Caesar's Legion/History



Caesar's Legion is an imperialist organization, founded and led by the powerful Caesar. The legionaries are a well-organized army of slaves, serving as the fighting force that mainly operates east of the Grand Canyon and in the former state of Arizona.

Origins
Raised near the Boneyard as Edward Sallow, Caesar was once a citizen of the New California Republic. Following the death of his father at the hands of raiders in 2228, his mother sought the protection of the Followers of the Apocalypse. While she worked for the Followers, cooking and cleaning in their library, the young Edward learned how to read and started taking courses, provided by the organization free of charge. Taught to "bring the torch of knowledge to the wastes", Sallow was a student of uneven quality. Though he was highly intelligent, his success in scientific pursuits was only proportional to his interest in the given subject nor was he particularly popular among his peers, due to his bad temper. For Sallow, the Followers were never an inspiring example, their devotion to scholarship too stifling, and their mission of enlightenment too naive.

In the year 2246, the Followers of the Apocalypse sent a group to the Grand Canyon to study the region’s tribal languages. The group included Followers Edward Sallow, Calhoun, a physician, and Mormon missionary Joshua Graham, a specialist in tribal dialects. On the way to the canyon, Sallow and his companions happened upon a cache of historical books, including The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and the Commentarii by Gaius Julius Caesar. Sallow studied the books rigorously for two weeks, not yet aware of their coming significance.Fallout: New Vegas Official Game Guide Collector's Edition p. 459: "Rebirth of the Son of Mars The adolescence and young adulthood of the man who calls himself Caesar were spent as a scribe of the Followers of the Apocalypse. While this boy had a quick mind, he made for a scribe of uneven ability, for his success in academics was equal to his interest in the subject assigned. Nor was he a favorite among his fellows. Though athletic, handsome, and petulance held him back. He never felt that he belonged among the Followers, and blamed them for it. Their rigorous devotion to scholarship was stifling, their mission to ensure that humanity would never repeat the mistakes of the Great War was ridiculously naive. The boy longed for something more. ''When the time came for the boy to leave the Boneyard and trek the wastes as part of a nine-person expedition, wanderlust soon curdled into disappointment. The primitive conditions of the tribes the expedition encountered disgusted him. Inferior people all, wretched in their squalor. Still, he seemed to discern, amid the chaos of their petty struggles and everyday atrocities, the true order of the wastes-and it was one of anonymous, amoral liberty. The wastes called to the boy as a blank slate upon which a man of will could write his own destiny.'' ''During the same period of the time that the boy was coming to these insights, the expedition uncovered a cache of well-preserved historical texts. Among with adventure fiction and comic books, history had always been his favorite subject, and so the task of cataloguing and studying the texts fell to him. Though the boy had long been aware of basic facts concerning many ancient empires, these new texts filled in many previously obscure details. Reading The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire rendered him a veritable hermit for two weeks. But even that could not have prepared him for the Commentarii, the account of the military campaigns of Gaius Julius Caesar, written by the man himself. Reading Commentarii changed the boy's life. Unfortunately, it was destined to change the lives of thousands more, and for the worse.'' ''In Gaius Julius Caesar the boy found a man who seamed [sic] to have fulfilled the full measure of potential greatness allotted to him by fate, a man whose career spanned political accomplishment and military achievement in equal measure. Such adventure! And intrigue! And cool uniforms! The boy's frustrations with his lot in life gained sharp focus. In reading about Caesar, he was like an ant scurrying about the feet of a regal statue. He resolved that he would go to any lengths necessary to change the course of his life. The Commentarii would be his blueprint. In an illiterate, benighted world, who would ever know that Caesar was not his original creation?'' ''That night, Caesar offered a different sort of assistance to a tribe his expedition had contacted recently: weapons, medical supplies, and tactical expertise. He led several tribal accomplices back to the expedition's camp and through its defenses, and there oversaw the murder of his eight fellows. Within a week he was leading the tribe on ever more ambitious raids against neighboring bands of raiders and tribals."'' (Fallout: New Vegas Official Game Guide/Behind the Bright Lights & Big City) Subsequently, the group was captured by the Blackfoot tribe and held for ransom.

Sallow saw the weakness of the tribe, who were currently at war with seven others in the region, outnumbered and bound to lose. Unwilling to sink with them, Sallow decided to take certain steps. Objections from Calhoun went unheard. Sallow taught the tribe how to properly maintain their firearms, properly shoot targets, and reload ammunition, after which he began teaching them how to make explosives and drilling in small unit tactics, all of which was based on old books he had recently read. Once they were ready, Sallow led them against the Ridgers, their weakest enemy.

When the tribe refused to surrender, he ordered every man, woman, and child killed. No exceptions were made. The Blackfoot moved on under Sallow's lead, surrounding the Kaibabs tribe. Upon their refusal to surrender, Sallow took their envoy to the ruins of the Ridgers' village. The piles of corpses were a shocking sight to a tribesman who had only experienced small examples of war, but what Sallow had led was total warfare. 

Rise to power
The Kaibabs promptly surrendered rather than suffer the same fate, then the Fredonians, then all the remaining tribes. Sallow was acutely aware that the root cause of all the problems was tribal identities, leading to internecine conflict and preventing any substantial recovery. He knew what had to be done. He had to erase all traces of tribal identities and substitute a single, monolithic culture in their place.

In 2247, when his confederation was large enough, Sallow crowned himself as Caesar, leader of the Great Tribe: the Legion. He deliberately patterned his new society after imperial Rome. He soon began putting his words into practice. Calhoun was sent back west to warn that Caesar should not be interfered with, while Graham stayed with Caesar, becoming the Legion's first legate. In the decades that followed, the Legion conquered minor holdings in Utah and Colorado, while the entirety of Arizona and a sizeable portion of New Mexico were brought under its control.

Betweeen 2248 and 2274, Caesar conquered and assimilated more tribes, forging a well-organized, culturally insular fighting force that expanded steadily across the region. His Legion conquered tribes of southeastern Utah, southwestern Colorado, the western edge of New Mexico and the northern half of Arizona. By 2250 he had declared himself the Son of Mars. By 2255, he had established a capital amid the ruins of Flagstaff. Caesar's ultimate goal is to conquer the New California Republic and merge its civilian culture and infrastructure with the military strength of the Legion, creating a new totalitarian empire. Foreign to anyone outside its ranks, the highly militarized autocracy adept at integrating conquered cultures formed the perfect template for a society that could adapt to the challenges of the post-apocalyptic world and thrive, establishing prosperity and peace: a new Pax Romana. The Legion would be a nationalist, imperialist, totalitarian, completely homogenous culture that would focus on long-term stability at all costs. 

War with the NCR
The Republic has the distinction of being recognized by Caesar as a worthy adversary and conflict with the NCR was inevitable. He sees himself as Caesar returning from his conquest of Gaul and the NCR as the corrupt Roman Senate.Fallout: New Vegas Official Game Guide Collector's Edition p. 41: "Caesar's Legion" "This horde of cruel, yet highly disciplined slavers has spread across the southwest like an all-consuming flame. Founded by a fallen member of the Followers of the Apocalypse, Caesar's Legion is effectively an enormous, conscripted slave army. As Caesar conquers the peoples of the wasteland, he strips them of their tribal identities and turns their young men into ruthless legionaries and women into breeding stock. Unlike the rag-tag Raiders back east, Caesar's "Legionaries" neither look nor act like haphazard, irregular troops. They are well organized, moving and attacking in large packs, and deliberately commit atrocities to terrorize those who might dare oppose them. ''True, Caesar is the perfect man. But he is not just a man: he is the Son of Mars, ordained by the god of war to conquer all Earth. To prepare the way, Mars razed the Earth, cleansed it with fire, and brought the weak and the wicked low; and now his son has come to deliver the wasteland from chaos and barbarism. To follow Caesar is to obey the will of Mars; to disobey is to condemn oneself to death. As the Son of Mars, Caesar has the divine right to demand servitude from all he encounters. Not everyone believes that Caesar is the product of a god's loins, of course. The most recently captured slaves tend to be pretty skeptical. But they aren't very vocal in their criticisms, and their children are raised not by skeptical parents but by priestesses appointed to that task by virtue of their knowledge of an adherence to the state religion.'' ''Nearly all physically capable, compliant males are compelled to serve in its armed forces. The primary value of pre-menopausal females is to serve as breeding stock (with Caesar or a legate governing how they are assigned to males), though they, like older females and less physically-capable men, are also used to perform a variety of other tasks. The largest unit of organization in Caesar's Legion is the Cohort, numbering about 480 infantrymen. Cohorts are further divided into Centuriae, which contrary to their name numbers about 80 men, and each Centuriae is divided into ten "tent groups" (Contubernia), making this the squad level of organization. Raiding parties are of this size (about eight men) and will be led by a Decanus (a squad leader, basically).'' ''Caesar desires two things: a Carthage, and a Rome. In the NCR he has at last found a grand adversary, against which he can wage a military campaign worthy of history books. And in Vegas, powered and watered by its great dam, he has found a capital worthy of, well, a Caesar. Contrary to the old saw, Rome will be built in a day. All it takes is plentiful slave labor, and Caesar has that in spades."'' A textbook example of Hegelian dialectics, where the thesis and antithesis conflict, creating a synthesis when the conflict is resolved. When the Legion conquers the NCR, it will be transformed from a republic crippled by bureaucracy, corruption, and gridlock into a highly efficient military dictatorship. The Legion will become a standing army protecting all the citizens of the new empire and the absolute power of its dictator.

The New California Republic was not willing to roll over and surrender. In 2271, the Legion's presence served as a catalyst for the Ranger Unification Treaty. President Kimball recounts during that year, the Desert Rangers of Nevada joined the New California Republic's forces to protect the region against "the tyranny of [Caesar's] regime."

Subsequently, a series of skirmishes and smaller battles (such as the destruction of Fort Aradesh out east) occured, and the Legion forced a confrontation. In 2277, the Legion faced the NCR at Hoover Dam, in what became known as the First Battle of Hoover Dam. Discovered by Ulysses, a frumentarius, the dam was a symbolic Rubicon. At the time, Caesar's forces under the command of the Joshua Graham marched against the NCR garrison at Hoover Dam, in an attempt to take the strategic asset and river crossing. However, Graham's elite troops were drawn into a trap laid by Chief Hanlon of the New California Republic Rangers. As General Lee Oliver's soldiers held the line, Rangers and Army sharpshooters targeted the Legion's commanders (primarily centurions and decanii), sowing chaos among the common legionaries. When the Legate, unable to adapt to new strategies in combat, ordered his elite forces to punch through and pursue Rangers decimating his officers, the Rangers and First Recon sharpshooters executed a tactical retreat into Boulder City. Elements of the Army and Rangers kept the Legion engaged long enough to allow the most experienced legionaries to enter the city. When they did, the Republic's forces pulled out of the city. Once most of them were safe (soldiers and rangers trapped behind Legion lines had to be abandoned), they triggered explosives packed into the buildings in advance.

Chief Hanlon's plan went off without a hitch. The exploding buildings acted as giant fragmentation bombs, killing and maiming most of the legionaries and leaving the rest in a state of shock; effectively crippling their offensive. The Army and Rangers followed the detonation with a counter-attack, pushing back and eventually routing the Legion forces and forcing the Malpais Legate to retreat from the cam back to the east of the Colorado River. Flanking attacks at Camp Golf and other camps in the Mojave were similarly repulsed. The Malpais Legate returned to Caesar in shame. To demonstrate that failure is not tolerated, even at the highest of ranks, Caesar ordered Graham to be burned alive. The former Legate was covered in pitch, lit on fire, and thrown into the Grand Canyon. This was the worst defeat in Legion's history.

Graham was replaced by Legate Lanius, who embarked on a campaign of expansion eastward to subjugate further tribes for the Legion and gather forces for another confrontation with the Republic. Over the next four years, Caesar rebuilt his army with 14 newly assimilated tribes, creating the finest possible blade with which to cleave through the Republic. The Legion's increasing power was accompanied by a noticeable decline in Caesar's health. Once healthy, his face became sunken and sickly, his nature more reclusive. But the worst were the headaches, increasing in strength and frequency, affecting his ability to lead. Although they remained silent, the decline was visible to his officers, but Caesar denied these problems, lashing out at any queries. The first hints of what might have been the problem appeared only a couple months prior with infrequent headaches. The headaches recurred increasingly along with blanking out mid-conversation. The most recent symptom to occur is Caesar's left leg stiffening and him being only able to drag it. While Caesar is untrained to diagnose himself, he's figured that he's likely suffering from a brain tumor, but defers to a professional's opinion on the diagnosis. 

By 2281, Caesar returned to Fortification Hill, poised to take the dam with what remained of the 86 reformed tribes that his Legion had conquered and claim New Vegas as his Rome. He is emboldened by Legion victories at the Battle of Willow Beach and the Battle of Arizona Spillway, but is playing his cards more cautiously this time, and will not give the order for Lanius to attack the dam until he can unearth the contents of the vault sealed beneath his base in the Mojave. Caesar also needs to neutralize the ruler of New Vegas, Robert House, assassinate NCR President Kimball, attempt to forge an alliance with the Boomers, Great Khans, and White Glove Society, destroy the Brotherhood of Steel, and, perhaps most importantly, deal with his brain tumor.

Behind the scenes
According to Joshua Sawyer, Caesar created his Legion as an imitation of the Roman legion, but without any of the Roman society attached to it. He also stated that residents in Legion territory are neither true citizens nor true slaves, but rather "people who keep their mouths shut, go about their business, and nod at the rare requests the Legion makes of them -- they can live very well."