As a world whose history had never suffered a break in continuity and which, until the present day, had not truly endured the ravages of war, Krieg's major Hive Cities all possessed extraordinarily complex sewer systems.
No one knew their true scale. Relevant departments had once dispatched exploration teams in an attempt to clarify the matter, but nothing ever came of it. All they could do was raise the same old questions at internal meetings: the shallow sewer systems required maintenance and repairs; wild animals were "running rampant"; there were risks of fire and explosion; and, most obvious of all, the one matter they were least willing to mention.
People. People living in the sewers.
A set of figures illustrated it well. Every year, the largest engraving-plate factory on Krieg's eastern hemisphere lost roughly 1.8 million employees. Setting aside those who mysteriously vanished or died from illness and accidents, only around three percent of the remainder retired normally and received the benefits they were entitled to.
As for the rest—the silent majority—they were usually dismissed for one reason or another.
Where did those people go after leaving the factory?
No one could give a definite answer, but every Krieger living in the Underhive had surely seen those figures wrapped in blankets or torn bedsheets, shuffling toward sewer entrances... After that, no one ever saw them again, as though the city had swallowed them whole.
The truth was not far from that. They had left behind the so-called civilized world and entered a place that was dim, lightless, and foul-smelling. It connected to the lower hive, where the lowliest mutants and deformities howled and wandered amid abandoned ruins, having long since lost the ability to speak. The drifters fared slightly better than they did, at least retaining some semblance of order.