The New Rome
We marched on for hours until evening became dawn. Mark was surprisingly quiet considering his personality during this time. The whole party only made camp once where I got to sleep for a couple hours before we marched on to the Legion outpost at Camp Verde. The run to Camp Verde took another few hours, so I managed to get a couple questions answered.
Mark remained unusually quiet, but Joshua lead the way north and I managed to learn what the two of them were talking about. Some of it was stuff I had no knowledge of, but made sense to Mark. Basically, Mark concluded what he initially told me, but with some new details. The Legion had been fighting up north long before I even set foot in Arizona and was primarily a northern concern. After the Legion took Flagstaff in 2256, they had been getting the occasional engagement by Swilling's Resistance and managed to trace their agents back to the valley. Several months back, Mr. Dinero happened by a new face in Scottsdale and hit it off with the guy. After some talk and even drinks back at his penthouse, the stranger pulled a gun on Mark accusing his father of funding the Resistance. The stranger's plan was to ransom Mark's life in exchange for information on Swilling's Resistance. The stranger clearly didn't find the right guy.
Mark's father had been out on one of his last whoring binges when the stranger pulled his gun, so they had to wait a while. As they waited for Mark's father to return, the stranger explained his plan only to be met with a laugh from Mark. It soon became very clear to the stranger that Mark's overly spoiled family wouldn't want anything to do with the organization that "Panders to the squatters of Phoenix." Mark talked his way out of a hostage situation by hating Phoenix more than the guy aiming the gun at him. So, eventually the gun was lowered, and the two talked the night away until the Legion came up. Turns out, the stranger was sent to Scottsdale by bad info, and though there was an embarrassing mix up; the stranger realized who Mark was and his potential use. Not surprisingly, the stranger was a Legion agent, and offered to set up a communication with his boss known as "Joshua." Mark's father died only a few weeks later, and the teenager inherited his title. Although Mark never saw the stranger again, he left an introductory letter to this supposed "Joshua" at their designated drop box. He forgot about it for a while, but eventually received a cryptic response. So, Mark had been exchanging letters with "Joshua" for several months until he received the last one approximately 4 days earlier. In the dead of night, Mark saw the last letter that described me in great detail, said to monitor incoming scaver traffic from the Phoenix ruins, and ordered Mark to ensure that I made it to my meeting with Joshua in three days.
Mark was initially supposed to simply make sure that I made it to the meeting spot safely, but took it a different direction. Mark had his right-hand man take me into Scottsdale where he held me captive until the meeting. Then, Mark decided he was tired of talking through paper and stole the opportunity to meet the mysterious "Joshua" alongside me during our initial introduction. During our nighttime chat at the gas station, Joshua told Mr. Dinero to come to Flagstaff regardless of if I agreed to accompany them for potential assignments from Caesar himself.
So, we rode on through the north wastes, and before reaching the outpost at Camp Verde, a group of Legion riders joined our rank. The guards following on foot then went their separate way while we rode on with the mounted legionaries. Through the burnt trees and bright rocks of the northern terrain, I saw crimson patrols marching the woodlands. Along the roads, we would pass by patrols of ten legionaries all wearing crimson, carrying spears, machetes, or various small arms. Each patrol was led by a heavily armored steel and crimson clad man with a helmet that sprouted red and black feathers horizontally across the top. I briefly wondered why every single Legion man I saw was wearing goggles, some sort of face mask, and helmet. I wondered if there was a reason they all completely hid their faces. Seeing these faceless soldiers in red roaming the region made me reflect back to my last trip up north. The Resistance and I cut through the deep woodlands and beyond any patrol path, so I didn't get to see the people we were there to kill until I had them in my sights. The deeper north we went, the more frequent the patrols became. Still not seeing too many non-soldiers, I remembered we were still in the fringe of Legion territory.
Riding with the other mounted escort allowed us to go much faster than with the foot bound soldiers in the beginning. About two more hours of fast riding went by after we passed the encampment at Sedona where I saw the site of the massacre only a couple weeks before. Everything went on business as usual for them except there were more sentries standing around the hall. It was almost as if we hadn't done anything to them as legionaries unburdened by heavy armor went in and out of the place. In Sedona, I noticed everyone there was either dressed like one of the legionaries or wore torn up old rag outfits with large red Xs on the chest and backs. I thought back to the stories about how the Legion enslaved people, but I didn't think anyone not in crimson and steel was a slave.
After a couple hours more, Sedona was behind us and we reached the outskirts of Flagstaff. The city wasn't in very bad shape; I guess it wasn't hit very hard in the blast. The suburbs were ruined but still speckled with patrols of men in standard legionary apparel. We followed the wide and decaying road under a highway overpass and into the heart of town where the ominous gate to the Legion capital stood proud in the distance.
I wasn't sure if it was me or not, but it seemed like the sky suddenly went from bright and sunny to overcast and grey. On the outskirts lining the road to the gate were wooden crosses made of old telephone poles or scrap wood jutting up from the earth. Half of them had the moaning bodies of slaves nailed to them and the occasional man dressed in a crimson tunic. There were vultures feeding on some of the bodies and I heard the groaning of those poor souls dying of thirst, hunger, or blood loss. The Legion Capital itself was surrounded by a giant junk wall covered in barbed wire, reinforced with cars and concrete slabs of ruined buildings. The wall itself reminded me of the Phoenix wall, but this one had Legion banners all along it spattered in dry and wet blood. Reaching the gates, there were slave pens packed to the wire with poor tribals that were mostly women. Large wooden log buildings dotted the area before the gate in rows, covered in Legion banners, and soldiers roamed in and out. Unlike the diverse crowds of traders, ranchers, caravaners, and countless others in outer Phoenix, outer Flagstaff held a more sinister atmosphere. Legionaries in steel, red, and blood stained tunics, drilled, or dealt with slaves. Where outer Phoenix bustled with commerce and people living their lives, outer Flagstaff bustled with slavery and almost an entire populace preparing for the next war.
As I took in the surroundings, it wasn't long before we stopped at the giant gates to Flagstaff proper. Soldiers on the flanking wooden towers made a gesture with their arms, and the thick steel gates creaked open. On the other side, all the sentries saw who stood before them, and dropped to their knees putting their right arms over their heart. Joshua Graham waved them off and they stood up to resume their duties.
Inside the Capital, I was utterly amazed. The streets were paved in stone much like Scottsdale, but instead of asphalt, the roads were lined with smooth cut rocks. I never seen anything like it before, but after taking in the architecture, I saw the people. In place of paid, clean, and polite servants from Scottsdale, there were worn down and miserable looking slaves being abused by their Legion masters. I expected Flagstaff to be in anarchy based on stories I heard and my own assumptions, but despite the rampant slave abuse; people filled the streets much like Phoenix. On our trot through the stone streets, I even noticed a few dozen traders leading brahmin to the Bazaar getting escorted by Legionaries or their own roughneck guards. Even though there were traders and other people in the city, I strangely found the whole demographic more interesting than scary or disgusting. I began wondering how a city smaller than Phoenix, but larger than some out west could function almost entirely of either slaves or soldiers.
We rode on slowly through the streets passing crowds of slaves led by soldiers, and large columns of legionaries marching to distant battlefields. Slaves lined scaffolding and platforms in the distance, constructing monuments to Caesar or wooden scrap housing for the soldiers. We passed large red tents on street corners with crosses facing the main roads, and alleyways full of farming plots where slaves tended to crops or brahmin. The slaves worked and the legionaries either supervised them or trained in one form or another.
Finally, we reached an open square in the center of town where over 100 legionaries stood silently in formation while an abnormally large man dressed in heavy metal armor barked orders at them. The armored man in charge had a long red cape draping to the ground around his blood-spattered shin guards, a steel helmet sprouting red feathers horizontally in a large plume across the top, and a face that radiated unmistakable loyalty, determination, and ferocity. As we rode between the formations, the armored man thundered a gibberish sounding command, and the legionaries simultaneously dropped to their knees doing their salute to the Legate. Joshua waved at the armored man and said, "Ave, Centurion. True to Caesar."
The "Centurion" bowed and stood up, signaling the rest of his men to do the same. We approached the large brick building in front where I noted a faded sign that once said, "Flagstaff City Hall" underneath a freshly painted red sign that said, "Palatii Caesaris."