POV of NCR citizen
I don't know how much longer we're going to last.
Prices go up every week. Food, water, fuel... even secondhand clothes sold in the dusty markets on the outskirts have become less and less affordable. Caravans arrive less frequently. They bring fewer goods, charge more. Everything costs more now. What used to be part of everyday life has become a luxury from the past.
The government has been dismantling the brahmin barons—those same men who for years sat comfortably on their ranches and in the Senate halls, lining their pockets with government contracts while the rest of us scraped by on crumbs. Now they're being accused of collusion with the Kimball administration, especially for their role in the Mojave campaign. That damned campaign didn't just ruin our finances; it cost thousands of NCR lives. My nephew among them.
The scandal broke like a rotting wound. The hearings were public. Yelling, insults, threats. Crowds outside the Capitol demanding justice. And justice came on its own.
They say General Lee Oliver, the same one who led the Mojave front, blew his brains out days before being officially found guilty of gross negligence. There were reports, warnings from scouts, safer plans. All ignored so he could shine brighter. All buried. Too late by the time the Legion hit us with everything.
And Kimball… Kimball didn't fare much better than his general.
A mob lynched him in Shady Sands. Furious parents, ex-soldiers, widows, broken veterans. They caught him on a surprise visit, with barely a handful of guards. They couldn't stop it. The crowd dragged him out, beat him, and hung him in front of the old administration center like it would fix anything about the chaos his corrupt administration caused.
The new government under President Murphy is doing what it can. You can see that, a little. They're seizing the barons' wealth, selling off their lands, their caravans, their dirty contracts with the high command. With that, they're barely managing to pay the war reparations imposed by the Legion. A desperate attempt to keep them from crossing the Colorado again—this time, to conquer California.
But there are things not even Murphy can fix easily.
Inflation is out of control. Kimball never stopped running the magic money printer.
Years of reckless military spending, institutional corruption, and a never-ending war that devoured every gram of gold we had. Now paper money is worth less every day.
And what does have value—food, water, fuel—is heavily rationed and painfully scarce.
But the biggest issue is water.
Without Hoover Dam, our reserves collapsed. There's not enough to keep the massive brahmin herds alive, and they were the backbone of our food supply, our trade, our industry. The barons knew this, but they never did anything. They drained every aquifer and dried up every lake to keep their herds watered.
Now the herds are dying one after another. And with them, meat vanishes. Leather becomes rare. Caravans grind to a halt.
And we... we just count the days, hoping this nightmare ends somehow.
For the first time in a long time, the NCR has been forced to look outward—and downward. Toward the Wastes. Toward everything surrounding us.
Groups are forming to hunt anything that moves: radroaches, geckos, night stalkers... even young deathclaws, if someone's bold enough. Meat is meat. No one asks anymore if it had scales, fangs, claws, or could tear off your leg with one swipe. If it can be cooked, it's food.
Out on the edges of town, makeshift hunter stalls are popping up, selling meat from creatures we used to avoid like plague. Now, it's the only thing we can afford, if we're lucky. If we get there before it runs out.
I lost my job at a furniture factory, one of many that shut down when the government stopped subsidizing civilian production. No more orders. No more wood shipments. No money to pay wages. Just a long, silent line for ration coupons, hoping there's still something left at the end of the day.
I never imagined this. I was never a soldier. I wasn't born in the outer territories or raised in a fort. I was born in a city with electric lights, schools, a public library where I read my first books. And yet... there I was, every morning, heading out with my grandfather's rusty old Winchester, three bullets in my pocket, and a knife in case I missed all three shots.
We hunted in groups at first, but most didn't trust each other. The groups fell apart fast. The land was full of beasts, raiders, and desperate people who'd do anything for a bit of meat. Sometimes it was hard to tell which was more dangerous.
Some nights, if I came back with a chunk of meat or something I could trade for bread, my daughter hugged me like I was a hero. Like she didn't know I nearly died twice that day for something that would barely feed us for another day.
One day—one of the few when luck seemed to remember me—I managed to hunt two geckos. One went down with a clean shot. The other… it was a dirty fight. I stabbed it over and over until it stopped moving. I walked away with a slashed arm and a jacket in rags. But I did it. Meat for several days. Maybe something to barter with.
Coming back to the neighborhood, blood dry on my hands and smoke clinging to my clothes, I saw something I didn't expect.
Joel, a skinny neighbor always hiding under a filthy rag, was in an alley selling fresh vegetables and canned food. Stuff you don't even see in ration markets anymore. Beans, apples, processed meat… even cans of some kind of sea animal.
I didn't ask questions. Not in times like these. The less you knew, the better you slept. But as I packed the cans into my backpack, pressing them down like they were gold, the doubt was already eating at me. If this came from the army or a looted convoy, I could end up in trouble far bigger than the price of a hot meal.
I stepped a little closer, pretending not to care, my stomach in knots.
"Where did you get it?" I asked, this time looking him straight in the eye. I didn't want to end up chewing on something that could land me in prison and leave my family unprotected.
Joel lowered his voice and glanced around, like the walls might be listening.
"From the Legion... I bribed the border guards. Pretended to be a merchant. Showed some old papers and they let me through. I used my family's jewelry to buy everything I could in what used to be Vegas."
He paused for a second, swallowed, and lowered his voice even more.
"They've got these huge facilities over there, full skyscrapers turned into vertical farms. They grow vegetables, raise fish. They're producing more than they consume, so food is cheap. Really cheap. They've got more than they need. Who would've thought those rapist bastards knew how to farm in the middle of the desert."
I looked at one of the cans again, this time more closely. It was sealed, clean, with a printed label in that strange language the Legion barbarians use. I didn't recognize the brand, but it looked new. Modern.
"Is it safe?" I asked, not bothering to hide my doubt.
"I ate it. I'm still here. And I wasn't the only one," Joel said, shrugging. "There are more people doing the same. I can tell you, almost for sure, there's no radiation. I think I saw a high-ranking Legion officer eating the same vegetables." He nodded like that was enough proof.
I said nothing. Just zipped the backpack, slung it over my shoulder, and walked away without looking back.
I don't know what hurt more: that the food came from the Legion... or that it was the only way my daughter would get dinner that night. Food without radiation, without fungus, without that metallic taste of expired rations you chew without thinking, the kind they hand out at ration centers.
Days went by, and Joel started making a living off it. Smuggling. He got in deep. Crossed the border, bribed whoever he had to, and came back each week with more supplies. Cans, cereals, dried fruits, even freshly made protein bars. People started asking for him by name. He was no longer "that guy in the dirty rag." He was Joel. The one who brought the good stuff. Because Legion food was the best a regular person could get—unless you had ties to the upper ranks who could still access the real harvests.
But the strangest thing wasn't what he brought. It was what he talked about. Every day, the city the barbarians had renamed New Rome grew faster and faster.
He said the Legion's city—now standing where New Vegas once was—had no trace left of the old world. No gambling, no flashing lights, no neon signs flickering among ruins. All of that was gone.
According to him, they demolished everything. The casinos, the hotels, even the old signs. All reduced to rubble.
And on those foundations, they built something new. Towers. A working aqueduct. Hospitals. Housing for Legion war veterans, homes for civilians. If anyone remembered a newsreel about the old city, they had to forget it—because it was unrecognizable now.
He said the city didn't sleep. Crews worked around the clock. You could hear the machines, steel dropping, concrete rising. Neighborhoods connected by a subway, already operating in some sectors.
And he said it like it was the most normal thing in the world. Like it made sense that the Legion—the same Legion we were taught to hate—was building a functioning city while we were out here hunting geckos with rusted knives. At what point did we become the tribals, while they kept moving forward?
Joel told us the Legion had started freeing slaves, turning them into freedmen. They were the ones now living in the new districts. But even so, the city was... half empty. Half alive. Clean streets, but quiet. Concrete towers waiting for hands to work them. Open doors with no one walking in.
And then he dropped something unexpected.
They offered him a job. Joel. In one of the Legion's farms—they were short on labor.
"It's not fully finished yet... but some levels are already running, crops growing. They need people, even the Legion doesn't have enough workers for all the jobs popping up in that new city," he told us one night while smoking in the alley, that strange mix of excitement and fear flickering in his eyes.
The offer was solid, all things considered. They'd give him an apartment in the city—supposedly four rooms, with a bathroom, connected to a plumbing system. He'd pay for it through his wages. They'd ignore the fact he was once an NCR citizen, just mark him down as a city resident.
The problem was—what if it was a lie? If this was a trap to get him to cross the border, bring his whole family, and enslave them... it was a well-built one. And it was hard to tell if the offer was real.
But every time he went and came back, he talked about markets with fresh products. New neighborhoods. People being hired for civilian posts—farms, transport, public works. He spoke with a certainty that made it sound real. Especially when he finally saw an NCR citizen now living under Legion rule.
And the man's answer was simple. "You're not truly free—but you have food, water, healthcare, and safety... instead of the freedom to starve to death."
By the end of that week, Joel made his decision.
He gathered his wife, his two kids, a couple of blankets, and an old car that still ran. Sold what little he had left. Exchanged some of his goods for gold and silver—the only currencies still worth anything on both sides of the border. He'd scraped together just enough. Enough to pass as an honest merchant.
He didn't say much. Just said goodbye to a few neighbors, left some canned food with Mrs. Norma—the widow who lived alone in the cracked apartment block—and headed east with his family.
The sun was rising when we saw him for the last time, disappearing down the old caravan road.