hc that ncr fashion trends will be clothes slowly morphing back from the future (FO1) to the 1940-50s to the 1920s. since their uniforms are already half way there by F:NV anyway
in 2281 NCR Brahmin Baron is a male coded activity and Caravan/Company owner is female coded. according to our sample size of 5.
(i just think it's inspiring how 3/3 of the people involved in the Cassidy Caravans corporate conspiracy are literally girlbosses. girlboss on girlboss violence. girl small business boss on girl mob boss and girl corporate boss violence? but also i don't think we ever get mention of a female Baron. hence, Brahmins are for boys and Capital is for girls. why am i reinventing gender roles in 2281 post America)
im a bonafide ncr hater (no real reason, i just didn't connect with them in either of the games they feature heavily in) but im reading your posts and its like... damn... maybe i just need to open my eyes and heart... genuinely inspired me to do another ncr run in nv just to try again. your mind
haha thanks! the thing about the ncr, for me, is that what is shown and what is told and what is implied are all a bit different, and we don't really spend enough time in there to really know what it's like. so there's a lot of room for headcanoning and worldbuilding, esp considering how it's supposed to be a closest thing to a modern nation in 2281, so there's a lot of blank space you can fill in yourself.
another thing is that im drawn to big, bureaucratic systems-- it's why i probably would've been an enclave fan if they had more lore and why my #2 is actually Legion instead of, well, literally everyone else. like i dont talk about the Legion as much but that's bc they give me less material to work with. the NCR has an actual history that we are there for for 3 whole games, so im drawn far more to them
the NCR has a tiny tiny population, but it's still bigger than everyone else's, so in terms of like culture, wealth, technology, etc, they have a lot of things they can do that is simply harder in smaller less organised countries. i guess if you see them for less for how they are explicitly shown but what they could be, what they already *must* be given all the other facts about them, you might see what im seeing
hope i convert you for real and good luck on your new run!
brainstorming new NCR surnames that will come to exist after the War:
type a: typical patronymic (Thompson, Richardson, Janssen, etc), except created post-apocalypse, meaning the names stuck at the front are sometimes female names, nicknames, or even -kid, or -daughter
example: Hub, Wastelands, East, Tribal, Newreno, Vault. George Fromreno’s family has been living in Redding for the past three generations but his surname-less grandfather got stuck with one nickname and now it’s permanent to all his descendants. Veronica Vault’s great great grandmother still has her old Vault suit in her attic somewhere, but nobody has been able to find it yet. Veronica herself has been inside a Vault exactly once in that hotel in New Vegas
type c: physical attributes
example: Smoothskin, One-eye, Blonde. Lily Smoothskin grew up around ghouls and hundreds of years later all her descendants share her moniker
type d: surnames that people created for themselves. in this headcanon the NCR decided to force everyone to get a surname for census + cultural “reformation” purposes after Tandi died. values and ideas.
example: literally anything a New Californian or a Wasteland immigrant could decide to name themselves after. Sequoia. Fast. Republic. etc. Cory Bearhead keeps getting mistaken for an ex-tribal even though his father, who gave him that name, was a hyperpatriotic chauvanist.
type e: normal pre-War surnames, but was only taken after the originally surname-less individual was forced to decide on a family name for aforementioned government reasons
example: any Anglo-American surname that was common before the War. Johnson. Smith. John P. Smith is a tribal who ended up gaining New Californian citizenship but didn’t want to deal with name-based discrimination by taking up a flashy surname. He used to be called Peace-Upon-The-Shore. The P stands for Peace, but he doesn’t write that on his resume.
type f: job names that wasn’t really prominent when the usual Anglo surnames started becoming a thing back in the olden days
example: Caravaneer, Doctor, Follower, Engineer, Prospector. Xavier Alex Follower joined the OSI and all his coworkers keep making fun of his name.
The New California mule deer is a staple of the post-war woodlands and high country. They average around 40 inches in height at the shoulder and measure approximately 57 inches in total length, weighing in around 150 pounds in females and 200 pounds in males.
Coloration
The coat color of the California mule deer undergoes seasonal changes, allowing it to adapt to different environmental conditions. In the warmer months, their coat tends to be a lighter, reddish-brown shade, which helps them blend into the dry, sunlit landscapes. During the colder months, the coat becomes a darker, more muted brown, offering better camouflage in the denser, shadowed terrain and against the backdrop of leafless trees or snow. These seasonal changes in coat color are essential for evading predators.
Predation
They are common prey to wolves, coyotes, feral dogs, and wildcats. New California molerats prey on the young.
Mutation
They are prone to minor to serious mutation, with fully mutation-free individuals being rare. Common expressions include excess limbs, irregular tines, bulging eyes, and cleft palate.
Fawning and Birth Complications
Gestation runs roughly the same length as pre-war whitetail and mule deer stock, but parturition is a far riskier affair than it once was. Does carrying fawns with polymelia (supernumerary limbs) frequently experience difficult, prolonged labor, as malformed fawns can present poorly in the birth canal — extra forelimbs or hindquarters tangling or failing to align properly for delivery. Stillbirths and doe mortality from obstructed labor are accordingly higher than pre-war baselines, and homesteaders familiar with deer sign have learned to recognize a "hard drop" by the trampled, blood-churned ground where a doe has struggled through an extended birth.
Fawns that survive delivery with extra limbs face mixed outcomes. Vestigial or partial extra legs are sometimes shed or atrophy within the first weeks of life, never bearing weight. Fully formed supernumerary limbs, by contrast, tend to persist into adulthood, and while they rarely prevent a deer from walking or running, they often throw off gait and stamina, leaving affected individuals slower and easier prey for wolves, coyotes, and wildcats — a culling pressure that, paradoxically, keeps the trait from spreading unchecked through some local populations even as it reappears generation after generation elsewhere.
Multiple fawn litters compound the risk further, as a doe's limited birth canal capacity combined with even one malformed fawn can complicate delivery of healthy littermates as well.
Agricultural Impact
They are the bane of small homesteaders' gardens and Agri-Barons alike, feeding on saplings, maize, and cabbages.
Parasites and Disease
They are also prone to passing on parasites to livestock, such as woodtick, which is extremely common throughout their habitat. Additionally, lungworms and the nasal botfly will enter and parasitize the deer's lungs and nasal passageways. Parasitic eye worms of the genus Thelazia have also been found parasitizing the deer.
finding out the Brotherhood is just a offshoot descendant of the U.S. army explained so many things about them. so the Enclave and the BoS came from the same source. me when the BoS was made by war criminals who couldn't even make it high enough to be calling the shots. many implications
so the NCR Ranger armour are beetles/bugs, the Enclave power armour are vultures, the BoS armour look like what, steel cans? they do be looking the most like knights, actually
hsumoore au where it's Race to Berlin except it's Race to New Rome and instead of Zhukov vs Konev it's Moore vs Hsu.
i guess in this au Barbarossa is Legion victory in Hoover Dam 2 and the subsequent push west. and the NCR is somehow both the USA and the USSR at the same time. (the NCR Lend-Leases itself)
who's Stalin. definitely not Kimball bc he got kicked out when he lost the Dam. unnamed clerk in the NCR bureaucratic apparatus that manages to fill in all the unelected positions with her cronies before anyone realises what she's doing
every time i see the playing card early development pic of col. moore it's so fucking funny to me because Who is that woman. that's a propaganda lady from wwii. like not even wwi or anything, specifically wwii. that's a whole different person. she freaks me out more than crocker's old pic, which is saying something. cursed white crocker at least does look like he could have the same personality as normal dennis crocker.
the playing card ver. of cassandra moore is the actress they get to play her in a revisionist period film like 50 years later. she has two scenes, no speaking lines, and they put her in there as an easter egg. she glares menacingly over actor lee oliver's shoulder as lee oliver the character heroically encourages the main character to go behead some legionaries. movie oliver is taller than movie moore, another of the film's many historical inaccuracies
putting Fallout dates into perspective: pt. 2, NCR history version
Tandi was born in 2145 and came to power in 2196, which if we set the time of Fallout: New Vegas (2281) as our standard for the present (2026), it means Tandi was born in 1890 and came to power in 1941, and died in 1993.
1993 is the year George H. W. Bush's presidency ended, for context. 1941 is, well, self-explanatory, but Pearl Harbor happened in '41.
anyway so she was already 51 when she became president, which isn't *old* for a leader but it isn't young either. it's hard to imagine her as 51. what did she do between those years? Aradesh must've been in charge the whole time. did she have... like, a job? surely she must've had one, she's energetic and clearly ambitious.
for context Ho Chi Minh, Charles de Gaulle, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Agatha Christie were all born in 1890. Ho Chi Minha and Eisenhower both died in 1969. De Gaulle died in 1970 and Agatha Christie outlasted all of them in 1976. but apparently Tandi died in 1993 with her mind more-or-less intact, so that is pretty crazy.
Aradesh himself served from 2189 to 2196. seven years, really a drop in the bucket compared to Tandi's 52. amazing how the length of her life when she was president and time when she wasn't is almost equal in length. regardless, 2189 compared to 2281 what 1934 is to 2026. to the Courier, the NCR is as old as any nation born in 1934. so basically, older than basically every post-colonial republic.
so 1934-1941 Aradesh. 1941-1993 Tandi. then you get Joanna Tibbett for five years, 1993 to 1998. basically what if Bill Clinton was a one-term president. then it's Wendell Peterson for twenty years, so 1998 to 2018. which is fucking insane by the way. there are actual dictators out there who never made it to 20.
then Aaron Kimball mysteriously kicks him out in two months. Peterson must've pissed someone off big time for that to happen, considering how entrenched he must've been to NCR politics by that point.
but anyway so Kimball's been serving for the past 8 years, basically. also he's 48 by the time of the game, so he was 40?? when he first served? damn. the man's young, that's crazy. JFK was 43 when he became president and everyone called him a child. Emmanuel Macron was 39 and he came to power in 2017, so it actually kind of fits up. Macron-Kimball parallel when.
anyway yeah FO1 happened 120 years before F:NV, so by our standards it happened in 1906. puts some things into perspective, that one. yeah and the nuclear holocaust was 2077, so 1822 for us. Congress of Vienna was in 1815 for context. so that's fucked up lol.
i headcanon that at some point Shady Sands forced every citizen to get last names for both culture and census purposes.
(if you ask me under which administration i'd actually say Tibbett, because idk she gives off 19th century Liberal vibes, but it could just as well be Peterson).
and ever since it must've been kind of weird how their two most important leaders (who were literally father-daughter btw) never felt the need to get one.
it's not a likely hc considering how white all the canon names are but i wish they did it thai style where everyone has to have a different surname
#this actually makes so much sense given how we don't have full names for many of the Fallout 1 and 2 characters#you'd think important figures like Tandi Aradesh and Seth would have well known full names#but it's like people simply didn't have surnames back then
yeah idk why i didn't also mention Seth. nobody refers to political/historical figures by their first names. like yeah Tandi is a pretty distinctive name but nobody calls Abe Lincoln 'President Abraham' that would be crazy. if they had surnames they'd call them by their surnames.
anyway headcanon that New California bestows the last name 'President' to Tandi and Aradesh years after Tandi dies. yeah Tandi President. that's her full name. Tandi and Aradesh President. the President family. meet the Presidents.
brainstorming fake NCR medical schools and ranking them
#2 Angel's Boneyard Medical University (ABMU)
canon, run by the Followers of the Apocalypse
#1 Los Angeles University of Science, Technology and Medicine (LAUSTM)
rival to ABMU, run by the OSI. using specifically the pre-War name of the city is lowk intentional, the specific OSI personnel who looked over its creation was one of the US nostalgic ones. in the NCR of 2281, of course, Los Angeles is the name of the state and Angel's Boneyard is the name of the city. LAUSTM has been the #1 medical school for years but they still have a chip in their shoulder about the FoA hospital having more patients (it has more patients because it's free...)
#3 University of New California, Vault City, School of Medicine (UNC Vault City, or UNCVC)
the VC campus of the publicly-run University of New California network. vaguely inspired by the University of California system. the original building was a repurposed old school that was built in Vault City's pre-NCR days, but the campus had to move outside the city walls after UNC VC grew too large.
#4 Hub National University, School of Medicine (HNU)
the HNU is one the most prestigious schools in the country, though its medical school is not as good as those in the Boneyard. still pretty hard to get into. most people don't know this but the HNU medical school is exactly one year older than ABMU, making it the oldest medical school in the country
#5 Tibbett Institute of Life Sciences, School of Human Medicine (TILS)
the TILS is more focused on agronomics research than producing doctors, but they've been branching out into Human Medicine after their acquisition of Dayglow Medical College (which was, despite its name, not actually in the city of Dayglow but a neighboring lesser-known barely-city of Glowtown). TILS was indeed named after Joanna Tibbett while she was Vice-President. in this headcanon Tibbett, a biologist by training, helped give funding to the school because she had a vague interest in sponsoring her former scientific colleagues, though she never followed up on it with anything like the OSI, due to her brief Followers past making it hard for her to imagine a non-private, non-volunteer-based organisation for science and medicine.
this means from the start TILS had quite a lot of FoA and former FoA staff working for it. under Kimball, TILS has slowly grown closer and closer to the OSI and its more nationalist mission despite its originally Followers-majority board)
#6 Shi Huang Di University of San Francisco, College of Medicine (SUSF)
most New Californians assume it's run by the Shi, but it was actually made by Shi-educated New Californian citizens rather than the Shi themselves. focused more on engineering than medicine, which is why it ranks relatively so low. in engineering it rivals the New Californian Institue of Technology (NCIT) in prestige
#7 Maxson State University, School of Medicine (MSU)
it's a fine school, but they're perpetually strapped for cash. Maxson doesn't really have an industry, and their dorms are not big enough to fit their entire school body even though it's basically in the middle of nowhere. but as far as 'schools in Maxson' go, it's the best you will get. its medical school is actually considered its second most famous major, after it's School of Packaging. (-> 4th wall joke. apparently Michigan State Uni is famous for packaging..?)
ghoul-only or ghoul-majority towns are probably pretty common across the Wastelands. and you'd think they'd all get along but you need to remember that these guys have an age distribution of 20ish-200+. i think atp the old ghouls have probably diverged culturally enough from the rest of the Wasteland to be distinct and the younger ghouls have a hard time acclimating
you gotta appreciate how everyone in the Mojave has something Weird about them. especially the NCR. they have an Ambient Freakishness to them that probably comes from being formerly a semi-normal citizen in a semi-normal modern republic being banished into a Wasteland where your enemies are LARPing as Roman imperials and Las Vegas is run by a previously thought dead pre-War tycoon. i think they all lose parts of their sanity to preserve the remaining ones. or maybe they got sent out to the Nowhere Front because they were so stand-offish back home
how many ambassadors do you think the NCR Foreign Affairs Ministry even has? it can't just be Crocker.
maybe one for the Shi, a handful each for various major trading partners along the northern and southern border, perhaps a few for major tribal/city states all the way out into the American midwest as outreach to convince them to ally against the Legion... (they've done it with the Desert Rangers already, so they're obviously capable of good diplomacy if they want to be)
they will def send one to the Boomers if the Courier gets them to help or stay neutral, maaaaybe even as a good faith mission, but i think the Caravan companies will be faster in trying to wheedle out their tech secrets
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