Rattletail

Rattletail was a village mentioned only in Fallout: New Vegas. It was founded by New California Republic settlers who had moved into Baja, sometime between 2256 and 2261. According to Hanlon the village was nothing more than six shacks built around a well. Hanlon was sent with six other NCR Rangers to investigate reports of raider attacks on the settlement. It took the rangers about a week to get there, with one dying from a Nightstalker attack and another nearly dying from dehydration.

When the rangers arrived, they discovered 5 men with .308 hunting rifles defending the village, and over 24 dead bodies behind a dune nearby. While investigation the bodies, Hanlon realized that the people the villagers had killed were not raiders heavily armed raiders but simply people trying to access the water in the town's well.

Seeing that the settlers of Rattletail seemed resolved to defend their well to the death, Hanlon created a story about a group of 100 raiders poised to attack the village in order to get them to leave. He also said that the raiders had already killed 10 of his rangers. This convinced the villagers to return back to NCR territory. The former residents of Rattletail resettled in Anza-Borrego, in pre-war Southern California, and were having success there raising Bighorners.

The player can get Hanlon to tell the story of Rattletail to them by passing a speech check of 50. After asking if he had any good stories to tell, Hanlon dismisses this by saying that the player should go ask one of the younger rangers for tall tales about killing raiders and defending villages (though he will talk about the battle of Hoover Dam. The player can prod Hanlon further by saying that there must be something he's proud of in his time with the Rangers. Hanlon says that Rattletail is one of his proudest accomplishments.