Isstvanian - Mara Landing Massacre: The Mara Landing Massacre was, apparently, one of the greatest tragedies of mis-navigation ever to occur within the Calixis Sector. The Ice World of Mara is a cursed place where no Imperial citizen is permitted to set foot. A frozen world devoid of life, Mara was once home of a number of Imperial installations, including a mining facility. Through a series of incidents so dark and terrible that their details are held under seal by the Holy Ordos, Mara was stripped of all living souls and left alone in the cold void to be a place of secret legends and tales of madness. It remains quarantined to this day, patrolled by ships from Battlefleet Calixis.The tragedy of the Mara Landing Massacre began when the troop transport Vervilix, bound for the war on Tranch, suffered a critical navigational error and dropped out of the Warp close to the Ice World of Mara and within the cursed world's quarantine zone. Disaster might have been averted had the ship's engines and communications not failed and left it drifting alone and lost above one of the most dangerous places in the Calixis Sector. Not knowing where they were but detecting structures on the surface, the officers commanding the 100,000 Astra Militarum troops on board decided to mount a landing onto the surface in an attempt to gather information on their position and press aid from any that might live on the Ice World. This decision was to cost the lives of over 50,000 guardsmen.Soon after the landing, all communication with the surface was lost. First-person reports from breathless dropship pilots told how the troops deployed to the surface had begun to slaughter each other, and discordant sounds began to rip through the communications networks -- alongside cries imploring someone to "make the buzzing stop." Not knowing how to respond, the officers poured more troops onto the surface of Mara until most of the soldiers had been deployed. When the Imperial Navy patrol ships reached the Vervilix five solar days later, only a few hundred survivors could be recovered from the thousands who had set foot on Mara.An investigation by the Holy Ordos determined that it was a tragedy of misadventure. Most of the survivors were executed, and quarantine patrols around the Ice World were doubled. Since the massacre, rumours have persisted in the Calixian Conclave that the cascade of accidents and coincidences that led to the disastrous planetfall were not the product of chance, but carefully planned and orchestrated by the Renegade Isstvanian Inquisitor Amaros and her close servants. It is said that Amaros was keen to see whether any useful survivors could be created and harvested from exposing untried guardsmen to such a great, unknown threat.The involvement of Isstvanians in engineering the circumstances of the massacre has never been proven, although a number of the survivors who were not executed for potential taint were quietly drawn into the service of several Inquisitors with suspected links to Amaros, a fact which may itself have sparked the theory. This harvest of survivors was bought in the blood and madness of thousands, but if the stories are true, its creator likely considered it a small price to pay.