Fiends

The **Fiends** were a raider gang made up entirely of chem fiends in the Mojave Wasteland.

## Historical background

Vault 3 was once an ordinary and happy vault, but the water system started leaking one day and the lower levels were flooded, forcing its people to open its door to the outside to seek help. Unfortunately, the first people they came across were a gang of bloodthirsty, chem-addicted raiders, lead by a man called Motor-Runner, who were loitering in the near vicinity of the vault. The raiders took advantage of the vault dwellers' naivety and conned themselves into the vault, upon which they brutally slaughtered every inhabitant and took Vault 3 as their own. Having firmly rooted themselves in this safe haven, the Fiends have since steadily grown stronger, and they now claim a large part of the southwestern New Vegas conurbation as their territory.

## Politics

### National Spirits

The Fiends start with two national spirits:

**Mojave Drug Monopoly**

* Political Power Gain: **+8%**
* War Support: **+10.00%**
* Country Base Node Income: **+10.0%**
The Fiends have a near total monopoly on the flow of chems throughout the Mojave, assisted by their suppliers from the Great Khans and New Reno. The chem trade is incredibly lucrative, especially when the locals of the Mojave live such a depressing life.

**Strength in Numbers**

* Recruitable Population Factor: **8%**
* Division Attack: **+3.5%**
* Raid Attack Bonus: **+8.0%**
* Appeal to Refugees: **+3.00%**
What the Fiends may lack in brains or technological edge, they more than make up for in numbers. Strangely enough, there's no shortage of down-on-their-luck chem addicts in the waste that is the Mojave.

## Behind the scenes

* In the upcoming 4.0 update to *Old World Blues*, it was announced that both the Fiends and Great Khans would be removed from the Mojave Wasteland, having their territories absorbed into the Mojave Territories and New Vegas, due to Fiend territory being "entirely boxed in". While it was promised that the Khans would return in the 5.0 update, no statement was given if the Fiends were to return anytime in the future.
	+ The reasoning for this was that the Fiend and Khan territories were too cluttered to allow for design space, with the main issue being the lack of meaning and entertainment value in both nations without either requiring both nations receive incredibly complex interlocking focus trees, or expanded the amount of territory they encapsulated.

## References

1. ↑ Development Diary #31 (4.0 Dev Diary #1 - Old World Blues (wait... again?)): *"While the decision to remove the Khans and Fiends from the region may disappoint some, ultimately, I believe it's the right call. There's plenty more space to explore the interactions between these prominent raider gangs and the NCR/Vegas forces in focus trees & events. In comparison, the map has relatively little space to explore these dynamics. As a result, the Fiends were entirely boxed in, while the Khans were a reasonably small raider gang in 2275 that posed more of a regional threat than a state-wide one. Never fear, however: we've already promised to reallocate Khan Warbands to 5.0's map areas."*
2. ↑ HappyTNH: *"The Fiends & Khans were removed because the design space in the area was far too cluttered: we couldn't meaningfully make them fun without either an absolute heap of complexity in interlocking trees, or external space for expansion (I didn't like this one because I like keeping to NV's lore constraints)"*
 - Obtained from Discord, 8/26/2021