Geography: Primarily planet-wide wastes surrounding immense, monumental hive cities. The largest, Hive Krakex, resembles a massive, man-made mountain.
Population: Approximately 45 Billion (Innumerable masses of factory workers, specialized industrial serfs, and ruling highborn families).
Tithe Grade: Exactus Primus/Extremis (Bulk plate armour, heavy military components, massed manpower levies).
Government Type: Hive Lord Governorship (Feudal Technocratic Aristocracy).
Planetary Governor: Hive Lord (Inferred: Overseer Primus Vorak, dedicated to industrial quotas).
Adept Presence: High (Adeptus Administratum missions for tithe accounting; Adeptus Mechanicus for managing industrial capacity).
Military: Hulee V Planetary Defence Forces (PDF), specialized hive Gendarmerie, and internal security regiments dedicated to maintaining production flow.
Trade: Bulk finished plate armour for tanks and fortresses, specialized metal alloys, and imported raw ores.
"The true sun is not the light that blinds the eyes of the uninitiated, but the furnace where the Emperor's armour is forged. Here, darkness is merely the absence of fire, and fire is eternal life."
– Enginseer Prime Xyllan, Hive Krakex (Inferred Quote)
Hulee V is a colossal Hive World located within the Rubicon Sub-Sector of the Askellon Sector. It is a world whose reputation rests entirely upon its immense productive capacity, earning it the designation as a cornerstone of the sector’s military materiel supply chain. The planet is entirely devoted to industry, absorbing centuries of bulk-imported raw ores to fuel the monumental factories buried within its vast cities. For the billions of its inhabitants, existence is defined by the confines of the massive architectural structures that consume the landscape. The surface outside these structures is largely a poisoned, industrial wasteland, and the human population thrives only in the claustrophobic darkness of the immense, metal-laced interior.
Hulee V is home to many gigantic hive cities, the greatest and most famous of which is Hive Krakex. Krakex defies easy classification, appearing less like a traditional spire and more like a huge mountain of metal and ferrocrete. Its construction technique is unique and strangely organic for an Imperial structure, emphasizing ceaseless, relentless growth.
Generations of builders and engineers have continually layered new outer shells onto the main edifice, giving the hive the appearance of lava dripping down a massive volcano. This process means the hive is perpetually expanding, rolling off the outer surface and consuming kilometres of land from the already ragged millions teeming in the surrounding wastelands. This process of constant expansion ensures that Krakex is one of the most structurally immense edifices in the sector. The ceaseless noise of billions of lives, the grinding machinery, and the immense internal heat necessary for smelting operations make Krakex an overwhelming sensory experience.
The billions who dwell inside this monolithic city live their entire lives in artificial light. Most never see sky or sun, and cannot conceive of a life without enclosed roofing, processed air, and immense crowds pressing on all sides. This isolation from the natural world creates a distinct psychological profile among Hulee V natives, who are born into houses or families whose vocations are decided from birth, ensuring they toil endlessly in the factory sectors and industrial habs essential for the hive’s survival. Their inherent traits favour agility and perception, necessary for navigating the cramped, chaotic masses, though often at the cost of personal will or independent thought.
The primary purpose of Hulee V is the manufacture of heavy military materiel. Using the massive flow of bulk-imported raw ores, the planet’s immense factory capacity is geared toward transforming these resources into plate armour of exceptional quality.
This armour protects many of the tanks and fortresses across Askellon. This strategic role means Hulee V is crucial to the broader sectorial war effort, supplying the Imperial Guard regiments and planetary defence forces with the vital metal plating needed to withstand the relentless enemies of Mankind. The sheer scale of this production requires complex logistical coordination, overseen by the Adeptus Administratum, whose officials are constantly tallying the output and consumption rates within the hive’s towering industrial blocks. The planet’s reputation for reliable, robust armour components makes its tithe critically important, ensuring Hulee V is afforded a high, though heavily scrutinised, position within the Imperial hierarchy. The internal architecture of the hive must accommodate massive smelters, rolling mills, and fabrication centres, likely located in the densely packed mid-levels where heat and toxic exhaust are at their most extreme.
Despite its strategic importance, the Hulee system is most notable for a single, critical event that occurred during a major sector-wide incursion of Space Hulks.
At the outer fringes of the Hulee system, a Space Hulk known as the Assassin of Pride was detected. At the time, the Askellon Sector was overwhelmed, with dozens of Space Hulks appearing across its borders along routes that suggested convergence toward the sector’s core, implying a dark intelligence was guiding them. While most local planetary forces were decimated responding to the threat, the Assassin of Pride was investigated by a hastily deployed Kill-team of the elite Deathwatch.
The actions of these black-clad Space Marines were highly secretive, with no account of their mission given to local Ordo Xenos Inquisitors. However, the mission was undeniably successful. The Deathwatch departed carrying a cargo of obviously high import. More significantly, in the immediate aftermath of this boarding operation and the removal of the mysterious cargo, every single Space Hulk still within Askellian space abruptly fell back into the Immaterium. This suggests that the artifact or technology recovered from the Assassin of Pride, and secured near Hulee V, was somehow key to the convergence and appearance of the entire Space Hulk fleet across Askellon. Hulee V thus stands near the site of an event where the fate of the sector was decided, confirming that deeper, possibly forbidden, cosmological connections influence its destiny.
The citizens of Hulee V are deeply immersed in the unique form of the Imperial Creed common to hive worlds. Hierophants born here often absorb local superstitions into the Imperial Creed, attributing a soul to the hive or city itself, revering the massive structure as a benevolent entity that watches over them. They treat the hive as a sacred place, carefully noting the many hums, creaks, and rumblings of the vast edifice as signs of its assent or displeasure. This spiritual dependency strengthens the established order, equating continuous, arduous labour with holy devotion to the machine-like city-god that sustains them.
The Planetary Defence Force (PDF) must be immense, continuously recruiting from the billions of tough, crowd-hardened citizens. While the primary defense likely relies on armored vehicles—protected by the very plates Hulee V produces—the internal security forces must constantly battle the ragged millions teeming outside the hive shell and the criminal elements that surely fester in the lower, unlit levels of Krakex, ensuring that the critical production lines are never threatened by internal revolt or sabotage.