Nomads' most common enemy are colonisers from the Royal Port of Crevus, a naval base originally intended to protect fishing ships from pirates that has become an entire settlement and intended jumping off point for the monarchy’s ambitions of empire in the undeveloped continent of Nalmir. Crevans often attack nomads that stay in one camp for too long, and nomads often return the favour to Crevan settlements when found. The result is a brutal guerilla war in which the Royal Navy has been forced to use their marines as bodyguards for settlers, attempting seek-and-destroy missions on nomads. These missions are often airborne, seeking nomad convoys in the area and destroying them with extreme prejudice.
Surviving the harsh winters and inhospitable tundras of the continent of Nalmir are the nomadic tribes known as the Khazsanii, a non-unified series of tribes whose way of life is thought to pre-date settlement by over a thousand years. While a hard and dangerous life, the Khazsanii have formed a tightly-bound community and sense of identity through their lifestyle, seeing nomadism as the last refuge of the tribe from the encroaching royal, republican and alien powers alike, and they are willing to defend this refuge with their lives if necessary.
Server-Relevant Information
This section will summarise some of the behaviours and pieces of information that are most typical of a Tajaran raised in a Khazsanii tribe who would be seen in the server’s setting. These are not hard rules, however they are highly advised to be loosely followed for the sake of a coherent story.
- Nomads typically do not engage in Suns Worship, instead worshipping the older faith of the Firdrist Pantheon. Very often, Suns Worship is viewed as the faith of the colonising powers, and the structure of the religion is anti-nomadic due to its centralised clergy.
- Nomads treat Nozhata as a sacred animal, being the key to life when exploring the vast tundras of their inhabited continent. This animal has become their unofficial symbol for this reason.
- Nomad groups are their own tribes, rather than inter-tribal. A nomad will have spent much of their life around their tribe. Some nomad tribes are created from groups of exiles, becoming a sort of found family rather than an ancient tribe.
- Due to their incredibly insular nature, many nomads are unfamiliar with alien customs, to the point that they can rarely even glean from stereotypes. This can seem hostile at first, but they often acclimatise after some time in space.
- Some Nomads come from a space-faring tribe instead, usually a single ship or a small fleet. Space-farers are much more likely to be understanding of various alien cultures and may even have taken in some xenos as their own. These nomads often replace the Nozhata with a bluespace drive as their symbol.
Tribe Versus Nation
Generally speaking, nomads do not live a peaceful existence. It would be considered unusual for a nomad to have never gotten into a firefight on behalf of their tribe, and it is often the fact that tribes will have armoured and motorised sleds alongside their traditional ones intended to provide convoy protection. This militant attitude to their lifestyle is typically front and foremost in anti-tribal propaganda, especially on television, with nomads often being represented as grizzled combat veterans and heretics.
The Free Tajara Republic is far from innocent in terms of crimes against the Khazsanii, their expansion into the coastal regions of the southern arctic circle beginning to destroy the ancestral fishing holes and trade routes that allowed nomads to maintain contact with the settled world. A vast fence and checkpoint system, often nicknamed Revolution’s Death, prevents nomads from entering the borders of the nation without paying a toll and announcing their presence. While erected in the name of supposedly defending the republic from a southern assault, many nomads view it as a way to force them into a more settled life. This typically ends in border skirmishes, sabotage to the fences and incredible amounts of smuggling, with some nomad groups seeing their illegal entry as an excuse to begin smuggling arms and goods in and out of the border without tax or regulation.
Even in space, nomads often face trouble with nations. While ancient prejudices and cultural erasure are often left behind, the new challenge becomes acceptance from the spacefaring nations. Nomad ships and fleets often find that being under neither a Kingdom or Republic banner creates bureaucratic issues that many law-abiding stations and planetary shuttle ports will not bother dealing with. Instead, spacer nomads often rely on criminal and piracy-inclined stations for supplies and work, giving them a dreadful reputation as sell-swords and extralegal ships for hire. The legacy of smuggling supplies over the FTR's border only continues into space.
Nomadic Governments
Tribal politics is a complex matter, as no two tribes can agree on all terms, nor may even be aware of one another’s existence. This means that one cannot simply classify a general rule for what a tribe’s politics are or what even individual members within tribes might think. Every tribe has different wants, needs and methods for getting these things, and while some are more diplomatic than others, violence is never off of the table for these groups.
This has begun to change, however, with the Nozhata Khazsanii (Basic translation: Packmule Nomads). A loose confederation of tribes, their symbol is a black flag with two diamond shaped stars and a contrasting triangle, representing the two suns overhead and the blade of their sleds. Largely a military alliance of tribes, the Nozhata Khazsanii have been labelled a terrorist organisation by the Sacred Kingdom for their use of extreme violence against Crevan settlers, forcing them out of their villages and into the tundra as the buildings are burnt to the ground. The Nozhata Khazsanii’s common argument for these tactics is that it is a measured response against the constant aerial attacks that their caravans have faced.
A Unique Culture
The culture of nomads has often been described as ancient by outsiders, who feel a connection to a deeper ancestral history when interacting. In a way, this is true, with the oldest faith and oldest language spoken on Azunal both being prevalent only in nomad tribes. Their worship of the Firdrist Pantheon is possibly the longest-lasting aspect of Tajara history, with multiple gods dedicated entirely to nomadic culture. Their version of Ornadi is also highly unique to the royal version spoken by nobility on the continent of Vahtul, likely more connected to the ancient roots of the language but also highly prone to tribal dialects and mannerisms.
The centrepoint for nomadic culture is the nozhata, a creature that can best be described as a six-legged polar-bear turned into a pack animal. Being a source of mobility, warm clothing, emergency food and even fertiliser for newly-planted crops, this creature has become the symbol of the nomadic cultures. To describe it as merely a symbol could be considered an understatement, instead a more applicable term would be sacred. The mistreatment or death of a nozhata is considered a great stain on a nomad’s legacy, and in extreme cases may even see a nomad expelled from their community.
Tajara memorialism also has adapted to the mobile lifestyle of nomads. Instead of writing on vast stone walls underground, nomads take their memorials with them on their sleds. The outside of every sled is intricately decorated with artwork, names and legacies, stories told as art, generations painted on the side of their home. These sleds are the most valuable possessions of the tribe, and the loss of a sled outside of an uncontrollable accident is seen as a high crime only worthy of punishment by exile, the ceremony mourning the loss of the sled as a former member becomes no more than the snow on the ground. This memorial tradition goes even further for certain members of the tribe, with the most significant and important of those who were a part of the tribe being remembered through performance arts, re-enacting their greatest moments around great bonfires to the delight of the crowds. Some of this spoken history is rumoured to be hundreds of years old, and so accurate that historians will approach ancient tribes looking for information.
Beyond Azunal
Among some Khazsanii, an idea has taken hold that brings with it the understanding that their way of life on Azunal will soon come to an end, as the nations encroach further and further on their territory. There is a way out, however, for those tribes willing to take the leap and abandon Azunal entirely. These spacefaring nomads have been a growing portion of the population since after the revolution, and their new environment provides an entirely different set of challenges. Acquiring spacecraft is one particularly difficult task, even after a tribe sells everything they have. Whether it’s one large ship or several smaller ships travelling together, these Tajara are often forced to buy the cheapest ships available from whoever is willing to sell to them, leading to an eclectic mix of ships from all species and all shapes and sizes.
On these ships, the traditions that have defined the Khazsanii for generations take on entirely new meanings. In lieu of the Nozhata, the ship’s FTL drive has taken on the significance once ascribed to the animal. The rest of the ship is treated like the sleds of their planetbound counterparts, with halls covered in art, elaborate tales, and memorials to the dead. Exteriors often bear an image or symbol of Semketna, the Firdrist deity of space travel. A significant portion of ships in these fleets are not equipped with reliable gravity generators, leading to a demographic of Offworlder Tajara not too dissimilar from humanity’s own.
Despite the change in environment, the tribes go about their lives as they once did, roaming vast distances and gathering resources when needed, but now with the bounty of entire star systems at their disposal, at least in theory. In practice, the fleets, which stay close to inhabited space out of necessity, are often accused of illegally gathering resources in owned systems, and may also find themselves gambling on whether or not a space station will deny them docking permission. They are not completely isolated, though, and are usually able to find someone willing to aid them in most places. Some nomadic humans and Zakkeran Unathi even find themselves travelling alongside these Tajara, often being treated as friends passing by, but those who stay for at least a year are frequently able to become members of the tribe.