Nomad
Behind the Wheel
Everyone else in Night City is stuck behind whatever wall or checkpoint the city decided to put in their way. A Nomad just drives around it. Some call them truckers, some call them scavs with a code, some just call them family, but every Nomad shares the same basic truth: the road doesn't belong to the Corps, the road belongs to whoever's got the wheels and the nerve to keep moving on it. Take away everything else a Nomad owns and they'll still have a vehicle, a weapon, and the people who ride with them, and to a Nomad that's never really felt like nothing.
History
The story starts with people who had nowhere left to be. When the Corps rolled onto family farms and the Collapse hollowed out entire cities, whole communities packed up whatever would fit in a car and kept moving, because moving was the only option left. Small groups became convoys, convoys became Packs, and Packs eventually became something bigger: Nomad Nations, entire nomadic peoples numbering in the millions, trading, building, and running supply lines across a country that had stopped being able to take care of itself.
It wasn't a clean or a fair rise. Cities that depended on Nomad convoys to survive still treated them like a nuisance at best, a threat at worst, blamed for crime they didn't commit and welcomed only when something needed hauling. Not every Nation held together, either. Meta, one of the largest Nomad Nations, learned to "speak corpo" well enough to undercut every other Nation's contracts and became a shipping conglomerate in its own right, a betrayal the road hasn't forgotten. Other Nations stayed true to the old ways and paid for it in lost contracts and thinner numbers.
These days, the Nomad Nations are indispensable in a way they never were before the War. With cities fragmented and the old infrastructure gutted, it's Nomad convoys keeping goods, people, and information moving between safezones across highways that nothing else can survive. The Aldecaldo Nation is the one most commonly encountered around Night City, having grown out of East Los Angeles and put down roots in the surrounding Badlands. The Wraiths, exiles cast out of proper Packs for one reason or another, raid the same roads the Aldecaldos protect, a reminder that not every Nomad is family to every other Nomad. Smaller clans in the area like the Bakkers, Jodes and Thelas also operate around night city though in different capacities. Notably the Thelas operate as a boating clan that move up and down the california coast while the Jodes clan operates around the train lines. These clans try not to interact with each other business contracts too much. Except the Wraiths who everyone hates.
The Family Car
Being a Nomad means being part of a Family before it means anything else, and a Family means a Motorpool. Every Pack maintains a shared pool of vehicles, from beat-up compact ground cars all the way up to armored Roadhaulers, Kombis, and the gyrocopters that Nomad pilots, sometimes called Deltajocks, fly to keep supply lines running all the way up to the Orbital Highriders. A Nomad doesn't own their ride outright so much as they're trusted with it, and that trust is earned through years spent proving themselves on the road, under the hood, and in a firefight when a convoy gets jumped.
That's the other half of it. Nomad vehicles aren't just transportation, they're rolling arsenals, built and rebuilt by people who grew up learning to weld armor plate and mount a machine gun before they learned to drive defensively. Every kid in a Pack knows how to handle a rifle, and every adult can field-strip an engine as easily as a gun. When something goes wrong on the road, and something always eventually does, a Nomad convoy is expected to fight its own way out, because help is usually a lot farther away than the trouble is.
Losing a Family vehicle is a real loss, not just a financial one. The Family will fix or replace what gets destroyed, but it costs the Pack resources it doesn't have to spare, and a Nomad who's careless with what their Family loaned them earns a reputation for it fast. The road doesn't forgive recklessness, and neither does Family.
Other Kinds of Nomad
Not every skilled driver and mechanic on the road grew up in a Clan or Pack, and Night City is full of people who learned the trade a different way.
- Street Gang Wheelmen — Every gang that runs product, people, or trouble across Night City needs someone who can drive like their life depends on it, because it usually does. These gangs operate very similarly to a nomad clan in having vehicles and resources to pull from but usually have very different spheres of influence. The most notable example of this in Night City is the Valentinos and Sixth Street gangs who maintain their own drivers inside the city. The Valentinos do this through a series of chop shops and a culture built around highly modified greaser cars going back to the 1950s. Sixth Street does this through veterans buying surplus corporate war vehicles and heavily modifying them. Every other gang has their own version of this though rarely at a similar scale.
- Corporate Couriers — Rarer than most other types of driver. Corporate Couriers are the skilled drivers and pilots employed directly by the corps, using the corporate motor pool. This gives these drivers access to the fanciest cars on the market but limits them in how they are allowed to modify them. Corporations tend not to look favorably on someone stripping out parts. On the bright side they get better AC.
Famous Nomads
- Santiago "Nomad" Aldecaldo — The Nomad, The "Old Man". The one everyone remembers and wishes they could have as much rizz as. Leader of the Aldecaldo Nomad Nation and, for a time, Rogue Amendiares's partner and equal on The Street, Santiago ran with a crew that included a young Johnny Silverhand and was trusted enough by Rogue to back her play against Arasaka itself. He's gone now, but his son, Trace Santiago, still carries the family name. And the Aldacado's are still around Night City. Santiago is so beloved that murals with his face can be found in several Night City Alleys and even other Nomad Clans put some respect on his name. From famous road heists, to saving busloads of Nomad hostages from corpo security. No one knew the roads and protected his people like the "Old Man".
- Racer Rajavi — Founder of the Sightseers, an Aldecaldo Pack out of Santo Domingo's East Cargo Village running small cargo and escorting caravans across Night City. Racer's philosophy is about as simple as it gets: a bike, a gun, and a Family are all a person really needs, and it's carried her Pack through jobs that would have broken a less tightly-knit crew.
- Yorinobu Arasaka — Second son of Saburo Arasaka, and founder of the Steel Dragons, Kōtetsu no Ryū, formed from a mass of Tokyo Nomads whose entire goal was to take down the Arasaka corporation. What started as personal rebellion grew into a genuine bōsōzoku gang, known for customized motorcycles and elaborately embroidered leather coats and jumpsuits, sworn to exposing and undermining Arasaka wherever they can reach it. The Steel Dragons have since spread as far as Night City and outlasted Yorinobu's own involvement, running under their own momentum long after he stepped back. Most other gangs consider the Steel Dragons to have a good goal, destroying Arasaka, but also think the gang is a bunch of posers, and Yorinobu a "rich boy tourist." Despite this, the Steel Dragons maintain a small presence in any city where Arasaka operates. Except in Tokyo, where they remain an active problem for the megacorp.
See Also
- Cheat Sheet — vehicle, combat, and Skill Check rules.
- Megacorporations — the corporate land seizures that put most Nomad Nations on the road in the first place.
"There's nothing like the freedom of the open road under your wheels. I've got my bike, I've got my gun, and I've got my family. That's all I'll ever need." — Racer Rajavi, Aldecaldo Nomad