Necromunda underhive rulebook pdf download

After all, campaigns are awesome fun to take part in, and many players find running their own bespoke campaign the most rewarding way to play the game. The Necromunda Rulebook also incorporates all the amendments made via errata released to date and provides additional clarity to tidy up any FAQs.

It presents a great way for new players to get started or for veterans of Necromunda to collate all of their resources into a handy two-piece of rules manual and companion book. This hardback book is available separately, but you can instead pick up the limited Slipcase Edition that includes both the Necromunda Rulebook and Necromunda Gangs of the Underhive. Click to expand Everything you need is in the library here on yakromunda!

As is the mighty storming the barricades! Hive of the living dead is in 'tales from the underhive' here. Lord of the spire is in 'arbitrator scenarios' here. Sharkforce Gang Hero.

Jul 23, 46 28 Headed for the Eye of Terror. Anthony Community Edition Editor. Jun 2, 1, If you did happen to do an NCE compatible compilation of my old outlaw gang rules I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Personally I'd love to see a compilation of all the really old stuff from the Citadel Journal and Gang War era. They're great for inspiration but a fair amount of the scans I have are quite terrible quality.

The first version of this document is linked in the top post. Only took me Apr 2, 1, 83 39 flemington, Victoria.

Nice work! Awesome, you sah, are a gentleman and a scholar! That's some quality work there my friend, I'm going to cast my eye over it at work today.

I've had a little spy and it looks great, really handy. Show hidden low quality content. You must log in or register to reply here. Similar threads. ArbitorIan Oct 1, Hive Lore. Replies 0 Views Hive Lore Oct 1, ArbitorIan. Updated Master Equipment and Skills Lists. Aulenback Jan 13, Mordheim.

Replies 1 Views Mordheim Jan 22, Willnox. This shadow war also brought to light a secret cult within Ulanti — the Eschaki. These were women who could still trace their ancestry back to the Blades and kept the ideals of the founding mothers alive.

When the bloody conflicts of the Two-faced War were done, and Lady Cinderak had emerged victorious, House Ulanti had once again secured its position in the spire, though it bore little resemblance to the House that had once split from Ulandari. Clan Athenos was gutted and in decline, almost all its hive kings having been slain or exiled.

The Eschaki, disillusioned with how removed the Ulanti had become from their origins, chose self-imposed exile from the spire. Swiftly, and with little conflict, they absorbed the remnants of Athenos, House Eschaki taking its place among the Clan Houses. Unlike the Goliath of the 41st Millennium, these Goliaths were not vat-born gene-workers, but rather hardened natural-born men and women of the forge.

They were bolstered by exiles from the former House Athenos, hive kings who sought revenge upon the Eschaki. A war raged on and off between the two Houses for years, the conflict finally culminating in the Great Poisoning during the Mynerva Famine. Despite thousands of their fighters having been killed by Eschaki treachery, House Goliath met the Eschaki in battle with hordes of slave Ogryns, spudjacker-armed worker battalions and muscle-bound gang lords.

Against the massive numbers of Goliath, the House of Blades employed waves of combat drug-fuelled murder squads, ash-dancer assassins and genhanced berserkers. Entire domes were drowned in blood during these night-cycle conflicts. The war ended with House Goliath all but annihilated, their survivors chased into the wastes or driven into the deepest regions of the underhive. The Eschaki revelled in their victory, all the while unknowingly having sown the seeds of their own demise.

The greatest rival to the Eschaki was the newly-formed House Goliath. Some whispered that the plague had been started by the Escher themselves, with the goal of destroying the Noble House of Aranthus, only it turned back upon them, devastating their House.

For its part, House Escher did little to dispute the rumour; even though the Escher knew it to be a lie. Nonetheless, it is a lie that has persisted and taken root over the centuries, so that most now believe it to be true. The Escher often use it to their advantage when it comes to intimidating representatives from the Noble Houses, such as holding inter-House convocations in rooms subtly decorated in the colours of House Aranthus, or offering noble guests wine served in Aranthian-style goblets.

The price of a few genetic abominations or stimm-induced deaths was a small one compared to the dark reputation the Eschaki had earned. For 1, years, the influence of the Eschaki spread.

Such meddling in the genetics of the clan would have terrible consequences. At first little credence was given to the malformed offspring that were being born in ever-increasing numbers. Necromunda has long been a toxic world, and few humans born upon it are free from some form of physical corruption. This led to some disastrous results, like the massacre that ensued when a force of Eschaki chemwarriors was sent to liberate Cog Town.

After murdering the outlaw helots holding the town, the Eschaki were overcome by a chem-induced madness, turning upon the hivers they had just saved and slaughtering them. So reliant was Adamus on combat stimms, his body was encased in drug canisters and tubes, constantly pumping chems into his veins. In his drug-thirst Adamus would often drink the blood of fallen chem-warriors to get his fix if his own reserves were running low. When hab-mothers speak of the perils of the Age of Eschaki to young Eschers, it is often to the tale of Adamus they point.

Eloch Twice-born, the last man to rule the Eschaki, was a withered thing. The enemies of the House who had long been observing its decline now moved in for the kill.

In Hive Mortis and Hive Ceres, agents working on behalf of House Ran Lo engineered a mass exile of Eschaki workers, diverting their factorum transports out into the wastes, and shipping in their own helots to take over.

When the Eschaki tried to retaliate, gangs of hired guns were ready and waiting. They might have vanished for good, had it not been for one woman. Vhoadycia was a hab-mother who had risen to prominence during the Goreside Dome wars of Hive Primus, when a coalition of clans tried to kill off the Eschaki presence in Vat City.

When she marched into the Elder Eschaki Council to confront Eloch and demand action from the clan, she discovered that Eloch was long dead, along with all the male Elders. Instead an allwomen council remained, divided between those who clung to the old ways of the Eschaki and those who, like Vhoadycia, wanted change. This was to be the turning point. Under the rule of Vhoadycia, who took the mantle of Matriarch Primus, the clan was reborn as House Escher.

Over the following centuries Escher would rise to reclaim its place among the Clan Houses. Though its menfolk would never recover from the Flesh Curse, the women of the clan would take over their part in defending it, a tradition that endures to this day. Among those to make their mark upon this time are the warrior women known as the Blades, hive queens whose will and genetic strength will one day become the foundation of House Escher.

By the time they pass into history, their deeds are already legends traded among the tribes and clans of the ashen world. The embodiment of the Blades, she is the first to bear the title of the Ancient and the Young and wear the three-faced crown.

Despite her young age and relative inexperience, her reign is marked by massive expansions for the Ulandari and the extermination of dozens of their rivals. She will go on to be immortalised in countless statues, paintings and holo-sculptures that endure to this day within the Sirens of Hive Primus. The history of House Athenos will be troubled, though in its people the blood of the Blades will endure.

This highway circumnavigates the planet but has not been usable for centuries due to rogue hive lords and ash waste tribes claiming sections of it for themselves. Started when the Patriarch Primus accidentally mispronounces Saint Valdor as Saint Valdon, it quickly escalates into open conflict between the Valdorians and Valdonians. The conflict is only settled when a fight in the Temple of the Emperor Deified draws the attention of the Order of the Argent Shroud — the Adepta Sororitas taking a tithe of , penitents from House Athenos as atonement for their transgression.

Over centuries of upheaval, the House will enjoy both triumphs and suffer defeats, spreading their influence across the toxic world even as a poison grows within its heart that will one day bring it to the edge of extinction.

So begins a time of ascendance for the House of Blades, its people enjoying wealth and privilege unlike anything seen before in the cramped domes of Hive City.

Soon they have won the greater measure of the drudging classes of Hive Primus to their banner, and their production rates soar as a result. Over the following decades Raebeca builds a wasteland empire, maintaining that her bloodline is the true bloodline of the Blades. Without realising the danger, they awaken a number of the clones who, in their insanity, lead a bloody murder spree throughout the hive before vanishing into the wastes.

Not even one in a thousand Eschaki men are born true, the women of the clan soon outnumbering them many times over. Due to interference by House Van Saar, and the unruly nature of the subjects themselves, the project is abandoned. The Matriarchs rise to this challenge, the women of the clan taking the roles once dominated by their menfolk, while new heroes are made by those Escher who dream once more of greatness.

On the Great Ash Road, House Orlock launches a series of raids against the Escher-owned settlement of Ashtown, expecting little resistance. They are quickly disabused of this notion when 20 Escher Wyld Runners drive off three Orlock road gangs in a firefight that lasts three entire days.

Thinking to best the Clan House upstart, Gormach calls on a massive Goliath pitfighter to be his champion. Deliaan takes great pleasure in killing the Goliath in front of Gormach, making sure the lord knows every cut is meant for him. As justice for the fallen, the hive Alpha poisons tonnes of corpse-starch bound for the Escher, so they might perish in the same manner as the Goliaths of old. Unfortunately for the Goliaths, the Eschers of Mynerva see through their feeble ruse, repackaging the poisoned foodstuffs and selling them back to the Goliaths via the Guild of Coin.

While the two sides debate, the chem-warriors flee into the wastes, choosing to live free rather than under the rule of the Matriarch Primus. Zoerina says she is a survivor of the fall and claims to have damning information regarding what really brought the hive down.

With murderous efficiency, the young Cyndella carves out territory in the Spider Points, breeding dust-stalkers and growing rich off raiding Orlock road trains. When, at the age of 18, she is killed in a shootout with no less than a dozen hive assassins, her name becomes known from one end of the Palatine Cluster to the other. After a welltimed insult, violence erupts between the House Masters.

Duke Cornelius the IX of Van Saar only escapes her blades by using a displacer field to flee the chamber. Dressed in extravagant ball gowns and with outlandish hairstyles, they spread blood and carnage with some of the finest weapons their Great House can afford, starting a tradition that continues to this day.

Ten minutes later, Lacy walks out of the Twice-shy reloading her guns, before sending one of her juves to go fetch the local Corpse Guilder. Upon seeing his compound surrounded by armed-to-the-teeth gangers, Van Zep declares it was all a misunderstanding and returns Symone to her comrades. Ostensibly, the clan is divided into three major factions: the Maidens, the Mothers and the Matriarchs. These are ruled over by the Council of Crones — the wisest and most powerful members of the House, who in turn serve at the pleasure of the Matriarch Primus — Queen of all Escher on Necromunda.

In reality, each faction is a vast collection of smaller factions, such as the hundreds of Clanchymist Cults or the family combines of the Shivver Cults. The Council of Crones is equally divided, its members forming and breaking alliances on an almost daily basis, while the court of the Matriarch Primus often holds power in name only.

Somehow, though, the system works. It functions despite the internal politics of the clan and in spite of the layers of rituals and rites that occlude its hierarchy.

This is because there is a bond between all Escher that seems lacking in many other organisations on Necromunda, a bond far stronger than gang colours or clan oaths. Eschers are, at their most basic level, a sisterhood united by their gender, in a way a Goliath or Van Saar ganger, or Cawdor or Orlock worker could never understand. Variously this role has been a lord or lady, or king or queen, sometimes gaining the position through hereditary rite of succession, other times through popular support or even treachery.

During the age of the Eschaki, the tradition came to be either a Matriarch or Patriarch — a person who filled the symbolic role of mother or father to the clan. When the excesses of the Eschaki gave birth to the Flesh Curse the line of Patriarchs was spent, and so Matriarchs became the sole rulers of House Escher. The Matriarch Primus is the culmination of this practice, and House Escher has been ruled by one for the last 1, years at least. These affluent individuals embody the high fashions and graces of the clan, and many can trace their lineage back to the last days of the Eschaki or beyond.

The twin bloodlines of Vestia and Sabine have dominated the position of Matriarch Primus in recent centuries. Over the centuries, however, the mantle of Matriarch Primus has been held by a wide range of powerful women, some more suited to the position than others.

Over its long history, numerous powerful families have controlled the Clan House, contributing members to its rulers. The noble court of the clan in which these rulers gather is known as the Council of Crones. Despite the name, the councillors are not all elders, nor are they drawn solely from those traditionally academic arms of the clan like the Shivvers or the Clan Chymists — the term is used to denote wisdom and authority rather than age.

The only two requirements to sit on the council are that a woman must have done some great service for the clan and that a majority of councillors approve her appointment.

Meanwhile Alyce Sabine suggested a new colour scheme for the Court of Blades to earn the same honour. Distinctive in their long purple robes and white surgical-veils, they demand respect from all within the House; hab-workers, factorum-sisters and even outlander gangers all making way for them as they stride through Hive City.

Over the course of her life, an Escher will rely greatly upon the Clan Chymists. They are present at her birth, when she comes of age, at the birth of her own children, and, should she live a full span of years, in the end at her death. In fact, the continuance of the clan would be impossible without the Chymist Cults, their matrons guardians of the mysteries of keeping the withered male members of the clan alive and producing new Escher children. Alongside these vital services to the clan, the Clan Chymists have another, darker purpose.

While much of their produce is benign, these potent chems and poisons are what they are best known for, and it is the strongest of these that House Escher keeps for itself. For these women two roads present themselves: either they can cast off the mantle of the clan and become outlanders, or they can take their place among the House gangs.

Each Clan House deals with its gangs in different ways. Some, such as the Goliaths, see their gangs as an unofficial militia and keep their gangers on a tight chemical leash, while others, such as the Delaque, seem to make little distinction between hive gangs and ordinary members of the clan.

For the Escher, any with the will and courage are offered the chance to run with the hive gangs. Each has their own way of preparing their youth for a place in the crushing social order of Necromunda, whether it is the Goliath data-slug or the Cawdor ritual segregation. The Escher have the Wyld. The Wyld is a catch-all term for all Escher girls who have reached maturity, but who have yet to find a permanent place among the habs, cults or gangs.

Some Wyld girls express themselves through experimentation and excess, living out the extremes of their youth in the tunnels and domes of Hive City before settling into their clan-given lives. Others expend their youthful energy through violence, either on the streets or in the fighting pits.

Then there are those who strike out on their own into the hive wilderness, looking for adventure and trouble. This latter group are collectively known as Wyld Runners. Runners flee the safety of House and hive to explore the badzones and wastes.

In ragtag bands, they rear their own underhive creatures and fashion their own weapons. Living so far from civilisation, they excel at survival and hunting. Many Runners have specially-trained pets for both defence and company. The favoured hunting animal of most Wyld girls is the Phelynx, sometimes called the Venom Cat.

Like the Runners themselves, the Phelynx are barely-tamed predators, eternally seeking out prey. Runners will ally with Escher gangs, while sometimes entire gangs of Runners themselves might be encountered.

As can be expected, the life of a Runner is perilous, and many do not survive to return to their clan holdings. Those that do are highly respected by their peers for their experience in the wilds, and many members of the Council of Crones were once Wyld Runners in their youth.

Even so, this level of freedom is not enough for some, who crave true independence from their House. For the most part these women are merely touched by the gifts of the Warp, far below the level of power that would draw the notice of the Adeptus Terra. To the Escher, however, they form an important faction of wise women and oracles to whom the Matriarchs have turned for centuries for advice and counsel. When counted against the hab-matriarchs, factorum sisters, Clan Chymists and gangers, Shivvers are only a tiny minority of all Escher on Necromunda.

Within this minor splinter group, only an even smaller number have any measure of psychic talent. For this reason, the clan goes to great lengths to protect the Shivvers, their enclaves and seeing-temples hidden beneath teeming settlements or out in the remote reaches of the outlands — often protected by unknowing Escher gangs. This also means that, when an Escher wishes to consult the Shivvers, she must often make a hazardous journey to where they live, working their way down into the tangled hidden places of Hive City or the underhive.

During that time of genetic manipulation and experimentation, the Clan Chymists discovered they could not only restore unconscious or wounded fighters to fighting fitness, but potentially bring them back from the dead with their chemical concoctions. Through a painful and complex process, the freshly deceased are pumped full of an exotic cocktail of chems, its potency forcing dead organs and torn flesh back to life.

The process only works on those who have recently died, and only if their body is mostly intact, but when it does work, the results are impressive.

The newly-risen Death-maiden retains much of her muscle memory, her reflexes undiminished, her body now largely immune to pain. Perhaps the most terrible aspect of the Death-maidens is their blood. As literal dead women walking, the Death-maidens have an almost mythical place within the society of House Escher. A Death-maiden owes no allegiance but to the House and answers only to the Council of Crones and the Matriarch Primus the council serves. Other Escher view Death-maidens with a mixture of fear and awe, not least because the Moraegan often wear veils, face paint or masks, to inspire terror in their foes, but also to hide the scars of their death.

The chems required to keep them alive eat their body away from within, while new traumas do not heal in the way living flesh would. Usually by this time, however, the Death-maiden has visited her revenge upon her killer and heaped the underhive high with the enemies of House Escher.

To expedite this process, the clan works closely with the Water Guild, for many of their industries are linked together. In addition to chems, House Escher has its hand in numerous secondary and often related industries, including light weapon manufacturing and the genecrafting of exotic creatures.

Recently, the clan has become well known for the quality and quantity of its las-weaponry output, and millions of Necromunda pattern lasguns are turned out by House Escher every production cycle. In these sacred spaces, the purple-robed figures of the Clan Chymists move among domes filled with bubbling vats and hissing pumps, their forms constantly wreathed in lurid fumes. Those not inured to the caustic output of the Chymist Cults, unlike the matrons themselves, find their skin blistering, their senses overwhelmed and their head spinning, such is the density of the chems saturating the air.

Such is the importance of the Chymist Cults, however, the Clan Chymists willingly give up their health, and sometimes even their sanity, to create their concoctions.

When an elixir has been perfected within the cults, it will be transported to the chem-factoria for replication. Under heavy guard the sample is taken into the fabrication crucible of the manufactorum, matrons overseeing its insertion into the ancient workings of the machinery. From there the chems can be turned out in huge quantities by lesser-skilled bonded workers.

Even given the stagnant nature of Imperium technology and the limitations put upon development by the Adeptus Mechanicus, not to mention the stymied creativity of most humans on Necromunda, incredible sciences still exist upon the ancient world. One of these is the art of gene-alchemy. In the upper reaches of the hive, such technologies are used to extend the lives of those within the Noble Houses through rejuve treatments or bio-mechanical augmentation, though it has found equal use in the creation of new kinds of life.

House Escher rediscovered a great deal about gene-alchemy during the age of the Eschaki when it was used to create the chem-warriors.

This knowledge was retained by the organisations that would, in time, become the Chymist Cults. It was used in the creation of the Goliath, and the Van Saar use it to keep themselves alive beyond adolescence. While other Clan Houses have a limited understanding of it, the Escher remain its masters on Necromunda, and to one degree or another, the other Houses must use Escher gene-clinics and Clan Chymists if they want the best treatment available.

The humble lasgun, basic weapon of countless Imperial troops and militia is one of the most common of these, and the Necromunda pattern lasgun is recognised across the Imperium. Every Clan House produces lasguns to some degree, though none are as prolific as House Escher.

A good number also remain on Necromunda, and it is these local variants that have the greatest number of makes — the Escher crafting their lasguns often with their own users in mind.

These clan-pattern las weapons tend to be graceful works of art made for the female warriors of the House, their form and function set to a much higher standard than most. As the oldest of the Clan Houses, there are domes, settlements and outposts that have been controlled by the House of Blades for thousands of years. Many of their domes and levels lie just below the Wall that divides the spire from the rest of the hive, and many of the gates between the two regions are controlled by the House of Blades in alliance with the Guild of Coin.

While it competes with House Van Saar for the regions around the Primus Spaceport that rings the highest levels of Hive City, House Escher has held this ground in the name of the Matriarch Primus for hundreds of years. Its numerous towers rise out of the hive just below the barbed crown of defences that mark the outer edges of the Wall between Hive City and the spire. Among this cluster of towers are three that rise higher than any other: the Maiden Spire, Mother Spire and Matriarch Spire, each home to a different faction within the clan.

At the very top of the Matriarch Spire, its peak sometimes pushing through the toxic cloud cover of Necromunda, are the Sky Gardens. Here the Matriarch Primus holds court, and the Council of Crones gathers to advise her. Lords and ladies of the spire would pay huge sums for the company of the greatest of these modified heroes, often to parade at their extravagant parties before their jealous rivals.

Later, when the Matriarch Primus became the ruler of the clan, many a Hive Queen used these same bridges to visit patrons or suitors in the spire, thereby ensuring that the influence of House Escher remained unchallenged. Some of these gangs have a direct connection to the Clan House and are little more than agents for the Matriarch Primus.

Many more, however, are outcasts — either by choice or circumstance — having set up their own underhive empires. In both cases, House Escher lays claim to any place its gangs hold sway over, whether or not the actual gangs themselves would agree. Mistress of Coin Melerva, the head of the Mercator Gelt in Dust Falls, tends to favour Escher gangs when it comes to getting jobs done. Just like the Blades of legend, many Escher seek out adventure and opportunity beyond their birth hive — either making the perilous journey to another hive city or to one of the countless wasteland settlements.

For some, these expeditions are temporary, and should they survive they will return to their home hive to take their place within the clan hierarchy.

Others enjoy the freedom of living out from under the shadow of the Imperial House, and count the horrors of the wasteland as a small price to pay for the privilege. Officially, the Clan House has outposts in most of the largest outland settlements, such as Bighole, Carrion Town or the Howling Crossroads. These are usually fortified compounds where ash runners from the Wyld buy and train beasts for the hives, or hire on to protect Mercator Gelt caravans. Wandering Escher can find shelter in these places, even if they are outcasts from their clan, the bond of sisterhood stronger than the law of the wasteland.

One of the largest of these Escher outland fortresses is the Sneering Fort, so named because of the shape of the cliff upon which it perches. Located on the edge of the vast Palatine Plateau, where the Great Ash Road winds down into the Dead Sea and the western hives that rise among the bones of ancient, millennia-extinct ocean creatures, it is a major trading post leading to Hive Primus. The women who defend and operate the Sneering Fort do so wrapped in flowing storm-robes to ward off the effects of the ash wind, their belts hung with curved knives fashioned in the manner of the local wasteland tribes and their faces covered with tox-masks.

In the pits beneath the fort, creatures of all kinds are trained and prepared for transportation, while Goliath and Orlock road gangs pay for the chance to test their strength against the best the Escher have gathered. And, like Hive Primus, the Eye of Selene sits in the centre of this web of satellites. Escher gangs fight in the depths of this massive space station much as they war within the underhive — albeit with the added peril that at any moment a dome might be vented into space.

For the most part, trade is so important to Necromunda that Lord Helmawr suffers no interruption to its flows, and comes down hard and without mercy upon any who do so. There are, however, hundreds of abandoned areas on the Eye of Selene, including loading docks, voidlocks and cargo-vaults, where secret deals might yet be made.

Once, the Clan House devoted huge amounts of its resources to understanding and defeating the disease but, as time has gone on, it has become inexorably linked to the Escher themselves — until the curse and the clan are one and the same. There are many now who believe the Flesh Curse was a blessing, and saved the House from extinction by forcing its members to adapt.

This does not stop some Chymist Cults, like the Sororita Chromas, from continuing to try to understand its nature, but the greater clan has long ago adapted to the new order. The Flesh Curse manifests in Escher at birth. Females exhibit no outward evidence of the disease, even though it lies dormant in their flesh ready to be passed on to any children they might have.

Males are not so fortunate. Invariably born withered and weak, even by the dismal standards of much of Necromunda, they would soon die without medical intervention. The short lives of Clan Escher males are spent in the Patriarcium Hospices hooked up to machines that monitor and maintain their lives. Still vital to the longevity of the Escher bloodline, they are harvested for their genetic materials through the esoteric processes of the Chymist Cults.

Then, invariably, not long after reaching maturity, they die. Over the millennia, its people have carved out territories in every corner of the industrial world, and adapted to thrive within its unique environments. Each one boasts its own sub-cultures and histories within the greater culture and history of the clan, though all are recognisable as members of the House of Blades.

Cloistered within the lower reaches of the hive city, far from its usual position close to the spire, are the Escher of the Penitent Blade. Clad in white robes, the icon of the Aquila emblazoned across their cloaks, they preach the Imperial Creed filtered through the lens of the House of Blades. However, when a true heretic or monster crawls in from the wastes the clans unite to oppose them, their faith in the Emperor unifying them in a way unknown in other hive cities.

It has even been reported that some of the Escher have had their faith rewarded by visitations from the sisters of the Adepta Sororitas, whose priory sits high atop Temenos. Sometimes these sisters even recruit Escher to their ranks, though not often, as the Sisters of Battle tend to find the Escher too undisciplined for a life of pious service to the God-Emperor.

True life in the hive ceased long ago, in the wake of the Aranthus plague, leaving only corpses and empty domes. Even before the plague had fully abated, the clans were moving in to scavenge and lay their claim to the dead hive. What they found was not only corpses but horrors beyond count, now running amok without the Imperial authorities to suppress them. Gangs of Wyld girls clad in bone-white warpaint and ghoulish costumes support the maidens. These are the girls of the Dead Wyld, and Hive Mortis is their playground.

Even in the hellish death-scape that is Hive Mortis, there are rules. The spire of Mortis, for instance, remains off limits to the clans, the dead of House Aranthus still sealed up inside. Most of these have long since fallen to ruin or been forgotten, renamed or subverted by the rulers who came after, but a handful still endure.

Hive Ulantia, ancestral home of House Ulanti, is one of these. Ironically, the Ulanti have had no official presence in Hive Ulantia for generations, the hive having become a haven for the Rebel Lord Quinsor Ulanti and his heirs. While Quinsor shares the Ulanti name, the Noble House does not consider his bloodline legitimate, and has long since disassociated itself from him.

Nonetheless, Quinsor controls a vast empire and is the most powerful of all the nobles of Hive Ulantia. While the Lords of Ulanti in Hive Primus do not consider Quinsor a threat to their line, they also do not like to take chances. For hundreds of years, the Escher of Ulantia have worked against the interests of Quinsor, opposing his agents and sabotaging his industries.

For their troubles, the Noble House furnishes the Ulantia Escher with the finest weapons and wargear it can afford, making its gangs some of the best equipped on all of Necromunda. The underhive of Hive Primus has been their personal battleground, and by their actions the fortunes of the Clan House has waxed and waned. If a gang queen is especially successful she might rise to rule the entire House as Matriarch Primus, which has happened a handful of times over the centuries.

Even if she does not attain such a glorious rank, her legend may endure long after she is gone, the greatest gang queens and their gangs kept alive by the oral traditions of the hab-matriarchs and told as night-cycle tales to the next generation of Escher juves. Since their former leader Leeara Nines was killed by a rival Goliath named Skullshank, the Carrion Queens have become one of the most savage gangs around.

They are currently fighting a protracted war against the Ironlords over control of the Ironhard in the Abyss below Dust Falls, with the backing of the Mercator Gelt. Nursing a grudge, Jelena has been more than happy to help Melerva in her private war against the Goliaths, throwing herself and her gang into taking down the Goliaths. They creep everybody out and, as a result, they have been driven out of almost every settlement in the underhive of Hive Primus.

Their leader, Jerra the Stalker, has a habit of making people feel uncomfortable just by being near them, gangers finding their skin crawling just to be in the same drinking hole as her. The Wyrd Sisters paint their faces and hang strange talismanic fetishes from their hair or carve twisting symbols into their armour and weapons. These affectations, along with a number of odd occurrences, have led to many believing the members of the Escher gang are somehow protected by otherworldly powers.

Certainly, the time Unruly Sioux walked past a pair of Enforcer sentry guns without them so much as turning in her direction, or when Cherry Nohm one-shotted an Ash Devil juve without even looking up from her drink, have given weight to these tales. Whether or not the stories are true, however, gangers and hivers both seek Jerra and her Wyrd girls out if they want help with supernatural matters, like getting rid of a troublesome helot cult or hunting down a bloodthirsty hive vampire.

Guilders, gangs and hivers all pay their due to the Bittersweet Blades, and it is well known that if a bounty is fulfilled within their turf then they get a cut. A dozen cycles later Sadie was the only one still breathing, and had set herself up in a badzone holestead she dubbed Synn Town. Keeping the locals in line, she built her empire on shaking down travellers and looting bodies she found out in the badzone.

Soon enough she had attracted a like-minded group of girls like herself — outcasts from other gangs or holesteaders who were looking for some adventure.

Disturbingly, she quickly found other Eschers who took similarly sadistic pleasure in carving up their enemies and then using their remains to strike fear into other gangs. Unlike the Corpse Grinder Cults or blood drinker gangs of hive bottom, the Red Widows, like many Escher, have turned the mutilation of their foes into an art form.

Bones are lovingly fashioned into blades or pistol grips, while flesh is cured into glistening leathers then layered into flak armour. Informally, this element within the clan is known as the Maiden Cult, and is made up of women from all strata of Clan House society. While not all Matriarch Primus have succumbed to this cult of youth, it is undeniable that Hive Queens and matrons are judged for the image they project. Ostensibly, it was argued that Tynas was no longer fit to rule, having grown soft after long years of seclusion within the Council of Crones, though most knew she was targeted by the Maiden Cult because of her extreme age — and, perhaps more damningly, her disregard for rejuve treatments to hide its effects.

The Maiden Cult has strong ties to many of the Chymist Cults, the use of drugs and technology to maintain their youth going hand in hand with the talents of the Clan Chymists. There is even speculation that the creation of the Death-maidens was a result of experimentation made by Clan Chymists belonging to the cult.

Dark rumours surround some of these gangs, as it does some cult members within the council, that their obsession with youth has led to heresy and worse — though the cult itself is adept at dealing with its own.

Ironically, the one place where the Maiden Cult has little sway is the Wyld. Youthful and headstrong, the Wyld Girls reject the control of their older sisters — especially the ones who try far too hard to look like they belong among the Wyld.

How much this budget is will depend upon whether the gang is being founded for Skirmish play or Campaign play. In either case, this budget may not be exceeded.