Diesel Jock
Nomad Strain
You hear them before you see them. The low growl of an engine, the crunch of tires on broken road, the sharp smell of diesel exhaust that other Strains find choking and Diesel Jocks breathe like air. Because for them, it is. Their respiratory systems have been reshaped by the Infection to filter toxic fumes, airborne particulates, and the poisoned atmosphere of exhaust-choked caravans. Their hands are calloused and tough, tendons fortified through generations of mechanical labor into grips that can hold a wrench through a fourteen-hour repair session or a steering wheel through a high-speed chase without faltering.
Diesel Jocks turned vehicular survival into a culture and then into a religion. When the Fall began, their ancestors loaded what they could carry into whatever would drive and fled. Fortification meant standing still, and standing still meant dying. Over generations, that desperate mobility solidified into something permanent: clans built around their vehicles, oral codes passed down as essential teachings, and a bond between driver and machine that outsiders find difficult to comprehend and Diesel Jocks find difficult to explain.
The vehicle is not property. It is identity. A Diesel Jock's ride is an extension of their body, their home, and their place in the clan. The scrapyard rite of passage, in which a young Diesel Jock must build their first vehicle from salvage in a designated yard, is the closest thing the Strain has to a coming-of-age ceremony. Those scrapyards are sacred and secret; outsiders are not welcome. The finished vehicle is not merely transportation. It is proof that the builder belongs.
Among the Nomads, Diesel Jocks are the road warriors: fiercely loyal to clan and friends, skilled negotiators and traders, deeply suspicious of outsiders who have not earned their trust. Picking up strangers is considered an ill omen, and the bond between a driver and their vehicle is rarely extended to anyone who has not proven themselves worthy of riding alongside. Their oral code emphasizes fair dealing, tight social bonds, independence from outsiders, and perpetual forward motion. To stop is to be vulnerable. The road is life.
Diesel Jocks turned vehicular survival into a culture and then into a religion. When the Fall began, their ancestors loaded what they could carry into whatever would drive and fled. Fortification meant standing still, and standing still meant dying. Over generations, that desperate mobility solidified into something permanent: clans built around their vehicles, oral codes passed down as essential teachings, and a bond between driver and machine that outsiders find difficult to comprehend and Diesel Jocks find difficult to explain.
The vehicle is not property. It is identity. A Diesel Jock's ride is an extension of their body, their home, and their place in the clan. The scrapyard rite of passage, in which a young Diesel Jock must build their first vehicle from salvage in a designated yard, is the closest thing the Strain has to a coming-of-age ceremony. Those scrapyards are sacred and secret; outsiders are not welcome. The finished vehicle is not merely transportation. It is proof that the builder belongs.
Among the Nomads, Diesel Jocks are the road warriors: fiercely loyal to clan and friends, skilled negotiators and traders, deeply suspicious of outsiders who have not earned their trust. Picking up strangers is considered an ill omen, and the bond between a driver and their vehicle is rarely extended to anyone who has not proven themselves worthy of riding alongside. Their oral code emphasizes fair dealing, tight social bonds, independence from outsiders, and perpetual forward motion. To stop is to be vulnerable. The road is life.
Culture
Culture and cultural heritage
Diesel Jock culture is clan-based and road-centered. Each clan maintains its own traditions, its own variations on the oral code, and its own scrapyards. The code itself emphasizes principles that sound simple and prove complicated in practice: deal fairly, protect your own, keep moving, and never rely on anyone outside the clan unless necessity demands it.
The bond between driver and vehicle is treated as something approaching sacred. Maintaining a vehicle is not mechanical work; it is an act of devotion. A Diesel Jock whose ride breaks down and stays down has lost more than transportation. They have lost a part of themselves. Charms fashioned from broken engine components or scrap metal serve as personal talismans, each one a fragment of a vehicle or a journey that mattered.
The bond between driver and vehicle is treated as something approaching sacred. Maintaining a vehicle is not mechanical work; it is an act of devotion. A Diesel Jock whose ride breaks down and stays down has lost more than transportation. They have lost a part of themselves. Charms fashioned from broken engine components or scrap metal serve as personal talismans, each one a fragment of a vehicle or a journey that mattered.
Shared customary codes and values
The road as life and sanctuary. Clan loyalty above all other bonds. The sacred relationship between driver and vehicle. Fair dealing, self-reliance, and perpetual forward motion as the principles that keep the clan alive.
Common Customs, traditions and rituals
The scrapyard rite of passage defines Diesel Jock adulthood. A young member of the clan is given access to a designated scrapyard and must build a vehicle from what they find there. The process is unsupervised; success or failure is entirely the builder's responsibility. The completed vehicle marks the transition from child to adult, from passenger to driver, from dependent to contributor. Those who fail are not cast out, but they carry the weight of that failure until they succeed.
The rules of the road, passed down through generations, govern everything from convoy behavior to trade protocols to the prohibition against picking up strangers (considered an ill omen that invites danger). These rules are not written. They are spoken, repeated, and enforced through the clan's collective memory and collective judgment.
The rules of the road, passed down through generations, govern everything from convoy behavior to trade protocols to the prohibition against picking up strangers (considered an ill omen that invites danger). These rules are not written. They are spoken, repeated, and enforced through the clan's collective memory and collective judgment.
Common Taboos
Sabotaging a vehicle is an offense that Diesel Jock clans treat with the severity other cultures reserve for murder. A vehicle is life, identity, and freedom combined. To damage one deliberately is to attack the person who drives it and the clan that depends on it. Equally taboo is entering a scrapyard uninvited; these spaces are sacred, and trespassing in them is a violation that undermines the rite of passage at the heart of Diesel Jock culture. Picking up hitchhikers violates the code of the road and invites the kind of trouble that Diesel Jocks have learned to avoid through four centuries of traveling at speed.
Common Myths and Legends
Diesel Jocks regard the Infection's influence on their bodies as the road's payment for their loyalty. Their ancestors chose motion over fortification, chose the open highway over walls and gates, and the Infection adapted them for that choice. Lungs that filter exhaust and toxic air. Hands and tendons fortified for the endless grip of the wheel and the wrench. These are not gifts. They are adaptations earned by generations of people who never stopped driving. The Infection runs through a Diesel Jock's body the same way fuel runs through an engine: you do not worship it, but you respect what it makes possible.
Nomad Strain. Road warriors with Infection-adapted lungs and steel-grip tendons. Vehicles are sacred; scrapyards birth both machines and adults. Ancestors traced to vehicular communities of the 1990s.
Classification
Strain
