REPORT FROM MIRA ANCHOVA: 504.815.M41
 

First in my report I want to bring it attention the Machines. I believe now, after seeing them perform, that the Oracle’s words were quite literal in their meaning. When he said lie, he meant it in the term of sleeping. The machines that we discovered, everyday farming machines, industrial machines and civilian tools had been tainted by the Warp. They were indeed sleeping, no doubt put into stasis when the planet was originally purged. We discovered, after Sammael’s jacking into and possession by the machine spirits within, that civilian items such as datapads and the vox beacon emitted a signal that activated the sleeping “machine spirits” and caused them to carry out their last command. From what we do know, there is something under where the vox-beacon was destroyed, and that the machines were digging to get it.

In addition, there was a guardian of these machines that my Cell and I have come to name “The Big Metal Pipe Thing From the Warp”, I believe it is a fitting name, as the entire structure of this heretical mechanical monstrosity was composed entirely of old irrigation and farm equipment that has somehow pulled itself together into one mass Katamari Damacy style and rolled to attack us. With the quick application of a meltabomb provided by myself and the combined efforts of the Cell’s firepower we managed to destroy the TBMPTFW, who in death deactivated the remaining industrial machines, preventing them from carrying out their last action. I recommend sending a team of agents down to discover what is buried under that building.

Galtus and the Purge arose within me a speculation. The planet was a staging ground for psyker testing; testing which I believe was leaked across the sector to this very planet, in this very Hive. Drawing from the sights I saw on that planet, when dust created visions of the past battle there, the information stored in the cognitator buried at the base of one of the buildings, and the first-hand knowledge I have from fighting against the Joyous Choir, I have come to a conclusion. The two are one and the same. And there are more. What we discovered on Galtus was that the heretics were testing psykers against one another, bartering with dark powers for the increased psychic potential in their progeny. What resulted was a series of tests, labeled as generations in which psykers from one bracket of years would be tested for greater potential than that of their predecessors.

This is similar to the tests we found were being performed in the Joyous Choir. Instead of using natural psykers, however, they used “Freaks” genetically modified humans implanted with some form of psyker-based material, which then manifested in psychic abilities. These freaks were then tested against the power of true psykers, and their performance was recorded in the similar vein to those on Galtus. I know what you’re saying, this is pure speculation, its hearsay and at best, far-fetched. But think of it this way, the Imperium is large, as is the sector, but is it really so difficult to believe that an entity powerful enough to convince a colony to renounce the Emperor and perform the most diabolical of acts in the Great Pink Bitch’s name, would be so foolish as to only have one base of testing? There are more of them, different branches investigating and testing different things for the Dark Gods. Whatever it is they’re searching for, they’re getting it. We’re interrupting them in the worst of ways, but dealing with this problem is like dealing with a bug infestation. You can’t kill every single ripper, there are billions, but if you cut them off from the big ones, keep them from their bosses they’re easy pickings.

We’re not going to beat them piecemeal; we simply don’t have any leads on where the next installations are or what they’re doing. I can tell you this, we’re going to lose if we can’t find the heart of these heretics and rip them out, because they know everything about us and we know nothing about them. “If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will suffer a defeat. If you know neither yourself nor your enemy you will succumb in every battle.” Tactica Imperialis, page 562. Faith only goes so far, the rest must be done with blade and gun, with book and with auto-quill. Otherwise we’re just buying time.

Thought begets Heresy; Heresy begets Retribution