#hive secundus

[thewenglishwarlock]

Little genestealer cutie finished up!

[titanomancy]

Sumptown funk you up.

[frankdraw]

new squiggly friend in hive secundus let's gooooooooo

[nevesmose]

Syndroma Holmiensis

Things are different now. That was the last advice Mikulin's father had given him. The Imperium is the biggest gang on the whole planet. The Night Haunter's gang. Stick with them and you'll do fine, son.

His father had lost an eye in a streetfight years ago and the bribe to fit an augmetic was far beyond their means. Mikulin tried to focus twice as much on the other eye instead, solid depthless black like those of every other Nostraman, as it gleamed with something like desperation combined with raw avarice.

Was it hope, he wondered? Something so rare on the Sunless World that they'd had to steal the Gothic word to describe it exactly. Whatever sibiliant kennings and poetic phrases his ancestors had used to subtly imply the possibility of a better future were gone now. Inefficient in comparison to the language of their new overlords.

Most of the time Mikulin found it hard to care overmuch. His ancestors had mined adamantium and murdered one another in the dark for century upon century and achieved nothing. Built nothing. Created nothing but further generations of void-eyed killers.

Until the Night Haunter came. He who flayed and freed Nostramo, pinned the planet down and eviscerated it inch by inch, block by block, heart by heart and corpse by corpse until nothing was left but order and a full stomach.

Mikulin loved the Night Haunter. Mikulin feared the Night Haunter.

It was natural for him to hold both thoughts simultaneously. He loved and feared his father too, didn't he? A strong provider, working shifts in the mine when the work was there and doing what he had to when it wasn't. But also a monster when he'd been paid and given the money straight back to the company bar.

When he was old enough to work they moved to the nearest great city, Nostramo Secundus. Dear Grey Place, the Adamantite City, a hive built into a vast outcropping of ore-bearing rock that jutted out into the roiling black ocean.

His father had called it a promotion, but the truth came out eventually. The mine bosses were scared that his drunken actions, his too-public offences against the new rules of society, would bring the Night Haunter to them. And the Night Haunter rarely found just one criminal worthy of punishment when paying a visit.

Far safer, therefore, to send the problem away into the teeming masses of the nearest hive city. Losing the work had destroyed his father but Secundus gave Mikulin a new razorgang to run with and all the freedom he was brave enough to steal. And he had the Night Haunter to thank for it.

Mikulin loved the Night Haunter. Mikulin feared the Night Haunter.

Mikulin cared little and knew less of the other demigods who had come later, surrounded by an inferno of blinding light and guarding their father the Emperor. Such events, occurring so far away in the capital, were of little importance to remote grey Secundus. Only the Night Haunter mattered because time and distance meant nothing to him. He could be anywhere on Nostramo, seeing and hearing all in his domain and dispensing punishment to the high and the low alike.

Mikulin loved the Night Haunter. Mikulin feared the Night Haunter.

Then the news reached Secundus that the Night Haunter had left to join his father and brothers in conquering the galaxy for humanity. Mikulin had looked up at the coldly glinting stars and felt a twist of envious fury in his gut. They had taken Nostramo's king from his people and wouldn't even use his name.

Konrad Curze, the Emperor had called him. An alien name from an alien being. Mikulin knew it was the Night Haunter who Nostramo's first Astartes followed into the void, him and no other.

They had tested Mikulin once for suitability. Just put your hand in the box on the servitor's chest. A brief sting and a few moments later the verdict was given - negative. Elevated hereditary cancer risk and other minor genetic flaws not meeting the threshold of mutation, the magos biologis announced before moving on to the next prospective recruit.

Stick with the Night Haunter's gang, his father had said. So Mikulin had apprenticed himself to the Administratum, serving the new Planetary Governor appointed in the Night Haunter's place. One of the first natives to join, they said.

Natives grated in his mind like two ends of a broken bone. We weren't natives before you came, before you took him away. We were ourselves. But things are different now.

The first time he really saw offworlders up close he'd just about managed not to stare, or grimace in the closed-off Nostraman way which, to the initiated, was just as expressive as a scream. Someone has put coins in your eyes, he'd thought irrationally, or broken glass in different colours. It happened sometimes as punishment for people who sold out their gangmates or saw things they shouldn't have.

It took him a long while to accept that it was just how they were, the same way they walked the street wrong, slowly, looking at the sights around them like prey. Behaving like that would get a Nostraman killed but, collectively, there seemed to be an indulgence for offworlders.

They didn't know what the people said or thought about them and they didn't have to care. Often Mikulin found himself hating them, hating their accents and their language at the same time as he learned to mimic both to rise up in their organisation.

The outsiders planned great things for Nostramo in the Imperium. We can make this world so much better, someone with eyes the colour of ice melting into slush told him. Mikulin said nothing.

They built Nostramo Secundus a botanical garden to rival any city in the Imperium. A vast adamantium-ribbed dome of glass filled with a kaleidoscope of verdant colour and shape tended by specialised horticultural servitors, the whole edifice illuminated by numberless ultraviolet and visible-spectrum lamps to allow the plantlife to thrive even on the Sunless World.

On the wall surrounding their creation, where Mikulin had to pass every day to reach the Administratum complex, the offworlders had commissioned some famed remembrancer to paint a mural of a lush, rolling Terran landscape lit by a rising sun and bearing the title LET NOSTRAMO FLOURISH.

The people of Nostramo Secundus hated it and the building it adorned. The cost of entry was high enough to exclude all but the wealthiest and every Nostraman visitor had to wear thick eyeshades or else suffer hours of headache and near-blindness, all just to look at plants. Mystifying.

Mikulin had access to the records of just how much power, water and heat the gardens drew away from the rest of the city. How many hab-tenements could the same resources support instead? He had calculated it once on a scrap of parchment and the answer sickened him.

The Night Haunter would have judged the creation in an instant, razed it to the ground and impaled the builders among the wreckage. Eventually Mikulin came to realise that the gardens were never really intended for him or any other native, only to improve the lot of the offworlders condemned to serve the Imperium on dark forbidding Nostramo.

Once, without thinking, he'd saluted an Administratum superior in the Nostraman way, hand clawed over his heart to say may it be torn out if I am untrue. The condescension and pity in their eyes had struck him like a physical blow.

Damn you all, he thought, eyes stinging with a shame he couldn't begin to process. Take your costume-jewellery eyes and your costume-jewellery Imperium and leave us alone like we always should have been. Our world was already better. We were already better.

Mikulin loved the Night Haunter. Mikulin feared the Night Haunter.

Mikulin grew old slowly, the decay held back by juvenats and technology for as long as the Administratum had the budgetary headroom to provide. Nostramo seemed to rot quickly in comparison. The nobility and oligarchs reappeared with new names and faces but the same blood in their veins, the same corruption in their hearts, and no Night Haunter any more to excise them like a chirurgeon.

He didn't remember exactly when it happened, but one work cycle he realised that the Imperium was no longer the biggest gang on the planet. Work orders, requisitions, suicide statistics, every item of paperwork that used to filter upwards to the Administratum had slowed to a trickle and eventually just stopped.

Mikulin continued to attend the office and the Administratum continued to pay him, but in reality the alternative government of the gangs and nobles had slipped into place like a knife between ribs to quietly usurp both their functions.

Eventually the last offworlders left Secundus. No one would say whether it was voluntary. Their replacements were black-eyed and loyal only to the shifting politics of the warlords they followed. They funnelled the city's sparse resources to pay debts and shore up alliances before the newer, hungrier gangs overthrew them and were consumed in turn by their own children in the incestuous reproductive cycle that was as irredeemably Nostraman as the smog filling up their lungs.

Through it all, Mikulin of the Administratum was present, observed and said nothing. They treated him with something like respect - that rarest of things, an elderly Nostraman.

In the end it was Mikulin who finally closed down the botanical gardens. Let the plants rot and the gangs split the proceeds however they pleased. He left and went back to his tenement, hobbling slowly the same way he did everything else now, and went past that accursed mural once again.

It had been smashed and defaced countless times, the people of Nostramo Secundus giving vent to their fury at the image of an idyllic fantasy they would never possess. The rising sun was blotted out by an arterial splash of black paint and, above it all, someone had scrawled new blood-red lettering to change the painting's title.

LET NOSTRAMO PERISH.

[farsight-the-char]

Neat little diorama thing from the latest warcom Necromunda article.

[askrobouteguilliman40k]

As for the Genestealers, these aren’t your run-of-the-mill Purestrains. From their Patriarch down, these guys have been changed by the destruction of Secundus – it’s not even clear that the Hive Mind would even want to pay them a visit by this point

...... How warped are they?

[nightbringer24]

THE FORTIFIED MANOR IS BACK!!! AND THE ARCANE RUINS!!

LET'S GOOOOOOO!

And Dwarf characters and artillery too.

[eljackinton]

Momo "Many Hands" Tzareem. Escher Gang Queen and Genestealer Cult Adept. Sent on a mission by the clan house to chase down a rival gang of Orlocks, nobody quite knows how Many Hands ended up at Hive Secundus, but once she returned her street had a taken on a more literal meaning.

[helldivers-2]

Azure Secundus survivor here.

Bugs are teaching me how to disarm hellbombs, theres some good materials in dem bombs the hive can use.

CALLING IN ORBITAL STRIKE

[ask-the-hive-doc]

The Clinic is Open!

Free care* brought to all citizens** by the benevolence of the Officio Medicae.

Treatment for the following conditions:

Minor trauma (sprains, fractures, lacerations, amputation of fingers or toes)

Major trauma (dismemberment, shooting, explosives accident)

Ague, consumption, and fevers

Removal and revision of augmetics

Apoplexy

Dropsy

Biliousness and Green Fever

Changes in life

Obscura abuse and dependence†

And more!

*Cost of service dependent upon indenture to Grimmel & Son's Flesh Processing and Nutrient Solutions, the Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Arbites, Holy Ecclesiarchy, or other participating ordo.

**Services only available to citizens in good standing with all legal and moral authorities, residing within Hive Secundus sectors B-IX to W-VII.

†De-Tox treatment is known to carry a risk of side effects, including but not limited to: nausea (which may be permanent), headache, irreversible nerve damage, muscle aches, and sudden death.

[thewenglishwarlock]

Little malstrain friend! Hoo buddy they're fiddly but fun to paint!

[titanomancy]

The Inquisition should have dossiers full of xenos-tainted subversives who keep showing up at the heads of genestealer cult uprisings, even after confirmed Deathwatch redactions, spread across lightyears of space and centuries of time.

Where do they come from? Why is it always that one bald chick, or the three-armed gunslinger? Only the Hive Mind knows for sure.

[victorluvsalice]

Merry Christmas SatiricalDemon!

@thesatiricaldemon *waves* So you requested a fic about Daniel, Dommik, and N on an inter-dimensional vacation to one of my other fic verses...and the very first thing that came to mind was a follow up on a thread about a certain crystalline butterfly birthday present Dan sent to the Victors that my Secundus boy found very inspiring. XD So yeah, that's what you're getting. Hope you enjoy!

This Feels Like A Recipe For Disaster

“. . .and that allowed me to dampen the threat response! They still react if one of the flock gets injured, but it’s more of a ‘chase away the potential threat’ thing – they won’t try a full swarm unless you full-on shatter one of them.”

“Oh, excellent, excellent! And I see in your notes here you were looking to see if you could get different colors – I would imagine that if you added that lovely compound to the caterpillar mid-metamorphosis, you could get a truly acidic shade of green!”

“Maybe, but that also has a good chance of completely destabilizing the metamorphosis entirely. . .though I guess it’s all about how much I add. . .”

Alice looked over at the two, hunched over the main experimentation table in Victor’s greenhouse lab, and shook her head fondly. “I’m sorry, it sounds like they may be at this for a while,” she commented, turning back to their other two guests. “Victor was – very inspired by that little gift your Dr. Daniel sent along for his birthday.”

“So I can see,” Dommik said, grinning in that rather off-kilter way he had. Then again, Alice supposed that since he was really some sort of odd vampire-worm thing running around in a human suit (and how she wished she didn’t know that), it was only to be expected. “Daniel was hoping that he’d enjoy the statue, but I don’t think he expected him to try and recreate it.”

Normally it’s a bad idea for anyone to attempt to copy anomalous flora and fauna, N added, their cold gaze fixed on Daniel and Victor as they kept exchanging ideas on tweaks to the crystalline butterflies Victor was working on. But your husband seems to have a rare talent in that regard.

“Only because it’s a butterfly, I’m sure,” Alice replied, folding her arms. “Lepidoptery is Victor’s specialty. He can work with other insects too – we’ve got a hive of modified bees from a honey-making venture he attempted a little while back – and he’s got some talent with engineering, but butterflies and moths are where he shines.” She grinned. “Possibly because his very first project as a Touched was figuring out how to make them glow.”

“Oooh! I’d love to see that!” Dommik said, excitement shining through his eye sockets. “I’m sure they’re beautiful!”

“They are – and much less deadly than the creatures you lot apparently deal with on a daily basis,” Alice said, glancing between them and Daniel. “I thought Secundus could be a rowdy place to live sometimes, but after the stories you’ve told us of your world, it seems almost – peaceful.”

It is a difficult place to exist sometimes, N agreed. But we have found happiness there, regardless of the circumstances. They tilted their head at her. I do still find it interesting you do not exhibit the same Hume potential as the Alice we know at home.

“Oh, I’d love to be able to bend reality to my will,” Alice grumbled. “It’d make life so much easier. . .then again, your Alice seems to have had a very different life to mine, even if some of the broader events match up?”

“Mmm? Oh, yes – I’ve noticed your meta-narrative placement is much different from hers,” Daniel commented, looking up from the notepad he’d been sharing with Victor. “As is this Victor’s from the one I know. No waking up Emily means no potential for necromancy at all!”

“I’ll take raising butterflies over raising the dead,” Victor mumbled, scribbling something with a frown. “Hmmm – I’m not entirely sure that’s adding up right. . .”

“I’m just wondering where Smiler is,” Dommik said, looking around.

Alice blinked, then glanced over at Victor, who looked equally confused. “Ah – who?”

“You know – Smiler! Your themfriend?”

“Wrong universe, dearest,” Daniel said, with a slightly softer version of his trademark manic grin. “This romantic situation was resolved before their creation – though they may be here somewhere in potentia! Perhaps I could look into the matter!”

“Who are they?” Victor asked. “Other than a ‘themfriend.’” He smiled, tone light. “What, are we supposed to be a threesome too?”

Daniel laughed. “You could if you wanted to be! In fact, in studying the meta-verse for this trip, I actually located a reality where you and Alice are part of a nine-person polycule!”

Alice and Victor shared another, much more astonished glance. “. . .all right, now you have to tell us about that one,” Alice said after a moment, shaking her head. “Because I have got to know.”

[ladynighthaunter]

Konrad has been sitting still for nine days in a chair too small for her, absorbing all the data of the hive cities on Kaldor Primus... And she is bored.

Each of the hive cities has a void shield, preventing orbital bombardment and drop pod assaults, her marine will have to track across the wasteland between cities, across toxic seas and assault on foot.... But most of her Legion is tied up on Kaldor Secundus, dealing with the dark mechanicus forces.

She slowly blinks.... She is thinking this all wrong, trying to think like a general.... She is no general, she is the Night Haunter, fear is her weapon.... And fear is what she will use.

Her terror squads will enter the hives by stealth and start targeting military and nobles, tear them apart and leave enough of them behind to be identified, they will be blades in the dark, taking the hives one at a time.... The commander of the planets PDF and her wife might disapprove, but spill the blood of a hundred to spare a million seemed like a small price to pay.

She rises from her seat, startling the people around her and starts voxing her orders, this war could take a year to win like this, but win she will.... And once they are done with the traitors, then they can move on to the criminal element of this world... Her world.

[farsight-the-char]

Indepednet releases for the Malstrain Genestealers, Spyre Hunters, and Tek-hunters, and other Necromunda models/accessories.

Buncha Dwarf reprints for The Old World. Plus an Orc caster, and returning terrain.

.........

Miniature reveals, plus more details on the next preview show.

[definitelynotalpharius]

Sainted Apocalypse, Castigator-Class MBT

// Sainted Apocalypse, Castigator class main battle tank: online. //

// Crew status, optimal. //

// Crew class: Adepta Sororitas; Order: Argent Shroud. //

// Begin battle log. //

SA-TD: "She's online, sister Sigirid."

SA-TS: "Wonderful. You ought to have been an Enginseer."

SA-TD: "I'd sooner swear the oath of repentance than be amongst those heretics."

SA-TL: "Careful. The Cult Mechanicum was sanctioned by The God Emperor Himself, sister Angeline."

SA-TD: "Oh. Is that because our 'lovely' dominus gave you those augmetics, oh sister 'Manus'?"

SA-TL: "To liken me to one of His sons is not but a compliment, sister Angeline."

SA-TG: "Sisters, I believe we're on a schedule. Quit your bickering and allow the Superior to begin the briefing before we're all sworn to the repentia."

SA-TS: "Thank you, sister Dominica. Our target is this forested area south of Hab-836, Hive Secundus. Cannoness Apocrifa has gotten herself into a unfaivorable position against the xenos filth. Our infiltration point is here, we're ariving via LOD along with 3 squadrons of seraphim and several retributor squads..."

SA-TD: "We're dropping from low orbit?!"

SA-TS: "Objections have already been made to Palatine Silvia. Her response was... It bears no need of repetition."

SA-TL: "We'll be fine. Just strap yourself in, nice an tight."

SA-TS: "As I was saying: were to lead a relief force. Prepare for a rough battle, reports mention xenos-tech is relatively effective against conventional armor. Any questions? Good. Mout up!"

// DRIVER LINK: ESTABLISHED //

SA-TS: "Status!"

SA-TD: "Machine spirit under control. Sound!"

SA-TL: "Sound, Superior!"

SA-TG: "Sound, sister!"

SA-TS: "Sound! Driver, advance... Prepare for drop."

SA-TG: "What is our intel on the xenos, sister Sigrid?"

SA-TS: "They've a propensity for technology. Heavy use of abominable intelligence. They also use machines mimicing the Titanicus. Drop in 30!"

SA-TL: "Expected armor?"

SA-TS: "Lesser. Heavy void shielding."

SA-TL: "Ah. I triple sanctified our ammunition myself..."

SA-TG: "Then we're definitely doomed..."

SA-TL: "HOW D-"

// ORBITAL DROP INITIATED //

AS-C: "See, sisters?! Reinforcements!"

AS-CS: "CANNONESS, LOOK O-"

AS-C: "A glorious death in His name! We charge! Bring the filthy xenos to heel! Castigator Crew, close fire support!"

SA-TS: "Aye, Cannoness. The Sainted Apocalypse is at your service. Driver, advance 1200!"

SA-TG: "Contact - Xenos Tank - 335!"

SA-TS: "Gunner - Sanct - Tank!"

SA-TG: "IDENTIFY!"

SA-TL: "UP!"

SA-TS: "FIRE!"

SA-TG: "HIT!"

SA-TS: "DRIVER - REVERSE - 400. Contact - h.. hounds?"

SA-TG: "Hounds?"

SA-TS: "By the Throne. They're actual hounds. 65"

SA-TG: "Should I fire?"

SA-TS: "Gunner - Pyre - Hold! I'll clear the horde with the HB."

SA-TG: "Standing by!"

SA-TL: "UP!"

SA-TS: "THRONE PERSERVE US! THEY'RE CHARGING!"

SA-TD: "They cannot get through the armor..."

// Alarm: Hull Breach //

SA-TS: "Ram them back, I'm getting the SB. Dominica, man the HB!"

SA-TG: "Aye, Superior!"

// Alarm: Engine Damage //

SA-TD: "Su-Superior! The... The machine spirit, it's fighting back..."

SA-TS: "We're clear. Driver - Reverse - 1200. Gunner, man the MBC."

SA-TG: "Aye, Superior!"

AS-C: "Status, Apocalypse!"

SA-TS: "Sustainable damage, falling back to backline."

AS-C: "Negative. Priority target, 1500 meters south of my position. Take it out."

SA-TS: "*sigh* Gunner - Sanct -"

SA-TG: "IDENTIFY!"

SA-TL: "UP!"

SA-TS: "FIRE!"

SA-TG: "HIT! Wait, was that all? Throne, it's reduced to mist."

AS-C: "Good shot, sisters! That was quicker than expected."

SA-TS: "We aim to serve."

AS-C: "And to kill, I see. Pull back for repairs, the cowards are withdrawing..."

SA-TS: "Compliance."

SA-TL: "Not our best work, I have to say..."

SA-TD: "Not our worst either. You've all your limbs, and Sigrid still has her good eye."

SA-TG: "Either way, that's at least two more notches."

SA-TS: "One. That last kill was... dishonorable. I'll not have it sully my Castigator."

// Battle log end. //