History Characters / FalloutNewVegasCaesarsLegion

* EvilPowerVacuum: House speculates that this will be the fate of the Legion once Caesar is out of the picture. With no strong charismatic figure to unite under, the Legion will fall to infighting and destroy itself within a year. Unfortunately, this also means that the territories of the Legion will fall back into anarchy. [[spoiler:Sadly {{subverted|Trope}} should the Courier take it upon himself/herself to put one in Caesar's head early on: his subordinates pick up the reins rather seamlessly.]]

** Caesar teaches that the weak are unworthy of living and deserve to perish, and has outlawed all chems and technology including stimpacks because they contribute to making humanity weak and frail for relying on them. The second you get into his tent, you'll see his bodyguards are armed with advanced power fists, he has an Auto Doc in his bedroom, and oh yes, [[spoiler:he has a fatal brain tumor and sees no problem in using modern medicine to save his own skin]].

[[Characters/FalloutNewVegasTheCourier The Courier]] | [[Characters/FalloutNewVegasCompanions Companions]] | [[Characters/FalloutNewVegasNewCalifornia New California Republic]] | '''Caesar's Legion''' | [[Characters/FalloutNewVegasTheStrip The Strip]] ([[Characters/FalloutNewVegasRobertEdwinHouse Robert Edwin House]]) | [[Characters/FalloutNewVegasSettlements Settlements]] | [[Characters/FalloutNewVegasOtherFactions Other Factions]] | [[Characters/FalloutNewVegasOtherCharacters Other Characters]] | [[Characters/FalloutNewVegasDeadMoney Dead Money Characters]] | [[Characters/FalloutNewVegasHonestHearts Honest Hearts Characters]] | [[Characters/FalloutNewVegasOldWorldBlues Old World Blues Characters]] | [[Characters/FalloutNewVegasLonesomeRoad Lonesome Road Characters]]-]]]]]

* JerkassHasAPoint: Though manipulative and cruel, Caesar makes some startlingly true observations about the Wasteland and the corruption of the NCR, which seems to be echoed by many "free" people of the Mojave. He notes that as brutal as his lands are, they're the safest to travel through, and that while the NCR acts like the saviors of the Mojave, they more often than not seize and capture what they want, when they want, without any consideration of the Mojave's people and landowners.

In 2246, a scholar from the NCR, Edward Sallow, was sent by his peers to study the language of the the Blackfoot tribe in Arizona. Within a year, reports began reaching the NCR that Sallow had not only led the tribe to victory in a war against its neighbors, but had reorganized them and their conquered enemies into an army of slave-driving fanatics.

** A much better example is the Legionary Assassins. Made up of the best warriors in the entire Legion; though their armor identifies them by certain roles, such as Praetorian Armor and Vexilarius Helmets, the Legionary Assassins are ''far'' stronger and better equipped than the generic versions of these soldiers. They travel across the wasteland in squads of four, searching for particularly dangerous enemies of the Legion. That means you. Once you pass level 25, they're the only type of legionary that will pose a legitimate threat.

* ANaziByAnyOtherName: The Legion are basically an explicit fascist dictatorship, and the game is not at all subtle about this. They're a patriarchal, xenophobic totalitarian regime that believes that human morality is only measured in strength and the exaltation of strength. Oddly, unlike many fictional villains who take after fascist imagery but don't actually derive their beliefs from such, the Legion take after Roman imagery despite the Roman Empire being an authoritarian but non-fascist government. This actually makes sense, considering that the original fascist state, Fascist Italy, also took a lot of imagery from the Roman Empire, including the word "fascism" and their symbol coming from [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces a Roman badge of office]].

* NoSympathyBetweenMooks: If you thought their hatred of everyone else was bad enough, the Legionaries even sneer at the death of the Nelson Garrison if you opt to help the NCR in "Restoring Hope," mocking their inexperience. You can also find several crucified legionaries around the Fort who were punished for failure. None of the legionaries walking around seems to mind.

* PlotArmor: At the start of the game, the Legion is suffering basically none of the problems their being an ultramilitarized stratocracy that embraces AntiIntellectualism, [[NoWomansLand misogyny]], and general depravity as core values and treats every single one of its members as slaves, knowing or not should according to historical precedent, political and military science, and basic common sense. They cover most of the Four Corners, they can defeat better-equipped NCR troops in superior numbers through the sheer power of their disciplined charges, and they don't have any of the problems of corruption or banditry that are endemic in the NCR (and, historically, are huge issues for authoritarian stratocracies like them). They do have [[KeystoneArmy some key weaknesses]], but if they lose it's going to be because the player pulled in MonsterThreatExpiration, not because their SpaceFillingEmpire collapses under its own weight or gets beaten by one of the better-armed factions that should have every advantage in a contest of arms against them.

** Joshua Graham, an ex-Legate exlied by Caesar, who uses the English pronunciation.

* ScienceIsBad: {{Downplayed|Trope}}. Caesar isn't opposed to technology as such, but he opposes the use of weapons that allow victory without sacrifice, and technologies that he sees as weakening his Legionares. Therefore, medicine beyond that of tribal remedies and war machines that allow for fighting without risking men (for example, robots) are banned. Energy Weapons are fair game, because they're just guns. [[spoiler:Caesar keeping an Auto-Doc and possibly Arcade for his tumor and using a howitzer for the final battle, however, is just fine...]]

*** As a bonus, one ending has the Courier point out to Lanius that, even if they achieve a local success in the Mojave, the Legion's lack of any real transportation capacity to support their logistics besides their own feet and the occasional brahmin (as opposed to the NCR, which has trains and trucks) will spell doom for them when they overstretch themselves trying to invade the NCR. In real life, this is ''exactly'' what happened in Korea; the Chinese won stunning victories against the U.S. Army in the First and Second Phase Offensives, even taking Seoul, but their logistical limits saw the whole effort breaking down barely a few dozen miles inside of South Korea as the Third Phase Offensive incurred heavy casualties and failed to decisively defeat the Americans. They were subsequently stuffed at Chipyong-ni by a single U.S./French brigade, pushed back across the border in subsequent U.S.-led counteroffensives, and exhausted the bulk of their remaining offensive strength against the now-strengthened U.S. forces in the failed Spring Offensive.

* VillainsActHeroesReact: While the NCR is sitting in the dam and doing little to curb Legion activities in the Mojave, the Legion is actively taking new territories and undermining their enemy. Prior to the event of the game, the Legion pushed the NCR completely out of Colorado in the decisive battle of Arizona Splitway and Willow Beach. Then, they proceeded to cross the Colorado and established a solid bridgehead by seizing Nelson and destroying Camp Searchlight. During the event of the game itself, it's the Legion that is actively sabotaging the NCR war effort while the NCR does nothing but wait for the assault on the dam. They destroy Nipton at the start of the game, put constant pressure on the garrison of Forlorn Hope (and will always destroy it during the Second Battle of Hoover Dam without Courier's intervention), coordinate with the Fiends to ambush NCR patrols around Vegas, collude with the Omertas to launch a coup on Vegas when the time comes, have an agent on standby at [=McCarran=] to destroy the Monorail and cut Vegas off from NCR reinforcement, and will successfully assassinate president Kimball if not stopped by the Courier.

* CoolShades: As part of his Vexilarius Helm.

* NemeanSkinning: He wears a Vexilarius Helm made from the hide of a coyote when out in the field.

* StaticRoleExchangeableCharacter: If he dies before you walk into Nipton or receive the mark of Ceasar, these events happen anyway, carried out by Gabban or Alerio.

* TooDumbToLive: Even if you've been incredibly hostile towards the Legion up until that point, Vulpes doesn't have any reservations about approaching you on the Strip in broad daylight ''by himself'' to give you the Mark of Caesar. There's nothing stopping you from capping him in the back of the head the moment he turns to walk away and the securitrons won't try to intervene either. He presumably knew at that point that the Courier had access to the Lucky 38 and thus some kind of special connection with Mr. House. It's amazing he didn't consider the possibility that the Strip's guards would let the Courier murder him. You'd think he'd have at least sent one of his grunts to do it, given that he's the highest-ranking spymaster in the entire Legion and one of Caeser's right-hand men.

* WeHaveReserves: In Camp Searchlight, you can find two of his agents dead, with orders on their bodies to go to the fire station and open up as many of the cannisters they find there as they can before reporting back to him. The cannisters were nuclear fuel casks and exposed everyone at the camp to a lethal dose of radiation poisoning, starting with the two unfortunate Legion agents.

* JustYouAndMeAndMyGuards: If The Courier decides to fight him, several other legionnaries will be joining him in the fight. Subverted if The Courier has good karma, as an option to ask him to fight one-on-one appears and he agrees with it.

* SuckSessor: Despite being Caesar's successor if he dies, he's quite a lacking replacement, as Lanius's skill is in personal combat and theatre-scale military command at most, not as a statesman or governor. While Caesar commands loyalty through his cult of personality, Lanius does it through fear and violence. Numerous characters comment that without Caesar the Legion will eventually fall apart because it's his presence that holds it together, and it's implied that despite his best efforts, Lanius will fail to stop this if Caesar dies, even if the Legion wins the Mojave afterward. It's implied in cut dialogue that Lanius knows he isn't cut out for being the new Caesar and laments this fact.

->'''Voiced by:''' Gregory Alan Willaims

* MacheteMayhem: He wields a unique blade called the Liberator, which was a gift from his centuarian as a reward for helping conquer the Sun Dogs tribe. If the player completes his quest he'll then give it to them so that he can force himself to work harder and earn another.

->'''Voiced by:''' Gregory Alan Willaims

* {{Expy}}: Has more than a few important similarities to Ashur from ''The Pitt'' DLC of ''Fallout 3'' – a charismatic and powerful leader from an advanced insular group that used his knowledge to organize tribals and raiders into a coherent society in the name of brutal but efficient and well-meant societal reformation, but they're more loyal to the leader than his visions and they'll fall apart without his leadership. The key differences are that the Legion is aggressively expanding its reach and values to other towns, and Ashur is aware of his flaws and plans to reform his men once they achieve their goals, while Caesar is an egomaniacal sadist. Both also rely on slave labor, with Ashur fueling the Capital Wasteland's slave trade and ''everyone'' in the Legion being some type of slave.

[[caption-width-right:350:''"Good. In hoc signo taurus vinces.[[note]]In the sign of the bull, you will conquer[[/note]]"'']]

* KnowNothingKnowItAll: For an intellectual, Caesar commits several factual errors in his discourses. For instance, what he claims to be Hegelian Dialectics (the concept of Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis) is not it, the concept itself is not even associated to Hegel, but to Fichte. [[note]]Although some philosophy books in real life also make that mistake.[[/note]] He also claims that the Roman Empire was free of corruption, which anyone with a cursory knowledge on classical era history can say it's simply not true. Arguably justified considering that the goal of his rhetoric is to be convincing, not factually correct.

* KeystoneArmy: A DownplayedTrope - Ulysses estimates that the Legion will only last about a year after Caesar's death. That won't stop them from staging their attack on Hoover Dam, and Ulysses concedes that Lanius's sheer brutality will probably hold them together for a while, but without their godlike veneration of Caesar to give them their identity they'll quickly collapse.

* SmallRoleBigImpact: Alerio's only role, if he shows up to begin with, is to deliver the Mark of Caesar, allowing the Courier to reach the Fort. One way or another, that act will have lasting consequences for the Mojave (unless you're on an NCR run and you don't go to the Fort).

* [[ArtisticLicense Artistic License Philosophy]]: {{Downplayed}}. Caesar misrepresents Hegel's Dialectics by saying it was about Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis, a formation that not only predates Hegel by several years (Hegel himself attributes it to Kant), but that Hegel was in fact dismissive of. Hegel's actual dialectics were something closer to Abstract-Negation-Concrete, meaning we project our "abstract" ideas onto the world only to find flaws in them (or in the world), and reconciling this "negation" of our original idea allows us to produce something "concrete". The "downplayed" part is that this is actually a ''very'' common mistake in philosophy (much to the annoyance of Hegelian scholars) and something Caesar (or the writers) got wrong on his own, though it does accidentally indicate in-universe that Caesar's knowledge of Hegel is [[WickedPretentious more second hand than he lets on]].

* [[ArtisticLicense Artistic License Philosophy]]: {{Downplayed}}. Caesar misrepresents Hegel's Dialectics by saying it was about Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis, a formation that not only predates Hegel by several years (Hegel himself attributes it to Kant) ), but that Hegel was in fact dismissive of. Hegel's actual dialectics were something closer to Abstract (Idea)-Negation-Concrete, meaning we project our abstract ideas onto the world only to find flaws in them (or in the world), and reconciling them allows us to produce something "concrete". The "downplayed" part is that this is actually a ''very'' common mistake in philosophy (much to the annoyance of Hegelian scholars) and something Caesar (or the writers) got wrong on his own, though it does accidentally indicate in-universe that Caesar's knowledge of Hegel is [[WickedPretentious more second hand than he lets on]].

** His original name, Edward Sallow, meanwhile, calls to mind the Salo Republic, the Nazi German puppet state established in Italy as Mussolini's regime collapsed during WWII. And [[Film/SaloOrTheOneHundredTwentyDaysOfSodom today the name Salo is most (in)famous for a work of hideous exploitation film about both fascism and sadism]].

** His original name, Edward Sallow, meanwhile, calls to mind the Salo Republic, the Nazi German puppet state established in Italy as Mussolini's regime collapsed during WWII.

* TheHeart: An extremely twisted version of this trope. While Vulpes and Lanius have more common sense, take a more active role in planning and carrying out the Legion’s deed and have more tactical savvy, Caesar is the one who holds to Legion together and informs its values. [[DeconstructedTrope This is why the Legion's values are depravity, misogyny, and the glorification of violence and slavery for their own sakes.]]

* TheHeart: An extremely twisted version of this trope. While Vulpes and Lanius have more common sense, take a more active role in planning and carrying out the Legion’s deed and have more tactical savvy, Caesar is the one who holds to Legion together and informs its values.

* MultipleChoicePast: There are several accounts of how he came to be the Legion's greatest soldier that don't quite match up with each other. For example, Caesar's account of how he was the mightiest warrior in a conquered tribe and was press-ganged into the Legion doesn't fit Lucius' claim that he was already a centurion when he was 12 years old. Joshua Graham remarks that he never heard of Lanius during his time leading the Legion; Josh was only banished seven years ago, suggesting Lanius wasn't present or at least prominent in the Legion at the time. To further confuse the matter, Ulysses mentions that no one sees Lanius without his mask on, and anyone who does is blinded for it, thus there's the possibility for there to be several Laniuses, since anyone can don his armor and mask to take on his image. Furthermore, this trope is likely deliberate to build up Lanius's ShroudedInMyth MemeticBadass image.