Alak-Hul, the Darkblade — the Hive general who challenged Oryx's authority and was imprisoned rather than killed, the exception to Hive Sword Logic that the Hive itself cannot explain. The Sunless Cell holds him in the Dreadnaught, Oryx's ship, and the strike is the Guardian preventing his escape now that Oryx is dead. The creatures who strain against the Will are the game's most interesting Hive — not the true believers but the ones who found the logic insufficient, who wanted something the theology could not provide, who failed and survive in the surviving as a kind of heresy.