Hive world Conatum Mare ideas

Hive world  Conatum mare ideas
orriginal post:
Recently made a homebrew planet I'm sending my Dark Heresy party to.
The most notable feature is that is has a giant, immensely deep ocean adjacent to a desert.

The reason? it used to be one huge (but significantly less deep) ocean; but one half had rare psychically reactive minerals that could be used as armor and force weapons, and so the Imperium built a dam that held back the ocean and created the desert for easier accessibility to the mineral. A city has since formed on the giant dam as the planetary capital.

The party is being sent there because there's a cult of destruction threatening the city-dam. the plot twist is that the psycho-reactive minerals are the result of a craftworld that crashed into the ocean thousands of year past; the miners found it and were turned by the psychic power of the latent Avatar of Khaine, whose trying to use the ocean on the other side of the dam to rebury the craftworld until it's found by the Eldar.

Ideas on the lay out and make up of the dam hive
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>sounds pretty nifty man! I'd be interested in the continued maitnence of the City dam, seeing as commonly Hives are fluffed to be rotting shitholes at the bottom with the shinny shit stacked on top of ruins.-
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>You'd most likely end up with something like that image, with the top spires being the parts above water and the rest being beneath the water level.
Probably some major cultural differences between water and air sides as well, after all no one wants heavy ordnance going off when your a few meters of concrete away from hundreds of tons of water
Plus the underhive would be very different, probably more of a sidehive as the base would be too heavily patrolled to check for potential damage for crime to grow-
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>Fair points. Perhaps the hive down below is also built like a spaceship or submersible. Sections separated by bulkheads and pressurized doors that slam shut automatically in case of a compromise somewhere in the line. compartmentalization and what not.
I'd like to think that there is a portion of the dam that was lost in the past, whole hab blocks and sections now filled with water, frantic reinforcements that leave five new meters of polycrete. so in the end, the Hive has been creeping slowly into the desert, as it is pushed back and the dam is constantly expanded. the inner coast of the hive could be the 'under' hive, with warrens and ruins sitting atop derelict and abandoned layers left behind, rotting away so every so often a whole ancient district slips into the sea. Dive teams of treasurer hunters could explore the submarine archaeology. this would lead to a very porous City, with the actual line of the damn being a patchwork of sealed off sectors and rapidly expanded pockets where water got in and could not be forced out.
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>So one part wild west frontier town on top of one part fallen Rapture? I like that idea a lot actually-

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THat's what I'm thinking. here are so more ideas I was thinking about:

-they may have ports and maintained structures out near where the dam used to be, built atop the remaining walls and covered with Hivers tasked with keeping the underwater supports working and the flow of materials going.

-Perhaps their main space port is floating off the 'coast' using semi-submerged mass drivers to launch cargo containers of the minerals into orbit on the cheap. Mass drivers that could theoreticly be taken over by cultists/muties and aimed at the DamHive by lowering the angle till the cargo haulers only orbit the planet once before smacking down hard.

The desert-ward districts could be nicer and newer, as they are always growing outwards. Planned out sectors with spaces in between that can be flooded with polycreet in under two days time, Massive reinforced pillars supporting levels of habs, shops and factories.

- Perhaps the most important manufactoriums are built on rails, moved into desgnated areas of the 'new zones' as needed.

-mining is focused primarily on the desert and seafloor directly at the edges of the Hive, dedicated to depleting areas marked out as 'foundation zones' by paranoid and always-preparing Magos.

-rivers of pollution leak into the desert underneath the new zones, forcing a constant 'clean up' for mining companies more of a dredging operation of mutant wetlands with the material dug up getting flown up and over te hive and plopped right into the sea.
- Perhaps they have to deal with amphibious mutants in the sumps and what not.
-was the sea partially drained and this Dam serving to cut off a inland sea? One made by the crashed craft-world perhaps? Imagine an dam across the straight of Gibraltar pic related were was the majority of the water sent? archanotech off world transportation? dedicated weather changing instillation

-are there settlements dotting the coastal Shelf's and cliffs around the drained sea?

-are there complications caused by the density of psychic shit closer to the center of the sea? difficulties that kept the mining from spreading across the whole desert volg-hive style?
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second thread.
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he oceans and what not. the dam was made to hold back the plant's water bodies, assisted by near by mountains about the inland sea and a serious case of "I don't give a fuck" about the loss of land elsewhere on the planet on the part of the Magos in charge. Thoes minerals yo. Shit's useful in all sorts for things from the Black Fleets, to Librarian's cowls and Psyker's helmets . the only reason this place is not a forge world dedicated to mining the shit is because of some sly workings of the administratium and a rerouted colony fleet or two before the magos' were alerted to the planet's explicit existence.
The inland sea is actually a crater made by a crashed craft world, who's remnants remain partially intact deep below the seafloor. mining efforts are reduced by the minor warp-fuckery caused by the eldar's spirits or what ever tryign to defend their home and get signals out to fellow eldar.

Pic related, My map of what the HiveDam would look like in the first century. Nicley contained habblocks, manufactoriums and all that other stuff, with a few tightly controlled rivers that run through hydro electric plants and are used to get water to mining outposts deeper in the new desert.
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So those psycho-reactive materials they filter out are bits of pulverized wraithbone?
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[spoilers]hey! shhh! spoilers are there for a reason!to preserve the plot hooks and what not.[/spoilers] but more seriously, Yes. Or perhaps minerals and silicates infused with he psychic scream of those eldar that died with the ship as it was flash-melted into the crust of the planet or something... Imperial geologists know that the inland sea was caused by some titanic impact, but their auspex could not filter out the warp fuckery enough to get proper scans. the City dam is not the only population center on the planet, and the drained inland sea is ringed by mining operations along the crater walls. Plenty of good shit got forced into faults and what not by the impact.

Pic related to what happens to Conatum Mare when the dam weakens in places due to attacks or structural problems. the Magos try to repair as they can, but fall back on a tactic of making new walls about the problem zone and using planned detonations to keep the hive runing well and avoid the insane cost of trying to clear out a section of hive for renovations. grey squares are ramshackle additions, as th epopulation has grown beyond the Dam city's ability to contain comfortably. when the new area is ready and the water flows in, many of the old towers may still be standing, and the surface is covered by somthign akin to a floating Volg hive.
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As the city aged and the population grew and constant warfare increased the demand for this curious alloy they kept digging up, things began to decay, to fall apart or blow apart. death cults sprang up and made attempts to 'break the wall, and let loose the embracing waves" these cultists and heretics were never orginized or very well thought out, so the damage was mitigated and combated on a case by case bases, resulting in an ever growing hive. THe mine spire, with it's many segmentum bureaucracies, Planetary politics and self-inflated nobles Stretched and stretched, following the walls to maintain it's 'corner stone' position. It is built upon the backs of the four 'sectors' of the new Mare, shimmering and bold with foundations locked to the sea floor.

The walls that were not torn down on purpous were sealed at the ends and remain as they always were, perhaps with a little less rooms with views, but functional. 'The Fortifications' as they are now known. Connections to all other sections of this waterlogged Archology exist haphazardly and often unguarded in the midsections and right below the surface.

The mighty towers and spires, small hives into themselves that gathered at the feet of the Dam City were submerged, and often pressurized, creating island columns connected by tubes and highways in a steel web. Most of Conatum Mare's internal trade and politics take place with in these half submerged palaces. "The Reef"

On the polluted waves, floats a sprawl of ramshackle towns and communities, dedicated to fishing, recycling and water purification. Merchants, muties, scum and filth crowd the corpses of the towers that did not make it. THe rotted pillars providing the back bone to "Sam's Flow"

deep below the seas lies the final section of the now titanic and ancient Conatum Mare, Mining and manufacturing facilities deemed to important to leave to the depths. they are now a writhing glass and concrete carpet, the simmering, bubbling "Sump Cauldron"
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