Southern HiveReport
English：Southern Hive · Factions
A pink-skinned fanatic Hive branch in the southeastern valleys, which calls every outsider a thing "of the Faraway" and sacrifices them alive to an ancient crushing machine named King.
The Southern Hive occupies the Royal Valley and Greyshelf in the southeastern corner of the map, and is the most violent and most closed-off of the Hive's three branches. It is far smaller than the Western Hive, yet it is one of the very few powers on the map that is unconditionally hostile to the player and demonstrably expanding. Of the three Hive branches, they alone are an aggressive carnivorous group[V1 0:01:28].
Two structural facts are easy to miss: their territory borders the ruins of the Second Empire, and it has gone essentially untouched by any power through a thousand years of continental warfare; at the same time, they never establish a settlement outside the Queen's direct reach[V2 0:04:28]. The first says their extreme isolationism actually works; the second foreshadows their fatal weakness — the radius of the entire polity is exactly the radius of the Queen's rule.
Appearance and differences
Southern Hivers are biologically almost identical to their western kin, differing in their pink skin and the white line patterns covering their bodies, plus some minor adjustments to skills and bleed rates. Some readings describe them as purple[V2 0:04:28]; the wiki records them as pink.
| Subrace | Difference from western kin |
|---|---|
| Southern Hive Worker Drone | Bleed rate 0.4 (western 0.3), no Toughness XP bonus |
| Southern Hive Soldier Drone | No -20% Perception penalty |
| Southern Hive Prince | Bleed rate 0.2, loses the Lockpicking, Perception and Toughness bonuses, gains Field Medic and Science bonuses instead |
The real difference is cultural. The Southern Hive calls the entire world beyond its own territory "the Faraway", and regards every creature from there — including Hiveless kin — as a resource to be devoured or sacrificed. It is precisely because of this extreme xenophobia that Hiveless (ronin) of southern origin are extremely rare.
"What are YOU?! No-hive for King!" — Droneguard
"King": the worshipped crusher
The true object of the Southern Hive's faith is not the Queen but King — the only "Crimper"-type ancient machine in the game. He is a giant robot left over from the Second Empire, wandering the Royal Valley with a permanent escort of Droneguards.
King and the Queen of the South are described as consorts, with the Queen ruling her subjects "with King's help" — but within their system it is the machine that is actually treated as sovereign[V1 0:01:28], the two forming an uncanny symbiosis[V2 0:05:02].
A player character captured by the Southern Hive is tied to a stake northeast of the Royal Valley; King then appears and eats the prisoner alive in front of the kneeling Droneguards, while the surrounding Hivers chant in unison for blood[V2 0:05:02]. For most players this is how they meet the Southern Hive: knocked out by a patrol, waking up on a post, and then crushed into pulp[V3 0:00:45].
"King will protect us, King will be happy with us..." — Droneguard
This machine's combat numbers are absurd: 1200 head health, 900 chest, 120 Strength, and when spawned at the capital he comes with a 2.4x–2.5x age multiplier that puts his effective skills well over 100. Beating him solo is next to impossible without crossbows, careful positioning or some other trick.
A widely circulated player reading holds that King's social function in the Southern Hive is not merely as a religious idol but as a production line: he crushes living organisms into biomass the Queen can use, which would be the reason the Southern Hive must keep hunting living people, and would also explain the skin-colour difference from the western Hive — the west breeds on crops, the south on flesh and blood. The wiki's "Queen of the South" article mentions a similar inference.
Military structure
The Southern Hive is a faction classed as "Military", and its establishment is nothing like the town life of the western Hive:
- Droneguard — Southern Hive soldier drones, the bulk of the force, equipped with Armoured Rags and polearms
- Elite Droneguard — guards the Queen's throne, armed with Toppers
- Armoury Droneguard — appears only under specific world states
- Prince — leads patrols and siege forces, wears [Standard] grade armour, carries a Long Cleaver
- War Gorillo — domesticated giant beasts that go out with the siege forces
The standard patrol is "1 Prince + 8 Droneguards", with an additional 4-Droneguard scouting party, operating across Greyshelf, the Royal Valley and Stobe's Gamble. The Southern Hive Village holds a body of workers who mine and farm by day and sleep at night, kept under a small Droneguard garrison — the numbers alone are the threat.
A three-stage offensive against player bases
Building a base near the Southern Hive triggers a chain of escalating hostility events:
- Southern Hive Visit — a 40% daily chance while your base is within 1,300 metres. Two small squads, each of 1 Prince leading 8–14 Droneguards. The opening line is their trademark absurdity:
"Neigh... bour? Not neighbours... Intruders! We don't like stone walls! Not in King's valley! Get out! Greeee!"
- Hive Eviction — a 70% chance to trigger within 24–48 hours of a Visit being driven off. Three squads, each of 8 Droneguards + 1 War Gorillo + 1 Prince. If they win, they simply occupy the player's base
- Hive Attack — triggers only if the player kidnaps (rather than kills) the Queen of the South, and ignores distance limits entirely. Seven squads in the first wave and six per wave afterwards, one of them with King himself in the rear
Expansion: following the power vacuum
The Southern Hive is one of the most active expanders in the world state system. As long as the Queen of the South is alive and not kidnapped, each of the following conditions unlocks a push:
| Trigger | Result |
|---|---|
| Death of the Western Queen | Patrols enter Bonefields, Border Zone, Flats Lagoon, Okran's Gulf, Okran's Pride, The Hook, The Swamp and Vain |
| Savant killed or captured | Patrols enter the Sonorous Dark; the Skinhouse falls under Hive control |
| Elder killed or captured | Patrols enter Stobe's Garden and The Crags; Iron HQ is taken over |
| Valamon killed or captured | Reaver Camp is taken over |
In other words, the Southern Hive is one of the few powers in the wastes that grows stronger from other people's failures. Every leader the player clears out of The Pits is clearing a road for them.
Weakness
The pivot of the whole structure is still the Queen. Kill or kidnap the Queen of the South and every Southern Hive holding is immediately overrun by the Deadhive, with all patrol spawns and related events stopping outright. It is exactly the same failure mode as the western Hive, only with more immediate consequences.
And the "King" worshipped as sovereign is entirely absent from this. Testing shows that in combat terms he does not treat the Hive's survival as his business — the player can wipe out the entire Southern Hive, Queen included, and as long as you never walk near him he stays exactly where he is without moving; he fights only for himself[V5 0:18:58].
Mechanically this is probably just "he was never written into those event triggers", but read as lore the effect is fairly cutting: a god fed on living sacrifices has no reaction at all to the slaughter of his worshippers.
Further reading: does this polity have a future?
What follows is channel inference; the game gives no answer.
HeroInHisHead reasons backwards from the Southern Hive's reproductive dependency to their strategic position: if new individuals really do require King to crush organic matter, then going to war with the Skeletons gains them nothing at all — a Skeleton carries no usable organic matter, so no number of kills converts into population[V5 0:19:30]. And losing King would mean the end of the line for the whole race, from which he infers that the most plausible ending for the Southern Hive is absorption by someone else, or outright destruction[V5 0:19:30].
The same chain of inference is also used to answer another question: if the Southern Hivers eat living people, why have they not lost their minds the way the Fogmen did? One reading holds that they acquired that Second Empire crushing machine from somewhere and switched their breeding material from crops to living bodies and blood — which is used to explain their skin colour, and also to explain how they remain organised, sane and agricultural despite being brutal and warlike: crops are only food to the Southern Hive now, no longer reproductive material[V2 0:12:13].
This is the same hypothesis as the "King as production line" player reading in different words, and neither has any textual backing. The only genuinely certain thing is the cold mechanical fact: the moment the Queen falls, the whole Southern Hive becomes ruins on the spot.
See also
Video citations
- Kenshi: Unique Companions | ScorchlandersCivilizationEx
- The Origins of the HiversHeroInHisHead
- Kenshi Colosseum: Southern Hive VS Western HiveHeroInHisHead
- Kenshi: History of the HiversCivilizationEx
- What If Cat-Lon Tried To Take Back Kenshi?HeroInHisHead