So, who the hell's this Nomad person??

Character name: Nomad

True name: Emily Vance

Age at first appearance in the series: 20-40 years (how much exactly? keep in mind when she would have arrived and that aging has been quite reduced at this time)

Origin: (Will figure out completely later.) A number of years (how many?) prior to David's arrival on Novusvita, Emily was a colonist (what division did she work in? (Exobiology, geology, tech, diplomacy, defence, etc.) in Aristotle, the south-most human colony on Novusvita, located in Cul'tun'ji territory on Gharo'zaghira. She and a number of other colonists went on an expidition (exploratory, research-related or otherwise?) into the polar mainland and never returned. All signals from their vehicle, PDA's and nanomites also inexplicable ceased, making it near impossible for them to be found (or so everyone else was told? Conspiracy theory maybe...). Just prior to or at the time of going missing, the expedition discovered or was on the verge of discovering something epic (a crashed Jaylen ship in the ice, perhaps? Maybe whatever they found was the reason for the expedition in the first place). Whatever transpired (what exactly did?), all the expedition members died, except Emily (and maybe one or two others, but they would later die as well), who was later rescued from the tundra by a group of Zen'ji (the Oivah'ji? A Col'tun'ji caravan that had passed by chance? Natives who were led there by intrigue for the human presence in the area? Someone else entirely?). Whatever exactly happened to Emily, she never trusted the Colonial Authority ever again (why?) and took on a nomadic lifestyle among the Zen'ji (maybe even creating her own human/translator or, maybe more likely, having a Zen'ji companion who could do the translating for her). She also took on the name Nomad. She has been discovered (through rumour and sightings) by the Colonial Authority, who possibly now pursue her and have also taken to calling her Nomad, as her true identity is unknown to her. At some point, she encountered/met/found/was contacted by the Oivah'ji and joined them (how'd this happen??).

Portrayal: She travels with a huge rucksack of supplies, a hoverbike and two adorable little spider droids that help defend her and repair each other or her bike if needed (all of which are originally from the exploration-or-whatever party's supplies). She travels Novusvita nomadically (hence her nickname) and is a very enigmatic figure and known throughout quite a few tribal communities where she'll trade for food or even live with the natives for a while. She's generally pretty badass, an excellent fighter and an expert in fending for herself (which includes knowing what Novusvitan foods a human can eat). She wears these epic goggles and a multitude of blankets and garments over her Hexsuit (making her look like someone living through a nuclear war), as said suit stopped working long ago (though she managed to keep the breather working and still wear the suit for defense (as it serves as an excellent armour)). Seeing as the members of the missing exploration party were never found, Nomad could be any one of them and I'm also going to refer to her as "he" until her identity isrevealed (which will be one of those "OMG it's a girl!!" moments for added epicness).

Role: So far she's sorta going to be the Oivah'ji representative for David and Priantos (Book II) and will also serve as an enigma element for the series. She's also Steven's brother and considers him an ally "on the inside" (though she contacts him in secret, he doesn't ever seem to be able to pinpoint her location and she's made it clear that she can't afford to be found (this will also kinda make Steven seem like a good guy until I demolish that notion completely with the events of Book III) and will sort of drive David to distrusts the Colonial Authority even more (given that he's already discovered that they've been keeping epic secrets from everyone), but I really have nothing more than that. I need to figure out her role in such a way that she can be a POV character in all three novels. Most pressingly, I need to figure out what she'll be doing in Book I.


So, any ideas or suggestions? I'd like to discuss her role in the first book and her story in general after we figure out who she really is.

Well if they go on an expedition she could be a Xenobotanist (Exobotanist? Doesn't sound right...) and they could be looking for a plant rumoured by Xen'ji that exists on the ice. She and others were obviously excited about this possible discovery, of a plant that can exist in such extreme conditions and the possible ramifications of its study.

Alternatively, she could be a techy who just so happened to be performing maintainence on the colony's radars when one of them suddenly picked up a signal, which then disappeared just as quickly as it appeared. Upon further examination the signal is like nothing else known to man, not of man's machines or of naturally occurring rays, and they find that it originated from the polar mainland. So an expedition goes there to discover what it was.

Quote :

Alternatively, she could be a techy who just so happened to be
performing maintainence on the colony's radars when one of them suddenly
picked up a signal, which then disappeared just as quickly as it
appeared. Upon further examination the signal is like nothing else known
to man, not of man's machines or of naturally occurring rays, and they
find that it originated from the polar mainland. So an expedition goes
there to discover what it was.

I approve of this development!!

I vote some or other Jaylen artifact or perhaps a crashed Jaylen ship (from the War of Shadow)

Crashed Jaylen ship would be neat. Automated distress signal or something that randomly turned on and off, perhaps?

Maybe Nomad concluded that the signal - of no apparent use and unlikely to have resulted from a malfunctioned, given the level of technology - was intended to bring her there and start her on her own journey. The ship may have also reacted to her presence somehow, which would later lead her to believe that she's the Third. Or something.

What exactly transpired at the crash site, though? After what happened, most of the party's tech would have stopped working (destroyed, maybe?) and all but Nomad and maybe one or two others would be dead.

Perhaps. But why would it want to bring her there if she wasn't the Third? And how would it react, and why?

Destroyed would be neat, but I don't really see what would have happened there to destroy it.

The Jaylen may have foreseen her as part of what should transpire, despite her not actually being one of the three.

The ship may react by activating or something by her touch or presence. All it has to do is, well, do something in response to her (it would seem).

Maybe the Jaylen ship sends out some kinda blast or something (a malfunctioning defense mechanism). The deactivation of any kind of tracking tech may have been deliberately done by the Colonial Authority or a member thereof, though. Nomad would try calling for help after the "accident" or whatever, but would find their comm tech mysteriously incapable of finding, sending or receiving any signals. (To make the Authority seem slightly less evil, they may have assumed that whatever the Jaylen tech did killed the whole party and merely chose not to retrieve the bodies or wreckage (fabricating the whole "gone missing" thing) as to keep the Jaylen under wraps.) Also, the crashed Jaylen ship would've malfunctioned because, well, it crashed and would thus be damaged by default (not by the crash, but by whatever caused it to crash (an attack from other Jaylen tech during the War of Shadow)).

These Jaylen fellows are pretty smart, it seems.

Sounds neat.

Indeed and glad you like it.


Now I/we just need to figure out Nomad's purpose / POV-story in Book I...


Edit: Here are some ideas (in rough order of occurrence):
-Nomad will start out riding on her hoverbike through the iced-over valleys of the Great Cyro Mountains (in other words, from the Oivah'ji capitol).
-She'll visit Jin at one point and observe the human base there for a while without being detected (so that I wouldn't have to explain at the end of the book why there were humans at Jin before the Brotherhood got there and slayed them all).
-She's going to meet up with Lash'irr at some point and discuss Oivah'ji matters (but in such a way that it can be mistaken as Brotherhood concerns) in order to mask her motives in at least the first book.
-She's going to follow/spy on Priantos and Tiard on part of their journey to Jin.
-As the civil war starts to happen, she'll chose to shift her attention to saving as many innocent lives as possible.
-Also civil war related, she may acquaint herself with a member of the Greyskin family leading the rebellion, which will both give the view into the civil war I originally wanted to give with a Greyskin character and make for quite an interesting / morally challenging situation(s) in Book II for said Greyskin character.

Some notes:
-I think I'll have her travel with some Zen'ji guy (I'm thinking a exiled Iga'ji ambassador for some reason) who'll act as her translator. He's probably gonna be killed by the Greyskin Rebellion when Nomad get's captured in Book II.
-A few times she's going to contact Steven (who's now going to be a comms-guy at Darwin) on a secure channel he set up. Steven, I'm sure I've mentioned, is going to be Nomad's brother (which I'll reveal later) and will supply her with intell while she keeps him up to date with her doings. In Book III it'll be revealed that he's actually a double agent for the Brotherhood, who he's been feeding Oivah'ji info from Nomad.
-I intend to write Nomad's POV in such a way as to avoid having to refer to her as he/she/it, in order to keep her gender (and thus identity) a mystery until Book II or III.

That sounds neat. As would an exiled Iga'ji ambassador. I guess that'd sorta make it seem more like she's with the Brotherhood, what with going around with an Iga'ji guy and all.

Yeah, I suppose I'll be giving that general impression in the first book. She's also gonna secretly pay a surprise visit to Lash'irr, which will also help steer readers to the conclusion that Nomad's part of the Brotherhood. That'll probably also confuse the hell outa them, considering she's human.

It would, it would.

You could, perhaps, have the TCA's 'Xenoarchaeology' department, and Emily was part of the team that discovered something revolutionary in the polar region? And then the TCA decided that it was too dangerous to let said revelation be revealed to the public, and so the team needed to be disposed of? Just an idea. What do you think?

That's pretty much the idea at the moment, only the TRC had from the beginning that what the team would be investigating would be confidential (the Jaylen ruins are the main reasons for human presence on the planet - the abundant life and whatnot just makes the perfect cover, which is why Novusvita was chosen to be settled on as apposed to other planets on which artifacts of past Jaylen presence would be found (I won't go into more detail with this right now, as it would require a paragraph as apposed to a bit of parenthesis)). The Jaylen wreckage Emily's team was investigating, however, reacted violently to their presence (supposedly a malfunctioning defense mechanism or weapon), killed/obliterating the whole team with the exception of Emily, who not only somehow survived, but gained psychokinetic abilities (that would, once found by the Oivah'ji, lead her to believe that she's one of the Three). The TRC simply covered the whole thing up (putting the blame on a tragic transport malfunction), though did find traces of a survivor (though had no way of knowing which team member survived). For this reason, the TRC was/is desperately looking for this enigmatic (and now rogue) survivor. Officially, Emily is declared dead along with the rest of her team (which she discovered from Steven, her brother, who is keeping her continued survival and activities secret).

Fair enough. But if you're going down that route, why did the Jaylen wreckage react violently and try and kill the team? And how, in the process of that, does Emily first survive and second learn some horrific revelation that turns her against the TCA? Since, if the TCA are intended to be 'evil', as the OP would perhaps suggest, then I'm not really seeing how this situation lends any weight to that.

The team were tampering with it, believing it "dead" (really not an inept assumption, given that its been lying around for centuries and showed no readable energy levels), and the contact reawakened it. The last time it was active, it was in a war, so its defense systems kicked in. Why the wreckage behaved that way is irrelevant, but it's wasn't at the direction of the Jaylen, if that's what you're asking.

Emily could have been a safe distance from the wreckage or, as I'm inclined to have it be, the one who activated the wreckage and so safe from its attack (with the latter possibility, she would have been inside the wreckage at the time, and the attack would therefor not have been a defense mechanism to kill whatever was inside, but a shield of some kind - the last thing the wreckage remembered doing before it was shot down). Alternatively (and contradicting my original plans), the Jaylen could have planned for the wreckage to kill everyone except Emily, as she would be essential to the coming war and the death of her teammates and the TCA's subsequent actions thereto would be the perfect push for her.

I'm honestly still working on the "horrific revelation". I'm thinking something along the lines of an Authority search party being dispatched to the wreckage, and some guy (likely Rodrick Jensen or otherwise some unnamed Authority representative) would react very apathetically to this and, when its discovered that someone survived, order the survivor to be captured or killed if capture becomes difficult. Nomad would overhear this from behind cover (either the wreckage's high energy interference was hiding her presence or she was unknowingly using some newly acquired cloaking ability ("Jaylen power")). After a few weeks she would have finally gotten her communicator working again (though another ability, perhaps?) and would contact Steven, her brother in Darwin, via his secret secure channel (he works in the comms department, so I'm sure he'll have something like that for emergencies). After explaining everything to him, he'd tell her that she died with the rest of her team in a fatal transport malfunction, according to the TCA. He'll later hack into the TCA's network and discover the whole Jaylen research thing, the true reasons for human presence on the planet and that the Authority are still looking for the survivor, and send said information to her. So that's basically what happened, I guess.

The TCA aren't really "evil", they just work by hidden agendas and make it among their top priorities to keep those agendas hidden. They will never really be portrayed as "good" either, though.

Thanks for the clarification; the idea makes more sense now.

Cool. ^^

I presume she'll just be mentioned in passing in the first book?

She's in the second chapter. She actually has a POV in each book.

Okay, then you'll probably want to start ironing out the last few details surrounding her, since she appears straight away.

I don't reveal her identity until midway through Book II. I won't even reveal that she's female until then. So until Book II, her past is irrelevant.