"Enlist today and get three Square meals a day and 100 NCR dollars a week!" That Banner had been flying for almost a year now. The NCR signed a treaty with New Vegas in 2274 and the ink on the page wasn't even dry before the NCR set up an embassy and a recruiting station. According to the treaty, they weren't allowed to conscript anyone but they were allowed to take on as many volunteers as were willing to go. I had a pretty nice job at the Tops Casino. I was a blackjack dealer most days but also ran the roulette table when needed. We had quite a lot of traffic over the holidays but with those coming to an end and the winter months setting in, business slows down a lot and on top of not getting paid much you have a lot of downtime. I like to use that downtime to run some numbers, I think about just how much more money I'd be making if I were to join the NCR Army. For starters, I got paid roughly 75-95 caps a week in wages and tips. However, do keep in mind that around here at least, caps are worth roughly twice as much as NCR dollars. still with being a civilian comes the expenses of life such as food, clothing, anytime you get hurt you have to see a doctor, and then the biggest expense of all housing. Now since I had a job at the casino I could have got a passport into the strip and got a place on Freeside for pretty cheap, but then you run the risk of waking up in the middle of the night as some jethead is stabbing a rusty blade into your kidney trying to steal the last 5 caps you had hidden in your shoe, no thanks. Instead, I got a permanent room in the tops. The permanent rate the tops gave to their employees was pretty reasonable at around 25 caps a week, so that instantly took away about a third of my money right off the top. After all the other mentioned expenses were paid, I maybe had about 10 caps a week to have fun with. Of course in the NCR Army almost all of those expenses will be covered, you don't have to pay rent, you don't have to buy your clothes or your food, and anytime you need to see a doctor it's free and on top of all that they give you a nice hundred dollar bill each week. Even after considering it's only worth 50 caps it would still mean at the end of the week I have about five times as much money left over as I would working my job here at the tops. on top of all that, all these assumptions were on an average week for me which the winter months were far below average. All the holiday Travelers had gone home all the farmers had nothing to harvest and overall everyone just kind of slows down during the winter. It varied from week to week but the tips were almost dry, the hours cut short, and overall this was a lean time. So with all the free time I had if nothing else I thought I would go down to that NCR Embassy and talk to one of the recruiters about just what being in the Army was like.