The ecclesiarchy has better things to do than collect lost artifacts of dubious authenticity belonging to minor saints. There are literally thousands of saints in the Imperium, most of them only known of on one or two planets, and for every genuine relic there are a few billion fake ones. The time it would take to check them out is better spent from the perspective of the ecclesiarchs who have access to any spacecraft.
This is 40k. That is exactly how they would spend their time. I mean, the Administratum? Hopeless, endless Pyrrhic bureaucracy defines the Imperium of Man.
Except it is explicitly not how the major groups spend their time. Thousands of worlds with valuables on them are left to rot by the Imperial branches of government because they have other stuff to do that matters more. The Ecclesiarchy doesn't chase down every random saints relics because it a) knows most of them are fake b) prefers to send it's ships on their actual ecclesiastical tasks, such as diplomatic missions to other Imperial groups or to spread the Imperial Creed to planets it hasn't been spread to yet and c) sending military forces out to kill things they don't like.
A verified relic
might get their attention, but they're a big organisation and only a few bits of it have access to actual warpcraft, and the likihood the people who have such authority will even hear about the holy panataloons of saint McNobody from the planet Derpington is basically nil. Saint Evisser is a great example of this, after the resources in the area he was beatified in dried up everyone basically forgot he existed because his import outside the area was bupkiss. The same carries across to 99% of the other saints. They don't matter to the Ecclesiarchy outside a very small important number, unless something happens that makes the current ranking Ecclesiarch in the area care.
The same principle applies to the other groups, they all have to send their warp ships on missions of expansion, reclamation, intra-Imperial diplomacy, espionage, war and major resource collecting. Minor stuff gets put at the bottom of the priority list until later, or they throw some coins at a random guy with a ship and get him to take care of it, or task it to a flunkey and let them make it to the place in question on their own with no support.
It's still so rare that a regiment of thousands usually has no more than three plasma weapons in their entire arsenal, and those are usually mediocre ones by the standard of plasma. The only people in the entire Imperium who are actually supposed to have lots of them are Dark Angels and the Mechanicus.
I'm just going to disagree here. In all my reading this is never made clear. Guys have plasma weapons, all factions, of every echelon. The quality in plasma weaponry is not explicitly stated, nor-canonical. The Mechanicus talks more about still having functioning Conversion Beamers and Lightning Guns as their special tech far, far more than they mention "our plasma weapons don't suck."
It's like Power Swords. Supposedly rare as hell and lost tech, yet every asshole Colonel in the IG seems to have one. I can't read any novel from any faction without at least one mention of a plasma weapon, somewhere. So unless every single work of fiction happens to mention the same two to three plasma weapons per chapter/regiment, I'm going to say you're overestimating their rarity, or taking one author's contribution and inflating it to apply to the whole Imperium. I know the lore behind DA plasma weapons, I just don't agree with it.
They essentially do mention the two or three per regiment, yes. That's how stories tend to work, you focus on the guys who have interesting abilities or equipment. Power weapons are supposed to be more common than plasma anyway, since they can still be made on most Forge Worlds by a multitude of people, while plasma is supposed to be so hard to make an entire Forge World might have just one Magos who can craft it, and he does it by hand over a three year period. They're harder to get than hellguns to the average person, and even they're rare as hell despite being able to be mass produced.
Also, when the Mechanicus is mentioned in regards to plasma, the amount and quality of it they have is explicitly a closely guarded secret. The Lathe Worlds mentions they hoard the stuff and the knowledge to create it beyond any other standard weaponry, as does .
If a guy like that thinks he might be able to salvage a plasma cannon or powerful shield generator from a wrecked fortress world or abandoned governor's pleasure palace he'll leap at it, it's probably worth roughly as much as his spacecraft is if it's in good condition.
I'm not arguing that. But that is a fringe economy in 40k. It's not the core economy. As I always like to say, anything is possible in 40k so I'm not disagreeing with you it exists. I'm just disagreeing that it makes up any significant part of the stellar economy. Junkers do not keep the Imperium running.
I never said they kept the Imperium running, I'm saying they represent the majority of ships that would salvage dead and dying worlds, and form the bulk of shipping to planets outside the main quartet of Agri World, Hive World, Fortress World and Forge World. Imperial Worlds, Feral Worlds, Feudal Worlds, Shrine Worlds, Dead Worlds and so on are of no interest to the Imperium most of the time, and largely see passenger flights, pilgrim ships, scavvies, small scale traders, bounty hunters, bored nobles and other small vessel traffic. You can go three centuries without a ship even half the size of a frigate heading to a Feral World, and the big ship that finally does show up probably just wants to draft a bunch of tribals into the guard.
EDIT: Also, since I just remembered I never shared this here.
I stole a bird and a sword from the Deathwatch to make a chaos champion/lord a bit more visually interesting. I predict the bird being a pain in the ass to transport though. It's going to snap off all the bloody time.