Characters / Fallout: New Vegas - Caesar's Legion

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Caesar's Legion

Pax Per Bellum.^note Translation: "Peace through war."

"Thesis and antithesis. The Colorado River is my Rubicon. The NCR council will be eradicated, but the new synthesis will change the Legion as well: from a basically nomadic army to a standing military force that protects its citizens... and the power of its dictator."

— Caesar

In 2246, a scholar from the NCR, Edward Sallow, was sent by his peers to study the language of 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.

Worshipped by his followers as a living god, Sallow — now calling himself "Caesar" — modelled his army after the legions of The Roman Empire, using his education in history and military tactics to conquer his way across Arizona and New Mexico. While the inhabitants of the region generally considered Caesar and his Legion a welcome relief from the anarchy that once plagued them, stories of the horrors he vested upon those who resisted spread like wildfire.

With the majority of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado under his heel, Caesar now sets his sights on New Vegas, gathering his forces on the eastern bank of the Colorado River in preparation for a massive assault. He sees this latest conquest as the final step towards his ultimate goal — returning to the NCR and overthrowing its stagnant democracy, in favor of a totalitarian dictatorship under his rule...

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• Adaptational Villainy: Downplayed. While still every bit the ruthless slavers in Fallout: Van Buren as well as New Vegas, their misogyny would be slightly toned down as they start allowing females to work as bounty hunters for them, as seen with this character. The Legion of New Vegas, you can be female and work for them, but you will be the only instance of that (and only because Caesar considers you exceptional) and still be denied some benefits and respect regardless of reputation.
• Affably Evil: Inculta is a bit like this, although his actions can say otherwise. Legate Lanius (despite being much more brutal than the other two) is surprisingly polite to the Courier, disapproves of Vulpes's methods of handling the West, and praises you if you have earned his respect or sided with Caesar. Caesar himself is a pretty good boss as long as you do not question his ideals too much/don't fail him. Even if you do fail him (or cross him), owning up to it and apologizing will cause him to forgive you. Lucius will apologize to you for blaming you if you fail to cure Caesar, and he is even willing to teach you unarmed moves if you haven't been hostile to the Legion.
• Armor Is Useless: Flip-flopped between the Centurions and the lower echelons. Excluding the former, Legion armor is terrible in comparison to NCR armor. It may have something to do with most of it being made of football gear. Good for protecting against unarmed blows... not so much against bullets or strong melee attacks.
• Assimilation Plot: A cultural version. It's not enough for them to conquer territory; they explicitly aim to erase the cultural identity of everyone they conquer and make it their own, so that there are no nations, tribes, or gangs; there is only Nova Roma.^note Avoiding this very thing is a big part of what made the real Caesar's Rome so powerful. The reason they were able to hold so much land was by allowing local conquered tribes to retain their identities while paying taxes to Rome, guaranteeing them a large deterrent from all-too-common tribal warfare. By forcing Tribals to abandon their history, the Legion under Edward Sallow is breeding a massive amount of resentment, ensuring that the Legion will never survive if their military might ever starts to wane.
• Ax-Crazy: Most of the Legion members you meet are a bunch of psychotic thugs looking to rape, torture, and murder everyone they come across. Even Caesar himself, despite his well-intentioned ambitions and rational veneer, becomes unhealthily sadistic and kill-happy when he loses his temper.
• Badass Army: Every Legionary, from the Legate on down, is either an experienced combatant or dead. The rank-and-file might not be terribly creative or well-armed, but even Colonel Moore admits they are in fantastic shape and fanatically loyal, charging machine gun nests with little more than a sharp stick if their commander orders it. Caesar himself is an exception; he relies on his brains to get around his lack of brawn.
• Badass Native: The very first Legionaries, barring Caesar and the Malpais Legate, were all Blackfoot Indians. The feathered headdresses worn by the Decani seem to reflect this.
• Badass Normal: Though the lower grunts of the Legion are poorly armed and rarely given formal training other than "Hit this until it's dead," NCR soldiers note how ferocious they are in battle and how even small squads of Legionaries can wipe out much larger companies of NCR troopers in melee combat. This has a basis in reality as for most of history, prevalent tactical thought held that attacking forces which managed to fully commit to a charge were likely to quickly break their enemies' morale, even before they reach close-range - further compounded by the NCR troops being generally regarded as being of middling reliability, the kind of troops who would be very vulnerable to the morale shock of an aggressive charge.
• Based on a Great Big Lie: According to the New Vegas game guide, Caesar claims to be the son of Mars, and though most adult slaves are doubtful, their children are indoctrinated to believe it by the time the boys are Legionnaires and the girls are slaves themselves.
• Berserk Button: Never say the name of Joshua Graham in front of Caesar or Lanius. They even say his preferred moniker "The Burned Man" with utter bitterness.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Let's face it, they look ridiculous in those outfits. But they're cunning, sadistic, numerous, and an enormous threat in the Mojave and far beyond, to the point of effectively dominating the entire former state of Arizona prior to New Vegas.
• Bread and Circuses: The Legion rules over what they consider "civilized people" this way. Settlements that willingly accept Caesar as their supreme ruler, pay tribute to the Legion, and obey its men's requests and orders unquestionably are given the Legion's protection and modest supply of water, food, and electricity in exchange. Raul notes that they have turned Arizona, which used to be quite a hellhole, into a somewhat stable and peaceful area this way. However, if the Legion writes off a group as an "uncivilized" tribe, they receive no such offer and are brutally crushed and forcibly subjugated.
• Breeding Slave: The purpose of Legion women is to produce more Legionnaires and slaves.
• Can't Argue with Elves: Despite the absolutely horrifying things the Legion does (such as the slavery, sexism, executing detractors, assimilating and erasing entire cultures at a time, and enough raping and pillaging to make Conan the Barbarian blush to name a few) you never get a chance to actually confront or counter-argue these points with anyone in the Legion, with the best excuse from Caesar himself being that it's all "for the greater good." In fact, they're the ones who consider the other factions of the wastelands as inferior, seeing organized militaries like the New California Republic or isolationist tech-hoarders like the Brotherhood of Steel as the "savages" and "profligates", despite the fact that neither of those factions commit atrocities at nearly the same level as the Legion do on a regular basis.
• Child Soldiers: Listen to Ranger Andy's story, and he'll tell you that the Legion has no issues with using child soldiers for suicide attacks against the NCR, knowing that the NCR soldiers will hesitate before they start shooting. When visiting the Fort, you can also see some young children training to be full Legionaries. Those children have an even worse implication: even in the NCR, many soldiers joined the active military at 16. Those aforementioned Legion children are expecting to be allowed to fight soon. Therefore, it's likely the Legionaries become active soldiers very young. There is even a story about Lanius in which he (conflicting his usual story) became a soldier at age 12.^note This is actually supported somewhat by the two kids seen running up and down the hill leading up to the camp at Fortification Hill, both of whom are tagged as "Legion Recruits" and can't be much older than 10 or 11. While that seems to be the exception, there is also Chief Hanlon, who tells us that anyone who survives 10 years as a soldier in Caesar's Legion is exceptional and can be considered a veteran, since most of them die long before that. Think about that for a moment, and then about how old most of those Legionaries you are fighting probably are.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The most depraved and aggressive faction in the game wears red.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Essentially the societal equivalent of the guy who cut off his hands and replaced them with swords. The Legion's agricultural abilities are middling-to-nonexistent, they have absolutely no medical expertise whatsoever, their construction abilities are limited to primitive and simplistic fortifications, and they are completely dependent on the goodwill of independent traders to acquire resources once they're done stripping a conquered territory to the bone because they don't engage in any kind of large-scale diplomacy or commerce. The only thing the Legion does, anywhere, no matter what is Rape, Pillage, and Burn, and anything that doesn't directly serve those ends is discarded.
• Cult of Personality: Deconstructed. The Legion is largely held together by fanatical loyalty to Caesar as a person rather than adherence to ideas or ideology, meaning that once Caesar is dead, it'll inevitably fall apart. Caesar realizes this, which is why he wants to conquer New Vegas so badly: he plans to transfer the cult to the city so the Legion can outlive him.
• Democracy Is Bad: The Legion is at war with the NCR because Caesar is ideologically opposed to their democratic form of government. He considers democracy an extension of the corruption that existed during the pre-War era, ultimately doomed to fail, and believes that NCR's rampant inefficiency is a sign that this form of government cannot be sustained. Ironically, what made the real-life Pax Romana–era Rome stand out in relation to its contemporaries was that leadership was held by multiple parties, though it wasn't really a modern democracy. Ruling as Edward Sallow does would have gotten an actual Roman leader assassinated prematurely for being an aspiring king, even during the early centuries of the Empire.
• Desert Bandits: Deemed this by the NCR, but quite averted in practice. The Legion's policies prevent the raiding of neutral caravans or towns (usually), nor do they enslave or rob random travelers (usually). They pursue Raiders and other wasteland nasties with extreme prejudice as well, which the NCR can't (or won't) often do.
• Despotism Justifies the Means: Caesar (and by extension the Legion) believe Hobbes Was Right, and that the specifics of what an authority does are irrelevant as long as there exists an absolute authority to obey. Conveniently, Caesar is also quite open about the fact that he is the only man alive fit for the job.
• Dirty Coward: While they boast about their loyalty and bravado, there are hints that some Legionaries may simply be ignorant rather than courageous. The Terrifying Presence perk usually only unnerves average NPCs, but the Legion assassins Karl sends after you? They run in terror. While less likely to flee combat than their NCR counterparts, Legionaries will still run away (which they themselves claim never happens) or even put their hands over their heads and cower in fear, and Lanius himself will run to heal if he gets too low on health. It could be argued that many Legionaries simply may not be used to facing outright defiance.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Between their extreme xenophobia, hatred of all things "modern" and "decadent", militaristic nature, and persecution of intellectuals, they're very reminiscent of the infamous Khmer Rouge.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: The army of pillaging Roman cosplayers masquerading as a light infantry army led by a history nerd turned continental super conqueror can't (or won't) bring themselves to use technology, form stable alliances, or position themselves as a lesser threat than their enemies to independent or minor factions. In short, they act even less like the actual Romans than the NCR does. Moreover, they are overly dependent on light infantry in contrast to the NCR's heavier infantry.
• Elite Mooks:
  • The aptly named "Veteran Legionaries."
  • Most Legion NPCs have significantly higher health and deal better damage than their NCR counterparts, and while NCR troopers can easily be wiped out at lower levels, Legionaries remain quite strong much later into the game.
  • 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 Vexillarius 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.
• The Empire: The Legion has been at war ever since it was founded and either assimilated or crushed every single community that they encountered. The NCR and Mr. House are the first real opposition that they've ever seen. The Legion's domestic policies include killing the sick, the weak and the elderly since they are not worthy of being alive, and wiping out the cultural identity of everyone under their rule.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": He only goes by the title of "Caesar" now, having long abandoned his name (and it is noted to be a title, much like it was for Roman emperors as he says that he "crowned himself as Caesar").
• Evil Counterpart Race: Caesar has deliberately cultivated the Legion to be this trope to NCR, through the Hegelian dialectic ideas of thesis–antithesis–synthesis. The NCR is the thesis, and its inherent corruption and inefficiencies have led to the rise of the Legion, its antithesis. The war between the two factions will create synthesis, a stronger whole forged from the two opposing original concepts.
• Eviler than Thou: All the main factions in the game are pretty crooked, but the Legion surpass them all with the possible exceptions of the Fiends and Omertas. On top of brutal slavery, legalizing rape, and killing slaves in the arena for fun, their leader is a psychopathic man-child who slaughters whole cities over a grudge and kills people for accidentally insulting his ego.
• Evil Is Petty: One of the actions that earns you Legion fame? Ripping up a child's teddy bear in front of her.
• Evil Power Vacuum: 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. Sadly subverted at least during the events of the game. 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 and still assault Hoover Dam, though it's implied the Legion will fall apart in the long term.
• Faceless Mooks: Many Legion soldiers wear balaclavas and sunglasses to cover their faces.
• Fantastic Racism: They dislike Ghouls and Super Mutants, though not to the extent of the Enclave or Brotherhood of Steel. According to J. E. Sawyer, towns in Legion territory have a relatively decent standard of living, but the Legion either wipes out or enslaves tribes and crushes their unique characteristics either way. Sawyer also states that the main reason that Super Mutants and Ghouls are not part of the Legion is that the mutant population in Arizona is too small to make a difference and ghouls, being centuries old, are too jaded to buy into Caesar's propaganda.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Their tactics and objectives more closely mirror the various "barbarians" Rome fought and eventually was subsumed by than Rome itself, a fact which mortifies Caesar himself. Although entirely unintended at the time of the game's release, as the group was relatively obscure then, they also bear an eerie and disturbing similarity to the Islamic State, an Islamic terrorist entity extreme enough that Al-Qaeda has gone on record denouncing them which has brutalized parts of Iraq from 2006 to the present and had a short run as a conquering unrecognized proto-state from 2014 to 2019 (when it expanded into Syria).
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Played with. It's noted by various characters, including the Courier in the ending, that an economy sustained primarily through pillaging will not last long, especially when trying to invade a trade-based society like the NCR and that once Caesar dies or if there are a lack of enemies to fight, the Legion will likely turn to infighting. But on the other hand, Caesar's intent is to take New Vegas and turn the Legion from a nomadic horde into a self-sustaining settled empire. It is also much better than the NCR at keeping peace in its territories—though they accomplish this with fear, brutalizing and executing with extreme prejudice anyone who dares to not toe the Legion's line.
• For the Evulz: A mixed bag. While many of the lower-ranking Legionaries love killing and bloodshed for... well, the killing and bloodshed, speaking with Caesar himself and his highest officers portrays their starkly different motives. They do enjoy brutality and war, but they enjoy it with the idea that one day the Legion can create a wasteland utopia, not for the sheer fun of murdering folks.
• Future Imperfect: Less than you'd expect, since Caesar did his homework and knows quite a bit about the Roman Republic, Empire, and Julius Caesar. The parts that are Roman are reasonably accurate, and even the language is emulated correctly. Still, as pointed out by Arcade, it's not Rome, just an army that's using it as a theme. The Legion deliberately doctors history to suit their own needs, such as teaching that Caesar is the son of Mars and that the Great War didn't happen, the apocalypse instead being a punishment from Mars for the Old World's ways.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Despite the comments that they're trained to fight to the death with no regard for their own safety, members with low HP are still likely to run and hide the way members of other factions do.
  • As well, the game talks about how their troops are extremely ferocious and how even a small squad of Legionaries can defeat a larger group of NCR Troopers. However, in game, a group of bog-standard NCR Troopers can easily defeat a group of Veteran Legionaries of the same size with minimal casualties. Turns out, a firing line of average soldiers armed with assault rifles can easily defeat a bunch of guys in football gear wielding machetes, makeshift spears, and random lower quality firearms.
  • The above is somewhat justified by engine limitations, as the NCR troopers will fire straight and stand their ground no matter what; lore-wise, their poor training and morale would likely lead to routs and defeats (with some in-game dialogue pointing out that groups of Legionaries frequently beat much larger groups of NCR troopers).
• Gratuitous Latin: Their entire culture is based on the Roman Empire, and they love to use Latin in their speeches.
• Happiness in Slavery: Despite being a large slave army, the individual Legionaries seem quite content at their station. For example: Lucius, Dead Sea, and Antony cheerfully talk about how their tribes were massacred, and how happy they are to be a part of the Legion. Even the two children in The Fort speak hopefully about the day they will become full legionaries. However, this is because Legionaries, despite Caesar's views on the subject, consider themselves to be a military organization and not slaves. They view belonging to Caesar as more of a military creed than law. For example, Vulpes, Gabban, and Ulysses call them either "Men or the Legion," or "my brothers". Furthermore, throughout the Fort, any time a Legion member discusses the slaves they clearly refer to them as a separate class. "The Slaves have been spreading stories about the Burned Man again." "Have you seen the new slaves? Some of them are quite beautiful." Regardless of their status, they are clearly treated better than the slaves they capture. Some high-ranking Legion members have slaves of their own. In addition, Legionaries are frequently found with Legion coin on them, meaning they are paid in some way. The Legion also rewards its members for special feats, like Dead Sea and the Liberator. This trope is very averted for those captured; the Legion subjects them to chattel slavery and deprives them of all rights. Canyon Runner, disturbingly, talks about how they are no longer human and should be proud of their status.
  • Subverted with Antony. Bringing up his tribe results in a rather anguished tale of how Lanius finally broke them by killing their sacred dogs. Unlike most of the Legion, he does not sound happy about it.
• Heteronormative Crusader: Curiously, a lot of people from outside Legion's territory seems to believe in a rumor that homosexuality (male homosexuality, at least) is allowed and widely practiced in the Legion, but according to Jimmy, a former slave that works as a prostitute in Westside, his affair with a centurion had to be kept a secret and said centurion even tried to kill him once other legionaries started suspecting something going on between the two, which indicates that homosexuality is, at very least, frowned upon in the Legion itself. That rumor is likely due to NCR propaganda, assumptions based on the historical Romans or both.
• Honor Before Reason: They prioritize melee combat over ranged combat because they believe it makes them morally superior and a stronger civilization. The Legion lost the First Battle of Hoover Dam because the NCR simply shot them from afar before they even reached the dam.
• The Horde: Their entire purpose is to conquer and enslave everyone else. Even Caesar admits that they are more like the barbarians of Gaul than the legions of Rome.^note And even that isn't entirely accurate: the tribes of Gaul shared a culture and at least the same basic language, but had as many smaller differences as, say, Native American tribes did. Not to mention that raping, pillaging, and plunder was the expected standard for any ancient army in Europe, Rome included. Though there are no records of the Gauls utterly enslaving everyone when they took a city (which wasn't a frequent thing), they usually preferred to just take what wasn't nailed down, or a tribute/bribe, and then leave to wherever they intended on settling. It's one of the many reasons they never became a more centralized society to create kingdoms or empires of their own.
• Hordes from the East: A post-apocalyptic North American variant.
• Hypocrite: In many ways, the values the Legion champions in their words are not reflected in their actions.
  • They talk about how important loyalty is, are defined by their fanatical loyalty to Caesar, and Nipton's Chronic Backstabbing Disorder is the reason they wiped it out. However, they are infamous for making alliances with others and then invoking You Have Out Lived Your Usefulness on them, either exterminating them because they are deemed unworthy for entry into the Legion, or pressing them into the Legion and suppressing their history and cultural identity.
  • 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, he has a fatal brain tumor and sees no problem in using modern medicine to save his own skin. Plus, Caesar himself used to be a Follower of the Apocalypse, a group who promotes and spreads the very scientific and medical knowledge that the Legion so despises.
  • The Legion is very big on Asskicking Leads to Leadership and general social Darwinism, and declare they can do things like conquer and enslave people because they are weak. But if you kill Vulpes, the Legion will send assassins after you to avenge his death. Then there's Caesar, who again, is suffering from a fatal brain tumor and uses advanced technology to heal himself. Ulysses even invokes this if you tell him Caesar is dead, calling him "history's hypocrite", and if he died, then according to his own philosophy, he had it coming.
  • The Legion considers NCR's victory in the First Battle of Hoover Dam dishonorable, as they did not fight the Legion head-on but instead retreated to draw the Legion's main force into an area heavily trapped with explosives. The Legion's tactics, especially those used by Vulpes, are even more underhanded, such as sending Legionnaires into Camp Searchlight on a suicide mission to release radiation on the town, using a chlorine bomb to attack the Strip, hiding proximity mines under the corpses of NCR soldiers to kill any survivors who try to retrieve the bodies of their comrades and, according to Ranger Andy, deliberately using children as suicide-attackers to make the enemy hesitate.
  • They sneer at NCR's citizens as weak and cowardly. Despite this, the rank-and-file Legion members you fight will turn and flee at low health like any other enemies, and many named members you can engage in conversation can be cowed with the Terrifying Presence perk.
  • Caesar sneers at the NCR's government as corrupt, inefficient, and only interested in benefiting its leaders and not caring for its people. Big words from a guy who declared himself a God-Emperor of a totalitarian regime that inflicts brutal atrocities on innocents.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Cannibalism is an accepted practice among the Legion, though not all its members are cannibals.
• Individualism vs. Collectivism: As Caesar himself proudly admits, the Legion is a hyper-collectivist society where the individual has no rights or value beyond his utility to the greater Legion. There are no elderly or infirm in the Legion, nor does anyone 'retire.' All members of the Legion from the lowest recruit to the Legatus himself are expected to serve until death, and anyone who is incapable or unwilling is promptly executed.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Caesar's, Vulpes's, and Aurelius's faces are all based on their respective voice actors.
• In Name Only: Despite modelling themselves on Rome, they much more resemble Sparta. Everyone is a slave or soldier, art and technology is unheard of, the slaves support the warriors, the physically and mentally handicapped are executed, and doing horribly cruel things is seen as a sign of strength. Caesar even comments that he thinks the Legion appears closer to the hordes of Gaul.
• Irony:
  • They actively shun technology yet the real Roman Empire was the most advanced and innovative civilization of it's time.
  • They are fighting the NCR because the Legion believes that it's inevitable that the NCR will fail. This argument is also used against the Legion itself. Caesar has a tumor and it will render him comatose later on in the story, requiring the player to defy fate by saving his life through surgery (by either performing it themselves or fixing an auto doc). If and when Caesar dies, the Legion will crumble and fall apart because Caesar has no equals and refuses to appoint a successor who shares his knowledge and wisdom. True enough if Legate Lanius takes over as he only cares about avenging Caesar and destroying the enemy, not heralding a new society for the wasteland.
    Joshua Graham: I think only Caesar can lead The Legion. I've never met anyone who could take his place. I couldn't. I never had a mind for logistics. I don't know Lanius, but from what I've heard, he has no interest in leading anyone unless it's in battle. No, The Legion dies with Caesar. What follows now are just the last steps of a man who does not yet realize that he's walking dead.
• Jerkass: Every single one of them. Oddly enough, most of Caesar's inner circle are a lot more polite than his soldiers and officers.
• Judge, Jury, and Executioner: For better or worse, the Legion actively takes a role in policing and enacting justice in the Mojave and abroad, even in neutral areas. The Legion's leaders, such as Vulpes, may have entire towns burned down or enslaved to punish crime and banditry, and while quite brutal, it ends up making Legion-controlled territory the safest in the West.
• Keystone Army: A Downplayed Trope.
  • 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.
  • House, meanwhile, arrives at a similar conclusion. Killing Caesar is not only calculated to have minimal effect if at all on the Legion's attack on Hoover Dam, but is likely to keep them a monstrous-enough threat in the short term. Within a year, however, he foresees them being riven by internal conflicts and without Caesar's guidance, will collapse on themselves.
• Kick the Dog: Pretty much their entire lifestyle. When they're not massacring entire communities and committing grisly atrocities, they entertain themselves by raping women, giggling about how much they like raping women, molesting children, watching slaves getting slaughtered in the arena, eating human flesh, committing human sacrifice, telling passers-by they deserve to by crucified, stealing teddy bears, and gushing about how much they're looking forward to murdering their enemies.
• Lack of Empathy:
  • Aside from loyalty to Caesar, most Legionaries lack any form of compassion to other people. They torture NCR soldiers for fun, regularly rape female slaves, and even their generic dialogue has them smugly deride the inexperience of their fellow soldiers who died in Nelson and drooling over raping slaves. Some like Silus even go out of their way to make sure collars keep slaves in perpetual pain.
  • A more subtle example is Legion-friendly trader Dale Barton. He'll happily trade with you and praise the Legion for their security polices without even the slightest sign of discomfort at the abuse of slaves going on right in front of him, nor will he even bat an eye at the crucified recruits.
• Legion of Doom: No pun intended. Caesar has constructed an alliance to destroy NCR that includes previous Fallout villains such as the Khans, as well as the White Legs, Omertas, and Fiends. The player can also recruit the White Gloves, Boomers, and even the Enclave.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: They are mildly this compared to the Fiends, who they count among their enemies. While they both constantly commit atrocities, The Legion are at least somewhat Well Intentioned Extremists, while the Fiends do pretty much everything For the Evulz. Also, the Legion can at least sometimes be reasoned with, while, with one exception, the Fiends just try to kill everyone they meet.
• Meet the New Boss:
  • Caesar's manifesto is remarkably similar to The Master and his Unity, only with Legionaries instead of Super Mutants. You can even talk to Super Mutant Marcus about Caesar, and while he doesn't make a direct comparison, you definitely get the vibe that he's seen it all before and knows it just isn't going to work.
  • Despite his contempt for Pre-War America, Caesar's flaws are worryingly similar to those of the Enclave. The glimpses we get of Legion's atrocities are remarkably similar to the iconic image of a soldier in Power Armor executing a captured and bound Canadian in the introduction to the original Fallout. The invasion of Canada and the sacking of New Canaan are also similar – both were innocent settlements that happened to have something their aggressors wanted, and so were brutally crushed. For all Caesar's attempts to make the Legion appear alien, their obsessive nationalism and intensely racist ideology are also more than a little familiar.
  • Although they despise the NCR for its love of money to the detriment of its people, the Legion's forces focus on protecting traders and caravans, many of whom profit directly of the Legion's war effort – while slaves and women are routinely abused and raped by Legion soldiers. Much like the NCR, they're aggressively imperialistic. It took the NCR over a hundred years to reach its current size, while the Legion equaled it in less than a lifetime. And while they belittle the NCR for trying to recreate pre-war America, the Legion is repeating many of the Old World's mistakes, such as the use of nuclear weapons at Searchlight and their brutality towards prisoners.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: 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 a Roman badge of office.
• Near-Villain Victory: Before the Courier got involved in the war, Caesar was successful in demoralizing the NCR. If the Courier was never involved, then The Legion would have succeeded in bombing the monorail, succeeded in assassinating President Kimball, and Caesar still would have received treatment for his tumor (either by enslaving a doctor or by ordering his soldiers to explore a vault full of feral ghouls for an Auto-Doc part). Benny was captured when he tried to infiltrate the fort, and Mr. House could have lost New Vegas to the Omertas as they were actively scheming with Caesar and planning to bomb the strip with a chlorine bomb because they lost faith in Mr. House due to his off-hand leadership. The Legion also have a very good chance of taking the dam by themselves as Chief Hanlon is tired of the war and is actively sabotaging the dam's defense by goading Oliver into making tactical blunders.
• Necessarily Evil: The cruelty and brutality of The Legion allowed them to conquer 86 tribes and their lands are seen as the safest to travel through. Caesar believes he's bringing long-lasting stability and security to the post-apocalyptic world by forcing everyone to be good through the means of slavery for production and conscription into military service.
  • Caesar's ultimate goal is to bring civilisation and long-term stability by assimilating and destroying foreign tribes, which is done to create a new society that can adapt to the challenges of the post-apocalyptic world and thrive, establishing prosperity and peace: a new Pax Romana. Caesar proclaims that The Legion would be a nationalist, imperialist, totalitarian, completely homogeneous culture that would focus on long-term stability at all costs.
  • Rose of Sharon Cassidy begrudgingly states that Legion territory guarantees absolute protection for travelling caravans. The Legion's public display of brutality drives away any would-be threat, they guard their roads, guard their supply lines, and the Legion doesn't have tolls for travelling through their territory.
  • According to Ulysses, The Legion is forbidden from attacking couriers, even if they do not support The Legion.
  • According to Raul, The Legion brought stability and security to Arizona and before The Legion's arrival, it was infested with raiders and the economy suffered as a result.
    The Courier: "How do you feel about Caesar's Legion?"
    Raul Tejada: "I don't really have a problem with them. People around here tend to see them as invading marauders planning to burn and pillage the countryside. But I've been to Arizona, boss. Before the Legion, it was a nasty place, so thick with raiders you couldn't trade with a town two miles up the road. Caesar's laws aren't nice, and their actions aren't always pretty. But then, neither am I, but you keep me around."
  • The developers themselves admit that The Legion has the potential to grow into a marvellous society, mirroring the actual Romans when they created the major cities. They also insist that The Legion in the game, however, is just a roaming band of murderers, rapists, and sadists. The developers also state that Caesar believes women are only capable of breeding, so he relegates them to do that so they can create more soldiers for him. Caesar personally dislikes the barbaric aspects of The Legion's actions because he believes it's unnecessary as The Legion is supposed to be bringing stability to the wasteland. In the game, he treats the female Courier the same way he treats a male one and had no qualms about making a deal with the Van Graffs (who are led by Gloria Van Graff).
• No Sympathy Between Mooks: 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 seem to mind.
• No Tech but High Tech: Their Evil Luddite policies have numerous inconsistencies/arbitrary exemptions, mostly concerning the rule of "no chems, only tribal medicine":
  • Legionaries occasionally carry Hydra, which is an addictive chem. It's also implied that they manufacture Hydra themselves, because the only renewable sources of cave fungus (an ingredient for Hydra) are legionaries and picking it from the caves in Zion (which is in Utah, a state whose territory is mostly controlled by the Legion). They also use Ant Nectar, which is technically all-natural but is also addictive.
  • The two main healing medicines used by the Legion are healing powder and bitter drink, which you craft from the exact same active ingredients as stimpaks (broc flower and xander root), just minus the syringe. And while Healing Powder isn't addictive, it temporary reduces your Perception because it tampers your sight, similar to numerous drugs.
• No Woman's Land: Women in the Legion are seen as sub-human and restricted to domestic roles, with the exception of the female-only priestly caste, according to the FNV official guide. If your character is female, several Legion members discuss how useless women are and question what use you could be of Caesar, and the Legion slave Siri will tell you that this is the first time that she met a woman who isn't a slave after she got captured by the Legion. Director Josh Sawyer stated it was intended that Caesar justify these behaviors as women being the only ones capable of breeding, so he relegates them to doing that to create more soldiers, but in the final product the Legion comes off as plain sexist.
• Odd Name Out: While most of them have Roman names, a few, like Dead Sea and Canyon Runner, don't. No explanation is given for this, considering the Legion's policy towards thorough cultural genocide.
• Order Is Not Good: They manage to largely keep the roads in their territory safe from random raider attacks, at the meager cost of building a society entirely around rape, torture, genocide, slavery, and cannibalism, and basically eliminating every facet of society except for the military.
• The Peter Principle: The Legion has a history of commanders unfit for their role. Joshua Graham was a brutal warrior and capable at relaying commands from Caesar but had no talent as a tactician and was naturally unsuited to fight a well-armed army of comparable size led by competent leaders. Lanius is slightly better as far as tactics go but if he ends up as the leader of the Legion will end up running it to the ground.
• Plot Armor: At the start of the game, the Legion is suffering basically none of the problems their being an ultra-militarized stratocracy that embraces Anti-Intellectualism, 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 some key weaknesses, but if they lose it's going to be because the player pulled in Monster Threat Expiration, not because their Space-Filling Empire 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.
• Politically Incorrect Villain:
  • Enslaving everyone either as a breeder or slave soldier.
  • The Fallout New Vegas Game Guide also says that they're racist against ghouls and super mutants.
  • Also, despite some rumors floating around the Mojave (mostly between NCR citizens), they are very homophobic, punishing homosexuality with death, if what Jimmy says is true. Rather ironic when you consider the society Caesar's Legion is emulating.
  • The real kicker is their attitude towards rape. Siri, who's been around the empire, makes it clear that the rape of female slaves is extremely common. They even boast about it in the audio logs left in Camp Charlie, the default dialogue of Legion soldiers has them lusting after slave girls, and even Canyon Runner is very open about selling Sammy Weathers for sex.
• Praetorian Guard: Since it is a faction based off Ancient Rome, this is a given. They're armed with Ballistic Fists in this case.
• Pretentious Pronunciation: Caesar's Legion and aligned members will pronounce Caesar's name with the classical Latin pronunciation (KAI-sar), while other characters will use the anglicized pronunciation (SEE-zer). Some notable exceptions include:
  • Marcus, an independent Super Mutant, who uses the Latin pronunciation.
  • Joshua Graham, an ex-Legate exiled by Caesar, who uses the English pronunciation.
  • Ulysses, also ex-Legion, who still uses the Latin pronunciation despite his disdain for "the Bull."
• Putting on the Reich: Putting On The Römisches Reich: Caesar modelled the Legion on Rome, particularly the post-Republic Roman Empire. He starts by uniting some tribes...
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Rape is both legal and encouraged in Legion territory. More soldiers are always necessary, and the woman's consent is a non-issue. Siri says it's common for adult women, and not even children and old women are safe. Canyon Runner openly sells Sammy Weathers for "breeding," the New Vegas Game guide mentions Caesar and his Legates assign women to particular officers, and JE Sawyer confirmed all enslaved women in Legion territory are used for sex.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Their standard operating procedure after taking control of an area. When you confront Legate Lanius and have a maxed-out barter skill, you can point out that this is not a sustainable method for the Legion to operate under.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Their look.
• Religion of Evil: Among the Legion, Caesar is worshipped as the son of Mars himself, with human sacrifice performed in his name.
• Rising Empire: Caesar sees his Legion as this. He intends on conquering New Vegas and establishing it as his Nova Roma, the nerve center from which he will go on to destroy the NCR.
• Science Is Bad: Downplayed. 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 Legionaries. 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. Caesar keeping an Auto-Doc and possibly Arcade for his tumor and using a howitzer for the final battle, however, is just fine...
• Shown Their Work: Multiple:
  • Sometimes hard to tell from the real Roman Empire. They even pronounce Latin as correctly as they can according to current academic thought. Caesar himself lampshades this by pointing out how, regarding the inaccuracies, the Legion at that point is more akin to the barbarians of Gaul, which makes the need for forging a New Rome out of New Vegas all the more crucial for him.
  • The Legion is one of the most accurate light infantry armies ever depicted in fiction. In short, they're massively outgunned by the NCR, with even the lowliest NCR grunts having more firepower and protection (in the form of a semi-automatic 5.56x45mm rifle, grenades, and a steel breastplate + kevlar) than any Legion troops bar Veterans and Centurions (the bulk are equipped with bolt-actions, pistols, revolvers, lever-actions, submachine guns, improvised explosives, etc.), but possess numerical superiority and more highly skilled grunts. As a result, they play to their advantages and hark back to their tribal roots by operating as light infantry and relying primarily on infiltration tactics. That is, "small independent light infantry forces advancing into enemy rear areas, bypassing enemy front-line strongpoints, possibly isolating them for attack by follow-up troops... taking the initiative to identify enemy weak points and choose their own routes, targets, moments and methods of attack; this requires a high degree of skill and training." Vulpes' operations are classic examples of these tactics in action, as he sends small unsupported units to probe enemy defenses (resulting in some of their deaths, such as the Legionaries found between Cottonwood and Novac), and then attacks with overwhelming force on the weakest part of the enemy lines when he finds it, with either the element of surprise (e.g. at Nelson) or with local numerical superiority (e.g. at Ranger Station Charlie). The limit to this doctrine is that the Legion tends to lose badly in stand-up slugging matches where the NCR can bring their firepower advantage to bear, such as the First Battle of Hoover Dam, or their assault on Camp Golf (which will fall only if the Courier actively corrupt the soldiers there) during the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. As Lanius himself says: "Our forces are better equipped to take objectives than hold them." This is highly similar to real modern conflicts where light infantry forces achieved some successes, such as the first few months of China's intervention in the Korean War or the first few years of the Iran–Iraq War, but ultimately were not able to hold out in the long term when their more heavily armed foes finally got their shit together.
    • 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 counter offensives, and exhausted the bulk of their remaining offensive strength against the now-strengthened U.S. forces in the failed Spring Offensive.
• Slave Mooks: As J.E. Sawyer describes it, every legionary is effectively a slave, even if he doesn't think of himself as such. He's conscripted as a child, indoctrinated into seeing Caesar as a god, brutalized, and then sent with poor equipment to act as cannon fodder. While he can rise in the ranks, the average legionary has no real rights and can be liberally tortured to death For the Evulz if Caesar or an officer wills it, hence the crucified legionaries around the Fort and Lanius making a habit of killing every tenth man in underperforming units, and Hanlon implies that the life expectancy of a legionary is under 25. In fact, the very first description we get of the Legion (in the opening movie) describes them as "a vast army of slaves."
• The Social Darwinist: The Legion has zero tolerance for what it views as "weakness": every time a new territory is assimilated, executing the elderly and chronically ill is among their first orders of business, and they refuse to use medicine in part because if a Legionary can't survive an illness or injury on their own, they didn't deserve to live in the first place.
• Sociopathic Soldier: Their entire organization. If it turns out that you're not one of these, your squadmates are expected to torture you to death without a second thought.
• Spare a Messenger: The Legion does a particularly sadistic version once they have subdued the population of Nipton. They hold a lottery. The winner gets to leave unharmed to tell others what happened there. There is also a second place prize, which is they leave you to also tell the story, but break your legs. All the other survivors are either killed on spot, crucified or taken as slaves. Whether these lotteries are common practice with the Legion is left unclear.
• The Spartan Way: The Legion has no problem with using child soldiers against their enemies.
• The Spymaster: Just like the NCR, the Legion have a magic an extensive network of spies and will know about it if you work against their interest. They even manage to infiltrate NCR's military command in the area and the Omertas on the Vegas Strip.
• Straight Edge Evil: They despise the use of chems, drugs, medicine, and alcohol, and vehemently punish Raiders for thievery. Also they rarely, if ever, use profanity. Hilariously, Caesar himself is the exception; he'll drop F-Bombs if he loses his temper.
• Stealth Pun: Caesar plans to make New Vegas into the capital of his Legion, his new Rome from which he will forge his empire. Presumably, as the Legion's head of state, he'd live in the capital, probably at a repurposed hotel. Thus the nicest building in the city would become... Caesar's Palace.
• Undying Loyalty: All Legionaries are fanatically loyal to Caesar, though it's noted that they follow him rather than his ideals. However, this has its limits. Silus, the Centurion in Camp McCarran, is able to see Caesar's megalomania and illness; he resents that a healthy soldier like himself has to die in defeat while Caesar lives. Similarly, Ulysses has long forsaken the Legion, though he still sees them as his brothers-in-arms, and some of his dialog suggests that he has always secretly resented Vulpes for destroying his tribe.
• Ungrateful Bastard: If they win at Hoover Dam, they immediately turn on the Khans and the Fiends. If Caesar dies and is replaced by Lanius, they also betray the Boomers and the Enclave Remnants.
  • Averted strongly with the Courier. Both Caesar and Lanius will dub the Courier a hero of the Legion, granting them copious gold and the status of a permanent Amicus, friend of the Legion.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Caesar (and the developers) outright admit that the Legion at present really is a roving band of murdering, raping sadists. His justification comes in the form that so was ancient Rome, but it eventually found a city to settle (in this analogy, Vegas and the cities of the West Coast) and grew into a marvel of civilization. Whether he is right to persist or wrong is up to the players to decide.
• Vestigial Empire: According to Mr. House and many others characters such as Marcus, Ulysses and Joshua Graham, this is what the Legion will become if Caesar dies. The fact that Lanius takes over after Caesar's death would only make this worse.
  Courier: You do know Caesar is dead, don't you?
  Mr. House: By my calculations, his death will affect the shape of the Battle for Hoover Dam minimally, if at all. The Legion's aggression will outlive Caesar. Indeed, they'll try to take the Dam as a tribute to his memory. Given a year, they'd have him deified – but by then, the Legion would be breaking down, riven with internal conflicts, a monster consuming itself. It's irrelevant.
  • Lanius implies that this is already the case, as the Legion has thrown in its full efforts to taking Hoover Dam from the local NCR expeditionary force. You can convince him that further attempts to prosecute the war will see the Legion collapse, whether they win the Second Battle of Hoover Dam or not.
  Lanius: The East was a hard-fought campaign. Even now, Caesar drew too much of the Legion's blood needed there for... this.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: 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 Spillway 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.
• Villain by Default: Every legionary from top to bottom is an evil marauder who rapes and kills for fun at the command of Caesar. You never meet a single member who can even be called decent.
• Visionary Villain: While on the surface they look and act similar to the raiders of the Capital Wasteland, any length of talking with the higher ups (especially Caesar) will show that while the low-level grunts might be thugs looking for plunder, the leadership have vastly greater ambitions than being just another group of warlords. They want to remake the world in their image, and they have a surprising amount of planning in place to do just that.
• We Have Reserves: From the countless bloodthirsty legionaries trained through brutal training regimens. They almost never surrender, and have commands to commit suicide upon defeat. Boyd talks about how difficult it is to get a Legionary to give himself up as a prisoner of war.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: As bad as the Legion acts, Caesar has legitimate goals of restoring the Wasteland to a new era of greatness, which he believes is an Imperial Roman nation free from the ways of the Old World (which he views as decadent and self-destructive). If there's any truth to what he says, he believes that in the long term the Legion will be best for all residents of the Wasteland.
• White Man's Burden: Their entire history was based on conquering tribes and removing their identity to become part of Caesar's Legion. If a tribe refuses to submit or has no value to The Legion then it will be destroyed completely. Both sexes are objectified; men have to fight and die for The Legion, while the women have to be breeders so the Legion will have more soldiers.
• You Are a Credit to Your Race: Or rather gender, if the female Courier chooses to side with the Legion.
• Zerg Rush: Even more so than the NCR. The Recruit Legionaries, the most common type of soldier, may be sent into battle wielding only machetes. There are anecdotes about them not even having that much and charging machine gun nests with sharp sticks, heavy rocks, or bare fists.

The Fort

Caesar

"Good. In hoc signo taurus vinces."^note "In the sign of the bull, you shall conquer."

King of Clubs

Voiced by: John Doman

"I was taught it was my responsibility to bring the torch of knowledge to the wastes. I may have taken the torch part more literally than they intended."

The head of Caesar's Legion, Caesar was a former member of the Followers of the Apocalypse by the name of Edward Sallow, sent east to learn more about the communities there. Caesar found a cache of old books on Roman history and was soon inspired to use the blueprint of the ancient Roman Empire to forge a new civilization from the wasteland. He and his expedition was captured by a tribe, but Edward parleyed himself into their leader by teaching them new and better ways of fighting. That tribe defeated one rival and then another, and Caesar drove them onward to conquer all the tribes they found, forging a new power in the Wasteland: Caesar's Legion.

---

• Adventurer Linguist: What he started out as, along with Joshua Graham and Bill Calhoun.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: If the player kills him, almost everyone in the Mojave, and quite a few people outside it, are happy to see him go, NCR characters in particular. Many officers will greet you congratulating you for killing him, and random NCR soldiers will say "I wish I could've been there to see Caesar die. What an asshole," when talked to.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: To punish Joshua for failing at Hoover Dam, Caesar orders the extermination of not just the neutral community of New Canaan but the Crazy Horns, Tar Walkers, Sorrows, and Dead Horse tribes, simply for being friendly with New Canaan. By the time the game begins, the Tar Walkers and Crazy Horns, as well as a few other small communities friendly with the New Canaanites, have been wiped out, and the Dead Horses' and Sorrows' lands are being invaded.
• Arch-Enemy: To the Courier in the second half of the game if you choose to oppose him. He’s also the only faction leader you can build any long standing personal enmity with as House is dealt within minutes after you turn on him, Kimball can't be talked to, and you can’t meet Oliver and Lanius until the very end. Merciful players will have especially strong reasons to hate him as he blackmails you into killing Benny. The hatred is just as strong on Caesar’s side. He regards most of his enemies with either dismissive contempt (such as previously conquered tribes and House) or with grudging respect (Kimball and Hanlon). His Villainous Breakdown shows that along with Joshua Graham, the Courier is the only enemy he passionately hates, to the point where he wants you tortured for his amusement. And unlike other persistent foes such as Ulysses there is no way to reason with him. Even non-Legion obstacles such as the Fiends, Omertas and White Legs are directly involved with him.
• 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 misconception in philosophy circles (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 more second hand than he lets on.
• Badass Bookworm: He was originally a linguist, sent by the Followers of the Apocalypse to research tribal dialects, and talking to him at length reveals a surprising knowledge of history, cultural theory, and sociology. His tagged skills? Guns, Melee Weapons, and Unarmed, and he'll defend himself using a Displacer Glove if you attack him.
• Badass Normal: Previous major villains of the Fallout series include super-computers, a cyborg mutant monstrosity, and the psychic leader of the Super Mutants. Caesar is just a normal civilian born in the wastes, and rose to power by uniting raider tribes and galvanizing them into a warrior culture to create one of the most powerful armies in the Wasteland. Also notable is that unlike them, if the player chooses to side with him, Caesar can win and become a God Emperor ruling over the Mojave from a New Vegas throne.
• Bad Boss: Joshua Graham found out the hard way. He can also be this to the Courier if you fail/question him, but if you don't he's happy to congratulate you and make small talk.
• Bait the Dog: The game likes to play with this trope back-and-forth. When you meet Caesar in person, he seems to be a very thoughtful and cerebral individual who sees the Legion as a brutal but necessary means to create a stable society. However, working for him and getting to know him makes it apparent that his big talk more centered on arrogance and delusions of grandeur, and he's a petty mass-murderer who is willing to massacre entire towns to satisfy his ego and will have you beaten to death just for talking to him when he has a headache.
• Bald of Evil: Even lampshaded by Mr. House.
  "I don't want you harming a hair on that man's head, assuming you can find one."
• Because Destiny Says So: Caesar's firm belief in Hegelian Dialectics has lead him to conclude that conflict with the NCR is inevitable, and it's his duty to bring about its destruction.
• Believing Their Own Lies: By the time the Courier meets Caesar, he's already begun buying into his own sense of inevitable victory.
• Berserk Button: The man has several sore subjects, and bringing them up will cut right through his calm, sophisticated surface and cause him to throw a childish temper-tantrum.
  • Among these include Joshua Graham, and being told "no".
  • It's a bad idea to disrupt his sleep.
• Big Bad: The closest thing the game has to one, unless you side with him. Of the four questlines leading to the final battle, all of them except for siding with the Legion involve you stopping Hoover Dam from falling under their control. The endings for the other factions vary depending on your actions and which of the Wild Card/House/NCR questlines you take, but there's always the possibility of the faction surviving or prospering. A victory for the Legion, however, results in most factions fleeing the region or being utterly exterminated. He's noticeably more involved in the story than previous Fallout villains too: while the Unity in 1 and the Enclave in 2 and 3 didn't really show up until the last quarters of their respective games, and only had a few missions relating to them, Caesar's Legion is encountered very early on and can be fought both directly and indirectly for the bulk of the game.^note An anti-Legion Courier encounters them as the direct antagonists of many sidequests, such as "I Put A Spell On You", "I Forgot To Remember To Forget", "Restoring Hope," "Oh My Papa!", and "An Eye For An Eye", and there are several Legion bases that can be cleared out early on (Legionary Raid Camp, Nelson, Cottonwood Cove, the Fort, Techatticup Mine). On top of that, the Fiends, Omertas, White Legs, and Great Khans, who antagonize the Courier separately, are all Legion allies, and Legion raiding parties and assassination teams will spawn every few days in the Mojave, usually attacking the Courier. Finally, they're the direct antagonists in the final battle in all but one of the endings.
  • Also the Greater-Scope Villain of Honest Hearts, where he ordered the White Legs to exterminate New Canaan and its allies. He also sent Ulysses to give them machine guns and train them in their use.
• Black Sheep: As a child, he did never fit in with the Followers of the Apocalypse due to his petulance and narcissism.
• Blood Knight: Caesar hides it better than Lanius, but he revels in violence. He'll scold the Courier for their lack of sadism if they ask to release Benny, and afterwards he gloats about the satisfaction of destroying his enemies and genocide. If you refuse to help him further, he'll threaten to have you cut to pieces for his enjoyment.
• Brains and Brawn: He and Graham were originally this, with him as the brains giving orders and doing the ruling while Graham was the brawns, leading his army and killing in his name. Nowadays Lanius takes up the brawn part.
• Card-Carrying Villain: See Eviler than Thou below.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: It's his MO to recruit disaffected local factions to help him take over a region, then exterminate or forcibly assimilate them into the Legion by destroying their culture once they're no longer useful. In his ending, the only Mojave allies he doesn't screw over are the ones strong enough to seriously hurt the Legion.
• Classic Villain: Vice: Ambition, Wrath, Pride and Cruelty. His baldness, educated vocabulary and crude mannerisms separate him from other members of the Legion and wastelanders in general. He tries to lure both the Courier and groups like the Khans into his service by pretending to be less malevolent than he really is. The true depth of his malevolence is revealed when he destroys New Canaan, and as for an iconic demise, the game gives him three: if left alone he'll die of a tumor which could have been prevented by the very technology he banned; in the House/Yes Man ending he's killed by the Securitrons who were activated due to his hubris due to his over confidence in his ability to control the Courier; or he can be stabbed just like his historical namesake.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard/Contractual Boss Immunity: With almost any other NPC, if you want them dead badly enough, you can just throw on a Stealth Boy and reverse-pickpocket a live grenade into their inventory. Try this on Caesar, and it's an unexplained No-Sell. If you want to kill him, you have to do it the hard way. Or the slightly-harder way of putting C-4 on a couple of his closest guards.
• The Corrupter: While he prefers brute force, Caesar isn't above using temptation as a weapon. When attempting to recruit the Courier, he tries to bribe them into obeying him by offering them revenge on Benny. Even if you make it clear you want him freed and have to mercy-kill him to save him from crucifixion, Caesar glibly assumes not only that you enjoyed it but that it won you over.
• Defector from Decadence: One of Caesar's motivations, evidenced by all his talk of "profligates" and "degenerates". Caesar was originally an NCR citizen and a member of the Followers Of Apocalypse. He left the two groups because he disagreed with them ideologically.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: If the Courier tries to have Benny released he'll blackmail you into killing him by threatening Benny with crucifixion. Because coercing someone who was likely your regime’s mortal enemy 24 hours ago into committing murder for your jollies is sure to win their loyalty and respect.
• Dirty Coward: Averted. He's one of few NPCs to act defiant towards you after intimidation, yelling for his Praetorians to come to his aid (albeit with a slightly nervous inflection).
• Disappeared Dad: In the supplemental material in the collector's guide, his father left him with the Followers of the Apocalypse when he was five. In-game, he tells the Courier that his father was killed by raiders when he was two.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: He's almost universally condescending and smug towards you. Even if you do all he asks and have an Idolized reputation with the Legion, he's liable to refuse to answer your questions and will tell you that the reason you should do as he orders is because he ordered you to do it. He's this way even after just waking up from life-saving brain surgery that you yourself gave him.
• Dystopia Justifies the Means: While he doesn't take it to the same level as Lanius, Caesar's rule creates a society where rape is legal; women are reduced to drones or sex slaves; men are trained to be bloodthirsty killers; sadism is promoted as a virtue and the sick and elderly have no value. This changes if he conquers New Vegas, but the extent of which it does change is uncertain.
• Emperor Scientist: Social Scientist, to be precise. He built the Legion out of a few tribes by using his academic knowledge of Pre-War government, military tactics and Roman history.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Even if you're a puppy-hugging paragon of kindness, Caesar is completely convinced that you'll want to join his army of rapists, murderers and genocidal madmen. Judging from his attitude and dialogue, it is pretty evident that his big ego leads him to believe that anyone with an ounce of competence must think exactly like he does.
• Evil Colonialist: A post-apocalyptic spin on the trope. Although his native intelligence and charisma is a big factor in his rise to power, the fact that he comes from the setting's most technically and culturally advanced society (and specifically from that society's best educated community) helps him immensely in conquering the primitive tribals in the East.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Joshua Graham. Both are charismatic leaders with an appetite for violence, both were responsible for founding the Legion and seek to uplift the people of the Wasteland. However, in contrast to Caesar's egotism, Joshua is capable of realizing his personal flaws and taking responsibility for his mistakes. He prefers to let people make their own choices and doesn't like his semi-religious image among the tribes - particularly because he's religious himself. In contrast, Caesar looks down on everyone around him, co-opts ancient beliefs for his own ends while believing none of them and openly pretends to be a god.
  • To a Good Karma Courier as well. Both seek to shape the future of New Vegas, both can potentially own Rex, befriend Arcade and gather a group of followers. However, while the Courier can encourage rival groups such as the NCR, Brotherhood and Followers to peacefully cooperate Caesar violently takes over any opposing groups and eradicates cultural differences. While the Courier and Arcade's relationship is built on mutual trust and respect and helps him to overcome his internal conflicts, his relationship with the Caesar is one of forced compliance that eventually drives him to suicide. Additionally, the Courier can be forgiving to the point where they spare Benny despite him giving you every reason to kill him while Caesar wipes out entire communities over minor slights.
  • Also to Mr. House. Both are self-made autocrats who rose from nothing to build their success on their superior intellect and education compared to the primitives of the post-apocalyptic Mojave and are determined to remake the world according to their own morality and ideology. But whereas House is a technocrat and a more-or-less benevolent dictator, Caesar is a dedicated primitivist and an often-sadistic totalitarian.
  • Ironically, he's also one to the real historical Julius Caesar whose name he's appropriated. Caesar was both a greedy, brutal warlord in his own right and a cultured aristocrat with an ego issue. The difference: Julius was historically quite merciful by the standards of the time (even if it meant using slavery and mutilation where other Romans would have ordered complete extermination), incredibly brave unto the last, tolerant of criticism (which might have helped get him killed), and led as much through love and respect as he did through fear while commanding one of the most technologically sophisticated forces of the era. He also valued diplomacy and tried to reconcile with his old enemies (something that got him killed, as this Caesar would know). Eddie Sallow, on the other hand, is an evil luddite, hypocrite, and Orcus on His Throne who rules by fear alone, uses his soldiers as cannon fodder in technologically unsophisticated human waves, and has zero concept of mercy or forgiveness. What handily sums it up is that Sallow subjects his men to Roman punishments that the actual Caesar never did.
• Eviler than Thou: While previous Fallout Big Bads regretted their actions, seeing them as necessary evils (Richardson, The Master) or were at worst mechanically indifferent (Eden, Calculator), Caesar outright revels in the carnage he causes, needing nothing more than a personal grudge to justify wiping out a stable, altruistic community. In this sense, he somewhat resembles Frank Horrigan, down to there being no way to talk him out of his madness. J.E. Sawyer commented that they're effectively the one main faction in the game to not be, in some way, gray.
  J.E. Sawyer: There’s nothing really morally grey about Liberia’s Charles Taylor, but he’s a real guy who did astoundingly terrible things for the sake of maintaining power. In the context of F:NV, I don’t think Caesar and the Legion need to be thought of as “grey” like the player’s other options. I think they can be what they are, as they are, because the lie of their fiction is intended to provoke thoughts about truth, i.e. the nature of humans who rise to power in such circumstances. When we say “war never changes”, we’re talking about things like this.
• Evil Feels Good: After executing Benny, he admits that he finds torture and genocide especially entertaining.
• Evil Gloating: Smugly boasts about his conquests and atrocities and flat out admits killing his enemies is the most satisfying thing about his job.
• Evil Is Petty: He threatens to kill you just for bringing up his defeat at Hoover Dam and throws a childish tantrum (complete with name-calling) if you decide to stop working for him. Taken up to eleven in Honest Hearts where he destroys New Canaan and tries to kill anyone connected to them, simply to get back at Joshua Graham.
  Courier: I think I'm done working for you.
  Caesar: Mark my words, you piece of shit! This is the last time you will ever refuse to perform an order I've given you. If you ever - ever - disobey me again, I will order my Praetorians to hack you to death with their machetes for my entertainment.
• Evil Overlord: A post-apocalyptic version. While brutal and often sadistic, he shows excellent capability in leading, transforming a ragtag band of slaves and tribals into an empire spanning several states, its machete-armed soldiers proving an overmatch for the NCR and its technologically advanced armaments. Some in the NCR even call him far more competent than President Kimball. Further solidified if Caesar dies and the Legion wins. Unlike Caesar, who unites the Mojave and seemingly makes the average life significantly better, Lanius establishes an all-out military regime, butchering numerous innocent people and launching failed wars against the Boomers and Enclave Remnants.
• Evil Luddite: He believes that introducing modern technology (especially medicine) to a population will corrupt them and harm their cultural development by making them weak and dependent. It's even his reason why he needs an outsider like the Courier to deal with the bunker rather than his own men since he doesn't want them getting the wrong ideas from being exposed to advanced pre-war tech.
• Fatal Flaw: Pride and arrogance, big time.
  • If he dies, the Legion is left with very little in the way of capable leadership, primarily because Caesar believed only himself could do it right. He never bothered training a successor or even imparting some of his knowledge of sociology and philosophy to other ranking Legion members, and he did this on purpose so that such knowledge can be used to control his followers.
  • The major reason behind his Idiot Ball grab described below is because he presumes out of sheer arrogance that the Courier fall in line and obey him. If the player does decide to work for the Legion, they can ask Caesar the reasoning behind his orders, and often his response is "because I told you to, you shouldn't need any further reason than that."
  • As a whole, Caesar's actions can be traced back to his supreme arrogance that he, and only he, can bring civilization and order back to the wasteland, and he refuses to entertain any notion that he may be making mistakes.
• Faux Affably Evil: If you ignore all the murdering, torture, and slavery, he is actually a nice guy to talk to about political philosophy. At least until you touch a nerve and he throws a temper tantrum, threatening to have you killed. One of his favorite tactics is to feign friendship with groups like the Khans and enslave them as soon as they've served their purpose. When you first meet him, he makes very thinly veiled insults at your intelligence and even something as simple as showing concern about his health or the first battle of Hoover Dam can get you a death threat. Discussing his philosophy and history, however, leads him to be more neutral and outright intellectual, and he does develop a respect for your intelligence after you cure his tumor.
• Founder of the Kingdom: Founder of the Legion and developer of its ideals.
• Freudian Excuse: His brutality as well as his disdain for and abuse of tribals may stem from the loss of his father to raiders at a young age. However, this is downplayed compared to previous Big Bads. The Master and Frank Horrigan went through extreme physical and mental trauma that turned them into monsters (the latter also suffered from indoctrination and mental illness throughout his childhood) while Autumn and Richardson were born into groups with very strict dogma. Caesar was raised by a loving mother and the most unambiguously good faction in the safest, most stable region of the Fallout universe yet he turned out even more cold blooded and sadistic than all the previous villains before him.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: He was the only child from a poor family that was raised as a Follower of the Apocalypse before he became the ruler of the Legion.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: For some reason, his in-game stats give him an Intelligence and Charisma of 4 and a Perception of 5. Given how clever and charismatic he is at any other time, it's rather odd.
  • Justified when you realise that this is his stats when he has a brain tumor.
• Genghis Gambit: His ultimate goal isn't to create a slaving, warmongering military state; his goal is to use that to forcibly assimilate the various tribes of the wasteland and give them a common culture, so that whenever the Legion inevitably collapses, the peoples left to rebuild will do it as one culture (as opposed to the NCR, which he thinks will also inevitably collapse, only to leave behind a multitude of self-interested, uncooperative states). Of course, he's already begun to slip from his seemingly noble goals into more megalomaniacal tendencies by the time the Courier meets him.
• Genius Bruiser: Originally more of a Badass Bookworm. By the time of the game, his brutish appearance and thuggish attitude cover up his more cerebral side.
• Genre Blind: His attempts to turn the Courier to his side (or lack thereof) reek of this. It doesn't even occur to him that a female Courier would be put off by the Legion's misogyny or the rape threats Siri warns her of in his camp.
• Glass Cannon: Statistically, he does have decent combat stats and his Displacer Glove is fairly powerful. However, his robes barely count as armor meaning that he's not that hard to kill with a decent weapon.
• A God Am I: Proclaims himself as the Son of Mars and maintains something of a cult of personality within the Legion. He doesn't believe it himself, but the troops do - to the point that suggesting Rome may be a pre-existing concept is punishable by death.
• God-Emperor: His "son of Mars" schtick.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Caesar represents a very dark grey morality. While his Legion is far more brutal than the NCR, it is far less corrupt and more often leaves its vassals (those living in Legion lands but not actually part of the Legion) alone. While the NCR is trying to economically expand its territory, Caesar believes expanding the Legion will ultimately lead to a warless Wasteland utopia. Furthermore, the roads are considered safer under Legion territory, especially for traders, because of the more iron fisted control Caesar has on the territory he controls.
• The Heart: 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. This is why the Legion's values are depravity, misogyny, and the glorification of violence and slavery for their own sakes. This is why him dying is seen as the end of the Legion on a whole, as without him, nothing can hold it together, and it will eventually destroy itself even if Vulpes and Lanius try to maintain control.
• Hidden Depths: Twice over. When you see what the Legion is like over the first act of the game, you'll probably come to see Caesar as a brutal and genocidal Evil Overlord. Then you meet the man in person and discover he's a Visionary Villain with a vast knowledge of philosophy, social science, history, and government, and he has big plans for rebuilding civilization once the war with NCR is over. But if you choose to side with the Legion and actually get to know Caesar beyond first impressions, you'll learn he really is a brutal and genocidal Evil Overlord, just a well-educated and articulate one.
• Hidden Villain: He can be this if you follow the NCR questline, as it's the only one that doesn't require nor incetivate you to visit Fortification Hill, which means that you can complete the game without ever seeing Caesar, only hearing about him.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Like the other faction leaders, he'll gladly hire you no matter what you've done (up until you gain enough infamy to get the Wrath of Caesar quest). Hell, if you work for Mr. House you're given a quest to activate some dormant sentry bots to wipe out some Legionaries; Caesar contacts you just as you begin to activate them and tells you to betray House.
• Hypocrite:
  • What's that, Caesar? Science Is Bad? Advanced medicine shouldn't be allowed because the weak don't deserve to live? People who use chems (other than Hydra and Ant Nectar, apparently) should be exterminated? Then why is it when we enter your tent the first thing we'll see is bodyguards armed with advanced Power Fists, and shortly after will likely see an Auto-Doc next to your bed? And why does a thorough search of your tent reveal cigarettes? He also apparently has no problem with taking Rex, a cyberdog, in as his personal hound, or using a howitzer to suppress NCR's snipers.
  • Ulysses straight up calls Caesar "History's Hypocrite" if you tell him that Caesar is dead. He then goes on to tell the Courier that if Caesar was too weak to defend himself from you, then by his own logic, he was too weak to lead.
  • He complains about how NCR's rampant capitalism and greed have made ordinary people suffer. Yet he devotes massive Legion resources to protecting merchants and caravans (some of whom, like Dale Barton, have profited directly from the Legion's war effort) while turning a blind eye to the extreme levels of sexual violence and abuse slaves in Legion territory go through.
• I Did What I Had to Do: While sadistic and evidently proud of his empire's authority, Caesar himself insists this. If the NCR were victorious, he claims, their Old World ways would inevitably lead to another nuclear war.
• Idiot Ball: Grabs a big one when he invites you to his camp. Even if you've killed every single Legion member you've ever seen up until that point and sabotaged them at every turn while aiding NCR, Caesar will pardon you of all crimes against the Legion up to when you receive the Mark of Caesar, and he gives you an invitation to come to his camp and meet him face to face. Then he returns your weapons and the Platinum Chip to you that were confiscated when you arrived, and orders you to go to a bunker beneath the camp and destroy what you find, but he never has any Legion members check to make sure you did, nor does he check himself. While House and NCR at least have something to entice you with, all that Caesar could offer is the opportunity to kill Benny, and if you did that already then he has nothing. Caesar's reasoning for all this idiocy? Sheer arrogance that you will work for him just because he tells you to, ignoring any evidence to the contrary.
• If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: He'll refuse to let you work for the Legion until you agree to kill Benny.
• Insufferable Genius: When the Courier asks him what Hegelian dialectics is, he responds that the simple explanation is that it's something that he/she would know about if he/she read books. Although, if Caesar read more about Hegel, he also would know that his idea of Hegelian dialectics is wrong.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He's bad, sure, but he makes some pretty truthful judgments about the corruption of the NCR, as well as noting how the Raiders and bandits the Legion fights are considerably worse than the Legion itself.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: The Legion at first appears to be nothing more than an organized band of raiders. Then you meet the man himself and you find out it's all part of an elaborate plan to create a world that won't destroy itself... then you find out he's a bad tempered sadist who commits mass genocide over personal grudges, has people tortured to death for disrupting his sleep, finds torture and violence entertaining and loves every moment of his conquering and killing, suggesting his idea of what a better world is may be somewhat different from that of most sane people. Even if you agree that he's got the most effective way to establish and maintain order in the Mojave, Caesar himself is still a petty, spiteful and sadistic tyrant.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Whatever good intentions he may have had in the first place have long been replaced by a crueler and more sadistic mindset. Actions such as the sacking of New Canaan and having you torn apart for his amusement if you decide not to work for him certainly can't be justified as "pragmatism".
• Karma Houdini: If the Legion wins, but only if his tumor isn't dealt with, leaving Lanius in charge.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Even if you don't kill him during the game, the tumor will eventually kill him, and in the endings of House and Wild Card is implied that he was killed by Securitrons Mark II.
• Karmic Death:
  • What Caesar will inevitably receive if his brain tumor runs its course: A death at the hands of something potentially preventable by the very technology he banned from his civilization. Not that he didn't try said technology... As noted under Hypocrite above, Ulysses comments that if Caesar dies, either by your hand or the brain tumor, then by the laws of his own Legion he was weak and didn't deserve to live.
  • Also, the Gun Runners' Arsenal rewards the player for killing him in two very specific ways: stabbing him to death with a knife ("Historical Propriety") or crippling his head with a throwing spear ("Even A God-King Can Bleed"). Arcade even gives you props for the accuracy of your historical re-enactment.
• Kick the Dog: Caesar is not a good person by any definition of the phrase, but destroying New Canaan along with any tribe with the slightest connection to them simply to spite Graham is easily his most gratuitously cruel act. It doesn't even have the flimsy justification Caesar uses to rationalize his aggression against NCR or Nipton; it was a peaceful, altruistic community that simply happened to have produced a Legate who failed him.
• Kick the Morality Pet: A Good Legion aligned Courier is the only thing the Legion gets in the way of decent members. But chances are it won’t make much impact since Caesar will respond to even innocent questions with spite and verbal abuse and will promptly have you tortured to death if you disobey him.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Depending on how the player views Benny. Some see Caesar ordering his death to be cruel, merciless, and an evil thing to do; others see it as a fitting end to a huge jerkass that got the Courier in this situation to begin with.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: For an intellectual, Caesar commits several factual errors in his discourses.
  • 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. 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.
  • He uses the concept of "Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis", to present an argument to the Courier that the Legion's takeover of New Vegas and victory over NCR will transform them into something that is a combination of the two and greater than either, a synthesis of the Legion and NCR. However, the Legion relies heavily on raiding and enslaving its enemies to thrive and its members have been indoctrinated to see NCR as weak and corrupt. The idea that the Legion, purely a military force, will just "settle down" and form a self-sustainable society once they have no one left to conquer is laughable, but Caesar seriously thinks that will happen. He clearly has not given much thought on how to make his abstract ideas of thesis and antithesis function in reality.
• Mask of Sanity: Although Caesar’s usual demeanor is that of a calm, intelligent ruler who practices philosophy in his spare time, it does not take much at all for him to lapse into a profanity-laden tantrum and hand out stone-cold serious death threats like candy, and his casual, bloodthirsty glee at the thought of killing even civilians makes one question if Caesar is all there in the head.
• Manipulative Bastard: The Sadistic Choice he threatens the Courier with if they try to save Benny shows what he lacks in foresight he makes up for in cunning.
• Meaningful Name: He took the name precisely for the symbolism of it. While there are many "Caesars" in history, Caesar models himself specifically after Julius Caesar. He directly compares the Hoover Dam and his conquest of NCR to when Caesar crossed the Rubicon River with his legion to begin his coup, becoming a dictator that transformed the democratic Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.
  • 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 today the name Salo is most (in)famous for a work of hideous exploitation film about both fascism and creative sadism.
• Might Makes Right: His philosophy. You can promptly kill him to prove that he can't live up to his own ideology. If you do, Ulysses straight up calls Caesar "History's Hypocrite" if you tell him that Caesar is dead. He then goes on to tell the Courier that if Caesar was too weak to defend himself from you, then by his own logic he was too weak to lead.
• Morality Pet: If Arcade is forced into his service he genuinely grows fond of him and is devastated by his suicide. This is even more remarkable because Caesar apparently enjoyed political debates with him, when his usual reaction to having his values questioned is a little… zealous.
• Moral Sociopathy: Caesar has a sense of morality. He holds the NCR in contempt for squandering the ‘common good’, respects his worthy opponents and has a strong belief in civic duty and maintaining a strong nation. However, it’s made perfectly clear he’s more interested in fulfilling philosophical abstractions and aside from occasional lip service, doesn’t care about people’s welfare. He butchers entire nations over personal grudges, dooms most of his subjects to a life of rape and slavery, kills people for interrupting his sleep, tortures them for entertainment and his smug, self-congratulatory boasting about his past victories mixed in with talk of ordering the killing of children makes it clear he doesn’t have a shred of remorse over what he’s done.
• Necessarily Evil: Averted. Caesar believes he's working for the greater good, but unlike Ashur or the Master, he doesn't see his actions as moral compromises.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: He takes quite a few cues from Pol Pot. Not only is he the leader of a faction similar to the Khmer Rouge, his backstory (a former intellectual who changed his name and latched onto an extreme ideology) is similar to Pol Pot's, as is his persecution of groups he belongs to (he's a former anthropologist who quotes Hegel and suffers from a brain tumor; Pol Pot was a foreign-educated private school teacher who had Chinese ancestry and came from a Buddhist family).
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Although you get a first glimpse of how far Caesar and his Legion are willing to go when you wade into the ruins of Nipton, when you first meet the man himself he’s a calm and logical ruler who tells you how he plans to use his horde of thugs to bring peace and prosperity to the Mojave. At first, anyway. Then you hear about his more unsavoury actions, like slaughtering entire camps and tribes down to the last man, woman and child out of little more than unadulterated bloodlust, his downright nauseous habit of taking those he conquers as slaves, of which the women are used as broodmares or perverted entertainment, and his downright inhuman glee at bringing a merciless, messy end to all that question or defy him even so much as an inch. Which ultimately show him for his true nature as a violent, petulant, psychopathic thug who neither comprehends nor cares that his actions bring more harm than good to the Mojave as a whole, and is so driven by his ego he would gladly run it into the ground than admit he was ever wrong.
• Non-Action Big Bad: While Caesar isn't actually a bad fighter, as you'll find out if you enter his tent and try killing him, he's more of a behind the scenes guy. He lets Lanius take command for the Battle of Hoover Dam. House even states that Caesar has minimal effect in the final conflict. Then again, he is an aging man with a brain tumor and therefore in no condition to actually participate in combat. Besides, Lanius has it well in hand, and is a far more competent fighter and frontline general than Caesar. One's the brains, one's the brawn.
• No Sympathy: While Caesar has his Pet the Dog moments, he's perfectly capable of committing mass genocide without a blink.
• Obliviously Evil: He believes that his actions will ensure humanity's longevity, but he doesn't tend to consider the price of this.
• Optional Boss:
  • At no point in the game does Caesar need to be killed to proceed with any questline , and killing him only affects the ending and a handful of sidequests, so the player is free to engage him or not at their choosing. Compared to Lanius, he's a pushover, but he's still a respectably powered combatant armed with one of the best hand-to-hand weapons in the game, and accompanied by his five bodyguards also armed with powerful hand-to-hand weapons, in his tent which is very small and has nowhere for you to run. Doubles as a Wake-Up Call Boss in this regard — he'll fall easily enough if you face him later in the game, but if you think you can take him early on, you're in for a painful lesson.
  • The only mission that involves killing him is Boone's companion mission, since killing him will give you 2 of the 5 relationship points to activate the mission, but you can still get the 5 points by doing other missions, so it's not necessary to kill Caesar.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Even the Legion-villainizing NCR respects their zero-tolerance justice policy for raiders, bandits, and other nasty people in the Wasteland. Caesar in particular despises raiders.
• Pet the Dog:
  • If he takes over Vegas, Caesar allows the Followers to leave peacefully since they're the ones who raised him in the first place.
  • Out of respect for Chief Hanlon for his composure in surrender and being a Worthy Opponent, Caesar has him beheaded in a quick, painless death, rather than subjecting him to the agony of crucifixion.^note It's not actually possible to get this ending. The way to get this ending slide would have been to get Hanlon to stop falsifying reports and then do a Legion run, but the only way to get Hanlon to stop falsifying reports is to kill Caesar.
  • Should you sell Arcade into slavery to him, Caesar will try to treat him reasonably and comes to see him as a friend. Ending narrations describe Arcade killing himself, and Caesar is devastated by the act and mourns him for months.
  • Saving him from his tumor will cause him to be extremely grateful and nigh-friendly to the Courier, which he lampshades by suggesting they "stop this mushy stuff."
  • He praises you repeatedly if you accomplish his missions, starting with smug comments on your servility before going to genuine compliments of your competency.
• The Philosopher: Surprising considering the Legion's general mentality, though he will not tolerate being questioned by anybody apart from Arcade.
• Power Fist: He wears a Displacer Glove, and can still punch you to death with it.
• Prepare to Die: If the Courier comes to see him by his invitation and has a bad rep with the Legion, Caesar will tell you that it was all a trap and he's going to kill you on the spot. And then...
  Caesar: Relax, I'm fucking with you.
• Pride: Oh boy. For better or for worse he views himself as a God-King and the spiritual successor to Julius Caesar himself. To his Legion he's considered a literal demi-god, claiming to be the son of Mars himself. Besides a select few, Caesar does not enjoy being debated or argued with and refuses to talk about past defeats, to the point where he threatens to kill you for asking about the First Battle of Hoover Dam.
• Psychopathic Manchild: It's very evident that he hasn't grown out of the narcissistic and petulant nature that created the rift between him and the other Followers back in the day. He reacts poorly if the Courier tells him that s/he's done working for him.
• Psychotic Smirk: Whether he's relating his past atrocities, or your most recent dirty deeds in the Legion's name, he always has a sneering grin.
• Resignations Not Accepted: He doesn't like hearing the word "no". Not one bit.
• Retired Badass: He may not lead his men in battle any more, but he can still punch you to death. He also outshines the other faction leaders in combat skills.
• Sadist: If you disobey him, he'll threaten to have you hacked to pieces for his own entertainment. According to him, there are few things more satisfying than destroying an enemy.
• Sadistic Choice: Forced on you if you try to have Benny released. Either you kill Benny yourself, fight a near-impossible battle with Caesar and all his guards sans your weapons, or leave, in which case Benny's doomed to crucifixion.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Easily the most foul-mouthed member of the Legion.
• Smug Snake: For all his talk of admiring the Courier's achievements, Caesar still looks down on him/her and pretty much anyone else. If asked about his philosophy, he'll make smarmy jabs at your intelligence yet still remain completely convinced you'll join him despite his disrespect. However, make no mistake - unlike most characters who fit this trope, he's every bit as dangerous as he thinks he is.
• Sophisticated as Hell: The rest of the Legion may be extremely impolite to you, but they're formal about it. Caesar, while he can be just as formal as his subordinates, throws around the word "fuck" and name-drops Grognak the Barbarian to the Courier. He is one of the most learned people you meet in the game, who among other things explains how he views the conflict between the Legion and NCR through Hegelian dialectics. His foul-mouthed side is especially pronounced when he's afflicted by his brain tumor. Paraphrased:
  Courier: Does your head hurt?
  Caesar: What does it look like, asshole?
• To Create a Playground for Evil: Though his main objective is to create a stable society Caesar also wants to create an environment that encourages practices such as sadism and cannibalism even though they don't have any purpose beyond giving him an opportunity to further torture his enemies.
• Troll: If you've opposed the Legion he'll dramatically list all the crimes you've committed, culminating in declaring your execution, but then reveal he was just screwing with you.
• Übermensch: In much the same way as Mr. House.
• The Unfettered: Whether it's bending his own laws to survive his tumor, crucifying his enemies, legalizing rape to maintain the Legion's numbers or wiping out a peaceful city to punish Graham for failing him, there is nothing to which Caesar won't stoop to get his way.
• The Unfought: Plot-wise, Caesar is never fought directly during The Second Battle of Hoover Dam. The Legion's story reveals he has a brain tumor and will be rendered comatose by the time The Courier returns with a doctor's bag or an Auto-Doc piece. He can be saved by The Courier in the Legion's story but his fate is ultimately unknown during the other faction-based stories as the final battle is against Legate Lanius. Caesar either retreated to safety, rendered comatose and evacuated, or he had succumb to his tumor before the battle started.
• Villain Has a Point: He's critical of NCR's democracy because they're bloated, corrupt, and inefficient, its leaders more concerned with expanding their borders and lining their pockets than caring for their people. Easy critiques to dismiss, except that numerous other characters in the game, including those who live in NCR territory and may even be part of its government or military, would readily agree with him.
• Villainous Breakdown: If you blow up the bunker underneath his fort but then say you refuse to work for him any more (or just pretend to), he'll start cursing and throwing a temper tantrum. Then you can threaten him with Terrifying Presence, resulting in him yelling for his guards.
  Caesar: Mark my words, you piece of shit. This is the last time you will ever refuse to perform an order I've given you. If you meant what you said, you best be on your way, and at good speed. And forget all that I could have given you. If you ever - ever - disobey me again, I will order my Praetorians to hack you to death with their machetes for my entertainment.
• Villainous Legacy: Part of his plan is to establish a Nova Roma that will outlive him and ensure humanity's future after his death. Other characters comment that it's to the point where killing Caesar won't stop the Legion as a whole, and indeed if you do kill him, Lanius just crowns himself the new Caesar and becomes a Dragon Ascendant. However, it's also implied that Lanius doesn't have the charisma and/or the insights on social science and philosophy that Caesar does, and in the ending it's made clear he's not as effective a ruler. While they may hold together for a time under Lanius, it's heavily implied that the Legion will eventually fall apart without Caesar.
• Villainous Valour: Unlike most characters, he (mostly) keeps his composure when hit with the Terrifying Presence perk, defiantly calling for his guards' aid instead of running, hiding or panicking.
• Villain Respect:
  • If you remove his tumor, he'll come to legitimately respect you, and it shows. If you win the game for Caesar, he'll not only make you extravagantly rich, but also denote you as a permanent Amicus (friend) of the Legion.
  • Despite being the man responsible for beating the Legion in the first battle at Hoover Dam, Caesar gives Chief Hanlon a quick and merciful execution instead of an agonizing one, noting that he had respect for such a capable leader.
  • If you sell Arcade Gannon to Caesar, he'll become Caesar's personal physician and intellectual sparring partner. When Arcade commits suicide, Caesar will mourn his death for months.
• Visionary Villain: This is the major thing that separates Caesar and his men from a particularly zealous bunch of raiders. Caesar actually has plans to create a new world once the Legion plants its flag on Vegas, and talking to him at length reveals he has a surprising knowledge of government and social science, and understands exactly what he is doing and what the results will be, for better and worse.
• Wasteland Warlord: As the absolute ruler of the Legion, commanding the fierce loyalty and obedience of his men who, in turn, enact Caesar's will upon the Mojave and its inhabitants.
• We Can Rule Together: To both the Courier and multiple factions. While he keeps up his word with the Courier (making them one of his lieutenants and rewarding them handsomely in the Legion Ending), he "rewards" the Khans with forced assimilation and the Fiends with extermination.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: His ultimate goal is to unite the remnants of humanity and prevent a tragedy like the Great War from ever happening again. But his method for achieving that noble goal is morally repugnant.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: If you neither do his quests nor go back to the Fort of your own accord to assassinate him, he simply disappears from the narrative. He doesn't even get mentioned in the epilogue. You'll only find out what happened to him if you read a guide or go back and complete "Render Unto Caesar" on your next play-through.
• Who Dares?: If you cause enough troubles for the Legion (break their alliance with the Khans, discover the Legion's mole in Camp McCarran and so on) and go to Caesar's tent, he will ask why would you dare to come before him.
  Caesar: So tell me this, because I really want to know: I am feared - with good reason - but you of all people dare to come before me, the mighty Caesar. What were you thinking?
• Wicked Cultured:
  • Caesar is a highly educated man and enjoys political/philosophical debates. He is also a knowledgeable historian who justifies his extreme actions by naming historical examples.
  • Fitting to his name, Caesar has very deep respect and appreciation for the post-Republic Rome, Julius Caesar being his personal hero. His understanding of Julius Caesar's motives, social science, and the philosophy behind the Roman Empire are actually quite astounding.
• Wolfpack Boss: By himself, he's basically just a slightly buffed Praetorian Guard with slightly worse armor. However, he has several Elite Mooks equipped with the most powerful hand-to-hand weapons in the game guarding him, as well as one powerful hand-to-hand weapon of his own. It's not very hard to take them all out if you know what to do, but they'll kill you quickly if you screw up.
• Worthy Opponent: One of his very few redeeming traits is that he recognizes competent enemies as such and will honor them even in victory.
  • If he conquers Vegas, Caesar grants Chief Hanlon a quick death out of respect.
  • He admires Kimball for his status as a former war hero and general, his autocratic attitude towards governing, and his draconian approach to warfare. But at the same time, he despises him for choosing to get elected democratically instead of staging a military coup.
• Would Hurt a Child: He had the entire population of New Canaan wiped out including the children. Oddly, he claims that he talked Lanius out of killing the surviving children of his tribe, though this was likely just pragmatism since they would likely be drafted as legionaries. Or it was just a barefaced lie, considering the Legate's Multiple-Choice Past.
• Young Conqueror: He founded the Legion at the age of 22.

Lucius

Voiced by: Yuri Lowenthal

"Unlike an NCR trooper, a Legionary is always ready to fight regardless of the circumstance he finds himself in."

The head of Caesar's Praetorian Guard, he is a master of unarmed combat and assists in training Legionaries.

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• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: He got to his position by fighting his way to the top, and has not been challenged in over thirteen years. Caesar suspects however it is more about respect from his underlings than fear of his prowess. In fairness to Lucius, he's a dangerous foe should the Courier fight him, especially because he is a borderline Wolfpack Boss.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: As a member of the Praetorian Guard, he specializes in Hand-to-Hand combat and can even teach the Courier a new combat move, provided that they're not completely hostile to the Legion and they have a high enough Unarmed skill.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Since Caesar's brain tumor only starts showing its effects during the main Legion questline, Lucius suspects you to be the cause of them. If you botch the surgery and kill Caesar, Lucius declares you did it on purpose, even if it was an accident. On the other hand the player can botch it on purpose and claim it was an accident to try and get away with it, making Lucius Properly Paranoid.
• Dark and Troubled Past: He's ashamed of his tribal origins, considering them primitive savages, and Caesar lifted them to something more.
• The Dragon: If Caesar dies, Lucius says Lanius, who replaces him, has not named a second yet, but his own name has been whispered.
• Genius Bruiser: He's not only a very powerful melee combatant, but he has a better sense of warfare than even Caesar possesses. For instance, he considers the Legion to have lost the First Battle of Hoover Dam because NCR's snipers killed their commanders from range, causing the lower-ranked Legionaries to fall apart without someone to give orders. That's why he's trying to repair a howitzer to suppress enemy snipers should NCR try that tactic again. He also acknowledges the Legion's reliance on the Zerg Rush is flawed, since sheer numbers are not always enough to prevail, you need tactics, and that they need to be ready to adjust to prevent another Boulder City incident.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: He's the least evil among the legion leaders. He isn't a man-child that exterminates settlements over petty personal revenge like Caesar, nor does he partake in horrendous terrorist acts like Vulpes or is as brutal as Lanius. He's even registered as neutral karma like Lanius. Unlike Lanius though, his neutral karma is backed up by being a borderline Only Sane Man.
• Light Is Not Good: Invoked by his name, which is Latin for "light".
• Noble Demon: In contrast to most of the Legion members you meet, Lucius is a fairly decent guy. At the very least, he doesn't seem to rejoice in causing rampant slaughter like Vulpes and Lanius, and isn't a rude jerk like Caesar himself. He does his job for Caesar, and while very loyal, has the Legion's best interest at heart and wants to do all he can to ensure success.
• Power Fist: Comes equipped with a Ballistics Fist.
• Praetorian Guard: He's the leader of them.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He says this is why Caesar teaches the Legionaries to be proficient with their bare hands and simple weapons instead of firearms. Firearms can jam, break down, or miss, and you may not always have them, so specializing in Unarmed tactics lets a Legionary be ready to fight no matter the situation.
• Straight for the Commander: He considers this trope to be why the Legion lost the First Battle of Hoover Dam. NCR's rangers picked off the ranking officers leading the attack from range, and with no one to command them the lesser Legionaries fell apart, because none of them had the sense of tactics to be effective without someone to give orders. This puts Lucius in sharp contrast to most other Legion members, who when asked about the battle blame their failures on Joshua Graham's poor leadership and don't offer any further opinion.
• Undying Loyalty: To Caesar. When he thinks you've caused his death during his surgery is the only time he really gets angry with you, and if you talk him down he tells you he lost his temper out of grief and loyalty.
• You Are in Command Now: He takes over the Fort when Caesar is incapacitated by his tumor, and remains in charge if he dies, though Lanius is the overall leader of the Legion now.

Vulpes Inculta

Jack of Clubs

Voiced by: Jason Spisak

"Do whatever Caesar tells you to do. And whenever the opportunity presents, strike at the Profligates. Pile body upon body."

The head of Caesar's Frumentarii, and one of the characters with a more mysterious background in the game. He's responsible for the destruction of Searchlight, the alliance with the Great Khans, the plot with the Omertas, and the pacification of the Twisted Hairs. When the Courier encounters him, he and his men have just finished sacking the small town of Nipton.

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• Animal Theme Naming: His name translates into "Desert Fox". And of course there's the dog head he wears.
• Bait the Dog: Close investigation shows Nipton really was the Wretched Hive he describes, and even if you disagree with his actions, you can at least understand his goals... until even closer inspection shows he lied about the town's cowardice to make it seem more deserving than it really was. And if that wasn't enough, he plans to massacre the civilian population of Vegas in an onslaught so brutal it disgusted even Lanius. He has the dubious honor of being labeled a "Very Evil" character in-game, something that is only given to four other named characters: Cook-Cook, Duke, Mortimer, and Philippe.
• Chainsaw Good: The Legion usually prefers to use simple and easily maintained weapons. Not Vulpes. He has a Ripper instead, and it's implied that he mostly just uses it for torturing.
• Cool Shades: As part of his Vexillarius Helmet.
• Creepy Monotone: His normal way of speaking is a calm, quiet tone; he hardly ever emotes much, even when talking about brutally slaughtering an entire town. His cavalier attitude just makes him even scarier.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: When he and his men sacked Nipton, they killed almost everyone there. Many were herded into the town hall to be mauled by rabid dogs. Some lucky ones were just shot or decapitated. The rest were either crucified or taken away into slavery, and the mayor who collaborated to escape the town's destruction was thrown into a pile of tires and burned alive. There were two survivors - one left physically unharmed, and the other got the bones in his legs smashed with sledgehammers.
• Cunning Like a Fox: It's part of his theme.
• Dissonant Serenity: He never speaks in anything but a cold and smooth voice, unless you go all Terrifying Presence on him and tell him you'll wear his head like he wears that dog's.
• Establishing Character Moment: His appearance and the way he coldly explains how he handled Nipton sets the tone for both him and the Legion for the rest of the game.
• Evil Genius: He's rather clever. See The Strategist.
• Faux Affably Evil: The first time you meet him, he's unfailingly polite to you, if not a little arrogant. In hindsight, this merely acts as a facade; he's actually a cunning and ruthless mastermind.
• Icy Blue Eyes: His Jack of Clubs card shows he was meant to have these. The Fallout Character Overhaul mod does redesign him with these eyes. In-game, however, he has a simple pair of brown eyes, which the player sees in New Vegas.
• Idiot Ball: Goes unarmed and alone to deliver the Mark of Caesar to the Courier, even if the Courier has a low Reputation with the Legion and has been shooting Legionaries on sight. Players who don't want to work with the Legion often choose to gun him down right then and there, since there's no penalty other than Legion infamy.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Was throwing Nipton's residents on burning tires good or necessary? Definitely not, but Vulpes was still pretty much correct in describing Nipton as a god-awful hellhole that was plaguing the surrounding area thanks to its welcome acceptance of murderers, bandits, and escaped convicts.
• Meaningful Name: "Desert fox." Probably in reference to his cunning, especially as the originator of that nickname also happens to be the Trope Namer for invoked Magnificent Bastard.
• Might Makes Right: Subtly invokes this in Nipton. If you have a problem with his actions, you're more than welcome to try to kill him and his men.
• Nemean Skinning: He wears a Vexillarius Helmet made from the hide of a coyote when out in the field.
• Nerves of Steel: Iron-willed at even the worst of times. Even when hit by Terrifying Presence, he manages to keep most of his composure, only yelling that "we have a problem!"
• Not So Stoic: He's normally pretty blasé, but there are a few moments when this slips.
  • If you accuse him of "slaughtering innocent civilians", he laughs in your face.
  • And of course, he freaks out and runs if you use Terrifying Presence.
• Older Than He Looks: He was the one who pacified the Twisted Hairs, the tribe that Ulysses belonged to, an event that happened around 30 years before the main game.
• Only Sane Man: The only member of the Legion to suspect the Courier who may have stormed Nelson, saved Joshua Graham and butchered waves of Legion assassins might not be sincere about joining the horde of Blood Knights that a day ago wanted them dead.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: A definite believer of this. Don't believe him? Just ask Nipton. He'll even tell you straight up to kill him if you believe he's in the wrong.
• Pragmatic Villainy: His actions are horrible but they have goals bigger than petty raids, he is diminishing the NCR's morale and troops by attacking important trade post.
• Promotion, Not Punishment: The act that got him promoted to Frumentarius involved acting without orders from his commanding officer, which could have got him executed if Caesar hadn't been so impressed by it.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Averted. Despite being the leader of Caesar's elite Frumentarii, Vulpes is fairly weak compared to other high-ranking Legion NPCs mostly due to wearing very light armor. He is more brain than brawn.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue to Lanius' red. While Lanius is a Blood Knight who prefers glory in open war, Vulpes works in subversive ways that the Legate considers dishonorable.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: If he's still alive by the time you get to the Strip, he'll be there to give you a message to come see Caesar disguised as a Gambler, including a suit and a hat.
• Shoot the Messenger: If you meet him in Vegas as he tries to act as a diplomat, there's nothing stopping you from killing him or his replacement on the spot since the Securitrons will not go hostile. If Yes Man's nearby, he'll even compliment you.
• Smug Snake: Not as bad as Caesar or most legionaries, as he at least has the sense to mistrust the Courier, but he's still stuck-up enough to boast that if Caesar wanted you dead, you would be. You can repay him for his bravado by killing him, his master and most of the Legion's big wigs when you storm the fort.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: The quiet, measured way he speaks just serves to make him all the creepier.
• The Spock: The most analytical and logical member of the Legion. While Caesar acts more on passion, Vulpes is more aloof and tends to plot out his attacks and discern their psychological impact beforehand. For instance, Nipton's destruction was painstakingly detailed to puncture NCR's morale, while the destruction of New Canaan boiled down to a glorified tantrum on Caesar's part.
• The Spymaster: He's the head of the Frumentarii, in charge of overseeing all the Legion's covert-ops and military intelligence activities. You can take a few missions from him as well. If you didn't kill him at Nipton, he'll approach you on the Strip to give you the Mark of Caesar. If you ask him how he even found you or how he got into the Strip, he'll just say that he has his methods as a Frumentarii. The implication being that he's been following you everywhere.
• The Starscream:
  • Openly disapproves of Lanius and privately expresses hatred for him, calling him a savage brute with no capability of leading the Legion. It's implied that if Caesar dies, Lanius and Vulpes ultimately come to an Enemy Civil War.
  • Though he respects and admires Caesar fully, bits of dialogue show that he does have at a least a small grudge against Caesar for making Lanius the heir to the Legion and not himself.
• Static Role, Exchangeable Character: If he dies before you walk into Nipton or receive the mark of Caesar, these events happen anyway, carried out by Gabban or Alerio.
• The Stoic: He shows about as much emotion as a robot, even when ransacking Nipton.
• Straight for the Commander: His backstory has him winning a victory for the Legion over a rival tribe by charging through a hole in their defenses and capturing their chieftain. This impresses Caesar and earns him a place amongst the Frumentarii.
• The Strategist: By far the most competent officer in the Legion. He was responsible for the sacking of Nipton behind NCR lines^note Which also killed four NCR soldiers and a dozen Powder Gangers, the dirty bomb attack on Camp Searchlight (a large NCR base, the destruction of which crippled their presence in the region), the establishment of the base at Cottonwood Cove, the alliance with the Great Khans (as he's The Spymaster, and the ambassador is one of his Frumentarii), and the plan with the Omertas to chlorine bomb the Strip, leaving it open for the taking for the Legion after the Omertas try to take it themselves. Not to mention that he was the one responsible for pacifying and assimilating the Twisted Hairs tribe in the backstory.
• Tempting Fate: If you express disapproval at his actions in Nipton he dares you to attack him and his allies with the implication that he doesn't even consider you a threat, and assuming they weren't sold or ignored most players at this point will have a rather healthy supply of dynamite from the Powder Gangers. Do the math. If you don't, however, you'll soon find out why he thinks so little of you.
• Too Dumb to Live: 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 Caesar's right-hand men.
• Unreliable Expositor: He claims none of Nipton's population tried to fight back during the lottery - but if you poke around the town, you come across three dead legionaries and several signs of struggle.
• Wakeup Call Boss: You're welcome to fight him and his cronies when you first meet him at Nipton. Just be prepared for the toughest fight in the game at that point.
• We Have Reserves: 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 canisters they find there as they can before reporting back to him. The canisters were nuclear fuel casks and exposed everyone at the camp to a lethal dose of radiation poisoning, starting with the two unfortunate Legion agents.
• White Hair, Black Heart: In the same artwork mentioned in Icy Blue Eyes and in the Legion ending slide for a female Courier, Vulpes is depicted with white hair instead of the brown that ended up in-game. Once again, the Character Overhaul Mod changes this.

Antony

Voiced by: Yuri Lowenthal

"When the Legion showed up, we fought; most tribes did. Hangdogs hung out longer than most... broke us by throwing our dogs on the fire. So we gave up. Our elders couldn't bear the idea of our spirit animals burning in the afterlife."

The Master of Hounds and a former member of the Hangdogs tribe before it was conquered by Caesar. His primary job is to oversee the breeding, training and care of Legion hounds, which he has done by stealing a slave girl's teddy bear to give to them as a chew toy.

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• The Beastmaster: His tribe specialized in the taming and training of dogs, which makes him a valuable member of the Legion forces as his hounds make vicious attack dogs.
• Cry for the Devil: Yeah, he's an asshole who stole a little girl's teddy bear to give to his dogs, but the man has a genuinely tragic backstory.
• Jerkass: He's a real mean guy who stole a slave girl's teddy bear just because his dogs could use a new chew toy.
• Machete Mayhem: His only weapon is a simple machete.
• Pet the Dog: Literally, his tribe loved and adored dogs, seeing them as their spirit animals. Even as a member of the Legion he still shows respect to the hounds he trains and will even give the Courier Lupa's brain if they can defeat the old girl in honorable combat, seeing it as giving her a kind of immortality.
• Spikes of Villainy: His shoulder pads appear to have nails stuck into them.

Otho

Voiced by: Yuri Lowenthal

"Remember the rules: light armor and machetes only. And, of course, to the death."

A Legionary in charge of running the arena at The Fort. If the Courier is male he'll be willing to set up fights for them against Legion slaves and even NCR soldiers. If the Courier is female... he mostly just throws insults at you and tells you to bother someone else.

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• Hypocrite: He'll tell a female Courier that only a man can fight in the arena even though a male Courier fights a female NCR Ranger as his final opponent if he decides to partake in arena matches. He also grants an exception if a female player chooses to fight Benny, though he may not have had much choice about that.
• Jerkass: He is reasonably nice to a male Courier and will compliment their skill in the arena, but if the Courier is female he won't even want to talk to her and responds to most of her questions with sexist insults.
• Machete Mayhem: He limits all arena fights to machetes only. He also carries one himself.
• Spikes of Villainy: Like Antony his armor has what appear to be nails sticking out of the shoulder pads.
• Stay in the Kitchen: He shows a much more sexist side if the player is a woman, even more so than most of his fellow legionaries:
  Female Courier: Hello.
  Otho: What do you want from me woman? I'm in charge of the arena, not the cooking pots.
• Ungrateful Bastard: It doesn't matter if a female Courier saved Caesar's life by operating on his brain tumor or sided with the Legion for control of New Vegas. The closest he gets to paying her a compliment is by telling her that it was good that a woman proved useful for once and that Caesar was bold to put so much trust her. Nice guy.

Siri

Six of Clubs

Voiced by: Lora Cain

"We're property. If you're too young or too old, the men usually leave you alone. Usually."

A slave woman who was captured when the Legion burned her hometown three years ago. She was training to be a doctor and has enough medical knowledge to perform basic first aid and make healing powders, though her recipes aren't very efficient.

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• Born Unlucky: She had high hopes of becoming a doctor, only to see it all ripped away when the Legion invaded her home and made her a slave, leaving her as little more than a primitive medicine woman who can only craft tribal remedies due to the Legion's prohibition on science and advanced technology. Notably, her Luck attribute is just 2.
• Rape as Drama: She makes it clear that women are never truly safe in Legion territory and that some of the Legion soldiers were even eyeing a female Courier when she stepped into the camp.
• Twofer Token Minority: She is one of the only female Legion characters seen and is also African American.

Melody

Voiced by: Ashley McGullam

"I can't talk to you. It's not allowed."

A young slave girl who has recently lost her teddy bear to the Legion's hound master and requests that the Courier bring it back to her.

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• Shrinking Violet: She won't even talk to the player unless they pass a speech check, use the Child at Heart perk or have really low intelligence.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Getting her teddy bear back to her safe and sound, especially since you might need to fight off four Legion hounds with just a machete to do it.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can bring her beloved teddy bear back... and then rip it apart right in front of her. There really isn't any motivation or reward for doing this either (aside from gaining some Legion fame); the option exists solely to allow the player to be the biggest, meanest asshole possible.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: If The Courier lays siege on The Fort, Melody will be completely gone from The Fort. Though it's possible she may have escaped while the Legionaires are busy fighting off The Courier.

Legate's Camp

Legate Lanius

We shall see how brave you are when nailed to the walls of Hoover Dam, your body facing west so you may watch your world die.

Voiced by: Mitch Lewis

"Lanius is savage. Savagely loyal, too, but only to me - he has no love for the Legion. But this has its uses. He has no attachment to his men, no compunction about battlefield losses. All he cares about is destroying the enemy. When another Legatus or Centurion fails to achieve results, I send Lanius to make things right. His first step is to beat the failed commander to death in front of his assembled troops. Then he orders the ritual of decimatio."

—Caesar, on his second in command.

Known as "The Monster of the East," Legatus Lanius is Caesar's right-hand man and the commander of the Legion's army.

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• Affably Evil: Much like the other Legion bosses. Bonus point for not being a Smug Snake. See mentioned trope below.
• Ambiguous Situation: It's left vague whether Lanius' backstory is accurate, or if it's just propaganda purposefully invoked by the Legion, which is further compounded by his Multiple-Choice Past, as noted by Ulysses. What is undeniably certain is that he only became prominent after Joshua Graham's fall from grace.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Caesar notes that the tactical and strategic abilities of Lanius are lacking; what isn't lacking is a hellish ferocity in combat and unmatched skill with a BFS. This is also deconstructed in the endings where he becomes the new Caesar, as being the baddest ass in the Mojave does not mean that he's actually a qualified leader. While he's more intelligent than what Caesar says, he lacks the capacity for social engineering, long-range planning, and building an empire that's more than a blood-mad raider tribe.
• Badass Boast: See his quote. In fact, nearly every quote by him is a Badass Boast.
• Bad Boss: The Radio New Vegas news story in which he is first mentioned involves him beating an under-performing squad commander to death, and then ordering nine-tenths of the force to kill the remaining tenth. (That last bit is actually rather expected of a Roman-esque military force, considering the actual practice of Decimation.)
  Mr. New Vegas: And you thought your boss was a pain.
  • Oddly enough, talking to him shows he at least disapproves of wasting the lives of his soldiers and has a limit to how much of his men he's willing to lose.
• Badass Normal: By Fallout Endboss standards, as far as we know he's just a human being in non-Powered Armor who doesn't even use a gun but is still probably the strongest character in the base game.
• Bait the Dog: His intelligence, respectful attitude and sense of honor might lure you into thinking he's not that bad a guy, but his rule of Vegas is even more brutal than Caesar's.
• Baritone of Strength: One of the deepest-voiced characters, Lanius is also by far the strongest warrior of the Legion.
• Big Bad: Takes this position as leader of the Legion if Caesar dies, which can be quite early in the game.
• Beard of Barbarism: Featured on his mask. His actual beard is much less wild.
• BFS: The Blade of the East. Sadly, should you take it from him you likely won't have many enemies you can use it on, and even if you do the game finishes not long after. However, Lonesome Road features near-identical weapons known as Blades of the West, which were specifically made by the Marked Men to emulate Lanius's sword.
• Berserk Button: Becomes enraged if you compare him to Graham and any attempts to talk him into withdrawing will fail if he suspects any dishonesty or dishonorable motives on your part. In general, he despises deception, which is what brings him at odds with Vulpes as he believes that victory in battle should be honest, purchased with blood. Also, even uttering the word "retreat" while talking to him will cause him to immediately end the conversation and attack you, even if you have passed every speech/barter check up to that point.
• Blood Knight: He considers war to be the entire point of living. If you managed to talk him in to retreating, he will give you a speech about how violence will set people free in ways that they will never understand and give them strength. In the Legion road, if asked about the battle, he will say he regrets fighting Oliver instead of Hanlon - because Oliver makes his victory too easy. He even uses you as proof of this, pointing out all the things you have done after getting shot in the head.
• The Brute: Alternates between this and The Dragon, though he isn't stupid.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He's not as dumb as he looks, an excellent fighter and a relatively decent tactician. And that's about it. Just put him in charge of The Legion and see what happens.
• The Butcher: "Lanius" from Latin translates as "butcher".
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Even considering he's a very muscular man near seven feet in height, his strength is inhuman. His incredibly bulky looking metal suit makes him as bulletproof as some actual Powered Armor (DT of 20), and if in-game weights mean anything it's actually heavier than the T-51b, which per the fluff no man could wear of it wasn't powered, yet he wears it via sheer muscle and even manages to run as fast as Usain Bolt while clad in it (he's the fastest character in the game, faster than Deathclaws). That's not even getting into how he's able to launch a power-armored player over thirty feet and through the air with a unique smack from his sword, or the time he killed ten elite soldiers in under a minute in the arena barehanded.
• Child Soldier: One story of his Multiple-Choice Past had him become a full Legionary by the time he was twelve years old.
• Co-Dragons: With Vulpes Inculta and technically Lucius, who's Caesar's chief bodyguard.
• Cool Helmet: You can even compliment him on it, while saying it will make a nice trophy. Overlaps with Mask Power.
• Cowardly Boss: After you deplete his health about 3/4, he runs away, throwing grenades to cover his retreat. He's actually running towards the pen for his dogs; when he gets there, he'll unleash them, use some healing powder, and charge back at you. Unless you sabotage the pen's lock first.
• Deathly Unmasking: It's entirely possible for you to steal his mask after killing him in single combat.
• Dragon Ascendant: Becomes this if you kill Caesar.
• Dragon-in-Chief: He's the general of the Legion and the commander for the final battle. Even if you kill Caesar, the war is not over until Lanius is dealt with.
• Dragon Their Feet: By the time you fight him, it's possible that either Caesar is dead or the Securitron army you/Mr. House has activated will be seeing to that shortly. Justified by the game making the point that killing Caesar won't stop the Legion, and Lanius has just taken control without him.
• The Dreaded: Most of the NCR is scared of him, and rightly so.
• Dumb Muscle: We might get this impression, especially from Caesar, and while he certainly lacks Caesar's foresight, this is largely averted. See Genius Bruiser below.
• Dystopia Justifies the Means: While Caesar's rule is hardly anything to look forward to, Lanius's rule is much, much worse with the intention of creating a Darwinistic world where the weak would be broken by violence while the strong thrive in constant warfare.
• Easy Logistics: He completely disregards logistics in his campaign. You can point out to him in the final battle that even if he somehow wins at Hoover Dam, his attempts to capture the NCR will only result in the collapse of the Legion as the NCR, in a much better logistical situation, stages attrition warfare among the overstretched, poorly armed, and inadequately supplied legionaries. Given how fast he understand your point and how the other higher ups view him, he likely wasn't put in charge of it. He is there to attack not to think.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He finds Vulpes Inculta's sacking of Nipton, Searchlight and his dealings with the Omertas dishonorable. And he can be persuaded to retreat if he's convinced that the campaign to take over the Mojave will be too costly for the Legion in the long run.
• Evil Mask: Made with a permanent scowl, wicked curved horns, and a wild beard. Lanius's mask is so iconic that the NCR uses it in their anti-Legion propaganda.
• Evil Sounds Deep: In part owing to his mask distorting his voice, but it still counts.
• Expy: He bears many similarities with the lieutenant from the first game. They're both dragons and possible Dragon Ascendants of the Big Bad. You may get the impression that they're Dumb Muscles (being told stories that established Lanius as a savage brute, even by his own boss and the lieutenant thanks to the first impression of super mutants by Harry) and while they lack their leader's charisma, they are both highly intelligent and well spoken. And they both speak in a polite tone, although the lieutenant is more mock-polite.
  • He could also be seen as an Expy of sorts to Frank Horrigan from the second game. They're both physically imposing and extremely feared by both their allies and their enemies alike. They're also similar in that they serve as the final bosses of both games despite not being the leaders of their factions, in both cases due to the true Big Bad being too old and past his prime to fight the protagonist themselves.
• The Faceless: He likes to enforce this image. The only people who have 'seen' Lanius without his mask are his slaves, who were struck blind soon after.
• Facial Horror: According to Caesar, he turned on his own tribe after their leader surrendered to the Legion and took down fifteen of them, but ended up with his face severely deformed. Caesar made his mask specifically so he could cover his face (although, if the Courier loots said mask from his corpse later in the game, he has no apparent scars on his face).
• Fatal Flaw:
  • As Ulysses states, he can't afford to look weak. To talk him down, the Courier has to convince him of the possibility of failure.
  • He has an additional one in his Wrath. As Caesar tells the Courier, he has no real loyalty to the Legion itself nor does he value its members for anything other than combat. On the one hand this makes him the absolute authoritative figure as his own men fear him more than the enemy. On the other hand, while he may be more intelligent than Caesar gives him credit for, Lanius's aggression and short-sightedness make him a less effective leader than he himself believes.
• Final Boss: He is the final boss of the game, unless one sides with the Legion or has a high enough Speech/Barter to talk him down from combat, and one of the toughest opponents in it. General Oliver is fought afterwards if you side with Mr. House or go Wild Card, but he is significantly less of a threat if one doesn’t/can’t talk him down.
• Flunky Boss: If you fight him, then two Praetorian Guards and a little less than a dozen Veteran Legionaries will spawn, packing ballistic fists, machetes, marksman carbines, and super sledges. However, if you talk him into fighting you alone, he becomes a Duel Boss. If you play your cards right, you can even invert it. The speech check will have him order his men to back down, but you can still have the NCR Ranger Squad Leader or a Mark II Securitron, one humanoid companion (e.g. Boone), one non-humanoid companion (Rex or ED-E), Cannibal Johnson, and Doctor Henry, whereas he has no other support.
• Four-Star Badass: The best general in the Legion.
• General Failure:
  • Downplayed Trope. He's better than Graham tactically, but he completely failed to consider the logistical side of his invasion. A Courier with a maxed out Barter skill can get him to retreat by pointing out how suicidal it would be to invade California in the Legion's current state. In fairness to Lanius, he quickly picks up on the Courier's logic, and agrees to retreat once he realizes his plan isn't viable. The implication is that no one in the Legion (an anti-intellectual, preindustrial tribal society) had sufficient knowledge of economics to point out these facts to him before he decided on the plan (or were willing to object); a trusted subordinate saying the same surely would have had an equal or greater effect on him as his sworn enemy.
  • Becomes this should Caesar die, not only upping the scale of senseless brutality exponentially, but running the Legion into the ground through failed decision after failed decision.
• Genius Bruiser: Despite being made out to be a savage brute, Lanius is actually a better tactician than Graham and Oliver, fairly articulate in speech and wiser than Caesar thinks. He also understands the logistical side of warfare enough to know that defeat in battle isn't the only way to lose a war.
• Hidden Depths: If you were expecting to speak to a monstrous savage when you finally meet him based on the stories, you're gonna be surprised. Lanius is brutal and violent, but also intelligent, perceptive, and has a personal code of honor. For instance, he's perfectly aware the Legion's current societal structure cannot sustain itself, and will consider you a Worthy Opponent for coming to challenge him when all others in the West would have fled.
• Human Sacrifice: He regularly performs ritual sacrifices with slaves and captured NCR troops in the hope of appeasing Mars for victory in battle.
• Hypocrite: He really does hate cowardice and approves of honorable battle... yet he'll refuse to battle you alone if your speech skill is not high enough and he'll send his Praetorian Guards to gang up on you as well as running away when low on health.
• I Am the Noun: "I am the East. And I will prove it this day."
• Inadequate Inheritor: He's a good general, but he's a poor statesman, and letting Caesar die but helping him win will prove this. Caesar believed that once the Legion occupied New Vegas, it should become a more proper state and rein in the mindless raiding and brutality, and true to this, will show signs of mercy and governing skill. Lanius, however, is too violent and brutal to manage that transition, and in every ending of his that differs from Caesar, it's changing a bit where Caesar Pet the Dog into Lanius murdering someone.
• Just You and Me and My GUARDS!: If The Courier decides to fight him, several other legionaries 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.
• Large and in Charge: He's the tallest and physically strongest human character in the entire game, and his metal armor makes him look even bigger.
• Last Episode, New Character: The Courier only meets him during the game's final quest, but his fearsome reputation certainly precedes him.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: A relatively subtle example. His quote about violence giving strength is like leveling up by killing others.
• Legacy Character: Theorized by Ulysses. No one is allowed to see Lanius's face, and it would help explain his Multiple-Choice Past.
• Lightning Bruiser: He can run faster than a Deathclaw, not to mention he can take more damage than the Legendary Deathclaw and hit even harder with his sword.
• Living Legend: Deliberately invoked in-universe; Ulysses states that Lanius is considered a near-mythical figure, both to the Legion and NCR. His power is in his reputation and all the legends about him, creating a god-like mythos to scare the Legion into loyalty and NCR into retreating. However, as the player will find out, while Lanius is certainly a powerful combatant, he is not the rampaging butcher the myths proclaim. Further, he knows that his real power is in his reputation and image, thus he will avoid jeopardizing it fighting a losing battle, and will back down to save face rather than fight and lose.
• Made of Iron: He can take 5 anti-tank rounds to the face without even slowing down. A Legion soldier at the arena mentioned that Lanius once killed 10 men in a match. All at once. Barehanded.
• Meaningful Name: His name means "butcher," appropriately enough.
• Multiple-Choice Past: 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 Shrouded in Myth Living Legend image.
• Noble Demon: To some extent. He dislikes Vulpes's underhanded methods (specifically his ploy with the Omertas) as well as the idea of a Pyrrhic Victory. Incidentally, appealing to his sense of honor is an effective means of getting him to withdraw and has a lower skill check requirement than relying purely on Speech or Barter.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Some options in talking down Legate Lanius will lead to him saying "My coming would have saved you, set your people free in ways they could not see". However, immediately afterward, he talks about his own Darwinist ideals about how "the weak" would die and "the strong" would thrive.
• Obliviously Evil: He doesn't view anything he does as vicious or outright "evil", simply believing he's doing his job and is being an honorable warrior via serving Caesar. Would explain why he seems to have more standards than much of the other Legion commanders.
• One-Man Army: Otho says that as a recruit Lanius once beat ten men to death in the arena, bare handed. One account of his multiple choice past also had him wipe out entire Legion patrols when the Legion came to conquer his tribe, the Hidebarks. When his tribe's chieftain tried to surrender to the Legion to stop the bloodshed, Lanius flew into a blind rage and attacked all of the tribe’s remaining warriors at once, killing a full fifteen of them before being brought down. In actual in-game combat, Lanius wipes the floor with any NCR that isn't a Veteran Ranger, and even then they don't last long.
• The Peter Principle: He's a good general and a warrior without peer, but if Caesar dies and he takes over, his skills at running a nation turn out to be rather lacking.
• Pyrrhic Victory: One way to talk him down is to convince him the Battle for Hoover Dam will be this, as the Legion has no reliable way to supply themselves once they cross the dam, there are no nearby tribes in the southern Mojave they can count on for support or slaves, and the Legion destroyed many of the towns there anyway.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: In contrast to Caesar (who doesn't really care about gender as long as he can exploit you), Lanius actively hates women, calling them 'bitches,' and even thinks NCR's treatment of them is its biggest shortcoming. Depending on your karma, he'll even threaten to rape a female Courier if you challenge him to single combat.
  Lanius: Woman of the West... you will learn your place - in my tent, and again, when you beg for release on the edge of my blade.
• Powerful, but Incompetent: While he's considered a better commander than Graham and is very good at killing people, he's only just smart enough to be convinced of the Legion's problems. If he actually ends up taking control of the Legion he makes severely poor, needlessly brutal decisions that will likely destabilize the Mojave for decades to come.
• Red Baron: The Monster of the East.
• Slave to PR: He's become a Living Legend, and he recognizes the power this gives him from pure reputation. He also recognizes how very easily this reputation could be damaged, and that he must be careful not to let that happen. Ulysses sums him up thusly:
  Ulysses: His strength lies in his title - and it is his weakness. He will not fight a losing battle and destroy what he represents. Put the idea of loss in him. Convince him the Bear will not be the twentieth tribe beneath his heel, it will make him pause like nothing on earth.
• Smug Snake: The only member of the Legion who doesn't suffer from this. He'll patiently hear you out at Hoover Dam and even accept your warnings that victory would only harm the Legion, even acknowledging that you're different from others of the West that he's met.
• The Social Darwinist: The worse one in the Legion, everyone he finds too weak will die or be enslaved no matter how many of his men die doing it. Violence is the only thing that matters to him.
• Stupid Evil: If he takes over the Legion and wins, he takes a number of steps that demonstrate what an Evil Overlord he is, but are strategically really stupid. The most prominent instance is deciding to hunt down the Enclave Remnants in order to allow no opposition to his rule. Caesar is smart enough to recognize it's not worth it and will leave them alone, while Lanius sends hundreds of Legionnaires after them to no success. He is smart enough to know better but he doesn't care, he just wants war. Both Lucius and Vulpes are worried about the future of the Legion in that situation because he's simply too boneheaded to be a good leader.
• 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.
• Talking the Monster to Death: With a maxed out Speech or Barter skill, you can convince Lanius to retreat, either by bluffing him into thinking that his forces aren't large enough to take the entire NCR, pointing out that the Legion's Scorched Earth policy is not economically sustainable, making him think that the NCR is secretly setting a trap for him like they did for Graham or make him think that his officers are potentially trying to betray him. However, Lanius will refuse any attempt to try and get him to back down if he senses deception or it is implied that he's a coward, making it possible to fail if you aren't careful.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: Besides his BFS, his only weapons are his Incendiary and Frag Grenades.
• Tin Tyrant: He wears metal armor that covers every single inch of his body. This is enforced by Lanius himself, never appearing outside his armor, and blinded his slaves so they could never see who he has.
• Undying Loyalty:
  • To Caesar, and when you bring it up, to the Legion as a whole (because it's an expression of Caesar's will).
  • Subverted in part with the Legion because, as Caesar points out, his loyalty to the Legion exists only because it's an extension of Caesar. Lanius has no loyalty to the Legion in and of itself and this may be why, if events unfold in such a way, he's such an spectacularly mediocre ruler.
• We Will Meet Again: If convinced to retreat, he states that he'll return to the Mojave one day and hopes to face the Courier in a proper conflict.
• Worthy Opponent:
  • He considers you to be one if you managed to use Speech to convince him to retreat. He even says that your views are noble, and hopes that the west will one day be full of people like you, so he can return one day and fight them in an epic battle. He also considers you one if you talk him into fighting you one-on-one, musing that you were brave enough to come face him when all the armies of the NCR would not.
  • He admits the NCR Rangers and Hanlon are this, and is disappointed it's Oliver he's fighting and not Hanlon, since Hanlon actually would have been a challenge for him.

Cottonwood Cove

Aurelius of Phoenix

Five of Clubs

Voiced by: Yuri Lowenthal

"It is the armor of a Centurion. You have the rare honor of beholding it unsplattered by the blood of my inferiors."

A Centurion leading Caesar's forces at Cottonwood Cove. He is disdainful of the Courier at first, but will warm up to them a bit if they prove themselves as a friend of the Legion.

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• Cool Helmet: Like all Centurions he has a really fancy helmet.
• Hypocrite: He looks down on the Courier for being a "profligate" and not a true member of the Legion even if they provide his faction aid, yet has tobacco and alcohol products in his office, which is prohibited by Caesar's laws (although they may have simply been there when Lucius took the place over and he hadn't bothered to dispose of them).
• Jerkass: It's clear he looks down on the Courier for not being a part of the Legion and won't change his opinion even if they side with Caesar. He will show them a small bit of respect if they bring him a lot of NCR dog tags, but not much. Oh, and he breaks official Legion law by having cigarettes and beer in his office while prohibiting his soldiers from doing the same.
• Machete Mayhem: He carries a Machete Gladius and seems to have distributed them to the soldiers under his command as well.
• Manchild: He has toys and a Grognak comic book in his office. (Though it is possible that they belonged to slaves that his group have captured.)

Decanus Severus

Voiced by: Gregory Alan Williams

"Trade with Cannon Runner if you like. Make trouble and things won't go well for you."

A legion commander with the rank of Decanus who serves under Aurelius of Phoenix as his second of command. In addition to his more mundane tasks watching over the camp he is also looking for ways to deal with the nearby NCR, something the player can assist him with if they have a high Explosives skill or the knowledge of how to make Powder Charges.

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• Cool Helmet: He wears a standard Decanus helmet.
• Machete Mayhem: He carries a Machete Gladius as a melee weapon.
• Scary Black Man: He's tall, has a deep voice, nice armor and is second in command of an entire Legion encampment. He also warns you to behave yourself while dealing with the Legion. (See his above quote.)

Canyon Runner

Four of Clubs

Voiced by: Shane Johnson

"They live in pitiful squalor, undisciplined, intemperate. To enslave them is to save them - to give them purpose and virtue."

A former member of the Blackfoot tribe who now serves as a Legion slavemaster. He recently acquired three new captures, a family, who he is quite eager to sell.

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• Affably Evil: He is a lot more friendly and polite to outsiders than most other members of the Legion.
• Happiness in Slavery: See his quote above. He considers it a great honor for one to become a slave of the legion, believing it gives people purpose and a chance to be a part of something bigger than themselves. If asked about his past he'll proudly state that his former tribe was the first to become assimilated into the legion and that serving Caesar has saved his tribe from being lowly scavengers or dying out.
• Machete Mayhem: Like his fellows at the Cove, he carries a Machete Gladius for combat.
• Odd Name Out: Most other members of the Legion have Latin names like Aurelius or Severus. He just goes by Canyon Runner.

Cursor Lucullus

Voiced by: Ari Ruben

"Ave. Are you ready to travel to The Fort?"

The ferryman who runs the boats at Cottonwood Cove. When the player receives the invitation to meet Caesar at The Fort, he'll give them transport there and back.

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• Affably Evil: Though he comes off as highly insulting, he at least makes an attempt to be polite to the Courier.
• Brutal Honesty: Though he tries to avoid directly insulting the player, he makes it clear that he sees them as an inferior for not being a part of the Legion. He'll also tell a female Courier that despite Caesar's request to meet her personally, he still views women as extremely inferior to men.
• Crazy-Prepared: If the player dumps radioactive barrels on Cottonwood Cove, he'll be the only one who survives, due to having an Advanced Radiation Suit.
  I warned them about that truck weeks ago. Always be prepared for any hazardous radiation I said. Those headstrong fools should have listened...
• Machete Mayhem: Like all of the Legion stationed at Cottonwood Cove, he carries a Machete Gladius as a melee weapon.
• Sole Survivor: If the player opts to pay the Legion at Cottonwood Cove back for what they did to Camp Searchlight, he'll be the only survivor due to being the only one who thought to bring a radiation suit with him.

Camp McCarran

Silus

Voiced by: Jesse Burch

"What an ugly little worm you are. What pile of excrement did the lieutenant pluck you from, worm?"

A captured Legion Centurion who is being interrogated by Lieutenant Carrie Boyd at the Camp McCarran NCR military base. Unfortunately, he has so far refused to say anything worthwhile to his captors, which allows the Courier to intervene and try to get some useful information out of him themselves.

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• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: He claims to not fear death and is certain that he can escape the base without being harmed or leaking any Legion secrets. However, if the player claims to be a Legion Assassin sent to kill him, he'll start to panic and beg for mercy.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Defied. He confirms that he should've have commited suicide instead of letting himself be captured like Caesar demands. The reason he didn't, however, is because he felt that he didn't deserved to throw his own life away after everything he did for Caesar.
• Dirty Coward: He refused to follow his orders to commit suicide like the rest of his squad. If the player poses as a Legion Assassin sent to kill him, he'll immediately panic and start begging.
• Hidden Disdain Reveal: With enough goading he'll reveal himself to be contemptuous of Caesar, knowing that he's growing weaker and considering him unworthy of throwing his own life away for.
• Hypocrite: He's fine with the other legionaries sacrificing themselves to protect Caesar's interests, but he claims that he himself shouldn't have to as well, simply because as a Centurion he is more useful to the Legion alive.
• Jerkass: Most Legion authority figures have at least a few positive traits, but Silus is completely worthless. It's not enough that he's crass and rude, but he's also a sniveling coward who was fine with all his troops sacrificing themselves because it gave him a better shot at survival.
• Saying Too Much: There are several ways he'll give away information about the Camp McCarran mole and Caesar's illness without being asked, including one dialogue option to simply "keep listening".
• Smug Snake: He is confident that he can escape without revealing any information and mocks the player every time they try to talk to him.
• Villainous Breakdown: If the player claims to be a Legion Assassin or reveals he just gave away highly classified information, he'll lose his cool and start breaking out the threats or begging.
• Violation of Common Sense: It's a little perplexing that Silus' jailers didn't take his centurion armor away when they stuck him in his holding cell. Putting aside the fact that it'd make him more durable to gunfire if he somehow managed to escape and make a run for it, it's odd that Boyd is letting him hold on to all these giant pieces of metal without at least restraining him first. While he obviously can't do this because of gameplay restrictions, with his hands free he could easily unhinge one of those giant shoulder pauldrons and smash Boyd in the head with it when her back is turned. It seems like he'd have no problem doing that considering he's a ruthless coward who'll do anything to survive. It's possibly justified given that Silus is too craven to attempt anything that risky, as he'd get riddled with bullets before he could reach the front door (unless he stole Boyd's uniform first and snuck out dressed as an NCR officer, although the odds for that aren't much better given that people around the camp would recognize him as the imprisoned centurion).
• We Have Reserves: It's implied he viewed his men this way given that he was fine with them all committing suicide en masse while he declined to join them in the afterlife.

Picus

"You're getting too close, Shamus!"

Picus, also known as Cpt. Ronald Curtis, is a Frumentarius agent who has been working right under the noses of the NCR military to send important information such as troop movements to the Legion, which has led to many ambushes and deaths. He is also planning on using a bomb to destroy the monorail connecting Camp McCarran and New Vegas together, which would deal a major blow to the NCR and Vegas.

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• Meaningful Name: He is likely named after the Picus of Roman mythology.
• The Mole: Impressively, he has been undercover as a member of the NCR military for years now and uses his position to leak classified information to the legion via radio.

Nelson

Dead Sea

Two of Clubs

Voiced by: Gregory Alan Williams

"The "great" republic couldn't find enough soldiers to liberate this camp, so they sent you? Pathetic."

A legion decanus from the Great Salt Lake who has conquered and holds the town of Nelson to demoralize and intimidate the nearby NCR camps. At present he has several captured NCR soldiers under his control which complicates things for the local NCR military. Depending on alignment the Courier can either wipe out Dead Sea and his legion forces or assist them in waging war against the NCR.

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• Cool Helmet: His decanus helmet, naturally.
• Graceful Loser: Dares you to wipe out Forlorn Hope, clearly thinking you'll never succeed. When you do, he momentarily drops his attitude and sincerely congratulates you for your "glorious victory", gives you his prized unique machete as a reward, and gives you full credit for the achievement (raising your Legion reputation).
• Hidden Depths: He has Science as one of his tagged skills and has raised it up to an impressive 66, quite unusual for a member of a group that shuns technology.
• Jerkass: He is very aggressive and dismissive of the Courier even if they have allied themselves with the Legion, to the point where he's one of the few Legion members with evil karma. It's also implied he's a bit envious of them if they managed to complete his mission since he wanted the glory for himself.
• Literal-Minded: Is further offended by the Courier apologizing for unintentionally offending him and telling him to "carry on":

"You are not my Centurion! You aren't even Legion! I do not 'carry on' at your command."

• Machete Mayhem: He wields a unique blade called the Liberator, which was a gift from his Centurion 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.
• Odd Name Out: Like Canyon Runner at Cottonwood Cove, his name doesn't fit in with the rest of the legion, though it may refer to the fact that they found him as a child near the Great Salt Lake in Utah.

Alexus

Voiced by: Yuri Lowenthal

Another decanus stationed near Nelson who has managed to capture a group of NCR soldiers and is holding them captive in the Techatticup Mine of the outskirts of the small town. Unlike Dead Sea he provides no unique dialogue and is just another target for the player to kill if they decided to side against the legion.

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• Cool Helmet: Like Dead Sea he wears a decanus helmet.
• Flat Character: Despite having a name and being involved in a quest, he has no unique items or dialogue. He's just a high ranking target to whack so the player can save some NCR soldiers.
• Hidden Depths: Not anywhere near the extent of Dead Sea, but he has Science as a tagged skill as well (though his is only 30) and a perfect 10 in Charisma for some reason.
• Machete Mayhem: He carries a standard machete as his melee weapon.

Other

Karl

Voiced by: Gregory Alan Williams

"Though they have been cruelly oppressed by the NCR, the Khans remain great warriors. {Choking on this a little; he's lying and it galls him} The Legion is honored to have such allies in battle."

A Legion frumentarii agent sent by Caesar to find allies for the upcoming battle at Hoover Dam, which he has acquired in the Great Khans of Red Rock Canyon. Of course, all of his promises of alliance and glory are a lie to keep the Khans loyal until the Legion can enslave them once they have outlived their usefulness. Luckily, with a bit of investigative work by the Courier his vile plans can be exposed and turn the Khans against the Legion.

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• Accidental Public Confession: Type 1. Picking the right dialogue choices causes him to reveal his utter contempt for the Great Khans... right in front of their leader!
• "Ass" in Ambassador: He pretends to be friendly and well-meaning but its clear he has no actual respect for the Great Khans or their traditions and merely sees them as pawns to be used against the NCR when the time comes. With a few speech checks the Courier can drive him to a rage and cause him to insult the Khans right to their faces.
• Berserk Button: Being compared to the Khans and ESPECIALLY being told that their warriors are greater than (or even equal to) the Legion's.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He plays up the friendly ambassador role when he wants the Khans to side with the Legion, but with a bit of prodding and some research he'll show himself for the backstabbing bastard he truly is.
• Faux Affably Evil: He's superficially polite to the Khans but in private he's seething with contempt over how primitive they are.
• Gagging on Your Words: It's clear that he absolutely hates being forced to pay the Great Khans compliments to maintain his cover.
• Machete Mayhem: Despite not wearing the official Legion uniform during his visit to Red Rock Canyon he still keeps a machete handy, likely as a symbol of loyalty to his true master.
• Undying Loyalty: To the Legion of course. Even implying that the Khans might be better makes him angry and its clear from the way he talks that some of his lies complimenting them are pretty hard for him to say with a straight face.

Cato Hostilius

Seven of Clubs

Voiced by: Ari Ruben

"Rise and shine. You have a big day ahead of you."

An elite frumentarii agent who meets up with the Courier during the mission to assassinate the NCR president during his trip to Hoover Dam. He provides both information and support during the quest, including disguises to get past security and even a bomb if the player passes a high enough skill check.

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• Affably Evil: Aside from being a bit condescending towards a female Courier when they first meet he'll remain friendly even while discussing assassinating the NCR president.
• Badasses Wear Bandanas: He is wearing a bandana headband when you first meet him and is depicted like this on the playing card he appears on.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: He goes in wearing a stylish gambler suit when the player begins the mission.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He only appears during a single mission in the game, buts its a pretty big one. Assassinating the NCR president big, in fact.

Gaius Magnus

Gaius Magnus is a centurion who had conquered the 87th tribe for Caesar's Legion and had earned his signature Armor of the 87th Tribe, an armor similar to Legate Lanius'. In 2281, Gaius was stationed in Dry Wells, once the home of the Twisted Hairs tribe, with his troops before the Courier launched a nuke from The Divide. After they went off, the massive windstorms flayed the Legionaries alive and turned them into Marked Men within seconds. Crazed and vengeful, Gaius provides a powerful fight against the Courier in Lonesome Road.

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• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: He didn't become a centurion for being nice and that minigun is not just for show (in the lore).
• Bling of War: His Armor of the 87th Tribe which is so beautiful and impressive that it provides a small bonus to Charisma.
• BFG: He wields a minigun that tore apart the 87th Tribe and lead to an easy victory. Fortunately he doesn't use it much in his fight, preferring to be up-close and personal with his machete.
• Cool Helmet: His centurion helmet loots pretty nice all things considered.
• Gatling Good: Used his minigun in the past but doesn't use it against you much as he's tagged as a melee Marked Man. It makes him very slightly easier than his NCR counterpart. Very slightly.
• Made of Iron: He has 10 in every stat meaning he has a ton of health (545), heals back 15 points a second, and his armor adds a bonus to his damage threshold and has a bonus to his damage resistance (a stat that is very difficult to rise).
• Named After Somebody Famous: Gaius Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (aka Pompey the Great) were two-thirds of the First Triumvirate of the Roman Republic and intense rivals.
• Regenerating Health: Being a Marked Man in an area with a lethal amount of radiation means he can heal 15 hit points a second and bounce back from any hit.
• Superboss: Just like Colonel Royez, he has near perfect combat stats and powerful armor to put up a fierce fight before going down.
• Token Non-Human: Being only very recently turned into a Marked Man, he's this for the very anti-mutant Legion.

Alerio and Gabban

Alerio

Gabban

Voiced by: Yuri Lowenthal (Alerio) and Gregory Alan Williams (Gabban)

A pair of Frumentarii. Should Vulpes Inculta die before you enter Nipton or walk out of the Tops after confronting Benny, the sack of Nipton will be carried out by Gabban, and the Mark will be delivered to you by Alerio.

• Developer's Foresight: Personified — they're there to account for the possibility of the Courier shooting Vulpes Inculta where he stands.
• Shoot the Messenger: Alerio's likely fate, considering the Courier had killed his predecessor before.
• Small Role, Big Impact: 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. Since three endings out of four require you to go there and upgrade or destroy the Securitrons stashed there, it's safe to say that act can have lasting consequences for the Mojave. Even without the questline requiring it, having the Mark allows you to get close enough to Caesar to kill him, should you so desire, fulfilling that trope in a different way.
• Static Role, Exchangeable Character: They fill in the role(s) Vulpes would've played if he was still alive.
• Too Dumb to Live: Alerio suffers from the same problem Vulpes would have in his shoes — he approaches a potentially vehemently anti-Legion Courier who has already killed his predecessor, gives his speech, and then turns around to walk away, leaving himself open to a quick sneak attack. Arguably, with him it's even worse, since at least if Vulpes is the one delivering the Mark of Caesar, that means you either didn't encounter him or let him leave Nipton, the latter of which means you either might be convinced to aid the Legion or were afraid of it.
• Villainous Legacy: Gabban states that the plan to sack Nipton was devised by Vulpes and he's just carrying it out.

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