First progress report for City26 challenge - Hive Rejoicing Torch (RT-87) - known in the local vernacular as Rough Times or Regular Torment.

I worked up some schematics as a 'where things are' guide.

Within this we have approx
2 x Spire wards (0.002% population) ~ 45 thousand inhabitants each.
5 x Upper wards (1.5% population) ~ 14 million inhabitants each.
12 x Upper Mid wards (9.8% population) ~ 37 million inhabitants each.
20 x Lower Mid wards (65.3% population) ~ 155 million inhabitants each.
13 x Lower wards (23.5% population) ~ 90 million inhabitants each.

I reworked the size/volume of Hive Primus from Necromunda to get a sense of what was above/below ground, what had surface access and what did not.
Our first ward is T27 - Carnosaur Refit Works - known locally as Dinochrome. Population ~ 155m.

Features
* Carnosaur capture and throne-control installation for knight-aspirant training
* Proving grounds - multi terrain battle simulations
* Antagonist holding yards - dangerous xenos, battle robots, penal companies
* Training arenas for duels and small-team training
* Candidate schools for knight-aspirants

All the above are supported by a large population of technicians, crafts-masters, trainers, ogryn dinosaur wranglers, beastman labourers, wardens, observers and all their habitation and sustainment requirements and secondary logistical support - transit, first-response medicae, authorised leisure and entertainments, shrines and worship facilitation.

Trappings & Trade

Imports of live great beasts for refit from the southern hemisphere and challengers for the arena and proving grounds - anything dangerous and able to put up a fight can work

Specific personnel found here are the knight-aspirants; those born to the knight-houses coming down from the upper hive or, rarely, offworld, those who have earned a place in the tests through outstanding performance in the down-hive cold-one cavalry or jetbike squadrons or as a fighter pilot. Occasionally a candidate swept up in testing for other Adepta is brought in.

Exports are a small handful of qualified knight-pilots so exceptional they warrant offworld transportation to one of the mother Knight-houses plus a large secondary output of pilots for fighters, speeders or sentinels plus candidates for Adeptus Titanicus, they Navy and similar.

Controlling Faction

Sacristan techno-magi of the Knight House Conneinster. They closely guard the secrets of the throne-like technologies which are used to create a control interface for a carnotaur that resembles that of a Knight war-machine. Their overwhelming priority is to prove the quality of the Knight-candidates of this world such that it be granted the right to become a full Knight-house. They oversee the brutal trials that grind carnotaurs, candidates and adversary forces into bloody scraps so that the few truly excellent candidates can be sent forth to glorify their name.

Rival Faction

Adeptus Mechanicus, arrived after the world was rediscovered, are split amongst themselves between three factions - a Mechanicus Biologis group that sees vindication and exhaltation of a cyborgisation approach, an orthodox Adeptus Mechanicus group that sees the Sacristans approach as near-heresy and loudly decries their every deviation from the sacred ways of the Omnissiah and a radical Adeptus Mechanicus group that believes that the Sacristans may have access to some unknown scraps of ancient STC technologies and wishes to learn from them. All three factions think the others utter fools and their internal fighting has let the Sacristans keep control so far.

Encounters
1. Wild carnotaur broken free causing mass chaos - noone wants to damage it during recapture.
2. Mechanicus-affiliated gangers intercepting a cargo of arena-remnants seeking tech to steal.
3. Riot by arena-fodder being suppressed by a cold-one mounted Arbites squadron.
4. Gang fight between rival mechanicum-faction-affiliates.
5. Offworld candidates agitating for consideration at the aspirant colleges - "Don't you know who I am?"
6. Attempted assassination of a champion arena knight.
7. Patrol on cold-ones, very snappish and by-the-book. Demand authorisations.
8. Ogryn carnotaur-wrangler, angry since 'his' carnotaur does not recognise him since refit for the arena.
9. Rowdy arena crowd - demand opinions from passers-by.
10. Rival arena-knight supporters having a grudge brawl.
11. Misfiring mindlink has a rogue beast and pilot on the loose.
12. New arena-champion flush with victory and celebrating - generous to those who respectfully join, furious if snubbed

NPCs
1. Master Sacristan (head of refit) - dour, focussed, ancient. Lives are grit to the long plan.
2. Arena-Knight - expert, glorious, above your concerns.
3. Carnotaur hunter ogryn - grizzled, cunning, wants back out in the jungles to do what he knows
4. Candidate assessor - hideously scarred patched with augmetics, sharp wit & mind, no time for fools.
5. Craftsmaster (reclamations) - hunched, smells of offal and oils, cheerful.
6. Arena superfan - bio-modded, intense, knowledgable, hair-trigger. Leads gang of fans.
7. Mechanicus Biologis - lumpy beneath cloaks, ocular tentacles, asks a lot of questions.

Plot Hooks
1. Black market titan-core was fitted to a carnotaur which has now escaped. Find it, quickly, quietly and retrieve it unharmed.
2. That arena-knight should lose their next bout. Lot of creds on it.
3. A desperate candidate wants intel on the upcoming challenges.
4. A buyer seeks a throne-like control - your choice whether attached to a carnotaur or from the retif works or arena-salvage.
5. Someone has been drugging arena fodder and ruining fight data for the assessors. Backtrack the source, stop them.
6. Expedite escort of the best carnotaur vet to the arena to save a wounded champion beast.

Three more wards worked up this month were:
T17 - Central medicae where man, beast and beastman are patched together to longer serve the Emperor
T39 - Railheads where ships are hauled in from the now distant coast
T41 - Bone reclamation and the meat honey apiaries

For the new year I will be taking on City '26, running with a Warhammer 40k hivecity - perhaps a precursor to running an Imperium Maledictum campaign in 2027, or some oneshots between this and then.

My initial concept was "a hiveworld from 40k as seen in the original Rogue Trader '87" and the more I thought, the more wrinkles popped up that provided more fodder. Elements I wanted to tie in were the Knight Worlds with their dinosaur herding, more abhumans, and a general stronger alignment to the aesthetic in Rogue Trader '87.

Launch concept, that may get tweaked, is an abhuman-heavy hiveworld serving as a support to a small domain of Knight Worlds. They have a weird slate of technology due to the Knight World Sacristans having held onto an odd set of things. The place is metal poor but promethium rich. They continue to process the dwindling herds of megasaurs from the non-poluted hemisphere and spend a lot of effort on synthetics, ceramics and other work-arounds to make up for the metal shortage.

The large abhuman population has made this place a focus of Adeptus Ministorum attention with multiple factions with a range of views on whether or not abhumans can truly be brought to the light of the Emperor and whether it is worth the effort. Adeptus Mechanicus is present both prying into the odds and ends of Sacristan preserved technologies and using the place as a backwater test-bed for unorthodox ideas. Adeptus Munitorium bureaus continuously fight over whether it is acceptable for the tithe to be met by well-trained but ill-equiped abhuman regiments.

This is a better place than many for abhumans, though the relentless demands of the Imperial Tithe are getting no lighter and life is no garden of flowers. The somewhat odd status of being ruled over by a Knight House brings a range of unusual pressures and suspicions along with a scattered handful of small mercies.

Approach

We got this handy graphical guide from Pete of Garblag Games which gives the 'rhythm' of the weekly tasks of this challenge.

Infographic of City26 Challenge by Peter Lattimore

I rummaged through various hivecity posts about the web and found some good breakdowns of life in a Hive which gives me a rough breakdown of
2 x Spire wards (0.002% population)
5 x Upper wards (1.5% population)
12 x Upper Mid wards (9.8% population)
20 x Lower Mid wards (65.3% population)
13 x Lower wards (23.5% population)

Some unknown netizen did trojan work estimating the size/volume of Hive Primus from Necromunda - I will be using a smaller version of that (taking the ground layer at 5-volumes down, not seven). Assuming we are ~ 46% the size of Necromunda with equivalent population density, we have 4.7 billion Imperial citizens packed in here, ~90 millon per ward. Each ward, the population of Germany more or less.

From #hexcrawl25 I found one of the handiest things to have was a template for the repeated bits so I bashed together this weekly worksheet. I may tweak this as we go but for now, it will do to start.

Inspirations

Rogue Trader '87 and 'Imperial Army' contemporary illustrations with fighting abhumans.

Chapter Serf from Zedeck Siew and that study on what esoteric crafts support the elite fighting forces of the Imperium.

Imperial Knights as per White Dwarf #126.

Genestealers cultists for the industrial aesthetic - we will tap the new generation of models like the goliath truck because it gives an glimpse into the functioning Imperium.

Necromunda for the general deep-hive vibe - particularly the mercenaries and hangers-on - for the rot that festers in the abandoned bits of hivecities.

Killteam for the broader range of Imperial weirdness.

Rogue Trader (Owlcat Games) for that sense of the sheer scale of nonsense, politics and weirdness that is constantly churning even when things are not in eminent peril.