Brotherhood of Steel

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

West coast


The headquarters of the Brotherhood is the Lost Hills bunker in California, the seat of the Brotherhood's High Elder and its 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 Brotherhood was 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 the New California Republic). All Brotherhood outposts are formally subject to the Lost Hills' ruling council's authority, even if they sometimes tend to act independently, especially if they are 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 Brotherhood rule and is a member of the New California Republic.

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 (NCR), 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 Brotherhood 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 the Brotherhood leadership at Lost Hills and has been an independent organization since the 2160's, when the airships of its founders crashed near Chicago. Unlike the original, isolationist 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. While more open to the outside world, this faction of the 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 Brotherhood main bases were bunkers that were probably pre-Great War military bunkers that were found, taken, and rebuilt. They 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, D.C. This faction is led by the idealistic Elder Owyn Lyons who decided to make the protection of the human inhabitants of the Capital Wasteland from Super Mutants and other threats his top priority, instead of the acquisition and preservation of technology. While Lyons is officially recognized by the ruling council at Lost Hills as the leader of a Brotherhood faction, 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 Wastelander 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. These soldiers help preserve the Capital Wasteland by holding back the Super Mutants, who tend to remain in the urban ruins of Washington, D.C.

However, there are members of Lyons' expeditionary force to the East Coast who preferred to stay faithful to the Brotherhood's original goals. These members of the Brotherhood left the Citadel and became known as the Brotherhood Outcasts.

Texas


After the death of Roger Maxson, Rhombus, the head of the Brotherhood's Paladins, became the new High Elder. After the death of the Master, the Brotherhood of Steel helped the other human outposts of the Core Region drive the mutant armies away with minimal loss of life on both sides of the conflict. However, a Super Mutant faction under the leadership of Attis moved east and attempted to recreate the mutant army in Texas using the Secret Vault. Rhombus, despite some criticism from the ruling council of the West Coast Brotherhood of Steel, started a crusade against the still existent threat of the Super Mutant army, now led by Attis. They traveled to eastwards to Texas. There, he discovered a prototype Vault which was abandoned and installed the Brotherhood's main base of operation in this area. Their principal mission was to eradicate the menace of all Super Mutants. For this reason, they created a new Texas Brotherhood icon, which featured two dual pistols, topped by a pair of wings, all of a red color.

Ranks


The Brotherhood of Steel 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 the rank of 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 the Head Scribe.

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

Brotherhood Knights are responsible for manufacturing the weapons and other pieces of technology used by the Brotherhood, although they also take part in combat activities. After many years of service and experience, the best Knights are promoted to Paladins - the pinnacle rank 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 of the Brotherhood. Paladins who survive to their later years become Elders, and they make up the Brotherhood's ruling council. The leader of the council and the Brotherhood itself is the High Elder, usually descended from the Maxson family.

Symbolism of the insignia
In the Brotherhood symbol, the gears represent their engineering knowledge, the sword is their will to defend themselves, the wings represent the uplifting hope that the acquisition of lost technology represents for mankind's salvation following the devastation of the Great War, and the circle represents the fraternal unity that makes the organization a true brotherhood.

Another interpretation is that the Brotherhood's symbol represents each of the organizatio's different 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 Initiates, whose services keep the Knights supplied with the information and the manpower required to get their jobs done.

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

Mariposa


The founder of the Brotherhood of Steel was Captain Roger Maxson of the United States Army. 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 by the U.S. Army to monitor the experiments being conducted there by West-Tek on behalf of the American government in the interest of national security. On January 7, 2077, all West-Tek military research was moved to the newly-constructed Mariposa Military Base, along with Spindel's team, to enhance the research's security.

On October 10, 2077 Captain Maxson and his men discovered, to their horror, that the West-Tek scientists at Mariposa were using military prisoners as involuntary test subjects in their experiments with the genetically-emgineered Forced Evolutionary Virus. Morale in the base broke down, and Colonel Spindel suffered a mental breakdown, eventually committing suicide five days later. Captain Maxson's men turned to him for leadership in the midst of the crisis.

After interrogating Robert Anderson, the chief scientist on the West-Tek research team, and learning about the extent of their immoral scientific experiments on military prisoners, Maxson executed Anderson in disgust, and the other scientists soon followed their leader to the firing squad. Maxson, now in control of the entire Mariposa base, declared himself to be in full desertion from the U.S Army via radio on October 20, 2077. Strangely, he got no response from the Army chain-of-command, as the rest of the Army was too busy fighting the Chinese threat. Three days later,on October 23, 2077, the nuclear bombs and missiles of both sides were launched, and the Great War ended two hours after it started, with most of the Earth reduced to a radioactive wasteland.

Exodus
The Mariposa Military Base survived the nuclear exchange that devastated the United States, the soldiers within protected from the radiation and FEV flooding into the newly created Wasteland by the base's highly-effective nuclear, biological and chemical weapons protection protocols. Two days later at Mariposa, on October 25, 2077, an Army scout in Power Armor (Platner) was sent out to get specific readings on the atmosphere. He reported no significant amounts of radiation in the area surrounding the facility. After burying the bodies of the executed scientists in the wastes outside of Mariposa, the soldiers sealed the military base, then headed out into the desert, taking supplies and weapon schematics from the base with them. Captain Maxson led his men and their families to the government fallout bunker at Lost Hills in California, and this event was later called the Exodus. In November 2077, after a few weeks in the Wasteland, the soldiers and their families arrived at the Lost Hills bunker, suffering many casualties along the way from the terrible confitions of the Wasteland, including Maxson's wife (but not his teenage son). The Lost Hills bunker became the headquarters of the newly formed paramilitary organization that Maxson created and named the Brotherhood of Steel, intending to use its resources to eventually rebuild human civilization--no matter the cost.

Early years
Not much is known about the early years of the Brotherhood of Steel. In 2134, a faction led by Sergeant Dennis Allen gained strength in the organization, and it urged the Brotherhood's Elders to let them explore the southeast ruins of the primary West-Tek Research Facility, now called the Glow after it was directly hit by a Chinese nuclear bomb, for technological artifacts. The Elders refused, so Sergeant Allen and his separatist faction split away from the Brotherhood of Steel, taking some advanced technology and weapons with them. Despite that, under the leadership of Roger Maxson, the Brotherhood grew in strength, further 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 new High Elder of the Brotherhood.

Growing power
In the 2150's, the Brotherhood established its control over the areas surrounding the Lost Hills bunker, becoming one of the major powers in the Core Region of the West Coast. Some time in the early 2150's 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 High Elder Maxson, found the Vipers. Expecting the Raiders to break and run at the sight of soldiers in Power Armor, Maxson did not 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 High Elder, and Rhombus became the new head of the Paladins and the order of Knights.

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 Sierra Nevada mountain range.

During the campaign, the Brotherhood sent a few scouts and emissaries to the Hub to track down the Vipers' members, and from these beginnings, the Hub and the Brotherhood opened 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's headquarters at Lost Hills 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, the Vault Dweller came to the Brotherhood's base at Lost Hills, wanting to join them. He was not taken seriously and sent on the usual fool's errand to the ruins of the West-Tek Research Facility, which was now called the Glow, after being hit by a Chinese nuclear bomb during the Great War. He surprised everyone by not only returning alive but carrying a holodisk with the record of a lost expedition of several Brotherhood Paladins to the Glow. As a result, 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 Brotherhood resisted his joining the organization.

It was from the Vault Dweller that the Brotherhood learned about the Master's mutant army and his plans to turn all human survivors into Super Mutants. With the support of High Elder John Maxson, the Vault Dweller managed to convince the Council of Elders to send a squad of Paladins to the Mariposa Base (which had been, ironically, where the Brotherhood originated, although by that time even John Maxson did not 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. The Brotherhood at this time appears to be the most technologically advanced faction encountered in the Core Region of the West Coast. Although the Super Mutant army and the Gun Runners have access to more advanced weaponry, the Brotherhood has a monopoly on Power Armor, certain medical technologies like cybernetics, and advanced supercomputers.

Midwestern Brotherhood


Following the defeat of the Master in the mid-twenty-second century, the Brotherhood's members eventually found themselves at odds with their need to recruit new blood into the organization versus their desire to maintain their code of technological secrecy from outsiders. The internal debate went on for some time. Finally, the Brotherhood Elders ruled against sharing any advanced technology with outsiders, convinced that they would ultimately use the technology for destruction and force humanity to once more endure terrible destruction like that of the Great War. Further discussion was discouraged and the Elders ordered the minority of Brotherhood members who favored sharing technology on a mission across the wastes. The Brotherhood constructed airships and dispatched the minority faction to the East, to track down and assess the extent of the remaining Super Mutant threat. Unfortunately, a great storm damaged the main airship and flung it far off its course. The mighty Brotherhood airship had been badly damaged. Smaller sections were torn from the main craft, never to be seen again. Many of the Brotherhood expedition's leaders were lost to the storm's winds. The fraction of the crew that survived struggled to keep their ship aloft before finally crashing on the outskirts of the blasted ruins of Chicago. The survivors of the Brotherhood expedition eventually formed an organization called the Midwestern Brotherhood, which diverged greatly from the ideals of the western Brotherhood. In time, they established a harsh rule over the towns and villages in the Chicago Wasteland area.

In 2198, after myriad fights with countless Raider bands, a warlike technological cult known as the Reavers, and a Super Mutant army led by the mad Paladin Latham (who was a survivor of one of the other Brotherhood airships), the Midwestern Brotherhood eventually faced their greatest enemy - a robotic army commanded by the Calculator, who was the mad Artificial Intelligence of Vault Zero. Eventually, the robots were defeated and/or absorbed into the Midwestern Brotherhood's forces thanks to the individual known in Brotherhood legend only as the Warrior. Throughout the course of the war against the Calculator, the Midwestern Brotherhood lost many of its troops but in the process gain access to Vault Zero which also happened to be a storehouse of knowledge and pre-Great War technology. The Midwestern Brotherhood established Vault Zero as their main headquarters throughout the Midwestern Region. As of 2277, the Midwestern splinter faction of the Brotherhood consists of large detachments located in Illinois, Missouri, Kansas ,and Colorado. It has come into some contact with the original, West Coast Brotherhood, but it refused to accept the authority of the Lost Hills Elders. Thus, the Midwestern Brotherhood is considered to be a "rogue" faction by the rest of the Brotherhood of Steel on both the West and East Coasts.

Aftermath


After the death of Roger Maxson's son, Maxson II, Rhombus, the head of the Paladins and the Brotherhood's order of Knights, became the new High Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel. After the death of the Master in 2162, the Brotherhood of Steel helped the other human outposts of the Core Region on the West Coast drive the mutant armies away with minimal loss of life on both sides of the conflict. However, a Super Mutant faction under the leadership of Attis moved east and attempted to recreate the mutant army in Texas using the Secret Vault. The Brotherhood organized a crusade against this faction (the reason for this is probably a desire to gain vengeance for their losses, as Attis was known to particularly relish killing members of the Brotherhood in gruesome ways). The leader of this Brotherhood crusade was High Elder Rhombus himself. He died during the battle in Los.

Decline
After the defeat of the Master in the mid-twenty-second century, the Brotherhood had become a shadow of its former self. By 2241, they are no longer the sole custodian of advanced technology in the Core Region Wasteland. 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 grandchild of the Vault Dweller who, with the Brotherhood's help, had destroyed the Master in 2162. They sent him to Navarro to retrieve Vertibird plans for them, but it is not known if they eventually received them.

The Brotherhood played a much less direct role in the Chosen One's fight against the Enclave, with their only presence in Northern California being three small outposts, each with a single guard. Of these, only the San Francisco bunker contained anything of interest. No longer the most advanced faction in the Core Region with the arrival of the Enclave, the Brotherhood lost its monopoly on Power Armor as the Shi also had access to working suits. Though aside from other rare instances, only the Enclave seems to use them. Although the Brotherhood's technological levels did not seem to have advanced at all in the 80 years following the defeat of the Master, from what little can be seen, they still possessed advanced weapons and medical technology.

War with the New California Republic
In the 2250's, the Brotherhood of Steel leadership, led by High Elder Jeremy Maxson, favored a return to power in the Core Region by wresting all advanced technology from the hands of "lesser people" by any means necessary. This attitude did not win them any friends, and because many in the Brotherhood disagreed with such brutal and aggressive methods, the whole organization was on the verge of a 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, the founder of the Brotherhood. He then sent a full complement of Brotherhood troops to occupy the bunker. Brixley was promoted to the position of Elder, given the rank of General, and placed in charge of the occupation. The remainder of her exploratory team was given the title of Elder as well. It was not long afterward that the Brotherhood's war with the New California Republic (NCR) was announced.

For years the war waged on and was considered a victory for the Brotherhood of Steel. However, no matter how many NCR 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 for lost Brotherhood Knights were always short in arriving. It soon became obvious that the Brotherhood was doomed to lose the war to the NCR's greater numbers. Morale 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 Stealth Boys. These devices could create a field of gravitic energy that would bend visible light waves 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 on human cerebral tissue. Paranoia, delusions, and eventual schizophrenia were the major symptoms. The Brotherhood disallowed the use of Stealth Boys and once again fell behind in their war effort.

At the present time the Brotherhood of Steel is facing yet another major problem. The side effects of the Stealth Boys were not discovered until the team using them had already begun to feel their deleterious effect. When the team was disbanded, paranoia over the reason for the end of their mission began to set in and the team plotted against their leaders. They stole the Stealth Boys, fled the bunker as deserters, and formed a covert paramilitary group known as the Circle of Steel. The goal of the Circle of Steel is to recover lost technology and rebuild the glory of the Brotherhood in the Core Region--at any cost.

Capital Wasteland


The Brotherhood's ruling council decided in 2257 to send an expeditionary force of Brotherhood members to the East Coast, to recover any and all advanced technology from Washington, D.C. and to investigate the reports of Super Mutant activity in the area. The group moved through the remains of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (The Pitt) on their way, conducting an operation called the "Scourge" against Raider forces in the area. When the group reached the Capital Wasteland, 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 on the West Coast. After the discovery, Paladin Owyn Lyons, the leader of the expedition, was promoted to the rank of Elder. A permanent base known as the Citadel was built into and beneath the ruins of the Pentagon. Lyons and his soldiers also found that the report of Super Mutant activity in the urban ruins of downtown Washington had been true and they helped stop the mutant tide from overtaking the entire region, by keeping the Super Mutants at bay and largely confined to the Washington ruins.

Eventually, Elder Lyons decided to make the protection of the innocent inhabitants of the Capital Wasteland from Super Mutants and other threats his main priority. In response, the Brotherhood's Lost Hills Elders cut off all support to the East Coast faction, while still recognizing Lyons as a legitimate 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 lost and 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 advanced 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 from the Wastelanders, thus ending the Brotherhood's official policy of technological secrecy. .

The Brotherhood of Steel originated in a rebellion by U.S. Army soldiers against what they viewed as immoral government-sanctioned human medical experiments. The first orders of their founder, Captain Roger Maxson, was to evacuate the Mariposa Military Base in 2077 and head to the Lost Hills government emergency bunker complex (see Maxson Log). Captain Maxson included a caveat in his initial orders: Unless otherwise directed, from a proper representative of the War Department, this order will stand as written. The seizing of the Pentagon by Owyn Lyons' detachment in the middle decades of the twenty-third century was an irony of fate. The Brotherhood now held the headquarters of the War Department.

In 2277, the Brotherhood faced an old enemy once again; the Enclave, led by President John Henry Eden.

The Brotherhood appears to be almost exactly as technologically advanced as they were in 2161. They do not have a monopoly on Power Armor either, as suits are somewhat available from merchants across the Capital Wasteland, though only the Brotherhood and the Enclave appear to use them in any significant capacity. In fact the Brotherhood only seem to have access to the inferior early versions of Power Armor, presumably found in the Pentagon rather than the standard T-51b suit used by the Brotherhood on the West Coast. The Capital Wasteland Brotherhood's weapons and armor are still inferior to the Enclave's, though this is more than compensated for by their acquisition of Liberty Prime, an extremely powerful prototype of a bipedal military robot discovered inside the depths of the Citadel. Despite their less advanced technology, the Brotherhood was still able to win a war against the Enclave in little more than two weeks with the help of the legendary Lone Wanderer of the Capital Wasteland.

The Brotherhood of Steel expeditionary force arrived in the Capital Wasteland barely a year before the Lone Wanderer's birth, either in 2257 or early 2258.

Appearances
The Brotherhood of Steel appears in all Fallout games.

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 of Steel as portrayed in the Fallout 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 with the established persona of the Brotherhood.