"Another enthralling piece from the Commonwealth's top reporter, Sentinel," Proctor Teagan remarked, handing Nora the latest issue of Public Occurances. This title was pretty on the nose: 'Tyrants of Steel.'
"Oh dear," Nora sighed, taking the paper along with the fixed power armor piece.
"She's going to cause problems, you know. We need to do something about this," Teagan warned.
"Yeah. Yeah, you're right," Nora began fastening the armor piece to her frame, "Piper's heart is in the right place. It's just been…Broken. It can't be as bad as the title suggests."
"You haven't read it," Teagan retorted.
"Then someone's been doing something wrong, and I intend to find out what Piper found. Piper wouldn't publish anything that wasn't verifiable."
"Maybe. What I don't get is why she goes after us. There are other targets in the Commonwealth that are actually worth going after, like the Gunners. I don't see why she has to make a stink about the Brotherhood, when all we've done is help the locals," he wiped his counter with a rag, finally getting a bit of grease stain that simply always been there.
"Because we took her sister," Nora informed him, "And she was all Piper had."
"What, was she a Synth?"
"Worse. She's a Squire. Lay off the scuttlebutt, Proctor, until I can get to the bottom of this, all right?" Nora requested, finishing the fastening of her armor piece.
"All right, if you say so, Sentinel," he conceded, "But if it doesn't happen soon, someone's going to do something stupid. God knows we could use some news to actually read that isn't talking about how we're child-abductors and murderers."
"I'll loan you a copy of Hot Rodder," Nora promised.
"Now that sounds like a good read."
Nora stepped out of Proctor Teagan's armory. The Prydwen was no longer above Boston Airport, and now the Brotherhood had further fortified the airport itself. Their numbers were far fewer than they had been during the Institute War as the main body of the Brotherhood had moved back to the Capital Wasteland, and were now spreading their teams thinner along the Steel Road, searching for new technologies in previously unexplored areas. It was rumored that the Prydwen was headed to Lower Imperia, the region between New York City and Albany, but that region was infested with Ghouls and Raiders, and was the toughest part of the Steel Road to traverse. Most caravaners didn't go through it at all, instead chartering ferries to go around the New York Flats. If Lower Imperia could be tamed, then more caravans would take the land route, with sea travel being expensive and a totally different kind of dangerous. Nora wanted to send the Minutemen into the area, but they had to focus on finishing off the Gunners before they could start expanding into other regions.
Still, the idea of the Brotherhood of Steel establishing themselves so close to New York City without anyone to meaningfully put a check on their power or their pride…
Nora entered the diner, and parked her Power Armor in the corner, alongside another Knight's suit. It was rude to eat at the diner in your Power Armor, and difficult to boot. She took the offered plate of Ragstag and a Nuka-Cola, which had been de-irradiated. It lost a certain bit of its kick, but it was still tasty. She flipped open the newspaper to the 'Tyrants of Steel' article, and read.
The Brotherhood. The Minutemen. The Neighborhood Watch. The Atom Cats. Diamond City Security. The Railroad. The Automatons.
We've come to rely on these groups to provide us with security and safety. Over the last three years we've seen them blossom from patrolling their own little corners of the Commonwealth to a network coordinating efforts to make this land a far easier place to live. Many of us are familiar with the basic cost of supporting groups like this: Taxes and labor. After all, nothing is inevitable but death and taxes. Some people risk the former to avoid the latter, but most would rather not take that chance.
Since the arrival of the Brotherhood of Steel, however, they have taken more than our caps in exchange for their 'help.' The Brotherhood of Steel has seized some of the greatest centers of technology and learning in the Commonwealth. Knowledge and technology that should be the right of all the people of the Commonwealth. With these, we could rebuild far more than what we have managed.
The arrival of the Brotherhood bolstered our fears of the Synth menace. They validated things we were already terrified of, and at the height of the War, it was useful. It kept some alive. Now, the Synths are free, free to be who they are, whoever they may have chosen to be. The distinction is no longer important, because no more Synths will be made. But that fear has not gone. Not of the Synths, not of anything, really. It hangs there, like a specter, emanating from no seeable source since the destruction of the Institute. Perhaps it will adopt a new face, or be adopted by a new threat, but the fear, it seems, is not created from something.
It was brought with someone.
It was brought with Elder Maxson.
We had every reason to fear the Institute, but it was a different kind of fear. It was the cold chill that you feel when you're being stalked by a pack of wild dogs. That feeling that you're not alone, that something is about to get you. The Brotherhood of Steel assuaged that fear, and replaced it with a different kind of fear. The Brotherhood is built upon the kind of fear that someone talks you into. The kind of fear that makes you vote to throw out your Ghoul neighbor, the kind of fear that makes you shoot a stranger because they dress in the kinds of suits they wear in Goodneighbor. The kind of fear that makes you drive out traders from your Vault.
It's the kind of fear that tyrannies are built upon. The Brotherhood saved us from that primal, very real fear, but they brought back the Red Panic from before the Great War. There's a tension in the Commonwealth, even now, three years after the destruction of the Institute. We no longer have an enemy to fight, but the old enemy of fear itself. And the Brotherhood knows this.
In the Capital Wasteland, there is a town called Little Lamplight. It's inhabited entirely by children, orphans from around the Wastes. In recent years, the Brotherhood of Steel has been baiting children out of their homes and coercing them to join as Squires. They paint the Raiders that once preyed on them from Paradise Falls as a reason for them to join.
Paradise Falls was cleansed of slavers over fifteen years ago. The market that bought slaves from them was destroyed a year after. Paradise Falls is now a community of farmers and scavengers.
Little Lamplight is now at its lowest population in over two hundred years of inhabitation by people under the age of sixteen. Thirty percent of inhabitants of Little Lampshade join the Brotherhood of Steel.
Earnest Wilkinson was once a Raider. He was a drug addict who failed to keep his job which supported his addiction. Nobody in his community reached out to him, and he took to mugging. The muggings turned into regular beatings and extortions, until he was picked up by a gang. For the first time in his life, he had connections with other people, who validated the way he lived his life. His gang was wiped out by a Minuteman patrol. I do not weep for the deaths of his friends, and neither should you.
But Earnest, he decided to do something with himself. He saw that the Minutemen had the same kind of camaraderie he had gained when he was a Raider, and decided to build something like that. Something that built bonds without destroying others. So he became a caravan driver. He salvaged what he could and bought himself a Brahmin. He went from Raider Camp to Raider Camp, convincing them to buy goods from him, convincing them to open their doors, safely, to other caravans. He wanted to build bonds between the Raider tribes and the rest of the commonwealth.
One day he happened into a Raider camp where their leader had a suit of custom-built Power Armor. The Brotherhood of Steel decided they wanted the suit, and cleansed the location with one of their signature kill-teams. Earnest hid during the fight. He watched the Brotherhood slaughter the camp that, just a few minutes before, he had been trading food to. He understood that. He didn't mourn them, and neither should you. But what he witnessed sent that very real cold fear through him. When the Raiders had been broken, the Brotherhood sent attack dogs into the forest to hunt down the ones that fled. What Raiders didn't escape or die in the ensuing hunt were dragged back with bloody, mangled limbs. The Brotherhood didn't bother tying them up. They just vaporized the entire gang. They took every scrap of technology they could, and set fire to the camp.
The Rule of the Raiders in the Commonwealth is that what weakens one gang strengthens another. Earnest went to that other gang, and went about his business. During his trading, he bought a plasma pistol in good condition. With this, he could defend himself more readily, or sell it for a nice, hefty profit, and maybe even expand his network. On his way out, a Brotherhood patrol saw his plasma pistol, and demanded he hand it over. He refused, and the Brotherhood took it from him by shooting his Brahmin and beating him into an inch of his life. He was rescued by another caravan.
Earnest later lost his leg as a result of the Brotherhood mugging. He rejected the offer of a highly advanced prosthetic, in favor a far more basic one, for fear of Brotherhood acquisition of the technology. He now struggles with pain, and has to use Med-X just to be functional. Earnest is not a saint. He has a lot to answer for in his life, and we will hold him to that. But maiming and mugging him is not the answer.
If Earnest's plight does not convince you, then perhaps that of the Atom Cats will. In the southern Commonwealth, the Atom Cats are a more common sight than the Brotherhood. They are easily identified by the distinctive flame pattern Power Armor suits they wear, just as advanced and well-kept as anything the Brotherhood of Steel has. They have, for years, helped protect and maintain nearby settlements with patrols and technical assistance. Not only do they fix purifiers and build turrets for small towns, they write poetry and draw art that makes the Commonwealth a much more beautiful place.
They teach children wordplay and give books that make it easier for the illiterate to learn their numbers and letters. Unlike Earnest, they are, compared to most everyone in the Commonwealth, actually saints. They have kept the Gunners at bay for years, and now have begun to push them back, all because it's the right thing to do. They have recently forged an agreement with the Minutemen to coordinate and teach.
The Brotherhood of Steel, however, is far less accommodating. Their leader, Zeke, has reported no less than fifteen different incidents between the Atom Cats and the Brotherhood of Steel, where the Brotherhood demanded that the Atom Cats hand over their suits, mods, and technology, or otherwise harassed or detained their members. Zeke mentioned that these do not include the verbal abuse they have suffered from members of the Brotherhood. On at least one occasion, an Atom Cat and a Brotherhood Scribe were injured in a firefight when a Scribe was caught inside the Atom Cats garage.
With the recent deal between the Minutemen and the Atom Cats, which directly recognizes the Atom Cats as having authority in the Minutemen as if they were Minutemen, this is actually a violation of the Castle Accord, the formal alliance between the Minutemen and the Brotherhood of Steel. The Atom Cats, who are used to operating with their methods, have not sent their complaints up the line to the Minutemen chain of command, preferring, instead, to handle the matter themselves, as they always have: With a smile and a laid-back attitude that lets bygones be bygones.
But how long until the Brotherhood goes too far with the Atom Cats? Who will get hurt? And how long is it going to be until they decide to take technology from someone who isn't an ex-raider, or someone in Power Armor?
How long are we going to be afraid?