Istvan Sato

Istvan Sato was a young man from Vindauga and a key figure during the Red Marker outbreaks of the late 23rd century. Long before he ever touched a Marker he was driven by a compulsion to perfect shapes and "make it whole," and on the penal world of Aspera he became a catalyst whose mind strengthened the Marker's signal and helped unleash a Necromorph outbreak.

Early life on Vindauga#

Istvan and his younger brother Jensi lived in the Mariner Valley compound, the poorest dome on the poor planet of Vindauga, raised in the slums by a single mother with too little food, shelter, or schooling. Jensi held the family together, while Istvan had always been a little off, obsessed with numbers and patterns and prone to sudden rage and paranoia. He saw shapes that no one else saw and recognized patterns no one else could, and he often said that a shape or pattern was calling to him to perfect it and make it whole.

His mother came to believe he had evil in him that needed driving out, and the brothers grew estranged from her. After she suffered a seizure that Istvan perceived as a "shadow man" choking her to death, she was committed to an institution and the boys were placed in foster care. Istvan begged Jensi to run away with him, but Jensi chose a new family instead, leaving his brother in the slums. Alone, Istvan became a drifter through the domes, scavenging to survive and listening to the shadow man in his mind. Over the years that followed the brothers crossed paths only rarely, each meeting marked by Istvan's worsening delusion, and at some point he lost two of his fingers.

The assassination of Tim Fischer#

Istvan eventually told Jensi that he would soon be on every news vid, that he would become famous by fulfilling his purpose. The next day he forced his way to a press conference held by Councilman Tim Fischer on the structural integrity of the Vindauga domes. Despite Jensi's attempt to stop him, Istvan rushed the stage and shot the councilman in the head before SCAF forces subdued him.

He was taken to an undisclosed location and questioned by a small man whose skin he perceived as gray. Istvan said only that the voices in his head had told him to kill Fischer, then attacked and choked one of the interrogators to death as the shadow man instructed. After repeated brutal interrogations failed, the gray man banished him to Aspera, an isolated planet that held a penal colony for political prisoners, where the torture continued.

Catalyst of the Aspera Marker#

On Aspera, Istvan settled into life among the other political prisoners and learned that the colony was only a ring within a far larger complex on an unterraformed world with nowhere to escape to. He soon began to suffer pressing headaches and to see shadows darting around him. Unknown to the prisoners, the Sovereign Colonies had built a nearby facility where they were constructing a Red Marker, Marker 2A, based on the Black Marker research from Earth. As the Marker neared completion, its signal began to drive the prisoners insane, and Istvan's visions changed with it, filling with the faces of people he had known, including his dead victim Tim Fischer, who spoke to him of a marvelous Convergence.

When the signals of Marker 2A, the Kreemar Marker, and the Aegis VII Marker converged on the penal colony, the scientists realized something important to the Markers was held there. Led by Dr. Enoch Briden, they determined that Istvan was the man the signals had been pointing to and brought him to the Marker facility. Istvan was entranced the moment he saw the Red Marker. By analyzing his brain waves the science team found that the Marker's signal was adapting to his mind and his mind to it, concluding that he was a catalyst whose mere presence strengthened the signal. Istvan refused to leave the Marker's side, talked to it through the apparitions of the dead, and accepted its charge to carry its blueprints and spread its replicas to other worlds and make them whole again.

The outbreak and death#

The Marker eventually released a burst of energy and began a Necromorph outbreak on Aspera, with matching outbreaks erupting around the Kreemar and Aegis VII Markers at the same time. Istvan remained in the Marker's "dead space" while the Necromorphs slaughtered everyone else in the facility and the colony. When his brother Jensi finally reached the chamber, Istvan attacked him on the urging of a hallucination of their mother before realizing Jensi was truly there, having crossed space to find him. Moved, Istvan turned instead on Briden and killed him with his bare hands, understanding that the scientist had only ever used him for his importance to the Marker.

Still in thrall to the artifact, Istvan asked Jensi to join him, certain the Marker could teach him to control the Necromorphs and raise the dead around them as servants. Horrified, Jensi concluded the Marker had pushed his brother past saving. He embraced Istvan, said goodbye, and shot him in the head. Istvan appeared to Jensi soon after as a hallucination, and under the Marker's influence Jensi was compelled to place his own gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.