A cyber-gothic role-playing game for mature players.

These pages are in no way intended to challange Games Workshop copyright.

Families, Gangs, Houses and Tribes

The social order of a typical Spire is Feudal and Tribal at the same time. The Feudal systems takes the form of the weak owing fealty to the strong, be this for protection, for a wage or from so other necessity that only they can provide. The Ministorum Ecclesiarchy sits atop this pyramid of loyalities/responsibilities. The Venators (or Wytch-Hunters) are the militant wing of the Ministorum, hunting down Genetic Deviants and rogue psykers. The Adeptus Administratum is beneath that, as humble servant-scribe to the this theocracy. The Adeptus Arbites (police force) are next in the chain of strength, enforcing Ministorum Law. Tech-tribes usually follow next in these chain of command, as they are the richer groups, usually owning factories and other resources. Below these are the many Hive and UnderHive gangs.

Gang, tribe, family and house are all interchangable terms which mean the same thing. People owe loyalty and respect to those to whom they are related through blood or marriage. These extended families look after each others interests. On the lower levels these people group around the areas they live and must constantly defend them against those who may want to rob or kill them for their homes, food or credits. The strongest members of the family are the typical gangsters (which the players control). Other members count as dependants (usually these are children or pregnant women or injured gangsters) and cannot really fight (though they will stay inside their hab and put up a defense if need be). The strongest and most cunning family members leads the tribe. The groups distinguish themselves in the way they dress, act and speak and each will have their own particular rituals and codes of conduct. The lower classes are in a state of constant warfare, struggle and vigilance. As murder is not a crime (the only crimes are against the Authorities and the families which belong to them), people must be able to fight. Typically, if someone has something you want, you kill them, or hurt them bad enough to take it. But as they stick close to their relations, you'll have to fight them too.

For PentHivers, life is a little less violent. Though they still maintain the family structure, with all of its micro-feudal implications, these richer tribes interact on a political level, forming alliances, making betrayals and buying each other out. Often these pratices result in warfare. Usually only the hot-headed youths of these families maintain the family honour. They fight in street skirmishes or duals to settle a dispute, with the older family members watching closely to see who proves themselves. Those that do well usually get the best jobs, the most money, the biggest inheritance and the best marrage prospects.

Day To Day

Necromunda takes 26 Earth hours to spin around on its axis. A Necromunda week is 8 days long. The 8th day is HolyDay devoted to Church going and Mass. Most Hivers have no days off work and no holidays. Every day is the same constant struggle except the 8th. only then are they allowed to rest whilst mind-controlling chemicals are breathed in and Hymns sang in the Churches - and even then they have to kneel on metal-hard floors.

Each day is devided up into 4 cycles each 6.5 hours long. With no night or day, with no changes in the light except for seasonal ones, time is measured in this way. The majority of hivers have to work for 3 cycles and 1 is left to their own leisure time and sleep. As most Hivers do not have watches, new cycles are declared through the Spire with alarms, sirens and church bells coming from the various factories, plants and Imperial buildings. During "leisure" time most Hivers must defend their homes or fight their way to the clubs for drugs. The Spire never sleeps, someone is always working and the alarms are always blaring calling the population to work. Workers have strict and set times to be at work and be released. Families will always have some members working whilst other stay at home, guarding their small territory from the neighbours.

Rich Hivers are less and less concerned with the bells and time as they have more cycles to themselves. The richer you are, the less you have to work. Very rich clans (owners, Brats, nobility) do not have to work at all, or very little.

Ritual

The Hive society is highly ritualistic, mainly due to the need to build up relations of trust between the arring tribes. Typically greetings are holding up or out your open hands, bowing ones head and lowerings the eyes, opening ones clothes at the chest, bowing low, or some other gesture of defenselessness/vulnerability to put the other group at ease. All aspects of life are ritualised in this manner to ensure the smooth running of interaction between groups as deverse as clerks in the Administratum offices to workers in the Munitions factories, all being from rival tribes. Ritual also allows goods to be exchanged and sold, and social interaction to take place in the bars and clubs.

As everyone is a gangster of sorts, each person wants to stand out from the heaving morass of the crowd and show that they are stronger. To this end gangs demands initiation ceremonies which those they have bought and those relations that have grown old enough must pass to become accepted. This rituals involve burning, branding, scarification, tattooing, getting beaten to a pulp by the other gang-members, and acts of bravardo (like scragging an enemy, stealing something, running through the vents for a set distance, playing chicken on the roads etc.). Gang member have their own look, hairstyles, skin-paint, clothing, weapons, vehicles, and the like all go towards an image which is maintained fiercely. This sense of identity bonds the gang and gives them a sense of worth and makes outsiders cautious or afraid (depending on their reputation). Virtually all gang territory is marked with painted symbols, totems, or sculpture.

Dance

Dancing is important in Spires which have clubs. Typically, gangs will gather at clubs to whore, gamble, enjoy a pit-fight and relax with drugs. Typically some sort of music is on offer. It may be electronic or a minimalist acustic sound or singing depending on the technological level of the Spire. If dancing is on offer gangs will dance as part of their ritual posturing. A pecking order, a fluid feudal system is maintained between all gangs, someone is always beneath you and someone always above you. Dancing is a way of staring down opposition, threatening them, showing your strength. Gangs always dance together and always have their own way of doing it. Whether it is to the simple clacking and beating of the bones and drums, or to a complex electronic layering of dissonance and discordance over 500 beats per minute, each gang will dance its typical dance. The Maori dance is a good modern day example of ritual intimidation. Gang dances may also attract sexual interest through dance, as well as deferance from surrounding gangs on the floor, or violence.

Body Armour

Freud's student Wilhelm Reich first coined the term body armour. Briefly, and a little inaccurately, body armour is a mode of body-language where a person postures, "holds themself", and moves in a particular manner. This manner is characterised by defensive-aggressive gestures and maneouvers - arms folded, chest stuck out - stomch sucked in, jaw held higher, and most importantly, muscles are tense and rigid as if the person expects a blow or violence. The person is primed for some sort of brutality - either to defend against it, ward it off or inflict it.

Hivers carry themselves in this manner daily. A Hivers life is a matter of continual posturing, posing and threats. Such intimidation can be covert - like body armour - or blatant - like dancing. A Hiver is socialised to live in this way. A break-down in body armour will be noticed by a keen and intuitive Hivers. Any Hiver who appears weak and vulnerable is the natural target of others. Only in groups are Hivers best defended. Groups themselves have pecking orders though, and weakness is not tolerated within gangs. It will be punished according to family law, or in a stret fight.

There are atypical forms of body armour, and because most Hivers are pathological, this is due to the nature of the brutality the particular Hiver has been faced with. Some of Reich's case-studies will illuminate particular examples.

Language

There are millions of different languages in a Hive-cluster due to the spread, density and isolation of the vast population between Hives. A typical Spire will have several dialects, many accents and a few languages depending on the amount of isolation and contact between levels. scavvie typcially have their own language, and UnderHivers have a thick accent. Penthivers speak perfect Imperial gothic and maybe other languages. These spread can lead to confusion, misunderstanding and plain non-communication between gangs, resulting in warfare.

The Effects of the Artificial

Hivers live in an environment alien (and familiar) to ours. The claustrophobic industrial maze of roads, subways, factories, refineries, gas drains, slag pipes, fibre lights, air fans, clubs, bars, mines, prisons and churches close in above and below the Hiver. S/he lives in a polluted environment, one where the only animal to be seen are the dangerous giant rats and spiders. Plants are unheard of. Hivers never see daylight or night-time. They have never seen the sky or felt fresh wind on their face. The dead seasons of Necromunda pass by unnoticed and uncared for.

Ignorance

Most Hivers are uneducated and illiterate, with understanding of concepts, theories or ideas beyond everyday necessity. The Ministorum constantly dictates spirituality and any other kind of speculation is inhibited by the inflexible language and the continual distraction of banal survival. Almost all Hivers never see outside of their own Spire. Escape is impossible and paying ones way out almost is. Yet most Hivers do not care to go outside because they don't know it exists. Social myths and superstition abound in the spire. Most Hivers believe that the Hive streches on and on forever, that there is no end to it. Indeed, this is how most of them conceptualise the Imperial. They are not even aware that they are on a spherical planet orbiting a dying star. The horizons of the typical Hiver are narrow to the point of blindness.

Those that are aware of an outside, other spires, the ash-wastes are usually Penthivers, Guilders and Arbites. Most of the time these Hivers do not speak about such things to the poor. This is partially because the poor don't ask and partially because the rich don't care to explain. Of course stories do circulate, but these join the other myths and legends that are talked about by Hivers on rare, idle occasions, and are not taken seriously, if indeed they are understood. Only a few Penthivers are aware that the Hives sit on a planet surface. These Hivers typically have dealings with the space port and off world trading, the Primus nobility and Imperial authorities.

Agoraphobia

Due to this life-long entrapment, if a Hiver ever leaves the confines of the Hive s/he becomes subject to agoraphobia. S/he will feel in constant danger in these wide open spaces and will feel disoriented and disarmed with no-one close to hide in or run to, anyone could be watching, danger could come from the vastness around them. The emptiness would be frightening. (A failed Willpower test means –1 Cool or –2 Cool if in a desert until the next WP test the next day). A Hiver will eventually get used to such conditions as they are highly adaptable.

Drugs and Psychosis

The typical 20^th and 21^st century definitions of sanity and insanity do not apply to the Hivers of the 40st Millennium. One can only understand Hivers through analogy – even though they are no like us. There is very little that connects us to them, no even our genes as the Hiver is no longer the familiar Homo-Sapiens-Sapiens but Homo-Sapiens-Psychus. Even so, compared to other worlds Hivers as bloodthirsy, sadistic and sociopathic. Despite their desensatized state they are still subject to the stresses and strains of living around so many other people in a hellish environment that appears designed to torment and frustrate them. Consequently Hivers are usually flooded with their own adrenaline during their waking hours. Their work requires it and day to day surival necessitates it. Hiver take a large amount of drugs either to relax and calm down (these would be depressants and tranquillisers) or speed up if they are fatigued (stimulants). The richer Hivers usually take regular doses of psychedelic, oneric or hallucinatory drugs for leisure and pleasure. Sex and combat drugs are also available.

LustMord

Without tranqs at least, Hivers become fatigued and subject to extreme stress. This may involve collapsing, screaming fits, panic attacks, catatonia, or random suicidal violence; Lustmord is the common name for these attacks. This is due to the amount of emotional and physical trauma involved in their daily lives since childhood and the sense of frustration and constant threat that Hivers are always aware of. Some Churches put a minimum of traqs in the Block if they can afford it and some even use onerogens in their incense if their congregation is unruly.

LustMord may also be due to the metaphysical influence of Nurgle upon a Hivers' psyche. Continually aware of danger and the possibility of death some Hivers are just going to go crazy. This adds to the element of random violence already on the street, and casts an unpredictable shadow upon the lives of all Hivers. LustMord can sometimes result in mass-hysteria and rioting. Spire riots are extremely dangers due to the tentative architecture of a Spire and the fact that every citizen is in someway armed. Arbites surpress such rioting with extreme displays of violence. Such mass destructions results in thousands of deaths and take hours, even days to quell. The Administratums Undertakers then have a lot of work to do, taking the heaps of bodies to the Re-Cycs and fending off the surviving scavengers and looters. Mass LustMord has occasionally resulting in Spire-wide disaster and destruction.

Strength

Survivalists by socialisation, only the strongest, fastest and most cunning live into their youth. Physical strength is valorised; there is a Neo-Teutonic worship that accompanies this, enforced by the Ministorum and the Hiver Aesthetic. Abstract, careful, rational and artistic thought are disregarded and almost absent, except in certain Imperial Institutions. Strength is almost synonymous with wealth and health. If a Hiver is rich in credits and property or has destructive or expensive weapons (or both) s/he is considered strong. If a Hiver has killed a lot of people this is also a good thing as it proves her/his strength.

Again, Hivers are not subject to our modern categorisations with regards to sexuality. No one is considered "homosexual", "bisexual", or "heterosexual". This is not an emancipatory force however. As Hiver society is largely patriarchal, sex is geared towards domination and siring heirs. Penthivers especially want someone to pass their fortunes and family alligences to, so fertile men and women are especially valuable and expensive to marry or buy. Homosexual behaviour is disapproved by Penthivers only when the actor has not sired or birthed an heir. Perversions are largely unknown; the only form is passivity. Because of the emphasis on strength, Hivers conceive of sex as an action, as an imposition upon another, almost a form of violence. The active actor in the sexual act is the one in control, or the strongest, or the one who is paying. The passive actor is having sex done to him/her, and is not strictly a participant. Passivity is seen as weakness, almost perversion. Penthivers frown upon it.

Poorer Hivers, on the other hand, use sex like they use drugs. It relieves stress, and though it is often expensive, it is to some degree a necessity. Because of these social and psychological pressures, few Hivers can abstain.

Physical strength, money and jewellery, good clothes (usually rat leather, or better, spider silk) fast cars or bikes, slaves and weapons (especially expensive or exotic weapons) make a Hiver sexually attractive to other Hivers. It will also make her/him feared and respected. This commodity fetishism is taken to the extreme of body modification. Tatooing is common and not very expensive. Branding and scarification itself is looked down upon, usually as a sign of ownership, unless it is part of a gang ritual. But scars and burns earnt in combat improves the physical attractiveness of a Hiver. More so do bionic replacements.

Rich Hivers will buy bionic replacements even if they don’t need them. A bionic displays the Hivers wealth and also makes her/him physically stronger or quicker by definition. Attention is drawn to internal bionics via external tattooing above the replaced organ, or corresponding studs in the head for brain implants. The more bionics someone has, the more attractive they are. The richest Hivers may even have gems implanted or have gold plating or engraving in their, weapons or bionic parts. Skin grafts, facial plates (engraved or studded), bone-fused body spikes and genital alteration are presently fashionable. Garishness, adornment and expense are the order of the day. For Penthivers a certain amount of plumpness is desirable, it shows that one can afford to eat well. For Underhivers, muscle and brawn are equally attractive.

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