Infinity the Game: Nomads

This is going to be a brief overview of lore for the Nomad faction from Corvus Belli’s Infinity. Now this is going to focus on information from the roleplaying game published by Modiphius, but if even if you haven’t played the rpg but you’re wanting to know a little bit about the Nomads in general, hopefully there’ll be something here to interest you as well!


Summary: 

To start off with, who are the nomads? In short, they are a faction of misfits traveling around the Human Sphere on their 3 motherships. Their lives are harder than those in many of the other factions, but they consider it worth it to live their lives with complete freedom and no judgment. They are proud of the fact that they are the only people left not under the thumb of ALEPH, in fact they have cobbled together their own chaotic datasphere, called Arachne, to prevent their secrets falling into the hands of ALEPH or its supporters. Nomads as a group are passionate, chaotic, rebellious and extremely individualistic which they sometimes express through extreme body modifications. Because they are so unique it is hard to pin down a single cultural identity for this faction, especially when you add in the differences between life on the three ships, but that’s just how they like it. And not all Nomads call the motherships home there are a vast number living and working on commercial missions, and they are often the only Nomads that interact with the other factions making them de facto representatives for Nomads as a whole.



History:

Corregidor was the first ship. But it wasn’t just a ship, it was a prison colony. Full of convicts, terrorists, refugees, all the “surplus” population of the nations who had built it. But maintaining it was expensive for those nations, and before they joined the PanOceania faction they had to somehow rid themselves of it. Giving the Corregidor independence was the solution they hit on. They were no longer responsible for them, it was up to them to find a way to survive. Although no one thought they would. 

They wouldn’t have without the brutal pragmatism of Corregidor’s warden. He quickly sorted the prison ship’s population into 3 categories. “Useful” prisoners, who had skills that would benefit the ship and help the group survive. “Valuable” prisoners, gang leaders or members of wealthy families, anyone that someone would pay to have returned. Or to have killed. FInally, the unlucky “surplus” prisoners, those with physical or mental health issues, or from poor communities, anyone the warden thought could not contribute and who no one would pay for. They were marked to be taken off life support first in case of emergencies. The inhabitants of Corregidor became a sort of mercenary force, and the first members of the Nomad faction.

The next major event in Nomad history was the Violent Intermission. Yujing and PanOceania both used the Nomads as guinea pigs of sorts in a paramilitary experiment. They realized that since ALEPH dominated the interplanetary media, if you had the cooperation of the AI you could conduct small targeted attacks with no political consequence. Bakunin was their testing ground, and thousands of its inhabitants died so that the two warring factions could learn they could do the same to each other. 

The Nomads as a nation were too small to retaliate in kind, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t retaliate. They had a criminal mastermind on their side, Sarmiento, a man who so many wanted to kill that he could have brought the original Nomads a fortune when they auctioned off their valuable prisoners, but who the warden had decided was more useful to them alive. Sarmiento was the man who made people think twice about taking on the Nomads, because his tactics were not normal or proportional. If you ordered an attack on Nomad defenses, your faction might not suffer in the same way, but you would find your bank accounts empty, house burned down, loved ones dead and every piece of blackmail anyone ever had on you livestreaming to the whole galaxy.

Now, ALEPH’s involvement in the Violent Intermission goes a long way towards explaining the Nomad’s hatred of the AI, but that is far from the only reason. Part of it is simply pride in their oppositional nature. The rest of humanity has turned much of their lives and decision making over to a soulless AI for the sake of convenience, and Nomads are the only ones fighting against what they see as humanity's biggest threat. They see themselves as inheriting the legacy of whistleblowers who came before them, those who spoke up against destroying the environment and using up the earth’s resources. Unlike the destruction of earth, if ALEPH’s reach continues to expand the Nomads believe there will be no escape. Nomad’s also deeply distrust anything to do with ALEPH and that is what spawned Arachne. 


Arachne is the dark-web datasphere and the unregulated counterpart to Maya, ALEPH’s datasphere used by most of the human sphere. As far as anyone is able to tell, Arachne should not work. Interplanetary access maintained by surreptitiously placed nodes aside,  Arachne itself is a mess, but that’s no accident. To confuse ALEPH, Arachne is comprised of irrational and contradictory logical systems based on mythology and sacred geometry. Arachne is objectively slower than Maya, but Maya tends to show you what it thinks you want to see, or possibly what it thinks you should want to see, so many Nomads say that Arachne is actually quicker to use to find what you’re truly looking for. Maya has seemingly endless content, but it’s curated. Arachne has everything jumbled together in a mess of pure chaos, but contains thingsMaya would never allow.


Ships:

Now Corregidor was the first ship, but the Nomads have expanded beyond being able to inhabit one ship alone. While hundreds of thousands of Nomads don’t live on any of the three motherships but are on commercial missions, the ships remain the heart of the Nomad nation. I’m going to briefly go over each ship and share some of what makes them unique as they are all completely different from one another. 

Bakunin:

The “radical mothership” Bakunin is a ship full of big ideas and innovative research. Mad scientists creating monsters, anarchists, activists, and dissidents all jumbled together. Visually it’s just as chaotic, a jumble of colours and lights, and music and performances are going on constantly. Exposed wires and carelessly placed panels in the ship are just for show, and some even have training games for curious children hidden in them, as the actual workings of the ship are safely hidden from prying eyes. Stray cats are everywhere, and feature prominently in urban legends of Bakunin. Most notably some people believe they carry the souls of departed people. 

Whereas Corregidor makes its money through hired labour and Tunguska through manipulating finance, Bakunin’s economy depends on tourism and entertainment, and research and development. Bakunin’s scientists are not restrained by ethics committees or political red tape, which has led to an equal mix of horror and success stories. 

One of the most notable ideas to come out of Bakunin is Social Energy. While difficult to define, it is a system of social ranking that is an ID, a currency, and also plays a big part in social interactions. It consists of a myriad of measurements taken from extensive data the system has on all citizens. It’s a quantified value of the impression an individual has on the society around them. It is represented by a number between 1 and 10,000, but values lower than 2,000 or higher than 8,000 are very rare. While it is technically not possible to have a ranking of zero, let alone below it, both the AI ALEPH and the Equinox terrorist group have the dubious honour of being considered less than zero aboard Bakunin. 

Corregidor: 

The inhabitants of Corregidor care about survival above all else, probably not surprising considering their origin as a prison ship cut loose to live or die, and view life as a series of transactions. The ship is full of workers, mostly manual labourers who have gathered after being rejected by the rest of society. Whether they were criminals or refugees they now call Corregidor home and offer labour for hire to the rest of the Human Sphere

Visually, Corregidor is stark and industrial. Every inch of space is utilized with nothing wasted, and everything has a function. There is not enough room on Corregidor, and there hasn’t been for generations, so everything is built with this in mind. Pragmatism is apparent in every facet of the ship’s design, and anything that can be made to serve more than one purpose will be. Nothing more than what is absolutely necessary is built, there are no public leisure spaces or artwork. Even private residences seem more like military barracks and utility and maximizing space are valued over comfort or aesthetic.
Corregidor’s economy is dependent on physical labour, mining, construction, mercenary work, and to ensure its inhabitants are up to the task they are required to participate in daily fitness activities. Skipping these is actually a punishable offense, but even if it weren’t, social pressure would likely be enough to ensure people took part. The idea of everyone pulling their own weight is ingrained into those who call Corregidor home and everyone has to do their part to keep the ship going. No one gets a free ride and even the air you breathe has a price, whether you pay with money or labour. If you don’t, or even if you can’t, you’ll find yourself arrested and forced to work off your debts. On Corregidor, whether you work as a prisoner or a free individual, work is inevitable. 

Tunguska:

Tunguska is full of hackers, bankers and organized criminals and if you’re looking to have something taken care of in secret, which is increasingly difficult in a world under the watchful eye of ALEPH, they’re the ones you want to talk to. The governing of the ship works as a corporate model and is split into three different groups. The Entente, a gathering of crime syndicates, hold 39% of shares in the project that is Tunguska. The Bank, made up of extremely discreet Central European financial groups, holds 29%. Tortuga, a collective of hackers, received 19%. Together these three groups are known as The Nines, named for the final digit of each of their respective percentage of shares. The remaining 13% went to external investors and new citizens. Having a share in Tunguska allows you to vote directly on how it is run. The Bank of Tunguska is considered the most powerful financial entity in the world, and while not as big as other such groups it is free to maneuver without bureaucratic red tape and O-12 oversight. Tunguska offers many things to the human sphere, some more legal than others. Legal services, consulting, investing, and so on, but also the best hackers you could find. The uniting feature of any job they take on is unorthodox methods and impressive results.

Perhaps the service most often taken advantage of on Tunguska is privacy, and in fact 80% of Tunguska’s economy is dedicated to providing it. The Human Sphere has, in most cases, sacrificed privacy for convenience with ALEPH integration and hyperconnectivity. Tunguska offers many options for anyone looking to regain some of that lost privacy, with discreet bank accounts, safe boxes, private datasphere connection, etc. This is all possible due to the Crypt, a secure data crypt in the ship’s core. Thus far neither hackers nor ALEPH itself have been able to breach the securities put in place to protect the Crypt, but if they were ever able to, the entire economy, and therefore ruling structure, of Tunguska would crumble. 

For those living on Tunguska, everything, including daily life, revolves around finance. Citizen shareholders receive yearly dividends, though these are not exclusively paid out in actual currency. It can be redeemed instead as something known as service vouchers. Tunguska is a business and so there are no publicly funded services. Everything is privately contracted whether that be healthcare, utilities, or anything else a governing body would usually oversee. Service vouchers can be traded in to skip the line, get better service, etc. It is transparent and institutionalized corruption and though those outside of Tunguska would tend to decry it, citizens find it reassuringly honest and unique in that if governments are corrupt to begin with, at least in this case citizens can participate in that corruption. Even the justice system on Tunguska is financial. A citizen who takes any action that harms Tunguska as an entity, Tunguskan citizens or the Nomad nation (in that order) will find themselves in social debt. If this can be paid off, a good defense lawyer can talk them out of it or bribes are made, which will be openly recorded, the matter will be closed. Otherwise, they may find themselves in massive debt they could never conceivably pay off and in a form of life sentence in indentured servitude to whoever it is determined they have wronged. 



Other important Nomad things:



Krugs:

Now every Nomad ship is extremely different and they may not interact with each other very often, but every four years there is an event very important to all Nomads. Called the Krug, it’s a gathering of the 3 motherships. It’s an opportunity to connect, trade goods or swap vessels, and strengthen the bonds between the three ships. It’s a celebration, and the only holiday celebrated by all Nomads regardless of background, religion, etc. The amount of deals being made at almost every turn is astronomical, perhaps rivaled only by the number of parties going on. Drug fueled raves whose fatality count rarely dips below double digits, elegant galas hosted by the rich and powerful where so many rules of etiquette are imposed it is mandatory to download software to your geist to keep track of all the dos and don’ts, drunken revelry in the streets, extravagant themed parties, there is something for anyone looking to have a good time. The number of children conceived during a Krug is quite high but not specifically known as some ships can be a bit touchier about lineage than others. And of course in between the deals being brokered and parties being thrown, someone has to take care of some planning. Things that need to be organized include the location of the next krug, and is always a spectacle of bribes, threats and pleading for it to happen anywhere other than the speaker’s own system, and transfers of people from one ship to another to help maintain biodiversity in their populations.

Ending:

And that is a quick overview of the Nomads. Certainly not everything, as there is no way to briefly summarize the chaotic variety that surrounds everything to do with this faction! If you’re interested in more lore I really recommend the Nomad supplement for the Infinity roleplaying game