The 40k Lorecast - Episode 27 - Hive worlds (Yes they are as bad as you think)

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

 On this episode we cover where the vast majority of the citizens of the Imperium live.  In fact probably close to 90% of them live in Hive Cities. Are they good places to live? no, in fact might be the worst. Crime? yep. Daemons? yep. Roving bands of raiders and marauders under your feet? also yep. Not to mention corruption, disease, industrial accidents, and corpse starch. So hop in for a fun trip to an imperial hive city.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast with me, John Barciotti and Bradchester. This guy. Once again, like and subscribe to the podcast, join our Discord and some of the other communities we have going now, Facebook, page, everything. You should go to the Patreon. Oh, yeah, also there's a Patreon. There's that one, too. I'm not good at this.

Our goal, again, just for listeners, we want you guys to have an interaction with you. So these things, it's not just a cast of us telling you our opinions of Lord. and then good luck with it. The Discord especially is a great way to get in contact with Brad and I. We're in there quite a bit where you see us discussing stuff with people all the time. If you think we got something wrong, if we think we got something right. If you have more questions, go in there. We could not be more happy to have you all in there.

I love sprawling conversations too. Yeah. By the way, the people will say this. I look at our Discord more than I look at about 50 other groups that I'm actually in. Yes. So although Brad used a key word there, sprawling. So I think it's a good way to bring us into our topic at hand, which is hive worlds. Urban sprawl defined.

Yeah. So in our last cast, we kind of dove into deeply into what imperial space looks like, how imperial space is organized, even how some of the imperial space is governed. And then we jumped into a lot of the key worlds. But we had to leave one world off. And that's because it's hive worlds. and hive worlds represent the most important, they might be the most important worlds of the Imperium. It doesn't where everybody lives.

Yeah, it is it. So let's dig right in into what hive worlds are. They are probably the second worst place to live in the Imperium outside of an actual invasion zone. And depending on who's invading you, I still might want an invasion. Yeah, that's actually a good point. It's, Tau.

I'll say something nice about Tau. If I were on an imperial world and the tower invading, that's the best of my options, because I won't lose. I'm kidding. God. So let's dive into what a hive is. It's hard to explain how big a hive world is. Yeah. Hive world is like a Corson, but a billion times worse.

Because hive worlds also go miles and miles and miles underground. in levels, which, like, each level is its almost own ecosystem of things happening. Yeah. So level one could be, and they get worse, to be honest, as a lower you get. Yeah. And so they're called hives because of the way that people interact in them, but they really are just spires. It's a very tall tower in the middle, and it expands out as it goes down.

But it does honeycomb, though. You know what I mean? Because it's pockets, pockets, they go down, down, down. Exactly. But they also go, and so I said, it's Corazon, because it's huge, and it goes like literally, unrealistically high. Yeah, miles up, miles down, hundreds of miles wide. What's crazy, though, is the size of the population, where we're going to get

in a Necromunda in a bit here. Necromunda has 100 billion people on it. For our reference, the Earth has 8 billion, and Necromanda is a city. So the hive road will have upwards of 10 hives on the planet, and each hive is 10 plus billion people. So we're bordering on some of these places may, they won't get to a trillion because that's not how the math works. But, you know, we're getting close to a trillion people on a single planet, living in a few cities. And also, these places do not produce food. No.

Oh, we'll get to that in a bit. But, yeah, Brad, you used Corazon. I actually used Midgard, because I've been playing Final Fantasy. It's kind of like that level where it's just this giant city where the further up you are, the better. The further down you are is whole. And it's nightmarish in a actual nightmare level. Yeah, I mean, this is as bad as it gets, barring demonic incursion. Sometimes happens.

Yeah. Generations of people will live inside of the hive. and they will live there, never even seeing the outside. The only chance you really have to leave the hive is to join the imperial military. Right. And one of the big things is some of these people have never seen outside as an actual outside. Yeah. If you're in one of the lower levels, you've never been to the surface.

Yeah. Well, we'll get to the surface a little bit. You're not missing much. So the hive kind of breaks down into four groups. You have nobility, the middle class, the lower class, and then other. Other is real bad, by the way. And weirdly enough, the middle class isn't that much more than the lower cast. It's just people that get to shit on somebody that's life is also shitty but shittier

than yours because you're an asshole, basically. Exactly. And as we've said before, the entire Imperium, if you're an imperial planet, you have three things you need to do. One, pay your taxes. Two, ship your supplies. Three, worship the god worship the emperor. And three, three is only available if someone says.

Yeah, someone asks. The first two are going to happen all the time. The hive cities are the quintessential of this situation. This is where all of those things happen nonstop. I mean, remember, a hive planet will have more people in it than multiple systems will. This is a core for the Imperium. And one, the people in charge do not, not, not want their shipment of widgets to stop because it'll mean someone will show up and find out why.

And you are probably doing some terrible shit to stay in power. Yep. Because you have to have your 10 to 100 billion people that are super not happy. as we'll get into it about what's going on, and you're keeping them in line with probably not the greatest methods. No. And because you are in pretty much dire straits

because the Imperium also doesn't F around. No. When the hive world stops producing, when the high world is 1% off, they are sending an inquisitor. Yeah, and he usually goes, hey, top guy, you get killed, next guy, don't let this happen again. These are, and that's what makes, we're going to get in this, how hellacious this life is going to get.

And the best thing about it is they make some of the best stories, though. Let's talk about that. Let's start with this. This is why we're going into. Yeah, from a setting standpoint. But it's super exciting because there's gene stealers, there's chaotic cults going on. There's just regular rebellions. There's the regulars, there's the drugs in the lower cities and there's biker gangs and there's

all of these things going on that you can do. Hey, what kind of setting would you like inside this? Yeah, so it's all available. Oh, yeah. Hive cities are, and we're going to dig into some of the cool side notes, but the concept of the hive city is this is what, and you're writing 40K and you want to write a 40K story that's not just an invasion. this is where it is.

The Inquisitors are always going to Hive City. Yes, because there's number one target. Even if you didn't know, you could just show up in a Hive City and you're a Hive World and just be like, some shit's probably happening. If you were an Inquisitor and you were given a quota, you would just go to a Hive City and knock a century of quota out and then go back to your regular. Yeah, I'm just like, I like to hang out. Yeah. I went to the Hive City. I caught 700 cult members, 35, you know, Zenos Incourions, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So can I go back to just doing my regular job now? To get something specific, though, it's pretty hard because you have to find it. You're like, so all I have to do is weed through these 100 billion people that live here and find this one guy who's been doing this. Also, this should be easy. That one guy might not even be part of the 100 billion. He might be living in the underhives, which, spoiler, we're getting to that in a bit. So first off, let's talk about the value of the high. cities for the imperial. One of my favorite statistics I saw was that a

a hive city in one hour can outfit a million imperial soldiers with all the weapons, closed munitions, food that they need to fight an incursion. One hour. This is, these things are absolutely critical. And that is not unknown to the forces of, well, I was thinking, it's, it's both. Avadon, Avondon's well aware of this. Yeah, well, that's the thing is, also, it's well known to the imperial. I know that you know, that you know that I know. So while Avedon knows about this, we know that Avedon knows about this. So he's trying to send in infiltrators, people to destroy shit, start rebellions,

screw with the system. We know he's doing that. So we send people in the Inquisition to stop that from happening. And it's a definite game of spy versus spy going on at all times. Also, there's also all the regular shit that's happening. That's not anything. It's just this place sucks. Yeah, there's also the normal, like, rebellions and all that, all that kind of crap.

They're, but not only are they key for production. They're also key for recruitment. It's like Imperial Guard recruit off these planets massively. And they can take, really, however many you want, because it's so overpopulated, it doesn't make a difference. A city has 10 billion people in it. You go take a million. they don't notice. Like, okay, cool, we can go fight this war now.

You've also got space marines, like the Imperial Fists, use Necremunda as a recruiting world for them. Mainly because it's also, they just grab all the fighters, but yeah. These things become incredible breeding grounds for space marines, for Imperial Guardsmen, for really psychers for, you know, for the Black fleets. Yeah, whatever.

The Black ships are not your favorite thing. Yeah, the Black ships are just doing regular trips to these places for obvious reasons. These things, because it's not, the Imperium needs two things that fight a war, munitions and people, and hive worlds give them both. And one of the best things, one of the terrible things that the hive world does

is, hey, these produce minor psychers, keep all those people together. They'll keep producing offspring of minor psychers, and we'll keep scooping them up. They'll keep scooping them up and feeding the emperor with that, which at some point we're going to do a cast where I tell, we discuss what the emperor does with all these psychers.

but that cast is not this one. Delicious. As you might expect, a lot of things go on in hive cities, the Imperium would not be super okay with. From an Inquisition standpoint, government standpoint, moral standpoint, they don't give two shits. But from those standpoints, again, though, the hives are so critical,

as long as everything keeps showing up on time, we're going to let it go. Because, again, we're at a never-ending state of war, and the answer to that was, where's the war, Brad? Yes. Yes. So let's dive into how a hive world is built

because we realized we never talked about this. We kind of touched it. I guess we, yeah, maybe did a little bit. We sprinkle it. Hives are built on planets whose resources have been used up. And by used up, Brad, we did cover his last one.

By used up, we mean literally it's all gone. Like the ocean's got pulled up because the spaceships need to have drinking water. So we're just going to come to your planet and take all of the water, which again, poor GW writing, the way gravity works, if you take all the water off the planet, it would actually collapse on itself. But we're going to skip that and move on with our day. Sorry. There's little moments of GW writing that got under my skin pretty quickly. So sometimes, yeah, all the minerals are gone. All the water is gone. Sometimes they build foundries on a planet that just, you know, convert the, that just convert the world to

a complete toxic wasteland. Oh, man, I saw space miles. They just wanted to use the vacuum. So as you're doing this, though, remember, as the Imperium is coming through and mining and ripping a planet apart, they have to bring people in because we can't use men of iron. Did that once. Didn't go great. Didn't go great.

So as a result, this giant populace is built to just strip all the resource out of a planet. And eventually you get to that last day where you got the last resource out. And all these people are sitting there. So what do you do with them? You can ship in another world. Or you could start making shit. There you go. And so they just build factories.

And the, effectively, in the death, the line I had here in death, I like the line. Like a dreadnought, but sadder. The idea is that the Imperium says the world may not be of mineral value to us anymore,

but it can be for production. So these hive planets are horrifying on the outside. No one, as we discussed before, people don't see outside. It's not a lot to see. It's a toxic wasteland.

You know. Not all of them are that bad, but a lot of them. Well, they end up being that bad again because there's too many people here. Yeah, the planets just get wrecked. So you really can't even go off. Even if it was halfway decent, it's a shit show real soon. Yeah, but it was, I did actually, I did make the comment to Midgard earlier. And when you leave Midgard and start exploring, you actually have like green grass.

That doesn't happen in high worlds. You leave a high world and it's a Mad Max toxic wasteland. So with that, that was the outside. Let's do the inside. You mean your sweet pod? Yeah. So if you're living inside of a hive, not a lot of, you know, one-bedroom apartments with the foyer. They jam as many people as humanly possible.

It is crazy. You're basically sleeping in a sleep pod for a lot of people. Now, a lot of people are going to, if you've read about this, you're going to fight back on because they usually center the stories around the gangs and things like that, they make themselves more space. Because the farther you are away from the exact production of whatever, basically the farther down you go, the more crazy is happening. Yeah, because the idea here is that we're going to have you live next to your factory.

If those people who know a lot of the Industrial Revolution, this was a pretty common thing during Industrial Revolution, where you'd have entire cities, something in their towns and people would live next to the mine that they all worked in or the factory that they all worked. And this is a normal way to do it. It's the same way for hives.

In the hive, whatever part of the hive your production doing, you live there. And that's right, you'd have like a sleeping pod or maybe like a very small personal pod. You and the family live there. Spoiler alert, they never call it out, but there's total child labor the whole way through this. It's the second you can do any work.

As soon as you can do any way, you're hooked up. And again, they will just modify you. Yeah. Not maybe as bad quickly as the admec will. But most of the time, if your family's supposed to make widget B, you get cybernetics so that you produce widget B better. Yeah, exactly. People in goods also have to move around the hive and to other hives in the same planet.

So there's this incredible network of trains, elevators. Yeah. Because you are literally, there's people that make blanks, like cars. I mean, Toledo makes the things that get sent up to Detroit to finish the cars. And this is a planetary thing that has to happen. John's neighborhood makes widget A that I need to make widget B, and then we send widget A and B much picks together, so that can now be the wheel of a tank.

Yeah. And that doesn't get, that gets sent down the line to the next one. And I just hope you all can envision what this is like, where you're talking about this hive where there are things coming in and out of the constantly, those thing going up out in the outer space because we're having, you know, it's being shipped off world. This,

when we talk, this is why I like the term hive for a hive world, because it's just busy. There's constant things moving, going at all times, constant moving at all times. And also in a lot of these places, people trying to stop that from happening and other people trying to stop you for stopping that.

There's a little bit of conflict. building around it. You have to be real cool with, oh, some shit blew up again. Fourteen guys got done down right next to me. I don't know why that would slow you down. Yeah, I got nothing. I got nowhere to be. Let's get this. Let's get this. Let's get going. Your foreman is like, I don't really want to hear anything about that. Keep building. And so it's kind of an, it's amazing place, not in a good way, but where stuff is just, it's, everything's in flux around you. Because it is, it's all about efficiency. The role. Because the way a hive world works is the raw materials come in, and the hive world sends them out the other side as a fully finished product.

There are probably multiple stops in that process. So everything just flying all over the place. One little issue with this, though, is as I kind of went through it, a hive. So just numbers so people can follow because I went and did, it was Wikipedia, so it took me eight seconds, but still. So, Earth, but anyway, Earth has 8 billion people on it. Okay? Most hives have 20 billion people on it. However, most hives are barely twice the size of London or New York City.

And I, now I will admit, when I was doing that math, it made it clear to me that it's quite possible that the writers at GW may not have architectural degrees because that math, that math doesn't actually work. It does if you go miles and miles down into the ground. If you take an average height of a person and you put this many people in an area, it actually doesn't fit. But that was something. It'll quit.

I had an Excel sheet out. Some of us are shorter than other people. Thank you very much, John. I guess that's true. Just so you all can understand, like what goes through my head is I'm doing these things. I'll usually do notes and I'm doing work at the same time. I kind of bounce back and forth. I have an Excel sheet up for work.

And I just did some basic math. and yeah, it's a world of fantasy, so we can go with that. And so as far as how these numbers work out, but we'll skip that. As we've discussed, though, as all of you are aware, Earth struggles a little bit with feeding its population. We have starvation on the planet as a stance. Now, let's shrink that space down and multiply the number of people by 20. Obviously, the planet can't feed these people.

And the thing is, is that here's one of the number of people. of the biggest things that comes in is they also send food, which the nobility do not distribute correctly. Yeah. And you also have a lot of the population is unaccounted for because there's more people. Yeah. Than they are even half of the jobs. Well, yeah, it's a dark note, but it's true.

The Imperium only counts the population in a hive city of the working population. They don't count like, there's no one out there with a. like the guy at the door who's clicking the button when someone walks by, the Imperium actually has no idea how many people live on a high world. They just know how many people work on a high world. And they send supplies for that.

Yeah, exactly. And then they fight over them. Quite a bit. Two things that obviously prop up out of this is the first one is waste. The next one is food, but it's easier to cover waste. So you have to deal with human waste

and industrial waste. And I will say the Imperium, It's pretty green. They are masters of recycling. As solid green as people. Exactly. I like how you're the lones in the movie. Hell you.

You're 76. So everything in the Imperium is recycled. So whatever factory, the way, for example, the way they build their factories, if, you know, material A comes into the factory I'm working on and I'm converting it into a product, whatever bits of that material I don't use, there's a factory right next to me that would use that for whatever they're building. The same is true with as each level of the manufacturing goes by, each factory, whatever extra bits that they are left with, they then go to the factory next door to be converted into something else. Same is true with human recycling. So all of the

wastewater that comes out has to get recycled back through. All of the, there's no fresh water sources we're pulling from. All of the clothing that's someone that people wear goes back to the guy that just died next to you. Yeah. And this gets us to the gross part, which is food. So we discuss that there are agro worlds and the agri worlds are producing food for the Imperium. They can only, but remember, a lot of what they're going to produce is going to get sent to the warships who are on the frontiers. Hive worlds have a different way. of feeding themselves. And it's a really cool thing called corpse starch.

And it's exactly what it sounds like. How do I say this correctly? They actually mix it together. It's kind of weird, actually. Because we're not cannibals. No, but they're literally making protein powder out of it. Yeah. That's the easiest thing I can say.

Yeah. I mean, then that if... Because they do mix it. It's not like just ground up dude. Yeah. It's there's... Also ground up rat. I'm saying it's ground up yes, to be honest with you.

That's true. It's a bug rat, human, weird protein powder mix that they make. It's not like you're just roasting a, you know, put a tent on the barbie. You know what I mean? What you're trying to do is they effectively take all of that together and they make gross-ass protein bars effectively. Yeah. It does make sense that, you know, these hives, millions of people, not to mention, bugs, rats, whatever passes for rat in the planet you're currently on, are all dying

every single day and just them decaying would kill the entire hive. So they're rounded up hourly, effectively, and thrown... Again, if you're at the back of it... If you're at the back of the train and snowpiercer, this is what you're eating. This is effectively what they were making. And as we've discussed before, the chaos gods don't really care if you're doing something in their honor, they just care that you're doing something that they would like. Like, are you doing something? Is this heinous, awfulness? Yeah. I'm going to know with Nergel for this one. It feels like a nergill one. This is very nergely because he's like,

I'll just stop the populace. Now, they're still getting food. And this is why, and I'm going to touch back this a lot with violence and stuff. We're going to go into this more. But one of the reasons that there's so much fighting is that there is food at the top. Yeah. Well, was the movie where they lowered the table down in prison. Oh, it was terrible, but yeah, I know what you're talking about. But yeah, it was also gross. But one of the biggest things about that

is lots of gang activity and stuff like that is I want a chicken wing, not a bug person protein bar. You know, I don't need ground rat and cockroaches today. I'm going to go up there and I'm going to shoot somebody.

Because we did get a shipment from that agro world. Where is it? It's being stored in warehouses for people that have more money than me to have. I would like to kill them. I'd like to do that and not eat the leftover people. Yeah. Which I still had a funny moment where I was going through that. I thought, what if like the Jukari rated, you know, a high world and then found the guys making the corpse starch and just had that moment of like,

When did your car go, hey, man, are you guys all right? It's like, did you, did we, were we already, did we conquer this? Like what's, like I'm good. Why do you not look like us, but you're doing us stuff? You guys have problems, man. Yeah, like you guys know you can just grow food, right? It's an option. We still, we grow it in the freaking web way.

They don't know what you guys are, you guys are weird. But to Brad's point, this does leave a. Mass, I mean, these are talking with billions of people on the edge of revolution at all times. And it's not, the edge of revolution would be considered full rebellion revolution. But that's just how high worlds work. Yeah, I mean, it's technically in revolution at all times. It's just, I think, you know, these. Are we still producing what we need to produce?

Cool. Yeah. Then it's mostly fine. It's still, it's, we're working under acceptable numbers here. Yeah. I mean, that's what the Inquisitor. are always coming through and looking at this. Like, basically, an inquisitor is going to sit there and say,

hey, there's an uprising in a hive. It's Brad said, yeah, and? Like, that's, that's normal. It, the inquisters are basically saying, is this part of a, are they just upset, in which case, whatever, or is there a bigger issue where we have to actually be? Is this a coordinated rising? Burn the hive down.

Do we bring, are we bringing in an Ordos, Malias, older Zinos? Yeah. Or are we just telling the imperial governor to bring in more Arbites? Yep, exactly. the beatings will continue until morale increases. But that's where you get into some of the greatest parts in that, though, is the stories of who's showing up. Are you trying to stop?

Is this a real thing? Also, it gets into some real questionable storytelling because most of these, there's a lot of the bad guys that are just bad guys and taking advantage of bad situations, but also, hey, man, are you going to kill this dude because he wanted some chicken? Yes, the answer is, by the way, yes. Yeah, sorry.

The answer is yes. The answer was always yes. So let's go through the classes and the hives. It's both the classes and the hives, but it's also the structure of the hive. I see about hives for those following along at home is it goes top to bottom. Pretty simple.

Top is going to be your nobility, which is a combination of obviously the imperial governor, but also anyone else who kind of carries clout within the hive would sit up in this era. You're probably going to have members of the Ecclesiarchy. You'll have any visiting members of any key members of the military. They're all going to sit there. Because remember, all these are all the recruiting worlds.

The Imperial Guard has a base there. The Arbytes have a base there. It is layered down. I mean, it is definitely top to bottom of this. Because you have these people that are just in charge of making sure things. And there's a ton of people that are just, you are the minister of this. Yeah. And so they're all the way at the top.

And so they actually can, in theory, Look out the windows. As I said before, it's a toxic wasteland. But you can. You are getting the best food. You also just put up a goddamn hollow vid of whatever you want to look at and pretend you're looking at. You can do that. And you've also got, it's also safe, too.

You're very far away from the common folk. So you just get to live your life up in your, you know, it's not really an ivory tower. It's pretty dark metal. But you're up there. Either way. Yeah, you're up there and you're not really being bothered. It's, yeah. It's a guilty cage, but it's still not a hive.

Totally rather live up there. Then you have this weird middle level that exists. That's not overly well-defined, but effectively, this is kind of where the middle management of the factories live. These people, their purpose is to... Well, there's not a glass ceiling here. There's... You have levels of nobility.

You have levels of the ecclesiarchy type thing. Yeah. And then you have, it is not a glass ceiling. It is a metal. It is a metal. Welded ceiling. At a man tight, like, you know, gates of cadius ceiling. You are middle management and you are staying there forever.

You also have like a pretty decently high chance of somebody killing you. Yes. You were the visible representation of the nobility. Even though you're not living as nobility, you're not living exactly the way I am. But you work for the man. That's the problem. And also, I can get you. So these guys, this middle level, they get a little bit more space.

They get a little bit better food, which to Brad's point makes them incredible targets for everyone else. And it's just this weird little kind of spot just above. So these people, effectively, they also live next to the factory that they're in charge of. They live in a nicer view. They're not on top of the furnace. These people also tend to be, well, at least in the stories, they tend to be the worst because they want to stay the hell away from the dregs that they have to interact with.

Exactly. And so they have their own mini gangs themselves because they have enough pull to get people. I can make your life slightly less shitty. You need to have guns to make sure that people with guns don't take me. These guys are, they're also Inquisition. I would argue they are more corrupt than nobility usually because of that. Because they've got, the thing is the nobility that, but we need to understand from the way the Imperium's set up is it largely feudal. So if you're a member of the nobility, if you're a member, if you're upper member of the guard, the Ecclesiarchy, whatever it is, you're good.

You'll be good. Your children will be good. Generationally, you'll be okay. These people are much more in the moment good. It's mercurial. You could be gone in a second. So they tend to be much more susceptible to the ways of chaos to, you know, corruption. These are the first people you go to.

Exactly. Because they also have the easiest way to disrupt. Yeah. If you need somebody to put a wrench in the mechanism, these guys have direct access. From there we go to the lower levels, which unfortunately are not the lowest level, there in a minute. We'll be right back after a quick break. The lower levels. This is what we've discussed earlier. These are just workers in factories. So it's, well, it's, it's weird, though, how they set it up, because they are this, it's a honeycomb network, but it's like a spider web

almost. It's just, just intertwined because of the fact that goods need to move planet wide every single day and be gone. You were talking about, an hour can produce so much shit. It only produces that shit because there's high-speed. railways that have no safety, by the way, that are zooming by you. They effectively have, like, open subways. Just like, hey, man, don't step in front of that train that's moving at 800 miles an hour. It might be out your front window. Yeah, sorry, out your front door.

You have a window. Window, window. It might be out your front door. So you have to open your door and hope it's not coming. But they have people living in and around all of this. It's just this interconnected circulatory system. basically, of tunnels and elevators and trains and everything else, but they have the lower levels wrap all around this where they all live.

Because when I need somebody that is making here this product, but I also need people that can transport this product, and I need people to fix this thing. And I also need extra people after these people get killed because that's going to happen. It's totally going to happen. We have to have more and more and more. Yeah. And your family just lives there.

Yeah. Oh, everyone lives there. That would conclude, as we just said earlier, the official population of the hive. Yeah. So we've now covered the, let's, we'll not use, well, we're going to say a hive has 10 billion people. What we used to describe was where those 10 billion people are. Now we're going to get into where another probably billion people are. That's a big number, by the way. Yeah, yeah. The population of the under hive, this isn't like the, of the undercounted homeless of a city. We are talking about an entire another city that just happens to be underneath the city full of people.

You're like also China also lives here. Who are also very, very hungry. And it's called the underhives. Now, when I read stories of the underhives, it's very evident to me that the writers for GW felt the same way about Mad Max and Fallout that I felt. It started off,

the end of actually, if I was, reading a lot more about it. The original underhives remind me completely of Mad Max. And then as we've got later into like the early zeros, it seems to take more of a fallout swing to it, which I'm laughing because that would line up exactly with releases because Mad Max came out in late 70s. Thunderdome was like, it was like 85. And then Fallout 1 would have been like 93. One of the best part you have to go with though is remember when we're talking under highs, I'm not talking small tunnels.

We're talking gigantic under city. Yeah. You're like, this could be anywhere between hundreds of yards to miles. Yeah, it could be, these cities are going to be 50 miles wide. You know, but it's also the height of it. Well, what, yeah, oh, I see, yeah, my point is like, yeah, if the, if the hive world is 50 miles wide, the under hive may also be 50 miles wide and two miles deep. It is giant. And to be fair, there's more space.

You do get a bit more. You get a bit more elbow room. You get a little more elbow room as long as you're willing to fight mutated things that will kill you. Yeah. To the end of the death. And so from here, we're going to take a quick departure. It's not much of a departure into, for those who don't know, a game in 40K called Necromunda. And it's fun as shit.

It is an amazingly fun game. Can be hard to find people to play with you. Whatever. That's the thing. Super fun game. So the reason we're going to talk about Necromanda is that Necromanda is GW's explanation of this world. So Necromanda is on the planet Necromanda. It is the hive of Necermanda on the planet Necromanda.

It's just happening the largest hive state in the galaxy. But it's also they said it wasn't unique. This is just what happens. Exactly. And it is a really actually extremely fun game. But I do know a lot of the people, thanks to our Discord, orderly listen to this are hobbyers, you need to be looking

at Necromunda models. It's a complete side note here, but I just want to point out if you want to just, if you want to paint something looks cool, Nicaramunda. If you want to kit bash something that looks way, way more amazing than it's the game. And it's still considered it's a GW model, so it's legal. Yeah, it's completely

legal. They do is one of the greatest sources for kit bashing and proxying, I think within the game. The Vansar are just cool as hell looking. It's like their Tal Mitru Kari, but like the best bits of both. So

seriously, as we talk about this, go look up Necromunda. You may have never played it. The rules are actually pretty good. It's a very fun game, but the models are really great. It's just something I'm going to bring up. But anyway, back to the topic at hand.

So the underhives are below the production level. So the people that live here, they're not producing. they're just trying to survive. And they're made up primarily, the ones that are, I can't say primarily. There's a ton of people that just live here.

But the things that matter, I guess, are the fact that they just make up gangs. They have huge biker gangs and things of that. That's why we get to the Mad Max thing. These are people that are violently trying to survive. Yes. They are killing, stealing. And it's just, this is part of how.

life is that you have a billion extra people in a large percentage of them are armed and getting what they survive. I mean, Brad said it well earlier. There's effectively X amount of resources available as far as food, and there's X plus X times four people. So you've got to do two things. One, kill people and make the resources go further. And two, make sure you have the resources.

this creates effectively a lawless place. They talk about the Arbytes don't go down there unless they're grabbing someone who did something bad in the upper levels. The comparison I make here is actually to a movie. It's in Portuguese. I don't know how many of you've seen it called City of God. God. I mean, watch it once because it won like a bunch of awards, but it's like. It's incredible.

It's so depressing. It's like, it's one watch and that's it. Yeah. Yeah, but it's a good one. too good about yourself. Yeah, if you ever think, like, man, life's, life's pretty good. Or actually, if you're like, life's pretty bad, how bad can it get? Watch see a God.

And no, it's kind of a true story. But like, it's, they don't, they don't go down there and do anything about it unless you are frequently go doing something about, if you impede the production, then people go down and try to, well, as you'd expect, if someone does some sort of like explosion, if someone does something to the upper levels and they need. to run away. They're going to run to the under hives because that's where you're, that's where you're safest. So the Arbites will come down there, but they're coming down there just for you. They have no interest in dealing with the lower levels. I mean, this is... And when they come down,

then they come down in force. Yeah. Oh, because they have to. It's like this is, you're not, again, this is why I got, I use the city of God. It's a very good reference to this. The Arb... The Imperial Guard would struggle invading Necromunda. Space Marines would They would succeed. Don't get me wrong. But these are not gangs who are like, you know, like the movie Warriors where they're armed with baseball bats. They have plasma weapons. I mean, this is. They also steal, remember, they're making armaments. They're making guns. Yeah. They're making the weapons of the Imperium. So they have them. In fact, they have them and they've jerry-rigged them to make them better. Yeah. They literally go up and they steal the weapons they're making and then go back down.

So this place is super fun. Aside, though, from all these war bands, you've also got other people down there who are just fleeing the Imperium. So mutants, you know, there's a certain level where you mutate enough that the Inquisite, that the Ordo Zino says, yeah, you're not okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we get to a certain point where before they do that, you're like, you lift this thing better

now. Yeah. So the mutants are down there because they have, otherwise they just get murdered. You've also got rebels. You should, we should have probably covered this reactor up at some point in time, huh? Yeah. Why is this guy got seven arms? Four arms is a problem. Three or five. It's like the holy hang grenade. Three or five are probably okay. Four arms in issue. But you've also got a lot of rebels who live down there because, as we said, this is a nightmare. You live in a hive. There's no upward mobility. You're hungry.

You're eating ground-up dead people for food. Remember it also has bugs, rats, and protein. Fair enough. And the pro-I can't even remember what that. There's an actual mixture. Yeah, there is a full ratio. I didn't want to go that far as, you know. I've nerded up all the time.

I'm sure, Brian is. I've looked it up, damn it. I can't remember exactly what it is, but there's literally a, they talk about it. So, as a. result, though, you've got rebellion is always being fomented down here. So you've got, just to recap, roving gangs who are just trying to rule the underhives. We've got mutants who are quite powerful, who are, they're actually

part of the gangs. We've got rebel groups who are down there, who are just, their goal is to plot and attack to go kill the nobility. And then you've got this last group, which are probably one of the biggest dangers to the hide for being honest, and it's unregulated psychers. Well, also, partially not their fault, because when you find out that your other option is to take a boat ride to death. Yeah.

They go and hide. But as a result, you do have quite a lot of unregulated psychers who are being, let's just say, recruited by certain forces. Yeah, that's not a great place. Chaos cultists in coming. Yep. So this kind of unsurprisingly, these conditions of the hive lead to quite a lot of corruption, which creates chaos cultists.

And the weird thing is, is that chaos cultists on the surface just look to be a legit rebellion. Yeah. It's pretty easy to get people your chaos cold. If you're like, how is your day? And you're like, I worked 18 hours. And then I slid into my pod after eating my dust burger. And you're like, what would you like to do anything but this? And they're like, I can get you real food.

Yep. And get rid of the people that are doing this to you. You're like, all right, I'm man. Yeah. And that's the regular rebellion. What you don't realize when you get to the meeting, everyone's got things carved into their skin. Because they're actually there worshiping Zinch.

Yeah. And now you do too. And you're like, you know what? Screw it. The last group we have down there, and we haven't covered them yet, we will in the future, are Gene Steeler cults. And the thing is, is that you put this in here, Gene Steeler cults are wildly insidious because they're more like invasion of the body snatchers. Because the Gene Steeler shows up as one. Yes.

and he basically starts grabbing people and they breed into you over generations and you are literally, biologically, will now worship the patriarch as your deity. Yeah, and we're going to do a lot of stuff into tyrannids, but just like that, they are, Jesus that are called this terrifying. It is by far the scariest thing.

and I know about chaos, this is the craziest thing because they infiltrate. It's the infiltration, I guess. Well, it's the, they long play. Yeah. That's the thing. Chaos infiltration is quick.

Yeah. This is like the literal, generational, they want to get all the janitors on the higher levels. They do, you know what I mean? That's just live I'm coming. I'm like because you're dead right. Yeah.

That being said, though, the under hive is not ignored. by the nobility. They are very well aware of its existence, and they actually use it for a lot of their own advancements. They also fund some of these gangs and stuff because they want certain under hive gangs to be in charge because they let them kind of do what they want as long as they don't stop the flow of the spices. Exactly. And also they know they don't have enough food. well, not enough food with them having to share their food. So they literally let these people have supplies and stuff.

If you weed out some of this populace, it would be great. It would be great. The other thing, they also work as a really good distraction for those lower levels. Because remember, these whole places on the edge of revolution, there are, it is in uprising at all times. But people on the lower levels are aware of the underhives. And what they don't want to do is, like, as bad as your job is, working in your factory all day, going into your sleeping pot, eating your dust burger. It's still, I'm not having to fight for my dust burger to the death every single day. So it does kind of help keep the population in line a little bit of like, look, guys, you could rise up and murder all the nobility, but you're just going to be in the under hive now.

Is that really what you want? And they also have people to blame. Yeah. Like anytime the shit goes bad, whatever. Why do we need to lock it down? Why do we need to have these draconian martial law in place all the time? Well, obviously, because the underhive. Because the underhive.

These guys will kill you if I don't do this. If you have an industrial accident, do you want to tell the Imperium there was an industrial accident? And one of the people you put in charge of factory blew it up? No, you blame the under hive. That's what they did. The under hive is a massive use of the nobility. from a PR standpoint.

It's also works so well for entertainment because you know who just take some money, build a fighter pit. Is anyone surprised they built fighter pits? No. Instead of bread and circuses, we have dust burgers and fighter pits. Yeah, it's just, it's wonderful.

As we said, some of these imperial nobility they did a little vacation to a pleasure world. I mean, this is literally the people that they recruit, by the way. Oh, I know. And they were out of pleasure world, and it was really fun. And now they're back at their stupid hive. And, yeah, I want to go torture some people under hive. And you go to the Slanesh pit. Yeah. There's a lot of Slanesh influence throughout the hives with the nobility. Yeah. Actually, overall, chaos does really well in hives. I mean, Nurgel's just, Nurgo's just watching them eat people. So that's got to be a win. Also, he's just putting pestilence out.

He just couldn't be happier. You're like weird. You put 100 billion people out of planet and people got sick. I can't believe it. Yeah, he's just, corn has the entire under hive to just giggle about. Slenash should just look at the nobility going, come on, guys. You know what you want to do it.

And then Zinche is just enjoying. Oh, the plotting. Yeah. Look, I just want to move up. No problem. Come on in. These things, and that's what makes these hives so funny is that they are, As much as we talked before about the emperor's big directive of don't fall to chaos,

and then the Imperium built chaos beacons. Oh, it's chaos breeding grounds. Yeah, like there's nothing chaos loves more than a hive world. There is one more piece, though, of the underhives that's really important. And it has to do with stuff we've covered before. And it's the term I hear is side muscle, but it's hired muscle for the nobility. The nobility has an issue. It's they are protected from to a point from revolution and what have you by the Imperial Guard and the Arbites and what have you.

But there's no protection from the rest of the nobility because, all right, just think about from a structure standpoint. We're a pyramid. If you're at the top of the pyramid, if you have too many other nobles who have too many kids who have too much this and your family begins to lose influence, you've really got one option. and that is go kill that family. Duh. Yeah. The Arbytes aren't going to do it. The Imperial Guard aren't going to do it.

The Inquisition you might be to trick them into, but you might get yourself killed in the process or your planet blown up. So that's not going to do. So what do you want to do? I'm going to go hire my own little group of thugs. Hired goons. Yep.

And wow, does the under hive work for this? They are. They also pretty easy to find them. They're in fighting pits. They're in fighting pits. They're in the fighting pit. You're a pretty good fighter in the fight. writing pit. Can you go visit this apartment tonight, two o'clock in the morning and make sure everyone

there is dead? Just letting you know they have a ton of stuff. Yeah. Also, weirdly enough, I'm about to tell you how to bypass every lock and security point. Yeah. Their code is seven. But moving back up from there, so that's the bottom. Let's now kind of take the hive as a whole and what daily life is like in a hive. First and foremost, it sucks. A lot. Yeah, all day. Remember, you probably have some extra pieces you don't want in your body.

Yeah. Because it makes you work your widget-making machine better. You also almost saw outside once, and then you didn't. You're eating a dustburger. Everyone you know is dying all day. All day. And there's a chance you might get killed. Yep.

And if you don't get killed, your day still sucked. Yeah. Because all you're in, you are a very, very, very small cog in a very, very large machine. And no one cares as long as the machine works. Because the thing I was thinking about is like what your protection is like from danger, right? So the Arbytes, the Inquisition of Space Marines, their focus is just the Imperium. That is the Imperium running. and they're all pretty ham-fisted in how they would respond.

So, you know. Unless you also, unless it's the salamatters that show up, if a Marine contingent shows up to fix your problem, who. Yeah, I don't feel like they're going to fix it with the. Well, they're, when your standard munition from your basic gun is a RPG, because that's what a bolter is.

It's true. Yeah, it is. It does some collateral damage. The analogy that I drew up here was, you know, an imperial citizen is being bothered by like a protection or something sort of organized crime. And the, and the Imperium finds out about it. There's going to be one of three things they're going to do. They're going to ignore it because production has not been affected. They're going to go in and destroy the entire gang and everything, everything around it. Which also is you. which also is you, or they're going to actually just go even further and level an entire section of the city because it was bothering with, it was interfering with production and we could more reliably blow this whole thing up and rebuild it and get back to production goals.

Remember, we build really fast. And notice how none of them were arrest the criminal and make them stop. Yep. So as an imperial citizen, this sucks. So this does lead to a pretty nice thing. of, uh, you could just leave, not on a vacation, but you could join the Imperial Guard or the Imperial Navy. Or if you're in a fight pit, you can get brought into the space marines. Yeah. The entirety of this world is focusing around, you know, production. It's a shit place to live.

So when someone says to you, hey, you want to get off the, you want to get off planet? Your answer is just yes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I do. I love it. I love everything about what's going. I'm just thinking about how the entirety of every hive world hasn't fallen to chaos. Yeah. It doesn't make sense. Every hive world should just be mini chaos. And you remember the entire time you're pumped with Love the Emperor the entire time from the Ecclesiac.

There's just so much propaganda being pumped. You're working 12 to 60 hours a day. and the entire time it's just propaganda pumped through the place at all times. I don't know why this happened, but now I have this vision of like pro-emperor rock music like Christian rock. Just being blared. It's just people singing praises. No, it would be more like just hymns. It's probably just nonstop.

That's the music you'd hear is people singing the praises of the emperor. Watch some of the stuff on Hammer and Bolter and stuff. They have some of the Imperium, like, where they just have, literally it blurtes out the emperor and stuff. Because it just has the flying servitors and stuff, just cruising around. But I will say as bad as all this is, we're talking about how bad it is. Living in a high world, though, does have some advantages when compared to the other worlds. You're not under threat of Zeno incursion because... Except for J.

That's true. That's not an incursion. And that's, it's, it's, it's, because they're not coming into you. It's excursion, actually. Because they're already there. Your smaller outpost worlds, you've also got pirates. I mean, you don't get, they don't get raided for shit because it's too big. Yeah, I mean, it's, the problem is your, your life sucks.

You're going to spend every day for the rest of your life and it's sucking. But you will live the life until probably a piece of machinery falls on you and kills you, which is still better than slave cult kidnapping you, you know. So we'll call that a win. And it's, yeah, relatively safe from, you know, the Imperium is heavily invested in you and though your world not blowing up. Yes. Well, the thing is, is that you have great space defense, so you're probably not getting invaded from there. You might die from several other ways because of gangers and explosions.

Right. In general, my life, weirdly enough, I'm not getting enough of vitamin yes. Yeah. And I'm probably just going to die from that. Yeah, I don't think you're living to 60. So, but you're probably not just going to get stolen. Yeah, which is better. You're not going to have random pirates showing up and just, like, kidnapping your entire world.

I still think it's pretty terrible. I might just go with the fight the pirates off. I would happily join the Imperial Navy. It's like, this has, this has got to be better. Let's go get, let's go get killed in a foreign world, you know. I believe the admec, is it 50, not admec, sorry. Peril guard. Is it 15 hours, right?

It's 15 hours. Is your average once deployed? It wants to deploy your average life's been 15 hours. Yeah, I'd probably take that over work in somebody's hives. Like, yeah, that's, I got a cool, I got a laser, I got a flashlight rifle. That sounds fun. I mean, it's just craziness that's going on. Yeah.

And it's, it's very interesting. You have weird, weird opportunities, though, if you're willing to immediately be a criminal. Oh, yeah. I mean, I view this, I mean, there's a lot of these old games like Wing Commander Privateer. In some ways, even actually fall out. I mean, there's so much of these types of games where we've all played big games where you're explored, you can, you start in a place like a hive city. Because where you always start. I mean, Final Fantasy 7, that's where it starts.

It starts in a hive city. And then it's the adventure of leaving it to then do more with your life. Right. And so, yeah. It's an RPG heaven is what it is. No, very much. However, if you don't become the main character, you're probably not leading a great life. No.

So, yeah, I think in conclusion, I think hive worlds, does it suck? Yeah. Is it better than 80% of the other options? I don't know about 80%. I've rolled sucks, man. It does. I'm just trying to think of like... You know what?

It is not better than 80% of the other options. You're always, you're thinking of it from I am the PC here. I am the player character. That's true. You know what? When you met the... Agro worlds where it's at, isn't it? Agriworld's probably the way to go.

Depending on the agro world again. Yeah. If you're not making the hook and you're actually making like, Wheat? I mean, Fortress World would be kind of cool, too. I mean, you get a lot of good views of just It's armory world. It's Armory World. You're right. You're right. That's the one. Armory World has the less chance of chaos incursion. You're just, you're right. You're in the sweet spot of I'm probably not going to get killed by random pirates and stuff. I'm just going with rogue trader. I'm going with, like, that's, I mean, rogue traders. I'm talking worlds now. You said, I know, and I'm cheating because you're sick, because you were right. And I was like, that's again, you're the player character.

Everybody was right. Like, I'm sure. I'll just change it. Yeah, that's where it's at. But anyway, so with that, that'll kind of conclude this coverage. Next week, our plan, we're going to start covering Aramon. We wanted to dive back into another individual character. And we decided to go with Aramon because he just got a bit more depth to his story.

Everyone's aware of his name and his existence, but not a lot of actually know his backstory as well or his backstories. He's got a lot. He's a big name, and he's been doing stuff just the beginning of the, of the lore of humans, I guess. Yeah, he's been around, and he's played an incredibly important role in a lot of the biggest moments, not the least of which is Magnus becoming a demon prince. Also, someone could Google for me and give me in the comments on Discord. How many recolas are too many? I think Brad might have eaten 20.

So, yeah, enjoy that pee. This might not be good colors. Once again, join our Discord. If you want to help us out and support the Patreon, that would be great. Jump on into, we have a Facebook page as well. And just come see us at events. With that, it's John Barcati and Bradchester. This guy.

Enjoy your week.