WE ARE HERE NOW
it was a sunny day when we started
Collection of work and expressions from people who are at different stages of their creative journey.
Collection of work and expressions from people who are at different stages of their creative journey.
DOC 024—W11-1/01
contexto: 025-W30-24 warmer sunny day,still having flu
The Ascendancy of the Hive‑Syndicates after the Pacification of Hive Cineris
End of the Rebellion
On 17 Solstice and 20 Solstice 986.M41, Wortex torpedoes fell for the first, and so far, only time in the long wars of Nexum Prime. The targets were the Hive Cineris districts officially logged as Sector I‑6 and Sector I‑9, known locally as Ashfall and Dusklight. Within an instant, the lives of roughly 4.3 hundred million souls, most of them civilians, were erased. After four brutal years of internal rebellion, the hive lay defeated.
On 2 Janus 987.M41, the battleship Aquila Resoluta glided into low orbit above Hive Cineris, banners of the Aquila streaming beside the heraldry of the Administratum. Aboard its adamantine deck, at 0900 local vox time, Princeps‑Regent Torian Silvan and General Gaius Istran signed the Compliance Scroll, making the Hive's surrender official. A handful of additional signatures, a 6 hour ceremony, and the most destructive conflict in the planet’s chronicles was over.
Six days later Lord‑Militant Tiberius Marcion entered the Imperial chancery in Hive Cineris. The two‑headed eagle rose on every spire, and the 16th Army Group received orders to occupy and administer a world in ruins. Only the ancient shrine‑sector of Seraphine Sanctum, cultural heart of Nexum, stood largely unscathed.
The capital’s fate was the opposite. Of its 1.65 million hab‑blocks, one million were ash, most lost in the incendiary sweeps of 986.M41. Grim as those numbers sounded, Marcion’s surveyors reported that the Hive retained more factorum capacity than it had ever devoted to a civilian economy. It was ready to rise from its own rubble.
The Imperium set about rebuilding, and in so doing, unwittingly revived Cineris’s criminal brotherhoods, soon dubbed the Ashen syndicates. During the war years these gangs had starved beside everyone else, but the post‑war order would see them grow larger and richer than ever by recruiting into their ranks the disbanded and desperate P.D.F. soldiers.
Birth of Grey Markets
To remake a defeated world the occupiers faced a litany of tasks: disarm the regional Planetary Defence Force; melt down their war‑gear; purge war criminals before newly convened Tribunal benches; dissolve forbidden fraternities; free political detainees; and rewrite the Hive Cineris civic charter.
Yet above every edict towered one harsh fact: the people were starving. Rations existed, but they were thin by necessity; even the other hives felt hunger after decade‑long sector wars. Relief may calm a heart, but it does not fill a stomach. When allotments failed, a darker economy answered.
Stalls sprang up in alleys, glow‑lamps powered by stolen cells. Citizens dubbed these trade‑mazes the Grey Markets. Chief commodity: protein‑grain, scarce and costly. Average factory pay in 987.M41 was around 50 chits, scarcely enough to buy a single recyc‑orange.
The first operators were not native Nexians. They were the Triarcan Drifters, former indentured workers shipped from three neighbouring hives to replace soldiers sent to the front. Treated little better than serfs, 3.6 million Drifters had toiled through the war; 2 million were repatriated afterward, the rest abandoned to fend for themselves. Given Imperial distrust of local traders, Drifters cornered early Grey Market trade, and resentment festered.
Cineris’s constabulary could not intervene. Too many officers had served the rebel cause, so the occupiers Arbites purged entire precincts. With no badge in sight and Triarcan knives carving deeper into neighbourhoods, angry residents turned to forgotten guardians. The syndicates returned.
Syndicates versus Drifters
Late in 996.M41 a severe clash erupted in Sector IV‑7, Imperially logged Koban Docks. Fifteen hundred Drifters seized the central hab precinct, taking hostages. With Arbites scarce, local Magistrate Septima Vale begged for the help of Taedor Vex, talon‑chief of the Gallowgate Enforcers. Vex’s fighters gathered salvaged las‑rifles, stormed the precinct and drove the invaders into the sludge canals.
The feat made them folk heroes and placed the Magistrate in lifelong debt. After lean war‑years, the syndicate star began to rise.
Tales travelled fast. Old citizens still speak of the Skirmish of Ragpickers Market. In central Sector VII‑4 (local name Low‑Hearth), syndicate gangers hauled a heavy stubber off a wrecked gunship, mounted it atop an abandoned scholam and opened fire on Triarcan raiders below, scattering them in minutes. The story’s accuracy is doubtful, but it convinced thousands of hungry citizens that the syndicates were their saviours.
Enforcer Malcor and the Kehstern Files
The Imperial occupation authorities knew about the brewing trouble but understanding it was another matter. One exception appeared in mid‑1001.M41: Arbites Investigator Juris Malcor. He detained Oriana Kehstern, widow of local clan founder Gideon Kehstern, and coaxed her history.
- The Kehstern Clan was born in 987.M41 when Grey Markets exploded.
- Rogue pre‑war constables helped them charge stall‑holders for “clean” lumen feed, refuse pickup and printed licences.
- Trade Depot 4 aka. Ashen Crown Market was theirs, until Drifters challenged them.
- Gideon fell to a bullet from his own quartermaster.
Malcor estimated 181 syndicate bosses commanding 18,400 sworn blades in Ashfall (Sector I‑6) alone. His monthly report never reached Lord‑Militant Marcion.
Rich and Famous
Arden “Ironhand” Andolos
While citizens queued for ration bars, Arden Andolos made millions amid the wreckage. Owner of Andolos Forgeworks, he had shifted manufactoria and fortified spires during the war, directing thousands of Drifter labourers. When the Imperium arrived, he was already under contract: his teams refurbished Voidward Launch‑Field so Marcion could land in ceremonial splendour.
Forgeworks was half construction cartel, half crime family. Today many syndicates mirror the Andolos model. He also owned velvet clubs in Sector II‑3 (High‑Marble) where Imperialoccupation officers unwound. Politicians sought favours there; so did Administratum scribes. Andolos pleased Imperial ears by vowing eternal war on sedition.
Yet few saw his face. No pict remains.
Anthea Mordane
By contrast, Anthea Mordane, leader of the Nightspire Combine syndicate loved crowds. In an 1011.M41 data‑sheet, remembrancer‑servo Kerran 47 dubbed her “Cineris’ own Lady Credo.” Anthea’s ascent began the moment Gideon Kehstern died. She captured Ashen Crown Market, then Sector XII‑1 (Nightspire) where gambling halls thrived.
With two key districts, Anthea joined the Mercantile Council and in 1015.M41 ran for Hive Council. She lost to a Coilbreakers Union candidate but drew 14,000 votes, a warning shot that syndicates were again political players.
Adding Fuel to the Fire
Imperial occupation troops did not merely ignore the syndicates, they supplied them. Lost ration crates, stripped las‑cells and uniform kits flowed from garrison stocks to Grey Market stalls. By 1020.M41 Cineris hosted 748,000 stalls; 88 percent paid dues to Tek‑peddlers, syndicate peddlers under Anthea’s Grey Market union.
Why tolerate crime? Because Imperials feared the growth of the Coilbreakers Union far more. The CBU membership ballooned from 19,000 to 410,000 in three years, calling for hab-labour councils and demilitarisation. Publicly Administratum agents raided vox‑studios and sacked 24,000 proctors, clerks and scribes. Privately, dirty work fell to syndicate blades.
In 1021.M41 riots flared in Sector XI‑5 (Overline Reach) where Drifter mobs harassed locals. Newly forged Thorn Circle, led by half‑off‑world Malchi Hun, received silent sanction. Their fighters crushed the riots overnight. The garrison looked away; Yun gained charter rights in the inter-hive transit yards. The Thorn Circle later re‑branded as the Eastern Compact and still rules the rails.
End of Occupation
On 3 Ascension 1036.M41 the Cineris Concordat was signed aboard Aquila Resoluta. After forty‑nine years the 16th Army Group lifted off; local defence cohorts, retrained and oath‑bound, marched in.
Under the Charter of 989.M41,oldest unamended code on record, citizens now elected guild deputies. Cineris was rebuilt and rehabilitated, yet clung to ritual and shrine. Factories boomed, heralding the “silver dawn.” Parallel to that miracle, syndicates reached the zenith of their power:
- Ash Wolves owned concrete, wiring and 62 percent of all post‑war hab construction.
- Nightspire Combine controlled vice licences across three sectors.
- Eastern Compact monopolised freight yards, shielded by unspoken Imperial gratitude.
Surface life gleamed, lower ducts throbbed with clan sigils, the quiet price of order.
Half a century after Wortex torpedoes turned Ashfall to ruins, Hive Cineris stands rebuilt, prosperous, and forever in debt to the under‑hive powers born in the ashes of defeat.