Nomads

**Nomads** were once corporate wage-slaves, who got fired and blackballed from employment, and now they roam the highways as travellers and motor-gangs. As life on the road is hard, they maintain strong family bonds. If a Nomad is in trouble, he can count on members of his family to watch his back.

People driven from rural farm towns, aboriginal reserves, outcasts, Veterans, and outlaws from the corporate America banded together in response to the injustices of lands purchased from beneath their feet.

Now, crammed into a huge, ragtag fleet of cars, vans, busses and RV's, your Nomad pack roams the freeways. They look for supplies, odd jobs and spare parts in the world where society has fragmented. The pack is home - it has teachers, Med Techs, leaders, and mechanics - it's virtually a town on wheels in which everyone is related by marriage or kinship. Sometimes the Pack pulls into a town just to fuel up or get grub. Other times, it swings south to follow the harvest; they pick crops in trade for cash or food. Less terrorizing cities and hiring out as muscle in Corporate wars. For obvious reasons, cops don't like Nomads. But it doesn't matter - yvehicles are usually well armored and bristling with stolen weapons; mini guns, rocket launchers and the like. Every kid knows how to use a rifle, and everyone packs a knife. Being homeless in the 2000's isn't easy.

The most visible members of the Pack are the Scouts - leather-armored riders on bikes or in fast muscle cars, who protect the convoy from attacks and hunt up safe campsites. As a Scout, you're on the lookout for trouble, and you usually can find enough of it, with rival Nomad Packs, the Law, and the cowboys; you ride the hard trail. You've got a gun, a bike and that's all you need. You're a Nomad.

## Structure

Nomad groups are divided into families, clans, tribes, and nations. Families can be as few of two people to as many as one hundred. Clans are made up of several families and can range from a few hundred to a over a thousand members. Tribes consist of several clans and can consist of several tens of thousands of members. Nations are the largest groups and number in the hundreds of thousands. The biggest nomad Nation has roughly one million members.

## Cyberpunk RED

In 2020 the Nomads were Mad Max style small bands of gangs who roamed the wastes fighting among themselves and being pirates to anyone entering their territory.

However in the time of the RED after the Night City Holocaust when a nuke went off in the Arasaka tower, the Nomads became united and moved into Night City to take over and control all physical forms of transportation in and out of Night City and to any other city across the U.S. and the Pacifica Confederation.

They became the biggest investors and builders of infrastructure in Night City; responsible for repairing services, and then controlling those services.

While the Nomads still have roaming bands in the wastes they are no longer fighting among themselves and now work together for their survival.

"Night City's seductive but remember you're a Nomad. That means guns. Guns and cyberbikes. That's how we hold the line. We don't have any home except the caravan. We don't have any rights except what we take. We get run out of town by cops; we get raided by the roadwarrior packs, and we survive because we've got guns and bikes..."

### The Rebuilding (2040–Present)

After the bomb:

Roughly two million people in the greater Night City region were left homeless due to the Bomb, either directly or because of flooding from the liquefaction of the city's foundations. Survivors fled into overcrowded tent cities in the surrounding suburbs of North Oak, Westbrook, Pacifica, Heywood, and South Night City. But tent cities aren't real homes and it was obvious that something needed to be done fast.

The remnants of the Night City government turned to outside resources, calling in old markers and favors from a wide variety of Edgerunners. Recovery was lead by the Nomads of the Aldecaldos Clan and their allies in the StormTech Corporation. With a lot of experience in city rebuilding due to the Chicago project, StormTech and the Aldecaldos were uniquely equipped to construct extensive temporary housing from shipping containers and later formocrete modules brought in by rail and sea.

### The Reclaimed Perimeter

When Night City was the regional hub, it was surrounded by a constellation of smaller towns and suburbs. Most of these were abandoned during the 2000—2020 period, as they were too far out to protect from the roving go–gangs that plagued the area. Now, supported by Nomad Families and private security, the Reclaimers are attempting to transform ghost towns into new homes for the dispossessed of the City.

### The Open Road

In the 2020s, the Open Road was home to roving go–gangers and well defended Nomad caravans. But as the Nomad Families take greater control of the world's commerce and shipping routes, they're using surplus military hardware to drive out the go–gangs and make the roads safe for travel. The roads are still open, wide and dusty, with dead and burned out vehicles littering the landscape, but increasingly, the Open Road is looking more Route 66 than Route 666.

### Transport

#### The Nomads

The most reliable transportation in or out of Night City is offered as a service by the Nomad Clans. Individual Clans sponsor heavily armed convoys to Cities along the Coast, throughout the West, and even to the edges of the New United States. These convoys, often made up of over a hundred vehicles ranging in size from giant multifamily combis to small and armed escort cycles, are capable of standing off even the most determined road–gangs and rogue mercenary groups. Sea–based Clans have commandeered everything from abandoned luxury liners to gigantic container ships and pressed them into service; these are the only reliable way to get out of Night City via the sea lanes.

### By Air and Even Space

Need to travel faster? Nomad Clans now control a sizable percentage of the aero–zep (modern cargo blimps) traffic around the region and overseas,. usually backed up by satellite snub fighters and AV's. There are few actual commercial jets or other winged aircraft available (too expensive to operate), but if you're really in a hurry, there are an assortment of ex–ESA (European Space Agency) or Orbital Highrider pilots commanding their own suborbital scram–jets; like the legendary Han Solo, these "Deltajocks" go out of their way to avoid legal entanglements and will move any cargo (including you) for the right price.

### WHAT YOU EAT

#### Meet the Meat

Things got even more heated when some enterprising farmers began raising real chickens, dwarf pigs, and even goats (cows are still rare). Individual animals and herds were shipped through Nomad convoys with heavy Solo protection, creating a new form of "cattle drive." Needless to say, there were attempts to rustle the range that ended up with many of the would–be rustlers buried in the Night City equivalent of Boot Hill.

### MEET THE TEAMS

#### Nomad Packs

Nomad Packs are natural teams—they are already together in one group, and everyone knows each other. A good Nomad pack could include a few Fixers (to handle in–town negotiations), a Netrunner (who handles the pack's intelligence work), Techs (for vehicle repair and scavenging work), and any number of Nomads and Solos. The pack operates from the Caravan— an assemblage of RVs, trailers, buses, and cars running goods across the blasted landscape of freeway America. The team could travel with the main caravan or as scouts traveling ahead in their own vehicles.

## Special Ability

**Family** is a two-way street. A Nomad can call on his group for hospitality, protection, and assistance but has to give back that aid or lose status or suffer penalties as a result. Their score in this Special Ability is also their rank within the group. A Nomad group can be a biker gang, an extended family, a nomadic cultural group, itinerant laborers, or panhandlers. A Nomad group can really be anyone who cannot stay put and grow roots - whatever the reason.

**Work Gang** is the Orbital equivalent. Orbital workers are clannish and help each other out.

## The Seven Nations

In America alone there are over 7 million nomads; more than half of them have given their allegiance to one of the seven Nomad Nations of North America. These groups are composed of clans, tribes and families which share common interests, enemies, or goals. The largest of the nations calls itself the Snake Nation, while the smallest is a nomad-owned corporation: MetaCorp. Found between these two extremes are the Blood Nation, the Folk Nation, the Jodes, the Thelas Nation, and the Aldecaldos.

The **Seven Nations** were formed by a series of unofficial treaties and conferences across America, and these meetings and gatherings continue today. The largest meetings between Nations come at the end of harvest time. The harvest is special to the nomads, since many are descendants of agricultural migrants. It represents a time of plenty; plenty of food, plenty of work, and therefore plenty of celebration. In times past, up to forty percent of the nomad population of North America has come together in various locations to discuss issues and celebrate during that late fall period.

### The Nations

#### Snake Nation

Officially the largest of the nomad groups, the Snake Nation is not a true nation in the eyes of many Americans, nomad and static alike. Nomads are generally a very libertarian and independent people, and the Snake Nation is a loose confederation of those who, though they wanted to preserve their autonomy, wanted a voice in nomad politics. Unofficially, they can be said to speak for the entire independent nomad population, and it is generally true that they faithfully represent the views of non-aligned nomads in North America.

#### Packs:

* Bakkers (Currently exiled from the snake nation)
* The Bulldogs
* Sandsnakes
* Vipers

### The Jodes

The original Jode family came from Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. They were not driven out by economic crisis, but by ecological crisis: as the agricultural lands died, the people who worked them began to die as well. In 1998, the great sandstorms obviated the possibility of anyone farming for quite a while, and those that had the strength began heading west towards California for no other reason than it seemed easier than going east through the more densely- populated areas of Collapse America. This mass of farming peoples (not yet organized in any fashion) drifted into Colorado and there, finding a place where they could rest, settled for a few months.

#### Packs:

* The jodes
* The Roses
* Jerichos

### The Blood Nation

As a side effect of the Collapse, the city of Miami completed its slide into a total war zone. Miami had been the center of the North American drug trade for almost twenty years, and in the years before the Collapse, it had also been subjected to massive immigration, both legal and illegal, from Cuba and Haiti. The flow of illegal refugees increased alarmingly as South and Central America heated up, and Miami swelled to bursting. A great many of these immigrants were connected with the various criminal organizations of their home countries before coming to America. Without those connections, most wouldn't have been able to leave the war zone. Currently, they are at war with the Disney Corporation.
#### Packs:

* Gargoyles
* Bloodbats

### The Meta (AKA MetaCorp)

The Meta is the youngest and strangest of the Seven Nations: youngest as they were formed during the Long Walk, only nine years ago; and strangest because they are a Corporation. Originally, those of the Meta Family were mostly ex-military and support services people in South America. Jonathan Meta was an Army Officer with years of service and an armload of decorations. The war was all but lost, yet the Government refused to stop. Most who fought in the SouthAm were not able to remember Viet Nam except Jonathan Meta.
### The Aldecaldos

The Aldecaldo family was the first true Nomad family to form, though at the time they were not nomads, but casualties of the city. Before the Collapse, Los Angeles was arguably one of the greatest cities in the world. It was also, in some areas, one of the worst In the 1980s and 1990s, parts of Los Angeles devolved into a war zone, as did so many of America's inner cities. There was rampant drug dealing, prostitution, gang activity, theft, arson, and all species of violence. The only thing missing was hope.
#### Packs:

* Blaine Family
* Aldecaldos
* Dunes

### Thelas Nation

Marine nomads, sea nomads, and water nomads are all names the government has ignored. Because such people are seen as lawless, they are lumped together by the government and called pirates. It is a term which, to some degree, they have come to enjoy. Their System is much like a hive mind with their own dedicated island and government system- A singular giant family.
### Folk Nation

The Folk Nation is another late entry into the nomad society. A nascent black culture based on pre-Collapse gang structures, they have come a long way from their old Chicago roots. In the mid-'90s, the Folk Nation (as it has been called from the very beginning) was one of the most powerful gangs in the world. They had long superseded the Bloods and the Crips for dominance of middle America. Some say their structure was so dose because they formed as a response to the other violent gangs in the eighties and nineties. Some say they were just another gang. No one knows for sure, but they are still here now.
#### Packs:

* Force of Nature
* Dust bowl walkers
* Edgeones