Arizona and Shady Sands

[SirDanest]

I was just thinking how I bet New Vegas would have benefited from actually witnessing directly how society was fairing under both the NCR and the Legion.

It's important to note that Raul had some interesting things to say about the legion in Arizona that seemed to paint them as more than kill-bots who just burned down everything they conquered (Nipton, Searchlight, etc).

Shady Sands was steadily advancing and improving in previous fallouts, and other than some political corruption, it's probably still doing so. There's some lore info on some wikis that imply a significant population.

So it would be neat to compare Arizona (probably very disciplined and safe from raiders, but with no freedom) the NCR (civilized and most like pre-war US but without an organized plan for the future) and New Vegas, with House's master plan revive old world tech to go to the stars -- what he might see as a "benevolent dictatorship" in between the free but corrupt ncr and the cruel Legion.

If I try to rig up some of Arizona and Shady Sands for myself, ... I wonder what it should be like? I am bettering many people have already wondered what these places really looked like in the NV timeline.

[madmongo]

I'm working on a large mod that includes Shady Sands and Arizona (and a few other areas) so I've put a fair amount of thought into this.

 

In Arizona, women are treated like slaves and men are forced into military service to keep feeding Caesar's ever-expanding army. Caesar has clearly borrowed a lot from the old Romans, so he does things in a somewhat similar manner. New areas are conquered, but then settlements are improved with stronger fortifications, better food and water, etc. Raiders and other threats are driven away. It sucks to be a woman, but for a man it isn't so bad. Men have the forced military service, but on the plus side, men do get paid for that service. And now there's no struggle to find a wife. Just save up your Legion coins and buy yourself a pretty woman. She can't say no! She has to cook and clean and take care of your every desire, and if she fails in her wifely (slave) duties, you can have her crucified and then buy yourself a new wife/slave. She will even raise your kids for you. For men, it's a life of luxury, much better than the way things were before Caesar. For women, not so much.

 

I don't think the NCR is doing quite as well as you think it is.

 

The NCR is also ever-expanding. For a while things were great, but "Kimball's War" is really starting to take its toll. Young men and women are sent off to fight Caesar, which many people in the NCR think is a worthless war in a far-away land and isn't worth losing their sons and daughters over. Taxes are harsh, since Kimball needs high taxes to pay for his continued military efforts (you'll note the down side of having Primm protected by the NCR is that everyone complains about all the new high taxes). The NCR has in many ways over-extended itself. It's run into a massive roadblock on its eastward expansion with the Legion, and expanding into the Reno area hasn't been successful yet, and as much as the NCR wants to take over New Reno and needs their resources, they are too bogged down with the Legion to devote enough resources to it. So on the northeast side of the NCR, they have New Reno and all of the raiders like the 80s and the White Legs to deal with. Inside California there are the Shi (which Fallout 4 indicates are still around) and other groups that haven't been totally conquered yet, so the NCR has to devote resources into maintaining control over what they have. All of this is straining the NCR to its limits, and there is a lot of unrest in the NCR as a result of it all. Kimball was a great war hero, so some folks are reluctant to talk bad about him. But overall people are getting very weary from his high taxes and his focus on the Mojave. The NCR only has so many soldiers, and with Kimball focusing his efforts on the Legion, other parts of the NCR are left without adequate protection. Raiders in the north are growing worse, and the NCR citizens in those areas feel unprotected and abandoned by Kimball, and yet they still have to pay high taxes and send their sons and daughters off to some far away war.

 

The NCR may pride itself on its freedom, but the reality of it is that it isn't as "free" as it likes to think it is. On the plus side, if you're a woman, or a guy who thinks women should be treated as people and not property, the NCR is definitely the better of the two.

[SirDanest]

we're ultimately guessing as to what Shady Sands looks like today. even if the taxes are harsh, so are they in some real life countries -- so it might be terrible, or it might not be. Either interpenetration is probably potentially valid without exact lore representations.
In any case, they might have cities with high populations, that don't look like they're made out of trash or blasted pre-war ruins. Vault city and Shady Sands could both look rather different from the ruins of D.C. or Goodsprings or Megaton. It might lack the flash and lights of New Vegas, but then, New Vegas is special in its own way.
Maybe they even sweep the garbage off the floor, something they don't seem to do in much of the fallout universe.
It's somewhat hard to believe that Caesar found _that_ many sociopaths to work for him. Admittedly, dictators have always had their fair share of people willing to work for them, but as far as I can tell right now, pretty much every legion man is identically obsessed with profligates. Even with brainwashing propaganda, I bet there's people who don't like Caesar, be they rebels or people just wisely keeping their heads down.
I can imagine some strong willed-women who made a run for it and are running some kind of (possibly quite futile) resistance somewhere out in the remote regions. There's probably a story there. Maybe even a vault that Caesar couldn't blast open. _Anything_ other than endless hivemind kill-bots from horizon to horizon.

Regardless I'm glad to see someone is working on both areas. I really did want to see both areas.

Edited March 3, 2018 by SirDanest

[SirDanest]

On another note, I think Vault city and Shady Sands are interesting because they're not built among the ruins of a pre-war town, nor were they glorified scrap-and-garbage shanty towns like Megaton or much of Diamond City. Rather they're examples of "geck-created" towns, with Shady Sands being the biggest city in the NCR; that's probably impressive, harsh taxes or not.