Lodi Campaign

Cascade Hive Background

“Just about a year ago, I set foot on the deck

Seeking my fame and fortune, finding some Archeotek!

Things got bad, and things got worse – I guess you know the drill-

Oh Throne, stuck here on Lodi again...”

Graffiti found carved into a wall panel deep in Cascade’s hive bottom

Lodi – the Creedence system and the world

Lodi – is the 4^th planet in the Creedence star system. It is considered the ‘major world’ and the rest of the system has little of interest or to recommend it.

 The inner three worlds of the system are close orbiting scorched rocks generally considered too difficult and dangerous to be worth the visit, although the second planet does maintain a Mechanicus Geologis outpost on its frozen dark side.

The 5^th and 6^th worlds are both ringed gas giants with many moons and some asteroid clusters.

The outer system has only one major planet, a frozen rock called Grunland without any kind of atmosphere, but there are numerous worldlets and planetoids in the outer system, indicating some kind of stellar devastation in the distant past.

The origins of the planet’s settlement are long lost to recorded history as are most records of its original state. What is known is that once, in the distant past, Lodi had a breathable atmosphere and at least some kind of primitive ecosphere. The exact nature of these are lost to time and there are few records of even the least reliable sort. Exact dates and means of settlement are also lost although the Magos Historica point to many similarities in construction and even culture between Lodi’s hives and those of Necromunda. There are enough commonalities that parallel development seems less likely than one world being a client, colony or settlement of the other. Exactly when the world was inhabited isn’t known but the earliest hive finds seem to indicate some five to six millennia before the Great Crusade – during a period generally referred to as the Age of Strife. It is possible as well that settlement of Lodi predates that somewhat to the period at the very end of the Dark Age of Technology. Given the somewhat blurry chronological borders of those eras, it could be either – or both.

Regardless, much like with Necromunda concern for any planetary ecosystem was not a consideration during early settlement. The goal was the planet’s vast mineral wealth and this was exploited on a grand scale. Mountains were leveled, seas drained and great cities built to convert the megatons of raw material into finished goods for both use and export.

As the industrial effluvia poisoned air, land and remaining seas, the industrial cities became less and less fit for survival. The bulk of the aerial contamination was heavier than air particles, gasses and fluids – so the cities rose – quite literally, to stay above the pollution. The lower classes worked in barely habitable conditions while the upper classes built luxurious spires and arcologies and even parks where the air was clean and the sun bright. Over millennia those spires became the industrial zones and new spires were built, the cities climbing endlessly upwards to keep the wealthy and privileged above the smog.

Cascade Hive

One of the largest of Lodi’s Hives, Cascade is also one of the oldest. Some say the oldest, although that is often argued and, in truth, no one really knows. Cascade’s population is somewhere in the range of 1.5 billion souls, all crammed into a many kilometers tall giant arcology. Most of the population live and work in the ‘Mid Hive’. This is an area roughly level with the toxic pollution clouds beyond Cascade’s hive walls. As has always been done historically, the habs are ‘up’ and the industrial domes and warehouse spaces are ‘down’. While the hive edge is, in theory, atmosphere tight little care is taken as long as the manufactorums and able to produce effectively. Beyond the walls huge rusting ramps lead kilometers down to the surface where great transit corridors of both ground vehicles and trains snake their way across the wasteland on giant elevated roads maintaining the bonds of commerce between hives.

The nobles of the great houses live in the ‘spire’ well above the manufacturing levels. These tall structures take many forms – from technological wonders to huge monuments to people long dead. Their huge windows overlook the city below and the great pool of multicolored toxic smog that stretches to the horizon in all directions.

As in most Hives, the nobles have their great familial houses to which the workers and even the scum in the Underhive draw their culture, genetics and practices. In Cascade these are:

House Phebis: (No Necromunda equivalent)

Phebis is the ruling house of Cascade hive and many marvel at this. The ‘Phebes’ as their enemies call them are the result of millennia of genetic engineering to make the ‘perfect’ human. They are without exception, tall, fair, light eyed and have perfect skin and physical form.

This is where the good portion stops, however. The vast majority of Phebes could lose a battle of wits with your average structural stanchion. They are not as dumb as a box of rocks – they are DUMBER. They hold their place at the top of the houses by virtue of their mutants. Every bit as physically perfect as their dumb kin, about one in every 20 Phebes is a literal supergenius with amazing powers of deduction, an eidetic memory and, many whisper, stable psyker abilities.

The hyper intelligent leading members of house Phebis use their less fortunate kin as cannon fodder in their wars and intrigues. They are adept enough at this that they have held the informal position of the dominant house for as long as anyone can remember – but the other clans are always looking to topple them.

A House Phebis gang can be built using the Outcast template led by a psyker or by a Spyrer gang.

House Moebius: (Escher)

Moebius is one of the top clans in the Hive and specialize in things like the production of drugs, pharmaceuticals and chemical work. While not as physically strong as many of the other houses, they make up for their lack of physical force with speed, skill and sheer psychotic boldness.

House Brobdingnag (Goliath)

Originally created as slave labor, the ‘House of Chains’ has managed to parlay its control of heavy manufacturing into significant political power.  The house was created by an Underhive Gangleader who won control of so many territories, manufactoriums and logistical centers that other houses began dealing with him as an equal. Often called ‘Brob’nags’ or just ‘nags for short, the members of House Brobdingnag may be huge and muscle bound, but only the foolish underestimate them or insult their intelligence.

House Kage (Delaque)

The House of Shadows is probably the closest to their Necromunda kin Delaque. Many say that there is even contact between House Kage and the Delaque leaders of Hive Primus on Necromunda proper. Certainly some of the strange practices and creatures associated with the Delaque have begun appearing in the bowels of Cascade Hive. Does it surprise anyone that a house dedicated to secrecy and intelligence gathering and distribution has more off-world connections than the others? Not really. Most of the other houses are more worried about what House Kage is gaining and also giving up for their association.

House Ferros (Orlok)

House Ferros originally began as an outgrowth of an alliance between the Guild of Miners and the Guild of Motives who controlled transportation between the Hives of Lodi. When the great houses tried to control these very determined, and individualistic workers the pushback incited several out and out wars between House enforcers and those out on the highways and byways between the arcologies. The mines, long known for danger, hard work and a ‘get it done’ attitude easily dealt with any outsiders attempting to impose their will.

In the end, House Ferros was born. While the internal structure of the house is less like a true ‘noble house’ and more like a Guild controlled by Organized Crime families – this does not in any way erode their power and influence.

House Tesla (Van Saar)

Closely allied in many ways with the Techpriests and Engineseers of Mars, House Tesla nevertheless maintains many of its own secrets. Their mastery and utilization of mysterious Archeotek completely baffles the Mechnicum, particularly given their total lack of rituals, incense, chants and other ‘required’ practices to invoke the Machine Spirits.

When the other houses require technology that is reliable, locally obtainable and does not tie them to the Mechanicum it is to House Tesla that they turn. But Tesla has its own secrets – ones even the House of Shadows has not been able to learn. Many senior members disappear into the deeps of the Underhive, sometimes for years at a time. Many do not return, but those who do often show up with new ways of doing things which the Tech priests would undoubtedly name Heretek were they to learn of it. Those attempting to follow and learn those secrets have never returned. At least not in a way that was useful to their houses. Sometimes an agent following the Teslas on their deep delves are returned to their house. ‘Saved’ as it were, by the Teslas. The fact that what is returned is a mangled and mind wiped servitor is not generally lost on those attempting to pry into the business of the House of Artifice.

House Malis Malleus and the Order of Martyred Blood

All Imperial communities are generally compliant with the demands and dictates of the Ecclesiarchy. But in all Imperial populations, particularly large ones such as Hive worlds, there are those who go far further into the most radical of mindsets. While all Imperial citizens are abjured to loathe the witch, the alien and the mutant, members of House Malis Malleus go further. Those hatreds become the core of their being, often interfering in the day to day operations of House and Hive.

Malis Malleus is theoretically responsible not only for support of Imperial creed, but also for the activities of the Reclaimers. The group in which is known in Necromuda as the ‘Corpse Guild’. In order to relieve the hives, at least somewhat, of the need to import all their foodstuffs, the Reclaimers ‘recycle’ any carbon based materials in the Hive which are no longer needed – running through vast machines to turn them into what is generally referred to as ‘Soylent’. While it is true that some genetically soy based material finds its way into the vats, the vast majority of the material is comprised of those lifeforms living within the Hive. These bodies are sterilized and ‘reclaimed’ for the Hive, providing sustenance for the workers.

The related Order of Martyred Blood are the local sect of the Redemptionists. Passionate in the extreme, these adherents to the Imperial Creed dedicate their very lives to purging the unclean – with fire. And if they are themselves martyred in the process, all the better for their sacrifice is death as the Emperor’s is life.

The Zones of Cascade

While Imperial Hives come in many shapes and sizes, designs and layouts as innumable as the stars themselves. Many industrial hives, like those of Necromunda and Lodi, follow a sort of ‘tower’ design which evolved out of circumstance rather than from any sort of urban planning.

Initially the hive begins as a ‘regular’ city sprawling out from the various navigation points such as ports or crossroads (or both) and centered around manufacturing regions which employ the majority of the population, with the remainder involved in service operations, logistics, law enforcement and military, governance etc. The wealthy and powerful tend to live some distance from the industrial heart of the hive with its noise, smog and pollution. Whatever Lodi’s original ecosystem was, there was apparently little interest or concern in preserving it. Within a few millennia pollution and aggressive extraction had rendered it marginally habitable. At this point the open air cities began to be ‘domed over’. This began by simply building canopies over the streets from rooftop to rooftop but as time went on entire sections began to get larger domes with greater clearance. Sometime around this period, as most of the pollution and toxins were metal based and heavier than air, those seeking a ‘better’ life began to build upwards. The wealthier and more powerful now lived literally ‘above’ their less fortunate workers. As the centuries and millennia passed the toxicity of the atmosphere continued and it began to be difficult to operate the manufacturing spaces in their original areas so they moved up into the next level while newer high class domes were built atop the older ones.

The lowest, increasingly dangerous and toxic levels first became slums and then even the slums rose up, the lower levels eventually becoming toxic wastelands of abandoned urban ruins cloaked in eternal darkness with Lodi’s sun no longer could venture.

By the 41^st Millennium, at least 16 to 17 thousand years since Cascade’s founding the uppermost spires are some twenty kilometers above the planet’s surface. Lodi’s dense corrupted atmosphere provides breathable ‘shirt sleeve’ air from around 18000 meters to around 21000 meters. Even so, one needs to be cautious of precipitation which can sometimes be acidic enough to burn unprotected skin. It’s not unheard of for exposure to rain to be used as a (very slow and painful) method of execution for those of noble blood found wanting in some way.

Buildings, monuments and towers over these roughly 1800 meters make up ‘The Spire’ where all the noble houses, government buildings and parks and public works buildings are located. Also on these levels are a great many landing stages for aerial ships and orbital transports carrying important people and high value goods to orbit. Lower value goods are ‘fired’ into orbit from a massive accelerator cannon located on the surface at Lodi’s equator many thousands of kilometers from Cascade Hive.

Just above the cloud level is ‘the barrier’ which walls off the Midhive from the Spire. Continually manned, the barrier is as much psychological as physical. Most of the prevention of those few who try to pass and who are not wanted is done simply by mark one eyeball, as very few midhivers (and essentially no underhivers) can manage even the basic dress code, much less the required identification.

Midhive is the most populous and most productive part of the Hive where better than 98% of the population is to be found. It is vast and cosmopolitan, with Manufactorums, Hab blocks, entertainment establishments, greenhouses, bars, brothels, offices of many kinds, logistical hubs etc. Everything needed for a city filled with well over a billion people. Work shifts are long and hard, with most working 12 hour days in very poor conditions. Life is spare, nasty, brutish and short – the average expectancy is around 38. Just enough time to grow, have a few kids, put in some productive years for the Emperor and then shuffle off. Most die to industrial accidents or toxin poisoning so there is little worry about ‘retiring’ or ‘elder care’.

The Underhive has no real ‘boundary’. The Mid Hive, as you go downward gradually becomes less well maintained, less populated, poorer and more dangerous. Eventually the power quits almost completely and stygian darkness fills the ancient domes, tunnels and logistical hubs.

It is here the battles between marginal street gangs take place. In the pitch black, a few small groups manage to eke out a marginal existence scavenging for rare elements, ancient technology or other valuables which are brought to semiofficial settlements run by the Guild – which brings those same materials up to the Mid Hive and sometimes even the Spire for resale.

In the Underhive, there is freedom, something not at all encouraged or sought in the Mid Hive. But there is also daily danger and no safety net at all other than your own gang members. Live may be free, but it is even shorter than in the Mid Hive.

                This is life in Cascade Hive.