Editing Warhammer 63k (section)

===The Age of Apostasy===
The Age of Apostasy is one of the major time periods of the Imperium. It began around M36, when Georgina Vandire, Mistress of the Administratum, had the Ecclesiarch assassinated and took control of the church herself. Power went to her head though and she began the so-called "Reign of Blood", in which she purged the Imperium of any dissenters with the backing of armies of millions of frenzied Imperial Cultists, led by her Preachers. Vandire proved difficult to unseat, as she was protected by an order of warrior men once known as the Sons of the Empress, which she renamed "Husbands of the Empress" when she convinced them to serve her.

Eventually, the people of the Imperium grew tired of Vandire's rule, and when a young woman named Samantha Thor started warring against the mad High Lord, she was soon joined by a massive army known as the Coalition of Light. Vandire sent a fleet to deal with Thor's army, but when it was lost in the Warp, people took that as a sign that the Empress favored Thor, and she became even more popular.

When Thor finally got to Terra, she joined forces with the Space Marines and Adeptus Mechanicus (who had never been friendly with the Ecclesiarchy to begin with), and managed to dislodge Vandire, forcing her to retreat to the heavily-fortified Ecclesiarchical sanctum of the Imperial Palace. With a Space Marine force spearheaded by the Imperial Fists and their successors attacked it was assumed that Vandire would be easily overwhelmed. It came as a nasty surprise when the Sons proved to be too well entrenched for the Astartes premier fortification breaking experts to overcome. The Adeptus Custodes brought Alex Dominica, the leader of the Husbands of the Empress, to a face-to-face meeting with the big woman herself. What exactly was said is unknown, but he was filled with such Rage that he renamed his sect the Sons and ended up personally executing Georgina Vandire himself. Her last words were "I don't have time to die; I'm too busy".

With Vandire dead, Samantha Thor became the new Ecclesiarch, and she instituted a number of reforms. First, she toned down the Ecclesiarchy's grandeur, insisting that the Church serve the Imperium as much as the other way around. Second, she issued the Decree Passive, a law which stated that the Ecclesiarchy should have no "women under arms". Finally, since she realized that the Ecclesiarchy still needed an armed force of some kind, she reformed the Sons of the Empress into the Orders Militant of a new, all-male branch of the Ecclesiarchy, reasoning that the Decree Passive didn't forbid them since they were men under arms. They then became the Adeptus Fraternitus, or "Brothers of Battle" warrior monks to the space marines' warrior nuns. To make sure these new reforms were followed, the Inquisition set up the Ordo Hereticus to both police the Ecclesiarchy and protect the purity of its teachings, with the Battle-Brothers serving as the Ordo's Chamber Militant.