Shattergrounds – The Nomad Story

One of the wonderful things about the campaign is the stories that come out of it. Here is an incomplete record of events as told from the Nomad point of view.

I reached out to the Nomad community for pointers to their battle reports and a brief summary of events. I’ve used those summaries as well as my own recollections of events as one of the organizers of the Nomad faction this year alongside Fuwafuwaru to generate the following content.

A big thank you to all the Nomad players in the campaign for staying positive, making great memes, and enjoying the sense of community and united purpose that these campaigns bring. Big shout out to Lady Numiria for being such a wonderful sport and engaging with the Nomad propaganda machine in a fun and positive way and giving as good as she got!

We Nomads wish O-12 and their newfound life partners, the Combined Army, the best of luck! I hope you enjoy the crazy Nomad antics!

Combat Event Summary

Quantum Anomalies appear. PanOceanian uses the chaos to capture a number of Nomad pilots, in particular dolphins, orcas, and cephalopods and begin performing experiments. Pilot First Class Bubbles was one of the captured personnel:

The data from these experiments cannot be extricated easily off-planet because of the jamming from the Shimmering Sky project, so ALEPH and PanOceanian operatives are extracting data modules hidden in sand castles. The Bianca island sand castle competition is an excellent cover for this:

While Fusilier Angus’s sand castle was a legitimate entry, it was destroyed by Nomad operatives attempting to prevent data exfiltration. Nomad operatives move to control the beach and carefully inspect all sand castles.

The crew of the Hasselhoff infiltrate a research facility and identify the locations and disposition of multiple captured pilots. The Montalban metro system is commandeered by Nomad forces to aid in pilot extraction. This same system is valiantly defended by Nomad forces against a Military Orders attack.

With an avenue of escape secure, multiple Nomad Military Force teams are inserted to rescue several pilots from these PanOceanian research facilities. Not all attempts are successful, but the dolphin pilot 37713 is successfully reunited with their Morlock lover, the Beluga Norbert is extracted by the 404th platoon, and Cassandra Kusanagi herself rescues PFC Bubbles.

As the campaign moved into Phase II, Kusanagi and forces from the Amethyst Sky coordinate the rescue of the remaining pilots. Attention turns to the Yacht Club at Montalban, where spies wielding figurative cloaks and literal daggers mingle with the high society of the Human Sphere. While some NMF personnel simply commandeer yachts and celebrate the rescue of their pilots:

Mary Problems is captured, Lady Numiria attempts to interrogate Bran in his sickbed, and some Ariadna Worker Union members are assassinated. Nomad operatives are engaged in all the active zones of the conflict, but much of the NMF attention is on coordinating the rescue of the pilots and events at the yacht club.

Politics Event Summary

Nomad News Network

Wu Yan Desalination Plant

As with the last campaign and the Vikruti Beach location, there was a secret theatre to be fought over!

Player Submissions

SpeculaKilla

Tunguskan Interventor Specula Killa uncovered a conspiracy involving Moto.tronic executive Declan Gray and the Evolved Intelligence. Is he a posthuman representing ALEPH, a defense contractor double dealing on behalf of his Megacorp, or just a freaky ultra rich out for personal gain?

Chapter 1: Slick Burned

Chapter 2: Duplicitous Liaisons

Desagnes

Operation W.A.G.M.I

8 Working Angel CRRRC are deployed to respond to the attack on Nomad labs in Montalban. They secure the facility but PanO manages to kidnap some pilots, including 37713, who has been catfishing resident Working Angel and Morlock Up Yours for WhaleCoin

Operation Seavangelist

Following the crypto trail leads to WhaleCoin’s founder and Seastedder, Gerard Dolfine, brother of famous sensa-series star Andrew Dolfine of Sea & Stars fame, and infamous tech bro, WhaleCoin founder and Seastedder. In truth, Gerard had been replaced by an ex-Equinox member who fell into a crypto rabbit hole. His operation was shut down by the Nomads and Haqq, but he managed to escape. Unfortunately, the Bakunian criminals he used had a dark sense of humor and put him in a dolphin Lhost. Up Yours tries to infiltrate to gather info but the mission falls apart due to Hassassin intervention. Haqqislam provides the Working Angels intel of the location of the pilot to avoid as an apology and to avoid a diplomatic incident.

Operation Highway of Love

Following the intel leads them to Edda where the Nomads stage a raid on a facility where they test TAGs operated by the Tikbalang Test Team. They manage to hold off the PanOceanians for long enough to save the pilots, but Up Yours gets injured by an Uhlan and the Nomads are forced to leave 37713’s illicit WhaleCoin gains. Still, the lovers are reunited and begin plans for their next crypto grift, Ur-Coin.

DeliverThisDough

Nomads Take Montalban Metro

Securing the metro allowed for evac of pilots and movement of nomad forces in montalban, and receiving deliveries of sardines from okolnir.

No Metro Assault Repelled

MO tried to take it back, but failed lol

Shots Break Out Between Nomad Escort and Starmada Security at Montalban

nomad delegates were at the yacht club attempting to generate positive PR for the nomad’s cause and paint it in a good light, otherwise condemming PanO for the experiments. O-12 forces attempted to assassinate the HVTs (and did).

Was going to log at least one more batrep with another O-12 player where I’d (hopefully) secure more hvts and make it look like O-12 was politically backing said experiments

borisgreymenace

Punching Up

Wherein black hand agent Boris loses and recovers Mary Problems, but it was all a trick to get a deep cover agent infiltrated into ALEPH.

Complex Inferiority

A planned extraction of Orca Uplifts goes wrong when an EXXO Genetic Algoritms underwater facility is damaged and begins flooding. A Tunguskan and Steel Phalanx teams are forced to fight over an emergency escape module. Despite eliminating most of the Homeridae Aspects, only Mary Problems and two Myrmidons are able to flee the scene.

Unsportsmanlike Conduct at the Yacht Club

In an effort to ascertain the whereabouts of Mary Problems, a second strike team is dispatched to Lorena to infiltrate an ALEPH datanode with a viral worm meant to ferret out mentions of Mary’s capture. Despite the sudden appearance of a new cloned Lhost of the previous team’s commander and some timely intervention from DI Jelena Kovac, the Tunguskan team is nearly swept from the field by Achilles, barely managing to deploy their quantronic virus in time.

Saving Private Problems

The infiltration of the quantronic virus pays dividends, revealing an undercover Bureau Toth agent that is going to review Mary’s detention. When the Toth agent goes to delegate summit at the Montalbán Yacht Club, a Tunguskan team is dispatched to eliminate the agent in order to insert a doppelganger at the ALEPH detention facility and free Mary Problems. Secondarily they must extract a MagnaObra executive who is really a Nomad mole. A friendly rivalry between Wolfgang and Raoul Spector sees the mission done.

With Mary now freed, the Tunguskan team must now get her exfiltrated using fabricated diplomatic crentials at Bleriot Airport. They face down an Asura in the rescue the at the cost of Securitate.

Razek (CSU Larry)

Episode 1: Rapture

CSU Larry and the crew of the Hasselhoff embark on an infiltration mission into the underwater research facilities of Montalban via remote submarines. The team encounters an Ariadnan security division tasked with sweeping the Q.A.Z damaged sub decks of the station and scrubbing the valuable data stored in a crypto-vault. 

Led by a charge from the Observance Stigmaton ‘Her Enlightened Siren’, the Nomads clear the deck and extract the data in the vault. The data they recovered contained information regarding the capture of Nomad pilots, including the location and details of their containment facilities. 

With one of their submarines being damaged during the approach to Montalban, the team was forced to secure a cargo elevator that led to an auxiliary landing pad on the ocean surface. They secured it and masked the cameras and sensors around the pad so it could be used for future infiltration.

Episode 2: Bloodsport

Back aboard the Hasselhoff, a quintuplet troupe of Tunguska Cheerkillers joined the crew. Their father, a Tunguskan billionaire and entrepreneur, just so happened to be a massive fan of the Nomad Nation’s Meta-Chem Wrestling league Krugmania. With Larry being the current Kruggernaut, the league champion, the philanthropist saw an opportunity to spotlight the man and make him an Arachne star, so he offered to bankroll the Hasselhoff’s activities and insert his five identical daughters in the crew to oversee his rise to stardom. 

A sudden mission was dropped on the Hasselhoff as Nomad High Command ordered them to assault Montalban in earnest and fight their way to the containment facilities. With the Hasselhoff running simultaneous ops all around Concilium as part of the Q.A.Z relief, the manpower was stretched then, and a hodge-podge team was hastily assembled for the op. The team infiltrated Montalban using the auxiliary landing pad they secured during the last op. 

When they arrived, they did so with a bang, forcing their way with guns blazing to the pilot containment facilities. With the vanguard assault taken care of, the Nomad Military’s regular forces swooped in and gained control of the sector, facilitating the extraction of the kidnapped pilots via the mag-train route secured by another commander.

Episode 3: Wetwork

With the pilots secured, the Hasselhoff was then tasked with preventing this scenario from happening again. Given the engagements with Ariadna, and the proximity of the pilots’ territorial waters being in range of Okolnir, an ariadnan controlled facility, the Hasselhoff determined that the data on the pilots’ whereabouts at sea was being collected and discreetly sold to PanOceania. 

Interventor Petra and CSU Larry took part in an op to infiltrate Okolnir, locate the data, and scrub any and all copies of it from the master database, giving the uncaptured pilots reprieve and sanctuary from the abductions. A hurricane was rolling in, and much of the facility’s staff had gone to ground to weather the storm. 

A chance encounter with a familiar Ariadnan from the Kurage Crisis blew the team’s cover, and things quickly went from a quiet op to a loud one. The team fought tooth and nail to get to the server nodes that contained data, nearly failing at their task as enemies closed in on them from all sides. With their egress vehicle shot to hell, the team requested a shuttle extraction from the Hasselhoff. They secured a landing site and waited for the shuttles to arrive. 

On their way, one shuttle was shot down by Okolnir’s air defenses while another one was forced to remain landed to not get shot down itself. With only one shuttle, the team couldn’t extract in their entirety, and so they loaded their dead and wounded and went back in to disable the air defenses to allow the shuttle to escape the planet.

Episode 4: On Death’s Door

The team, bolstered by the extraction team’s manpower from the surviving shuttle, fought their way to Okolnir’s central operations tower. They aggressively took control of the operation’s room and remotely overloaded Okolnir’s power plant, blacking out the station and shutting down the air defenses. With the skies no longer covered by air defense, the shuttle lifted off and escaped the rampaging, intensifying hurricane. 

Now stranded with no way out, the team took a moment to assess their options, which were admittedly quite limited. While staring out of the tower’s main window, Larry took in the view of the hurricane now that there was no light pollution from the facility, and he discovered the cause of the massive hurricane. 

Gone undetected by all sensors and visually obscured from the storm, was a Quantum Anomaly in the form of a singularity looming in the sky as it consumed a nearby mountain. The anomaly was drifting toward Okolnir, putting the team on the clock to find a way out. Petra was reminded by Larry that, after the Durgama Incursion, O-12 had ordered all settlements on Concilium Prima to have accessible emergency evacuation shuttles at the ready. 

The team quickly made their way to the nearest shuttle, intent of commandeering it for themselves to make their mistake. At the launch site, the team encountered a squad of ariadnan troops looking to take the shuttle for themselves as well. The firefight was quick and brutal, leading to most of the Nomad team being killed or severely wounded. 

Out of options, Petra ordered the surrender. CSU Larry, Interventor Petra, Marco Martinez of the Mobile Brigada Corps, and Reverend Healer Sherry were captured, and their whereabouts are currently unknown.

VeryFastPanda

• 404 Independent Platoon raided a MotoTronica underwater laboratory and saved the Beluga uplifted pilot Norbert.
• The facility was being abandoned by the corporation: being very close to the Montalban QAZ, it suffered critical damage from the anomalies.
• The JSA mercenaries overseeing its decommissioning were defeated, but allowed to safely leave with their wounded.

Tristan228

Holidays Are Over

• Maj Hademar’s task force gets called out of their vacation leave. Meeting the new ones in Bakunin, Uhahu & Denma, whilst being aggressively approaches by some “abominable snowmen” aka. PanO’s Winter Force.
• Riot Grrl fires the first documented shot of the campaign, kills a Karhu

As if we were called to the headmaster

• The TF gets called to Edda for some investigation of the previous fight but gets ambushed by some space monkeys
• Morats are defeated, Bran who seized the enemy’s beacon has to be interviewed

Hectooooooooor – the Trauma

• Bran got xeno-Monkey Pox therefore has to be quarantined.
• O-12’s High Commander Lady Numiria pays a visit to Montalbán to maybe get information from Bran there.
• Hector, the abominable Aleph plastic greek he is, goes mad in sight of all the Nomads
• Maj. Hademar dies whilst trying to defeat Hector in a heroic intervention after almost all of the Bakunians he knew died to that wanker

In your face, Saladin!

• High Commander Lady Numiria sticks her Nose into Nomad affairs again. This time without Hector.
• PanO researchers can be uncovered by both parties.
• Uhahu saves the day.
• Revenge driven Moira kills Saladin in lieu of Hector for the death of her venerated Sister

WiseKensai

Steel Sandcastle

Steel Sandcastle

Cassandra Kusanagi and a hastily assembled team intercept and prevent an ALEPH attempt to extract data from PanO experiments on Nomad pilots. This also involves the destruction of a sandcastle and a number of key ALEPH personalities are sent packing.

Gator Wrestling

Gator Wrestling

Clued into the location of Private First Class Bubbles by the crew of the Hasslehoff, a Nomad dolphin pilot, Cassandra Kusanagi and crew embark on a rescue mission. A group of Dahshat mercenaries are in their way but are summarily dispatched.

Big Druze Energy

Big Druze Energy

While securing the Montalban area, Kusanagi intercepts a Druze contingent hell bent on assassinating some Ariadna Worker Union members. The team is unsuccessful in saving the AWU personnel, but successfully disrupt the other Druze objectives.

Express Panda

Express Panda

WiseKensai himself inserts with a team of C.R.A.S.H.E.R.s in a daring orbital drop to rescue a third AWU member from ALEPH custody.

Meme Collection

Since memes are shared from all over, I’m not 100% sure where all these are from–I definitely did not make all of these. Thanks to all the Nomad propagandists as well as the talented artists we riffed off of.