not exactly what one would call a fluff bunny and was hoping some of you may help me to fill the gaps. What exactly is involved with bringing a world into the Imperium? Let's say a space marine battle barge was lost in a warp storm and suddenly deposited thousands of light years in a system with a human world on it that hadn't yet been reclaimed by the Imperium. What would happen next? Does an Inquisitor come to the planet to oversee its integration? How exactly does it get integrated? Is there even a typical process for this or does it happen differently to each planet? How long does the process take?

Any and all help would be super appreciated. Thanks everyone!

If the Marines emerge way off course, they're more likely to head back the way they came.

If they're a crusading chapter with no defined agenda (at least one not important enough that they can't faff it off for a bit), then they've got a few steps.

The first is to disable defenses. If the planet poses a threat to their battle barge, this will involve lightning strikes to negate those threats.

Then they will probably issue a demand to the planetary leadership to submit. If they refuse, surgical decapitation of military, government, and possibly religious leadership will follow. Raids to destroy key assets. If this fails to bring surrender, targeted destruction of targets designed to demoralize will be considered.

Once compliance is assured, the SM contact the Imperium via astropath (hopefully they had some support elements with them already!) to come and babysit the world.

When the Imperium arrives in force, they will be incorporated into the Imperium's culture, with steps in varying degrees of order: The religion will be dismantled or incorporated into the Imperial Creed; the planet will be assessed for and assigned a tithe; institutes of higher learning will be monitored, disbanded, or subsumed by the Adeptus Mechanicus; cultural elements deemed heretical will be investigated by the Inquisition; Administratum Historitors will move through and alter or eliminate any historical records which contradict the Imperium's version of events both past and present, and defenses will be established.

Broadly speaking, that’s the role of Rogue Traders.

They’re essentially very wealthy Imperial Citizens with a permit to explore unexplored regions, with a view to finding worlds suitable for colonisation.

Typically, they’re though of as adventuring beyond the nominal rim of the Galaxy, but given the sheer size of the Galaxy, and how sparse the Imperium actually is, that’s not necessarily true.

From there? It really, genuinely depends. Some worlds might be little more than Iron Age or worse. Some might be more medieval in society. Others yet may hold levels of technology baffling to the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Their fleets are often fairly autonomous, but will contain different elements of The Imperium, such as Ecclesiarchal elements and Ad Mech elements. And if they don’t, it’s generally true that they’ll summon allies via Astropathic Communication.

So, hypothetically (but not necessarily) any element of The Imperium would do much the same.

Powerful as a Battlebarge and it’s attendant fleet is (assuming they’ve all washed up on the same shore), much the same would happen. Typically, Astartes are above the politics of The Imperium, because that’s not their role in the grand machine.

I suspect all Chapters would send an Astropathic message of some kind - either to an allied Forgeworkd, Recruitment World or Rogue Trader,, then largely be on their way, because wherever they were going still needs them. They may even simply report back to their home world or home fleet.

But, if there’s a clear and present Xenos or Heretical threat, they’d most likely engage it and give it a damned good shoeing- because that absolutely is their role. But that will all depend upon the size of the threat. Little point stirring up a Hornet’s best you can’t feasibly confront, not if you can summon/redirect other elements to do the job, before heading back off to where you were meant to be going


Automatically Appended Next Post:
But, as is my favourite answer?

It Depends.

Let’s say that whatever mishap has ultimately stranded the Astartes wherever they’ve wound up, also means that they can’t simply get back to business?

Then they’ll look to take more direct action to bring it into the fold. And that method will depend on the system, the Chapter and Fleet elements present.

If it’s a Feral World, with no sign of genetic deviation? Chances are it’ll be claimed as a Chapter Recruitment World.

If it’s more advanced? Depends on their hostility.

The important sources here are the early Heresy Novels. Not that the later ones are crap, because they’re not. Just that the early one’s best show The Great Crusade and how compliance was achieved.

Some planets, having been cut off from the rest of humanity for millennia, welcomed their brothers with open arms, and welcomed compliance. Others needed some form of persuasion. Some required a good kicking. And others still were wiped out to a man because they were irrevocable in their current form.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
How exactly does it get integrated?

I think the other answers about attacking the planet and whether it’s a feral world are kind of useless. There are four distinct things that need to happen for a world to be compliant

The local religion has to be controlled by the Ministorum. There’s probably a local religion or religions, and it’s probably enough for whatever senior people the locals choose to be in charge has to be approved or dismissed by the nearest ministorum hierarchy. Even on planets without any religion there will be education and entertainment institutions and the ministorum will oversee that.

The planet has to round up psykers and turn them over to the league of black ships. There’s a good chance the local culture interacts with their psykers some way, maybe training them or even being ruled in some way by them. They have to abandon this and start using Imperial protocols for astropaths and other psykers. This is one of the main things the arbites are for.

They have to be assessed for tithes. The Administratum will determine how many troops the planet have to equip and tithe to the war effort in other parts of the galaxy. There’s a chance the local defenders will be augmented with off world imperial guard, partly as defenders and partly as occupiers.

The last is the mechanicus. There are examples of planets having some local tech guilds that aren’t really part of the mechanicus. The mechanic is don’t have to show up and completely take over everything, but they do have to be able to oversee everything that the local tech guilds do.

And that’s compliance. The Imperium have rules that are supposed to stop planets from being taken over by daemons/psykers/warp beasts, and they have military requirements.