Data Sphere

Hey, i'm highly curious about the fluff of Infinty and especially about the Nomad's as i will mostly/only play them.
I don't want to buy the books yet though and so far haven't found someone near me to lend it, so i wanted to ask if you guys could tell me more about my favorite crazy folk from all the fluff you found/read about so far.
I know that typing up a whole story from the book if such a one exists does take time and is boring, so a summary works too for now and definitely do take your time, it's nothing needed right now but i would love to know more as the fluff on the website is pretty limited and the model specific texts are only giving so much of an idea too.

How much do you know about Nomads? Assuming no prior knowledge:

Unlike traditional planet-based nation-states, Nomads are based on 3 ark-ships - Corregidor, Tunguska and Bakunin. Corregidor started as a cryogenic space prison, I can't remember atm where the other ships came from. What's important is that they have no permanent position, travel from system to system by attaching the ships to Circulars (huge starships that provide wormhole-based inter-system communication), and exist by the grace of O-12 (space UN), a healthy dose of bribery and blackmail, and their own sheer will to live.

The defining Nomad attribute is independence. All ships' communities started as rebels one way or another, and they don't want to go back to the ordered nanny states, especially now that there's the all-seeing eye of the AI watching everywhere. Nomads are the centre of anti-ALEPH movement, they have their own info-network (they rely mainly on their Arachne instead of the ALEPH-controlled Maya that's used in most of the Human Sphere) and consider the AI a Skynet waiting for its chance.

Each of the ships has its own different way of life:
Corregidor started as a prison and survived by hiring themselves for any kind of zero-G tech job, so they're hardened, no-nonsense and the harshest motherfuckers in space. Think oil-rig workers crossed with the Lunar colony of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. They still survive by being the best at space construction and EVA tech, as well as being fiercely protective of their own workers and interests (e.g. if you hire a Nomad team to overhaul your space station's systems, you might count on one of them being a disguised Intruder assigned there to evacuate the team in case the employer wanted to screw them over).
Bakunin became a refuge for all kinds of misfits, revolutionaries, freaks, religious fanatics, mutants, mad scientists, and pretty much anyone who wanted out and could pay for a module. The golden rule is "we don't care what you do inside your module as long as you behave in common zones and don't jeopardize the ship". There's probably a form of every weird ideology/religion/social movement in there. Two places you might hear about are Vaudeville (the common zones where the modules' inhabitants mingle, creating a very weird culture and a tremendous influence on Human Sphere's fashion trends) and Praxis (which is where the more serious misfits tend to end up; black laboratories where ethics is optional and less important than progress itself - and progress is defined in very strange ways. That's where weird Bakunin units (Chimeras/Pupniks) come from, it's likely that Morlocks' mutagenic drugs came from there as well.) Oh, and there's the Observance. It's an offshoot of the Catholic Church - after the pope decided to accept the AI and the resurrection process, there was a schism. What resulted is a female-dominated (Sin-Eaters do penance partly for being male) sect with a different martyr cult (st. Mary of the Knife, IIRC) with extreme rites and beliefs (return to flagellation and the like).
Tunguska doesn't have a sectorial yet so it's less-known, but it's the hub of data collection and manipulation. Basically a hacker paradise, tax heaven, data repository for hire, profably with origins in Russian Mafia.

Not gonna describe the units, you play them so you know them

Inter-faction relations: hostile to , major powers ( ) treat Nomads as a pest that's too costly to remove and can be useful once in a while, gets some higher tech from them, friendly to and on the basis that minor powers have to keep together lest they be devoured by the political giants. Nomads actually provided tech and training on the cheap to during the Commercial Wars and helped push a bill recognizing its sovereignty through O-12, to avoid a nasty precedent of stepping on the little guys.

Not sure what more I should say. Ask and I'll answer.

Pierzasty does a good job there,

As I recall, Tunguska was built by various criminal enterprises who wanted to avoid being controlled/eliminated by ALEPH, and quickly became the galaxy's hub for illegal, illicit information and finance. Implications are that there is an even shadier faction within Tunguska called the 'black hand' or similar.
Of course all of the best information specialists gravitated there and they are responsible for keeping ALEPH out of the future 'dark web'.

On Coreggidor, you work for O2. People who can't work get spaced, so there's no retirement for the old and infirm. This of course means survival of the fittest, and given the nature of their ship it explains why they have the best zero-g workers and some pretty novel technology.

Most Nomad equipment is scrounged from the major powers, (e.g. their 'Reptile series' TAGs are defunct models that PanO rejected as useless) which are repaired and often improved in ways that the original designers never thought of.

The major powers still have dealings with the nomads largely because they make use of their services - they are the best space workers (Coreggidor) come up with some of the best inventions (Bakunin) and offer illicit services that are out of sight of ALEPH.

The minor powers like the Nomads because of mutual self-interest. The nomads as already mentioned have helped the Ariadnans gain independence and helped Haqqislam to defend themselves and the silk trade.

Occasionally the three ships get together and have a big party/'parliament' (for lack of a better term) called a Krug. They make decisions, which are largely driven by Tunguska.

Character-wise; Senor Massacre is a Nomad originally, and learned his skills in the Coreggidor gladiatorial rings. I'm pretty sure that Achilles led a strike on one of the Nomad ships (stands to reason this was Bakunin) that got repelled by the Observance.
Avicenna was allegedly an ALEPH construct intended to infiltrate Haqqislam, but was re-programmed by the Nomads (as a result she will work for Bakunin as a merc)
Likewise, William Wallace was a reconstruction intended to infiltrate and subvert Ariadna but was re-programmed for them by the Nomads.
ISTR that Lupe Balboa and Thrasymedes do the dance with no pants occasionally.

ALEPH is probably the only human power actively seeking the destruction of the Nomads, because it can't control them. The others either tolerate them (PanO/Yu-Jing) or rely on them to survive (Ariadna, Haqq).