The Worst Parties in the World
Of every one-hundred men in the Legion, ninety-nine served Caesar because he seemed real smart. Not a-one of them understood what the fuck he was talking about, what the hell he meant by "Hegelian dialectics," or cynicism, or "the perfection of society through austerity and meritocracy," but damn did all those ideas sound smart, and he spoke real good and he used a lot of big words and he never, ever lost his train of thought while in the middle of a sentence. To a lot of His army He was the smartest man they ever met. And all those smarts bore out. He won battles and he conquered tribes and thus the vast majority of his men were more than happy to do whatever he told them, whenever he told them, even if, really, none of it made all that much sense to them.
Proudly among those men stood Centurion Otho- he who tore men in two. He split skulls and sang as he slaughtered. In the wasteland he was known chiefly for gleefully bringing back the Judas Cradle and the Spanish Donkey. When Caesar introduced smog-belching war chariots into his army Otho used them not for battle, but to pull profligates apart. Sometimes he'd pull them apart crosswise, their entrails trailing behind them as they were dragged screaming along the dirt. Sometimes he pulled them apart lengthwise, their guts spilling out onto the ground beneath them as their bellies split open, wailing and sobbing as their families helplessly watched.
"Hey, Pat, watch- watch this throw," he drunkenly implored Centurion Patroclus, drink clutched in one sweaty, meaty hand and a bright yellow lawn dart in the other. With a careless toss, the dart soared up and over and missed its mark by about three inches, sinking harmlessly into the carpet of neon green Astroturf.
"Better shot next time, Otto," Patroclus jeered, jabbing at Otho with his own beverage (mutfruit wine, concealed within an old flat-top steel beercan without a label). Around them tiki torches sputtered in the cool night breeze. Out in the shadows past the Astroturf and the tiki torches and the white picket fence the wasteland was crawling with some of the Legion's best. They spread a wide net with their perimeter, pistols at their sides and wary eyes scanning the horizon. But guarding the Bull Pen was an easy job. They were deep within Legion territory, when the Legion was stronger than ever, and even as they kept alert the men were at ease. Some even squatted in the dirt or leaned on rocks, and chatted idly.
"That's two points for me. Looks like I'm winning," taunted Patroclus with wine-stained teeth after his blue dart found its mark. On the porch a few other guests languorously watched the contest while the band softly played an auana hula. The sound and smell of cooking meat wafted over the luau as Otho polished off his "soda" (juice from what passed for sweet fruit of the wasteland). The Centurion, who once killed a baby in front of its mother by slowly pushing in its fontanelle, happily belched, clapped his hands and vigorously rubbed them together. He licked his lips, plucked a fresh lawn dart from a basket, and tossed.
As a young speculatore Otho fell while climbing and hurt his back. It didn't bother him and he thought nothing of it until he turned thirty-three and wrenched it whipping a disobedient recruit. Suddenly his back was in constant pain, a pain worse than any other in his life. Worse than being stabbed, worse than being shot, worse than being passed up for promotion, made fun of, or losing his tribe; worse than losing his family. All else he could push down and ignore, but not the wracking, miserable pain that his back would now cause him for the rest of his life. Being the loyal legionary he was he'd never partake in modern medicine to sooth his tortured body. Instead, he resorted to an old tribal remedy he demanded from a slave. She made him a tincture that was essentially rubbing alcohol and made children and the infirm dizzy with just its smell. The tonic didn't really relieve his back pain but it worked better than nothing so he drank it every day when he woke up, when he ate, and when he went to bed. For the next ten years Otho experimented with all manner of primitive painkillers until an enterprising caravaneer started supplying him with a "traditional Blackfoot curative," which was really just ground up oxycodone pills. Middle-aged, arthritic, and bald, the centurion hid his dilated pupils from the harsh glare of the sun with a big pair of cheap plastic pre-war Oakleys wrapped tight around his bulbous, fleshy head. A decade plus of drinking paint thinner for breakfast left him with a bloated nose riddled with burst blood vessels. He was a hard man, and he once fought like there was no tomorrow, but a lifetime of fighting like there was no tomorrow had made mashed potatoes of his face and left him a little punch-drunk, on top of his opioids and his herbal remedies. He swayed when he walked and he looked like a shaved gorilla.
Otho commanded a Centuriae on the farthest east of Caesar's domain, the very edge of Yootó Hahoodzo, almost north Texas. Rumors abound that Texas was rife with super mutants. Traveling Texans told tales of a dread army of The Master's super mutants, valiantly still fighting his war against humanity, now at the behest of his former lieutenant. Sometimes speculatores claimed to have seen giant green men on their patrols. Otho never saw any mutants, super or otherwise. He kept vigilant watch, though.
Most of his time on the fringe of Caesar's territory was spent running drills, enforcing discipline, mediating disputes, and occasionally cutting people in half. Like the good old days. He was the senior officer and therefore the most powerful man for miles and miles around. As such it was his responsibility to report back to Legion Command all the super mutants he was not seeing. Most of his time not spent on the fringe was spent in or around Flagstaff.
"One point!" Otho tossed up his arms in triumph to a smattering of polite applause on the deck. A peal of unrelated laughter erupted from the immaculate midcentury modern mansion behind them. Otho bowed anyway. The light of the torches danced in his sunglasses. Centurion Patroclus didn't notice as he stumbled his way up to the tiki bar established on the deck. The bar-tending slave grimaced as Pat gave him a lascivious wink but topped off his beverage all the same.
Otho's daughter likewise was not watching her father drunkenly play lawn darts. She was inside the house, by the freestanding Malm fireplace being entertained by the other guests, one guest in particular. When her father told her they were going to Caesar's capital this was not what she pictured. To be invited to the beating heart of Caesar's great and terrible empire, the nerve center that saw every Legionary man at least once was frighteningly unexpected, at least so soon. When she'd spent most of her life not only free of their dominion but actively opposed to it after only a month Otho's daughter was still not comfortable living among the Legion. When her father extended his invitation to her she initially demurred out of white-knuckle terror, but since he not so much invited her as demanded she accompany him she had no choice but to acquiesce. They'd prepared her for the eventuality that she might be taken to Flagstaff, naturally, but details about what that entailed she either hadn't listened to or hadn't been told to her. At most, she remembered they said not to worry, to relax and to "float downstream," whatever that meant. Relax, don't worry, and "float downstream" was the central focus of her Juliae training. Words and deeds are two different things, though, and try as she might to relax and float downstream she remained anxious and terrified of what kind of Stygian nightmare Caesar's throne might sit upon.
So it was to her surprise (and relief) to discover how domestic and suburban the destination turned out to be. Rather than a hellscape of suffering and subjugation the manse they arrived at was a perfect pre-war picture of professional class America, faithfully recreated from Time-Life centerfolds and Columbia Broadcasting System's Friday-night lineup. A warm shower greeted them after their long journey and a whole host of idle diversions entertained them before the party. Accompanied by Otho's personal retinue (which thankfully included a few of his daughters' escorts) their journey took a week but they were some of the first guests to arrive, and all through the day her father's peers and their entourages trickled in until the Centurions were so numerous as to form their own Centuriae. Other guests arrived to join in on the festivities, beyond Centurions to caravaneers to celebrities, such as they were in the nascent empire. Some musicians, acrobats, daredevils, comedians, a playwright, dancers, a scattering of actors and actresses, and more than a few people whose claim to fame simply seemed to be their own beauty, as uncommon as it was in the wastes.
And especially to the surprise of Otho's daughter, she found herself among friends. No small number of the Legion's "elites" made Ouroboros their home and Hecate their Goddess. For instance, after her perfume-scented bath in a massive claw-foot tub Otho's daughter was stunned to find herself playing boccie ball on the fake lawn against her childhood friend, touring singer, and Maenad agent Nii'eihii Niitouu. Even as they laughed and played as though not a day had gone by since they were kids Otho did not recognize his daughter's oldest friend, Nii-Nii. In fact, he did not once look at Nii'ehii Niitouu 's face but continued his eternal vigil of her ass and waist and breasts.
Proceeding boccie ball was a lively round of charades over charcuterie with Centurion Corram and his daughter, who bunked with Otho's daughter in Ouroboros. Corram was the Centurion who maintained order in Flagstaff and although he did not live there (it, like everything in Flagstaff, belonged to Caesar) he did keep his recently returned daughter in the house.
"So what did you do that my father didn't? I want to live in a mansion instead of a tent!" Otho's daughter bantered with Corram. Corram's daughter sheepishly blushed.
"It is quite a bit nicer than sharing a bunker with four other girls," she said and laughed knowingly with Otho's daughter while Corram and Otho laughed less-knowingly but no less happily.
Proceeding charcuterie and charades were a couple rounds of golf on an endless green sea of plastic grass with Centurion Phaestos and his twin sister, who had recently reunited with Phaestos after an extended absence. Having never played before Otho's daughter was a terrible golfer, but her father and Phaestos were well practiced, and Phaestos's twin sister grasped the core concepts quite quickly, although perhaps not surprisingly, considering she was roughly the same height as Phaestos with roughly his same build but in much better shape. Phaestos's sister, for instance, did not have a beer belly. Otho's daughter felt quite comfortable around her.
By then more Centurions had arrived, including Thoros and his three daughters, Ursus and his daughter and sister and niece, Lupos and his two granddaughters, and Adolphus with his mother, who must've been at least seventy but looked younger than him. Thoros offered Otho's daughter a drink but Otho pushed it away and said, "She's not old enough to drink."
Otho's daughter and the women around her who had seen her drink to the point of projectile vomiting so many times that it was practically a party trick couldn't help but laugh, and their uncles and brothers and fathers and grandfathers all laughed along without a care in the world.
For a few blissful hours Otho's daughter allowed herself to relax, truly relax, and have a little fun, for the first time since leaving Ouroboros. She ate of succulent meats and sweet mutfruits, she limbo-ed, she gossiped in the bathroom with her friends, she flirted a little with some handsome guests. All the Centurions told well-rehearsed tales of former glories and drank. The Legion might be at war, the Legion was always at war, for what was the Legion without war, but clearly these men were not. They'd killed ant queens and deathclaws and molechs and supermutants in their time but now they were down to ogres and maxulaw and łéʼétsoh pitsooti. Otho's daughter found it all quite a bit sad, really. The Centurions had doughy, soft bodies, tortured and tenderized by decades of fighting, of violence and bloodshed and horror, of legacies that would leave hideous, jagged scars all across the land for generations to come. Many of them were missing eyes, or hands. Covered in shiny scars crisscrossing leathered skin. Old men. This was supposed to be a war council. It was more of a convalescent home.
More guests arrived. The eternally tardy, those that had been held up, and the more fashionable party attendees. And there was no Centurion more fashionable than Centurion Janus. The most sought-after clothing in the wasteland was Hawaiian (sometimes called Aloha) shirts. In the wasteland they served as formal wear for fancy events. The more fabric one's Hawaiian shirt had, the more important that person was, which led some very important-feeling men with means to stitch as much Aloha fabric together as they could and make a huge, billowing shirt that looked more like a mumu or a toga. Centurion Otho, for example, had a toga with five different fabrics stitched together, a blue shirt with an orchid print, one white shirt covered in leis of all different color, a lighter blue shirt decorated with German cars, a green shirt with surfboards, and one red shirt with palm trees. For many Centurions of the Bull Pen these Hawaiian togas had the extra advantage of disguising the weight they'd put on since they took cushy jobs as Caesar's bureaucrats. If a man really wanted to be fashionable, he'd top off his dress with a big straw hat and use cherry cola to secret his alcohol. When he was Legate the Burned Man had unofficially outlawed caffeinated sodas. While Caesar never made a decision one way or another about pop the taboo against carbonated beverages didn't follow Graham into Wi kaʼi la. Only the bravest or most reckless might mix themselves whiskey and flat Nuka Cola, or rum and Sunset Sarsparilla, lit by tiki torches as they stood around on salvaged carpets of Astroturf boasting of past glories.
By far the best dressed at any meeting of the Bull Pen was Centurion Janus, also known as the Death-Dealer or sometimes Old Two-Face, on account of what a snake he was. In his later years after he retired from the Legion Janus would call himself "Baron Saturday" and style himself after Baron Samedi, with a fine silk vest, trousers, dark glasses, and a top hat. The only apparel he kept from his days as Centurion Janus was the bone cane he himself topped with a gaudy quartz doorknob. At The Bullpen's parties he paired his scepter with an Aloha mumu, as was the style, but it had a gold lamé breast and animal-print collar and sleeves. Over that he wore a ratty black faux-fur coat. Around his neck was a metal chain plated in gold, and on one of his fingers the 1970 Super Bowl IV ring that once belonged to hall of famer Curley Culp (but with all the diamonds pried out), which he took as a trophy after the capture of Yuma.
Unlike the other men of the Bull Pen, the Daughters of Hecate had no records of Janus before he became a Centurion. He had no known tribal affiliation, and it was unclear when he started his service. The common assumption was that he changed his name to curry political favor and that his old name was counted among the countless legionaries whose records abruptly ended around the time he was named Centurion. But without a record of the name change it was impossible to tell. For all anybody knew his mother or sister or daughter or wife was in Ouroboros, and all they had to do was see him and the mystery would be solved, but that would never come to pass.
When Janus arrived at the party it was, naturally, a scene. The band stopped playing so the Centurion's own musicians could herald his arrival, accompanied by a color guard that twirled Legion standards and danced gaily to the beat. Of all the party guests who gawked at him and his entourage only Otho's daughter did not clap. The color drained from her face, instead. She was not delighted by the merrymaking and amusement of such an outlandish man. Truly, the only Centurion of the Bull Pen with any color or vibrance. No, Otho's daughter was not amused. Nor was she scared, like she was of Janus before he emerged spectacularly before her. When all the dancers stopped and the doors flung open to reveal the Centurion in all his bejeweled glory, Otho's daughter was overwhelmed with anger. Furious, righteous rage. The kind of malice that can only ever be earned.
It was Nii-Nii who brought her back to Earth, naturally. With no desire to stoke the Centurion's ego the artist opted not to watch his entrance and instead shared a cocktail with some equally-tired friends, but then suddenly the music stopped and the doors flew open and for a moment the party was silent and a cold chill ran down the song bird's spine because at that exact moment she remembered with perfect clarity why she hated Centurion Janus with all her heart and would never, ever forgive him no matter how long she or he may live. And then she thought of Otho's daughter.
She rushed to the unknown girl's side and gently directed her out of the house the way only she could. They found a quiet spot out on the lawn, by the bomb shelter. They cried together. For the first time in a long time the two of them let themselves reflect on what a truly, wickedly awful and unforgiving place the world is. How scared they were. That at that very moment they were in the metaphorical Heart of Darkness, the epicenter of sin and depravity that rippled ever outwards, each concentric circle bigger and more grotesque than the last. No amount of white paint or blocky chairs or fake grass, no amount of golf or Parcheesi or other delights could hide the monstrous crimes these men had committed, against the world and against these two women in particular. Nii-Nii never lost sight of the mission, though.
"If you break kayfabe and do everything you ever dreamed of doing to that man right now you will jeopardize the operation and threaten everything the Goddess has dreamed of, possibly dooming not just our friends and loved ones at this party but the entire world; but if you do try to kill him I will have your back until we're dead," Nii-Nii explained as she pressed the carbon-fiber knife into her friend's hand. They returned to the party before someone went looking for them.
Otho's daughter was not satisfied. She heard and she understood Nii-Nii's reasons for rubbing elbows with a man who personally did her specific and acute harm, but now she wanted to hear everyone else's excuse. And to that end, she embarked on a personal quest to ask every single one of them. The answers were easily forthcoming.
"What do you think of Centurion Janus?" or even, simply, "Janus?" was all she had to ask, and stories and opinions came pouring out of such intensity and diversity that by the end of the night no one, not his friends and loved ones, not even the Goddess, not even the man himself had a more complete picture of the Death-Dealer than Otho's daughter.
Janus styled himself as "in" with the frumentarii, not because he was one but because he informed to them regularly and vociferously. In fact, he was such a reliable and exhaustive source of information that the frumentarii were once personally reprimanded by Caesar for not seeking out more diverse sources of intelligence. At the time, nearly three-fourths of their internal Legion Intel came directly from the Centurion. There was a long list of legionaries whose careers and even lives were ended by Old Two-Face, typically to his own benefit. Everybody knew this. It was no secret among the Bull Pen what a gossip the man was, nor was it a secret that all alcohol enjoyed at their soirees was provided by him. He'd maneuvered his way into authority over all contraband in his cohort, thanks in part to how many of his men he'd crucified for smuggling contraband after ordering them to smuggle contraband. All liquor in the territory he protected went to him and he sold it for a handsome profit to his peers.
Janus had fucked men over, he fucked tribes over, he was a liar, a snake, and a scoundrel. Otho's daughter was not alone in her loathing, it was very quickly made clear to her. Plenty of party-goers were happy to show her the old scars that Janus's duplicitous double dealing had dealt them. They hinted darkly at secret schemes of their own. Others loved him for these very qualities. Some had happily laundered their own intrigue through him, kept their hands clean while he discreetly disposed of their rivals. Lots of guests were scared of him, they kissed his ass in fear of becoming the next targets of his forked tongue. A few sophisticates dismissed him. Without being personally aggrieved by the Death-Dealer but aware of his reputation they kept him at arms length and otherwise considered him more of a curiosity, just another sideshow in the carnival that was the Legion. In her father's opinion, any animosity between them in the past was irrelevant, especially any harm done before Otho was made a Legion man. If anything, her father seemed to feel like he owed Janus for fucking him and his family and his people over, since it obviously led to him becoming one of the most powerful men in the wasteland today.
Above all though, regardless of any opinion of him, his loyalty to Caesar was unquestionable. He lived to serve his God, and so long as his conspiracies inconvenienced the men beneath him and not the man above him he was unlikely to suffer any consequence for them and in fact, he never did. When Caesar formally approved of the Bull Pen's parties by attending one, he and Janus shared a private drink of pre-war America's finest bourbon. The contents of their conversation followed Janus to the grave. Caesar was the one man Janus would never rat out.
The last guest that Otho's daughter sought in her quest was Janus himself. While her father played lawn darts outside she gained the Death-Dealer's audience, a hundred different thoughts and feelings swirling in her head and one sharp knife on her person. Nii-Nii kept a close eye on her as she probed the party for Intel on her target, and swept to her side when she arrived at the focus of her investigation, prepared for whatever may come. All of the stories and rumors and opinions she'd been given did nothing to help her when face-to-face with Janus himself. All the greater understanding she'd labored to accrue meant nothing when he was living and breathing and speaking right next to her, as flesh-and-blood as she was and only a little taller. If anything, everything she'd learned only made it harder to see him in front of her as he really was. She could barely hear the words he spoke, as engrossed as she was with the color of his teeth, the fray of his jacket, the swirl of his ear. His legend was so out-sized and horrifying it was impossible that it could all be contained in this one creature. The weight of his terrible legacy should, Otho's daughter thought, bear down on him with such force that he should be crushed into a diamond, like the fake one that topped his cane. Yet here he was, standing next to her, laughing and smiling and, as always, putting on a little one-man show.
"And who is this fetching creature?" he suddenly directed his attention at her, snapping her out of her fugue.
"That's Otho's daughter," someone said, "One of them," and for a moment she saw something in his eyes, a flash of recognition and, she thought, guilt. Fear, too, maybe. She could've imagined it, but for a second it looked like the Death-Dealer was thrown. But only for a second.
"Well, I'm pleased to report you look nothing like him," he quipped and kissed the hand she did not realize she gave him. Their audience laughed, and Otho's daughter laughed along, mechanically, without taking her eyes off Janus. She managed to draw another nervous glance from the Centurion but he quickly regained his composure and went right on back to being the life of the party. It didn't matter. Otho's daughter knew for sure she wasn't seeing things. She knew she scared him.
She left the party satisfied, with a deeper understanding of the night's events than any of her peers. These regular parties that the Centurions threw were meant to be a break from politics, a departure from the war councils they once were, a perversion of the cutthroat business of being a Centurion. What they'd created was so much worse, a nightmarish abattoir of backstabbing and back-patting and palace intrigue that took infinitely more effort than a simple meeting might. Of course Caesar didn't mind the Bull Pen's parties. They were as stiff and staid as any autocrat could dream of and, in actuality, by his own design. There was nothing stopping him from collecting reports and sending orders to these men individually. He wanted to bring them together, had placed each man carefully in their post for that purpose. At some point he was going to have to transition the Legion from an army to a nation. The Centurions who massed with him on the Colorado assumed (if they assumed anything at all) that once Caesar held New Vegas he'd name them all senators in his Empire, but Caesar had already built his own quorum of mush-heads and sycophants. They called themselves the Bull Pen.
Save the clever few who had maneuvered themselves into their cushy posts like Janus, Caesar made sure his empire's future political class were all adult-sized babies who wouldn't challenge him, but still presented an image of authority. Most of the Centurions serving under him at the front were going to die. Most of the men serving under him at the front were going to die.
So was Caesar, but he didn't plan for that. None of the men he'd set up to serve as his government would ever challenge him, but just as they didn't understand his ideology they had no true loyalty to his dream. And Caesar was sick. Very sick. Barring some sort of miracle, his campaign in the Mojave would be his last. And as soon as he died, the Bull Pen were going to tear apart the massive swath of land they currently kept unified for their living God in desperate, ill-conceived bids to serve as his successor, and maybe help themselves to a little of that good living god action. Otho's daughter could see it in their little piggy eyes. The unification of the southwest wasteland, the brave new utopia little Eddie Sallow had conceived would be carved up, burned, and obliterated by these brave and loyal warriors. The safety and stability that the peoples of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado had enjoyed for only a brief decade would be undone in a matter of months, or even weeks depending on how fast word of Caesar's demise traveled. The wasteland would fall into bloody ruin again, neighbor against neighbor and only the cruelest and least scrupulous surviving. Caesar was too short-sighted and too selfish to consider a future that didn't include himself. Only the Daughters planned for that eventuality.