Departmento Munitorum - History: The Departmento Munitorum was founded in the early years of the 31st Millennium during the Great Crusade to help provide strategic command for the Imperial Army. The structure of the Imperium at that time was very different from what it is in the 41st Millennium.In the earliest days of the Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium, all that was required of the fighting forces of the Imperium was conquest. The Imperial expeditionary fleets that set out from Terra only carried with them the means to fulfill a portion of their supply needs, and simply took what they needed from the worlds they conquered in their travels.Upon the completion of a successful Imperial Compliance action on a target world, the expeditionary fleet would move on, leaving the assimilation of the planet into the Imperial fold to fleets of pioneers and Terran colonists. Each world, in time, would become fully capable of supporting itself and contributing to the needs of the growing number of Imperial expeditionary fleets.Such a state of affairs could not continue, for eventually each fleet would exhaust its supplies and be too far from a Compliant world capable of resupply. In these times, the resources necessary to fight a campaign were organised by the commanding officer of each individual expeditionary fleet, a necessity of the times, but one that was wholly unsuited to the growing size and complexity of the Imperium.The newly formed Council of Terra began recruiting those individuals whose minds could function in a number of specialties: as war leader, diplomat, exactor, mediator and logistician. Such able-bodied men and women suited to the task of stellar logistics were few and far between and the Council empowered these administrators with the duty of maintaining the Emperor's armies in perpetuity.This earliest incarnation of the Munitorum was known as the Corps Logisticae for a while, then a division within the naval administration of the Armada Imperialis, then was briefly overseen by the superb logistical brilliance of the Regent of Terra Malcador the Sigillite and his appointed subordinates.Only shortly prior to Primarch Horus' appointment as Imperial Warmaster following the victory in the Ullanor Crusade had the Corps Logisticae grown into a full departmento of the Imperial Administration, with all the bureaucratic advantages that it brought them. But initially some mistakes had been made, such as confusion over planetary coordinates and non-standard equipment reaching the Space Marine Legions.The earliest pioneers in organising a unified Imperial supply and recruitment structure had almost insurmountable obstacles to overcome, not least of which was the reluctance of each Imperial expedition's corps of officers, most of them Space Marines, to relinquish control of such things to mere mortals, even when they were more qualified to administer them than Astartes.As the Imperium continued to expand across the galaxy from Terra and the scale of Imperial-conquered space became relatively manageable, such resistance to change was understandable, if short-sighted. As time passed and the demands of a constantly changing battlefield required greater and greater ingenuity on the part of the Imperial war machine, Imperial Army soldiers would often go into battle equipped with a multitude of different weapons, ammunition stocks, armour and training.Rumours persist that there were darker reasons for it being desirable that no Imperial force could look to its own supply in these times, but evidence of such motivations cannot be substantiated.The very success of the earliest expeditionary fleets were to sound the death knell for such objections, for soon the Imperium had become so large that such resistance to more centralised logistics and bureaucracy became untenable. Central control of the Imperial forces (primarily the Imperial Army) was given to the newly-named Departmento Munitorum shortly before the start of the Horus Heresy.From this point onwards, every Imperial Army regiment (and after the Heresy, every Astra Militarum regiment) would look to the administrators of the Departmento Munitorum to raise, supply, train and dispatch it. In recognition of the great importance of this work, no less than three seats amongst the lords of the Council of Terra were given to the most senior officers of the Departmento Munitorum: the Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Army, the Lord Commander of the Estate Imperium and the Master of the Administratum.