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Fortification Hill (named The Fort in the Pip-Boy) is a vast and heavily fortified base of Caesar's Legion on the east bank of the Colorado River.
Background[]
Here the Legion is preparing for its second assault on the NCR at Hoover Dam. This is also the location where the Platinum chip is used to install the upgrades to the Securitrons, as the fort is built above Mr. House's secret bunker. Caesar himself is stationed here, along with his Praetorian guards, as well as the bulk of his armies in preparation for the upcoming battle.
Layout[]
To reach the fort, you must use the barge at Cottonwood Cove. However, you can not take the barge until certain point of game. You must either be invited either when exiting The Tops after completing Ring-a-Ding-Ding!, Vulpes Inculta (or Alerio, if you have already killed Vulpes, who will comment on this) will be waiting outside, or you have to progress For the Republic, Part 2 to the part where you report to Colonel Moore that you have dealt with the Great Khans. If you have not yet been invited, the guards at the Fort may be hostile. If you travel to Cottonwood Cove with Boone he will immediately attack all legionaries on sight, causing them to turn on you. This will happen even if you have been invited.
On either side of the entrance are sleeping tents. To the north of the entrance past the tents there is a small bar. In the center of the camp are the Arena and Caesar's Tent. To the Southwest, there are more tents, another bar, and the weather monitoring station, which includes Mr. House's secret bunker.
Legion arena[]
Main article: Legion arena
The Legion Arena is a small pit made of walls of scrap metal put together to form a makeshift Colosseum. Here the Courier, if male, can fight slaves to the death for the amusement of Caesar's legionnaires. A female courier will be told they are not allowed to fight in the arena and will not have this option, although they may still fight Benny in it if they chose.
Buildings[]
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Inhabitants[]
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Notable loot[]
- 2000 caps, a power fist, and a T-45d power helmet in the Very Hard locked footlocker in Caesar's room.
- When arriving at the fort, towards the North East there is a trench. Continuing along this trench until you reach the end, you will find a 500 bulk 5mm round.
- Lupa's brain (used during Nothin' But a Hound Dog). You must kill Lupa for her brain. You may speak to Antony, who is standing beside her, to arrange an arena fight with Lupa. Alternatively, you may attack Lupa where she stands, but it will turn everyone at the camp hostile. Lupa's brain increases Rex's DT by 10.
- Caesar's armor.
- Displacer glove, used by Caesar himself.
- Assuming he hasn't yet been killed or chosen to be crucified by the player, Benny will have his suit and Maria, a unique 9mm pistol
- There is a first aid box laying behind a bush on the North-East side of the wall after the first slope.
Related quests[]
- Render Unto Caesar
- The House Always Wins
- I Hear You Knocking
- I Put a Spell on You
- The Finger of Suspicion
- Wild Card: You and What Army?
- A Trusted Aide
- Powder to the People
- Saving (or Savaging) Sergeant Teddy
- Laurifer Gladiator
- Silus Treatment
Notes[]
- You may choose to fight Benny to the death in the Arena, both of you will have machetes. He will have Maria on him when he is dead.
- The Legionary guarding the entrance to Robert House's bunker pronounces Caesar with a soft "c" sound, unlike all the other Legionaries who use a hard "k" sound.
- There is a Museum of Technology poster in the first room of the weather monitoring station.
- The location is actually far larger than the area that can be accessed by the player. From various locations throughout the camp you can see that the tents of the Legion stretch out far across the land surrounding the camp, though the gates to these areas are marked as inaccessible.
- If you sneak kill the guard at the gate (the one who confiscates your weapons), your weapons will not be confiscated on subsequent visits.
- Lupa's dead body will remain in the arena.
- Attacking the training dummies with a power fist will cause blood to spew out of them.
- You can't fight in the arena if you're a female.
- There is an NCR Trooper crucified to your left when you enter the gate.
- There's no way, with the exception of console commands, glitching, or Fast travel (if you have already discovered the location) to get to The Fort rather than taking the boat from Cottonwood Cove.
- The Legion has a strict policy of eradicating all use of drugs and alcohol among their men. Despite this, Legion Officers and troops around the camp may be seen drinking beer.
Behind the scenes[]
- There are the remnants of a cut subplot involving Siri. It seems she would originally be located near the Brahmin pen (or at least near a brahmin somewhere). The player could ask her about a dead brahmin, which seems to have died of some disease. You could convince her to give you the meat. Once the meat had been obtained, it was then possible to poison the Legion's stew, as visible in the leftover messages FortPotMsg and FortDogBowlMsg. Weirdly the "infected brahmin meat" item was later moved to the ultraluxe. The quest still cannot be completed, however, as there are no objects to put the meat in. The script for adding the poison to the food also does nothing, the outcome part was never finished. It seems the story event VStoryEventLegionDogsKilled is possibly referring to the player poisoning the dogs here (and presumably this somehow carrying on to elsewhere?). There is full dialogue for the aftermath of this event in the game, but seemingly no way to trigger it. The Nightkin dialogue for the event is perhaps most revealing: "Head voices wonder... why bull doggies die?" Although the nightkin are of course insane, it still suggests there is some kind of mystery to the event, and perhaps it is caused by a disease spread from dog to dog by the player's actions (siri's cut dialogue suggests that there is indeed something "infectious" about the meat/disease).
- Killing the dogs seems to have effects in a few other parts of the game. Cass' cut dialogue topic VCassCoreLegateNoHounds suggests originally Legate Lanius would have hounds with him (or perhaps just the ones found in cages at the end game), and Cass would have dialogue to comment if the player's actions with the meat caused them to have perished. One of Lanius' dialogue lines specifically mentions hounds: "[FAILED] No, I shall make it a contest - whether I can kill you *before* my hounds tear you apart." Possibly he originally meant this in a literal sense as he would be backed by his hounds.
- There was also supposed to be a second slave girl serving food here, lots of minor disabled Legionaries, some crucified people, and Dale Barton was supposed to have a brahmin with him. All are present but disabled. The dialogue conditions for slaves are also (deliberately?) broken, so you can't hear all the things they have to say, they just say they can't talk now.
- It seems likely that originally it was planned for the area outside the fort gate (with the rows of tents) to be explorable. The slaves follow markers that lead to end markers called "to secondary camp". that run outside the gate. The idea is they would move back and forth unloading things from the main camp to Caesar's area. In the final game they merely teleport in and out of the fence. To add credence to this claim is the fact there is a small amount of deliberate handmade navmeshing between the tents outside - someone clearly started making this area navigable by NPCs. It was likely abandoned very early on due to the amount of work needed. Possibly it was only so the slaves would "really" walk down to this area and the come back again, and not for the player to go there - the aborted navmesh forms a very deliberate corridor shape that would be impractical if the whole area were to be accessible.
- Benny was originally supposed to be locked in a cage once captured at the Fort. Several scripts note this, and so does some of his dialogue. He also has unused dialogue for a final confrontation with the Courier some time after being freed from the camp. He was supposed to sneak up on the player using a stealthboy, and then confront them before opening fire. You cannot talk him down, only kill him. The end result of this sequence would be that there was no way for Benny to survive Fallout New Vegas, so the sequence was probably cut to be vague and allow the character to potentially return in a future game. His cut dialogue for this sequence also references him being locked in a cage - however the actual voiceover says "thanks for getting me out of there", whereas the written text says "thanks for getting me out of that cage", which suggests it was deliberately re-written late on. There are also several variables in the The Fort script to keep track of Benny's fate that aren't actually used (probably for the aforementioned Benny's revenge sequence that was cut)
- There are some unused NPCs set up for sparring. While there are sparring Legionaries here in the final game, they only use the original template NPC for this character, so can only be African American. There are two unused varieties of this NPC FortLegionarySparringCM and FortLegionarySparringHM (Caucasian and Hispanic).
- The unused message FortShellsCreated suggests at some point you could forge phosphorous shells of some description here - likely for the howitzer.
Appearances[]
The Fort appears only in Fallout: New Vegas.
Bugs[]
When you enter the fort, sometimes you will see excessive tearing of the screen everywhere.- You may not regain all your weapons upon leaving the fort, so make sure you save before you attempt to leave.
- Upon entering, all items may be floating, including the Slave Ledger required to win Great Khan sympathy, so make sure to check the air.
- Sometimes, if you have Boone waiting outside Fortification Hill, the guard outside Caesar's tent, the dog near him and everybody inside Caesar's tent except Caesar himself will be hostile. To prevent this, you must have previously kicked Boone from your party.
- If you leave the fort after having the platinum chip returned to you by Caesar, the guard will take the chip. If you return to the Lucky 38 and kill Mr. House (not sure if it matters, but the demonstration of the Securitron upgrades had not be initiated), the platinum chip will be added back to your inventory. Fast traveling back to the fort will initiate the same dialogue as trying to leave with the platinum chip. Choose the option to stay and they will not confiscate any of your items, leaving you fully equipped.
- Sometimes you will be randomly killed by the guards when you walk up to the tent.
- Sometimes the Praetorian Guards in Caesar's tent will randomly attack even if you have the Mark of Caesar.
- When you try to leave the Fort by clicking on the gate, it will not trigger Cursor Lucullus to ask you if you are ready to leave.
- After following Benny to the Fort and choosing the option to crucify him, upon returning to the drawbridge it is possible to see two Bennys one on the cross and another standing by it, the one standing by it can be talked to and untied, if you untie him you gain good karma.
- If you helped Benny escape turning Legion hostile, and then escaped the Fortification Hill by fleeing from the Legion rather than killing everyone in the Fort, you may be unable to fast travel or take the raft to the Fort later because for some reason the game freezes during the loading screen. Even going to the Hoover Dam or swimming in Lake Mead too close to the Fort may cause the game to freeze. This can be really annoying if you wanted to get Lupa's brain for Rex or during the end of the main quest which takes place on Hoover Dam.
- There are a great many problems with corpses in the Fort. Any Ash Piles left in the Fort will respawn their inventories upon returning, as will some Non-Ash Pile corpses. Any normally killed soldiers may also spawn alive upon returning. Non-Ash Pile corpses also have a habit of vanishing not long after you've killed them, even if you don't leave the area.
- When exiting the Fort with a companion, unique weapons that where confiscated may be duplicated in the companions inventory.
- After fighting in the Arena, some machete's can be picked up but not dropped again. If you try dropping it, the message stating it is a quest item will appear. When arriving at the gate and having all your weapons taken, the machete will remain in your inventory.
- Occasionally, if you have a weapon drawn when you fast travel to the fort and you disarm when asked by the guard, your hands will remain in the position that they would be in for the weapon you had drawn, even though the weapon is absent. This can be fixed by pressing the reload button, which will bring up your fists. The conditions and specifics for this glitch are unknown.
- Sometimes upon entering the fort after wiping them out, a powder ganger will appear at the draw bridge. He will be hostile and wll be wearing simple powder ganger armor with a stormchaser hat.
- If you kill everyone in the fort (not counting slaves or children) every time you re-enter, the dead bodies will respawn, dead, in the same spot you killed them but with new items on their inventories.
- The area in and around the Fort may be extremely choppy when you first arrive there.
- Bringing Arcade Gannon to the Fort in order to gain his trust For Auld Lang Syne will override the conversation in which the guard takes the players items. As long as the guard is not spoken to once Arcade finishes speaking, it is possible to then walk around the Fort with all items and weapons without turning everyone hostile.
- You can drop any weapons or chems you don't want confiscated if you bring up your pipboy as soon as the area is loaded. The guard will confiscate your equipment after you close your pipboy. Then you can pick up the gear you dropped and use it in the fort.
Gallery[]
Caesar's compound at top of the hill.
Fortification Hill in the opening scene of Fallout: New Vegas
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