You've experienced the FALLOUT series in your own way, but want to learn more about its
story. Well- to get to the heart of the story- you have to go back to the beginning...
This presentation brought to you by Vault-Tec.
Congratulations on receiving the "All Clear" signal. You are now authorized to exit your Vault-Tec facility, but remember,
while you've been safe inside your Vault for the last few years, other people haven't been so lucky.
Society on the outside has probably changed and you should be prepared for a variety of possible scenarios.
The area around your Vault could be populated by cannibalistic mutants, gigantic insects or maybe even feral children who have enslaved all the grown-ups.
Who knows what kind of kooky civilization has formed; but the important thing is that you roll with the punches.
Remember "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" and you'll get along juuust fine with everyone you meet.
A long time ago there was a saying "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned
to repeat it" That made more sense back when every child in the country went to school
five days a week and learned their history from a big room full of books. Of late it
can be a mite hard to find a history book that hasn't been burned or rotted through,
so it seems like the good folk of the wasteland are doomed to repeat a lot of history's mistakes.
There's a certain man in Nevada who is deliberately repeating history's mistakes. Calls himself
Caesar, spoken by his followers as Kaizar. He's not the first to go by either of those
names. A good two thousand years ago the first Caesar ruled an empire on the other side of
the world -- that Caesar probably never even imagined that there was a whole continent
over here full of new people to enslave.
Well, this new Caesar of the post-apocalyptic world is out to finish what the first one
started. Rather than aiming to restore America to what it was in the days before the Great
War, Caesar is forging a new nation, using the Roman Empire as some form of twisted inspiration.
That's a funny idea for someone to get in their head, of course this Caesar had an unconventional
upbringing. He was born in 2226 out West in the Boneyard, the ruins of what used to be
Los Angeles. He didn't stay there long, his mother took him away when he was just a baby,
and raised him with the Followers of the Apocalypse. Despite their name, these "Followers"
aren't one of those doomsday cults, they're just a group of do-gooder intellectuals who
try to preserve the knowledge of the old world.
They also keep records about the present, so we know all there is to know about who
Caesar was before he declared himself Emperor. He used to be a bright young man named Edward
Sallow. He was chosen to go on a Followers expedition to study the tribespeople of the
wasteland, and perhaps he was a little too intelligent and educated to be sent out among
the savages. He viewed them with a mixture of sneering contempt, and misguided pity.
He felt it was his duty to civilize them at any cost.
In a stroke of irony it turns out that those uncivilized lands had some books from before
the war; books that weren't reduced to a pile of ash. Rare historical records, including
an account of the original Caesar's war in Gaul. Sallow could have seen the history of
Rome a warning about an empire that was doomed to fall. But, instead, he saw something of
himself in Caesar, and decided to follow his example, even if it meant knowingly repeating
the mistakes of the past.
The Romans described in those old books were, by the standards of their time, the most civilized
group in the known world. So mighty was their Empire, they even had it better than most
folks today. Food, fresh water, roads and libraries. The problem is that only some Romans
had it that good - their empire was built on conquest and slavery, and the people on
the bottom rung of society had it about as bad as a molerat in a Deathclaw den.
Under the new title of Caesar, Edward Sallow forged the tribals of Arizona, New Mexico,
Utah, and Colorado into an army patterned after the Legion of Rome. Their entire society
was converted to the war effort, and they used merciless strategies to decisively end
their conflicts. Eighty six tribes in all, and each one they encountered was either assimilated
or annihilated.
The men who survive are forced to become soldiers in the Legion. All traces of their original
tribe are eradicated and these slave soldiers have but one option in life: To die in the
service of their conquerors. With each new victory the Legion grows in number, leaving
behind no one to oppose them. In his own way, Caesar is bringing order to wasteland, one
genocide at a time.
The women of conquered tribes are not allowed even the dignity of dying in combat. The Legion's
strictly regimented society forbids such equality, no matter how skilled those women may be as
warriors. This rigid separation ensures that half of the Legion's forces fight, while the
other half breeds the next generation of slaves.
Caesar would say that slavery is a fitting punishment for the weak and cowardly members
of the defeated tribes, a chance for them to prove themselves of worth in their new
life. A compelling argument, but nothing can justify being born a slave. Children born
into the Legion are separated from their parents, given no knowledge of the culture of their
ancestors, and identify themselves only as one small part of the vast Legion. They are
all destined to die in Caesar's servitude.
Caesar's love of the old times and martial virtues does not prevent him from arming his
men with weapons developed in the twenty-first century. If throwing javelins at their enemy
won't get the job done, then the Legion will reach for assault rifles or even more advanced
weaponry. They do prefer to fight hand-to-hand whenever possible and some of the Legion's
men carry kinetic energy hammers and ballistic gauntlets enhanced with twenty first century
technology.
Caesar is the absolute ruler of this army, and disobedience is punished with death. A
slow death. The Legion burns people alive, crucifies them on poles along the roadside,
and forces them to fight to the death in duels for Caesar's amusement.
Failure is punished with equal cruelty. Every member of the Legion knows that it is better
to die in battle against the enemy than to stand before Caesar in shame. Even his highest
ranking commanders, his Legates, can suffer his wrath.
A few years ago Caesar proved this when his army came upon its first worthy opponent.
The New California Republic. Even as the Legion was spreading Westward, the NCR was exploring
territory on their own Eastern border. The two nations clashed on the banks of the Colorado
river for control of the Hoover Dam in 2277.
It proved to be the first defeat for the Legion. The NCR has the biggest, most organized army
in the wasteland, and their Rangers are some of fiercest, most cunning fighters in the
Wastes. The NCR feigned retreat across the dam and led the Legion to the town of Boulder
City. Back when there was a town there.
The place is a graveyard now, filled with the bones of Legion soldiers who charged to
their own doom, certain that the NCR was fleeing in terror before Caesar's might. Caesar himself
would have been clever enough to deduce that this was a trap, but he had delegated the
task to one of his Legates who failed to see that the NCR was only pretending to run. When
the Legion reached Boulder City they found enough explosives to level just about everything
in town.
Even with the loss of over one hundred soldiers during the battle, the NCR managed to rout
the Legion and secure the dam and leave the Legion stuck on the other side of the river.
The Legate who organized that disastrous attack learned just how terrible Caesar's fury can
be.
He was one of Caesar's oldest friends, Joshua Graham. They met back before Edward Sallow
started calling himself Caesar, but that did not earn Graham any mercy. For his failure
in the Battle of Hoover Dam, he was set on fire and thrown down the biggest hole in the
wasteland. The Grand Canyon.
There are tales of people surviving all sorts of fates. Men mutated into blobs of goo without
dying, cyborgs that are more machine than man, hell there's even a lucky bastard that
survived having a tree growing through his brain. Then there's Joshua Graham. People
swear that they saw a "burned man" walk out of the Grand Canyon not long after the
Battle of Hoover Dam. Might have been Graham, might have just been an old ghoul out scavenging.
Either way, the possibility of Graham still being alive is just one more worry for Caesar
these days.
Like any Emperor, Caesar knows that his military must constantly consume new territory. The
Legion produces little, and has left nothing but destruction in its wake. The only way
for it to survive is conquest. But now the Legion is stalled, camped out on one side
of the Hoover Dam while the NCR waits on the other.
Caesar can appreciate the potential of the Hoover Dam. It can generate enough electricity
to power the Empire he intends to build. For now though the Legion prepares a massive force
to take it from the NCR.
Legionaries cross the river in small groups on barges, and have established some camps
on the Western banks as a brazen affront to the NCR's authority. There are enough Legion
soldiers West of the Colorado river to cause plenty of trouble for settlers and soldiers
out there. They need a fresh supply of slaves, although the Legion will sometimes burn whole
towns to the ground and torture the citizens to death as a symbol of their might.
The horrific tales of these attacks help reminds people in the West that the Legion is coming
eventually. Caesar sees the NCR as a personal challenge, as though everything that's happened
West of the river for the last two hundred years all happened just so Caesar would have
a worthy foe to defeat, and he's definitely up there in that fort of his, planning for
the next battle at Hoover Dam.
But the dam is only the first part of Caesar's plan, though. He doesn't intend for his army
to roam the land indefinitely; he wants to found a new capital city for his empire, and
just a stone's throw from the dam is a town that already has a lot in common with ancient
Rome. It's a decadent cesspool of every vice that a body can desire.
A New Rome. A New Vegas.
A place where the walls are high enough to keep out the worst critters the wasteland
can throw at them, and the streets are safe to walk thanks to an army of security bots.
Not to mention a plentiful supply of leggy showgirls and roulette tables. The problem
is, New Vegas already has its own tyrant. He's been there since before the bombs fell
two hundred years ago, and he plans to stay there for two hundred more.
But that- is a story for another day...