POV third person
In the north, the legionary columns advanced with a regularity that didn't belong to tribal armies or improvised hordes. These were true legions—disciplined, hardened by years of reforms, brutal training, and integration wars. The unification of two full legions—each with its own traditions and tactical structure—created a force so vast that not even the combined strength of the Three United States, at their most desperate moment, could match it during the early days of the campaign. To their enemies, these troops seemed countless: they moved in mobile cohorts, led by centurions who knew exactly when to strike, when to give ground, and when to vanish into the landscape.
At the front were two legates who shared neither ideology nor temperament, but were equally effective. One was an architect of fear—he controlled dozens of tribes through presence alone, using terror as his language. The other was a cold strategist, obsessed with weather, supply routes, and logistical psychology. Together, they turned the north into a map of pressure points, aiming for a rapid internal collapse: to dismantle the Republican structure from its least defended edges before the center could react.
Meanwhile, in the south, the third legate—arguably the most capable of the trio—took on the most thankless and decisive role: to hold the line. His mission wasn't to seize territory, but to pin down the bulk of the enemy. He contained the Shi State's divisions, the paladins of the Brotherhood of Steel, and the armored squadrons of Shady Sands. He wasn't trying to destroy them—only to keep them trapped, busy, and convinced that the south was the main front. Every shell fired there was one that wouldn't land on northern cities. Yet his resistance wasn't passive: he inflicted brutal losses through methodical use of artillery and lightning raids, timed to exploit any tactical weakness.
His troops were equipped with the best the Legion could gather: adapted power armor, self-propelled artillery, and a small but efficient fleet of vertibirds. He knew when to fake a retreat to bait a trap, and when to push the line forward to press a weakness. Though contained, his offensive crept steadily toward The Hub, a vital node of the Republic. But his real success was strategic: by diverting the attention of the Republican high command, he kept troops away from the north—troops that might have stopped the Legion's unstoppable advance across California.
Above, the Legion's air force operated on a different logic. Lacking resources for mass bombing, every strike had to be surgical. Light, fast aircraft flown by well-trained veterans targeted critical points: power plants, weapons depots, radar stations, communication nodes. Their goal wasn't to destroy enemy forces directly, but to bleed the infrastructure that sustained them—like a blade cutting arteries, not muscle. Entire units were left without supplies . Within days, some companies began to desert, driven by starvation or sheer exhaustion.
The impact was immediate. The Republic began to fracture. Member states, isolated and cut off from logistics, started acting independently. Governors declared states of emergency and mobilized their own militias. They no longer followed orders from Shady Sands—they were simply trying to survive. Aid caravans were destroyed before they could arrive. Every reconstruction attempt was bombed before completion. Even maintenance crews became priority targets.
And within that chaos, the traitors operated.
There weren't many, but they were placed where it mattered. Planted during the years of false peace, they wore the uniforms of bureaucrats, technicians, and mid-level officers. Now, following new orders, they altered reports, delayed critical decisions, redirected convoys into ambushes, or simply passed vital information to the enemy. Their actions weren't dramatic—but they were deadly. A lost convoy. An isolated unit. A misinformed general. The cumulative effect was devastating.
But what people feared most wasn't what they could see.
What they feared most was what they couldn't.
The Frumentarii—the Legion's invisible elite—no longer just observed. They punished. Using state-of-the-art optical camouflage, acquired—or stolen—through years of infiltration, they infiltrated fortified bases. They killed in silence. A commander would vanish. A transmitter would go dark. A communications tower would stand empty. No one saw the killers. But everyone heard the same phrase, broadcast over internal frequencies:
Ave, true to Caesar.
Psychological terror wasn't a byproduct—it was part of the design.
The Frumentarii weren't after a conventional victory. Their war was moral. They knew that an army afraid of its own shadow was an army already defeated. And paranoia began to bloom. Soldiers rotated shifts with shattered nerves. They shot at each other by mistake. Some slept with their fingers on the trigger. The threat didn't come from the front—it came from three meters away. From a poorly lit corner. From a radio that turned on by itself.
They didn't know when the next strike would come.
They only knew there would be one.
The Legion's campaign didn't stop. With the northern front completely shattered and the south bogged down in attrition, their advance became a continuous line of conquests. It was in the Navarro region that Lanius discovered something unexpected: the NCR no longer controlled the area.
In its place, an irregular force—made up of elders, youths, and Enclave survivors—had emerged from the shadows of local populations. They had hidden for years, blending among civilians, waiting for a chance. Their equipment was old—often rusted—but still functional. Taking advantage of the Republican withdrawal, they launched a sabotage campaign that decimated the local garrison. Within days, Navarro ceased to be a Republican base and became an insurgent stronghold.
But the real surprise came next: they chose to join the Legion.
It was an unexpected alliance—almost unthinkable in earlier times. But Lanius's pragmatism knew no ideological limits. He saw them as a useful tool. They, in turn, saw in him the only real chance at revenge against a Republic that had marginalized and hunted them after the Enclave's fall. Thus, Navarro became a brutal convergence point—combining the Legion's martial power with the technical knowledge of its new allies.
With his rear secured, Lanius turned his gaze westward.
The Shi State—until then an impenetrable wall even against the Master's supermutants—made a critical strategic mistake: they withdrew all their forces from the southern front to defend their central territory. They believed the Legion's advance on San Francisco could be contained. They were wrong.
Guided by Lanius's hand, the legionaries crossed into Shi territory without resistance. It was there, for the first time, that the Shi people faced the Legion's unmasked brutality. Entire towns were reduced to ashes. Captured populations were chained and sent south in long columns. Watchtowers were toppled, archives destroyed, and local leaders publicly executed as a warning.
And still, San Francisco held.
But Lanius did not strike immediately. He encircled the city, cut off power lines, and destroyed any convoys trying to flee by land. Each day of siege was calculated torment. Inside, the Shi high command scrambled to organize desperate defenses, but they knew time wasn't on their side.
That's when the Crimson Dragons—an elite unit tasked with covert operations within the Shi State—attempted a desperate gambit: assassinate Lanius.
Eight specialists. Experts in stealth, close-quarters combat, and urban warfare. They infiltrated under the cover of night and ash fog, striking directly at the command camp.
But Lanius's strength wasn't built on reputation alone. He wore a newly forged suit of power armor. At his side stood two towering praetorians, permanently on guard. The attack was swift, well-coordinated—and a complete failure.
One by one, the Crimson Dragons fell. The first was cleaved in half before hitting the ground. The second was smashed against a rock so hard his helmet embedded into his skull. Lanius fought like a steel storm, his blade slicing through plating and armor like skin. In less than two minutes, the ground was covered in bodies.
The last two tried to flee. They didn't make it. One died screaming. The other didn't have time to scream.
At dawn, their corpses were hung from the improvised walls of the camp, still in uniform.
When Legate Malpais secured Sac-Town after a short but decisive battle, he did so with a maneuver as simple as it was devastating: he split the NCR in two.
The victory wasn't just territorial—it was structural. By taking control of the logistics center that connected the northern and southern fronts, he left the Republic's military apparatus divided, unable to communicate efficiently, and forced to operate as two isolated entities. Convoys stopped arriving. Commanders stopped receiving orders. Infrastructure built over decades was strangled in a single move. The legions in the north advanced freely. Those in the south were trapped.
And Malpais didn't stop.
With Sac-Town under his banner and the river turned into a wall of iron, his eyes turned to the real prize: Shady Sands—the political, economic, and symbolic heart of the Republic.
The capital.
But as expected, the Republic would not let its soul fall without a fight. With the enemy only days away, Shady Sands mobilized every last resource. A general emergency draft was declared. Recruits were accepted from ages fifteen to sixty. Entire groups of inexperienced teenagers were handed old rifles, while retired veterans were called up once more. Academies were emptied. Factories turned into war workshops. The entire city became a living wall.
But that wasn't all.
The equipment meant for the southern front—intended to replace what was lost in battles against Gaius's Legion—was redirected. Tanks headed for The Hub were hidden in abandoned ranches across the hills. Artillery batteries meant for Boneyard were installed in towns surrounding the capital. Defensive lines were hastily built, reinforcing every path, every crossing, every hill.
Malpais understood exactly what that meant.
He wouldn't be facing just soldiers. Every town between Sac-Town and the capital would become an improvised fortress. Every crossroads, a point of resistance. There would be no clean advance. This would be a war of mobile trenches, of houses turned into bunkers, of farmland burning under crossfire.
And so it was.
Malpais's march toward Shady Sands was unlike any other offensive in the campaign. Every town he tried to cross became a bloodbath. Streets once quiet were now littered with civilian corpses in improvised uniforms. Mounted machine guns swept through avenues, while homemade artillery—strapped to tractors or salvaged junk—hammered his flanks with unexpected ferocity.
Legate Malpais did not retreat. No matter how strong the defense, he crushed it. But the cost was high. The path was no open road—it was a mountain range, every ridge a lethal trap. The Legion bled with every kilometer. And still, it advanced.
Because Malpais knew that the battle for Shady Sands wouldn't be won with elegance or speed.
It would be won with persistence.
With iron.
With fire.