Caesar, born Edward Sallow,[1] is the leader, dictator and co-founder of Caesar's Legion in 2281. Worshiped by legionaries as the self-proclaimed "Son of Mars," a former member of the Followers of the Apocalypse and an ex-citizen of the NCR. Since subjugating the desolate region of the Grand Canyon in 2247, he has since forged his legion from 87 tribes - assimilated or exterminated - from the former Four States Commonwealth. The militaristic might Caesar's Legion achieved completely pacified the lands that the Legion occupied, but safe roads were only the first step to fully realizing a permanent Legion that could continue after his rule. The next great step was to expand westward and acquire a real "Rome" in the form of New Vegas that could be the base of his new empire. But, before they can continue westward, Caesar and his followers must deal with the New California Republic, a formidable military power that Caesar sees as his first worthy opponent.
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Background[edit | edit source]
An educated and highly intelligent man, Caesar is infamous as the most dangerous enemy the New California Republic has faced. Inside the Legion, he is respected for his charisma as well as his brutality. These traits are the main reason such a large, sprawling organization hasn't collapsed into a slurry of small, infighting factions.
But despite the grand persona Caesar has created for himself, he also has a less graceful side. If confronted with his past mistakes, or if he feels that he is not in complete control of a situation, Caesar will reveal his true nature as that of a prideful, megalomaniacal bully with a fragile ego and a hair-trigger temper, and act out in petulant denial and anger or childish spite.
Now in 2281, Caesar looms in his field base/headquarters at Fortification Hill, waiting to cross the Colorado River to avenge his humiliation at the First Battle of Hoover Dam and finally annex New Vegas as the capital he feels his empire truly deserves. Caesar is playing his cards more cautiously this time, and will not give the order for Lanius to attack the Dam until he can unearth the contents of the vault sealed beneath his base in the Mojave. Caesar also needs to neutralize House, attempt to forge an alliance with the Boomers, Great Khans and the White Glove Society, as well as destroy the Mojave Brotherhood of Steel, and attempt to assassinate President Kimball. Two factors have halted his progress: firstly, a debilitating brain tumor that prevents him from fully administering to the day-to-day operations of the Legion, and secondly, his interest in reports of a resourceful Courier whose ambiguous allegiance could either be a problem or, potentially, a boon to his efforts.
Early life[edit | edit source]
Born in 2226 near the Boneyard as Edward Sallow, he was once a citizen of the New California Republic. Following the death of his father at the hands of raiders in 2228, his mother sought the protection of the Followers of the Apocalypse. While she worked for the Followers, cooking and cleaning in their Library, the young Edward learned how to read and started taking courses, provided by the organization free of charge.[2] Taught to bring the torch of knowledge to the wastes, Sallow was a student of uneven quality. Though he was highly intelligent, his success in scientific pursuits was only proportional to his interest in the given subject, nor was he particularly popular among his peers, due to his bad temper and narcissistic attitude. For Sallow, the Followers were never an inspiring example, their devotion to scholarship too stifling, their mission of enlightenment too naïve.[3][4]
In 2246, the twenty year old Sallow was an anthropologist and linguist. To benefit from his talents, the Followers sent him east towards the Grand Canyon, on his first expedition. Accompanied by a physician named Bill Calhoun and seven others, he was tasked with learning the dialects of the tribes inhabiting the region.[5][4] On the way to the Canyon, he and his companions happened upon a cache of historical books, the most significant to Sallow were on ancient Rome; including The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Gaius Julius Caesar's own Commentarii de Bello Gallico. He studied the books rigorously for two weeks, already inspiring him to be more but not yet aware of their coming greater significance.[4] Prior to their arrival in the Grand Canyon, they met with Joshua Graham, a Mormon missionary and a tribal specialist from New Canaan. Already an accomplished scholar of dialects, Graham was supposed to teach Sallow about the local languages. But before that could take place, the Blackfoot tribe captured the three scholars for ransom.[6] While Sallow believed the tribe did this for ransom, Graham would later attribute the change in the tribe's relationship with the party to a mistranslation.
Rise to power[edit | edit source]
The tribe was a sorry sight, weak and insignificant.[6] Worse for the hostages, The Blackfoot were at war with seven other tribes; they were heavily outnumbered and Sallow recognized their defeat and subsequent demise was only a matter of time. Unwilling to sink with them, Sallow decided to take certain steps. Objections from fellow Follower Calhoun went unheard.[7] After witnessing their lack of knowledge firsthand, Sallow stepped in to teach the tribe how to properly maintain their firearms, how to properly shoot targets, and how to reload ammunition. The next step was teaching them how to manufacture explosives and drilling in small unit tactics. All based on books Caesar read as a young boy.[7] He quickly impressed them enough to the point where he was made their acting war chief. Once they were ready, Sallow led them against the Ridgers, their weakest enemy; divide et impera (divide and conquer). When the tribe refused to surrender, he ordered every man, woman, and child killed. No exceptions were made. The Blackfoot moved on under Caesar's lead, surrounding the Kaibabs tribe. Upon their refusal to surrender, Sallow took their envoy to the ruins of the Ridgers' village. The piles of corpses were a shocking sight to a tribesman who only knew tribal strife, "played at war" with the occasional raid, raping, and pillaging. This was total warfare at its most destructive and barbaric state. The concept of total warfare was an entirely new and terrifying type of conflict that the tribes had never encountered before. Such brutality would form the core of the Legion's tactics and philosophy.[8]
The Kaibabs promptly surrendered rather than suffer the same fate, then the Fredonians, then all the remaining tribes. Caesar was acutely aware that the root cause of all the problems was tribal identities, leading to internecine conflict and preventing any substantial recovery. He knew what had to be done. He had to erase all traces of tribal identities and replace them with a single, monolithic culture. A year later, in 2247,[9] when his confederation was large enough, Sallow crowned himself as Caesar, leader of the Great Tribe: the Legion.[10] He deliberately patterned it after the Roman Empire. One of the reasons was that this ancient, European culture was completely foreign, alien to the ignorant tribals he was subjugating. Caesar used the Commentarii as a blueprint―after all, which illiterate tribal would know that he was not the original Caesar, and his "Rome" was merely a copy of a civilization long gone. Second, he considered Rome's highly militarized autocracy adept at integrating conquered cultures the perfect template for a society that could adapt to the challenges of the post-apocalyptic world and thrive, institution prosperity and peace: a new Pax Romana.[11] The Legion would be a nationalist, imperialist, totalitarian, completely homogenous culture that would focus on long-term stability at all costs.[12]
He soon began putting his words into practice. Calhoun was sent away to the NCR as a messenger, and to warn them against interfering with Caesar's plans. While Calhoun was sent back to the Followers to inform them of what he was doing, the other seven members of the expedition were murdered on the self-proclaimed Emperor's orders. The newly-christened Caesar formed his Legion out of the tribes that had either been conquered or had chosen to capitulate to avoid total destruction. Joshua Graham would, however, ingrain himself in the Legion as Caesar's right-hand man and became the Legion's first Legatus, in time becoming known as the Malpais Legate.[10] In the decades that followed, the Legion secured holdings in both Utah and Colorado,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] while the entirety of Arizona and New Mexico were brought under its control. Tribes were forcibly assimilated into the Legion, while cities and their inhabitants lived on as subjects of the Legion.[21] Since 2250, Caesar has styled himself as the Son of Mars, divinely ordained to subjugate the world to his will, and five years later he established his first capital in the ruins of Flagstaff.[9][22] By 2274,[9] he had conquered most of the tribes of Arizona, Colorado up to Denver,[23] New Mexico and southeastern Utah, and became known as the "Conqueror of the 86 Tribes," whose Legion had never met any serious defeat until their confrontation with the NCR at the First Battle of Hoover Dam.
War with the NCR[edit | edit source]
The Republic has the dubious distinction of being recognized by Caesar as a worthy adversary and conflict with the NCR was inevitable. For Caesar, this was more than animosity or petty hatred. He sees himself as Caesar returning from his conquest of Gaul and the NCR as the corrupt Roman Senate. A textbook example of Hegelian dialectics, where the thesis and antithesis conflict, creating a synthesis when the conflict is resolved.[24] When the Legion conquers the NCR, it will be transformed from a republic crippled by bureaucracy, corruption, and gridlock into a highly efficient military dictatorship. The Legion will become a standing army protecting all the citizens of the new empire and the absolute power of its dictator.[25][26]
Of course, the New California Republic was not willing to roll over and surrender. Following a series of skirmishes and smaller battles (most notably the destruction of Fort Aradesh out east), the Legion forced a confrontation. In 2277, the Legion faced the NCR at Hoover Dam, in what became known as the First Battle of Hoover Dam. Discovered by Ulysses, a frumentarius, the Dam was a symbolic Rubicon. At the time, Caesar's 68[27] reformed tribes under the command of the Joshua Graham marched against the NCR garrison at Hoover Dam, in an attempt to take the strategic asset and river crossing. However, Graham's elite troops were drawn into a trap laid by Chief Hanlon of the New California Republic Rangers. As General Lee Oliver's soldiers held the line, Rangers and Army sharpshooters targeted their commanders (primarily centurions and decanii), sowing chaos among the common legionaries. The Legate, unable to adapt to new strategies in combat, ordered his elite forces to punch through and pursue Rangers decimating his officers, the Rangers and 1st Recon sharpshooters executed a tactical retreat into Boulder City. Elements of the Army and Rangers kept the Legion engaged long enough to allow the most experienced legionaries to enter the city. When they did, the Republic's forces pulled out of the city. Once most of them were safe (soldiers and rangers trapped behind Legion lines had to be abandoned), they triggered explosives packed into the buildings in advance.
Chief Hanlon's plan went off without a hitch. The exploding buildings acted as giant fragmentation bombs, killing and maiming most of the legionaries and leaving the rest in a state of shock; effectively crippling their offensive. The Army and Rangers followed the detonation with a counter-attack, pushing back and eventually routing the Legion forces and forcing the Malpais Legate to retreat from the cam back to the east of the Colorado River. Flanking attacks at Camp Golf and other camps in the Mojave were similarly repulsed.[28] The Malpais Legate returned to Caesar in shame. To demonstrate that failure is not tolerated, even at the highest of ranks, Caesar ordered Graham to be burned alive. The former Legate was covered in pitch, lit on fire, and thrown into the Grand Canyon. This was the worst defeat in Legion's history.[29]
Graham was replaced by Legate Lanius, who embarked on a campaign of expansion eastward to subjugate further tribes for the Legion and gather forces for another confrontation with the Republic.[30] Over the next four years, Caesar rebuilt his army with 14 newly assimilated tribes,[31] creating the finest possible blade with which to cleave through the Republic. The Legion's increasing power was accompanied by a noticeable decline in Caesar's health. Once healthy, his face became sunken and sickly, his nature more reclusive. But the worst were the headaches, increasing in strength and frequency, affecting his ability to lead. Although they remained silent, the decline was visible to his officers, but Caesar denied these problems, lashing out at any queries.[32][33][34] The first hints of what might have been the problem appeared only a couple months prior with infrequent headaches. The headaches recurred increasingly along with blanking out mid-conversation. The most recent symptom to occur is Caesar's left leg stiffening and being only able to drag it.[35] While Caesar is untrained to diagnose himself, he's figured that he's likely suffering from a brain tumor, but defers to a professional's opinion on the diagnosis.[36]
Philosophy[edit | edit source]
The bedrock of Caesar's philosophy is that service to the state is not just the highest virtue, it is the only virtue. Caesar is critical of NCR society as its leaders care not for the "greater good". This is contrary to Caesar's belief that "an individual has no value beyond his utility to the state, whether as an instrument of war, or production." He views the Great War of 2077 as a chance for humanity to start over and aims to unify humanity under one banner or eliminate them should they refuse. Reading through old world books, Caesar has gained knowledge of the old glory of Imperial Rome and has used the ignorance of his followers to claim that he is Caesar, the son of Mars, the God of War, and not Edward Sallow, former Follower of the Apocalypse.
Aside from total military defeat, Caesar's greatest fear is being exposed as a fraud. Most members of the Legion, excluding some of the most trusted ones, are oblivious to the fact that the Legion's culture is based on books about ancient Rome – they believe that all of the customs enforced by Caesar were dictated to him by Mars himself. Those who claim otherwise are viewed as ultimate blasphemes and are likely to be executed. While some of the newly captured slaves are skeptical, they don't tend to be vocal about it, and their children are taken away from their parents to be raised by Caesar's priestesses.[37] Secretly, Caesar still doesn't feel like a real Emperor of Rome – with his loose nation of savages, he still thinks of himself as merely a barbaric king of the Gauls.[37] Caesar desires two things: a Carthage, and a Rome; by seizing New Vegas, Caesar felt that he would finally be able to elevate his Legion into a legitimate nation by giving it its own "Rome" by destroying the NCR, Caesar's "Carthage" – transforming them from a nomadic army into a true empire; a militaristic, imperialist, autocratic, culturally homogeneous empire whose ruler holds undisputed power - a "Pax Romana" which would prevent humanity from ever fracturing itself again.[38]
Caesar regards the NCR as only an extension of the corruption that existed during the Old World and that it is ultimately doomed to repeat the same mistakes. He sees in it similar attributes associated with the Roman Republic before Julius Caesar seized power; extensive bureaucracy, corruption, senatorial infighting and filled with a people driven solely by greed and personal gain. It exists as the antithesis to the Legion and as a catalyst for change that only a confrontation with it can bring; a clash he sees as an inevitable product of Hegelian dialectics.[39] The conflict is a vital one, not only for the future of his Legion strategically but also philosophically; the NCR is the first of his enemies to which he is truly ideologically opposed and the first that can truly test the strength of his Legion, as well as his philosophy.
In his view, the NCR does not have a long-term solution to the problems of the Wasteland - the bombs had reset humanity's progress and he believed the time had come to rebuild it into something new.[39] He argues that NCR is weakened by its democracy, and that it was at its strongest when under the dominating rule of its second president – Tandi – whose popularity was such she remained leader of the NCR for most of her life until her death as the senate would never dare oppose her. He was taught to venerate her as a child and observes that she was ultimately more of a queen than an elected official and that it is similar centralized power that a new civilization needs.[40] In the eyes of Caesar, the NCR that came after Tandi's presidency has been blighted with greed and widespread corruption because of the oligarchical control of politicians and brahmin barons looking out for only their interests instead of the greater good and its citizens. Caesar is simply quickening what is the inevitable, logical conclusion of the once virtuous NCR.[41]
Caesar also regards self-sacrifice as a necessary part of rebuilding civilization, as evidenced by the fact that he refuses the very notion of using the Securitrons hidden inside the bunker underneath his camp. Caesar rejects allowing his Legion to advance technologically, believing that life must be kept hard and filled with sacrifice in order to strengthen humanity.[42] He has similarly kept his people ignorant of mankind's former knowledge of medical science, allowing his Legion to get by on primitive healing powders while he himself keeps an Auto-Doc in his tent for both his personal use as well as a "gift" to anyone Caesar favors.[43] Similarly, drugs and alcohol are completely forbidden from being used by legionaries,[44] so most legionaries must make do with previously mentioned healing powder, bitter drink or concocting new remedies like Hydra, all with the caveat that the pain remains.
Interactions with the player character[edit | edit source]
Interactions overview[edit | edit source]
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This character starts quests. | |
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This character is involved in quests. |
Quests[edit | edit source]
- Render Unto Caesar: From here on out, the player character can choose to work for Caesar, and thus, the Legion.
- Et Tumor, Brute?: Caesar has a lethal brain tumor for which he desperately needs a cure.
- Arizona Killer: Caesar will order the Courier to assassinate President Kimball during his visit to Hoover Dam.
- Veni, Vidi, Vici: Caesar will order the Courier to report to Legate Lanius to begin the battle for Hoover Dam.
- The House Always Wins, Wild Card: You and What Army?: When the player character comes to The Fort, Caesar believes he has another pawn to use. He orders the Courier to go to the underground weather monitoring station and destroy the Securitron vault. When Mr. House or Yes Man contacts the Courier from within the bunker and tells the Courier to activate all the Securitrons, the player character can. The resultant shaking of the ground fools Caesar into thinking the player character destroyed whatever was in the vault.
- Return to Sender: If Caesar has been killed, the player character can complete the quest by convincing Chief Hanlon to stop his plot against the NCR, thus allowing both the rangers led by the chief and the troopers led by Lee Oliver to be praised for their victory in Hoover Dam (If the Courier joins the Republic), having Hanlon retire (if the Courier join Yes Man/House), or the remaining rangers being killed to the last by the Legion (if one joins the Legion).
- I Forgot to Remember to Forget: If Caesar is killed, two companion points are gained, which helps gain access to Craig Boone's personal quest.
Effects of player's actions[edit | edit source]
- If the player character has completed Restoring Hope or I Put a Spell on You (on the NCR side), Caesar will mention how they have been so much trouble for the Legion. This also happens by completing Birds of a Feather, killing Dead Sea (can be done with or without completing Restoring Hope), breaking the alliance with the Khans in Oh My Papa, brokering peace between the Kings and the NCR as part of Kings' Gambit, completing How Little We Know in Cachino's favor, completing the quest Eye for an Eye, or killing Vulpes Inculta.
- If none of the above actions have been taken, Caesar will offer compliments if the player character has completed quests or certain tasks detrimental to the NCR, or completed quests for the Legion before meeting Caesar such as completing Cold, Cold Heart, unlocking Archimedes II for themselves in That Lucky Old Sun, killing or releasing Silus in Silus Treatment, and completing We Are Legion.
- If any crimes against the Legion are committed after meeting Caesar for the first time such as killing Dead Sea at Nelson, completing I Put a Spell on You in the NCR's favor, breaking the alliance with the Khans, or completing How Little We Know in Cachino's favor. Caesar will mention the crime in question and ask if they have committed any other crimes. He will then forgive the Courier this one time and warn that if other crimes are committed he will have them killed. If another crime is committed after Caesar warned them, he will mention this and then order his praetorians to slaughter them.
- Telling Caesar they are done working for him will result in him warning that if they ever disobey him again he will order his praetorians to hack them to death for his entertainment. True to his word, he will turn hostile and send his praetorians to attack if the player character refuses to work for him a second time.
- If the quest Arizona Killer was failed and Caesar asks why they did not attack President Kimball, the Courier responding that they changed their mind will yield the same responses.
Other interactions[edit | edit source]
- After the Courier notices Caesar's headache, his ailment can be inquired about if the Courier has a Medicine skill of 40. They can talk to him and ask how long he has been limping for. If successful, he will mention that he has been suffering from it for two weeks, after which he will lie down and warn them not to disturb him again or he will have them killed.
- Failing the check will result in him telling the Courier to "fuck off."
- Ignoring his warning and attempting to speak to him again will result in Caesar becoming furious and calling on his praetorians to attack.
- Caesar is one of the characters that the player character must eat in order to earn the Meat of Champions perk.
Killing Caesar[edit | edit source]
If the player character manages to kill Caesar, the effects on the game are fairly minor, (although the Legion ending is largely changed), due to the fact that Caesar, as the leader of the Legion, no longer directly participates in the events.
- If the Courier speaks to Caesar before attacking him, they can say "Death to tyrants!" This is a common mistranslation of the Latin phrase "Sic semper tyrannis." The actual translation of this phrase is "Thus always to tyrants." This is believed to have been uttered by the assassins of the real Julius Caesar. The latter is also the name of a challenge to assassinate the NCR's president.
- If the Courier has the Terrifying Presence perk and a negative reputation with the Legion prior to meeting Caesar, he will ask what they were thinking when first meeting him, and the option to tell him "That I'd decorate this tent with your guts." can be used to frighten him before attacking.
- If Caesar dies for any reason other than his illness or using the autodoc to dissect his brain then passing a speech check in Et Tumor, Brute?, Legion reputation will automatically change to Vilified, even if the player character didn't kill him.
- Julie Farkas exclaims "So, the great Caesar is dead ..." and goes on saying that she doubts that it will have much effect on the imminent attack.
- If the player character talks to Mr. House about killing Caesar before he dies, Mr. House will reply that "[He] does not want you to touch one hair on that man's head, assuming you can find one." He says that Caesar provides a good distraction for the NCR.
- If the player character kills Caesar while working with Mr. House on the "The House Always Wins" quests, they can return to Mr. House and tell him that Caesar is dead. Mr. House simply notes that this has a "minimal" impact on the battle for Hoover Dam and offers no reward or punishment for the action.[45]
- If the player character kills Caesar, Mr. New Vegas will say "it is still unknown how the assassin managed to evade security," even if they killed Caesar in a frontal assault on The Fort (i.e., didn't evade security).
- If Caesar is killed with Boone as a companion, Boone will smugly say "Thumbs down, you son of a bitch!" - a reference to the gesture that is commonly thought to have called for the execution of a failed gladiator in ancient Rome, despite the thumb inside the fist meaning "mercy" or "weapons down." He will subsequently have further dialogue options when selecting the "Talk" option. He will also talk about the death of Caesar having little effect on the attack on Hoover Dam, but admits, on prompting from the Courier, that he still enjoyed it immensely. They will also gain two points to use toward Boone's quest I Forgot to Remember to Forget.
- If the player character speaks to Lily, she will remark that Leo thinks there will be more people to chop up and that the player character should be careful.
- There is a dialogue with the Legate at the end of the game, stating "So, Caesar giving orders from beyond the grave?" - an indication that Mr. House is right and Caesar's death was no more than a minimal setback. However, House will also note that Lanius is a poor leader compared to Caesar, and predicts that within a year of his death the Legion will be torn apart by infighting.
- Caleb McCaffery greets the Courier with "All hail the slayer of Caesar!"
- Most NCR troopers will say, "Wish I could have been there to see Caesar die. What an asshole."
- Chairmen at The Tops will state "That's the guy/gal who killed Caesar!"
- Francine Garret states "here's one on the house for taking down Caesar, serves him right for treating women like livestock," and gives you a free bottle of liquor.
- James Garret will also give you a free bottle of liquor, like his sister.
- Some travelers on the Strip will comment, "Now that you've killed that Caesar bastard, the Strip's really going to bloom."
- White Gloves in the Ultra-Luxe will comment, "I hear you killed Caesar, is it true, that he wore a toupee?"
- Sergeant McCredie at Camp Golf will complement the Courier on a great job, and Mags will say "I hear Caesar's dead, and we have you to thank for it... nice work."
- While near the end of Return to Sender, the player character can convince Chief Hanlon to come back to his senses and cease falsifying the reports by reporting Caesar's death to him.
- In Honest Hearts the player character is able to tell Joshua Graham that they saw Caesar die. He will not react much to the news but he will admit that he thought he would die before Caesar. He also remarks that Caesar's death is good news for the Mojave, and states that without Caesar's leadership the Legion will eventually fall apart. However, the Courier cannot do the reverse, as killing Caesar's former righthand man (or even leaving him alive) brings no dialogue options with him.
- If the player character speaks to Ulysses after the end of Lonesome Road they can tell him that they have killed Caesar. He isn't angry despite his former allegiance to the Legion and states that the east may fall apart in time but that it's too soon to tell; he goes on to say that unless they do the same to Lanius, they'll get no thanks from him.
Inventory[edit | edit source]
| Apparel | Weapon | Other items | On death |
|---|---|---|---|
| Caesar's armor | Displacer glove | Platinum chip (If Benny survives the confrontation at The Tops) |
Legion ear |
Notes[edit | edit source]
- Members of the Legion pronounce Caesar's name /ˈkaizar/, a post-classical Latin pronunciation, emphasizing the diphthong. Legionaries who knew him early in the Legion's history, as well as most other wastelanders, pronounce it as the Anglicized /ˈsiːzər/.
- Barring his occasional use of Latin and references to accompanying academic concepts and subjects, he speaks in a casual, "modern-day" dialect.
- Caesar holds some level of respect for Aaron Kimball, calling him "a man of potential." He believes that Kimball would have been more powerful and had more control over the NCR if he had seized power, instead of being elected.
- If the player character pickpockets Caesar while detected, he will automatically turn hostile and his inventory doesn't open.
- If Caesar dies, his body will never disappear.
- Punching or shooting Caesar's body after he dies will turn the Legion hostile.
- If Caesar turns hostile, he appears to not have an "attacking expression," and will attack with an expression on his face as if he wasn't angry.
 | The following is based on Fallout: New Vegas cut content and has not been confirmed by canon sources. |
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- In Honest Hearts, there remains an unused model, although possibly used for Honest Hearts intro slides, of Caesar named NVDLC02CaesarYounger. The only difference between the model used in Fallout: New Vegas and this model is that the unused model has a comb-over.
| End of information based on Fallout: New Vegas cut content. |
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Notable quotes[edit | edit source]
- "We have cities of our own, but nothing compared to Vegas. Finally, my Legion will have its Rome."
- "Oh yes, raised in that tradition. And the teaching stuck. I was taught it was my responsibility to bring the torch of knowledge to the wastes."
- "As an anthropologist and linguist, my assignment was to learn the dialects of the Grand Canyon tribes. What a fucking waste of time!"
- "I showed them total warfare. Like I said, there's a lot you can learn from old books."
- "Good. In hoc signo taurus vinces. (In the sign of the bull, you will conquer.) Report to Legatus Lanius immediately - he'll brief you on the plan of battle. Come back victorious, or don't come back."
- "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."
- "My conquest of the Mojave will be a glorious triumph, marking the transition of the Legion from a basically nomadic tribe to a genuine empire. Just as my namesake campaigned in Gaul before he crossed the Rubicon, so have I campaigned, and will cross the Colorado."
- "I've heard it's a bad idea to tempt the wrath of Caesar."
Appearances[edit | edit source]
Caesar appears only in Fallout: New Vegas but is mentioned in the add-ons Honest Hearts, Old World Blues,[46] and Lonesome Road. He was going to appear in Van Buren, the canceled Fallout 3 by Black Isle Studios.
Behind the scenes[edit | edit source]
- John Gonzalez wrote Caesar and Joshua Sawyer asked for Caesar to present his rationale in the framework of his interpretation of Hegelian dialectics.[47]
- Caesar possesses a number of parallels to his historical counterpart. For example, the historical Caesar actually suffered from a condition similar to the one depicted in-game. He had headaches, blackouts, and sometimes even seizures. In terms of appearance, Caesar is balding and has an Aquiline nose, a sign of nobility in ancient Rome. One thing of note is that Caesar is 55 years old in 2281, and the historical Julius Caesar was assassinated at the age of 56 on March 15, 44 B.C.
- Metzger, the leader of the slavers guild from the Den, was initially named Caesar.
- Caesar claims to be the Son of Mars and his claimed ancestor, Romulus, C. Julius Caesar claimed to be a descendant of the god Mars as well.
- In a quote, Caesar refers to the Rubicon River, which the real Julius Caesar actually crossed in 49 B.C., triggering the Roman civil wars. Roman armies were forbidden from crossing it (and, as such, entering Rome itself) except for few exceptions. Therefore, having his armies cross the river was the same as a declaration of war and as such an irreversible decision, a point of no return. This reference, in combination with Caesar's plan of making Vegas the true capital of his empire, parallels the historical Caesar.
- Though Caesar claims he is following the example of the Roman Empire in creating a homogeneous culture through conquest, this demonstrates he is not quite as educated on the Empire as he believes: the real Empire achieved control over many areas by requiring the populace to submit to Roman rule but honoring local customs and allowing local leaders to continue their rule as long as they took orders. Caesar's Legion is considerably more controlling than the actual Empire was, requiring much more brutal force than Rome usually exerted over its territories.[48] This is especially true seeing as historians considered this period to be that of the Roman Republic and not yet the Roman Empire (while Romans at the time always called it a Republic), and despite Julius Caesar's often imperialistic and dictatorial actions that are seen as the catalyst for the creation of the Empire, there is still doubt over his true intentions for Roman society. The previous Roman tyrant before him was Sulla, who also similarly caused a civil war by marching on Rome: Sulla instituted many reforms, then resigned after about a year and retired, disbanding his legions and establishing government once again. Julius Caesar was very popular with the lower and middle classes of society and enacted many populist reforms (including extending citizenship rights and abolishing the tax system that relied on Roman intermediaries) all the way up to his assassination by elite members of the Senate.
- In Van Buren, there was supposed to be a character named Caesar who appeared in Denver. His real name was Terrence rather than Edward, and was a vexillarious rather than the founder/leader of the faction. He was described as being short, a "real hardass," and having a Napoleon Complex. He was also said to "beat women to show people he's tough."[49]
Developer quotes[edit | edit source]
Both are men of intelligence and education who traveled from a life of relative comfort, technological wizardry, and "civilization" into a wilderness full of warring people with relatively low education and a relatively "primitive" lifestyle. Both rose to power and were essentially deified for their intelligence, knowledge and leadership capabilities. Both cut off communication with the outside world and lived in their (until now) remote, savage kingdoms, using the most brutal means possible to deal with rare instances of dissent. Both have an "unusual" way of looking at the world due to their cultural isolation.
Unlike Mr. Kurtz, Caesar's reign continues for a long, long time.”— J.E. SawyerGallery[edit | edit source]
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References[edit | edit source]
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