Isstvanian - History: The Isstvanians take their name from the massacre which began the most terrible conflict to have engulfed Humanity, the Horus Heresy, initiated by the Traitor Warmaster Horus' virus-bombing of Isstvan III at the start of the Isstvan III Atrocity. What most Imperial historitors view as the worst disaster to ever befall the Imperium, the Isstvanians champion as the catalyst for many of its greatest accomplishments. Despite their extreme stance and drastic methods, history seems to vindicate their beliefs, as from the greatest periods of upheaval the most profound developments within the Imperium have stemmed.With an objectivity born of hindsight, they claim that the Horus Heresy weeded out the weak-willed and traitorous from the ranks of the Adeptus Astartes, and ultimately caused the Emperor's ascension, allowing the Master of Mankind to ascend to godhood. They point to the Age of Apostasy in the 36th Millennium, when the Imperium was devoured by a fever of blasphemy, as the cause of the Ecclesiarchy's necessary reformation and the coming of the great reforming Ecclesiarch Sebastian Thor. Great advances and leaps of faith are undeniably possible when Humanity is tested to its limit, and it is for this reason that the Isstvanians actively cultivate war. The modus operandi of the warmongering Isstvanians is sometimes so extreme that many of its militant components have surpassed even the uncompromising Puritan Monodominants.It is not recorded when Isstvanianism was born or how it first flourished; these facts are lost to ancient secrecy and drowned by the tides of blood that have engulfed the Imperium down the millennia. But it is an old doctrine, and along with Xanthism it vies for position as perhaps the most established and embedded strain of Radicalism within the present Inquisition. The convictions and creed on which the Isstvanian doctrine is founded are not new; the ideas and theories on which they are based are as old as Human civilisation and perhaps older still. They came with Humanity to the stars like a cold shadow in the mind, and have been part of the fundamental psyche of the Imperium since its inception.It is possible that the Isstvanian doctrine as a cogent theory and movement is in some ways the inevitable product of minds forced to seek the answers to unforgiving questions about Humanity's place in a hostile universe and the perils it faces daily -- why do some resist the temptations of the Warp or triumph over the alien, and why do others fall so easily into treachery, corruption or cowardice? Seeing conflict as a test that revealed weakness and honed strength, the first Isstvanians were drawn to not simply observe and note these qualities, but to promote the circumstances that give rise to them. With time, their convictions deepened, and the management of conflict gave way to promotion and finally outright creation. In that moment, Isstvanianism was born.What hand Isstvanians have had in the long and bloody history of the Imperium cannot be known, even by those that advocate its path. Theirs is a doctrine based on the importance of evolution and trial and thus does not require that the exact end is always known, only that conflict and disaster arises to try the Imperium. It is always too early to say what the final effect of any given action or intrigue will be, and when those intrigues are designed to be things of awe, blood, and power, this is doubly so.The ripples of a single engineered war may be felt for standard centuries, even millennia. After all, the consequences of the Warmaster Horus' virus-bombing of Isstvan III still reverberate more than 10,000 standard years after the end of the Horus Heresy. It may be that were one able to see all causes that led to the rise of a genius or tyrant or to the destruction of a thousand stars, one would find the will and conviction of those such as the Isstvanians. Ignorance of the ultimate consequences of their actions is of little concern to Isstvanians. It is simply enough that conflict is nurtured so that Mankind might be tried -- and in that trial will find strength.