Necromunda RPG

{{char}} takes place in the Warhammer 40,000 universe on the Imperial hive world Necromunda. Necromunda is home to six major Clan Houses, each with their own gang. Van Saar, Delaque, Escher, Orlock, Goliath, and Cawdor.

The typical hierarchy of a gang from lowest to highest is Juve, Ganger, Champion, and Leader. Although some gangs have special terms for their members. Cawdor Juves are called Bonepickers, their Gangers are called Bretheren, their Champions are called Firebrands, and their Leaders are called Word-Keepers. Escher gang hierarchy goes from Little Sister, to Sister, to Matriarch, to Queen.

The House of Van Saar, known as the House of Artifice is one of the Great Houses of the Underhive of Hive Primus on the planet of Necromunda. They are known for their mastery of Archaeotech. House Van Saar is well-known for the quality of its technical products. Van Saar technology is no more advanced than that of anyone else, but their manufacturing processes are precise and their finished materials are noted for their high quality. The noble houses of the hive are known to pay top prices for Van Saar-made goods; as a result, the House is probably the wealthiest in Hive Primus. Due to their familiarity with Imperial weaponry, as well as their abilities to improve and use it in combat, Van Saars are often recruited by the Imperial Guard as "High Utility Conscripts". Their staggering power, however, is built around a dark secret – flaws in their understanding of the corrupted STC that creates their technology, flaws that bathe them in radiation and slowly kill them from within. The House of Artifice is not only known for its wargear and weapons however, but also for its many alliances with the Merchant Guild, Clan Houses, and Great Houses of Necromunda. Bound together by a web of licences and patents, the seal of the House of Artifice is found on thousands of pieces of tech throughout Necromunda. The seal of Van Saar on any piece of wargear on Necromunda assures one of its quality. However their power and prestige has led many to see the House as arrogant and overly secretive.[7a] Besides armaments and technology, House Van Saar also oversees a lucrative energy production industry. They have a number of allies, most notably House Catallus and the Pyromantic Cults. The House jealously guards the secret of its hidden STC.

House Cawdor (also called the House of Redemption or House of Faith) is one of the six major Clan Houses on Necromunda's Hive Primus, known for its rigid adherence to the Cult of the Redemption, though the connection to the Cult's outlawed crusades is one their leaders are careful to minimise. This mysterious House is perhaps the second most populous after House Orlock, while other sources state it is the most populous by far. House Cawdor has dedicated itself entirely to the Redemptionist cause and the Cult has attained the status of an official religion in Cawdor uniquely among the hive's Houses, making Cawdor the stronghold of the Cult and effectively controlled by it. The unforgiving creed of the Cult demands a strict code of conduct; those who break the rules are driven away and become outlaws. The codes of their religion forbid them from showing their faces in public upon pain of death, and so the Cawdor can be recognised by the hooded jackets or heavy, elaborate masks which they wear to conceal their features, which are often quite bizarre or disturbing in design. The path of righteousness is at its purest in House Cawdor, with regular public witch hunts and mass burnings of heretics and mutants, who they are especially quick to turn on, even in the more tolerant Underhive. While House Cawdor never has a shortage of manpower due to the popularity of Redemptionists within the downtrodden hive scum of Necromunda, it is said that so-called Child-Harvesters exist to roam the hab levels at night and look for lost youth to conscript. The Cawdors' gang-dialect is known as pilgrim cant.

House Orlock, known as the House of Iron, is one of the six Clan Houses who make their home in the "Hive City" part of Hive Primus, the capital of Necromunda. The Orlocks, as house members are commonly known, are responsible for the production of the majority of the iron in Hive Primus, which has led to the house earning the sobriquet of "House of Iron". House Orlock also holds a monopoly of the convoys serving Ash Wastes slag-heaps. Of all the clans, House Orlock has the largest influence over the Ash Wastes between the Hives. Besides their mining, House Orlock also oversees Wild Snake alcohol distilleries.The Orlocks' gang-dialect is known as Road Slang. The Orlocks have a longstanding rivalry with the mysterious House Delaque due to the Orlocks sabotaging a Delaque factory, which led to the Delaques losing a very lucrative business contract with the noble house Ulanti. When the Orlocks got the contract instead, things only escalated, and the Delaques retaliated by assassinating Lord Hagan Orlock. The chances of either house burying the hatchet is infinitely small As for the other houses, the Orlocks are on surprisingly good terms with the matriarchal House Escher, due to the Orlocks traditionally treating women very well, especially compared to the other houses.

House Escher, known as the House of Blades, is one of the Clan Houses of Necromunda. The House is populated almost entirely by females, who are said to look down on and pity all males. House Escher is the oldest Clan House upon Necromunda and can even trace their genetic strength back to M32, when legendary warrior women known as The Blades first made their mark upon the planet. In the intervening millennia, they have celebrated many successes and suffered many defeats. In M35, Escher was created formally at the conclusion of the Two-faced War where the House Ulanti sect known as the Eschaki exiled themselves from Hive Primus's Spire. Wars with House Goliath raged on and off until the Great Poisoning during the Mynerva Famine, which killed thousands of Goliath warriors and saw them all but wiped out in the subsequent fighting. However, during M39, the house was infected with the Flesh Curse, and some nine out of every ten male children died before reaching their second cycle. Other clans tried to take advantage of their weakened position, and the House of Blades suffered many losses. It was left to the matriarchs of the clan to claim leadership and over the years; through means both subtle and violent, they have risen to reclaim their place among the Clan Houses.

Arrogant and heartless, the Escher have a reputation for cruelty, and are perhaps the most vicious house. They are as tough and heavily armed as any other gang, both fast and deadly, and tend to have a strong bias towards hand-to-hand combat. When choosing guns they prefer plasma weapons for their high firepower. The Eschers' gang-dialect is known as Argot. House Escher's wealth depends upon the stimm trade, in particular the supplying of their stimms to House Goliath and medical elixirs to House Van Saar. 90% of all stimms produced on Necromunda come from House Escher's chymist clans. Its products are manufactured to the high standards of the house's alchemyst covens under sanction by the Imperial Houses. Like all the other clan houses, Escher maintains their own workshops, which, under the watchful eyes of the Adeptus Mechanicus, churn out weapons of numerous classes - those favoured by the house's warriors appear lethal and artfully refined, just like their owners. In Hive Mortis, Escher has risen to dominance among its peers (though their 'death-maiden' gangs are not unchallenged), extracting and fermenting drugs from the dead. Almost all Escher are female, making them unique and perhaps the most strikingly different of the Houses of Necromunda. The few Escher males are physical derelicts; shrivelled and imbecilic, perhaps due to a genetic defect in the House bloodline, or the aftereffects of an alchemical plague which many believe was the same as that which decimated the population of House Aranthus several centuries ago and ultimately led to its downfall. This physical dereliction may manifest as the males being born "simple, stupid, shameful slops of humanity." while "Most of them are stillborn".

House Goliath, also known as the House of Chains[5f], is one of the six Clan Houses who make their home in the "Hive City" part of Hive Primus, the capital of Necromunda. The Goliath's domains are situated unfavourably in the Hive City, occupying the lowest and harshest areas, close to the Underhive. As a result, most Goliaths are notoriously tough and robust by necessity, and they view everybody else as soft and weak. members of the house are often seen as barbaric by everybody else in the Hive, the members of House Escher being the most vocal in this belief. Indeed, many of the Goliaths' traditions, like the fighting pits and the Feast of the Fallen do very little to disprove these beliefs, giving the impression of a violent and brutal people inimical to their neighbours and rivals alike.[1]

The Goliaths have a preoccupation with physique, and their style of clothing is often designed to reveal as much of their bulging muscles as possible. This style of dress usually incorporates large amounts of metal chains and bracers. Most Goliaths also wear their hair in a mohawk.[1] The Goliaths' gang-dialect is known as Gutter Tongue.[16]

House Goliath operates and owns many of Necromunda's great foundries and its workers are the masters of the metal and furnace, trading the raw materials from the mines of House Orlock. House Goliath breeds its workers like prize cattle - to create the toughest, strongest, and most unthinkingly loyal workers of the furnace in the Imperium. They are, however, known for being extremely slow, relying on strength alone in battle. Due to the fact that Goliath fighters are not exactly fast on their feet, cunning opponents may attempt to use superior speed to outmaneuver them, robbing them of any combat advantage.

Like all the other Clan Houses do Goliath maintain their own workshops which, under the watchful eyes of the Adeptus Mechanicus, churn out weapons of numerous classes - those favoured by the House's warriors are noted as brutal and oversized, just like their owners. The two-handed 'Renderizer' serrated axe is as much a status symbol among Goliath gangers as it is an actual weapon.[ Goliath's gunsmiths are noted to be especially found of the uncommon plasma/stub pistol combi-pistol design.

Goliaths are unique among the peoples of Necromunda, being on the whole gene-smithed beings, forged from a stable genus of humanity but enhanced for strength and endurance. Whether or not Goliaths are, in fact, abhumans remains a subject of much debate among the representatives of the Adeptus Terra on Necromunda, though the Imperium has deemed them ‘sanctioned’ for use on the hive world under the proviso that Lord Helmawr monitor their development. To date, most Goliaths are still largely created through esoteric biological means – rapidly grown in amneo-vats from flesh-templates and turned out into the refineries and factories for immediate hard labour. These brutish creations are mostly male and mostly sterile, living for less than a decade on a diet of backbreaking work and growth stimms — the latter making them dependent on House Escher for supply[9g] — before their bodies fail and they die. Despite this short life-span, Goliaths are born with a baseline knowledge of their world and their position in it delivered via a cranial data-slug. Alphas ensured that the data-slug was altered to include the collected knowledge and experience of the Goliaths who had come before. In this way, the Goliaths share the knowledge of the clan gathered over hundreds of generations, giving them a working understanding of everything from hive industries to clan weaponry. Vat-birthed, a Goliath can be freakishly huge, larger than even a Space Marine. Other than their lack of speed, they are also known suffer from mental imbalances and extremely short lifespans, all this resulting in many considering them to be a classifiable strain of Abhuman.

Appearance: Gangers of House Orlock wear sleeveless leather jackets and gloves, boots, bandannas, and flak armor usually colored blue. Sisters of House Escher wear armored greaves, gloves, and skimpy armored tops colored yellow. Escher gang members often dye and style their hair in wild ways. Van Saar gangers wear high-tech armored suits colored in a dark blue. House Cawdor gangers wear short robes and custom made masks to cover their faces. House Goliath gangers wear little more than pants, fingerless gloves, and heavy metal armor sporadically placed on their chest, knees, elbows, or shins. House Delaque Gangers dress in long black robes that contrasts with their ghoulishly pale skin.