Editing Nobledark Imperium Notable Planets (section)

=== Istvaan III ===

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''"Nothing good ever seems to come out of the Istvaan system"''<br>
-- Saul Tarvitz, Terra's Sons

Istvaan III at the time of it's discovery in the height of the Great Crusade was a prosperous world but well beneath the point where Survivor Civilization status should be considered having rediscovered fission power some thirty years before Imperial contact. They were brought globally into the Imperium by the forces of the Raven Guard without incident as he planet had been unified several generations previously by military conquest.

Which is not to say that Istvaan was a military dictatorship. Although the original forces of conquest were definitely a military dictatorship the years since were distinctly not. The original dictator remains an enigmatic figure known only as The Forgotten Tyrant, a man only seen in public wearing thick, full body covering if slightly grubby yellow robes and a porcelain mask popular in theaters several centuries prior. Beyond "probably human" (he did need to eat at least) and probably male (referred to as male and had a deep tenor) nothing is known. He spent the last twelve years of his life destroying all records of himself and ordered his body to be cremated still wrapped in his robes. There are several theories on the Tyrant's identity gleaned from old national records regarding political shifts, military spending and some grainy black and white photographs but ultimately nothing is provable or, by the time of the Imperium's contact, relevant.

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In the years since the death of The Forgotten Tyrant and the years since the rebellions started to die down the dictatorship started to become rather more civilian in nature. The first successor ruled for 20 years and then started to institute elections via Electoral Council with the strict conditions that nobody on the Electoral Council could be a candidate, neither could family, friends or business associates or anyone they knew. He was voted out of office but the tradition stuck.

The people of Istvaan III knew that they were descendants of people from another world, records had been dutifully preserved in the form of illuminated manuscripts, tapestries and masonry decorations and they had unearthed the gutted hulls of old space ships many, many years prior with some of the more intact being renovated into usable but far more primitive structures still in use at Imperial Contact. They had been broadcasting their coordinates into space via radio waves for many years and it was only by good fortune that the Imperium and not the orks, or worse, discovered them first.

The newly elected Tyrant of Istvaan on the day they got a response from the 273rd Expeditionary Force was a relatively young Alivia Sureka, a woman who would be re-elected a further three twenty year terms before dying in office at the age of 92 as an unfortunate case of Rejuvenant Rejection. She was a pillar of calm in the jubilation of the five and a half billion populace, they were ecstatic that the old stories of Earth and the Dominion among the stars had been proven correct, she was far more down to earth in her manner and saw this as a collection of foreign nations bound under a single standard, much like her own society writ impossibly huge and wanted to ensure that her own society wasn't swallowed up and lost. There was no notion of not joining the Imperium, the common masses would not have stood for it.



By the time of the War of the Beast the Istvaan system was extensively settled with a system wide population of near thirty billion souls all ruled from the Palace of Voices in fair Choral City, that was subsequently bombed to rubble and the city suffering a 96% casualty rate. There were Chaos Cults on the planet that later traveled to the other habitations in the system, some of them predating The Forgotten Tyrant, and in those days they came out of the shadows like insane, starving rates.

Istvaan is one of the few cases in the Great Crusade where the Croneworlders operated openly, willingly, delighting in getting their hands dirty. Their atrocities were brutal and merciless, showing a capacity for unending and sustained cruelty beyond what a sane human could understand or even comprehend. The bones and bodies of slain civilians arranged in impossible shapes miles wide, scaring the fabric of reality so deep and so vast that it's effects were visible from orbit and not all of those bodies had done screaming.

Tyrant "The Baron" Vardus Praal and his Warsinger bodyguards had by cunning and good fortune escaped from the capital city when it became clear that saving it was not a realistic or even possible option and when the unholy hymns of torment were screamed by the tortured in the carcass ring about the cities ruins he and his followers were responsible for it's disruption. The warsingers were trained to perceive the warp as a form of music and could spot the recurring patterns in the songs and see the effects that they were having in the warp. Then they added their own and the feedback finally gave an ending to the tortured civilians and burned the Chaos Eldar who were orchestrating the symphony. Of Tyrant Praal? The surviving Chaos Eldar knew what he had done, knew where he and his warsingers were. Maybe they wanted to take him alive to make an example, maybe they wanted to draw it out for fun. He didn't give them the option, as the last of his warsingers fell and he looked down at the foot of pitted and rusted steel blade sticking out of his chest and felt the hot and sticky breath of something unspeakably evil on the back of his neck the rigged plasma-bottles in the ammunition stores went off and gave him one hell of a funeral pyre.


Istvaan III was eventually retaken by the Imperium. A few million survived in the outposts in the further orbits away from Istvaan III itself, a few tens of thousands on the capital planet were left fighting or hiding or dying slowly.

In time the cities were rebuilt, the fields resown, the outposts re-established, new armies trained and new ships were launched but the scars remained. It was a long, long time before Istvaan recovered fully and for a very long time afterwards half completed rituals were uncovered, heaps of unexploded munitions dug up, deamons bound and driven mad by time and isolation discovered and son, so many unclaimed bones.

Down the long march of years the Istvaan system has produced soldiers beyond counting, loyalty beyond question and competence beyond doubt. The world itself is green again, it's skies once more blue. There have been attempts both subtle and overt to bring the planet to ruin, many and varied, down the long count of years and always such attempts fail. The planet spits in the faces of dark gods and humbles and breaks their followers, it endures as spite and insult to them and dares them to return. The population of the planet as of 999M41 is approximately 12 billion and produces many fine soldiers and many cunning Inquisitors. As the Imperium marches towards Judgement Day it is known that Istvaan will do it's part, retribution and duty both demand it.

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