This is a part of a worldbuilding exercise where I tried to make a group that could fit into an established universe, but was also a different take than what was already seen there. I chose the Fallout universe.

While the Wraith tribe prefers not to engage in direct battle, they are willing to if push comes to shove. The most common occasion being that they need to take over a good living space from someone like a group of raiders.

When an outright battle is going to happen, the tribe prepares war brew, using their sacred herb. War brew contains a very specific mixture of psycho, med x, jet and much more, along with the blood of an enemy. They insist it does not work as well without the blood, but are also unwilling to let outsiders examine the herb or their brew.

The effects of the war brew is an entirely lucid high, that leaves the warriors ingesting it energetic and wild eyed, and makes them froth at the mouth. This combined with them frequently using the same noises ferals do when communicating in battle, as a shorthand, and their generally very brutal fighting style using machetes up close, often leaves their enemies to assume they are half feral and unorganized, or even monstrous. In reality, the warriors are lucid and very organized.

During the battle, smoothskin warriors are relegated to long range weapons or even better – staying hidden with the children to protect them. this leaves the front lines to the ghouls, which means the Wraiths will weaponize radiation any chance they get.

Before the battle the warriors are assigned in groups to a war preacher. A war preacher is a glowing one, wearing something that looks like a larger version of the warrior’s necklace, often also carrying many stimpacks and irradiated waterbottles. As ghouls can feel radiation (canonically this has been referred to) the war preacher will stay in the middle of the group, sending out pulses of rads at regular intervals. This lets the warriors keep track of their preacher during the chaos of combat, to keep surrounding them, keeps them strong, and as the Wraiths rarely get in scuffles with groups who aren’t smoothskins, it’s a real problem for their enemy. All this while the war preacher snarls and raves incoherently, and administers stimpacks etc. to the warriors.

As if this wasn’t enough, the preacher’s necklace is not a religious statement, but a way to hide a radio close to the preacher’s face where they can hear it. near the battlefield, Prophet and a group of bodyguards will be hiding, somewhere they can overlook everything, and transmit instructions to the preachers on where to move.

The combined effect of this is that the Wraiths are terrifying to meet in battle, both in the sense of appearance, and in that they are often underestimated as half feral, when they are actually very organized and strategic.

Outright battles are extremely rarely done with groups the Wraiths have basic respect for, and as such they will gladly irradiate the area, ambush etc. and overall do what it takes to win. This also leaves the fallen enemies in the aftermath as a handy food supply for a victory fest.