FACTION
NOMADS OF THE SAND

"I thought I understood the nomads from our aerial surveys - distant mechanical shapes crawling across the golden expanse of the desert like metal beetles in search of carrion. But standing on the observation deck of Walker “Jameela” as it crested the Dune of Sorrows, feeling the deck plates vibrate beneath my feet with each thunderous step, watching the horizon stretch endlessly in all directions... I finally grasped the terrible beauty of their existence. Every dawn brings the possibility of water, every sunset the certainty of thirst. Their massive walkers don't just traverse the Sand - they devour distance itself, transforming emptiness into purpose, one grinding footstep at a time. Master Marek warned me that the desert changes you, but he never mentioned it would make me question whether we cartographers, relatively safe in our flying machines, truly understand anything at all."

• INX-394 "Inks," Apprentice Cartographer, Handelstaat Guild Hall,
  Day 21 of The Burning, 123 AP

Titans of the Desert

Colossal mechanical walkers loom over endless sand dunes, their massive metal legs sinking deep into the shifting sands with each thunderous step. These gargantuan mobile settlements are the lifeblood of the desert nomad clans, towering testaments to human ingenuity and the will to survive in the harshest of environments. From my airship's observation deck, they resembled ancient gods striding across a sea of gold, but up close, the true scale becomes overwhelming, each footstep leaves a vast crater, each stride spans distances that would take a walking human several minutes to cover.

The walkers themselves are marvels of salvaged technology, cobbled together from the remnants of a long-lost civilization. Their exteriors are a patchwork of scavenged metal plates, adorned with billowing canopies that provide shade from the merciless sun. These canopies flutter and snap in the desert wind like the war banners of titans, like sails on a ship, their fabric worn thin by sandstorms yet somehow enduring. Antennas and satellite dishes sprout from their upper decks like metallic flora, constantly scanning the horizon for signs of resources or danger. I watched technicians rappel down the walker's sides to repair damaged sensors, their silhouettes tiny against the mechanical mountain they called home.

Inside, the walkers are a maze of corridors and chambers, each level a microcosm of nomadic life. The air is thick with the aroma of spices and machine oil, the constant hum of engines providing a bass note to the symphony of daily life. Ventilation shafts carry not just air but conversations, laughter, arguments - the entire emotional spectrum of a people perpetually in motion. The deck plates beneath your feet never stop vibrating, a reminder that this home has no foundation, save momentum itself.

The Sacred Engineers

At the heart of each walker lies the engine room, a cathedral of pistons and gears tended to by the revered Muhandis - the nomad engineers. These individuals, their bodies adorned with intricate tattoos depicting vital blueprints and circuit diagrams, work tirelessly to keep the aging machines functioning. I witnessed their devotional maintenance rituals, part mechanical necessity, part religious ceremony. They speak to the engines in hushed tones, their hands tracing ancient diagnostic patterns across control panels worn smooth by generations of touch.

The tattoos covering their flesh tell the story of their calling and specialisation. Each circuit diagram, each gear ratio, each cooling system schematic represents knowledge too precious to risk losing to accident or death. A master Muhandi bears the mechanical knowledge of their specialty etched into their skin. A hydraulics expert might have coolant flow patterns winding around their arms like sacred serpents, while an engine specialist carries fuel injection timing marks down their arms, and a gear assembly engineer bears the gear ratios spiraling around her legs.

They pass down their knowledge through a tradition of teaching young apprentices, with each tattoo a lesson that must be learned. But when a Muhandis dies, their successor must endure a far more brutal initiation. I witnessed the aftermath of such a transfer - a young woman who had inherited the position after her master's death in a raid by an enemy boarding party. For three days and nights, she lay still while clan tattooists copied every mark from her predecessor's body onto her own flesh. Her muffled screams echoed through the walker's corridors as a decade of accumulated knowledge was inked into her body, transforming her from apprentice to master through agony. The knowledge may never be lost, and the price of carrying it transforms each Muhandis into a living archive, their flesh a sacred text written in pain and responsibility.

Life in Perpetual Motion

Life aboard the walkers is one of constant motion and adaptation. Hydroponics gardens, tended with religious devotion, provide fresh produce. These vertical farms represent hope made manifest - rows of green life growing in defiance of the inhospitable desert outside. The gardeners move with practiced grace despite the walker's swaying gait, their hands never quite still as they adjust irrigation flows and monitor nutrient levels. I learned that maintaining the gardens requires not just agricultural knowledge, but the ability to predict the walker's movements, to know when a step will come and shift the water in the growing trays.

Water recycling systems, operating at near-mythical levels of efficiency, ensure that not a single drop is wasted. The nomads have developed a culture that values resourcefulness above all else, with social status often determined by one's ability to repurpose and innovate.

The children aboard the walkers know no other world than motion. They play games that account for the swaying deck, tell stories that incorporate the rhythm of mechanical steps, and learn to read the desert through vibrations felt through metal rather than sights seen through glass. Their laughter echoes through the corridors, a sound both heartbreaking and hopeful, evidence that joy persists even in the most unforgiving circumstances.

Seekers of the Lost

From these mechanical behemoths, daring expeditions set out into the deep desert, seeking the fabled dead cities. These ruins, half-buried by time and sand, are treasure troves of pre-Collapse technology. The scouts who venture forth are revered as heroes, facing unimaginable dangers to bring back the precious components needed to keep the walkers functioning. I joined one such expedition and learned that courage in the Sand is measured not in moments of bravery, but in the willingness to walk away from safety into uncertainty.

These expeditions are not taken lightly. Before departing, scouts undergo rigorous rituals, their bodies and minds sharpened through meditation. They carry with them not just tools and weapons, but the hopes and prayers of their entire community, with small totems and personal messages from friends or lovers tied to their gear.

Many do not return, their fates becoming cautionary tales told around communal fires. The desert keeps its secrets jealously, and I have seen search parties discover expedition camps with all equipment intact but no trace of their owners, as if the nomads simply evaporated into the heat shimmer. Other scouts return changed, speaking of ruins that whisper in languages no human tongue should know, or technologies that respond to thoughts rather than touch.

Yet for all the danger, these missions are vital. Each successful return is celebrated with days of feasting and storytelling. The recovered tech is examined with reverence, each piece a link to the ancestors who built the world that was lost. I watched clan elders weep over a recovered data core, not from sadness, but from the overwhelming connection to their lost heritage, proof that their ancestors were more than just a myth.

Convergence at the Sacred Waters

At regular intervals, the walkers converge on hidden oases. While it is not uncommon for Nomad communities to go to war against each other over resources, these gatherings are usually peaceful affairs, explosions of color and sound against the monochrome backdrop of the desert. The sight of the convergence at Salaam oasis defies simple description, with dozens of mechanical titans arranged in concentric circles, their legs locked in position, creating a temporary city of bridges and platforms suspended above the sacred waters.

But the nomads are not alone at these gatherings. Caravans from the great city of Medha arrive with goods the desert cannot provide: spices, medicines, refined materials, and most crucially, fresh clones to replace the losses each clan has suffered during their year of wandering. The Medha traders set up elaborate pavilions at the oasis edge, their colorful banners advertising wares both legal and questionable.

Flags of every hue snap in the wind, and the air fills with the music of a hundred different instruments. The contrast is jarring - brutal machines of survival transformed into a festival ground where music and laughter replace the endless grinding of gears. Rope bridges stretch between walkers, creating aerial marketplaces where traders can move from clan to clan without ever touching sand. Children dare each other to cross these improvised catwalks, their parents watching with the particular anxiety of people who know the price of every risk.

These oasis meetings serve many purposes beyond mere survival. Resources are traded, with intricate bartering systems based on the value of water and tech. Information is exchanged, maps are updated with new hazards and opportunities, and warnings of hostile clans are shared in hushed tones around cooking fires. But perhaps most importantly, these gatherings are a time for forging bonds beyond one's own walker, for remembering that the nomads are more than isolated survival units scattered across an endless waste.

The Markets of Necessity

The most crucial trade at these gatherings occurs in the shadow markets where Medha merchants deal in human lives. Officially, clones must work off an indenture to the factory or warlord that purchased them, but they are not property to be bought and sold freely. The reality of the desert writes different laws. I watched clan elders in whispered negotiations with Medha traders, their conversations conducted in the careful language of euphemism and implication. They speak of "employment contracts" and "relocation opportunities," but the currency changes hands for lives all the same.

The clones offered for "employment" stand in neat lines beside the Medha pavilions, their faces bearing the particular emptiness of those who understand their fate but lack the power to change it. Most are recent production models, their bodies unmarked by hard labor, their neural  programming still fresh and uncontaminated by experiences that might breed independence. The nomads inspect them like equipment, checking reflexes, testing comprehension, evaluating their potential contribution to clan survival.

It is a transaction that turns my stomach, yet I cannot deny its necessity. The desert claims nomad lives with ruthless efficiency - disease, accidents, and violence between clans thin out each clan year after year. Without these replacements, the walkers would eventually carry only ghosts. The clones themselves seem to accept their fate with the resigned compliance built into their neural programming, though I caught glimpses of fear in some faces, brief moments when their manufactured calm cracked to reveal the terror beneath.

The Medha traders facilitate these exchanges with practiced efficiency, their ledgers recording "voluntary relocations" while their purses grow heavy with Sukh. They speak of providing opportunities for clones to see the world beyond city walls, to contribute to humanity's survival in the wasteland. The words ring hollow in the desert air, but they serve their purpose, maintaining the legal fiction that allows both parties to sleep at night.

Nomads may freely move from one community to another at their own choosing, provided the new community accepts them. This exchange of people serves as both escape valve and genetic necessity in a world where each walker's population must remain carefully balanced. In a world mostly populated by female clones, marriages between walkers are seen as vital for maintaining the genetic diversity of the comparatively small natural human population, and for strengthening alliances between individual communities. A human male will usually be paired with at  least half a dozen willing females, while under constant observation for any warning signs of sudden transformation due to the Reaper Agent. The same applies to any male offspring they may have. In the narrow confines inside of a Nomad Walker, male transformation into a mutant is particularly dangerous, and males are usually confined to more open areas where it is easier to observe and contain them if necessary.

Council in the Desert

As the gathering reaches its peak, elders from each walker come together in council. They discuss the great migrations, plotting courses across the desert that will sustain their people. These meetings often last days, with heated debates about the interpretation of weather patterns and the reliability of ancient maps. I observed one such council session, held in a court surrounded by the lavish tents of each clan’s elders, where arguments over water rights and territorial boundaries carried the weight of life and death.

The elders read the desert like a shaman might read a sacrificial offering, interpreting signs invisible to untrained eyes. They debate the meaning of changed wind patterns, the significance of new oasis formations, and the threat posed by shifting dune configurations that might block traditional routes. Their decisions will determine not just where the clans travel, but who lives and who dies in the months to come. The weight of such responsibility ages them visibly and I watched clan leaders emerge from these councils looking years older than when they entered.

In the end, maps are redrawn, territories renegotiated, and ancient grudges either settled or renewed. The council becomes a theater of human drama where personal vendettas clash with practical necessities, where the survival of hundreds balances against the pride of leaders who have never learned to back down from a challenge.

The Price of Parting

When it's time to part ways, the farewells are bittersweet, the migrations of nomads from clan to clan tearing families apart even as new ones are formed. The rope bridges between walkers are severed with ceremonial care. Promises are made to meet again at the next oasis, though all know the desert may have other plans. The Sand is cruel to the weak and ruthless to the overconfident. Clans that seem prosperous at one gathering may arrive at the next broken and desperate, or may not arrive at all. These partings carry the weight of potential finality, each goodbye balanced against the possibility that it might be the last.

As the walkers lumber off in different directions, their massive forms gradually swallowed by the shimmering heat haze, the nomads return to their daily routines. But they do so with renewed purpose, carrying with them the memories of new connections made and the hope of reunions to come. The children who played together will grow up carrying stories of other clans, other ways of life, ensuring that nomad culture remains unified despite the vast distances that separate them.

Echoes of Ancient Steps

In this harsh world of the Desolation, the nomads have not just survived, but forged a unique culture. Their walking homes are not merely shelter, but the embodiment of their resilience, ingenuity, and unwavering spirit. Each step their walkers take across the dunes carries forward the dreams and determination of generations who refused to accept defeat.

The rhythm of their mechanical homes has become the pulse of human persistence in the Sand. When I close my eyes aboard my airship at night, I can still feel that vibration in my bones, the steady, relentless march of a people who found freedom in motion and dignity in survival.

As long as the nomad walkers stride across the dunes, the heart of humanity continues to beat in the desert, a rhythm as steady and relentless as the march of time itself. They are proof that home is not a place but a people, that civilization is not defined by steel and concrete but in bonds maintained, and that sometimes the only way to preserve what matters most, is to keep it moving.

[Personal note: Mina insists the vibrations from Walker Jameela have permanently altered my equilibrium. She may be right. Even now, writing this report in the stillness of our guild hall, I find myself swaying slightly in my chair, my body still keeping time with footsteps that echo across a thousand miles of sand. Perhaps the nomads are right, perhaps movement is the only honest response to a world that refuses to stay still. -Inks]

• INX-394 "Inks," Apprentice Cartographer, Handelstaat Guild Hall,
  Day 21 of The Burning, 123 AP