Ocularians - Wheels within Wheels: It is not enough for the Ocularians to know the future. They must control it, for what use is such foreknowledge if it is not exploited? The purpose to which the Ocularian's accrued esoteric knowledge and prognostications are put is a central issue for the faction and indeed the most common cause of rivalry and discord within its ranks. For some, particularly the diverse covens of mystics and secret colleges of Adepts that populate its ranks, the quest for knowledge is a goal in-and-of-itself; the revelation of the patterns of the future and past a higher calling than any other.However, for their masters the prime goal is the use to which the revelation is put. To the Ocularians the future is mutable, containable, changeable, and sacrifices must be made so that the Imperium prospers. To the Ocularians the superiority of their way as opposed to that of other Inquisitorial factions is self-evident; the likes of the Recongregators and the Thorians are trapped in the blind dogma of the present or the remembered sins and glories of the past, all engaged in the folly of trying to fight fires already blazing, or worse, demolish the burning house to extinguish the fire, rather than the wise course of crushing the spark before the flame can catch.It is here, in the playing of the Ocularian's long game, in their strange intrigues and obscure interventions spurred on by shadowy foreknowledge, that the nature and personalities of the individual Ocularian Inquisitors come to the fore. Most remain steadfastly loyal to the Inquisition's first rule; the defence of Mankind, and use the knowledge they glean of things to come, true or false, (or potentially either) to combat the Imperium's enemies. In this, they believe they are following the direct example of the Emperor Himself, who tried to use His own precognitive powers to shape a better future for humanity.To this end an Ocularian master extends their hand and on a distant world a child dies who one day may grow up to raise revolt, or a voidship's course is changed to take it out of the grasp of a pirate attack and save the life of the great-grandsire of a potential future Imperial Saint. While at another's contrivance a series of grain shipments are diverted and starvation scourges a world, cutting back a burgeoning overpopulation that would otherwise have bred a plague that would have spread to ravage a dozen other spheres. There exists, however, a handful of Ocularians whose pursuit of power and foreknowledge has taken them into far darker territory, and whose obsessions have turned into madness and megalomania.To act on such knowledge of things yet to come can corrupt the strongest soul. Ocularians choose who lives and who dies on a grand scale, not merely in response to a direct threat as many Inquisitors must, but by simple expediency and in accordance to the ebb and flow of possible events. In short, Ocularians shepherd what is to be. Such individuals, particularly those who have succumbed to the temptations of sorcery and made their own deals with darkness, can swiftly become tyrants more akin to spiteful and petty gods than Inquisitors, deciding the fates of untold millions according to their own insane whims or as a part of some plan to further their own twisted personal vision of human destiny.The Ocularians are themselves well aware of this danger, and have fought shadowed conflicts with each other in the past to bring down such "renegade elements" in their ranks. In truth, the risk of any single Ocularian growing to wield too much power is one of the reasons the Parliament of Whispers cultivates such secrecy and paranoia both within and without the faction's own ranks.