Hive PrinceReport

English：Hive Prince　·　Races

The Queen's right hand and the Hive's de facto ruler — one Prince for every forty Workers and Soldiers, and yet the Hiver you meet most often out in the wastes.

The highest ranking Hiver, the right hand of the Queen. Nobody has ever really seen the Queen, it is always the Princes who run things. A free Prince is usually the product of losing a power struggle to a rival, or of being exiled for some dereliction of duty. They are far more intelligent, and far more possessed of free will, than other Hivers. — in-game race description

The Hive Prince is the top of the Hive caste system — strictly speaking, the visible top. For the biology the whole race shares, see the Hive overview; for the source of reproduction, see the Hive Queen. This article covers the Prince's rarity, his governing function, and one puzzling consequence of both: the rarest caste is the Hiver you run into most often.

Rarity and the business of ruling

Spawn weights in the game files state the ratio outright: both the Western and Southern Hive set the Prince at 5 and the Worker and Soldier at 100 each — one Prince for every twenty Workers plus twenty Soldiers.

That tiny minority owns every interface the Hive has with the outside world. "Nobody has ever really seen the Queen" is the key to Hive politics: the Queen neither appears nor issues orders, she only supplies a field of will made of pheromones, and day-to-day rule is carried out by the Princes. The Prince is the rarest of the three castes and simultaneously the Queen's deputy, which in practice makes him the Hive's managerial and technical class^{[V1 0:05:30]}. Princes combine brains with fighting ability — less of the latter than a Soldier Drone — serving as both the Queen's mouthpiece and the actual commander on the ground; in the Western Hive they double as envoys and merchants, and are regarded as the Queen's most important children^{[V2 0:02:49]}.

Negotiation, pricing and eviction in a Hive Village are all handled by Princes, and every Hive trader is a Prince — they do not sleep, and they can fight. The food stock in Hive Villages is also presumed to be their work, since only Worker and Soldier Drones carry the −20% Cooking penalty.

In the Southern Hive the Prince's role shifts from administrative to military: every Droneguard patrol is led by a Prince, and the Hive Eviction event that assaults a player outpost consists of three squads of eight Droneguards plus one Battle Gorillo each, every squad under a Prince.

Relationship with the Queen

The Prince is the Hive Queen's only proxy, and the only caste permitted to stay away from the Hive for long stretches — they evolved to operate independently, so that they can lead caravans far afield without losing the connection. A free Prince has only two possible origins: losing a power struggle, or exile for dereliction of duty. Behind every Hiveless Prince lies the wreckage of a piece of court politics.

A Prince still connected to his Hive feels something close to physical revulsion towards the Hiveless — he becomes visibly agitated when one comes near, and calls in Soldier Drones if the intruder will not leave. This is precisely why a player squad containing a Hiver is refused trade in Hive Villages.

Numbers: the most fragile head, the most complete skill set

The Prince's health layout is unlike either of the other two subraces — every body part is a flat 80, the head included.

His limbs take slightly more punishment than a Worker's, but his head is the most fragile of the three — under two-thirds of a Worker's. With a head hit weight of 80, second only to the chest's 140, that head is an easily overlooked cause of death. The rest: 50 blood, 0.3 bleed rate, 1 heal rate, 0.5 hunger rate, 1 vision multiplier, 31.318 mph top speed. Headgear is partially open to him (unlike the Soldier, who is barred outright); footwear is not. In addition, the Prince is the only Hiver who will not eat foul meat.

Skill profile: the best technical race in the game

• +20%: Athletics, Dexterity, Field Medic, Lockpicking, Perception, Science, Stealth, Thievery, Toughness
• −20%: Labouring, Strength

Nine bonuses against two penalties is the healthiest structure of any playable race^{[V1 0:05:30]}. Lockpicking + Stealth + Thievery is a complete thief package; Perception + Dexterity supports crossbowmen and fast-blade builds; Science makes them ideal researchers; Field Medic lets them double as the squad medic — a single Prince can very nearly cover every technical post in a party. The bill comes in only two places: −20% to both Strength and Labouring means low carry weight and slow building and mining. Putting a Prince on a Base Building production line is a waste — that is the Hive Worker Drone's speciality.

An anomalous presence in the wastes

The rarest Hive subrace is nonetheless wildly over-represented across the world — the Wiki attributes this to intelligence and survivability far above their kin. Factions composed entirely of Princes include the Cloud Ninjas, Swamp Ninjas, Grayflayers and Stone Rats; clearly over-weighted are the Shinobi Thieves, United Cities, Rebirth slaves, Blackshifters, Mongrel, Tech Hunters and Anti-Slavers. Outside Dreg, Lost Princes actually outnumber Lost Drones in most regions — not because more Princes leave, but because Workers die too fast.

That said, "a Hiveless Prince always ends up on top" is no iron law: you can meet Princes reduced to Samurai Conscripts, and the Samurai Sergeant in charge of them is sometimes a Worker Drone. The two unique recruits show the two ends a free Prince can reach —

• Silvershade — a Hiveless Prince who hides in noisy bars so that human voices drown out the loneliness. He owes a casino owner a debt; pay roughly 3,000 Cats on his behalf and he joins, with every stat above average. He is not tied to one city: Mud Town, Black Scratch, Flats Lagoon, smuggler bars, Waystations and World's End are all possible. The deadline on that gambling debt is real, too — leave it unpaid and his legs get broken^{[V3 0:05:22]}
• Yamdu — "High Noble Attendant" to the noble Longen, with eyes for nothing but profit

After leaving the Hive that loneliness never really goes away… so crowds put me at ease. — Silvershade

Silvershade's line is more than characterisation; it is the standard description of the Hive condition after separation. Life without a Hive is lonely and depressive, which is exactly why he prefers to be where the people are^{[V3 0:05:22]}.

A Hiveless Prince can climb much further than "recruitable NPC in a bar". The founder of the Preacher Cult is himself a Western Hive Prince^{[V4 0:05:39]} — a high-intelligence Hiver who lost his link to the Queen and ended up building his own religion among strangers. Set against the premise that the Prince is the Queen's sole proxy, this carries a particular weight: the same physiology and the same intelligence make an administrative bureaucrat while plugged into the Queen's pheromone network, and can grow into a cult leader once cut loose.

Southern Princes and Fog Princes

The Southern Hive Prince has a reduced bleed rate of 0.2 (Western: 0.3) but loses the Lockpicking, Perception and Toughness bonuses. The Deadhive also has a Prince form — the Fog Prince — with lower health and a higher hunger rate, one of the few Fogmen retaining any command capability.

See also

• Hive ｜ Hive Worker Drone ｜ Hive Soldier Drone ｜ Hive Queen
• Western Hive ｜ Southern Hive ｜ Deadhive ｜ Fogmen
• Statistics and Skills ｜ Recruitment & Squads ｜ Races

Video citations

1. Kenshi: History of the HiversCivilizationEx
2. The Origins of the HiversHeroInHisHead
3. Kenshi: Unique Companions | Shek, Hivers, SkeletonsCivilizationEx
4. The Origins of the Preacher CultHeroInHisHead