Necromundan Nomads

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The nomads on Necromunda have been part of the setting since the planet's first mention in White Dwarf 130 (UK)[1] back in 1991 but with the release of the Necromunda: Ash Wastes[7] in 2022 were they given a notably different presentation, going from something that is known human and part of Necromundan society (in a way) to being something that’s unknown if they are human and outside of the larger Necromundan society. This page is written around the assumption that the release of the Necromunda: Ash Wastes did not overwrite the earlier presentations of nomads and instead that both groups exists simultaneous, here referred to here as nomads for the older incarnation and Ash Waste Nomads for the newer incarnation to distinguish the two groups from each other, even though the old incarnation was also called "ash waist nomads" at many times.[4d]

Nomads

Nomads by John Blanche[2]

Nomad gangs, also called nomad bands, wander the ash wastes which lie between the hives of Necromunda.[1a] They form a distinctive social group on Necromunda, and have their own rituals and tribal society which is distinct from the clans of the hives. Rites of passage, ritual scarification and tattooing, scragging and trophy taking are all known to be practiced among them in various forms. Tribal and personal honour are extremely important.[2]

Few true nomads use vehicles preferring to carry only as much as they can load onto their own back. In this way, every nomad is a fighter and a bearer, ready to defend his own part of a caravan.[2] And when walking the waste do they not tether themselves together, since that is a good way for one person’s mistake to kill everyone.[5] Among the nomads that employ vehicles are all types and sizes of vehicles used: wheeled, tracked, walkers and even exotic skimmers. With some bands preferring to have a myriad of light buggies or bikes, believing speed and manoeuvrability. While others chose a single armoured, slow moving transport-crawler to protect them from worst of the weather.[4b]

Some nomads have turned to the mutated creatures which roam the wastes for mounts and/or beasts of burden. Those groups migrate with the heards, surviving by living off the creatures, hunting them for food. Such life is perilous, as many of the creatures are predators and a stray nomad makes an easy meal. Those beasts are occasionally traded with other nomad bands or shanty towns. Uses are found for most of the creatures, with many parts of them being eatable if prepared in the right fashion, bones can be used for crude weapons, hides make clothing and dung can be converted into fuel.[4b]

The nomad routes cross the planet and bands migrate from one hive cluster to another, following good weather and trying to stay ahead of the fierce seasonal ash storms. For all the mutual dislike between nomads and hivers do many nomads make a living carrying trade goods between the hives, the goods they carry are small, usually exotic and always costly: rare drugs, special ammunition, strange things found in the ash wastes and secret messages from distant hives. Many gang leaders prefer to use nomad couriers, valuing secrecy above the speed and ease of using road tunnels.[2] They also trade with the scavvies living in the shanties clustered around the hives,[1b] sell found items to guilders as raw material, and act as middlemen between traders.[3a]

Apperance

As the ash wastes occurs in many different, often vivid hues – such as sulphur yellow, critic green, cobalt blue, pink mauve, as well as various shades of grey – do the nomad bands who live there occur in equally colourful hues, the better to blend into their surroundings.[1a] Some nomads make extensive use of body-painting as a means of protecting their skin from the sun and dust, as well as decoration.[2]

It has been described that standard nomad clothing is made up by thick leather breaches, jerkin and gloves, heavy woollen cloak covering the head and rebreather, and hard-soled boots. With mishmash of metal tape, leather straps, strips of burlap, tied around the neck, wrists, ankles and waist – anywhere the toxic ash might penetrate the other layer.[5]

Warfare and raids

Nomads indulge in continual warfare and inter-tribal feuding for amusement and gain. Nomad gangs ambush convoys from the hives and other nomads when they can. They frequently attack travel tubes and disrupt trade between the hives. Raids on merchant convoys crossing the wastes are commonplace, but some nomad bands are audacious enough to make slave-raids on shanties and even hives, if they can get in through damaged tubes or breaches in a hive’s shell. Any storm that breaches the shell of a hive will give rise to anxiety in expectations of an imminent nomad raid. Nomads have also been known to occasionally raid the hives by infiltrating into a hive and then retreating into the ash waste before any resistance could be organised,[2] or just blowing a hole in the wall with missiles.[3a] Sometime they get into the underhive via derelict tunnels uncovered in the ash wastes. Seen as dangerous undesirables by hivers, the nomads are attacked on sight by Helmawr’s soldiers and merchant gangs because of the danger they pose to road tunnels and convoys.[2]

In the toxic ash wastes is ammunition often hard to come by, especially rare ammo, and some weapons are completely worthless: for example are flamers of little use in high wind. For these reasons nomads tend to use laser weapons and those which fire at a slower rate with more effect, so there is as little waste as possible.[3b] A favoured weapon for nomads is the Long Rifle, it’s long range being valuable in the wide open waste. The double-bladed knife has become a common weapon of the nomads and a symbol of the Nomads' struggles.[4d]

Origins

Different origins to the nomads have been given: that they are descendants of rural settlers who were long ago reduced to nomadic scavenging existence due to the pollution of their lands;[2] that their ancestors committed a crime and were expelled from the hive to die, with their descendants, the nomads, still being punished for that crime;[3a] they are exiles living with the shame that their ancestors cast them from the safety of the hive;[4a] the surviving descendants of the losing members of the House Cattalus civil war, exiled into the wasteland.[4c] It is possible that different nomad groups have different origins. But whatever the case have it been stated that they accept the hardship of the waste and see them as the punishment for the wrongs their ancestors committed.[4b]

Known Nomad bands

Ash Waste Nomads

"You can always tell when the Ash Waste Nomads have hit a caravan or a settlement – mostly because they don’t leave anything behind to let you know it was them."

— Tufor, Scraptown lookout[7c]


An Ash Waste Nomad[10]

The Ash Waste Nomads, known to themselves as the World Walkers or the People of the Ash[7a], are the population of Necromunda that lives truly outside of the Necromundand society deep in the Hive World ash deserts. While there are other groups making their homes across the plant’s toxic surface do the Ash Waste Nomads see themselves as a distinct group separate from those Clan House outland gangs, mutant bands, duster clans, prospectors, and scavvies. [7a]

To the rest of the people of Necromunda are they as alien and unsettling as any known xeno species, and few things in the waste terrify travellers more the prospect encountering the Ash Waste Nomads.[8a] In the eye of the hivers they have divorced from humanity, and through they might appear as humans, there can be no doubt their culture, and perhaps their very biology diverged from the rest of mankind’s long ago.[8a] The nomads habit of taking their dead with them only adds to the dark tales concerning their true nature.[8b] And outside of themself do no one know for sure what flesh lurks beneath their ragged robes and masks, or if, in fact anything of their human ancestry remains at all.[8c] There are stories about their robes hiding some hybrid of insect and man – an explanation for why they are at one with their environment[8f] – and that they cannot be killed, a claim only reinforced by tales of nomads surviving injuries that would kill a normal man.[8b]

The Ash Waste Nomads have a strange affinity for the creatures of the wasteland.[8h] Most well-known is probably their use the Dustback Helamites that they have somehow managed to tame and now ride into battle,[8c] but they also are known to use Arthromite Duneskuttlers[8h] and macro-grapplehawks.[10] That they have managed not to only tame helamites but ride them into battle marks the nomads even moreso as abominations in the eyes of the hivers, for what race of people could be kin to such despicable beasts born of the toxic deserts and chem-rich soil?[8c]

The nomads eschew normal vehicles, and it is believed by many that this is because they have no way of maintaining them. It has been suggested that it is not the lack of parts that make helamites superior wasteland mounts, but rather the durability the insects possess, and the terror they cause in their enemies when leaping out of the wasteland gloom.[8g]

The Ash Waste Nomads measure the Imperial House’s power in a very practical sense: if a person standing out in the waste can see the distant, cloud-wreathed lights of a hive's uppermost spire, they are under the gaze of Lord Helmawr. And if they can travel so deep into the wastes that no hive is visible in any direction, they are in the Deep Wastes and they themselves, not Lord Helmawr, are master.[7b]

While the Ash Waste Nomads rarely venture into the underhive - only the direst of circumstances will force them to abandon the wastes - it is not unheard of, either because they were caught far from any safe haven during a freak storm or because they are raiding the edges of a hive for supplies.[8d] When venturing into the underhive, the nomads have been known to create Nomads’ Outposts – a temporary base, heavily defended and thrown together from whatever materials are handy, for them to operate from while raiding the underhive.[8e]

History

According to the records of the hive world, the Ash Waste Nomads have existed for thousands of years, surviving the toxic ash wastes, the changing seasons of the planets, the horrors they share the waste with, and countless efforts by the Imperial House to wipe them out.[8b] Theirs is an ancient society whose history stretches back countless generations.[7a]

Their origins are mired in myth and legend: ancient tales recount how, when the Lords of Araneus (the ancient name of the planet Necromunda) were cast down by the Imperium, the last citizens of the Araneus Continuity's empire fled from their oppressors into the wastes of their now-blighted world. Some say the nomads are descended from these first people, tormented and changed by the wasteland into the creatures that stalk the wilds today, a hatred of the Imperium and its proxy House Helmawr still fresh in their hearts. Other claim that the nomads existed even before the coming of the Imperium and were a slave class of the Iron Lords, forced to toil deep beneath the ground in hellish mines. Only when their masters were dethroned and Necromunda scoured by fire did they emerge to take their rightful place as the rulers of the ash wastes[8b] It has also been long been rumoured that the survivors of Hive Meridian’s destruction merged with the local Ash Waste Nomads tribes, and still, thousand of years later, see the Great Crater as their ancestral home[7a]

Tribes

It is known that the nomads gather themselves into great tribes[8b], with hundreds of Ash Waste Nomad tribes inhabiting the Great Equatorial Wastes[7a]

These tribes go by many names, throught most commonly a ‘tribal name’ and an imperial one, for instance, the Tsun'ghar the greatest tribe of the Equatorial Wastes, are usually know by their Imperial given name: the Grey Waste Walkers.[8b]

The nomads are believed to worship, or perhaps are beholden to, the spirits of Necromunda itself – through there is speculation on whether or not these are something a-kin to gods or saints, or merely metaphorical interpretations or personification of the planet itself – with each tribe following a specific spirit and having a warrior or leader said to embody the one that watches over their people. [8b]

Known tribes

Warfare and raids

The ruthless Ash Waste Nomads are brutal in battle, striking with utter surprise. [8b] Using their ash clocks, robes and sky mantles to blend into the environment[7d][8i][8j] they can lie for hours beneath shifting ashen sands, waiting for their prey to draw near. They strike with sudden and overwhelming force to bring down their quarry and claim their loot before fading back into the wastes.[8b] Their strength comes not just from their talent for battle or ability to seemingly appear or vanish into the rolling storms of the wasteland, but the terror they inspire in their enemies, who know nothing of their true nature.[8b]

Their weapons have been described as most likely scavenged from victims of the wasteland.[7d]

For the most part the Ash Waste Nomads stay away from the established settlement of the Clan Houses (with the exception of raiding) but there are places where the two sides clash almost constantly, one of those places are Cinderak City.[7a]

Known ranks

Known Ash Waste Nomads

Images

Videos

See also

Ash Waste Nomads Miniatures

Sources

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