Sun Jul 03, 2005 6:01 am by Codename
As promised, my idea...
So we know that the Nomads are guardians of some sort. Yet they also seem to be "unintelligent, but definitely sentient and primal beings". However, that did not stop them from initiating an exceedingly well-planned takeover of the Rheinland government. I would say that's hardly the work of unintelligent beings. There is a bit of a disconnect here, imo.
So how to solve it? Well, we're told that the Nomads were created by the DK to act as guardians and caretakers. Now, if we make the reasonable assumption that the DK are very advanced, we can safely go a step further. The "Nomads" as we knew them in Freelancer proper are not one homogeneous group. We can say that there are three tiers or castes in a hierarchical system.
The bottom level will be the actual Nomads. These will be the primal, unintelligent organisms which function as drones, essentially. There will also be lots of them. They can be controlled through the manipulation of certain artifacts. We know Mason and his merry band of megalomaniacs have some such artifacts, which explains the limited degree of control he can exert of some of them.
Next level will be the “specialist Nomads”. If there's a problem that a drone can't fix, the second tier Nomads will be responsible. These guys would actually fit the TGL bill quite well, I think. There won't be a whole lot of them, but they'll have intelligence enough to question their orders if they don't seem to make sense. And, since they are technically-minded to a large degree, (to fit in with FA's idea) they will be impressed by human achievements. Of course they'll also be stuck because they can't openly rebel. They neither have numbers nor power on their side, at least not initially.
The highest level will be the “managers”, for lack of a batter way of describing it. These'll be the ones who are supposed to control the drones though use of whatever artifacts and such are necessary. They'll also be the ones who planned and executed much (if not all) of the covert operations in Freelancer itself. Make no mistake, these guys are smart and they know humanity is a threat to their own power. That's why they fought us.
Now that the background is sort of out of the way, I'll describe the current situation.
There are still craploads of drone Nomads. Some were sucked away at the Dyson Sphere but most were left behind. We see them in the Omicrons. The specialists are also around, to a degree. Again, some were lost in the final battle of FL, but there are plenty who weren't in the Sphere at the time. The managers, however, are all but gone. The Dyson Sphere would have been their base of operations. The only ones outside of it would have been those tasked to possess certain humans. So essentially the Nomads are headless.
What this means is that the drones will work with their last orders – probably something along the lines of “kill all humans” - but won't do so in a very effective way. At least, that's what'll happen until Mason comes along and starts playing puppet master.
The specialists, free from having to worry about being attacked by the managers or drones for insubordination, will band together and try to ally with the humans (as the TGL do in FA's idea).
Does this make sense to anyone other than me?