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Characters: Fallout New Vegas Caesars Legion
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This is a partial character sheet for the Video Game Fallout New Vegas. Visit here for the main character index. Subjective trope and audience reactions should go on the YMMV page.Caesar's Legion'' Pax Per Bellum" (Peace through War) - The Legion's motto as inscribed on their gold coins "To enslave them is to save them, to give them purpose and virtue."- Canyon Runner - Courier: "Why is the Legion so...strange?" - Courier: "What does "Pax Romana" mean?"
A merciless and well-organized nation of imperialistic slavers originated from Arizona in the area around the Grand Canyon. Founded by the charismatic and dangerous Caesar. They modeled their society on the Roman Empire and believe that though force assimilation against the people that they conquered, humanity will one day all be united under the banner of the Legion, putting an end to all wars. They are currently aiming to push the NCR out of the area and conquer the Mojave Wasteland and one day California. - Affably Evil: Caesar. Inculta is a bit like this as well. Legate Lanius, despite being much more brutal than the other two, is surprisingly polite to The Courier and disapproves of Vulpes' methods of handling the West.
- Altum Videtur: Their entire culture is based on the Roman Empire and they love to use Latin in their speeches.
- Always Lawful Evil: One of the Legion's greatest strengths is how fanatical its soldiers are. That being said, they're far cries from the chem-mad Fiends.
- Joshua Graham is actually a pretty nice guy. Though notably he only became a nice guy after he left the Legion. When he was in the Legion, he was close to Complete Monster territory.
- Armor Is Useless: Excepting the Centurions and the armor they make from the armor of fallen enemies, Legion armor is terrible in comparison to NCR armor. It may have something to do with most of it being made of football pads.
- Assimilation Plot: A cultural version of this. 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, only Nova Roma.
- Badass Army: Every Legionnaire, from top to bottom, is either badass 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 is an exception; he relies on his brains to get around his lack of brawn.
- Depending on how you look at it, Caesar may still qualify. When you keep in mind that he is the equivalent of President Kimball, who is a former war hero, Mr House, and Elder McNamara, who is a former Paladin, he still comes out looking rather impressive - despite having started out as a scribe. That's right - the most badass faction leader is the one who never received military training to become this good. He still has the highest strength stat of them all, shares the highest endurance stat, has the most HP, and completely outshines the others with his tagged skills (Guns, Melee, Unarmed - all at 100), making him better with guns than a former soldier and a former Paladin. While he may not actively lead his men in battle any more, he is still present near the front lines, unlike any of the other faction leaders. Think of it this way: He wears a Displacer Glove and can still punch you to death, despite being 55 years old (notably only five years younger than Kimball) and suffering from a brain tumor. Additionally, in his early days he was an adventurer linguist. Not as badass as his men, maybe, but still a good example for the badass leader of a Badass Army.
- Badass Normal: The Legion has even less resources than the NCR, but has developed into a big enough threat to challenge them.
- Berserk Button: Never say Joshua Graham in front of the Caesar or Lanius.
- Bread and Circuses: Mostly averted since the Legion have no intention of improving the living standards for the common people. But according to Raul's experiences and Caesar's long term plan, they rule over areas under their control using Type 2, except if you are a slave or a female.
- Child Soldiers: Listen to Ranger Andy's story and he will tell you that the Legion have 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. 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.
- 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 as an extension of the corruption that existed during the Old World and is ultimately doomed to fail.
- The Empire: The Legion has been at war every since it was founded and has been conquering every single community that they encountered. The NCR, Mr. House, and the Brotherhood are the first real opposition that they ever encounter. The Legion 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.
- Elite Mooks: The aptly named "Veteran Legionaries".
- The Extremist Was Right: Their brutal regime has made Arizona a safe and secure place to live. Safe in comparison to, say, the Capital Wasteland. In fact it's one of the safest places in the post-war world...except for the fact that if you're not in a very specific group of people (healthy, young to middle aged, human male soldiers), you either get killed or brutally enslaved and this goes double for women.
- Future Imperfect: Less than you'd expect, since Caesar did his homework and the parts that are Roman are reasonably accurate. Still, as pointed out by Arcade, it's not Rome, just an army that's using it as a theme.
- Faceless Mooks: Many Legion soldiers wear balaclavas and sunglasses to cover their faces.
- Five-Bad Band:
- Genre Savvy: Caesar has taken the necessary steps to ensure that his ideals and plans for the future will be perpetuated in the event of his death. Even then it's implied that if he dies the Legion will fall into infighting, just not automatically.
- Gray and Grey Morality: Caesar "intentionally a very dark grey."
 . - 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.
- Hypocrite: They always talk about how important loyalty is, and how they follow it, and apparently the lack of loyalty is the reason they butchered Nipton. However, many of the conditions for joining the Legion are A Fate Worse Than Death.
- And Caesar, despite all his talk about the weak not being worthy of living, is in fact himself a sick man suffering from a brain tumor and will have no problem about using modern medicine to save his own life even as he bans medicine in his society.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Cannibalism is an accepted practice among the Legion, though not all its members are cannibals.
- 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 slave 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.
- To be fair historians generally will tell you that Sparta was the warrior nation and Athens was the cultured society, with science, philosophy, and government, of Ancient Greece. Rome was a country that looked back on Greece's ancient history and incorporated the cultural sophistication of Athens and the warrior culture of Sparta to create an Empire that would span a great portion of the continent of Europe and Asia. As Caesar himself explains the way to balance the Legion's warrior society out with a more desirable society where technology, culture and order will prevail is to create a center for their Empire, New Vegas will be their City of Rome that everyone will rally around, without a centerpiece, a capital for their society they will continue to be little more than nomads warring across a wasteland.
- Ironically, the Legion may actually fit the name, specifically, Caesar's Legion is a legion as opposed to the whole of Roman society. The Legions were a structured, regimented, efficient military force that practiced absolute discipline and ruthlessness in combat. In this regard, Caesar's Legion perfectly matches their name.
- 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.
- No Woman's Land: Women in the Legion are restricted to domestic roles or made slaves, with the exception of the female-only priestly caste, according to the FNV official guide. If your character is female, the slave Siri will tell you that this is the first time that she met a women who isn't a slave after she got captured by the Legion.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Enslaving anyone without a pair of balls (and even if they do if they're not brawny enough/too brainy or don't especially want to be soldiers) is a good way to moot the question of whether the Legion might have a legitimate point.
- 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.
- Praetorian Guard: Since it is a faction based off Ancient Rome, this is a given. They're armed with Ballistic Fists in this case.
- Putting On The Römisches Reich: Caesar modeled the Legion on Rome, particularly the post-Republic Roman Empire. He starts by uniting some tribes...
- Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Their standard operational procedure after taking control of an area. When you confront the Legate Lanius and have a high enough barter skill, you can point out that this is not a sustainable method for the Legion to operate under.
- 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: Caesar believes that mankind's dependence on technology is what caused the Great War. He also thinks that it makes people weak and lazy over time. Therefore technology such as 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...
- Sociopathic Soldier: Their entire organization.
- Shown Their Work: Sometimes hard to tell from the real Roman Empire. They even pronounce Latin as correctly as they can according to current academic thought.
- The Spartan Way: The Legion have no problem with using child soldiers against their enemies.
- The Spymaster: Just like the NCR, the Legion have an extensive network of spies and will know about it if you work against their interest. They even managed 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.
- 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.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Caesar aims to one day unite the entire wasteland under the banner of the Legion as a empire that would prevent humanity from ever fracturing itself again.
- We Have Reserves: From the countless bloodthirsty legionaries trained through brutal training regiments. They are also unwilling to surrender at all, Boyd talked about how difficult it is to get a Legionary to give himself up as a prisoner of war.
- You Will Be Assimilated: Their ultimate goal.
- 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.
Caesar 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." - Caesar talking about his origins
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 to survive the wasteland. He and his expedition was captured by a tribe but soon became their leader by teaching the tribe a better way of fighting and began systematically taking over tribes and creating them into Caesar's Legion. Vulpes Inculta Voiced by: Jason Spisak
The head of Caesar's Frumentarii, and one of the more undeniably evil men in the game. - Affably Evil: Like many other characters in the game, his friendliness to the main character is the only thing keeping most players from murdering him on sight.
- Animal Theme Naming: His name translates into "Desert Fox". And of course there's the dog head he wears.
- 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.
- 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.
- Nemean Skinning
- 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.
- 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.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Plays the Blue Oni to Lanius. 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 be there to give you a message to come see Caesar disguised as a Gambler, including a suit and a hat.
- The Spymaster: He is the head of the Frumentarii, in charge or overseeing all the Legion's covert-ops and military intelligence actives. You can take a few missions from him as well.
Legate Lanius Voiced by: Mitch Lewis
Known as "The Monster of the East," Legate Lanius is Caesar's right-hand man and the commander of the Legion's army.
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