Father Elijah is a former elder of the Brotherhood of Steel in 2281. He serves as the primary antagonist and optionally the secondary protagonist of Dead Money.
Background[]
A scribe of the Brotherhood of Steel, Elijah defied convention and rose to the rank of elder, an honor usually reserved exclusively for paladins. An exception was granted for him, on the grounds of him being a genius, able to figure out the workings of a device just by looking at it.[1][2] His scientific acumen was matched only by his drive to recover and develop technology. His approach towards technology, iterating and improving, rather than simply preserving it, was considered unorthodox by his peers.[3] Elijah often dispatched scribes on tech retrieval missions, chasing all the leads he found.[4][5] His drive to develop new technologies put him at odds with the more conservative members of the Brotherhood, particularly other elders. The conflict developed as Elijah pushed for developing new technologies and new, ethically questionable weapons. The elders, rather than deal with him, decided to send him away, east, to form a new chapter of the Brotherhood in the Mojave.[5]
Elijah revealed himself as a brutally pragmatic and altogether unpleasant leader. A pathological control freak, he would often view the people under him as mere equipment, expecting them to carry out his orders and requests unquestionably, while dissent or unpredictability on their part would not just annoy, but even outright infuriate him. Elijah also detested face-to-face interaction, preferring to keep his human interaction via terminal screens and would predominantly use terminal messages to send scribes on missions into the Mojave on tech leads.[4][6] By far the only person with whom he had any kind of working relationship (but still largely terminal communicated) was Scribe Veronica Santangelo, his pupil. Elijah might have used his status to end her relationship with Christine Royce, so that she would follow him into the Mojave. Veronica was kept in the dark about the affair, and her reverence of Elijah only increased.[7][8]
Elijah had partly been sent east to investigate the Hoover Dam and the possibility of bringing it back to functionality. However, the Brotherhood was not quick enough and the New California Republic had claimed it shortly prior. Elijah was furious, likening it to "children playing with a bomb."[9] Instead of the dam, Elijah turned the Brotherhood's focus onto the HELIOS One solar power facility. Elijah's obsession with Helios and the need to defend against NCR forces deploying into the Mojave resulted in the Brotherhood ignoring the expansion of the Van Graff family into the Mojave, despite them distributing pre-War energy weapons. The elder's orders were clear.[10]
Desertion[]
It was not until Operation: Sunburst that Elijah's true nature became apparent to the rest of the Brotherhood. It was clear that the Brotherhood were on the losing end of the conflict, but Elijah refused to accept defeat and became obsessed with finding the technology required to defeat the NCR. Operating from the Brotherhood's HELIOS One base, he sent paladins out on a number of missions that could be considered tactically questionable in efforts to secure vital technologies he was adamant would swing things in their favor. He eventually discovered that the secret to victory lay on his own doorstep, with the ARCHIMEDES II weapon. Though the Brotherhood's position was tactically unsustainable, Elijah felt that if he could just get ARCHIMEDES functional the NCR could finally be pushed back.[9] He stubbornly refused to give ground but salvation never came and when the NCR finally overran the perimeter, Elijah simply disappeared into the wastes without a warning to anyone, not even Veronica, and was assumed to have deserted the Brotherhood. His successor, Nolan McNamara, wasted no time in gathering his men to launch a counter attack to break out, those that had survived the battle at the facility were able to retreat to Hidden Valley.[6][11]
Following the loss, the Brotherhood analyzed their defeat at HELIOS One. They came to the conclusion that ex-Elder Elijah was largely responsible, considering that his actions and choices leading up to the battle had endangered his fellow brethren and caused the defeat. They further concluded that his unwillingness to leave the facility despite pleads from his subordinates left Brotherhood positions non-defensible. This was clear to many other members of the Brotherhood. By 2281, the now-Head Paladin Edgar Hardin stated:
Paladin Ramos, another survivor of the conflict, shared this opinion, noting that:
Additionally, for abandoning his chapter during Operation: Sunburst and going rogue, Elijah was marked for execution by the Brotherhood and their special operations and internal affairs branch, known as the Circle of Steel.[14] However, Elijah had not truly abandoned the Brotherhood nor his desire to see it dominant. He had in fact left to find new technologies that would save them; to find what he believed were treasures of the Old World.[15] For Elijah, the Brotherhood without change was doomed; they needed to begin again and he would do whatever was needed, no matter how morally questionable, to ensure that came to pass. He traveled throughout the wasteland, going as far as the Divide and spending time among the Ciphers.[16]
Big MT[]
Eventually, Elijah stumbled across the Big Empty in his travels, where he found an incredible amount of rare pre-War technology. Captured temporarily by the Think Tank upon his arrival, he managed to escape in seconds, much to the shock of the brain bots.[17] In the great expanse of Big MT, Elijah ran into another human, a courier named Ulysses, who spoke to him of the legend of the Sierra Madre and convinced Elijah to journey there to find what he sought.[18] Before he could embark upon the Sierra Madre, Elijah had to make a few preparations. Making his way to Little Yangtze, he experimented on the survivors of the prison camp with explosive collars while, curiosity getting the better of him, seeking out the radio frequency until finally tracking down a faint broadcast.[19] Avoiding the local robots and suffering from migraines through the overuse of Mentats, Elijah fine-tuned both the collars and the radio signal.[19] Now, with the location of the mythical casino and his collars ready, his grand plan to defeat the New California Republic was ever so close to fruition.
However, the trail of crimes he had left across the wastes in the years preceding his arrival had not gone unnoticed, and the internal affairs of the Brotherhood soon dispatched assassins to stop him, Christine Royce being one of them. As the Think Tank sent robots to contain him and, catching a glimmer from a sniper scope, Elijah instinctively sensed the worst.[20] Strategically detonating his subjects' collars to make his getaway as she attempted her assassination, Elijah defeated Royce. She became a subject for medical experimentation after being dragged away to the Y-17 medical facility.[14] He then moved on and set up a camp on the roof of the Signal Hills transmitter and later on the cliffs near the Big MT north tunnel where the uncontrollable broken and berserk Securitrons provided him defense.[21] Hacking into the Think Tank mainframe as the Big MT's robots closed in, Elijah fried Doctor 8's voice module and rerouted Doctor 0's processors to take control of the train network. Via remote control, he directed a train into one of the tunnels, creating a path for his escape through the wreckage.[17] Leaving his retrofitted LAER rifles and jury-rigged Tesla cannon behind, he then set off towards the Sierra Madre with a Gauss rifle and, crucially, the knowledge that could make the Mojave his, and his alone.
To prepare for his expedition, he renovated the abandoned Bunker 13, a former Brotherhood bunker, as a base of operations in the Mojave, setting it up for when he managed to get his hands on the technologies it offered. In making round trips around the Sierra Madre to his bunker, he performed analyses of the Cloud and the Sierra Madre's environment. Once ready to go to the Sierra Madre, he left a final message for Veronica in the event he did not return.[22]
Sierra Madre[]
Upon reaching the Sierra Madre, he found everything that he had hoped for and more. The Cloud had somehow preserved the pristine nature of the casino and prevented it from decaying in all its centuries of disuse, in addition to serving as a deadly deterrent to potential intruders. He marveled at the casino's automated security systems: the invulnerable holograms, perfected versions of the technology he had found at the Big Empty. A single one of these holograms, deployed in the right place, would become a one-man army, massively powerful and almost impossible to defeat with conventional weapons.[23] However, the potential of these paled in comparison to a relatively innocuous technology: the Sierra Madre vending machines.
These machines utilized Sierra Madre chips and used the raw material in their composition to assemble various items, such as alcohols or clothes. The potential for these had already been partially realized before the War, as medical staff and construction crews had used them to generate medical supplies and explosives; but Elijah had grander ideas. He could use the vending machines to create everything necessary for building a new nation: food, supplies, ammunition, collars, even currency. His ultimate plan was to cleanse the Mojave with the Cloud and create a new world, using the holograms for defense, the collars to ensure compliance, and the vending machines for resources.[24]
However, Elijah also found that he could not unlock the secrets of the casino's vault alone. He used his explosive collars to coerce captives into trapping other fortune seekers lured by the Sierra Madre's signal, forming a chain that eventually grew into teams conscripted to do Elijah's bidding or die. Eventually, he found a new way of starting the chain in the form of Dog, a nightkin whose overwhelming need for a master figure allowed Elijah to bend him easily to his will even without an explosive collar. Human nature got the better of these teams though, and as soon as they became close to the treasure they all felt they could take it for themselves, inevitably turning on one another.[25] One team managed to actually get Elijah into the heart of the casino, but after their deaths, Elijah found himself trapped and alone.[26] In response, he modified the signals controlling the collars to add an extra condition: if one person died, they all would die. Unable to communicate with Dog and the outside, Elijah assumed this would be his end, until Dog, automatically acting on orders given to him long ago, brought to the casino a prisoner with a Pip-Boy 3000, someone with who Elijah was capable of communicating.[27] Elijah would be free to go, assuming he could bear to leave behind the casino and all its secrets.
He guided the Courier and the three remaining collars of the Sierra Madre: Dog, his unquestioning nightkin servant; Christine Royce, the same Circle of Steel knight that was dispatched to the Big MT to kill Elijah; and Dean Domino, a ghoulified, pre-War lounge singer who has been trapped in the Sierra Madre since the War. There, he ordered them to trigger the Gala Event to reopen the doors of the Sierra Madre Casino & Resort.[28] Once inside, the Courier managed with Elijah's instruction to arrive in the Sierra Madre vault, where Elijah came out of hiding and a confrontation ensued.
Interactions with the player character[]
Interactions overview[]
Interactions | ||
---|---|---|
This character starts quests. |
Quests[]
- Find Collar 8: "Dog": Elijah sends the player character out to recruit Dog in the Villa police station.
- Find Collar 12: Christine: Elijah sends the player character out to recruit Christine Royce in the Villa clinic.
- Find Collar 14: Dean Domino: Elijah sends the player character out to recruit Dean Domino in the Residential District.
- Heist of the Centuries: The Courier can either kill, join forces or imprison Elijah inside the Sierra Madre vault.
Other interactions[]
- If the Courier has exhausted all dialogue about him with Veronica before starting Dead Money, they can bring her up in conversation in the vault's chamber.
Effects of player's actions[]
- If he is trapped in the Sierra Madre vault, he can be heard mumbling to himself on his radio signal.
Endings[]
# | Slide | Voice-over narration | In-game condition |
---|---|---|---|
1 | In the years that followed, the legend of the Sierra Madre faded, and there were no... new visitors to the city. Years later, when a mysterious blood red cloud began to roll across the Mojave, then West toward the Republic, no one knew where it had come from. Only that it brought death in its wake. Attempts to find the source of the toxic cloud failed. The Mojave was cut off. Through the Cloud, lights were seen from HELIOS One. There were stories of ghosts immune to gunfire, who struck down anyone they saw with rays of light. The last chapter of the Mojave came when a modified REPCONN rocket struck Hoover Dam, releasing a blood-red cloud, killing all stationed there. All attempts to penetrate the Cloud and re-take the Dam failed, and both the NCR and Legion finally turned away from it, citing the place as cursed. In the years that followed, communities across the West began to die as traces of the Cloud began to drift over lands held by the NCR¹. Only two remained alive in the depths of the Cloud, at the Sierra Madre, waiting for their new world to begin again. |
The Courier sides with Elijah. |
- Elijah is killed fighting the Courier
- Elijah meets his end abruptly in the vault, where he fights the Courier and falls in single combat. His corpse, along with that of Frederick Sinclair, lies in the now totally inaccessible vault forever.
- Elijah is locked in the vault
- Elijah, lured by the promise of the Sierra Madre, cannot escape. Once inside the vault, the casino does not let go. When Elijah finally passes away, the casino creates a new hologram to walk with the other ghosts that fill its casino. It is a pre-programmed homage intended for another. It assumes a new meaning in the likeness of Elijah. A means of allowing even the dead to begin again.
Inventory[]
Apparel | Weapon | Other items | On death |
---|---|---|---|
Father Elijah's robes | Gauss rifle* | Stimpak Microfusion cell |
- * Elijah carries two Gauss rifles; a normal one which he will drop upon death, and a special non-player character-only version which he will use if his regular Gauss rifle is dropped. Elijah's non-player character-only Gauss rifle is coded as a companion weapon; it does not use ammunition, cannot be disarmed and cannot be looted.
Notes[]
- Elijah claims to have made more holorifles, but he does not use any, nor are there any others in Dead Money. However, by listening to his broadcast while in Salida del Sol, the Courier can overhear him bemoan giving up the holorifle.
- Elijah is a challenging combatant. Besides his powerful Gauss rifle, he has a high amount of Hit Points for a human character, more than most companions with the exception of Dog and God and Lily Bowen.
- Elijah has a Pip-Boy himself, despite the fact that he belittles the Courier's use of one on several occasions. This is best seen with a Stealth Boy and closely looking while inside the vault. He also uses it to control the force fields in the casino vault.
- His in-game appearance differs from his holographic representation.
- Locations visited by Elijah in Old World Blues can be identified by scattered drained microfusion cells left in the area.
- Elijah appears to have been capable of reprogramming the Sierra Madre vending machines, and adding new items to their production lists, as evidenced by the machine's ability to produce holorifle modifications.
- Elijah's line "Ask! You still have time," spoken in dialogue with the Courier once the latter has opened the Sierra Madre's vault, is spoken as if Elijah is standing next to the Courier, without the added sound effect of conversing over radio/intercom/terminal speakers.
Notable quotes[]
- "Finding it, though, that's not the hard part. It's letting go." – Elijah on the Sierra Madre
- "Sources of food, supplies, medical assistance, ammo, make more collars, even print currency! Make a nation. The Cloud allows me to wipe the slate clean. Collars ensure cooperation. Holograms - defense. The Vending Machines provide everything else. The Sierra Madre can kill nations and build them, using its technology with the right applications."
- "Attack? No, not attack them. Wipe the slate clean. Make the Mojave like it was meant to be: undisturbed by man. I'll send the Cloud, the Holograms. Bring ruin in my hands until only I stand atop the HELIOS One tower again. I'll scour Hoover Dam with the Cloud, rain its walls with spears from the sun - with an army of Old World ghosts behind me, Holograms all. I'll kill them until it's only me, me alone in a quiet world. In a world that's nothing like what happened at HELIOS One."- in response to the Courier saying "You want to attack NCR? All of NCR?"
- "You think you've escaped?! You can't outrun me, you were always under my control! Do you hear me? Do you hear me?!"
- "Play stupid, play clever, make the mistake of saying "no?" That collar on your neck'll go off and take your head with it."
- "That thing on your wrist - it's a convenience. It tells you where to go, what to do, dulls your brain.. It may have helped you find the Sierra Madre broadcast, but it's just as much a crutch today as it was in the Old World."
- "Alarms... what... you. Think you can run, think you can trick me?"
- "Because in some respects, breaking into the Sierra Madre is easier than breaking human instinct. Greed. The Villa is filled with corpses; some killed by the dangers here, some by me. Others... turned on each other. Once they realized the Sierra Madre could be theirs, they cared nothing for their freedom... their survival... or each other."
- "Whoever designed the Sierra Madre... their obsession with messing with frequencies and signals..."
- "Numbers, equations, circuits... all can be controlled, provided there's a connection, and the knowledge to use it."in response to the Courier saying "How are you speaking to me?"
- "When you came into the bunker, you saw a victim, their head blown off for disobedience. The city is filled with other stories, many such stories. Is "no" your choice?!"
- "Do I? For what? Your greed? Curiosity? You came here on your own, no one held a gun to your head. I've seen your Pip-Boy archives, your map markers and notes - you picked up the Sierra Madre signal just as I did, you couldn't resist. So if you feel I have a lot to answer for... no, the blame isn't on my shoulders. Might as well have put the collar on yourself."- in response to the Courier saying "You've got a lot to answer for."
- "Did you really think you could steal from me? The Sierra Madre is mine."
Appearances[]
Father Elijah is mentioned in Fallout: New Vegas, Old World Blues, Lonesome Road, and appears in the add-on Dead Money.
Behind the scenes[]
The following is based on Fallout: New Vegas cut content. |
- In the base game, Veronica's responses to the Courier's description of Elijah's fate are disguised to avoid revealing plot elements of Dead Money before it was released. Dialogue in this conversation refers to a ghoul named "Abraham" who was presumed dead but healed in "the Crater" and has now "gone north, into ghoul country," and another ghoul named "Monte" who the Courier had to either kill or trap in a subway tunnel in order to retrieve an "accelerator." Dead Money overwrites the Courier's lines with ones about Elijah.
End of information based on Fallout: New Vegas cut content |
- Elijah and Helios One is similar to the the biblical story of the Prophet Elijah, who called down a "column of flame" from the heavens.
Gallery[]
References[]
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