40k Lore, Hive Cities

greetings and salutations friends and welcome back to my warhammer 40k lore today we're going to be talking about hives hive is a catch-all definition used to refer to the gargantuan mega cities the imperium pills on their planets although that is slightly misleading because you see a hive does not necessarily have to refer to an imperial hive city as i said it is a bit of a catch-all definition in most cases hives have been built over the course of thousands upon thousands of years some of them dating back to the dark age of technology so it's a little bit of an oddity they're certainly built by the imperium more or less even though there are many of them that were started before the imperium was a thing but they are imperial structures in that all of the current hives are essentially built by the imperials by stacking skyscraper upon skyscraper upon skyscraper upon skyscraper add infinitum so for the purpose of this video i will be referring to them as imperial hives moving on some of you might have heard of judge dredd and his universe in which they have mega cities well you can probably compare those mega cities to the ones in 40k imagine one of those mega cities except larger and built vertically you know what forget all that just imagine a man-made mountain okay populated by a few million upwards to billions of people filled with all the things a modern city in the 41st millennium needs including massive industrial complexes occasional housing areas and absolute buttloads of mutated gangsters other accommodations like you know food and [ __ ] is desirable but entirely optional and highly dependent on where in the hive you live because an imperial hive like all good societies have a strict social hierarchy with the noble families and important people living near the top and so-called upper spires and then get progressively worse the further down you get quite literally in fact as the lower you get the shittier it gets until you reach the under-hive where the word shitty is no longer good enough to describe the levels of extreme poverty and filth imagine if you will a packed trash can that has been left outside in the sun for about a couple weeks or so if the remarkably nasty stuff at the top is the conditions in the middle hive then the unmentionables all the way at the bottom of the trash can is the underhive crushed and covered in filth seeping down from above and then left to marinade in the filthy semi-liquid nonsense that has streamed down from above it is literally an existence that revolves entirely around the idea of getting chat on for the rest of your life and since i still don't feel like i have adequately described the levels of [ __ ] no that goes on there i would like to point out that the adapter's astartes frequently recruit from down in the under hives this means that the conditions in the underhive is comparable with those found on death worlds partially these charming conditions are caused by the locals themselves a wonderful mix of everything that is wrong with humanity all cooped up in extremely uncomfortable surroundings with well nothing better to do than violently interact with each other usually with various blunts instruments and handguns besides the locals the under hive itself is not the most stable of structures seeing as it is the absolute bottom of well billions of tons of metal the laws of nature dictate that this is a less than stable situation and leads to frequent cave-ins i guess is the correct term for this further weakening the already shaky foundations of the underhive these are called the hive quakes and they can vary in destructive potential from utterly inconsequential to you know hive-wide disasters furthermore you might recall my earlier metaphor about the trash can and the various juices leaking down well that also happens in the underhive although in this case the juices are replaced with torrents of industrial waste so contaminated that it might as well be magma as far as humans are concerned but all of these are natural disasters do get boring after a while and while the locals are certainly quite rowdy there is nothing quite like in our bites raid to really get the adrenaline flowing for the most part the underhives are completely and utterly ignored as far as law and order goes but occasionally the local police forces if such a definition can really be used for the heavily militarized forces of the arbites of a hive city though that's besides the point the point is that they do occasionally get well bored simple as that really or maybe some bigwig up spire blue blood gets the bright idea to try and clean up the underhives and the arbitees get to really let loose now don't get me wrong the various policing forces of the imperium will put any modern-day police force to absolute shame in the mindless violence department but even these are remarkably angry organizations get precious free opportunities to break out the gunships the tanks and the heavy bolters in their day-to-day duties an arbitee's expedition into the underhive is essentially a full-scale military invasion and is conducted as such except with far far fewer rules of engagement so after an entire army of highly aggressive and heavily armoured police with gunships and tanks roll into the underhive it will probably stay quiet for a while right [ __ ] no in fact rolled through is somewhat misleading as anything short of a squad of space marines is unlikely to get more than a few dozen kilometers into the underhive before getting bogged down and overwhelmed by the wide and wonderful variety of monsters that live down there you see the local gangers and mutants and various irradiated monstrosities dislike each other with quite the passion but they're hatred for law enforcement is on a whole other level and they will happily set aside their various differences for just long enough to chase out these new visitors as such virtually all are biti's excursions into the underhive achieve absolutely nothing or well that's not entirely true it does expend massive amounts of ammunitions and create some vacancies and local arbeitis essentially an imperial under hive is gotham city on steroids batman would not last a [ __ ] week down here hell i would love to see a pre-heresy crossover where batman gets transported through an inter-dimensional thingamajig onto nostromo and 30k just before conrad curus started cleaning house ah granted i imagine it would be a somewhat short crossover but the fight would be damn interesting for the 30 odd seconds it would last anyway but i appear to be wondering slightly off topic here believe it or not i do actually script these episodes in the vague hope that it might actually stay on point for once now let's have a look at the hive itself i have already talked about the under hive in my usual concise into the point manner so let's move up to the lower to middle hive area this neighborhood is somewhat safer than that below hear about you might get mugged murdered and raped it is true but at least they won't desecrate the corpse afterwards so that's a plus and if you stay in the main areas patrolled by the albates you are relatively safe this area is also where most of the industry is located along with the habitation blocks where the slay citizens live life around here is not particularly pleasant and most families live in squalid conditions on barely adequate pay and return for working 12-hour shift since conditions that might charitably be described as horrendous most people here will live out their whole lives never seeing the sun or going much further than to and from work and while there are opportunities for people to better their lot in life we're not talking about stuff like getting an education living in a mansion we're talking in terms of getting enough pay to eat a meal one or more time extra a day or afford a slightly larger apartment or running the lights or heat in said apartment for an extra hour living and working in a hive is quite literally as grim dark as it gets no monsters to slay no glory to be gained and certainly no pretty damsels in distress just the slow soul-crushing grind of being a very small cog in a galactic scale machine small wonder then that the hives tend to be fertile ground for heretics if you quite literally have nothing but the rags on your back and no hope for a better future then even the darkest of paths start to look pretty damn shiny granted if you thought your life was crappy before then adding the inquisition and local albite's forces to your list of worries might not be the best of it is and for those that really really can't stand it anymore but don't want to get hounded by the ecclesiakin burned on a stake there is one option available to the adventure seeking local namely the imperial god and hey honestly if i was given the choice of living in a hive as one amongst billions or joining the guard i'd be picking the guard the odds for survival might fall drastically but at least the odds of living will also increase considerably then we get to the considerably less shitty upper hive here the administrators and upper-class citizens live those who own run or manage the industries of the lower hive as well as the people who run the workings of the hive itself life is considerably easier in the upper spire electricity and basic comforts like running water and heats is free and space is readily available for large houses and public parks crime is virtually non-existent or well at least the rough and tumble kind as the streets are patrolled and watched by the local arbitees and sometimes even the proper imperial adapters are bytes themselves rather than local law enforcement this is the level where getting an even a better life is not only possible or desirable but in many cases expected as the various local families compete for favor from the spired nobles of the planetary governor who usually takes up residence at the top of the spire and above this already quite luxurious level we find the said spires where the nobles and high officials live these are the people who de facto own the hive and can do well literally whatever they want really whenever they want they do technically speaking have duties and work to do but if his royal nobleness would rather laze by the pool or sexually molest the staff then that is of course his royal prerogative someone else can take care of the tedium of work after all that is what servants are for and above these nobles again is their de facto ruler in fact the de facto rule of the planet itself the governor and his family the kings and queens essentially of entire planets and their considerable resources in most cases these governors are far more occupied with securing and potentially and eventually increasing their already considerable positions rather than trying to improve the planet or hive itself but occasionally you do get something as rare and mythical as a governor or indeed even noble that he's actually interested in using his position for the betterment of the people as a whole there are planets in the imperium that are almost comparable to our own in terms of living standards and luxury but they are usually non-industrial and non-hive worlds and there's a term i need to explain as an aside the term hive world is used for worlds that are practically covered in hives so-called hive clusters these plants can have populations numbering hundreds of billions and are usually entirely reliant on other planets known as agri worlds for food in return they produce astronomical amounts of goods manufactured in the hive cities these planets are even worse places to live on than just normal hives as the pollution levels created by the planet-wide industry has long since crossed the level of irreversible and entered the realms of outright [ __ ] deadly there are some planets in fact so polluted that only the upper areas of hive cities are livable where what remains of the population can stay just above the constant fog of pollution and that brings me to the last part of the hive the outskirts frequently known as ash wastes this is the area outside the hive that has been scoured virtually clean of life by the constant stream of pollution and waste produced by the hive the environment is quite deadly and inhabited only by those that even the under hive won't take such as tribes of mutants that have gone far beyond even the low low standards of the underhive and gangs of so-called ash wasters bandits that use the waste to protect themselves from imperial retribution while raiding the convoys and transports across the wastes to enter the hive of course this is a somewhat mild ash waste the kind of livable ash waste that surrounds most hives but in case of the older hives in the case of high worlds it can get quite a bit worse to the point where it's just flat out lethal to unprotected humans and in some cases planets can be so polluted by various deadly chemicals that it will eventually eat its way through pretty much any protection lastly we need to look at the strategic values of a hive obviously it is a center of industry and local leadership as well as the primary habitation for the population this naturally means that it has to be defended in the eventuality of an invasion and so most hives are heavily fortified although again there's some variation but all hives contain at least one planetary class void shiegel the generator which is enough to protect the hive from virtually any orbital and or land-based bombardment this ability to resist bombardment furthers the strategic significance of the hive as it is usually one of very few installations on a planet that can resist direct orbital bombardment and therefore makes it a safe haven for troops then comes the hive's more mundane defenses in the form of massive shock absorbent walls and gun positions i mean even the most likely fortified of hives will give the defenders a massive advantage over any potential attacker but a truly fortified hive city like those located on fortress worlds boasts hundreds if not thousands of artillery positions and wall mounted guns and fortified hardpoints protected by dozens of batteries of aaa along with extensive bunker complexes both inside and outside of the walls and occasionally literally inside of the walls where there will be massive complexes of tunnels walkways and choke points for the defenders to hold onto even if the outer walls have been lost and perhaps most importantly of all the void shields defensive umbrella extends slightly outside and above the walls thereby stopping the enemy from shelling the walls and directly and for the enemy to be able to fire directly at the walls well not only do they then have to work their way through literally dozens of meters of shock absorbent walls but it will also bring their guns well into range of any artillery mounted inside the wall which is going to be a damn costly move for any army and the massive curtain walls is only one of several layers of defenses in contrast in most historical cases in real life history that is if a numerically superior attacker gets past the walls the defender quickly falters as he spread thin across multiple unfortified angles of attack in a hive however it's not that simple the vertical nature of the hive means that the attacker is constantly fighting an uphill battle and exposed to plunging fire practically every single step of the way to further complicate matters the lower parts of a hive city is hard enough to navigate during peace times but in an emergency the various means of transportation can of course be destroyed highways elevators stairwells and even entire habitation blocks can be demolished forcing the attacker to rebuild vast swathes of the city while constantly under fire from the defenders and as long as the defender makes sure to stay just outside the attacker's reach while retreating this can go on for months or even years with the defenders constantly holding a massive advantage over the attacker as hives are very very large indeed really is things like the hive cities that really sets 40k apart from other you know supposedly epic settings attacking a hive city is essentially impossible the defender can hold out for months if not years all the while reaping an unsustainable toll amongst the attacker but that's the thing with 40k even the impossible can be made quite mundane when faced with the equally impossible threats of orc wags numbering in the dozens of billions or the might of the imperial sledgehammer that can quite happily throw millions upon millions of men and tanks at an objective and all that is before we get to truly insane [ __ ] like black crusades and tyranid hive fleets at some point when i figure out a suitable way of doing it i'm gonna have to make some lore videos about large-scale conflicts in warmer 40k like the battle for armageddon or the siege of rocks but i have yet to come up with a suitable way of telling these stories since i have yet to really come up with a format that would convey the epicness of these kinds of scenarios just showing off artwork just isn't good enough so i'll be covering that eventually once i can wrap my head around how to actually do it to make a long story short hives are really really insane buildings and i can't really get across just how ridiculous they are without making one of these lore videos so i'm gonna have to try and hurry up and figure out a way to actually do it so um you know in the next seven or eight years i'll probably come up with something we'll have to wait and see but until next time i have been arch thank you very much for watching and i do hope to see you soon

Channel: Arch

Views: 638,914

Keywords: Hive Cities, 40k, Warhammer 40000, Arch, Hive, The Imperium of Man, lore, million miles, ghetto, arch warhammer, 40k lore

Id: XuypOzJvz6k

Length: 21min 31sec (1291 seconds)

Published: Fri May 06 2016