The Hive, also known as Hivers, are a Race of stick-like humanoids who are meant to collaborate under a collective mind, ruled by a Hive Queen and her princes. Hive characters are separated into many subspecies with their own unique appearance. The majority of the Hivers care for little else other than the Hive's happiness and survival and are willing to give their lives for the Hive as a whole.
The longer a Hiver is separated from their Hive, the more their bond with it will weaken, giving way to an increased sense of will and a lack of purpose, although some of them will instead die. Once the bond breaks completely, Hiver characters cannot return and are considered "Hiveless" or "Lost Ones", as they are no longer connected to their Queen's pheromones. The Hiveless have complete free will and individuality, although they will feel purposeless and depressed, now that they have independence. Princes that are still connected to their Hive will become distressed at the presence of a Hiveless in their vicinity, and if possible, alert any nearby Hive Drone if the Lost One refuses to leave.
There are two hive minds: Western Hive and Southern Hive. Both of these hives are led by a Hive Queen.
Western Hive[]
The Western Hive is the friendliest Hive Faction. Western Hive can be found in many zones of Kenshi, often in Trade Caravans. This faction is home to hivers who are of these races:
Southern Hive[]
The Southern Hive is a violent faction. They can originally only be found in the southeastern quarter of Kenshi, but depending on World States created by the player, they can invade new areas. This faction is home to hivers who are of these races:
Fogmen[]
When hivers are separated from their hive, they can become corrupted and turned into Fogmen. Fogmen are insane, cannibalistic, and numerous. Players should be careful when Fogmen are nearby. This faction is home to hivers who are of these races:
Play Style[]
Hivers can be bandaged using First Aid Kits through the Field Medic skill like Humans. They can use Beds and Camp Beds to quickly recover their organic health. Hivers typically have lower limb health than characters of other races, meaning that loss of limbs is highly likely. On top of that, when you lose a limb, between 6 to 30 blood (The amount is random and not influenced by stats) is lost instantly along with a large amount of bleeding. It is important to take care as losing multiple limbs could result in a bloodloss KO with further bleeding leading to death if you do not have a replacement on hand or bandage fast enough. Lost limbs will need to be replaced with Robot Limbs, which are healed with Skeleton Repair Kits like Skeleton characters.
All playable Hive characters gain experience at a higher rate for Toughness. The subraces have experience multipliers for other stats as well, meaning that some combat styles will train faster than others.
Players should ensure their Hiver characters have adequate armour protection, primarily because of their low health bars compared to other races. Soldier Drones cannot wear any equipment in the "HEAD" slot, and the other subraces have specific limitations on that slot as well. All Hive subraces are restricted regarding the "SHIRT" slot since they are unable to wear regular shirts. Hiver shirts are inferior to normal ones as they lack arm protection. Hive characters are also unable to wear equipment in the "BOOTS" slot since they have no feet; this has resulted in Hive Prisoner Shackles existing to be equipped in the "ARMOR" slot.
All playable Hivers are capable of consuming Raw Meat and all but Hive Princes can eat Foul Raw Meat. This means that they can easily find food as long as there is fauna nearby. Hivers are immune to Acid, meaning they do not need to worry about Acid Ground, acidic bodies of water, and Acid Rain. They are still harmed or hindered by other Weather Effects, and players should be aware that there is no way to protect Soldier Drones from Gas or burning entirely.
Hive merchants in Hive Villages dislike Hiveless characters and will refuse to sell them goods. Players should use a character of another race to trade with these merchants. This does not apply for Hive Caravans, which wander many regions, as they might even follow and harass Hiver player characters in order to trade.
Due to religious reasons, The Holy Nation views Hivers as an impure race. Holy Nation military will harass and attack hivers that approach their cities alone. Any captured hivers will be sent to Holy Mines or the infamous Rebirth until their death.
Princes gain experience at a higher rate for Lockpicking, Stealth, and Thievery. This fact likely contributed to the racist attitudes which characters from the United Cities have towards hivers, evidenced by the United Weekly Series.
Hivers all have a 60 chance to be hit in their stomach, and 140 for their chest which results in most KOs coming from chest injuries.
Lore[]
The sixth volume in The Guiding Light Series refers to Hivers. This book shows how hivers are viewed by Okranites, who refer to them as "insect fiends."
The first and fifth volume in United Weekly Series refers to Hivers. The first one is an empire perspective on an increase of Hiver citizens in the United Cities. The fifth volume is a story of empire traders visiting Hive Villages.
Discrimination against Hivers is commonplace in Kenshi, as a result of prejudices towards the Hivers' organization, status, tendencies and/or race, and the reasoning, justification, and policies to deal with them differs from races to races, groups to groups and factions to factions:
The Holy Nation considers Hivers to be "impure" and unholy for both not being of a human race and for their obedience and subservience to The Queen (as opposed to Okran). In order to purge their influence and enforce the holy doctrine, Hivers found in holy lands are systematically imprisoned, enslaved, and sent to Rebirth for further judgement. Needless to say, they do not trade with them either.
Shek Kingdom detests Hivers for their feeble physical build and lack of martial prowess, and often times harass them for this. For this reason, some haughty Shek warriors will refuse to be recruited by a Hiver, and it is likely as a result of this that no Hivers are found as citizens in their country, as Sheks there in general probably do not sell housing to them. Despite their inhospitality towards Hivers, the Hiver Trade Caravans are allowed to come inside their cities, although whether it's for trade or to pay tribute is ambiguous.
The United Cities in general, but especially the Nobles, loath Hiver immigrants for being impoverished, low-class, and ostensibly a contributor to increasing crime-rates inside UC. Although they do welcome them on one condition as Hiver immigrants can be easily exploited to be made as decent slaves and servants, to the point that a Worker Drone is around 4x more prevalent than a Human to be an Empire Peasant. However, a radically xenophobic group who can be found in The Great Desert called the United Heroes League are unhappy even with them as slaves, seeing them as both repulsive and competitors in the workforce, and often target them for harassment and violence. Please note that the United Heroes League is a bandit faction and not actually affiliated with the United Cities. If attacked the guards will assist you in defeating the League.
Traders Guild and Western Hive have a mutual competition in the trade market, and dislike each other as a result, comments from the WH to not buy food from TG can be heard, and TG seemingly wastes no time in enslaving the Distant Hive Villages once their biggest rival is out of the picture.
Lastly, Western Hive itself hates individualist Hivers, seeing them as traitors to the queen and defective. They absolutely refuse to have any deals with the "Hiveless".
Regardless of which group they belong to, a commonly held belief between the denizens of Kenshi and all (non-Hive) factions above is that the Hivers have a tendency to be dirty, greedy, stealing and scamming. Given that Hiver Trade Caravans have an event where they make a ridiculously high mark-up of Lantern of Radiance (and claiming it's a discount), and the fact that the source for their 'cargo' are suspicious at best, the better experience gain in the stats with regards to Thievery (which suggests they are good at doing and have a tendency of doing these stuff) alongside the fact that there is an entire shady gambling group made up solely of Hivers in Swamp, these beliefs are at least partially true.
Trivia[]
- Hivers are born from the Queen's dispenser unit.
- Only Western Soldier and Worker drones can eat Human Teeth.
- Hivers apparently love fish. Deadcat fish sellers will especially try to get the attention of Hivers.
- Normally, hivers do not have a concept of individual names, but the Hiveless do, and usually give themselves a name, like Beep and Eyegore.
- A contradictory twitter post says, "Hivers choose their names based on the first thing they see."[1]
- Hivers have no anatomical sex and in character creation have their gender setting locked to " - " but are generally referred to as male by members of other races. This has no mechanical effect in practice, as the only faction that behaves differently based on characters' gender is also automatically hostile to Hivers. Beep has dialogue suggesting that he at least does not consider himself female, but also that he has minimal understanding of what "female" is.
- Dialogue in game suggests that the huts in the hive villages are at least partially made of Hiver vomit.
- Dialogue from Hivers of Western Hive when being healed implicate that when a Hiver is missing a limb or severely injured the community will just dispose of the Hiver into the crematory.
- Hivers seem to enjoy acid rain.
- Hivers screams seem to almost always include "G", such as "GAHH!" or "Greee!"
- Southern Hive characters are not properly implemented for play and are frequently treated as being human.
- Hivers in general, though especially the Worker Drones, act exceptionally childish compared to other races.
- "No-Hive" is a term given by non-defected Hivers that can be applied to every race, including the defected Hivers themselves, but "Hiveless" refers more commonly to the Hivers that have defected from the Hive.
- Beep is a Hiver!
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