Explorator Fleet
The Explorator Fleets are fleets sent by the Adeptus Mechanicus to explore less-known parts of the galaxy. Think of them as Rouge Traders, add in ship loads of tech priests, ancient spacefaring technologies (which the priests keep to themselves, the selfish little....) and a big old focus on finding hidden technological secrets rather then booty and spoils and you have yourselves an exploratory fleet.
Their primary mission is to find lost technology, especially a working STC system (though printouts are also welcome). Often, they find other things, like new worlds and civilizations, or worlds with which contact had been lost centuries before, or Forge Worlds founded by a previous expedition. Often they find danger, which is why they bring along a detachment of Skitarii, just in case. The drive to find working STCs fills the tech-priests with the sort of (worrying) intense fervor you don't see outside of a Justin Bieber's fan legions and so they risk huge fleets to find them.
Explorator Fleets tend to be crewed by the most curious of tech-priests, which means that when they find ancient tombs filled with impossibly advanced technology, they tend to poke around a little too hard and a little too deep, which wakes up the Necrons and causes lots of death (this happens in at least two of the Ciaphas Cain stories). It's a seriously endemic problem, probably compounded by the fact that some tech-priests worship the Necrons as angels of the Omnissiah.
The reason why the Adeptus Mechanicus isn't too keen on sending out Explorator Fleets is because they are worried about all of those nasty corrupting influences out there in space ya know. The lure of forbidden technology, the sight of tech heresies, xenos technology....it can all turn a tech-priest on their little metal head and at times not in the way the higher ups would like. Their reverence for technology means anything unusual (even a long lost type of electric toaster) can make them giddy and excited and since they are far away from the steadying hands of the senior techpriests magos on the forge worlds (where they can monitor them big brother style) the chances of heresy are high. Add the fact exploratory fleets include the most open minded of tech-priests and well....such things are self evident.
So why allow such high risks? Why not allow the rouge traders or imperial exploration fleets to bring back technologies for them, letting them do the hard work? It is because of greed. The Adeptus Mechanius are the biggest horders in the universe and are worse magpies then the Blood Ravens. They keep all the best technology for themselves and only really share the mass produced stuff due to their ancient agreements. While the imperial navy has to manually load torpedos by hand with hundreds of workers, the mech
The worst thing is the tech-priests don't know how the tech really works when they