“These new inhabitants... not natives... most of them. Came with duty, purpose... ready to kill each other. The Divide was stronger. Left marks on them, too. Not Bear, not Bull - now... radiation's marked them, made them equal in history's eyes.”— Ulysses
Prior to the First Battle of Hoover Dam in 2277, Legion scouts discovered the existence of an NCR supply route going through a small community called "the Divide." With the supply route at the Divide and Interstate 15 connecting the forces of the Mojave Campaign and Hoover Dam to the Core Lands of New California, the route became a priority target for the Legion once they destroyed the trade routes connected to New Canaan in Utah.[2]Caesar sent in his best men to destroy the supply line in an attempt to deal a blow to the NCR's logistics, causing NCR forces to reinforce the trade route in response including Rangers and other forces.[3]
In the end, the battle was a pyrrhic victory for the Legion, as the Divide went up in flames after the activation of a package sent to the area after its recovery from Navarro, brought there by a courier. Unbeknownst to everyone, the package contained a device that, upon coming in range of the Divide, "spoke" by transmitting launch codes to the array of pre-War military nuclear missiles, causing them to launch and detonate against the sealed walls of their siloes. The resulting explosions shattered and cracked the earth surrounding the area, recreating the Divide as an inhospitable and hellish landmark in the wasteland.[4]
The most overt side effect of this was the creation of a veil of perpetual storms (bolstered by long-ago weather-control experiments conducted by Big MT researchers[5][6]), kicking up winds so strong it tore skin from muscle in moments. This was the fate of the surviving NCR and Legion forces in the Divide; exposed to the fierce winds, they are flayed of their skin perpetually while bathing in the intense radiation from the detonated warheads. In the end, those who survived only did so through a severe form of ghoulification, appearing as walking corpses trapped in a state of seemingly endless suffering as their skin is torn off regularly in excruciating pain as the rads heal them, their minds boiling with hatred of the Divide.[7][8] Rumors of the marked men and their ability to survive in the hellish place they call home spread throughout the West Coast in subsequent years, achieving a degree of mythical reverence much like the Sierra Madre, the Burned Man, and the Big Empty.[9]
Characteristics[]
Society[]
Years of suffering in the boundaries of the Divide have both literally and figuratively stripped the marked men down to their basic instincts. They show no other emotion than a desire to lash out in violence and hatred at the world, with their fellow survivors as the sole exception.[7][10] Though they sometimes attack and kill one another, seemingly and solely as a form of sport, the shared circumstances that turned them into what they are now served as a silver lining of sorts in that it eradicated all former animosity between them as soldiers of the NCR and Legion.[11][12]
In adapting to their ghoulish condition and the environment they inhabit, marked men are seen making camps near the remaining silos and instances of loose warheads scattered around the Divide, deliberately weaponizing their ghoulification to benefit from the healing effects of radiation when encountering strong enemies.[8]
According to outside observers, those among the marked men who once followed Caesar have taken to using scrap and junk from the Divide to cobble together varied, crude versions of the blade and helmet used by Legate Lanius, presumed to be an attempt by the former legionnaires to anchor their identities and hold onto old memories of their past.[13] The former NCR soldiers, on the other hand, stuck to their skills with guns and explosives; even as ghouls, it stands that they cannot forget the lessons instilled in them by their military training.[14]
In both cases, the marked men continue to use the remains of the armor they were wearing on the day of the Divide's destruction.[15] With the wear and tear of time passing, they have resorted to patching and crudely repairing their armor with scrap from the Divide such as old roadsigns, vehicle license plates, etc.[16]
Biology[]
Marked men are a unique variant of ghoul, noted as being capable of surviving in an irradiated environment that supposedly would be dangerous even to regular ghouls. The most outstanding characteristic of a marked man is their blood-red complexion, of which is actually their exposed muscle tissue; while ghoulification made their flesh weak and fragile, it is the storms of the Divide that strip their skin off, leaving behind only the raw muscle and exposed skeletal joints underneath. Speculation by outside observers supposes that the intense radiation of their home, the Divide, provides them with an enhanced regenerative ability stronger than typical ghouls, explaining why they prefer to congregate in irradiated areas and remain proximate to loose nuclear warheads where found.[8]
Gameplay attributes[]
All marked men level with the player character, possessing a large HP pool compared to other humanoid enemies, and benefit from the moderate protection provided by their unique suits of armor (albeit far less compared to properly maintained regular versions of their armor found in the Mojave Wasteland). In terms of HP and DT, the weakest version of a marked man is on-par with high-level versions of the White Legs tribals encountered in Zion Canyon and lobotomites encountered in Big MT in the Honest Hearts and Old World Blues add-ons respectively.
Due to leveling with the player character, marked men are capable of carrying a variety of powerful melee and ranged weapons, and at higher levels (above level 40) have the unique attribute of being the only faction that almost universally uses non-standard ammunition for their weapons (i.e. shotgun slugs and armor-piercing rounds), increasing their combat proficiency against well-protected targets. Additionally, many marked men make simultaneous use of both firearms and grenades. At times, they can be found using Stealth Boys as well, making them harder to detect.
When near sources of radiation, i.e. warheads, marked men will regenerate lost HP rapidly the closer they are to said source. However, encounters with marked men during the Lonesome Road add-in tend to be few in numbers, and it is rare to find more than a dozen in any particular location, though as noted above, their high-end weaponry will mean a high-level Courier will still face a challenge.
Most of them are found wearing ruined NCR trooper armor (now known as the marked trooper armor), while some of them may be wearing Legion armor (called the marked scout armor).
Irradiated heavy troopers are the ghoulified remnants of NCR heavy troopers stationed at the Long 15 outpost. After the Courier launched the nuclear missiles from the Divide at the outpost, the radiation left behind turned them into ghouls, leaving them hostile to all others. They look like regular NCR heavy troopers with the added ability of regenerating health while irradiated.
The marked men that appear in the launch chamber of the Temple during The Courier will explode after being killed.
Despite being former members of the NCR military, marked men wearing ruined NCR armor will not drop dogtags when killed.
Despite it being noted that the marked men of the Divide's flayed appearance as ghouls was exclusively due to the strong winds peeling their skin off coupled with the intense radiation, if one targets Dry Wells and/or the Long 15 during the Lonesome Road main quest The Apocalypse, the irradiated inhabitants found there will appear similar to the marked men.
An early version of Colonel Royez with the Editor ID NVDLC04NukeNCRColonel exists within the game files of Lonesome Road. Unlike the final release version of Royez, this version is named "irradiated heavy trooper", sharing several features with the standard irradiated heavy trooper, except using the same SPECIAL statistics for NCR troopers - 5 for all statistics and equipped with a Minigun loaded with 5mm AP rounds, rather than using different weapons found in the standard version.
↑The Courier: "[NCR] Those bodies in the silo were NCR soldiers... some special forces." Ulysses: "Might have been. Once. To the Divide they came... in the Divide, they rest." The Courier: "[Legion] The dead in the silo, some were Legion Frumentarii, scouts. Assassins." Ulysses: "Might have been. Once. To the Divide they came... in the Divide, they rest." (Ulysses' dialogue)
↑The Courier: "On the High Road, you mentioned NCR and Legion fought here... before and after the Divide?" Ulysses: "The two-headed Bear made its claim, dug its claws into the trail you made. For once, it seemed like it might succeed - cut a route to the Mojave. Couldn't let NCR stay in the Divide. Trade route, road the military could use... can't have two roads into the Mojave. Not after the work we'd done to cut off New Canaan, other routes, killing caravans... all we'd done to make the West bleed." (Ulysses' dialogue)
↑The Courier: "[NCR] NCR would have needed this supply line open to reinforce the Mojave - and Hoover Dam." Ulysses: "The Dam. That Old World Wall. The Bear, NCR, couldn't be allowed to reach it easily. Long 15... Canaan... both bad enough. Kimball, Caesar, House... you'd think their whole world was that wall, cutting the Colorado.If I'd never laid eyes on it, never spoke of it... ...but once found, it was all Caesar could see. That, and the flag beyond it, another symbol, big enough to challenge him. And the Divide, one of the roads to it - Legion was tasked with cutting that artery. If you can't kill the Bear in one stroke, bleed it, starve it. That kind of murder... it's what any of the Legion would have done. Now... the Divide belongs to history." (Ulysses' dialogue) The Courier: "[Legion] The Legion would want to cut this road off if it had been a supply line to Hoover Dam." Ulysses: "The Dam. That Old World Wall. The Bear, NCR, couldn't be allowed to reach it easily. Long 15... Canaan... both bad enough. Kimball, Caesar, House... you'd think their whole world was that wall, cutting the Colorado.If I'd never laid eyes on it, never spoke of it... ...but once found, it was all Caesar could see. That, and the flag beyond it, another symbol, big enough to challenge him. And the Divide, one of the roads to it - Legion was tasked with cutting that artery. If you can't kill the Bear in one stroke, bleed it, starve it. That kind of murder... it's what any of the Legion would have done. Now... the Divide belongs to history." (Ulysses' dialogue)
↑The Courier: "What's at the Divide?" Joshua Graham: "I don't know for certain, and I don't think NCR knows, either. Whatever happened at the Divide was too much for them to handle. Our frumentarii told us what they saw. Only fools and madmen would march into a place like that. All roads wind down to the same spot, the grave. They said all that's left there is a gaping wound cut into the Earth, cursed and damned. No place for God-fearing folk." (Joshua Graham's dialogue)
↑Y-0 research center terminal entries; terminal, Dispenser Funding Update: "Got the funding from Sinclair. Near as I can tell, he's willing to not only bankrupt himself for these devices, he's struck a deal with the Big MT executives, letting the Villa become a lab for the supposedly-harmless prototype tech here. I've seen the Big MT execs do this with other isolated towns (Hopeville Meteorological research up north), and the whole process, it's not what I signed up for."
↑ 7.07.1The Courier: "I've never seen corpses mutilated like that." Ulysses: "Even as the fires here burned them from within... the winds of the Divide tore their skin, exposed them... screaming... to the sky. And just as the Divide tears at them, so they tear at each other, for sport - like some tribal scarification. Falling back to their history, maybe.No matter what they suffer...the radiation, fire of the Divide, sustains them. Makes them stronger." (Ulysses' dialogue)
↑ 8.08.18.2The Courier: "[Survival 35] Radiation may keep them alive in areas so physically punishing, it would kill others - even ghouls." The Courier: "[Medicine 35] If they've become ghouls, the radiation would strengthen them. Heal their wounds - not the scars." Ulysses: "[SUCCEEDED] There's truth in your words, in what I've seen of their tactics, movements - recovery. Those wounds - they couldn't live otherwise. The Divide winds have torn the skin from many of them - may be the radiation is the only thing keeping them walking. Make camp near silos... warheads. No way to cleanse the radiation - makes them hard to kill there, have to draw them out." (Ulysses' dialogue)
↑Dead Money loading screens: "The Sierra Madre is a legend, like the Big Empty, the Burned Man, and the rumors of survivors from the Divide."
↑The Courier: "The rads in this place seem like they would do more damage to them." Ulysses: [FAILED] "They're more beasts than men now. They clutch at their pain as they clutch at their weapons... anchors them." (Ulysses' dialogue)
↑The Courier: "Some of the flayed Hopeville soldiers looked like NCR... but fought beside others in Legion armor." Ulysses: "Pain makes for strange allies... the hate the Bear and Bull shared across the battlefield, now turned against the Divide. Few survived... intact. Many NCR were already here when the destruction happened. Keeping the route East open, in fear of Caesar. Fear of the Legion." (Ulysses' dialogue)
↑The Courier: "Inhabitants? It doesn't look like anyone's alive down there." Ulysses: "These new inhabitants... not natives... most of them. Came with duty, purpose... ready to kill each other. The Divide was stronger.Left marks on them, too. Not Bear, not Bull - now... radiation's marked them, made them equal in history's eyes. As vicious as the storms are, these shadows of Legion, of NCR - silhouettes of things to come." (Ulysses' dialogue)
↑The Courier: "Those Marked Men in Hopeville - some had strange masks and blades I'd never seen before." Ulysses: "They bear false versions of Legate Lanius' mask, the one Caesar fashioned for him. Thought it was an insult at first.... know better now. It's shaped from Divide metal, not with care and strength, but with hate. Keeps them anchored. Crude, effective - like the blades they carry, distant mirrors of their Legate. A symbol they can hold on to - while the Divide tears at them." (Ulysses' dialogue)
↑The Courier: "Other Marked Men had NCR gear - and they weren't carrying masks or blades." Ulysses: "For the two-headed Bear... NCR... they don't have symbols in the same way Legion does. They revere their mines and explosives, guns... that is their religion - death from afar, take pride in it." (Ulysses' dialogue)
↑The Courier: "[NCR] Those soldiers in Hopeville... were once NCR, I'm sure of it. Why were they with the Legion?" Ulysses: "You see true. Not scavengers... it's what they wore before this all happened." (Ulysses' dialogue)
Marked men who carry Plasma Defenders are given the incorrect ammunition, microfusion cell, over charge rather than the correct energy cell, over charge. This renders them unable to use the weapon entirely.[verified]
