Adepta Sororitas - The Age of Apostasy: The Adepta Sororitas date their founding from the 36th Millennium during the turbulent times known as the Age of Apostasy. During this age the Ecclesiarchy held nigh-total power, which it used to ensure that every single subject of the Emperor in the Imperium paid their dues, both spiritually and financially, to the duly appointed officers of the faith. In time, the Ministorum exercised such power that it began to dictate the policies of the ruling Senatorum Imperialis of the High Lords of Terra.The ecclesiarch came to be viewed as speaking with the authority of the Emperor Himself, and he influenced every aspect of the governance of the Imperium. Perhaps it was inevitable that the other great bureaucracies of the Imperium should grow resentful of the Ministorum.The Adeptus Administratum in particular found its own powers greatly curtailed, for the Ministorum's tithes took precedence over its own raising of funds and resources, leaving little in the coffers to pay for the running of the secular components of the Imperium.The Administratum's political influence soon waned so far that the Ministorum was able to dictate policy in secular matters as well. The raising and deployment of armies, the prosecution of wars, the commitment of significant Imperial resources and the appointment of sector lords all fell under the effective control of the Ministorum.In time, other institutions began to distrust the Ministorum's power, and the Adeptus Astartes and the Adeptus Mechanicus in particular became increasingly estranged from the Ministorum-dominated Imperial government.As if the situation could not get any worse, the entire Imperium was soon plunged into even deeper despair. The incidence of Warp Storms, a phenomenon that cuts off vast swathes of the Imperium's space from interstellar travel and communication, increased by an order of magnitude.The Warp began to seethe with roiling energies which bled forth into realspace, making travel between anything other than worlds in the same planetary system increasingly perilous. Central governance of worlds limited to periodic contact at the best of times entirely collapsed.Where the Black Ships of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica were unable to get through, entire populations fell to daemonic incursion or Enslaver domination. Civil war and anarchy beset the Imperium, with those planets that remained accessible being ruthlessly suppressed by the increasingly brutal Frateris Templars. Seeing that their foes were tearing themselves apart, the myriad enemies of humanity struck.The Traitor Legions sallied forth from the Eye of Terror, using their own blasphemous sorceries to strike planets otherwise cut off from outside aid. Orks traversed the Warp in their ramshackle Space Hulks, uncaring where the tides of the Empyrean regurgitated them and wreaking havoc in regions previously beyond their reach.The Drukhari used their Webway to freely navigate the galaxy, and struck wherever they desired, dragging millions of captives screaming to their infernal realm of Commorragh, to suffer tortures and degradations beyond a sane man's imagination.The entire Imperium was gripped by an apocalyptic frenzy of doom and anarchy. Countless new sects sprung into being, many proclaiming that the God-Emperor was enacting His final judgement upon Mankind and that the end times were at hand.No world was untouched by the anarchy, as whole populations rose up in increasingly bizarre and extravagant acts of penance and self-flagellation. Anyone who dared attempt to reason with such doomsayers were declared Heretics, and world after world tore themselves apart in an orgy of bloodletting and violent penance.Onto this doom-laden stage stepped the insane Goge Vandire, the 361st Master of the Administratum, a position he had attained by the ruthless application of bribes, threats and outright assassination. A strident opponent of the Ministorum, Vandire had plotted against it for many standard years.Shortly before his ascension to the rank of High Lord, Vandire brought about the selection of a man of his own choosing to head the Ecclesiarchy, ensuring that none could stand before his subsequent rise.As confidence in the new puppet-ecclesiarch, Paulis III, plummeted due to his reputation for incompetence and venality, Goge Vandire made his move, taking control of the Ecclesiarchy in a military coup d'etat orchestrated by Astra Militarum officers under his control who simply executed Paulis III outright, claiming that his behaviour proved that he was a heretic and made him unfit for his office.Vandire then used the support of various Ministorum cardinals he had bribed and otherwise brought under his influence to immediately call a conclave that selected him as the new ecclesiarch.Assuming the dual roles of ecclesiarch and master of the Administratum to become the most powerful person in the Imperium of Man, Vandire succeeded ultimately only in driving the Imperium into the bitterest period of civil war and rebellion it had known since the Horus Heresy -- remembered as the Reign of Blood.