I sent a courier with a package to the operatives at the hostillary where they were staying with instructions that they were back on duty and to report via shuttle to the imperial cruiser Pius Hammer. The operatives faced long queues so Iota hacked the bill boards to show the flights were cancelled, allowing them to jump the queue and board the shuttle to the cruiser before it departed. I was sending them to Ancra valley on an Agri world called prosperity where farm workers had disappeared. Their task was to investigate the disappearances and navigate the political system as there was friction between the Adeptus Mechanicus and the local cathedral in meeting the imperial tythe. The workers did not like servitors replacing mechanical labour.

The operatives took a shuttle to the surface which docked on top of a silo. Xanther Futah, an Administratum adept, was waiting by the elevator. He asked the operatives to repair the relationship between the Adaptus Mechanicus and the Ecclesiastum as part of their investigations. The operatives witnessed an argument between the two sides with the Ecclesiatum complaining the Mechanicus were entering 'the ruins' and converting injured workers into servitors.

Gaius spoke to the overseer and learned the workers were superstitious and believed in 'the grim harvest', and that twilight shades emerge at night to steal away workers that were impious or did not meet their quotas. He also reported that disappearances always occurred during the night shift and blamed Mechanicus servitors for stealing them away. He said the Children of the Dawn disposed of the bodies of the dead, but if a tech priest got hold of a body they would turn it into a servitor. He then spoke to a worker called Thavium who said the missing workers were taken by the grim harvest and he had seen one of the shades. A Brother Fergus had been working in a field to the south west, and about 12 hours into a 16 hour shift she heard a noise like the wind and a cry from her brother. As she ran over she saw her brother taken into the ground, by a form moving gracefully and quickly which she said were Tech ghouls in league with the grim harvesters.

Erika went to the cathedral and listened to a sermon by Confessor Euphrati. She then spoke to him and was told that tech ghouls were encroaching on Ecclesiastum territory, replacing manpower with servitors, and Euphrati believed the administratum was exaggerating the disappearances. He warned that the eyes of the mechanicus were everywhere and wanted Erika to sabotage one of their flying eyes for which she would be rewarded. She then spoke to a labourer who warned her not to go to the ruins.

Mordacai went to the ruins. On the way he found several odd very shallow footprints in the mud leading to nowhere. A group calling themselves Children of the Dawn were guarding the ruins and rebuffed Mordacai. They were part of the indigenous population who worshiped the emperor as the Lord of the Dawn.

Iota went to the mechanicus complex which was covered in piping and machinery, end emitting a putrid sulphurous fog. Five combat servitors were guarding the gates and farming servitors were being taken to the fields. They appeared efficient at farming, but the accompanying members of the mechanicus were not helpful. Iota found a small section of grass in the human harvested zone that had been cut by a monomolecular blade. He spoke to a supervisor there called Helem then one of the workers called Savak. Savak warned he should leave this place least he become another sacrifice. Savak said he saw a dark tall slim figure which moved with inhuman grace, disappearing and reappearing as it moved, with screams of their victims as they were taken away. It was carrying a long slender object which made a strange noise. He had then found a long piece of metal which was razor sharp and made of a black-green metal. Probably some form of projectile like an elongated bullet and likely to be xenos in origin. Iota took it as evidence.

The operatives then went to Sortium compound run by the Adeptus Administratum where they had to answer lots of pointless questions and fill out forms before being given security passes. They enquired after Xanther and were asked more questions before being taken to him. The operatives asked him for accommodation, and discussed the ruins. Xanther said there was nothing there. Just rocks and the Children of the Dawn were just protecting the ruins due to superstition.

The operatives slept but were woken by a droning noise after two hours. An incident was occurring in a field which they were told was some form of raid. They went to the field, where they found tech priests and servitors facing off Children of the Dawn who were armed with weapons. There was a body of a field worker on the ground which was covered in long deep cuts. Everyone was shouting and Iota had to step in and use authority to make the tech priests back off.

The operatives went to the Judician complex run by the tech priests to meet Genator Heptex Ovium and examine the body. Erica performed an Autopsy and determined death was because of blood loss due to extreme trauma inflicted by a whip. The pattern indicated a weapon not used by the imperium, and there was traces of poison. She gave it an 85% probability of being xenos in origin. Erika then determined the blade Iota had found could be from an Aeldari splinter weapon.

The operatives then went to the ruins where they were challenged by Children of the Dawn. The Children were given the body but still refused to allow the operatives to continue to the ruins and told them to leave. The operatives then used stealth to return with Gaius leading, avoiding the Children. They found ancient Aeldari ruins made of Wraithbone with a tunnel entrance into the mountain. The operatives entered and found pictograms on the wall depicting tall slender figures in supplication to a female deity. They had been defaced by a sharp bladed object. Erika identified the deity as being the Aeldari god Ashtar, their god of the harvest.

The operatives heard the sound of claws scraping on rocks and a guttural growl. They also found a human corpse in a tunnel to the north and a hole in the ceiling leading to the surface in a tunnel to the south. The body had been dead a few days, was badly mauled and had been partially eaten. Gaius found a backpack of unfamiliar design, full of elongated bullets similar to the one Iota found. Mordicai went to investigate a wraithbone formation and was attacked by a clawed fiend which took many shots to kill. Erika was clawed during the fight and her hand seriously damaged. When it was finally killed Mordicai cut its head off for future study. The wraithbone formation was in the shape of a shrine, with gemstones and pictograms carved in stone, the same pictograms as the defaced examples found previously.

Iota took the backpack, and when he put it on, metal fibres adhered to his back, and the backpack had no weight. The operatives continued until they heard voices. The voices were not human, and creeping forward the operatives saw two Drukhari xenos. They were armed with long rifles and knives covered in poison. Mordicai threw a krak grenade at them, blowing them to pieces. A rifle and knife survived which Mordicai took. There was a symbol of the chaos god Slannesh on the knife, and the rifle took the ammunition found in the backpack, so Iota gave the backpack to Mordicai as well. I am going to have to keep a close eye on Mordicai as he appears to be developing a liking for xenos and chaos influenced tech. If that starts affecting his performance I may need to find a replacement.

The operatives continued into a large round cavern with a domed roof and a huge statue in the centre depicting the Aeldari god Isha. A powerful energy reading was detected to the west and there was an open passage to the south. The operatives went to the entrance to the south where they found a blue energy field which Erika recognised as a webway gate which xenos races use to travel between worlds. The energy pattern appeared erratic.

The operatives then heard a voice saying "it was close enough and to put guns down monkai". The operatives complied and a figure appeared and identified itself as an Aeldari ranger called Ulthyr. It wanted to know what the operatives were doing and said it was sent to stop Drukhari from polluting the world. Th eportal went to an Aeldari craft world which had been taken over by Drukhari, and the portal had been opened by the Cicatrix Maladictum. The operatives agreed to help purge the temple of Drukhari and Ulthyr would then shut down the portal.

Ulthyr took the operatives to a door in the west and said prepare to fight, then the door opened. Beyond was a huge long hall, with decomposing bodies, desecrated Aeldari statues, and workers who had been chained up and tortured. There were five Drukhari performing a ritual with some of the bodies. The operatives crept up and started firing at the Drukhari as Ulthyr killed one with a single shot. It was a long fight but finally all the Drukhari were killed and five workers were saved. The operatives left the ruins, and an explosion collapsing them occurred shortly afterwards.

The operatives were picked up by the pious hammer and brought back for a debriefing. Mordicai acquired new armour, certainly beyond what his salary would allow. I suspect he sold the xenos tech to fund it. I suppose it is good that the operatives are finding ways of becoming more effective without my having to fund them, but should I find they are becoming too independent I might need to start recruiting a new team. There is always a excess of resources ready to toil and die for the emperor.