IN ORDER TO EVEN BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND THE BLASTED WORLD OF NECROMUNDA YOU MUST FIRST UNDERSTAND THE HIVE CITIES. THESE MAN-MADE MOUNTAINS OF PLASTEEL, CERAMITE AND ROCKCRETE HAVE ACCRETED OVER CENTURIES TO PROTECT THEIR INHABITANTS FROM A HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT, SO VERY MUCH LIKE THE TERMITE MOUNDS THEY RESEMBLE. THE NECROMUNDAN HIVE CITIES HAVE POPULATIONS IN THE BILLIONS AND ARE INTENSELY INDUSTRIALISED, EACH ONE COMMANDING THE MANUFACTURING POTENTIAL OF AN ENTIRE PLANET OR COLONY SYSTEM COMPACTED INTO A FEW HUNDRED SQUARE KILOMETRES.

THE INTERNAL STRATIFICATION OF THE HIVE CITIES IS ALSO ILLUMINATING TO OBSERVE. THE ENTIRE HIVE STRUCTURE REPLICATES THE SOCIAL STATUS OF ITS INHABITANTS IN A VERTICAL PLANE. AT THE TOP ARE THE NOBILITY, BELOW THEM ARE THE WORKERS, AND BELOW THE WORKERS ARE THE DREGS OF SOCIETY, THE OUTCASTS. HIVE PRIMUS, SEAT OF THE PLANETARY GOVERNOR LORD HELMAWR OF NECROMUNDA, ILLUSTRATES THIS IN THE STARKEST TERMS. THE NOBLES -HOUSES HELMAWR, CATTALUS, TY, ULANTI, GREIM, RAN LO AND KO'IRON -LIVE IN THE 'SPIRE', AND SELDOM SET FOOT BELOW THE 'WALL' THAT EXISTS BETWEEN THEMSELVES AND THE GREAT FORGES AND HAB ZONES OF THE HIVE CITY PROPER.

BELOW THE HIVE CITY IS THE 'UNDERHIVE', FOUNDATION LAYERS OF HABITATION DOMES, INDUSTRIAL ZONES AND TUNNELS WHICH HAVE BEEN ABANDONED IN PRIOR GENERATIONS, ONLY TO BE RE-OCCUPIED BY THOSE WITH NOWHERE ELSE TO GO.

BUT... HUMANS ARE NOT INSECTS. THEY DO NOT HIVE TOGETHER WELL. NECESSITY MAY FORCE IT. BUT THE HIVE CITIES OF NECROMUNDA REMAIN INTERNALLY DIVIDED TO THE POINT OF BRUTALISATION AND OUTRIGHT VIOLENCE BEING AN EVERYDAY FACT OF LIFE. THE UNDERHIVE, MEANWHILE, IS A THOROUGHLY LAWLESS PLACE, BESET BY GANGS AND RENEGADES, WHERE ONLY THE STRONGEST OR THE MOST CUNNING SURVIVE. THE GOLIATHS, WHO BELIEVE FIRMLY THAT MIGHT IS RIGHT; THE MATRIARCHAL, MAN-HATING ESCHER; THE INDUSTRIAL ORLOCKS; THE TECHNOLOGICALLY-MINDED VAN SAAR; THE DELAQUE WHOSE VERY EXISTENCE DEPENDS ON THEIR ESPIONAGE NETWORK; THE FIREY ZEALOTS OF THE CAWDOR. ALL STRIVING FOR THE ADVANTAGE THAT WILL ELEVATE THEM, NO MATTER HOW BRIEFLY, ABOVE THE OTHER HOUSES AND GANGS OF THE UNDERHIVE.

MOST FASCINATING OF ALL IS WHEN INDIVIDUALS ATTEMPT TO CROSS THE MONUMENTAL PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL DIVIDES OF THE HIVE TO START NEW LIVES. GIVEN SOCIAL CONDITIONS, ASCENSION THROUGH THE HIVE IS NIGH ON IMPOSSIBLE, BUT DESCENT IS AN ALTOGETHER EASIER, ALBEIT ALTOGETHER LESS APPEALING, POSSIBILITY.

EXCERPTED FROM XONARIARIUS THE YOUNGER'S NOBILITE PAX IMPERATOR

- THE TRIUMPH OF ARISTOCRACY OVER DEMOCRACY.

Welcome, fight fans, to the twenty-seventh All-Comers Fight Fest, here at the To-The-Death Arena. Boy, have we got a treat in store for you tonight? The pit fight to end all pit fights. We’ve got Piledriver. We’ve got Ramrod Rameses. We’ve got the Head-Harvester. We’ve got Ghyarotha, the Ratskin Savage. We’ve got monstrous mutant Milliasaurs, hungry Scalies and the biggest rat-beast you’ve seen this side of the Effluous. Who will leave as our Lord of the Spire and who will leave in a body bag? It’s all here, fight fans! At the twenty-seventh All-Comers Fight Fest!

Nastrol Skedge opened his eyes and looked around him. Nothing had changed. It was the same nightmare situation he had awoken to after those slime-sucking snakes of Delaques had turned betrayer on the Ironfists. Unbelievably, his Goliath gang were being beaten by those snivelling dogs of Vito Scald’s when the Network had turned up, emerging like mirroreyed ghosts seemingly from nowhere.

At first Sisken and his Delaques had leant their firepower to help the Ironfists bring down Scald’s Hotheads but as soon as that threat had been eliminated, they turned on the Goliaths. Skedge himself had been buried under a collapsing bulkhead and was taken alive, only to be sold to the notorious Guilder Phelonius Carbonyne to become one of his pit fighting slaves, fodder for the endless bouts of his bloodthirsty entertainments.

Skedge’s head ached like someone had rammed an electrode into his brain, as indeed they had: several electrodes, in fact.

‘Stop squirming,’ the techno grumbled. ‘If you want me to get this saw unclogged and working again before the next round you’d better sit still!’

Skedge looked up into the man’s eyes, or rather eye – the other having been replaced by a red bionic implant – and scowled. The techno was bald and wiry, and reminded Skedge of the traitorous Delaques. The Goliath’s shoulder and back ached from where the monstrous buzz-saw arm had been grafted onto his body and bolted to his spinal column, his left arm having already been brutally removed. The flesh around his newly-implanted ownership studs was still red-raw too.

‘Are you done over there yet, Lazlo?’ asked one of the other pit slaves sitting waiting inside the plasteel-walled bunker. He had a grease-black topknot of hair, a Guild skull tattoo on his left shoulder and a huge hydraulic claw in place of his right arm.

‘I will be if this muscle-head stops twitching worse than a Ratskin overdosing on Spook,’ the techno complained.

‘Don’t talk about our potential associate like that, Lazlo,’ the claw-armed pit slave chided, a ‘By the black Abyss, what are you talking about?’ Skedge growled, speaking for the first time since he had entered the bunker after eviscerating half a dozen scavvy mutants in the last round. ‘We’re slated to fight in the next round!’broad grin on his face.

‘We’re breaking out of here,’ the pit slave said. ‘Let me introduce myself. The name’s Scuzman Veck. I and my friends here,’ he took in the other cyborgs in the sweaty gloom of the bunker with a sweep of his claw, ‘have had enough of living life at stinking Phelonius Carbonyne’s pleasure. So, after the third round…’

This is it, fight fans, the one you’ve all been waiting for. Scuzman Veck’s Meat Grinders against the Executioner and the Beast of Broken Spar, Ghyarotha. You won’t see the like of this grudge-match again in a long time. Place your bets and remember, when the klaxon goes the blood flows!

The roar of the ground was deafening. Underhivers packed the stands of the arena, all eager to see the pit slaves slaughter each other in new and messily interesting ways. Scuzman Veck and his crew were lined up on the other side of the rust-stained ash floor of the fighting pit with Skedge and the drugged-up Ratskin brute they were calling the Beast of Broken Spar facing them.

Through narrowed eyes, Skedge could see the obese warty bulk of Phelonius Carbonyne squatting like a fat, albino toad on his servitor-carried palanquin within his own private arena box. Diesel engines roared and oily black smoke belched into the air as the pit slaves fired up their tool-weapons. The crowd roared even louder, in expectation of the bloodshed to come. If the plan was to work they had to make this look convincing…

Don’t panic, fight fans! Don’t panic! Everything is under control! Please remain calm and return to your seats. Everything is under con-… fzzz… krzzz… You can’t come in here! Get out! Hey, watch that power ca-… sprzzzz…skzzz… Get out, everybody! For skav’s sake, didn’t you hear me? Run while you still can!

Underhivers scattered before him as he powered towards them, sweeping the whirling blur of his buzzsaw before him. Exhilaration running through him, Nastrol Skedge came to halt outside the arena gates and looked around him. They had done it. Skav, but they had done it! Well, at least he had done it. He could hear Scuzman Veck still cursing, trapped by the press of Guilder guards in the arena behind him. But Nastrol Skedge was free!

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

Pit Fight