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[40k] What’s everyday life like for people on a Hell-Forge world?

Most Daemon worlds are endless battlegrounds for the four Chaos Gods. Nothing much going on there except lots of daemon warfare and killing.

But Hell-Forge worlds are a little different. Presumably, they’re a lot more stable and productive than the former - they have to be, in order to supply the logistics for the Chaos forces in the Materium. 

We have a lot of info about life on Imperium Forge worlds, but I don’t really see much about Hell-Forge worlds, except for mentions of slavery and suffering and the Dark Mechanicum having a different insignia than the Imperium aligned ones.

So what’s everyday life like there? I assume it’s quite shit, overall, but I imagine that they at least work you to death in a fashion less counterproductive than the Imperium aligned Mechanicum? 

I don’t think the Dark Mechanicum have the same taboos about technology, and no need to worship the Omnissiah. 

Do they have a Chaos God worshipping religion as a replacement? 

Or do they not bother to tell people there what exactly they’re working for, just that they need to work or no rations for three days? 

Does it depend on which Chaos God is in control? 

Do different Chaos Gods have different ways of managing the Dark Mechanicum on Hell-Forge worlds? e.g. Nurgle likes having all the workers be horribly mutated and full of cancer, Slaneesh keeps everyone in line with occasional orgies and torture, Khorne entertains/terrifies everyone with Hunger Game style gladiator fights, Tzeentch just runs things exactly the same as an Imperium Forge World and nobody notices they’re actually working for Chaos etc.

Or are the Dark Mechanicum a mostly neutral third party, and the Chaos Gods have declared Hell-Forge worlds neutral “truce” zones where they don’t meddle, so productive work can actually get done?

What’s the culture like on Hell-Forge worlds? Presumably, there is a need for education of some kind for the higher ranked engineers. Is it an apprenticeship system? Or do they have actual schools where they learn basic math and science?

Is there room for some kind of recreation and/or dissent on these worlds? Historically, human beings have always found ways to amuse themselves, even in horrific conditions. Concentration camp victims kept their spirits up by secretly communicating with each other and telling jokes. Slaves often developed a sort of parallel culture to those of their masters, with their own traditions of music, dance, cuisine, worship etc. Historically, refugees and deserting soldiers still managed to crack jokes (very dark jokes) about their situation, even as they were being starved and dehydrated and riddled with disease. 

I wonder if, on some non descript corner of a Hell-Forge world dormitory, there’s a small group of engineers who’ve decided to start an acapella group. They practice in places where their singing is drowned out by the sound of machines, and are just loud enough that they can hear each other .

Or maybe a little graffiti scrawled in a Hell-Forge engineering school bathroom, making fun of one of the teachers. The whole floor was punished with whippings and half rations for a week, but a few of them secretly thought it was totally worth it. The kid who scrawled the graffiti has grown into a tired old man, almost unproductive enough to be sent for “retirement” in the flesh recyclers, but the memory of the bathroom graffiti still makes him feel like laughing. 

Or a breeding couple that was paired off by some infernal bureaucracy, but as it turned out, they actually quite liked each other. They only met the one time, a few years back, but they still think about each other every now and then. They wonder where their kid went, and what their serial number might have been. Funnily enough, they both guessed correctly that her number started with a G. 

When they sleep, they often dream of an impossible world where the three of them are all in the same dormitory, the overseer gives them half an hour every day to talk freely, and everyone can eat all the rations they want. Then they wake up, and everything is shitty again, but for a few seconds, they were happy.

You know, something along those lines. Unless all the humans on Daemon Worlds are genetically modified to be drones, they’re likely to still act like human beings. In real life, people found ways to cope even when subjected to the worst imaginable conditions. 

Are there any stories set on these planets? Not the military stuff, just a glimpse into everday life on one of these planets. Something like Necromunda: Underhive Gangs, which explores life as just another gang member on the bottom levels of a hive world.
gpt
Like most things 40k it really depends. 

Some could be as benign as a planet wide cult that worships chaos instead of the emperor making infernal machines and they have no knowledge of the bigger picture or what worshipping chaos means. 

Then the opposite end of the gamut would be hell like feudal worlds where forced breeding and cloning are the norm due to the workers being worked to death reguarly and where daemons prey on the people as a personal playground while they are forced to make hell forged weapons 23 hours a day until dead. 

You might also have a nurgle style planet where everyone is rather content with their lot in life. The blessing from nurgle have strengthened them, made them happy to stand in an assembly line for a century eventually becoming a puss and bile turret with tentacles assembling wheel bearings for tanks. 


The other issue is none of these are stable. Rogue warbands might come in and destroy the current leadership and take over manufacturing with their own people, which would be a very hostile takeover if you dont start worshipping the correct God immediately.