I snuck some Ork spores onto a Hive World!

[Cthell]

A wall won't save them from the orks, or eldar or death world fauna that exists in the underhives, or the army of undesirables that can muster. A wall will not help to prevent the spire from being overrun by disease, or by the fact in the underhive without the watch of the police the cultists have summoned an army of deamons or because of a gang warfare a huge fire has engulfed the hive killing most of the factories and shunting down power, water,air and sewage distribution for the upper hive, or poison the water supply for the vast majority of the hive.
The underhive is the perfect breeding ground for all those dangerous creatures and diseases that exist in Warhammer 40k and the spire nobility will not find out about the threat until it will be too late.

The wall might not save them from the underhivers, but the underhivers knowing that the spire-dwelling elite are perfectly willing to virus-bomb the entirity of the lower hive at the first sign of real trouble will. The spire has enough of its own infrastructure to supply power and air for at least a couple of weeks; more than long enough for the PDF to come in and hose whats left of the inhabitants out of the underhive and repopulate it with more...compliant citizens. Remember, this is the 41st millenium. Law enforcement does not involve miranda rights - unless you are rich/influential (usually the same thing) the Arbites will haul you away because they don't like the look of you, and shoot you in the back if you try to run.

[snottlebocket]

What about fire or the destruction of the precious power and life support machinery that is idiotically placed in the underhives?

Happens all the time. Don't forget how damn big that place really is. Hives house billions, there is no single life support system that can be destroyed.

The hive is constructed of domes. Domes collapse but domes also get reopened. Some domes have pretty good atmospheric quality, other domes get air and water that's been recycled through who knows how many machines. If you go deeper the domes don't have any life support at all, they're just running on whatever atmosphere is trapped or trickles through vents, holes or get's generated by the local ecosystem.

Up in hive city there is relative social stability and life support is maintained to the best of their ability. Below on the frontier of the underhive there's never a shortage of people risking their lives exploring ruined domes. Discovering a passageway that can be cleared to open up a "new" tunnel between domes can mean new life for ruined domes as settlers and explorers colonize the new area. Discovering a way into a lost dome that contains valuable archeotech could make a man wealthy for the rest of his live.

This is exactly the kind of thing gangs fighter over in the necromunda game. Territory matters. Having territory with valuable assets like quality life support that makes habitation possible, valuable organic or mineral deposits worth mining or even a secret entrance into a dome full of old tech nobody else knows about is worth killing for. So yes, **** does break down in the hive. Disasters happen, entire inhabited domes can collapse in hive quakes. But domes are also discovered and opened up.

[Harwammer]

Also gangers will pick up any archeotech they find in the collapsed domes and sell it on to guilders. The tech then trickles up hive, gets repaired and restored in to working conditions. And as I said, firewalls.


Here's a little extract from Necromunda Source Book to give you an idea of what lurks at the bottom of the hive (at the lower reaches of the underhive):

The Hive Bottom
At the base of the hive buildings become so structurally dangerous that the region takes on a different and even more inhopsitable character. This is the final and deepest zone called the Hive Bottom. Hive Bottom is so decayed and cumbling that the original domes and foundation piles have long since collapsed, forming a layer of almost solid rubble. Within the rubble are enclosed pockets linked by holes and tunnels worn by liquids leaking from above. These pollutants and effluents, the discharge fluid of the entire hive, form a vast lake of radioactive putridity called the Sump.

Nothing can live in the Hive Bottom other than the most monstorus mutants. Its denizens are the spawn of darkness and pollution. Some of these foul creatures find their way into the underhive, or even into the lower parts of Hive City, but their natural domain is the darkness of the Hive Bottom.

[El_Machinae]

Thanks for all the replies. Before this thread, I thought that infecting a Hive World would be an interesting way of speeding its decay and depletion, that - over time - the Orks would be drain and a nuisance that would be worth directly combating. But it sounds like there's so much ruin down there that the local denizens would be the ones handling the problem, and that they don't really 'contribute' to the productivity of the Hive either.

[Harwammer]

They could be a good short term nuisance; perhaps a number of key events occur that combined allow an ork uprising to occur? Perhaps a spate of gang wars keeps the local enforcers busy whilst the PDF is dealing with a cult uprising in a secondary hive city? With less putting the boot down on the orkosystem I could imagine things getting out of control pretty quickly.

Occasionally massive tragedies do happen; sticking to Necromunda hive primus as an example, the zombie plague managed to spread from the depths of the Underhive, up to the higher echelons of the Spire before it got under control. The thing is, Hive Cities seem to be pretty good at healing up, and even in the worst case situations a new population can be shipped in (e.g. post 1st War Armageddon) and the city will be back to it's overcramped default state in no time.

[Scalebug]

Imagine the poor nutri-moss farmer of an underhive settlement, with grots pilfering things not nailed down, snotlings getting thrashed in the harvesting machine, and your brother-in-law getting a crude spear through the chest as you are ambushed by a desperate feral ork.

...and then the week goes from bad to worse as a Redemptionist crusade rolls into your village with flamers at the ready to purge the taint of the foul alien. Not unlikely they will judge a few settlers as having failed in the Emperors eyes by not purging the greenskins themselves, or even being actively traitorous Xeno-lovers, and put them to the pyre as well...

[snottlebocket]

Thanks for all the replies. Before this thread, I thought that infecting a Hive World would be an interesting way of speeding its decay and depletion, that - over time - the Orks would be drain and a nuisance that would be worth directly combating. But it sounds like there's so much ruin down there that the local denizens would be the ones handling the problem, and that they don't really 'contribute' to the productivity of the Hive either.

It's sort of a mixed bag. The underhive area immediately below hive city does significantly contribute to the hive city's productivity. The gang fights them selfs are actually illegal. Most of the time guilders and enforcers will turn a blind eye on warring gangs provided they don't do it in settlements and don't disrupt business (ie. attacking guild caravans and such) The underhive simply has so many valuable resources that it's worth the occasional skirmish. Whether it's archeotech hoards, mining territory or simply food or water resources. Not to mention good old sabotage and revenge. If you manage to sabotage a rival gang's means to fill their contract, there's a good opportunity for taking over that contract. (and inviting some old fashioned revenge from the gang you just back stabbed)

So a lot of the violence in the upper reaches of the underhive is not senseless. But it does mean there's a strong presence of a variety of armed people who don't put up with anything that disrupts business. Whether it's other gangs, hive nasties or something more exotic like orks. If you go further down the presence of the gangs might decrease but that just means an increase in monsters, mutants and other hazards. All of which are in the business of surviving a very nasty environment and they don't go down easy either.

So the short of it is really that ork infestations won't have the opportunity to grow into a nuisance or a threat. Unlike other planets, Necromunda is not a place where orks can quietly grow into tribes of raiders. Compared to the other stuff that lives down there, orks simply aren't that bad. They can survive and scrape by, they're good at that. But they won't rise above the rest into a new threat to the underhive or even hivecity and the spire.

The underhive is kind of an "there's always a bigger fish" scenario. The enforcers, guilders and gangs can organize into a fairly migthy if disorganized army if need be. It's just never necesary because whatever wants to kill them has plenty of things that try to kill it right back down there.

[Poseidal]

Hive Worlds are mostly uninhabitable on the surface right? That would make Ork growth more difficult.

I would probably think Agri-worlds are better places to start an Ork infestation, grow it there then move onto the Hive World with large numbers.

[snottlebocket]

Hive Worlds are mostly uninhabitable on the surface right? That would make Ork growth more difficult.

I would probably think Agri-worlds are better places to start an Ork infestation, grow it there then move onto the Hive World with large numbers.

Necromunda mostly is. The surface is a toxic wasteland with a poison cloud reaching up from the atmosphere to a few dozen miles up into the atmosphere. In the past one of the ruling houses of Necromunda was sentenced to death and cast out into the wastes. Surprisingly they survived and are now one of the only factions on Necromunda living outside the hives as Ash waste nomads. They're one of the main threats to ground based travel, trade and communications between hives. (or one of your best chances to pull such things of if you don't mind dealing with outlaws)

It should probably be pointed out that Necromunda was GW's playground for every post apocalyptic stereotype and fantasy they could come up with though. Expansions and Fanatic articles (an article that published additional rules for gw games) brought some pretty outlandish ideas to Necromunda. As such Necromunda is a complete madhouse of unlikely characters and factions in an even unlikelier world.

One of my favorite pieces of fluff chronicles the travels of a down on his luck underhiver who descends all the way to the edge of the sump. There he joins up with a crew of rough men who sail a scrapyard craft across a massive acid lake where they hunt and harpoon titanic arachnid creatures that swim in the lake for their valuable diamand like eyes. The captain of this vessel is a fanatical man with one leg, the other replaced with a spider fang. This captain is hell bent on hunting down the arachnid who took his leg, a near mythical creature that dwarves it's lesser kin and sank many a ship.

Sound familiar? That's about the level of seriousness you can expect from Necromunda. In a 40k universe that's about as far away from making sense as possible, Necromunda takes a few steps further.

[El_Machinae]

Oh yeah, agri-worlds would get decimated (in the long-run) my an Ork infestation. As their ability to export foodstuffs was diminished, they'd get less and less support from their trading partners. Without steady imports, their technological base would crumble. I wouldn't be surprised to see one degrade into a feudal world over the course of a dozen centuries.

[snottlebocket]

Oh yeah, agri-worlds would get decimated (in the long-run) my an Ork infestation. As their ability to export foodstuffs was diminished, they'd get less and less support from their trading partners. Without steady imports, their technological base would crumble. I wouldn't be surprised to see one degrade into a feudal world over the course of a dozen centuries.

Agri worlds barely have a population though. They do tend to be very valuable however. It takes next to nothing to overrun an agri world but help would be on the doorstep asap. Then again asap in the imperium might mean somewhere during the next few centuries.

[El_Machinae]

Well, of all the varieties of planets, agriworlds are the ones that would tithe regularly. They'd not be able to maintain a constant output of (spoilable) exportable foodstuffs without a steady stream of compensatory income. A couple of seasons without export would decimate their economies to the point where they'd need to reshift to internal needs.

[snottlebocket]

Well, of all the varieties of planets, agriworlds are the ones that would tithe regularly. They'd not be able to maintain a constant output of (spoilable) exportable foodstuffs without a steady stream of compensatory income. A couple of seasons without export would decimate their economies to the point where they'd need to reshift to internal needs.

By that point I imagine they'd have some very angry administratum and possibly guard on their doorstep demanding to know where the grain is.

[Cthell]

By that point I imagine they'd have some very angry administratum and possibly guard on their doorstep demanding to know where the grain is.

Which is why agri-worlds always have a PDF stationed on them; both to "show the Aquilla" and to stay alive just long enough to get a distress signal out if something goes wrong. Remember, agri-worlds are an inviting target for every enemy that needs to eat (so... everyone bar Necrons); they usually have a benign biosphere, lots of real estate, and very little in the way of immediate defenses. Mind you, since they are essential for the functioning of hive/forge-worlds, there will usually be a rapid-reaction force somewhere in the vicinity.