Nina de Yanga

Ranger Yanga

**Nina de Yanga** is a citizen and Veteran Ranger of the New California Republic. Her disappearance into the Mexican Waste was the impetus for Operation Bounding Overwatch and the beginning of NCR investment in the Mexican heartlands. Along with her involvement in Mexico, Ranger Yanga served at the first and second Battle of Hoover Dam, and the NCR Expedition into Oregon Territory.

## Early Life

Nina was born in the the small NCR settlement of Anza-Borrego. Before Nina was born her mother was a native of Baja Sur California. Following a massive drought which left local wells dry residents of Baja California searched the Mexican waste for a new source of water.

Wandering the waste, many of these wastelanders lost their lives in their journey for water. Sometime around 2256 Nina's mother and many other wanderers from Baja Sur who had barely survived an attack from enslavers approached the NCR settlement of Rattletail in northern Baja. Five men from Rattletail, supposedly believing these wanderers were also slavers, opened fire with .308 rifles killing 24 of the wanderers.

Soon after, Rattletail was visited by NCR Chief Hanlon who had led a team of six Rangers to the settlement to investigate the reports of an attack on the settlement. Of the six Rangers to take the journey, only four arrived to their destination. Nina's father was one of these rangers. Hanlon convinced the settlers of Rattletail to relocate to California to avoid further hostilities. While Hanlon sold the residents of Rattletail a story about a raider army coming to retaliate against them, two of the rangers gathered the survivors of the attack to also relocate to California.

Together, the NCR rangers led the survivors of Baja Sur and Rattletail to establish the settlement of Anza-Borrego near the city of Dayglow, where many of the residents became Bighorn ranchers. In Anza-Borrego Nina's parents wed and had a single child. Nina's mother never forgot all of the people from her original village who died as they looked for a better life, and never fully forgave the residents of Rattletail who took the lives of innocent people. Hanlon made her, and the other survivors, promise that they would never discuss the settlers from Rattletail that it was they, not raiders, that were attacked all those years ago.

Soon after, Nina's father, as a ranger was redeployed to various zones of conflict along the eastern and southern borders of the New California Republic. Her father and Hanlon infrequently visited the settlement of Anza-Borrego and instilled in Nina the tools needed to survive the waste and the understanding that the law and justice are not always the same thing.

As a young girl, Nina's mother would leave her with family friends, other survivors of the massacre, and leave for days at a time. On her tenth birthday, her neighbor baked her a sweet roll, her father sent her a .308 bolt action rifle, and her mother told her a secret. On the nights that she had been leaving and the days she spent away from home, Nina's mother had been traveling into Mexico looking for the survivors from her village who had been enslaved on their journey for water. Nina's mother divulged that she had almost given up hope, until one night, about three years prior, she was able to find an older woman who once cared for the village children, being sold not far from the NCR's southern border. Only able to speak to the woman for a brief moment, the woman cried out to Nina's mother that there were others alive and to send help.

Nina's mother pleaded for her husband to abandon his post to help her search for her people, but this sort of leave of absence was too much even for him; he could be court-martialed, stripped of his rank, and imprisoned, if not executed. Nina's gift from her father could only mean one of two things, that her father was so estranged from fatherhood that he doesn't know what is an appropriate gift for a ten-year-old girl, or as assurance that Nina was old enough to face the challenges of the waste. Armed with the same weapon that slew members of their family, their neighbors, and friends, Nina and her mother began to travel together south to save who they could. Over the next six years, they were able to locate and save seventeen of the survivors, raiding the caravans and camps of the enslavers.

## Military Enlistment

join NCR ranger Corps at 16. Hanlon is reassured by her father that she is ready and forged documents to say that she is 18. is the youngest member of the corp. father didn't want her to enlist in the army where troops' skills aren't nurtured and appreciated.

## Disappearance in Mexico

mother goes missing after continuing her raids without nina