Bandit Nomads

The Bandit nomads were a series of loose nomadic tribes that dominated Western Occentia during the Era of City States.

Origin
The Bandit Nomads originated during the Bronze Age Collapse. As part of the massive upheaval of the world order, combined with a harsh drought and constant uprisings and wars, the vast majority of cities and towns were abandoned or destroyed, creating a huge number of refugees that formed packs and moved from city to city trying to find a new home. Unfortunately, they frequently ended up razing cities that refused to take them, creating even more refugees and causing thousands of deaths. The cities that could afford it started hastily erecting defenses and walls and tried to defend against the refugees, causing skirmishes. Eventually, no city remained that was willing to take them.

Transition
With nowhere left for them to go, any attempt to settle and found new towns typically resulted in failure as another pack of migrants would ultimately flood the town and destroy it. So they kept wandering, adrift with nowhere to go. they would try to live off of food they gathered from the environment, as well as trying to raid what they could off of the remaining cities. They slowly forgot that they were ever part of settled civilization, and the cities started to see them as increasingly foreign and became ever more afraid of them over time. The term "bandit nomad" first appears about a century after the collapse.

Dominance
The Bandit nomads became incredibly hostile towards the city-states, and they would attack, kill and steal from any city folk they found. this included razing the farms on the outskirts of each city, making farming an incredibly risky investment, as well as attacking and killing any travelers who ventured too far from the walls. This was the main cause for the severe isolation of the city-states during this period. the cities often portrayed the bandit nomads as evil gods who strangled the cities within an inch of their life.

Decline
As the cities slowly built up their technology and improved their skills, they started to be able to, with great difficulty, fight off the nomads. the citizens of the cities started getting better at hiding from them, though the bandit nomads still mostly dominated city state life. It wasn't until the Mercenary corps was founded that the bandit nomads really started to decline. The corps became the first force to properly challenge the bandit nomads rule and they were ill equipped to resist. the huge profits that the mercenary corps made contributed to it's explosive growth and it became more and more dangerous for the bandit nomads to be around certain areas. they gradually began to recede over the course of just over a decade, finally disappearing in around 8BF.