Sights & Scenes

...for the Hives of 40k

Version 1.0; written by Gregorius21778

(c) 2016
Legal & other stuff:

Fan work created by: Gregorius21778

My blog: www.gregorius21778.wordpress.com

Artwork by: Maciej Zagorski; The Forge Studios

License bought at drivethrurpg.com

Games Workshop, Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer 40,000 Role Play, Dark Heresy, the foregoing
marks respective logos, and all associated marks, logos, places, names, creatures, races and race
insignia/devices/logos/symbols, vehicles, locations, weapons, units and unit insignia, characters,
products and illustrations from the Warhammer 40,000 universe and the Dark Heresy game settings
are either ®, ™, and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2000-2016, variably registered in the UK and other
countries around the world.

Sights & Scenes for the Hives of 40k is a play aid for GameMasters that provides
narrative scenes to make a hive come alive during an RPG session. The first half was written for no
hive in particular while the second half was originally written for “Hive Volg”, which is on
Fenksworld and part of DarkHeresy 1st Edition Calixis Sector.

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01#[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.

02#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.

03#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.

04#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.

05#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.

06#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”.

07# 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.

08#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.

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09# 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!”]

10# 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].

11# 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.

12# 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!

13# 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.

14# 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.

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 -= Hive Volg =-

01#[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.

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02#[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.

03#[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.

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04#[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 whore 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!”

05#[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.