Brotherhood of Steel

The Brotherhood of Steel (BOS) is a techno-religious organization, with roots in the US military and government-sponsored scientific community from before the Great War. The BOS is mostly composed of the descendants of those military officers, soldiers, and scientists, but aside from some outlanders among their ranks, the BOS is as close to pure strain humanity (prime normals) as you're going to find outside of a Vault or the Enclave.

Overview
The ranks of the BOS is generally recognized as being composed of the best and the brightest, which means the BOS is a relatively small organization, at least compared to the New California Republic. They make up for this with their frightening arsenal of pre-war and post-war technology: They have laser weapons, Power Armors, surgical enhancements, combat implants, and the Brotherhood Paladins who have the ability to erase an entire town from a map without a scratch. The vast majority of BOS members are born in the Brotherhood - they very rarely accept outsiders into their ranks. Those born in the Brotherhood that want to be neither Scribes, Knights nor Paladins are free to leave - the Brotherhood does not believe in forcing anyone to serve them against their will.

While they're generally not hostile to others without a good reason, unlike the legendary chivalrous knights (and very much like historical military and religious orders like the Knights Templar), members of the Brotherhood are not interested in justice for the obviously weaker and less fortunate around them. They largely focus on keeping their secrecy and preserving and developing technology, which, in many cases, they put above human life. Their motives are often unclear, and Brotherhood members are not people to be trifled with. It is safe to say, however, that if a group of Brotherhood knights appears to be helping some less fortunate people, their motives are not altruistic.

The Brotherhood doesn't like to share their choicest technological bits, despite the obvious benefits their technology could bring to the wasteland. It's commonly accepted within the Brotherhood that the people of the wasteland are not responsible enough to use (and maintain) all of the technology the BOS has at their disposal. They are known for trading some of their technologies with frontier communities and NCR states in exchange for food and other resources, but they keep the more sensitive technologies to themselves.

While they have great reverence for technology, most of the Brotherhood members have little regard for non-technical fields of knowledge (and even for non-combat technology). Even most of the Scribes don't care about history, and some Initiates don't even know who Roger Maxson, the founder of the Brotherhood, was.

The Brotherhood's attitude towards mutants ranges from dislike (e.g. in the case of ghouls) to outright hostility (in case of super mutants). Early contact with the Master's super mutants was mostly hostile, and the BOS helped drive the majority of the mutant armies away from California. While after the Master's defeat many super mutants settled peacefully among humans, the hostility between the two groups didn't disappear. BOS contact with ghouls has been limited, but negative - it's difficult for the BOS to respect a stumbling crew of emaciated scavengers that tend to dismantle or FUBAR old world technology. BOS' anger grew even further when various salvaging operations began in the Glow, a location which the BOS came to regard highly both for their fallen comrades and the Pre-War technology there, with Dayglow ghouls at the forefront. Most BOS members see ghouls as filthy scavengers.

West Coast
The headquarters of the Brotherhood is the Lost Hills bunker, the seat of the BOS High Elder and the ruling council, and the place where the organization was founded. It is also the center of their research and military activities. However, by 2242, the BOS is spread across the wastes of California in small bunkers and installations hidden from the eyes of common folk, and finding them all and wiping them out would be a difficult and dangerous task. Their installations include bunkers in the Den, San Francisco and Shady Sands (capital of NCR). All Brotherhood outposts are formally subject to the Lost Hills authorities, even if they sometimes tend to act independently, especially if they're located far from California and contact with the headquarters is rare. The Lost Hills bunker is surrounded by the town of Maxson, which, while named after the founder of the Brotherhood, is officially outside BOS rule and is a member of the NCR.

Southwest
Maxson Bunker is a Brotherhood of Steel outpost in the Arizona area, commanded by General Andrea Brixley. The bunker was intended to be used as a staging area for exploration teams scouting the east. However, once the war broke out with the New California Republic the bunker became a forward base of operations against Hoover Dam, an NCR outpost. The war effort has gone poorly for both sides. The BOS has superior technology, but the NCR has superior numbers of troops. As a result, the war has been at a stalemate for years. Morale on both sides has plummeted but the BOS has been severely affected. In the wake of these troubles, a covert group of former BOS operatives has come into existence. Calling themselves the Circle of Steel, this group raids caravans and villages, confiscates any advanced technology they may have, and does so in the name of salvaging mankind from itself.

Midwest
Much further East there lie the territories of the Midwestern Brotherhood of Steel, a splinter faction which lost contact with Brotherhood leadership at Lost Hills and has been an independent organization since the 2160s, where the airships of its founders crashed near Chicago. Unlike the original, isolationistic Brotherhood, this faction rules over a large part of the area between the former states of Illinois and Kansas and drafts tribals from villages under Brotherhood protection into its ranks. In an even more glaring contrast, while the Midwestern Brotherhood treats mutants and ghouls as, at best, second class citizens, some of them were actually allowed to join the organization. While more open to the outside world, this Brotherhood is by no means altruistic - the villagers under Brotherhood rule, while protected from raiders and mutants, live in fear of the infamous Brotherhood Inquisitors. The Midwestern BOS bunkers are called Bunker Alpha, Bunker Beta, Bunker Gamma, Bunker Delta and Bunker Epsilon.

East Coast
On the East Coast, a faction known as the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel established a base called the Citadel, built into and beneath the ruins of the Pentagon in Washington, DC. This faction is led by the idealistic Elder Owyn Lyons who decided to make protection of human inhabitants of Capital Wasteland from super mutants, instead of the acquisition and preservation of technology, his top priority. While Lyons is officially recognized by the ruling council at Lost Hills, because of his changed priorities he receives no support from California and his faction is mostly independent. Without reinforcements from the West Coast, Lyons has been forced to recruit locally, but most new conscripts are overeager, unskilled, or both, and as a result their survival rate is atrocious. Elder Lyons’ daughter Sarah commands her own elite squad, Lyons’ Pride. A group of disgruntled members who preferred to stay faithful to the Brotherhood's original goals left the Citadel and became known as the Outcasts.

Ranks
The BOS is divided into different ranks: Initiates are trainees who are expected to perform well enough in the training process to be promoted to Senior Initiates, and later to Apprentices. After proving themselves, Apprentices are promoted to Journeyman Knights or Scribes. The next rank is Senior Knight/Scribe, and finally the leader of each of these orders is the Head Knight and Head Scribe.

Scribes are responsible for copying the ancient technologies, maintaining the current technology and even experimenting with new weapons and other useful devices. Scribes rarely leave the safety of the BOS bunkers, but they are sometimes called into the field to examine a piece of technology or perform a task beyond the skills of the Brotherhood soldiers.

Knights are responsible for manufacturing the weapons and other pieces of technology. After many years of service and experience, the best Knights are promoted to Paladins - the pinnacle of the Brotherhood military. Paladins are in charge of all security and outside activities. The Paladin ranks are Junior Paladin, Paladin, Senior Paladin, and Head Paladin. As all Paladins are also Knights, the Head Paladin is usually also the Head Knight. Paladins who survive to their later years become Elders, and they number among the Brotherhood ruling council. The leader of the council and the Brotherhood itself is the High Elder, usually descended from the Maxson family.

The Midwestern Brotherhood has a separate rank system that differs from the original Brotherhood ranks. In the Midwest, the Scribes act as both scientists and engineers, taking the place of both Western Scribes and Knights. Midwestern Knights are just a military rank lower in the hierarchy than Paladins and are not allowed to use Power Armors. The Inquisitors act as the Brotherhood's law enforcement and intelligence.

The Capital Wasteland division of the Brotherhood uses a rank called "Sentinel". The only BOS member to achieve it so far has been Sarah Lyons.

Symbolism of the insignia
In the Brotherhood symbol, the gears represent their engineering knowledge, the sword is their will to defend themselves, the wings are the uplifting hope, and the circle is the wholeness that makes it a brotherhood.

Another interpretation is that it represents each of the orders. The sword represents the Paladins, the wings represent the Elders (the "wings" control the movement of the sword), the large gear represents the Knights, and the two smaller gears represent the Scribes and the Apprentices, whose services keep the Knights supplied with the information and the manpower to get their jobs done.

While both the original Brotherhood and the Capital Wasteland division use different colors for different elements of the symbol (blue for the wings, grey for the sword and black for the gears), the Midwestern Brotherhood uses several monocolor variations. A blue version is used by the Knights and Paladins, a black one by the Scribes and an orange one by the Elders. The golden/yellow variant seems to symbolize the Brotherhood as a whole. The Midwestern version is also reversed horizontally - the large gear is to the right of the smaller ones, not to the left.

Mariposa
The founder of the Brotherhood was Captain Roger Maxson. He was a member of a military team commanded by Colonel Robert Spindel, originally sent to the West Tek research facility on January 3, 2076 to monitor the experiments in the interest of national security. On January 7, 2077, all West Tek research was moved to the newly constructed Mariposa Military Base, along with Spindel's team.

On October 10, Maxson and his men discovered, to their horror, that the scientists at Mariposa were using military prisoners as test subjects in their experiments with the Forced Evolutionary Virus. Morale in the base broke down, and Spindel suffered a mental breakdown, eventually committing suicide 5 days later. Maxson's men turned to him for leadership.

After interrogating Robert Anderson, the chief scientist, and learning about the extent of their actions, Maxson executed him, and the other scientists soon followed. Maxson, now in control of the entire base, declared himself to be in full desertion from the army via radio on October 20. Strangely, he got no response, as the rest of the army was busy fighting the Chinese threat. Three days later, the bombs were launched, and the Great War ended two hours after it started.

Exodus
The Mariposa Military Base survived, the soldiers within protected from the radiation and FEV flooding the wasteland. Two days later at Mariposa, a scout in Power Armor (Platner) was sent out to get specific readings on the atmosphere. He reported no significant radiation in the area surrounding the facility. After burying the scientists in the wastes outside of Mariposa, the soldiers sealed the military base, then headed out into the desert, taking supplies and weapon schematics with them. Captain Maxson led his men and families to the government bunker at Lost Hills, and this event was later called the Exodus. In November, after a few weeks in the Wasteland, the soldiers and their families arrived at the Lost Hills, suffering many casualties along the way, including Maxson's wife (but not his teenage son). The Lost Hills bunker became the headquarters of the newly formed Brotherhood of Steel.

Early years
Not much is known about the early years of the Brotherhood. In 2134, a faction led by Sergeant Dennis Allen gained strength, and they urged the Elders to let them explore the southeast ruins of West Tek, called the Glow after being hit by a nuclear bomb, for artifacts. The Elders refused, so Allen and his divisionist group split away from the Brotherhood of Steel, taking some technology and weapons with them. Despite that, under the leadership of Roger Maxson, the Brotherhood grew in strength, developing their technology, and the orders of Knights, Scribes and Paladins were formed. In 2135, Roger Maxson died of cancer, and his son took over as the High Elder of the Brotherhood.

Growing power
In the 2150s, the Brotherhood established its control over the areas surrounding the bunker, becoming one of the major powers in the region. Around the early 2150s a raider group known as the Vipers began to establish a power base in the badlands to the South of the Lost Hills Bunker. Driven by a religious frenzy (and the need to provide for their much larger numbers of soldiers and disciples), they began raiding more frequently than before, eventually attracting the attention of the Brotherhood of Steel. In 2155, The Brotherhood sent out a few squads of scouts to track the Vipers down. This was more of a training exercise conducted by the High Elder than anything else, as the Brotherhood was convinced that a small detachment of troops in Power Armor would be sufficient to deal with a group of raiders, no matter how large. One Brotherhood squad, led by Maxson, found the Vipers. Expecting the raiders to break and run, Maxson didn't take into account the religious zeal and ferocity of the Vipers. . . or their poisoned weapons. A single arrow nicked him while his helmet was off, causing him to die a few short hours later. John Maxson, the grandson of Roger, took up the role of Elder, and Rhombus became the new head of the Paladins.

The Paladins, now led by Rhombus, began a full scale campaign against the Vipers, tracking them down and wiping out almost all of their members within the span of a month. Some of the Vipers were able to flee north and east into the mountain range.

During the campaign, the Brotherhood sent a few scouts and emissaries to the Hub to track down Vipers members, and from these beginnings, the Hub and the Brotherhood began full trade relations (caravans had delivered to the Brotherhood before, but not long after the destruction of the Vipers, caravan trains ran directly from the Hub to the Brotherhood on a regular basis).

Super mutant threat
Several years later, the Brotherhood were to face an enemy far greater than any band of raiders. In October 2161, a Brotherhood of Steel patrol came across a dead super mutant in the badlands. They took the corpse back to the Scribes, and Head Scribe Vree began to study it. After several long examinations, it was shown to be completely sterile.

In February 2162, a man known as the Vault Dweller came to the Lost Hills bunker, wanting to join the Brotherhood. Not taken seriously, he is told to go to the ruins of the West Tek facility, which was now called the Glow, after being hit by a nuclear bomb during the Great War. When, after some time, he returned alive, and brought with himself a holodisk with the record of a lost expedition of several Brotherhood Paladins to the Glow, he was the first outsider in a very long time to be accepted as a member of the Brotherhood of Steel, even though some prominent members of the BOS resisted his joining the organization.

It was from the Vault Dweller that the Brotherhood learned about the Master's army and his plans to turn everyone into a super mutant. With the support of John Maxson, he managed to convince the Council of Elders to send a squad of paladins to the Mariposa Base (which had been, ironically, where the BOS originally came from, although by that time even John Maxson didn't remember it), where the Master's FEV vats were located. With the help of the Brotherhood, the Vault Dweller eventually managed to defeat the Master, and was never seen again in the Lost Hills bunker.

Aftermath
After the death of Maxson, Rhombus, head of the Paladins, became the new High Elder. After the death of the Master, the Brotherhood of Steel helped the other human outposts drive the mutant armies away with minimal loss of life on both sides of the conflict. Without the ability to create more mutants and enforce their harsh brand of justice, the majority of the mutant armies fled to the east, beyond the no-man's land.

A much smaller faction, under the leadership of Attis, tried to recreate the mutant army in Texas, but was eventually defeated by the Brotherhood.

Midwestern Brotherhood
The Brotherhood found themselves at odds with their need for new blood versus their code of technological secrecy. The debate went lightly. Finally, the elders ruled against sharing the technology with outsiders, convinced that they would endure what they had before. Further discussion was discouraged and the elders ordered the minority on a mission across the wastes. The Brotherhood constructed airships and dispatched the minority East, to track down and assess to the extent of the remaining super mutant threat. However, a great storm broke the main airship and flung it far from its course. The mighty airship was badly damaged. The smaller sections were torn from the main craft and never to be seen again. Many of the expedition leaders were lost to the winds. The fraction of the crew that still survived, struggled to keep their ship aloft before finally crashing on the outskirts of the ruins of Chicago. The survivors eventually formed an organization called the Midwestern Brotherhood, which diverged greatly from the ideals of the old Brotherhood. In time, they established a harsh rule over the towns and villages in that area.

After long fights with countless raider bands, a warlike technological cult known as the Reavers, and a super mutant army led by mad Paladin Latham, a survivor of one of the other BOS airships, in 2198 the Brotherhood eventually faced their greatest enemy - a robotic army commanded by the Calculator, mad AI of Vault 0. Eventually, the robots were defeated, but in the course of the war, the Midwestern Brotherhood lost many of its men, and territory. As of 2242, the splinter faction has yet to meet the original, West Coast Brotherhood again.

Decline
After the defeat of the Master, the Brotherhood had become a shadow of its former self. No longer the sole custodian of advanced technology in the wasteland, the Brotherhood was struggling to find a new identity. After they first encountered the Enclave, they started to raise small bunkers in various cities throughout Northern California, and in 2242 they eventually came across the Chosen One, the granchild of the Vault Dweller who, with Brotherhood's help, destroyed the Master in 2162. They sent him to Navarro to retrieve the vertibird plans for them, but it is not known if they eventually got them.

War with the NCR
In 2250s, the BoS leadership, led by Jeremy Maxson, favored a return to power by wresting all advanced tech from the hands of "lesser people" by any means necessary. This attitude didn't win them any friends, and because many in the Brotherhood disagree with such brutal methods, the whole organization was on the verge of civil war.

In the year 2242, Jeremy Maxson renamed Peterson's bunker, found by Andrea Brixley's expedition in 2231, after his famous ancestor, Roger Maxson. He then sent a full compliment of troops for occupation. Brixley was promoted to Elder, given the rank of General, and placed in charge. The remainder of her exploratory team was given the title of Elder as well. It was not long afterward that the war with the New California Republic was announced.

For years the war waged on and was considered a victory for the Brotherhood of Steel. However, no matter how many troops fell to the Brotherhood's superior technology, the NCR always seemed to have more replacements available. The Brotherhood, however, was not so fortunate. Being an elitist group, replacements were short in arriving. It soon became obvious that the Brotherhood was doomed to lose the war to the NCR's greater numbers. Moral at the bunker began to falter as the war seemed more and more hopeless. Eventually the inevitable happened. Lower ranking members of the Brotherhood began to desert their posts.

In an effort to end the war once and for all, the Brotherhood began to use newly discovered subversive technology known as StealthBoys. These devices could create a field of energy that would bend light around the user, thus making him virtually invisible to sight. This allowed Brotherhood operatives to penetrate deep into NCR territory for the gathering of intelligence. However, it was soon discovered that the devices had severe side effects. Paranoia, delusions, and eventual schizophrenia were the major ones. The Brotherhood disallowed the use of StealthBoys and once again fell behind in their war effort.

Now the Brotherhood of Steel is facing yet another problem. The side effects of the StealthBoys were not discovered until the team using them had already begun to feel their effect. When the team was disbanded, paranoia over the reason began to set in and the team plotted against their leaders. They stole the StealthBoys, fled the bunker as deserters, and formed a covert group known as the Circle of Steel. The goal of the COS is to recover lost technology and rebuild the glory of the Brotherhood at any cost.

Capital Wasteland
The Brotherhood's ruling council decided to send a contingent of soldiers to the East Coast, to recover any and all advanced technology from Washington, DC and to investigate the reports of super mutant activity in the area. When the group reached the East Coast, they found the Pentagon largely destroyed, but they found there a technological marvel that, if restored, could help the Brotherhood rebuild a strength and reputation that had been declining steadily for years. After the discovery, Paladin Owyn Lyons, the leader of the expedition, was promoted to Elder. A permanent base known as the Citadel was built into and beneath the ruins of the Pentagon. Lyons and his soldiers also found the super mutants in the urban ruins of downtown D.C. and helped stop the mutant tide from overtaking the entire region, by at least keeping them at bay.

Eventually, Lyons decided to make protection of innocent inhabitants of Capital Wasteland from super mutants his main priority. In response, the Lost Hills elders cut off all support to the East Coast faction, while still recognizing him as a leader of the Brotherhood of Steel, and the Citadel as their D.C. headquarters. However, some members of the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood believed that by abandoning the Brotherhood of Steel’s primary mission of acquiring new technologies, Elder Lyons had abandoned the very values that defined the order itself. One night, the dissenters departed from the Citadel, absconding with weapons, Power Armor, and other pieces of technology and equipment. Lyons branded the dissenters “Outcasts,” traitors to the Brotherhood of Steel – it was a name they would ultimately wear like a badge of honor, proud of the distance it put between themselves and Lyons’ “soldier sycophants.” Without reinforcements from the West Coast, Lyons was forced to recruit locally.

Appearances in games
The Brotherhood of Steel appears in all Fallout games, including the Fallout Tactics and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel spin-offs.

Joining up
In Fallout, you can join the BoS by going to the enclave southwest of Vault 13, asking to join and fetching the holodisk from Glow.

Holodisks about the Brotherhood of Steel
Fallout Fallout Tactics
 * Captain Maxson's Diary
 * Maxson Log
 * Ancient Brotherhood Disk
 * Sophia Tape
 * Brotherhood Code (non-canon)
 * Journal of Sir Latham
 * General's holodisk to wife Maria

Inconsistencies
The Brotherhood in the spin-offs is radically different from the one in the role-playing games. While in Tactics it is because the BOS portrayed there is a splinter faction, there is no explanation for the differences in Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. Tactics also contains numerous other inconsistencies, including saying that the Brotherhood was descended from a military Vault in the intro.