Hive Worlds

A Hive World is a category of Imperial planet distinguished by vast, continent-spanning cities, often built high into the sky and deep beneath the earth. Their populations are enormous, and almost all food needs to be imported. A Hive World rendered temporarily inaccessible through Warp space will suffer a devastating famine within a very short space of time. It will become a vast catacomb of lunatics driven to excesses of anarchic, urban savagery by starvation and claustrophobia. Hive Worlds are dangerous, being too large to monitor safely, and their citizens are typically unbalanced, if not utterly crazed. It has been known for the Adeptus Arbites to cull these planets in order to bring their populations down to manageable levels.2

Billions of people can live crowded together in a single Hive-city. Each of these Hive Worlders is a potential soldier for Imperial forces, including the Imperial Guard and the Space Marines. Hive Worlds contribute the vast bulk of the recruits for the Imperial Guard. The violent gangland lifestyle which most residents are forced to live means they are already hardened and experienced in warfare. Almost every recruit will already know how to handle a gun.

Hive Worlds also serve to populate newly discovered planets. Imperial citizens are gathered from various Hive Worlds (willingly or unwillingly) and shipped off to distant colonies. An example of this would be Medusa V.

Hive Worlds have huge import/export ratios, exporting a vast range of materials, and relying on imports of food and water.

There are hundreds of Hive Worlds in the Imperium. Most consist of various enclosed Hive cities or Hive clusters surrounded by wasteland, jungle, ice, plains, etc. In the most extreme examples the Hive World has developed beyond the point of separate Hive clusters - the planet's surface instead is completely urbanized with hundreds of stacked layers of arcologies, covering the entirety of the planet. Holy Terra is an example of this "city-planet".

In common with most other Imperial worlds, Hive World society has distinct classes, with a ruling class and a working class. Invariably the lower classes inhabit the lower and more decayed and polluted levels of the Hive.

The sheer numbers of workers in a Hive makes them hard to control. Gangs grow up and control sections, fighting among themselves and millions subsists on scraps. Further up power reaches the ancient lighting system, while even further up, air circulation systems clean the air for those rich enough to afford it. It is a hierarchical system, and a ruthless one, but given sufficient forces to keep the populace down, it is a very efficient way of housing billions of people. If each person had a house on the ground, the entire planet would be overrun with living quarters and no room for production facilities.

Hive Worlds are important due to their output. They don't reach anywhere near the production of a Forge World, but the number of workers give out a huge quantity of materials. Hive Worlders, being just as brutal and savage as those on Feral Worlds also provide the best fighting material to the Imperium.