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Confrontation

A cyber-gothic role-playing game for mature players.

The Hive Environment

Life-support

Air

The Shell surrounding a Spire is partially sealed (to what degree depends on the age, wealth and structural integrity of a Spire) to keep out the poisoned atmosphere and corrosive ash from outside. Fans and air filters are positioned at strategic points (mainly the top levels) and circulate breathable air throughout a Spire. Towards the middle of a Spire air is stale, dry and stinks. Towards the bottom air is harsh causing coughing and regular respiratory problems. On these mid to lower levels air is polluted by chemicals and gas to varying degrees. Breathing can be hard and painful on some days, making the mouth sore, rashes appear around the nose, nose bleeds, fainting and fits of wracking coughing. many people try to buy expensive respirators. Most have to make do with thick rags around their faces to act as filters.

Food and Water

Only the very rich can afford off-world food. These luxuries are often only bought on special occasions and 99.9% of Hivers will never see them, never mind taste them. Other affordable food stuffs (affordable for rich families only) are made from the animals detailed below: rat milk, butter, cheese (with various moulds) and yoghurt from the diaries, spider caviar and limbs, rat steak (pehaps marinated in tranq-wine), rat soup, mould dishes, wafers, stuffed mushrooms etc.

The rest of the population eat Block, also known as Re-Cyc. Block in re-cycled biological waste, including human bodies. Re-Cyc machines drain the fluid from biological matter giving Hivers the vast majority of their water, which is treated for disease with chemicals. Block is the remians. It is a green-grey flaky substance, bitter with chemicals. It contains artifical nutriants which are imported from off world as bodies cannot be re-cycled indefinately. If a church wants to keep an unruly populace under control it will "spike" the water and Block with sediatives. If a spire does not receive artificial nutrients regularly the ignorant populace will slowly starve from malnutrition, scurvy and the like.

Light-Heat

Light and heat come from the same source - the lightfibres that are span like tendrils throughout a Spire. They are powered by the heatsink and give off a low orange light, much like our streetlamps. The spire is a perpetual urban night time. Heat radiates into the Spire, which without would reach freezing temperatures. Life would die on the outer areas of the Spire and could only surivive next to the Heat-Sink furnace. The light and heat vary according to the 2 seasons.

The 2 Seasons

Becuase the Heat-Sink draws its energies from the super-hot mantle underneath the planets crust, its geo-thermal energies are subject to seasonal shifts in temperature due to the gravitational influence of the Red Giant as the planet orbits it. As the magma flow shifts, the geo-thermal energy fluctuates. During the hot-season the lighting is bright, almost yellow, and Spires become hot places. Chemicals may turn to humid gases, forming deadly clouds and chemical condensation my drip like rain from the walls and ceilings of the Spire. During hot-season mosq-flies hatch and breed, spreading diseases throughout the populace as they drink blood. The cold-season is just as hard. The light dims to a glowering red haze, or in poorly light airs, dwindle to nothing. The temperature drops, the sick, very old, very young and injured may freeze to death. People sometimes migrate towards the centre where the Heat-Sink is - invariably this results in fighting. Chemical pools may freeze over causing potential hazards.

Needless to say, earthquakes and volcanic activity can devastate a Hive or Spire resulting in cracked Heat-Sinks which leak lava at best, and magma explosions ripping through the Heat-Sinks of Spires at worst, destroying the entire structure.

Animal and Plant Life

Only a few species of animal and plant have survived the millenia long pollution and ravaging of the planet. These have evolved too, to cope with their new, hostile environment. The main vegitable survivors have been moulds and fungi that can grow in lightles, arid conditions. Where found they are protecte and propagated by Hivers as a valuable source of food.

Animal survivors are mainly vermin, insects and "arachnids". Rats have grown to dog-sized proportions, with large, hunch hind quarters for leaping, bristling thick fur for protection and warmth and long sharp fore-incisors for cutting and sniping. They hunt in packs and have excellent night vision and sense of smell. In some Spires they are at the top of the food chain and the humans living there are in a constant struggle against the larger, stronger packs which hunt them down.

Insects have not grown much bigger, their exoskeletons would collapse under their own weight. Instead they have assumed the role of parasites, rot-grubs in diseased flesh, worms in the gut, lice in the hair. Mosq-flies are perhaps the worst insect that plague Hivers. These creatures look like fly-mosquito hybrids. In the hot season they swarm and suck blood from the unwary via diseased proboscis. The hum of their wings can be heard all around in the air at this time, and many die from the infections they spread from person to person through their bite. Some are actually very beautiful, their irridescent wings are fetishized by rich collectors who hunt them with nets and wearing sealed-suits on the lower levels. The giant spiders are also a dangerous animal. Though these things are not strictly arachnid they do spin webs and dessicate their prey. They lurk mainly in the vents or abandoned buildings. They can sometimes be as large as a modern car if they are old and successful, and make dangerous foes. Hungry spiders may hunt through the streets, climbing (somehow) over the walls and ceilings of the Spire, dropping on thin threads and picking people up from the ground to be dragged away. Both spiders and ras are hunted by Hivers who make it their business. For those that are strong and quick enough, it can be a very lucrative one. The final type of animal that is detailed under its own special heading later on, are Caraytids.

Dis-ease

The most common diseases to affect Hivers are cancer, sexually transmitted diseases, diseases carried by mosq-flies, and congenital diseases. Cancer is common due to chemical and radioactive pollution and is one of the primary killers of Hivers. STDs are a regular problem due to universal prostitution. Versions of syphilis and herpes are common and lethal, destroying faces and poisoning wombs. Congenital diseases are found in areas where the gene pool is small (which is surprising often in Hives - the lower levels are typically sparsely populated or cut-off), or where deformity is common.

Air-borne diseases are almost unheard of - the high pollution level in the atmosphere kills most bacteria. However, tough and virulent disease can kill off entire Spires due to the damaged immune system of most Hivers. Because of the pollution, the Hiver immune system is compromised. It is also weakened because it is rarely exercised; the lack of common diseases means that only the aforementioned types of disease are regular problems. Strong airborne diseases are also deadly due to the air-circulation system in a Spire. The poisoned and polluted atmosphere from outside is filtered, but the fans re-circulate the air around the vents through the Spire, and it is far too expensive to filter the air from disease. Furthermore, this air is breathed and re-breathed countless times, and towards the lower levels it is foetid, still and stale.

Water and food rarely carry disease, it is carefully purified with chlorine and anti-bacterial agents. Parasites are also common, and many UnderHivers carry them. Most UnderHivers shave off their hair to stave off lice.

Typical Diseases

STDs

Typical Parasites

"The actual life of most of mankind has been cramped with back-breaking labour, exposed to deadly or debilitating diseases, prey to wars and famines, haunted by the loss of children, filled with fear and ignorance that breeds more fear. At the end, for everyone, stands dreaded unknown death. To long for joy, support and comfort, to react violently against fear and anguish is quite simply the human condition." Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos "Only One Earth"

Pollution

Pollution is a fact of life in the Hive. Hivers see it as natural and common-place. They accept it like we accept breathing in car-exhaust fumes and daily waste dumping. Everything is polluted, the air is by engine fumes, chimney smoke and the thousand gaseous poisons of industry, the food is polluted by definition, the re-cycled bodies of the life that lives in the Hives are permeated by it. Water is cured and treated with poisonous, carcinogenic chemicals, and the drugs are artificial, mass-produced and unhealthy.

In many Spires the lower levels are home to ancient Nuclear Power plants. By now much of the radioactive waste has finally degraded, but some is still active and dangerous levels of radiation cause certain areas to be avoided by Hivers (if they know about them), or radiation sickness weakens or kills the ignorant.

Acid Rain and Smog

In other Spires where chemicals are processed and waste drains run open through the streets to the Shell-Wall, the areas around the Heat-Sink can result in humid conditions where the exposed chemicals forms clouds of poisoned droplets and drift through the streets, or run in rivulets down the walls. Sometimes these clouds rise until they get too far from the Heat-Sink. They then cool and fall down as a lethal, flesh burning rain.

Dead Air

Dead Air is the name of an area of a level where the air is stale, diseased or poisonous. This maybe due to one (or several) various factors: 1. The fans in this section have broken down and the air has gone stale through lack of circulation. It will stink bad, be difficult to breath and probably carry disease. (charater stats should be modified accordingly, perhaps -1 to Move and Initiative). 2. Poison gas from a lower level seeping up from chemical stroage of wastage constantly seeps into the area and is trapped here due to lack of ventilation or a blocked pump. The area wil be high in stinging, toxic fumes that at best will make eyes and nose and throat burn, and at worse it will reduce a character to hacking, coughing, mucus membrane damage of lungs and face acting like a choke grenade. 3. Sewage can cause dead-air, though this willnot be found where Hivers live. Only in Rat, Scavvy or Degenerate territory will sewage be found, buried or open, littered about or kept in one place depending on habit.

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