Authors Note; Before anyone starts thinking I'm some sort of Confederate lover (The American civil war era confederates I mean) I would like to point out several things. 1. A confederacy is a legitimate form of government and is only thought to be directly associated with slavery because of its connotation with the civil war; 2. The United States was a confederacy until 1789, it used the document known as the Articles of Confederation to govern the states as a series of more or less independent countries (they didn't even have the same currency); 3. The Confederacy of New Vegas is only called a confederacy. There shall be an explanation in the chapter, I just don't want people jumping to conclusions that I'm some sort of slave mongerer or something.
Also, most of this chapter is going to be very boring to people who don't care about the government of the CNV, or what the Confederacy itself consists of in terms of what factions and towns are in it (suffice it to say, the entire in game map except for the Mojave Outpost, as well as a few more towns past the periphery of the map. I give the best description of their locations that I can, but If you really want to know where they are, look on Google Earth or pull out an old fashioned Atlas. I used an Atlas that still thought the U.S.S.R. was in existence, so its not too hard). I have never been to the region, so my descriptions will be more or less following the appearance of the game map, along with some additions that have sprung up since the Courier took over New Vegas. The towns and regions that have also been added to the country will essentially be described as best as I can from online pictures, so anyone who leaves in these towns or has been to them should just know that I am making it all up except for what little I can determine using the good old internet.
Reflections
Nicole began to search the bodies of the raiders she had just killed, discovering the usual nasty, half-rotten fingers and ears that were raiders usual trophies. She found several guns and other weapons and tossed most of them into her pack, taking care not to damage the ancient battle axe that one really big brute had been carrying. She had no idea where the maniac had found it, but she knew that it would be good to put into the museum she was putting together in her spare time. It was amazing how many important artifacts could be found by simply roaming the wasteland and searching through buildings. The whole project was mostly a side interest, but it provided her with an excuse to escape from her nursemaids at the Lucky 38.
She couldn't understand why it was so important for Arcade that she remain in Vegas itself all of the time. Yeah sure, centralized control of the rest of the nation and all that, but he and Yes Man could deal with all the usual problems as well as, if not better, than her. Why did crowning herself Queen of the Confederacy make her need to stay in the Lucky 38 to rot? She had been wandering the wastes ever since she was twelve years old! She had even made sure of a line of succession in the (unlikely) event of her death. Her companions had either returned to their homes or had become her ministers of various departments, and she had established a succession with Arcade and Veronica making them her Chief Executive Minister and Minister of Technology (which had become a very important position in the post-apocalyptic world) respectively. As Chief Minister, Arcade had numerous duties piled on top of him, mostly related to reconstruction and trade, as well as being Nicole's deputy and current heir. Veronica, who while currently on an extended diplomatic mission, was focused primarily on research, science, technology, and the establishment of a basic universal education system. At the moment, Arcade was also performing her duties until she could return. She wasn't expected to return for at least another eight months however, and he was beginning to feel the strain.
Raul had become Nicole's de-facto chief Mechanic (not exactly a cabinet position), and Cass had taken a pile of caps to start up a new, currently government owned caravan company. That company, the Mojave Trading Company (MTC) was to be government funded and sponsored until it could pay off the start up loans that Nicole had given it. Even when those loans were paid, Securitrons were to be provided to all caravans for free. She had also limited Yes Man's command structure to only respond to her and her four remaining human (ish in the case of Raul) companions. That prevented other people (if they could fight their way into the 38's Penthouse) from performing the easiest coup of all time and simply ordering all of the Securitrons to hunt her down.
Arcade would argue with her until his voice was hoarse, saying things like "That plan helps, sure, but it isn't the point. We need to do everything we can to help the people," or, "Why stay a wanderer? You can focus on establishing the independence of the Mojave here at home, safe from those blasted Deathclaws!" or, "Did you notice Freeside on your way through to the Strip? Still a ruin,". She had kept him in the Lucky 38 as her personal physician, Chief Minister, and sounding board for the changes she was working on making; but It was really irritating that he would constantly try to get her to fix everything NOW. You have to be slow and careful when establishing a new order on an anarchic land. People can only get used to so many changes at once, and any radical reordering of the world in which they lived in would cause anger at her new regime, and she could not afford resentment this early in the new nation.
Fortunately, she was the Mobs darling at the moment, as public safety and the standard of living had gone up exponentially since she had combined the might of her Securitron army with the Boomers and Brotherhood. With the Strip still providing her with a powerful economic base, and the Dam powering the Strip, she had everything she needed to begin forging a new powerful, technic, civilization.
Things needed fixing, she recognized that, and that had been one of the main reasons that she had killed House and kept the NCR from annexing the Mojave, or, God help her, actually let the Legion take over. House would have been an excellent leader, but there was no way she was going to kill the Mojave chapter of the Brotherhood, a group that had accepted her as family (eventually). The NCR might even have been effective at uniting the old American South West together, but only if the leadership could get their collective heads out of their collective butts long enough to determine that that smell they were smelling was not new vegetation growing without radiation.
If one thing was certain however, it was that the Legion was the worst way to go about establishing a new regime upon the ashes of the Old World. Despite Caesars constant mumblings about reading books and following the model of the ancient Roman Empire, he seemed to forget that the Roman Empire had been created by a genius of military and political strategy and had fallen because of incompetent rulers, or because the competent ones had stopped raising the pay grade of the Praetorian Guard. Which of course left the Guard to kill the current emperor and replace him with another that gave them more. He had no real long term plan in place, and the Legion could not held together for more than a decade or so after his death in any case.
So she had set out on creating her own new nation between the remnants of the Legion to the east and the retreating NCR to the west. In theory, the Confederation of New Vegas was actually a totalitarian dictatorship where she reserved all rights of law, civilian, and military power in the country. She could do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted, and however she wanted it to be done, it would be done. Problems would frequently arise in such a dictatorship, Nicole was a good enough student of History to know that, such as a buildup of resentment for being unable to make the country's decisions and the fact that few dictatorships work out as long term governments, such as the Legion itself. If a popular leader is in place for an extended period of time, and that leader has full authority of government, than it is unlikely a later leader would be able to maintain the popularity of the first. In order to circumvent these problems as much as she could, she made herself the Queen of New Vegas, and set the country up as a monarchy. While that didn't solve the problem, it at least kept the title in the family (whenever she got around to having a family. For the moment, she had made her remaining companions her chief ministers and political deputies). She even intended to move to a more representative form of government in the near future, when everything had settled down and she had reconstruction well on its way. She wasn't arrogant enough to believe that her solution was the best solution, and it remained to be seen if it would be a solution at all, but it was the best idea she had. The Great War had knocked the survivors back almost to the stone age, but left them with the technology and weaponry of an advanced, modern era, and needed a strong reigning arm to keep them from devolving even further.
Besides that there was also the fact that the theory of the written constitution (basically formed around the peace treaty with the NCR) of the CNV (Confederation of New Vegas) was rarely exercised.
In practice, the CNV was a confederation of more or less independent towns and settlements, given large amounts of caps to use as a budget to promote trade, industry, and construction. People could basically go on living as they had been for decades, with minimal interference from the all powerful central government. She had even allowed any towns that did not want to be a part of the confederacy to not join it if they so wished. She had strongly encouraged the various towns and factions throughout the Mojave to join, and very few people had had a problem with the new defenses that she provided each settlement, helping the towns focus on growth and reconstruction as well as the establishment of a basic industrial and educational core for the young country. The very sharp Sword of Damocles fashioned of thousands upon thousands of upgraded Securitrons had been a nice bit of encouragement to the few who had not wanted to join.
She had not been proud of the fact that she had strong-armed the new government upon its people, but it had been necessary to create something for the government to govern.
In any event, the towns of Primm, Goodsprings, Sloan, Jacobstown, Westside, Freeside, Boulder City (what was left of it), Novac, Nipton (what was left of it), Nelson (what was left of it), and Searchlight (again, what was left of it), all joined the CNV. The Boomers, Great Kahns, and the Mojave Chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel also joined the CNV. The Brotherhood had also sent messages to the other official Brotherhood organizations, most notably the original Chapter to the West, and the semi-exiled Brotherhood of D.C. that had recently fought the last remnants of the Enclave, to join in Alliance with the CNV for the preservation of humanity. The original Brotherhood at the Lost Hills Bunker was still debating the proposition, and the messenger to the east had not arrived in Capital Wasteland yet. Very little airpower remained to the CNV, and the Courier had been loathe to send one of her two vertibirds to the east to take the message faster. Instead, she had sent her semi-exiled Brotherhood Scribe, friend, (and occasional lover), Veronica, east with a platoon of Securitrons to show that she was serious about the new technology.
Aside from the home region of the Mojave that she had wandered during her travels that led to her establishment of the CNV, the towns of Echo Bay (on the north end of Lake Mead, about twenty kilometers east of Bitter Springs) and Bullhead City (about fifty kilometers southeast of Searchlight and on the east bank of the Colorado river near Davis Dam, which had not been totally destroyed during the Great War and provided another power source for the CNV) both requested to join the confederacy shortly after the second battle of Hoover Dam. The tribals of Zion, under the leadership of Joshua Graham, the former Malpais Legate of the Legion drew up an alliance with the confederacy almost as soon as they heard of the unexpected results of the NCR and Legion war. They remained a simple ally, mostly focused on agriculture and tribalism within the valley of Zion.
Beyond these places was the one secret place that had become part of the CNV. Big Mountain had become probably the single most important place in the entire confederacy. The only people in the entire confederacy who were aware of its existence were her companions or former companions. Although all of the members of the Think Tank were at least slightly insane, they were still geniuses, and they had been working on new technologies for centuries after the bombs stopped virtually all other technical advancement. The Think Tank provided numerous technologies to the Courier, including (after much persuasion, Doctor 0 (O or Zero) was particularly angry about this) a new Mark III OS for the Securitrons, which heavily upgraded the auto-repair capabilities of the Securitrons, as well as the accuracy, range and damage of all of its weapon systems. Another entire new version of Securitrons were even outfitted with a new twin Tesla Cannon main gun in exchange for their missile systems. The Courier had several ideas for the technologies of the Big Empty, including something that just might completely secure the Mojave once and for all.
Nicole grunted as she shoved one of the bodies over onto the pavement to get to another corpse below it and swiftly began to rummage through its pockets. She found little, just a single grenade and a few shotgun bullets, but tossed them into her bag anyway. Suddenly she heard a series of beeps and chirps coming from down the road she had come from. She glanced up unhurriedly and saw an almost disgruntled sounding eyebot come floating quickly up the road.
"Oh ED-E, you thought I forgot you didn't you?" she cooed to the robot. The machine let out another set of unintelligible beeps and slowly rotated next to its master, using its heavily upgraded scanners to determine if any threats were within a First Recon's sniper range. Determining that there wasn't even a molerat around, the robot let loose one last beep and settled into a guard position.
Several of her companions had frequently marked that her obsession with the eyebot was... unhealthy.
To say the least.
She didn't care. She knew that the robot had saved her life, as well as their lives, an almost uncountable number of times, and it had been with her ever since she had made it to Primm early on in her journey. She loved the robot. The one time she had said that when defending her relationship with it, Cass, who had been on another whiskey romp, had asked if she used the laser cannon mounted below the grill that passed for a face as a... special friend. That particular comment had earned a drunk Cass a flying boot to the head, much to the amusement of all present, including Cass after she had picked herself drunkenly off of the floor.
However, the Robot had handled itself extraordinarily well, and had been a major factor in conquering the Mojave. Its lasers had torn through many bodies; human, animal, and mutant alike.
"Come on ED-E, we still have a long walk to Novac ahead of us," she said to the eyebot which obediently beeped and moved to follow a few feet behind her again. She started walking along the road at a brisk pace on the road north to Novac, leaving the corpses of Nabrun and his gang for the vultures and other mutated monsters of the wastes.
Author's note; Once again, please feel free to tell me if their are any issues with the story so far. Just copy and paste the offending sentence or part of it into a review and tell me what is wrong with it and I will fix it as soon as I can.
