The Priests of Mars
When Harpy took possession of his grandchildren after their father died it was implicitly understood that his wife would be the one to actually raise them. The babes were his, of course, his rightful property to do with as he pleased and that's why he took them but the idea that he would be the one to actually care for them, to feed and clothe and bathe them wasn't just unthinkable, it was outright laughable. Like every other responsibility in his life it was his other property, his wife, who was to do the actual work. She'd already raised all his sons and daughters, it was only natural that she would raise his grandchildren, too- as dictated by him and by his values, of course. Unfortunately, she died before Julia ever made a memory of her.
There was no name for what killed her. Some sudden-onset illness the tribe couldn't possibly diagnose or treat. She'd lived a pretty full life, certainly by wasteland standards, but eventually something took her away from the wretched Earth. The Twisted Hairs lived on the banks of the Colorado and they killed and they stole and the world after nuclear apocalypse was cruel and unforgiving and they buried their dead and they didn't eat them and that was pretty good for a post-nuclear tribe. Curing whatever cancer befell Harpy's wife was well beyond their means. Even all the work Julia did later to improve the tribe's healthcare wouldn't have been enough to save her grandmother. Not even close. That was just how life was for the tribes.
Harpy loved his wife, he really did, but all he could do was accept his loss and move on. In a shocking break with tribal convention he did take on more responsibility for his grandkids after her death, and he got along alright although pretty much the only thing he ever cooked was nasty coyote tobacco coffee. There was still a coterie of aunts and great-aunts and sisters and nieces to take care of Julia and her brother, so even without her grandmother Julia understood the role older women were meant to have as caregivers and, most importantly, educators and enforcers of the social order. They cooked and they cleaned and they watched Julia and her brother and took care of them when they were sick but their most important responsibility was making sure that their charges knew exactly how they fit into the fabric of tribal life. They made sure that Heart knew he was to lead the next generation and that Julia knew to hate herself. They pecked at her like a murder of crows, pulled her hair and pinched her arms and made up a woman she could never be to judge herself against. Her great-aunt Zelda was particularly skilled at making her feel small and bad, like her life was a box she'd never quite fit in. One time Zelda caught her with a knife, and held her upside down in the middle of Dry Wells and smacked her ass so hard the welts on her bony cheeks bled. She said, "girls don't fight."
"Girls do what they're told," she said, as she hit a five year old Julia over and over again with a gecko-leather strap where everyone could watch. At the time, Zelda was 53 years older than the girl she was beating. If she hadn't gotten tetanus and died four months before the Twisted Hairs were conquered by the Legion she would've made an excellent Priestess of Caesar.
Like Julia, Edward Sallow was raised without a father by a clique of older women, and, like Julia, he came to understand their role in reinforcing cultural mores. As a boy he was subject to much less repression, obviously, but even still every so often he'd unthinkingly break a taboo and the claws came out. Until the day he died Caesar was haunted by nightmares of the time a librarian caught him doodling in the margins of a textbook. By coincidence her name was Zelda, too.
The misogyny of the Legion was well known by the time they made their way to the Colorado River; legendary by the second battle of Hoover Dam. It was received wisdom in the New California Republic that Legion policy was not just institutional abuse of women but actual outright hatred for anyone of the female sex. Certainly it was true that the Legion treated women inferior to men. But Caesar only cared that all men and women were inferior to Caesar. If, among all his slaves, women were treated worse it was because women had always been treated worse. Perhaps if women had served as soldiers in Augustus Caesar's legion they could've been afforded the opportunity to die in Edward Sallow's.
Instead they were forced into traditional gender roles of caretaking and babymaking and among a select few older women- if they were mean enough- preaching his doctrine. Although his commanders chaffed under their authority, not least of which because they were old and women, they were forced to accept the Priestesses of Caesar, who enforced a different kind of discipline. Contrary to their image in the Mojave there was a revered place for women within the Legion- advancing bullshit social-Darwinist ideology, thin as it was. They pecked and they prodded and made sure everyone knew that they could not ever possibly hope to live up to the example of mighty Caesar, made sure that everyone in the Legion was always trying to impress their god-king. The old women made sure no one deviated from Caesar's philosophy with their own ideas, buoyed by the promise that in his glorious empire they'd have a piece all to themselves, temples and power and a place. Each Priestess of Caesar, as they trolled the ranks for dissension and set standards for behavior, dreamed of a mighty temple in Caesar's glorious Nova Roma, where they could tear men apart and put them back together in the image they made. In the image of Caesar.
To Operation Remus and the new Caesar they were a nuisance, an impediment that needed to be dealt with by force. Caesar's Priestesses were always a thorn in the side of Hecate's infiltrators, always combative and suspicious of anyone trying to interfere in any way with the Legion, with the way things were, and when the orders came to dispatch them Hecate's spies carried them out with aplomb. Before Ouroboros ever sent out its first detachment of Golden Children and the newly-christened Heralds of Apollo the maenads that were already safely ensconced in Caesar's army began gently culling Caesar's Priestesses. A little bit of poison here, a well-timed accident here, and the old ladies of the Legion that taught Latin and ferreted out blasphemy slowly but steadily faded into the wasteland.
It wasn't strange at all. People died all the time. Especially women, especially women past a certain age. As terrified as the Legionaries and Centurions were of Caesar's crones they were not inclined to investigate possible causes for their suddenly frequent deaths. They didn't even try to find a name for what killed them, which was good, since every death had one name- Hecate. By the time Operation Remus did start sending out the first groups of former Harpys to reconnect with their husbands fathers brothers and sons there were hardly any Priestesses left, and after Caesar died the ones that remained were forced out of their homes in the middle of the night and shot. No one questioned it. The Priestesses, in their diligence to make sure everyone behaved in the way they (and Caesar) deemed acceptable, had made many enemies across the southwest. Caesar had planned it that way. He'd set those ladies up from the start, to be a locus of resentment and hate for his repressive cult, and they all died because of their loyalty to him.
One of Caesar Apollo's first acts as Emperor of the new Empire of Mars was to deify his predecessor Caesar, the man he claimed was his father. Across the four corners wasteland new temples would be built in his honor, where young men would be trained as Legionaries in his name. Though Caesar's Priestesses were gone (to the quiet relief of his subjects), thankfully there was a large population of men who'd been mutilated in their service to the Legion and left behind, but were still fiercely loyal to the man now officially recognized as the manifestation of Mars, God of War. Former castoffs, old soldiers who couldn't fight anymore but still remembered how found new purpose in the Empire, raised to a priestly caste by the new Caesar, alongside some other Legionaries who were skeptical of the new Emperor and might otherwise raise objections if they weren't placated with easy, prestigious positions that removed them from danger and, beneficially, the Legion's hierarchy and direct power within the Empire. With a new religious order the Daughters of Hecate had complete control over Caesar's image and legacy, but with the legitimacy of being enforced by true believers. Men who were perhaps not as good at maintaining social order as the women they replaced, but who served their purpose well enough and had no other options. They were known as the Priests of Mars. Where once there had been a place for old women chosen by Caesar himself there was a new order. They walked on the bones of the old Priestesses, whether they knew it or not. No one thought about the women who had once given voice to Caesar's doctrine. No one cared. The new world was born out of the ashes of the old. Where the Priests of Mars walked they walked on the bones of the old world.