#[This hive section] is overseen by enforcers who walk on gantries running along and across the streets, high above your heads. These grim looking men and women are armed with sniper rifles and some of them watch the crowd with magnoculars.

#The already crowded street starts to fill with more and more people. It seems like a work shift has ended in one of the major manufactoria and after a couple of minutes you are just a drop in an ocean of sweaty bodies, pushed along by the stream. Staying on your course is not easy, as nobody seems to stop but everyone just flows with the crowd.

#In the middle of the [street or place] stands a preacher on top of some hardplast boxes, giving a sermon about fire and damnation and all kind of sins. He denounces all passersby as unworthy sinners that should redeem while most of the people just try to ignore him, which in turn only infuriates him more.

#Down from above comes a fine drizzle accompanied by a hissing sound. As you look up, you see workers hanging from the ceiling in front of a gigantic aquila relief carved into the hive wall. While they clean they clean the imperial ornament withpressure washers , water and filth sprays down on you and the other pedestrians.

#From the far opposite wall of the hive section comes a deep humming as the huge ventilation systems awake and start to set the air into motion. A stale breeze washes over your faces, but moments later it becomes fresh as recycled air is piped into the section and the used up is sucked out above. The artificial gale chases paper waste over the rockcrete floor.

#The big corridor you follow is astoundingly clean and a chemical smell dominates the air, reminiscent of a hospital. After a while you notice huge yellow warning signs which are stamped across the floor. [“Warning! Entering sector with infection level V!”]. Ahead, you find a basin, at least two yards in length, that coveres the whole width of the passage and is filled with a clear liquid. Servitor drones are positioned at both ends of it. Once you reach the one on your side, it turns to address you, monotonously delivering its message: “Footwear disinfection basin - Treat slowly - No splashing – Disinfection is mandatory”.

# A horrible stink fills your nostrils while you move along. As the crowd suddenly divides in front of you, you see the source of the stink: a small sea of raw sewage covers the middle of the [street or plaza]. If it spilled down from far above or if it welled up from below, you cannot say.

#You take the metal stairways down to the next level and the free standing construct squeaks and shudders under your every step. Half way, an old-fashioned iron gate with an electrical ward blocks the passage [PC need to hold a cognomen with an access code against it, by-pass it or will have to climb around the gate. The later is an ordinary(+10) Athletics/Agility test with the chance of dropping to your death]. At the end of the stairway, a servitor welcomes you to the section with an static-ridden voice and begins to list the important communal offices and facilities to you, and where to find them.

# In the dim lit area ahead, you note a red light that darts about like a mad firefly. It turns out to be a servo-skull that zick-zacks across the heads of the citizens. Every now and then, it abruptly dives down into the crowd. After a while it ascends back up, only to soar to another position to repeat the procedure. While you continue on your way, you come close to the erratic pass of the skull drone. As it goes down nearby, you catch some harsh sounding orders issued to a pedestrian by the skulls vox module. [Perception / Awareness test: “Stop! Identity control. Hold your cognomen in front of you and wait for further orders!”]

#Suddenly something bumps into you and makes you stumble half a step back. It is a young boy, about 10 years standard, who wears the badge of one of the local courier guilds. He holds an electro-sealed tube container in one hand and is about to utter a "sorrysire". [This might be a thief in disguise or just an honest courier boy. The PC might harass him or not. It will not have any consequences one way or the other].

# The flow of the crowd comes to a stop. Irritated and annoyed muttering forms into a background noise as the questions “what is going on?” spreads. After a while the answer ripples back: the street has been blocked at both ends, a genetic screening takes place. The people around you complain but stay where they are. From time to time, everybody moves a few steps forward, only to stop again. (...) After what seems like an eternity [or after an endless series of pushes and shoves by the PC as they force their way forward through the crowd] you reach an impromptu barricade made of segments of iron bars welded into free standing grates. At a small opening, you are held back by brutes that hide their faces beneath crude loin cloth masks: they demand to take a blood sample from you with a small device similar to an auspex.

#Shouts of pain, anger and frustration come from the crowd around you. The second you are still wondering, somebody shouts “RATS!” While the warning is repeated by others, you suddenly see one of the vermin hushing by next to you. The beast is the size of your underarm!

#Traders have placed market stalls left and right and hawkers strut through the streets that loudly advertise their goods. Interested buyers form islands in the stream of people, and those islands quickly grow in mass as other pedestrians are blocked by them and have to press and wiggle themselves back into the stream once more.

# Ahead, the sound of cheering and raunchy laughter mixes with electric music and erratic applause. After a few moments you are close enough to see the source: on the elevated base of a five meter high statue of a war hero a trio of scantly clad women dances sultry to chimes coming from a box-shaped technological music device. The monument they are dancing on is surrounded by a half-circle of noisy men, some of whom throw coins up to the dancers. Further away, a group of angry looking women rants about this open display of shamelessness.

[EDIT: Correct an error or two]

Good stuff; definitely some things in there that I might use.

Very nice!

# The floor and walls shudder slightly - nothing as dramatic as a hivequake, but some nearby manufactorum cycling up industrial machinery. You can just hear the faint, incomprehensible squalk-crackle of mechanicus binaric tech-lingua as the enginseers assigned to the manufactory carry out rituals of activation.

# There is a bustling crowd and the sound of hawkers and street traders as one of the local markets begins opening. You can see a couple of sancionates lurking under one awning, watching the proceedings, but for the most part every space in the alley suddenly floods with mid-hivers. Large hatchways open on either side of the street, both at ground level and above it, as rickety-looking walkways form parallel paths along the walls one and two floors up and no less lined with traders and their wares.

# There is a wash of lights and air through the otherwise shadowy street as a mag-train, suspended from overhead rails, shrieks past at several hundred miles per hour.

# [low-hive Port district] With a whine of engines, a convoy of half a dozen arvus landers covered in administratum merchant fleet heraldry are setting down at a nearby skyshield pad. As they touch down, creaking blast doors close around the pad and the sound of air pumps purifying the smog-filled air from outside the hive.

# [low-hive Port district] A cargo-ten turns around the corner of a warehouse, towing an articulated train of cargo containers on crackling suspensor rigs. Each is covered with convoluted codes denoting shipping information. Not even noticing you, the cargo-ten driver almost runs you down before pulling aside at the last moment [Awareness//Dodge test?] - unimpressed at the presence of pedestrians, he doesn't even bother to stop, but thunders on deeper into the warehouse district.

# [low-hive Port district] Whilst little more than stacked cargo containers, this area of the port is an impenetrable maze in three dimensions - hinged walkways movable to allow access, each controlled from a dusty central office that is clearly abandoned most of the time. Some containers are so corroded they have clearly been in situ for years - a few even have hive-creepers and other weeds nestling in their joints and fastners. Stacked atop them are cleaner and more newly painted storage containers, resting here until redirected on into the hive to their ultimate destinations.

# [up-hive port district] Atmospheric shields flicker into being around a nearby skyshield pad in a pale blue dome. An elegant aquilla lander is descending, searchlight playing on the pad, where a group of well-dressed armed men - presumably household guard - stand waiting.

# [up-hive port district] A pair of Phaeton autocarriages pull out of a nearby parking area, accelerating onto the access ramp with little or no concern for anyone in the vicinity. Ahead of you, you see two port workers desperately scramble to safety.

# [up-hive port district] This whole compartment is a series of bonded storage houses - generally suspended and supported from floor, ceiling and wall on long, well-lit reinforced arms rather than merely resting on the ground. Winding stairs and access lifts allow their owners to control access, and more than one has stationed guards or security servitors at entrance points, scanning oath-cogs of workers before permitting them access to the valuables within. Convoys of monotask servitors, escorted by dutiful workers, transport stasis-coffers and containers of valuables to and from transport vehicles and landing pads.

This is great stuff. I will definitely look to use this to flesh out my next hive trek.

~ alemander

In January 2011, I wrote some random encounters for Hive Volg on Fenksworld (both are part of the Calixian Sector of DH1st), as requested back then in this FFG forum topic by forum user Lete.
Now, in April 2016, I decided to correct all the errors and to provide them anew. After all, Volg is not the only industrialized hellhole of the universe, right?

[The Sink]
The characters mission leads them to a section of Hive Volg that is taking up the space in an overbuild excavation sink. As the PC reach the ladders leading down into it, they notice some yellow signs in hive dialect scribbled next to the access.
Intelligence(+30) tells them that it looks like a warning. If anyone is able to read it [difficult(-10) test for Linguistics], the scribblings tells them that the levels the PC are about to enter are flooded with carbon monoxide (due to a burst in a pipe) and that this had occurred just two days ago.


If the PC take the ladder down into the section they will find the upper levels of the place to still be inhabited by some of the people.. They know about the thread below and will tell anyone who asks that those level beneath them are “a grave”, but they don´t know where else to go, so they stay in this place as long as they deem it save.


No matter which level the characters move through, there is not much space and ramshackle huts are cramped into what once were wide corridors. Multiple large pipes run along and across the walls and the ceiling (the huts themselves haven been built against the corridor walls and the pipes, as some of them are warm and used as radiation). In the levels flooded with carbon monoxide a lot of corpses can be found, most in makeshift beds and on dirty mattresses (the leak occurred during a night-cycle. The people never woke up but suffocated in their sleep). Strangely, there is no sign of any item of value.


The characters will later find a suspicious corpse in the “streets” (the spaces of the corridors that is not occupied by huts). It wears a breathing mask connected to an air flask, but the rubber tube connecting both is severed and the corpse shows numerous knife wounds. The hiver came down here with this improvised gear to loot, but he was not the only one with that idea. What the characters have in front of them is the result of a deadly fight out of pure greed, and whatever the characters came looking for will be in the possession of other looter now. The folks in the upper levels can give the characters a description (and perhaps some more information), as they noted both persons as they went down, but only one of them was seen coming up, bearing some fresh wounds.


[The Gantries]
After their arrival, the characters will first spend some time atop of the Hive (which does not rise high but burrows itself down into the depth). From here, the hive looks like an urban pockmark, a series of open abysses, chasms and fosses. Walking along the edges takes hours or even days and the only way across them are rickety, time-worn steel gantries.

The PC will notice that at many gantries people line up to queues, only crossing a given gantry one at a time. The metal of those moans and shrieks with every step one takes over them and those on them walk slowly, despite the sour rain pouring down. Later in the adventure, the characters will become witness to a gantry crashing down into the depth (or down to them from above), and those on them plunging down along. Other hivers will rush to them at once…but not to help but to take their belongings for themselves.

At some point, the characters will end up before a gantry without anybody in sight. Will they dare to cross it?
Later, as they line up to cross a gantry, they will encounter some bullies who brush and push their way through the queue (Intimidation goes a long way in Hive Volg).

As one PC crosses a gantry, somebody -runs- past the queue on the other side and onto the gantry. The person is chased by three other guys who stop at the other side and open up fire with crude weapons. The gantry shudders and moans under the additional weight of the man running for his life. Will the PC on the gantry try to kill the other man in order to ensure his own safety? The three shooters do not care for casualties among the bystanders and blast away, and the gantry itself might come lose.

[More from Hive Volg]

[ATTACK!]
The PC venture into an area bordering at an abyss, the edge guarded by crank gunnners that point their barrels down into the darkness. The streets here are crowded as there is one of the few Almshouses nearby.

While the characters go about there own business, they suddenly hear gunfire followed by the whaling of an industrial siren and the people in the street turn into a panicking mob. If the PC turn toward the danger, they see some men (what goes as enforcers in this district) manning the crank guns firing down into the abyss. Pale, malformed slimy things leap up from there, disgusting pale beasts that look like a mix of frog and dog, the size of a man.

[Loved ones on sale]
(This scene assumes that the PC are clearly identifiable as superior by the natives). As the characters make their way through the ugly streets of Volg, they hear shouts behind them. A local women (who looks like 40 but is end 20) tries to catch up with them, in the one hand a filth-stained piece of paper, in the other the hand of a small boy (about two years old) whom she is drags along.

If the PC understand here broken Low Gothic (Linguistic check;+20) they will learn that she tries to sell the boy to them. The paper is a birth certificate that states that the boy is born “fifth generation in the Volg” (and by local law free to leave if he can afford it). She offers to sell him for 10 thrones (“good boy! Cleans ! Carries!”) but will go down to as low as 5 thrones (if the PC do not show interest). If the characters refuse to buy the boy, she will break down and cry.

Actually, she is a ***** by depth and the “agreement” with her pimp (and the drugs she buys from him) increases her dept each day. Lately, the pimp announced that he will take her boy away as compensation for parts of her dept. While she has given up herself, she has not given up on her boy yet. Thereby, she stole money aside to buy a fake birth certificate (she was sentenced five years ago and the boy is first generation and thereby not allowed to leave) and seeks for a way to get her boy out of here. If the characters buy the boy but stay in the area, the pimp might hire some local muscle to get him back as “he belongs to me by right!”

[Taking out the trash]
Up the street, the PC see a number (1d5+1) of underfed and near-naked men and women who lie in their own filth on the street. They tremble and twitch from time to time, the other people on the street give them a wide berth.

As the characters slowly walk on, they will note an old guy in wide, tattered black ropes approaching the “twitchers” who pulls along a ramshackle chart. From this, he slowly pulls out an old, short staffed pickax from under a bunch of rags. Callously, he bashes in the skull of the first “twitcher”, then locks the pickax into the chest of the corps and pulls it onto the chart. The old man slowly turns to the next “twitcher” and raises the pickaxe. Nobody pays the scene any attention.

[The “twitchers” are drug addicts who ran out of money and are completely nerve-burned by the bad drugs they had been sold. They actually lie in front of the drug den which just threw them out after their money was spend and they were not able to leave on their own anymore. The old man in the black makes a living of boiling corpses to produce soap from the fat (and other things from other body parts). To him, those “twitchers” are just one step away from being dead anyway, and he has lived in Volg for to long and has seen to much to care. So, he comes around from time to time to see what he can pick up.

For ease of use, I turned the scenes I provided into a PDF that I have put up on dropbox. Enjoy.

For a very good visual on what I imagine Hives to be like, I recommend checking out the film "Salute of the Jugger" (that's "Blood of Heroes" for you folks in the States, I believe). Red City is almost a perfect rendition of what (Under)Hive life should be like; masses of the unwashed, street vendors, filth and grime, an uncaring upper class, faceless enforcers of the law...the works. If you can cram a highly popular bloodsport into your Hive (or involve it in your campaign plot), all the better!