The Replacement of Thought

If one looks at Circle Junction from the bird's view, one would see a large series of lines marking the old world rails merging and looping around a central circle by which the location is named. In the days of old, that circle was the center "Junction" if you will, that diverted the trains in all directions to different states, and even different depots in the massive rail installation. In the days of the Legion, that circle made up the Interior Fortress, home to the Interfector's personal palace and the many nearby warehouses within the facility remained home to the 500+ legionaries who occupied the city. If we go further out, you would see the many more surrounding industrial facilities once used for storage of transported resources and repair work on the old trains, now used as shops that continuously poured their smoke into the sky as new weapons and equipment for the soldiers on all the Legion's fronts were made. Beyond those factories and going further out, were the slave quarters, a sprawling city created from scrap of the old ruin and worked together with wood and debris to contain the masses. This slave city was erected over time, and was constantly growing as the wire perimeter had to be moved by the week to make room for more and more victims of Legion expansion.

Upon leaving the city, a person would find themselves in the corners of either Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, or Utah, depending on the direction they left, but that would be by no means the end of Legion control in the area. On the fringes of the Circle Junction region and in all directions was the locations of many camps that shared a similar purpose with the city itself: fueling the Legion. Though there were a multitude of different camps in the area, the most important camps within the Circle Junction territory were those that created soldiers, soldiers like Aleron and Montano.

Now Aleron and Montano were a common type of soldier especially in this period of Legion history, ones that were created by the Legion, not born into it. It is true that the Legion took in the young, and had camps specifically dedicated to breeding soldiers from the womb. However, whether the conquered man was 10, 12, 16, 22, or even 30, all who were not born into Legion, were so thoroughly destroyed after they entered the camps that they might as well have been born again upon exiting.

Though there are many rumors and plenty of mystery behind what exactly created the soldiers of Caesar, here is what is known about those who fell to the Legion, only to become it's vicious warriors:

Have you ever heard a lie so many times that it becomes the truth? It is seen in abuse, in adolescence, in life itself. Suppose you were abused as a child, suppose every day your father came home drunk and proceeded to verbally and physically abuse you. You would hear words and phrases like, "You are worthless" "You are a waste of breath" "You don't matter" "You shouldn't have been born" "You were a mistake." All of those things are lies, and perhaps some even use words and phrases like that as inspiration to be better or to remove themselves from the abuser, but those words, after hearing them enough times, become a part of your being.

If you think about what exactly "Thinking" means, you may come to realize that thoughts are only a series of images, sounds, smells, and everything perceived in your life being brought up in the present by your mind, whether it is to compare a bad situation with a current one, a good time with another good time, or even a sense of love in a present period in your life that is currently without that feeling. You may smell a wonderful fragrance that brings your mind back to a time where you smelled something similar as you held your love. You may hear a new friend in the present thank you for something, and you smile, remembering other times you've helped friends and received their gratitude. There may also be times of great hardships being endured in the present, and the mind transports itself back to a time that you overcame, perhaps allowing you to stay true to your course, knowing it will soon be over and the good times are just around the corner.

These are the thought patterns of a man who enters the Legion camps.

A man, a tribal, a prepper, raider, mercenary, or waster enters one of Caesar's camps with their mind remembering everything in their life leading up to the moment they are escorted up to those gates to a Circle Junction soldier camp. Their mind is almost entirely occupied by the fresh memory of what happened to their tribe or family, and the pain in their limbs from the forced march. There almost isn't time to think about anything other than that pain, many can't even think about the fear or anxieties about what's in store for their immediate future.

When they come to a stop outside the gates, they remember the feeling of warmth and the sensation of their mother's embrace, only to be reminded of her death at the hands of those masked soldiers staring them down. They think about the sweet kisses from their love, and then remember how she was ripped from their arms and sentenced to a life of rape and birthing children they would never see. They look to their left and right, see many familiar faces, and silently give comfort to those who can't handle the situation or look to others who've remained vigilant and silently plot schemes of rebellion or means of escape. They then look at the masked faces of the victors, recall all the horrors done up to that point and feel powerful when the marching stops. There's a brief period of recuperation where those schemes are devised in the brain and with those memories of all the injustice, they say to themselves, "I will never bow to Caesar." They look at those masks like the villains they are and are ready to fight for that life they watched get pulverized from existence... Then they hear the echo of the loudspeaker beyond the walls of the camp.

The new victims of Legion expansion are unchained from the transport beams, and some resist, only to be brutally beaten back into submission by the voiceless and faceless men who have been waiting for a chance to spill blood. The new slaves/soldiers are stripped of all their clothes, black bags are placed over their heads, and those who protested are either pummeled into unconsciousness, or slaughtered for disobedience. It wasn't uncommon for the image of a friend being cut open to be the last thing a person sees before being stripped naked and blinded. A last image of a life formerly lived, a life that ended, a life that never even existed in their mind after being escorted through those gates and hearing that speaker get louder and louder.

Similar to the layout of Circle Junction, most Legion soldier camps were shaped like a circle, and the new slaves are escorted into the "Outer Ring." The naked and blinded men are escorted to the perimeter or outer ring, and placed in one spot as the shouting and horror continues in the world directly outside the bag, but the words of the loudspeaker are the only clear words the blinded man can hear. They have no idea where they are, but they hear the abuse, hear the footsteps stomping to and fro, and the only thing they can think about is the happy but difficult life they lived and how it ended. All those memories repeat on a loop in the dark bag while that loudspeaker continues to speak. They feel the sun beating down, only adding to the agony and sleep deprivation of the forced march, many are hungry, and none of their captors know what mercy is.

At some point during that first day and when all the captives are standing in their spots within the outer ring, the speaker is silenced for the moment, and a terrible voice orders the blinded to repeat after the speaker. The voice sounds like that of a monster, a behemoth, the voice sounds so wicked and cruel after only being able to imagine it from within the mask and after hearing all that terror leading up to the silence. The person still complies, only temporarily, since they fully intend to use that time in the bag's solitude to plot their escape.

The loudspeaker comes on louder than before, screaming the words, "I am worthless" "I am nothing" "Caesar is all" "I deserve death" and so many other self derogatory phrases that are all interspersed with statements about the perfection of Caesar. Many repeat the words as instructed, it goes on for so long during the heat of the day that many collapse, and it usually isn't too long before some rebel and attempt to remove the bags from their heads and look for somewhere to run only to see the masks of Caesar surrounding them that have been watching all of this. The blinded and naked men are completely powerless, obediently repeating after the loudspeaker, but hearing the horrible beatings of those who defied to their left and right. It becomes very clear to all who are within the blinding mask that it is safer to remain blind and endure the repetitious words while they can only imagine what's being done to create the bloodcurdling screams of those who defied. All who hear but cannot see pray that the footsteps of the soldiers in red don't stop before them. The terror around them and the loudspeaker merge so smoothly with the thoughts and images of the person inside the bag.

Hours upon hours go by, and the loudspeaker never stopped, all that's left are those who continued to repeat the words since most who would defy had already been killed at this point.

Eventually, the footsteps stop in front of you, and you're terrified. You had been good, you've been repeating the words the whole time, of course you were still trying to plot your escape, but you hadn't been given the chance. Alone in your thoughts, you recall the terrible sounds you heard done to your friends hours earlier and cry. How did they know you were plotting? They wouldn't have stopped in front of you if that wasn't the case, right?

The bag is removed from your head and all you see is a man in front of you with a legion mask and a fan of red and black feathers across the top. He's holding a tray of food. The first thing you see after hours inside the bag is one of your tormenters offering you the thing you've needed. He places the tray on the ground as three other masked faces aim their guns at you and a canteen is placed in your hand. You raise the canteen to your lips at the man's motion, and say "Thank you" being genuinely gracious for the gift. Before you can taste the water and squat down to eat the food, a fist is delivered to your stomach. You had not kept repeating after the loudspeaker. "Thank you" were not ever words that came over the PA.

There in the sand, with walls to your front and back, you see the line of your blinded friends standing there repeating after the PA while the masked men beat you for what feels like hours for failing to comply with the directive. Alone in the world with the men who are trying to kill you, there is no saving grace, your friends lining the outer ring are too alone in their heads and complying to help you in any way. Eventually the beating stops, the tray is stepped on, and the canteen is poured out onto your head as your mouth was filled with sand during the beating. You are hauled up onto your feet, bloody, broken, and emotionally destroyed, and the last thing you see before the bag is tied again around your head was a small tent behind your standing marker and the fact that the sun was a lot lower than it was before the bag came on.

At night, the slaves of the outer ring are given 4 hours of sleep, and the loudspeaker blares louder than during the day. Floodlights are turned on, and each slave is given a restless 4 hours to sleep, allowing the message of the PA to enter further and further into the man's mind as rest is made impossible by the continuous abuse and uncooperative conditions. You then rise from your tent, or are dragged out of it, and the bag is thrown over your head once more as you stand in the same spot to repeat the same words again and again and again. Meals were given twice a day, and many of those meals were destroyed for failure to follow the simple directions made nearly impossible by sleep deprivation, starvation, and dehydration. Your brain fails to communicate properly with your extremities and your brain is reduced to the simple thoughts, "Don't make them hurt you" and "I am nothing" "I am worthless" "Caesar is all."

You try to think about that rage and hate towards your captors, you try to plan your escape, but more pain is inflicted upon you for failing to follow an order you didn't know you weren't following. Many can't handle it, and some hand themselves over to their tormenters entirely from exhaustion or early mental destruction. Some think suicide is the merciful choice when they're alone in the mask and all they can see is the "What was" and how it will never be the "What is" again. However, you hear the people who've given up, and their deaths didn't sound any better than the Hell you're in right now. You cry again inside your mask, trying desperately to remember what it feels like when your mother hugs you, but all you can think about is her brutal end, and repeat the words, "I am nothing" "I am worthless" "Caesar is all."

There are no rests to relieve yourself, you're already covered in your own waste or standing around it, making that message from the loudspeaker more and more true, "I am disgusting", "I am savage." It's feeding time again, and you're allowed to eat by your tormenter, making you feel accomplished, only for that feeling to be destroyed when another merciless pummeling comes your way after regaining enough of your strength. There is no correct action. As the punches and kicks land all over your body, you repeat the words, "I am nothing" "I am worthless" "Caesar is all," and just before being dragged onto your feet for another several hours of standing and speaking to the darkness of the bag and your mind, you realize this is only the second day.

This is the routine of each man who goes to the legionary camp for an entire month in the outer ring. Standing and repeating the phrases of the loudspeaker, suffering physical abuse, and only allowed enough food and water to remain alive while you remain sleep deprived and blinded, left alone in your thoughts.. Those thoughts becoming more and more replaced by the message of the loudspeaker.

Some may be asking when the machete training comes in. When the new slaves learn how to fight, how to kill Caesar's enemies. To that, it should again be reiterated that a soldier of Caesar is rarely a volunteer, especially in this time. Soldier camps in this period were overflowing with those who've had lives before the Legion came, lives worth fighting for when facing down Caesar's endless hordes. This practice was a means of erasing everything a person was, letting them know how that reality they remembered is gone, and how that reality will never exist again so long as the Legion lives. After a month of standing in place and getting the new message of your being pounded into your very soul, the conditions of that world are shown all over your body. You've been naked the whole time, body blistered and burned beyond belief from the sun, standing there in the heat, rain, and all conditions, surviving on so little, and enduring the worst humans imaginable... This is what your life is. All the while, that message repeats, reminding you that you indeed deserve this, and all the abuse done to you was due to Your inability to comply with the victors.

Stuck with your thoughts and unable to see anything aside from those few moments the bag is removed, you've seen the same thing again and again. Whether you saw that line of your friends bagged and standing in the rain or heat, you see the same image again and again of who exactly has the power in this world. You lost track of the days after less than a week, and your mind and voice has been repeating the same words on an endless loop. By the end of the month, you are entirely convinced that this is all there is in life: To comply or to be destroyed. You may not have agreed with that message at the start, but the brain typically functions based on what it knows. Again, thoughts come from what you've seen, smelled, heard, experienced, and all those thoughts you had when you were blinded by the bag became more and more proof that this existence is all that is true in the world as you repeat the words, "I am nothing" "I am worthless" "Caesar is all..."

After an entire month of that, a person is usually so mentally destroyed, that some are not able say anything other than the long series of words that made up the loudspeaker message. The bags are removed, and the slaves are then escorted to the "Inner Ring."

The inner ring can more or less be described as the same thing as the outer ring. The slaves are moved through a series of gates where they then take their place on new markers, again with a frayed old tent behind them to pathetically shelter from the elements during the continuing 4 hours of authorized sleep. It again wasn't uncommon even at this stage for people to pass out from standing in place and being given such miserable conditions, but still, they are hauled onto their feet after an expected beating. The biggest difference between the inner and outer ring is the bag. The bag is no longer forced over the heads during the days of standing and repetition. Instead, the slaves face the wall of the final sector of the camp, each spot lined with paintings of the Legion Bull on its blood red background. The slaves take their spots, and stare at that banner, the loudspeaker comes on again, and more phrases are repeated on an endless loop.

The conditions remain unchanged, but the removal of the bags is not license to look around. Many have already mentally succumbed to their captors by this point, so the thoughts of escape upon entering are no longer there by the time they reach the inner ring. Everyone knows there is no escape, and all are thankful that they no longer are stuck inside the masks, alone with their brains. The world is still horrible, but the pain of that world remains at a distance as you stare into the golden bull. You still hear the pain of that world being inflicted upon your... "Friends?" Who even are those people? They never helped you when you were being beaten, you aren't even helping them when the world is beating them, you just want the pain to stop and pray it doesn't come for you. However, you know that so long as you stare at that Bull and repeat how worthless you are, you remain safe... At least until you aren't.

The masked faces stop in front of you again. Internally, you beg them to go away, but they don't. You scowl even more as you stare into the Bull and you scream "Caesar is ALL", but the men don't leave. You scream the words from the PA again and again, the blood shooting to your head and your body in agony from the sun's blisters, but still they remain. All you want is to stare at that bull, and you don't want the worldly pain to get in the way again. If the world tries to prevent you from saying the words "True to Caesar" you'll kill it. You see those glimpses of what happened to your friends and tribe, your mother, and what happened each time the bag was removed from your head only to see the people you thought would help, standing there in their masks, free from the pain you're going through. The blood in your veins boils as those faceless men stare you down and you scream louder than before "CAESAR IS ALL!" Eyes fixated on the Bull and ready to kill, you remain sleep deprived, dehydrated, and half starved, but still you say to yourself, "If they prevent me from saying Caesar's name, I'll fucking kill them!"

The thought astounds you. At what point did you go from, "I'll kill these people for what they did to my family" to "I'll kill them if they stop me from doing what I'm told?"

Suddenly, a bag is thrown over your head by some unknown figure from behind. Your body is pummeled by the familiar sensation of fists and boots, and still that fire in your heart burns as you remain naked and powerless against the world outside your view of the Bull. That bag is removed again, and standing above you is the feathered helmet, but the way he's standing is not like the other times he harmed you. He's standing winded, and you hear something being dragged away, but you're too weak to turn and see what it is. He reaches down, lifts you up with one hand, and places a canteen in your hands. You cannot see his face, but you know the look on it. He saved you, saved you from... something. Before you can turn around to look at the figure being dragged away, you notice the other legionaries are gone, and the man with the feathered helm raises his hand towards the image of the Bull. You repeat after the loudspeaker, "I am savage" "I deserve death" "Caesar saved me."

For three weeks, slaves remain in the inner ring, staring at the bull, ready for pain, ready for punishment, and continuously repeating new messages from the loudspeaker. Still sleep deprived, mostly starved, and continuously dehydrated, you stare at the Bull only seeing that world of horror in your peripherals. Blistering heat, freezing nights, and heavy rain, you stare at that Bull, unable to recall the past, or anything outside the terrible world you're now convinced is all there ever was in this life.

Stare at the Bull, say who you are. You may have the occasional thought "Who am I?" the only answer you know is "I am nothing." You remember your hate for those who captured you, and remember how all their abuse came from your own failure to follow directive. Then you remember it was them who gave you food. It was them who abused you. It was them who put you here, but then you remember the taste of water, and you hear the words, "Caesar is all."

Caesar is the sole reason for everything good that has ever happened to you. It was not him who abused you. It wasn't even his men who abused you, it was yourself. You think back to those first thoughts you had upon entering the camp, you vaguely recall your mother's embrace and it only makes your rage grow, not towards the Legion, but to her. She's the one that birthed you into this awful world of plague, war, death, famine, and hate. It's Her fault you ended up in this Hell. You think about that first kiss with your love and remember how it was care for her that made you stand up to the Legion in the first place. You hate her for her beauty; you remember how that beauty only tormented you when you were blinded and how her haunting image in your head terrorized you in comparison to the world you're now convinced is all there ever was. Those recollections of a life before are so vague at this point that even though they are rapidly fading, you hate everything that ever led to where you are now, without the ability to focus that hate on the true tormenters because after all, "I am worthless" "Caesar saved me" "Caesar is all."

By the end of your time in the inner ring, the image of the Bull is still the only thing you see when you shut your eyes and that world remained terrible around it. So long as your eyes are on the Bull, the world stays away, but if that world encroaches, the men who harm you reward you after the bag comes off and you're dragged back onto your feet. You've finally come to realize that they have not abused you ever, not even at the start, they kept picking you up time and time again. Everything that led to the Hell you live is to be hated and slaughtered as your eyes only see the gold and red and your mouth repeats the words that identify what you are "Worthless and nothing." The answer to all that terror and your removal from it has been repeated by your mouth 10,000 times over the past two months, and you are able to recite each and every one of the 100+ phrases you've spoken, heard, and felt in the hours you tried to sleep:

You are not your own. You are not a person. You are nothing while Caesar is everything. You deserve death. You deserve pain. Caesar is the one who makes the pain go away while everything else, including yourself, is what has given you pain. Finally, the end of your time in the inner ring has come, and you are escorted away, mentally annihilated and physically destroyed. You wonder where they are taking you, but all you can see is the image of the Bull and those masked men escorting you "nothing" into the final stage.

You don't know this is the final stage, you have no idea what would be in store for you since the moment of arrival, and you rapidly lost the ability to contemplate the future over the terrible weeks and months that distorted your perception of present reality. As that image of the Bull occupies the entirety of your vision, you are a sun blistered malnourished walking corpse, and a festering blob of misdirected hate towards everything that put you in Caesar's hands. You are totally unable to place the Legion as responsible for any terror by your brain's perception of the reality created in the words you've said again and again and again until they became the truth of your life. You pass a series of gates with all those people who entered the camp with you who also remained trapped in their unending Hells. You approach the concrete building of the central room, the last stage before your reality is finally consumed by the Bull.

You enter the pitch black structure and everyone in your group is posted to their spot within the walls. You can't see anything, but the arms of your captors guide you as if they are the only ones who can see in the world of blackness. You've been staring at that image of the Bull for so long that even in the darkness, it's still all you can see, even while the arms lead you further and further into the structure and that loudspeaker gets quieter. You hear the door close, and you realize that the light from outside was actually calming in the room you saw as completely black. However, the closing of that door made you realize just how dark the place really is, but still, all you can see is the Bull.

The arms grabbed you, and you've long since had the ability to fight back removed from your being, so you remain completely resigned to it when the arms pin you to the walls and chain you there. There you remain, for three whole days. The tormentors leave you alone after chaining you too the wall, and all to be heard is the silence and breathing of the men in your shoes. You hear them but you cannot see them, you cannot even talk, but still the words of that loudspeaker echo in your mind again and again in the complete darkness. You cannot hear the loudspeakers themselves because the walls of the enclosure are so thick, but you still hear them loud as day as your mind repeats them in the silence. The words crept their way into your subconscious being over so long and in all the darkness, that image remains, while the breathing continues.

You had been killed. This place without hope or light is death. The images that'd been replaced by the sounds of the loudspeaker flash in your mind again and you hate everything you once loved and stood for as you try to recall the true cause of the pain you endured. You think of how everything in your past led to the torture and then death of you yourself. You begin to vomit as you try to recall love and those who gave it to you, again, only remembering where everything that wasn't Caesar led you. The central room was a place without time, where 5 minutes in the black were equivalent to years of psychological pain when the memories hit, only to be destroyed by the new thoughts that are now who you are.

You feel the years pass until a hand reaches out and touches you. It is still impossible to see it, but your attention is gathered and you feel a canteen be raised to your lips. Alone in the void and unable to lift the canteen due to your restraints, you feel the water rush down your throat and the canteen draws away. You remember and understand what it's like to be in the mother's womb, fed and kept alive, by something you do not understand, but something you belong to. This time is different though. You do not want to be born into that world of horror and torment that landed you in the place you ended... But something is different. You know that world, and know you died in it, you died before knowing that Caesar is all. But now you know the new truth, and you're ready to come out of the dark, not into the light, but as a member of the dark. All you know in preparation for your birth is that "Caesar saved me."

Though you have no way of knowing it, two days pass in that room, and you've spent the entire time being nurtured in darkness while your brain festers with hate at the existence that put you there, completely understanding that Caesar is responsible for all things good as the image of the Bull remains. Then the third day arrives and your thoughts are removed by an unbearable pain that consumes your entire body. Your body and head is beaten and kicked in the pitch blackness and you've long since forgotten there were others in the room. You feel the pain, it feels familiar, but you can't seem to connect this pain with that of the beatings before entering the room. It feels as though fantoms are harming you, and you can't remember what people even look like since the pain is so unbearable. It doesn't stop, it continues on and on until you are no longer conscious, which feels like something entirely different when you were already in a place you thought was death. Then, you awake.

When you awake, you find yourself in a bright world, no loudspeaker, no torment, no torture, no heat of the day, your body is still broken but as your eyes adjust to the light, you see the men of Caesar looking down at you. You feel your surroundings and feel the bed you're on, believing what you went through was a nightmare until you look left and right to see the slaves who were with you laying in similar beds in the bright open room. You look back at the soldiers of Caesar and there is no fear in you. The only difference in those men from the ones who harmed you is that these men are not wearing masks. They wear the helmets, but they do in fact have faces. You realize this for the first time. Suddenly, the man in the center asks, "What is your name?"

You had already been killed before and already lived a nowhere life that led to nothing but pain and death. Being asked your name, you entered a new world where you have no identity but know how horrible that existence outside the Legion was. You look down at yourself lying there on the bed and see yourself wearing the black kilt and red tunic of a Legionary. You have always been Legion, you always were, you just didn't know it.

You try to recall the life before one more time, but even thinking about thinking about that makes you sick when the images of that torture flash before your eyes. You feel the rage boiling at thought of your old life, and you know that someone chose you to be born into this world again. Survival, food, water, shelter, comfort, all comes from Caesar in a world and environment that did not care for you. Caesar was responsible for saving you, past memories only led to the terror of the camps. Caesar became the sole reason for everything good, while that deep burning hatred towards everything done to you remains inside... but what to do about that hatred? You ask yourself.

The words "What is your name?" echo in your mind once more, and all you can say is "I am nothing" while knowing deep down that "Caesar is all."

That soldier of Caesar then looks down at you, points to the uniform you wear, and tells you on behalf of Caesar himself, "I am to change that."

The next two weeks are spent in a separate camp located further away from the initial camp and out of range of the booming loudspeakers. Those two weeks are spent testing the new soldiers ability to carry out even the simplest of directives. There are ample opportunities presented for those to escape this separate camp, but there are no accounts of anyone ever attempting that. After the black room, a man has had all of his thoughts completely removed and replaced by a new thought pattern that always circles back to a hatred of anything not Legion, and always back to the man responsible for everything "good" that's happened to them, Caesar. By the time they leave the room and awake in the uniform of Caesar, most men are so thoroughly destroyed psychologically that they don't even remember their names, especially if their name somehow reverted their thought train towards memories of that life before, that they now so hate.

Language is not entirely important for brand new recruit legionaries since most are forbidden to speak in general. Those who barely know the english language are not spared from things like the loudspeakers since the message is still more than clear in that first camp when torture is regular from the legionaries and the environment they were in. Where language fails to influence some, circumstance more than makes up for that. With language and speaking being secondary in a world that demands them to die for Caesar, simple orders are responded to with simple words. Other words are introduced to the newborn such as the Roman ranks that make up the Legion and a person learns to talk once again in a way that is only in confirmation to the word of Caesar while derogatory to everything not Caesar. Outsiders are dissolutes and profligates while everyone Legion is servant or superior.

Superiors are to be honored as the representatives of Caesar they are, while profligates are to be destroyed. It is also said that it is because of this language facet that Caesar picked Rome as the model for his totalitarian nation. To start, many of Caesar's conquered spoke in tribal dialect that evolved from the popular old world Spanish language. Being a child of the Latin language, Spanish words were relatively similar to many Latin ones, and this made for easy introduction of new words to the conquered's vocabulary. The Roman model remained familiar to grasp yet so foreign to the English, Spanish, and Tribal speakers of the region that it was ideal for maintaining a disciplined culture in which every word had weight.

This all said, the two weeks after that initial camp are spent testing the recruits' ability to follow orders while ensuring the work of the prior camp was firmly cemented into the recruits' beings. As it pertains to the language, new words, ranks, and ways of speaking are planted into their brains. While the torment at memory continues long after the two weeks; it becomes clear to those men that their thoughts have no weight when spoken into existence and enter the ears of a man who's also learned that "Caesar is all."

After the two weeks of familiarization with the Legion and after learning how their sole purpose in life is to benefit Caesar who pulled them from captivity, the man remains a festering object of undirected hate. It is subliminally planted in their minds who that hate goes to, and at the end of that two week period, the new recruits march out to other centuries across the Legion's fronts, ready to destroy the world that put them in Caesar's camp in the first place. The soldiers march to the fronts, bursting at the seams with hate and ready to savagely throw themselves against all who oppose Caesar, barely armored, barely armed, but still set to die once more.

Even if they can remember their old name, a name is not given to the recruit until they've survived long enough to be in need of some sort of address. The notable savages in Caesar's ranks become Recruit Decani, and exercise the leading of their fellow savages against the ranks of Caesar's enemies. Over time, and after enough interaction with other soldiers of Caesar across different campaigns, the man has learned more and more through experience in what they've done since being born again. By the time a recruit decanus becomes a Prime Legionary, they are more versed in the world, more strategic in their dealing of matters that involve those who aren't Caesar, but that foundation of their being remains the same their whole life, "Caesar is all."

No matter what's thrown at them, life or death has no meaning when they remember what was done to them and how they've been programmed to Know not believe, that the world was what hurt them. On the battlefield, they wear the masks, feeling safe from exposing their internal weakness to the villainous world. They look at their brothers to their left and right in the dust and sand, all masked, and waging their own physical battles against that world while simultaneously battling their own mental war of isolation in service to Caesar from behind the mask.