Hiyas!

An absolutely neewbie question...

When the Acolytes visit the Mid-hive, what are their option for finding food services (if any)?

a-Your DH equivalent of fantasy RPG's "tavern/restaurant."

b-"Get in the queue, Guv'ner (there is a huge warehouse dispensing foodstuffs ála cafeteria/soup kitchen (utilising hiver food vouchers for currency, for instance)!"

c-There isn't any - the machine broke down.

d-If you don't get food at lunch-time you're screwed (the factory gives food to employees only)

e-Something completely different!

Also, would there be some kind of shoppettes (the mid-hive's equivalent of 7-11s ), convenience stores?

Thanks!

L

Well, I would say "all of the above"

Since the "low hives" seems to feature soup kitchens ("Edge of Darkness") as Alms Houses, I think it is reasonable that the middle hive does features both shops (similiar to super markets, but more warehouse-like and greyish and with the total abscence of advertisment) to buy packed & durable food (and perhaps some spices or something) as well as restaurant like affairs (more in line with todays fast food restaurants..again, with little comfort and no advertisement inside). Real restaurants might be present as well... but much less of them then you would expect based on todays society. Perhaps, a mid-hiver will visit a "real restaurant" between one and four times a year.

Food stalls go a long way, so. Cheap, hot, overspiced & unhealthy food. Mostly paste-like. Or hot fungus with sauce.

In a novel of Dan Abnett, there was a "side note" about food stalls being very dense about arenas featuring bestial fight ("Carnivora"). They bought the meet of the dead critters and fashioned meat products out of it.

The answer is of course "it depends on the Hive"

A Hive is a massive thing spanning areas larger than most countries, and would probably fit a little of all the above choices in a single hive. I see mid-hivescape as something like the setting in Blade Runner. A mish-mash of hi-tech flyers, skyscraper buildings and automatic syatems for those with the power and money, sharing the same cityscape as Wok-fry food stalls, manully powered rickshaws and cheap hookers.

Gregorius21778 said:

That same Abnett novel also features a family run chain of resautrants in the lower hive levels while mentioning that mid-hive levels were serviced by government subsidised cafeterrias.

Gregorius21778 said:

Emperor's Teeth! I thought Coscarla District was Mid-hive! You sure?

Thanks

L

Well, I would say Coscarla is geographically "mid hive", but at the events of "Edge.." this times are long passed.

The place is rundown, things go bump in the night, scavengers and scum loot and inhabit deserted buildings and narco gangs go about there business quiet openly.

This sounds "low hive" to me. Especially since this one "report" attached to the adventure stats the decline of the Coscarla District.

Basically Hives have to be self sufficient, you cant physically move enough food into them quick enough to support a population of multiples of billions so they do have to be self sufficient. You can augment what they have with off-world supplies like big blocks of protein, calcium, vitamins and so forth but something like a steak would be kind of exotic... unless of course you don't ask where it came from.

Society goes to complete **** after it misses 3 meals, so by and far they would have to grow their own with hydroponics and aquaculture, probably with extensively modified organisms that provide the vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates and so forth to sustain human life. Given that hives are relatively high tech things in 40k and some form bastions of sector industry, probably don't have to allocate too much of your population to actual farming and the rest can go off and do their factory jobs, equipment fixing, foundaries etc. They also have to practice a lot of recycling so scavenging probably isn't as looked down upon as much as people think, everything from water, air, poo to metal would get thrown through something to make it useful again in some form or another.

I dont imagine it would be very good food, kind of like living on WW2 K-Rations and eating the cardboard it came in for flavour.

Hives I believe by memory are heavily supplemented by off world shipments - thats part of the entire reason that they have literally entire worlds dedicated to agriculture and such, so that they can help keeping feeding all of the worlds in the Imperium. They use a lot of wonky systems, and because of how inefficent the Imperium is, and the sheer number of hives you can have your hive be anything you want it to be really.