Genestealer cults in heavy fighting on Hexis

Of late the atmosphere within Kel Sandros' ruling council had become fractious, even by Aeldari standards. The T'au Empire had failed to capitalise on the advantages bought for them in Aeldari blood and a resurgent Imperium pushed back at the many threats that assailed it. Some argued that a change in the Craftworld's fundamental strategy was needed, that the end times and the Rhana Dandra were almost at hand and that no time remained in which to bring about the destruction of mankind and thus save the material universe from inevitable consumption by the warp.

Beneath crystal domes unlit by the light of any star seers consulted their runes and attempted to divine a stable path through the roiling tumult of future threads. To their frustration they obtained only brief and contradictory flashes of the future. An Imperial Inquisitor, sworn enemy of their people who might by necessity be friend, the Craftworld's dead united in a silent chorus and a fierce warrior promising salvation that danced with balletic grace amidst fire and destruction. But all these threads terminated in blackness, as if an impenetrable shadow cloaked all possible futures.

Tarquil feared what this might mean, fears only heightened by the reports reaching him from scouts and agents throughout the Aleph subsector warning of the rise of alien worshipping cults and a fresh Tyranid menace on the planet of Hexis. More information was needed, and if the gaze of Kel Sandros' seers was blinded it would have to be obtained by more mundane means.

Attempts to establish new webway portals on Hexis had been thwarted by the very Tyranid menace they sought to investigate, as if it understood it was being observed and moved to oppose the Eldar. Compelled by dire necessity a task force deployed out of the existing webway portals, now deep inside chaos territory, and made its way through the ever shifting ebb of war under cover of darkness and psychic cloaking, guided by the eyes of its scouts and the precognition of its seers.

On reaching the barren wastelands of the Tyranid infested zone the Eldar began hunting for suitable genetic samples, only to realise that they were the ones being hunted. Warbands of corrupted humans ambushed them from the rocky terrain,staging hit and run attacks on foot or on crude dirt bikes before retreating back to the shadows. The Eldar countered with rapid manoeuvre and focused aggression, surrounding and annihilating groups of attackers that over extended.

The fighting was close but the Eldar were unable to secure dominance over the area of engagement as further attacks materialised from areas they had only just secured. Unsure of the strength of the foe they faced and unwilling to risk attracting the attention of Imperial and Chaos forces that periodically surveilled every inch of the planet the war host was forced to withdraw.

Their efforts had not been entirely been in vain. The corrupted humans had been positively identified as Genestealer hybrids, their forms grotesquely mutated with extra arms and elongated muzzles. The Eldar had even secured a slain Patriarch for genetic testing. But they had failed to gain a proper assessment of the strength and intentions of the Tyranid threat, or to establish new permanent webway portals within the Tyranid infected zones.