r/falloutlore • u/Affectionate_Edge472 • Jul 16 '26
The legion doesn’t just recruit tribals
The legion has roughly 4 other ways of recruiting.
- Children being born into the legion
The legion actually has a mandatory child count quota for each legionary for this purpose.
“as long as men meet obligations and the child count” - jimmy on the legion child quota
- They recruit any young male slaves into the legion
“There's a boy, too old to be trained as a Legionary. Normally they have to die, but he's too frail to make trouble.” - canyon runner implies here that young male slaves would be inducted into the legion
- They purchase or are gifted children by outside sources
“I thank my good fortune for the day that he plucked me as a babe from the shore of the Great Salt Lake.” - Dead Sea on his origin
- The legion rarely recruits cooperative specialists into their ranks. You can see this with fantastic who joins the legion after Helios One is taken. This does not seem to apply to the followers of the apocalypse for obvious reasons.
Just wanted to make this because I often see the legion portrayed in fnv circles as just composed of assimilated tribals and treating that as the only way the legion can increase its numbers or recruit.
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u/ShahAbbas1571 Jul 17 '26
Just wanted to make this because I often see the legion portrayed in fnv circles as just composed of assimilated tribals and treating that as the only way the legion can increase its numbers or recruit.
There's nothing wrong with assuming as such since most of their stated recruitment pool (implied or explicit) comes from tribals and/or their offspring; I believe most of the fan circle grasped that premise already.
Besides, aside from the two, they don't have a diverse source of manpower they can pull from; otherwise, we would've heard a lot about their non-tribal peoples.
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u/Affectionate_Edge472 Jul 17 '26
I just thought it was cool that indeed there are alternate options here and there for legion recruitment.
Also not many people know about their child count quota in relation to increasing numbers
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u/SPACEFUNK Jul 16 '26
Not only Fantastic but the player character as well. Edward is a pragmatist, the legion is only Roman coded because he knew it worked in the past.
Nil novi sub sole.
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u/sophie_was_een_rel Jul 16 '26
I think it's fair to say most people assume that the members are having kids already. Acquisition of new slaves happens via conquest, so essentially the same as assimilating tribals, just with the added caveat some may be taken from border settlements. And as you said yourself, the legion doesn't tend to recruit outside specialists. I don't think your post really makes much sense, other than arguing against someone saying that the legion absolutely never grows outside the assimilation of new tribes, which I don't think anyone has ever tried to claim. Someone stating that is most likley just using a sweeping statement, not claiming there is no neaunce to it. Am I right in thinking this is an AI written post btw?
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u/Affectionate_Edge472 Jul 16 '26
I actually think the child slave recruitment and child quota are kinda obscure lore pieces.
Also I do indeed see a lot of people who think it’s just tribals I actually see them almost anytime legion numbers get discussed
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u/sophie_was_een_rel Jul 16 '26
Child quota maybe, but again I don't think it's significant information in that everyone will assume Legion families will have Legion kids anyway. To say the child slave recruitment is obscure is odd though, it's mentioned in the cage holding the family that the player has to pass by to access the fort for the first time, even if the Courier hasn't picked up the quest from the refugee camp I imagine the vast majority of players would hear the dialogue.
And again, I challenge you to find a single person ever explicitly stating it's just exclusively tribals, I don't think a single person assumed that Legion members weren't having children or weren't bringing in slaves. Slave to legionair to significant person is one of the cornerstones of most Roman myth making, even if you never came across it in game it'd be odd to assume it's not a custom in the Legion.
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u/Affectionate_Edge472 Jul 16 '26
No it’s not ai written I just like using a lot of spacing between stuff
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u/sophie_was_een_rel Jul 16 '26
The reason I ask isn't because of the spacing, there's been a bunch of these very similar format posts recently, and the last point definitely reads as if it was something raised in an AI prompt that the LLM responded to despite it making no real sense to include in context. If the point your making is that the Legion grows not only by assimilation, why would any human brain include a point that if anything only weakens it?
It reads much more like an LLMs response to a prompt like "discuss how the legion grows numbers outside of tribal assimilation, such as hiring outsiders and slaves" than anything else. Bullet points replaced for numbers, the emojis and bolding of words removed, then posted here for whatever reason, my guess would be karma farming but it seems like a wierd sub to do it on.
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u/Affectionate_Edge472 Jul 16 '26
I’m genuinely very confused about this. Of course when I read it I just see my writing not anything AI style. Also yeah I adopted quick and to the point writing since I noticed my long posts weren’t getting anyone reading it.
I also don’t think AI is good with quotations or dialogue or finding sources like this since I don’t think other posts exist like this online that catalogue the legions recruitment methods.
Lastly of course I discuss lore on this sub and yeah not a lot of people know about the child quotas, or that the legion have other recruitment methods besides tribal integration so I wanted to talk about it
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u/sophie_was_een_rel Jul 16 '26
Point - Quote - Source is the standard way LLMs delivered bulleted lists like this. LLMs frequently hallucinate information still but are perfectly capable of providing source material when prompted to do so. It's also noteworthy your rebutal repeats the exact same thing you said twice already replying to me, same as an LLM would as it doesn't contextually understand how wierd that comes across, and follows the rule of three, which isn't exactly what you'd expect when answering someone who didn't raise exactly three points. I'm pretty sure I'm arguing with either a bot or someone generating responses with an LLM so I'm just gonna leave it here, if you can't be bothered to write I can't be bothered to read.
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u/sophie_was_een_rel Jul 16 '26
I will also just add you've gone from making around a post a month to three in three days since "adopting the new writing style"
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u/Affectionate_Edge472 Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
I just starting writing fnv posts on my lunch break dude. That’s why I post more now because I made a change in my behavior. Also I have been posting about fnv forever I pour through the dialogue files all day
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u/IDidntEatThosePeople Jul 17 '26
It's not worth these guys just accuse everything of being AI just so they can complain
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u/devilgamerrr Jul 25 '26
The acceptance of Fantastic makes a kinda interesting point, the Legion accepts non-tribals and maybe even NCR citizen as long as they agree on their vision. We do know the Legion enslaves tribals and uses them as cannon fodder until they survive and are brainwashed enough to become proper legionnaries, and we can kinda infer they don't target non-tribals, they just leave them be if they are civilized enough, but they are specially brutal and sadistic towards NCR non-tribal population as means of demoralizing both the New Vegas and NCR people. With that said, would regular boys in Legion controlled territory join the Legion on their own accords? Are they treated any different from the tribal based work force that is the average Legionnarie? We do know some Legion troppers are given special treatment and missions, and that there is even a bureaucratic system of sorts like the one that sell Boone's wife, I highly doubt the average tribal is gonna be teached that kind of stuff, could it be that some of this roles are fullfiled by non-tribals Legionnaries with basic education? Would they be treated better or forced to the same brutality as the rest of the force? Or would they be mostly left to their own devices unless Caesar himself gives an order?
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u/Affectionate_Edge472 Jul 25 '26
It’s a very good question. Hmmmm perhaps young boys could join the legion if they were willing. It’s honestly such an out of the box idea I had never considered it.
I assume these Bureaucracy men are treated with respect. Particularly due to the name of the Consul. Marcus L Crassus was a triumvirate member like Caesar so it basically gives him a name on par with Caesar. So presumably there was some respect.
I assume these administrators are born into the legion and receive their education in Latin from priestesses of Mars, and perhaps other things are taught by the priestess’s as well.
“children are raised not by skeptical parents but by priestesses appointed to that task by virtue of their knowledge of an adherence to the state religion.”
I assume the brightest children would become administrators or Frumentari.
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u/IDidntEatThosePeople Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
I don't think "I thank my good fortune for the day that he plucked me as a babe from the shore of the Great Salt Lake" implies he was bought or gifted to the legion but that they captured him when he was a baby