04/30/2207

So can’t believe it’s been a week since I last wrote an entry but so much has been happening. We have been trying to find the wolves but they are elusive and have no constant location that they hide out at. But we are learning a few things about them, how they operate and their favourite locations to do it as well. Apparently where we found Mike is one of their favourite locations, none of us can believe that he’s dead. But we are slowly moving on. I've not seen Leo or Kassie for a few days, probably Avery has them doing something.

Well I went back to the Vault Tec building to see if vault 72 communicated with the hub. Yeah they seemed to have sent a message about 4 days ago, the door was attacked but some people that were heavily armed. It possibly could be the Brotherhood of Steel but it doesn’t match how they operate but it could be the Wolves or an unknown faction. But I did find something new in there, some bit of armour to help defend myself with. Maybe it was dropped by one of the wolves just because of the paint on it. I killed a few more wolves today just a block down the street from the vault tec building, they are expanding their territory I told Avery and he’s getting concerned.

I told the others about what I saw about our vault and yeah we all think that what we did was the right thing getting out of that vault. But what we did stealing the meds and torching the shared bathroom was a bit excessive. But it had to be done, we had to get out of there.

04/23/2207

We started searching more of Bend and found a trace of where Mike may have gone but it’s in Wolves territory so we have to be careful of where we step. We know that we are in their territory because we think we have seen their markings. We have searched all of pilot butte neighbourhood park or that’s all we can make of the sign we read and well found some things as it looks like a no man's land for a battle.

I wonder what the prewar people would have done here, probably just sit and take in nature but we couldn’t do that we still have to find Mike. This world has gone crazy. We walked down the street and met some of the Wolves hanging a body off a street light, we hid so they couldn’t see us. After they left we walked up to the body and it was Mike we finally found him Leo cut him down and yeah he’s dead after everything he’s dead. We went back to Avery’s camp and told them that we found mike.

They comforted us in our loss but I just want revenge as he was my brother and the old world rule of an eye for an eye. We just have to watch what they do for the next couple of weeks and figure out their patterns and flush them out like vermins. Sarah is worried that I will lose myself but I won't. It's what is needed, he's my blood. I asked Avery where they are and he doesn’t know where they are from as they just popped up one day but I will find them.

04/22/2207

Well Mike hasn’t come back yet so we are a bit worried that he has gone further away than he said he would or that he is dead. We searched the Vault Tec building but have found some things such as the locations of other Vaults in the surrounding areas. We have marked them on a map we found and Sarah found a Pip Boy so we can know where we are exactly. We read more about the vault we came from and it’s way worse than what we thought. So our vault was a test vault for how society would cope with a incompetant dictator. Why would they do these kinds of tests like what does it achieve? It's just bizarre but we did find some supplies that will help us out massively. We found a group of others as we were walking out of the Vault Tec building and were friendly enough and took us back to their camp, an old logging camp. It was really makeshift with their walls and watch towers, is this how the world is now? We met their leader called Avery, he was really serious and told us what to expect in places like Super Mutants. We don’t even know what they are but we won’t be able to miss them apparently. We were also shown where each fraction controls and it’s mind boggling like we don’t even know how to process it. So there are raiders which control most of the area and they are in a long war with the Lost, an old world tribal group with a lot of makeshift weapons. Another group is the Wolves, a group of fanatics that worship Werewolves of all things it’s just really weird honestly like yeah. Also another group called the Brotherhood Of Steel that just sounds like something from the old king Arthur books haha. But now we need to find Mike as he has been missing for a little bit but now we are worried. Sarah is really freaking out as we all grew up together so we can’t really lose each other. I hope that he is alive somewhere.

04/21/2207

Well yesterday was a shit show but we survived the night a group of us got exiled from vault 72 for finding out the truth about our vault. Apparently out of all the dwellers we only had one pip boy for the entire vault and it was for the overseer only. But yesterday we were sealed out of the vault forever and can’t go back. About 8 of us have left me, Sarah, Mike, Kassie, Leo, Caitlin, Ash and Joshua. We haven't wandered far from the vault but we don’t even know where we are. That pip boy would have been useful. We do need to find some better ways to protect ourselves like some combat armour or something as these vault suits won’t do much. From the pictures we have seen, Bend Oregon looks so much different. I think we are on the outskirts of Bend Oregon from my best guess but Sarah thinks we are further away she could be right as she was good at reading maps haha. Mike left about a couple of hours ago to try and find some food or weapons, hopefully he comes back. He wasn’t always the most sound of mine and was a bit psychotic but fingers crossed. We stumbled across some military checkpoints on our way down last night so we managed to pick a few things up but it was so weird seeing the remnants of the old world. We found an old vault tec building and will search it in the morning. We are holding up in an old world diner for the night and Kassie is worried if what we did in the vault was right. I think what we did was right but it does haunt me a little bit.

So Me and Charon have been roaming around the wastelands for a few months now and things haven’t been going to good for me and him because we had to find dad and we did but not in a place where I expected him to be he was in this cryo pod of some sort and It turned out to be a simulation for the vault dwellers and I ended up doing a lot of bad things for a bad man by the name of doctor Braun and when me and dad got out of the simulation a group called the enclave attacked us and we had to retreat through the sewers and we ended up going to the brotherhood of steel and now we need to get a g.e.c.k. from vault 87 I need to go now I will be writing more about what happens if I make it out with Charon

Hi there! Thanks for clicking! I've been a writer for almost for almost 12 years and Fallout is a universe I've fallen in love with. Here's a fanfiction I wrote as a break out of my two year's writer's block. Here's a link:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12262797/1/As-Rotten-As-The-Wasteland

Here is a little summary if you find any of what I'm saying interesting: "Lisette and her brother, Orson O’Brien have lived in the Capital Wasteland their entire life but when they accept a job from a shady individual, they pay the price. With her brother gone and on the verge of death, Lisette is taken under the wing of the Brotherhood of Steel. She must join or be thrown out alone. Lisette joins and finds herself a place among the Brotherhood rank, in hopes to one day find her brother. But the journey is full of setbacks and questionable people with questionable motives."

The link brings you to the first part. I just posted the third part for a grand total of 51k words! So there is plenty of content to read!

Thanks for your time! And enjoy.

Hi there! Thanks for clicking! I've been a writer for almost for almost 12 years and Fallout is a universe I've fallen in love with. Here's a fanfiction I wrote as a break out of my two year's writer's block. Here's a link:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12262797/1/As-Rotten-As-The-Wasteland

Here is a little summary if you find any of what I'm saying interesting: "Lisette and her brother, Orson O’Brien have lived in the Capital Wasteland their entire life but when they accept a job from a shady individual, they pay the price. With her brother gone and on the verge of death, Lisette is taken under the wing of the Brotherhood of Steel. She must join or be thrown out alone. Lisette joins and finds herself a place among the Brotherhood rank, in hopes to one day find her brother. But the journey is full of setbacks and questionable people with questionable motives." The link brings you to the first part. I just posted the second part for a grand total of 27k words! Yes and it's only in the second part. I anticipate around ten parts. Thanks for your time! And enjoy.

Been working on a rough draft of a pre-war fallout novel. This is the rough rough rouuuuuuugh draft.

Lemme know thoughts!!!

.....................................

"The minute pitter patter of footsteps came from behind me. Silence shattered by the slight shifting of gravel under the weight of a small frame. I turned around and saw nothing.

Prickled hairs stood on end underneath the cloying weight of frosted Combat Armor. I felt that feeling of deep seated restlessness bubbling up from my peripherals as if an entity was gazing upon me.

It had been over four hours since being sealed in. Droplets of ice began to form where sweat and dew mingled on the hard green surface of my shoulder pads. I wasn't meant to be stuck amidst the outside elements. I was dressed for war in a hot Urban environment. My own breath taunting me with hopeful whisps of heat.

Then I heard it again.

The slight expelling and inhaling of air just a few steps away. The warmth of servos whirring as they attempt to violate our pretenses of the laws of physics. It occurred to me any sudden movement would alert the intruder. My awareness of the enemy may be the only thing that keeps my family from receiving a Cedar casket this winter from Uncle Sam this Christmas.

I refuse to utter the derogatory term slapped on Chinese cloaking technology by American soldiers. I never thought I'd encounter one. This was it, the black ghost. I had trained for this. They were legends. Shadows moving at night that left slit throats and grieving widows all across the Tundra. He must be nervous, otherwise I would already be a memory. Perhaps eventually a statistic. And finally a forgotten textbook photo that children will read about in school.

Despite the numbing cold, my fingers could feel the ice cold steel frame of my N99. I reached as slow as possible, each finger extending towards the grip. Agonizing over every muscle fibers instructions for what may have been mere seconds, and yet feeling the weight of eternity hovering over this decision. The next few moments would decide everything. A quick decision of erratic movement, may in fact become the final pulsing synapses in my brain before I leave this Earth.

I reached the trigger, hoping against all reason that the dark pitch of the room would shield the gaze of the Communist behind me from my movements. The Colt N99 lay dormant, resting on my right thigh and covered by my nervous gloved palm. I drew my pistol as I had 10,000 times before. Moving with the most agility I could muster, I turned about face and locked eyes with an ethereal blur. Microseconds of realization later, I knew I had been right. The black ghost now less an uniformed myth and more a frightening truthful terror.

Breath in. Aim. Adjust.

I've done this thousands of times…

I could see the blur rapidly rushing forward. I pulled the trigger.

As frigid as my hand was, it would soon be jarred alert by the inviting warmth of a 10mm round whizzing through the air.

It was the most terrifying moment. Even today I'm really bothered. I think I realized in the pitch black room that War, War nev-"

"And that's all the time we have for today Jake."

"Oh."

"Yes, unfortunately, as much as I do think your stories pleasant. Psychology isn't cheap! Got to keep the lights on, and Uranium is a very expensive element."

"Yeah, I understand, It's just, Doc. Do you ever think, I'll get past the pain, the night terrors, the sh-"

"I have another client waiting."

The magenta couch was sticky from sweat. It had been an intense recreation of the most intimate moments of Jake's life. Somehow despite opening up the traumatic to a man of much education. He felt worse. Rejected. As if his story was merely that to someone. A story. No life experience could profoundly affect Dr. Messer if Messer thought it mere fancy.

"Sometimes I wish I wasn't so passive Doctor. I'll go. Freaking VA."

Later Jake left the lights on in the bathroom as a sign of protest.

The gray brutalist building stood in stark contrast to the brightly hued pastel colored skyscrapers next door. The rebirth of suburban America had invigorated this sense of bright hope in the aesthetic pallet of Seattle. Still, it clashed with the crescendo of evergreen firs and the dull brown and red brick buildings in pioneer square. The VA Hospital for the Post Traumatically Informed stood nestled between old buildings from several centuries ago. Leaving the office of Dr. Messer, Jake began walking towards his ride

A semi-rusted Chryslus Coupe sat ten blocks from the VAHPTI office. A dark beautiful green reminiscent of the nature surrounding the Pacific Northwest. This car had been Jake's for 8 years. A 2065 model, classic, in the process of being restored. Or at least Jake lived out the myth that it would one day look new while being fully aware it took great physical and financial effort that he was not the least inclined to pursue. In order to save money they had decided to move the parking lot a reasonable 10 blocks away to a mostly unused block of abandoned brickwork buildings. For the soldier returning home, this wasn't a challenge or even a real annoyance. Parking was free if you didn't include the cost of a short brisk walk. For the permanently wounded veteran though, it was particularly annoying.

He didn't mind the walk though. This was his home. His world. And the semi-anonymous nature of the passive Seattle populous had allowed Jake to grow up fully aware of every nook and cranny of the city and yet relatively unattached to knowing each and every shopkeepers name.

Stalls selling fresh caught Salmon flanked the roads. The smell of the ocean spray, the mist of salty air. The pacific was beautiful, with big waves jutting across a setting sun. The concrete greeting his steps, wet from the Seattle rain. People, faceless and vast walked to and fro between the occasional Eyebot projecting advertisements and patriotic slogans into the open air. A particularly dapper looking model caught Jake's attention. It was from the Sophisticated Eye, a glossy and fashionable establishment that hid behind the false pretense of style. The name was once more a mindless play on the word Eye. It seemed like the moment Eyebots arrived, every business had its own personal sputnik hovering around. Every advertisement imaginable was trying to attach the word Eye to a product. The lack of originality tied knots in Jakes stomach as he saw puns forcibly invade the once pristine sanctuary of intellect that had enclosed the realm of marketing.

The world was getting dull or the Mentats were dulling the world.

In reality, the Sophisticated Eye was just another tabloid dropping stories about extra-marital affairs and Zetan sightings. Roots of truth were non-existent amidst the holotapes and papers. They put dapper clothing on the hovering drones that went around Jet City. A little top hat with bowtie and cummerbund was attached to this model. The suave dress on the floating hunks of steel was intended to make people almost forget that all the Sophisticated Eye spewed were conspiracy theories about Shadow Governments and human experimentation in the desert.

"Read all about it! Roger Maxson deserts army!"

"I'll take a copy," said Jake, thinking internally about how seconds before he had dismissed this as trash but now was found near sick at the thought of what lay within.

"$19, sir."

"Cheap today." thought Jake to himself, fumbling to ignore the deep seated pain that the mention of this article began to create in him.

While he would've loved to cater to the addiction of new information that was so strongly integrated into his personal existence. Always reading and using the Library Terminal. Jake waited until he got to his house. It was a short drive, and by the time he reached the clean and sheik porch of his Lustron style home he was sobbing.

Captain Maxson was a strange mixture of valiant All American and the soldier. While brief, the encounters Jake had with Maxson had been meaningful. Including a time in the Tundra, where Maxson had personally saved his life from a suspicious Communist spy. Like Patton, that leader from long forgotten times, some men in the military inspire not only courage but brotherhood among the troops. This was Maxson. The thought that he would betray the great Commonwealth turned Jake's stomach while simultaneously producing feelings of acceptance. It was getting harder to accept the low value on human life and the high value on service asked of him. He had read about this movement from over a hundred years ago. The facism movement. While it was popularly used as the summation of great evil in debate and dialogue, he couldn't help but feel slight tones of the Fascist worldview were co-mingled with everyday encounters in modern Commonwealth. It drew up memories of the stereotypical southern drawled redneck yelling the word 'ommon 'ealth as a proclamation of American greatness."

Making his way to his favorite chair, Jake opened up the Sophisticated Eye.

"Radio communications out in the desert of Mariposa by amateur radio enthusiasts picked up a strange recording! You won't believe what we heard! Turn to page 32 to read more!"

"Mmm… Turnbait. Just great." Mumbled Jake, well aware that the Sophisticated Eye spread it's information thinly over layers of advertisements.

"108th Infantry squad among the stars! Th-"

"Hmm, not that page."

"On October 20th, in rural California, a radio signal was picked up. Reportedly it was from Roger… Turn to page 47 to see the name that YOU never thought YOU'D EVER see associated with benedict Arnold! Brought to you by Sugar Bombs!"

"We already know it's freaking Roger Maxson. Gah!"

After 37 minutes, Jake had pieced together a good portion of the story and also placed an order over the phone for some more cans of Yum Yum Deviled Eggs. While normally deviled eggs didn't remotely appeal to Jake, something about those colorful pictures made his stomach roar.

Roger Maxson had radioed out into the desert that he was abandoning the military and taking control of Mariposa. This seemed fanciful at most, as it did come from the Sophisticated Eye, but still it was disturbing. While he would never admit it, Jake felt a certain acceptance from reading strange conspiracies and wondering about the universe. It broke all social mores of polite dinner conversation to ever bring up his current affection for Zetan theories. It was so strange to himself that he often dismissed his own love of the conspiracy.

What bothered Jake the most was the way Maxson was so different in real life then most soldiers. He was the All-American. This article, while unduly false, was so disturbing because it meant even the most faithful in the Commonwealth had given up.

The emotions began to make the itch worse. The desire to alleviate his sadness. To overcome the pain.

With a knowing glance the former soldier looked to the cabinet. Another chance for a good night seemed fool hardy after a session with Messer. It was another excuse to wander off into addiction. To soothe that monster inside of him. This, this was his destiny. To repeat bi-monthly until the pain went away.

If it ever would.

The cabinet leered. A pack of mentats and a demon's blood inside.

I'm a girl from Texas and I've only recently fallen in love with Fallout (about two years ago) but I'm also a writer. I started writing when I was about 8 years old and now being 20, I figure I'm pretty decent at writing.

So, here's the link to the first part of a fallout story I've been writing for almost two years: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12262797/1/

Here is a little summary if you find any of what I'm saying interesting: "Lisette and her brother, Orson O’Brien have lived in the Capital Wasteland their entire life but when they accept a job from a shady individual, they pay the price. With her brother gone and on the verge of death, Lisette is taken under the wing of the Brotherhood of Steel. She must join or be thrown out alone. Lisette joins and finds herself a place among the Brotherhood rank, in hopes to one day find her brother. But the journey is full of setbacks and questionable people with questionable motives."

Like I said, the link contains the first part. I anticipate above 10 parts in total. It's in progress but I hope I'll find some more motivation to finish it if people actually enjoy it lol.

Thanks for your time! And enjoy.

• …what does he mean it can’t be pulled? This clown is supposed to be a farmer; must I do everything myself? I literally have to trek across the wasteland to pull up a goddamned tato vine. Fucking useless.

• [09-Mar-2288] Ha! Some fuckwit raiders tried to hit Tenpines today. I guess they figured it was vulnerable, seeing that it’s under construction and covered in scaffolding. It couldn’t have gone more wrong for them. Not only had I just emplaced enhanced laser-turret security, but our western and eastern run provisioners both happened to roll up mid firefight: it was carnage. Oh, and Lucy Abernathy’s newly appointed constables, Mendelson and Raul, showed they were good for more than sniffing out tato thieves: they were like a pair of gun-toting figureskaters. Note to self: get those two a thank-you gift.

  The mountainside is still glistening with punk giblets; I might leave them there as a warning, (and perhaps to attract some insects, for the barbecue).

• [10-Mar-2288] Geoff Harvey is a godsend. He has revolutionised the logistics of the Minutemen. With his network of provisioners, not only does he ensure that I have the supplies I need, but the caravaners double as Minuteman patrollers, putting down the Wasteland filth and wildlife as they run goods between our settlements (as we saw yesterday, at Tenpines). I am the law as far east as Zimonja, as far south as Greygarden, and as far west as Sunshine Tidings co-op.

  I found a mint condition pre-war Tux a few days ago; I obviously don’t have a use for it, but it seemed like a shame to just leave (or sell, for that matter). Glad I kept it, I can give it to Harvey—he’ll be the swankiest bartender in post-war Massachusetts! I’ve been a bit distant with him lately, and I can’t even remember why. Hopefully this’ll set things right between us again.

• [11-Mar-2288] Well I’ll be damned; the first thing Supermutants have irrevocably destroyed of mine is a tato plot. They scourged it pretty good before Lucy’s constabulary filled their tiny heads with lead. Blake was right - they can’t be pulled. I dug, hacked, and heaved at those blackened roots in a full set of T-60 power armor—nothing. There’s no way in hell the plants are going to grow back, either. I guess we’ll just have to suck shit and accept the small plot of unusuable land as a monument to the tenacity of Supermutants.

• [16-Mar-2288] Construction of Tenpines Tower is finally complete, and what a beauty she is: four storeys tall, elevated off the ground upon concrete pylons, laser turrets guard a bountiful ag-plot, the Mole’s Head Inn cafe-restaurant-bar probably serves the best hot plates and mixers in the Commonwealth Wasteland. The view is to die for (literally, for some), I have an office, workshop, and a clinic (staffed by a genuine ‘doctor’, Harriet, if you ask her - some tato-picker I tapped on the shoulder who now won’t answer you unless you append the ‘Dr.’ These people, honestly). The elevated courtyard even hosts a market square and BBQ area, I shit you not.

  Rob and Elaine Paula, the squatters tending the shack I found here last year, are about the only ones that aren’t pleased; these ungrateful cunts have been undermining me from the get-go. What, did they think I’d just clear the entire Corvega factory of raiders for them out of the kindness of my heart? That's not how General Chugchug plays! Fuck them, they were nothing before I came. Now they sleep tight in the safest place compound in the Commonwealth Wasteland. For some reason they think they deserve a bigger say in what goes on - last week they tried to shoo away a goddamned blacksmith because they didn’t like her! Who put them in charge of staff? You know, the thing is, if they were a little bit less anxious about their place in the pecking order, and a little bit more grateful for everything I’ve done for them, then maybe there could be a view to a supervisory position for them. But seeing as they’re being little shits, fuck the cunts - they get nothing. They should be glad I let them stay (albeit, in thier crappy little shack, now bathed in the shadow of Tenpines Tower).

• [18-Mar-2288] I finally cracked the Drainpine Terminal! Or rather, the ripped instance of it I cloned on my Tenpines terminal. Actually, I didn’t even do it, per se—I wrote a script that basically threw a dictionary at the authentication algorithm. Obviously the terminal had a built in lockdown to prevent this, but because this was just a cloned instance of the terminal, it could simply be reverted to the earlier state if it went into lockdown. Once I’d figured that out, it was just a matter of hitting ‘Enter’ and leaving the terminal to tap and rattle for 16 hours.

  Whatever is behind that Drainpipe terminal door better be good, after spending a month hunched over code trying to breach it. Either way, the two-bit security most terminals run is a fucking cake-walk compared to this, at the very least I’ve learned enough about computer science that I’ll never have to spend this long on cracking a network again. Actually, I might even make an abstracted and modular version of this bruteforce algorithm and keep it on a holotape - then I can just tweak and run it from my pip-boy whenever I want.

• [20-Mar-2288] Fuck, got jumped by a bunch of ghouls in a caravan park. Spent most of the fight fumbling for my grenades while they thrashed at me. By the time I finally let one off, they’d already knocked all the peripherals from the suit. What’s worse: I borked up the throw, and the grenade detonated at my feet. I swear, the suit makes me complacent sometimes. Anyway, it wasn’t all bad news: I did find a half set of t-60 armour to replace what I’d damaged (no idea what the hell it was doing in this white trash hovel, but I’ll take what I can get).

• [21-Mar-2288] Dead settlers at Fort Hagen. What’s the point in even trying? Ultimately, we’re all going to end up just like them. We might think we’re clever, programming a Protectron to clear out a squad of synths, but inevitably we just end up pinned in a corner, with an angry protectron firing at us on one side, and the synths on the other, while a mk II Turret pumps us full of lead from the side.

  I’d forgotten about the view from Fort Hagen’s rooftop. Soon.

Another Day In The Wasteland

^Prior ^entries:

• [Entry 1: [07-Nov-2287] My Mister Handy asked me if I considered him family...

](https://github.com/BKLaughton/AnotherDayInTheWasteland/blob/master/entries/entry_1.md)

• Entry 2: [02-Dec-2287] I cleared the corvega factory of raiders...
• Entry 3: [25-Dec-2287] Ho ho ho, merry fucking Christmas...
• Entry 4: [05-Jan-2287] Lucy Abernathy, what a badass...
• Entry 5: [10-Feb-2288] Mystic Pines retirement home: not hiding a dark secret. Well, fancy that...

[10-Feb-2288] Mystic Pines retirement home: not hiding a dark secret. Well, fancy that...

• …Lexington sure has slipped, though; man, what a dump. I’d been putting off scavenging there, thinking it’d be a big job. Wrong. The place has been picked clean. Even super duper mart was underwhelming. I guess that makes sense - it’s been the obvious place to raid for two centuries now. Christ, what the fuck happened to Shaun in this place?

• [12-Feb-2288] Lucy Abernathy caught me in an awkward spot today. I was kinda blowing off some steam over some drinks with a couple of buddies when she happened upon the get-together in a bit of a huff. Thing is, the buddies in question were Dogpaste and Sticky Joe: the mutilated dog and hobo corpses by the Old North Bridge. 'Visibly disconcerted' I would say sums up her response. Dogpaste tried passing it off with a joke, but that only made things more awkward.

  Anyway, turns out she was looking for me because she'd caught some wastelander pilfering from the mutfruit patch. Seems pretty clear cut to me: shoot the bastard. Lucy doesn't agree. She actually defends the theif, saying they're normally a big help on the farm, and that the mutfruit was rotting on the vine because I've expanded the farm faster than we can staff it. That's where I lost it - some parasite steals from me, and it's my fault because I'm working too hard to develop this shithole?! I fly into a bit of a tirade, until Dogpaste checks me with that look of his. He's right, I wouldn't want to scare her. So I give the gun to Sticky Joe and hear her out.

  Lucy actually makes some good points; I mean, a bullet might be all these worms deserve, but we are short-staffed. Also, she suspects that it happens more than we realise; unilateral capital punishment could easily scale out of hand. I'm doing my best to keep calm in light of these animals plundering my settlements any moment I look away, when I remember Thicket Quarry. If Lucy cares so much about rehabilitative justice, then she can be responsible for it: her new job is 'Constable-General.' I've tasked her with turning that gutted raider-den into a prison and mirelurk hatchery. Additionally, she is to create a Minuteman Constabulary, to investigate and prosecute crime across all Minuteman settlements.

• [14-Feb-2288] Wildwood cemetery: killed a lone raider. Or was it a caretaker? :/

• [15-Feb-2288] I went back to the drainpipe bunker to have at that terminal again. No dice, though I feel like I’m getting further than before. If I could just chip away at it daily, I might eventually get in - but who has time to hike all the way out past Drumlin and back. Not the first time this problem has come up; building up Tenpines matters a lot to me, but it’s anything but centrally located. Sanctuary, Red Rocket, Abernathy’s, Zimonja and Sunshine Tidings aren’t any better. Starlight is definitely my best option, but I’ve barely started on construction there; there’s still so much to do here at Tenpines, and so few resources to go around.

  For now, I stay here at Tenpines. As for the drainpipe terminal, I have an idea: although I can’t break the security, I have managed to get limited access to root. Even without superuser rights, I should be able to rip an image of hard tape. It won’t let me write, but so long as I can get a full system listing into the terminal’s RAM, I should be able to use my pip boy to copy that, and write it to a blank casette (or seven). Then, I can recreate the environment on any terminal. Speaking of which, I ought to build a terminal here at Tenpines, if I am to stay for the time being. I can even partition the hard tape, and dedicate some of it to word processing, so I don’t have to keep these logs on my pip-boy.

  Who’dve thought I was to learn more about computers after the bombs fell? Two-hundred years after, for that matter.

• [16-Feb-2288] Preston got kissy with my ass again. God it was awkward: he just goes on and on and on. Apparently I saved his life because he didn’t kill himself, or something. Does this fuckwit actually think he’s the only one who bitched out on the trigger-pull? We’re all still here, in this place, right? Again, I spent the whole thing half-listening, doing my best to shake the urge to take the conversation to a sexual place. What the fuck even? Maybe I’m into humiliation or something? Not mine, his: every time he opens his sycophant mouth, I’m assailed with homoerotic urges. I know one thing for sure, if I ever acted on them, I wouldn’t bitch out on the trigger pull. I guess I can’t run with Preston anymore. Ah well. I’ll miss having his laser musket on my six.

• [18-Feb-2288] Found a ghoul doctor, Bethany, living above an irradiated cesspool near Sunshine barracks. I could barely hear her over the hysterical clicking of my geiger counter, and she asks me if I needed any treatment. What a character. Ghouls: the best thing about the wasteland.

  I’ll let Rainbow Jane know. I guess that ought to be counted as a ‘resource’ - she’s not likely to die anytime soon, so long as she stays camped on that radpit.

• [19-Feb-2288] Re-allocting Preston is proving difficult. Basically it’s a case of keeping your enemies close, versus keeping him out of my face. He already acts like he owns Sanctuary, so that’s out. Tenpines is out too, it’s my main base of operation, and I don’t want to resurrect his borderline mutiny over the Zimonja incident. Hah! Zimonja! Oh ho. Wouldn’t that be grand? Nah, he’d probably just refuse. Also, it’s literally derelict. I really ought to get to setting up that radio station…

  He’d only ruin Sunshine Tidings - that experiment needs to stay in Rainbow Jane’s hands. Red Rocket is too intimate, it’s like my holiday home. I guess I could get him to develop Starlight. Gah, I don’t want him to Prestify it though.

• [21-Feb-2288] I finally got to Graygarden. Not sure how I missed it when I cleaned out Arcjet systems with Danse, I must’ve passed within a few hundred yards of it (speaking of which, I need to get back there for a second pass, we were in a bit of a hurry on our way through, and I didn’t want to hold up the show stripping the joint for scrap).

  Anyway, Graygarden lived right up to the chitchat the settlers at Tenpines were tossing about - it’s a farm run by robots (Mr Handies, to be precise). Codsworth’d love it! At first I was alarmed at the complete lack of security. Man, what is it with undefended settlements? Would we call this a settlement, though? I mean, no people live there. Wait, was that racist? On second thought, maybe Codsworth would find the place… dehumanising.

  Anyhow, I offered to set them up with some turrets and something, but they were a bit guarded. They warmed up after I helped them out with a water supply issue, though (yep, mirelurks). Come to think of it, they’ve been operating for 200 years without issue, they probably have it handled. Ah well, still good to have a friendly port so close to Boston.

• [23-Feb-2288] Gunner attack on Red Rocket. While I’m dealing with the attackers, from the barricade, one of them slips in (I guess from behind), kills silent Pete, and slips into my goddamned hotrodded t41! There’s no way this was a random raid; it’s too deep in Minuteman territory, too surgical. The frontal attack was a feint, meanwhile just one of them slips in over the back fence and goes straight for the suit. The whole thing reeks of an inside job.

  It’s gotta be Sturges.

• [24-Feb-2288] Garvey goes to Graygarden! They’re light on security, so it’s ‘helping’; they’re close to the frontier, so it’s important; they’re robots, so he can’t weasel yet more influence; they grow food, and it expands Minuteman territory and prestige, so he can’t refuse. Perfect.

• [26-Feb-2288] Sticky Joe and Dogmeat helped me hammer out the rules for riotball. So, basically, every settlement is going to have a hoop up, but just one. Under it, 3 on 3 Basketball can be played, but that's the easy bit. Before 3 on 3 Basketball can commence, one has to actually get the ball to the court: until the first point is scored, riotball is a full contact sport. Each team has four members, one of which is a sub (prohibited from carrying weapons or touching the ball), the other is a 'Qwik' (also unarmed, but the only one allowed to touch the ball during the full-contact, cross-country phase). Murdering members of the opposing team forfeits the match, but maiming them is fair game. No guns or ranged weapons of any sort allowed. Preventing the opposing team from making it to your settlement's hoop is a valid tactic, but once the ball goes through the hoop once, all players drop their weapons and the game stays on the court (for 10 minutes, or until 21 points, whichever comes first). Losing team keeps the ball.

  Basketballs themselves are like hot potatoes, you don't want 'em. A settlement's riotball team can practice any day they want, but are only free to assault each other on Sundays (from 00:00 to 23:59). Once a year, we'll have the Grand Count, where balls are tallied and settlements ranked. The settlement with the fewest balls wins a prize. The settlement with the most gets something else. Haven't figured that bit out yet.

• [27-Feb-2288] Saw two identical dudes fighting to the death in front of starlight. I helped kill the stronger one, who wasn’t talking. The one I saved wasn’t remotely grateful. Then again, I guess his doppleganger did just try to kill him. What a fucking place. I guess it was a synth? He had a weird plastic part sticking out of the crater I made in his head.

  Is this how synths come into the world? That certainly builds the case against them, if every synth copied a human, killed them, and took their place. I wonder how many of the settlers at Tenpines and Sanctuary are synths…

• [28-Feb-2288] Good news! Garvey officially hates being posted at Greygarden. At least, I guess that’s the reason he wants to re-take some lost Minuteman ‘castle.’ Naturally, he wants my 'help' (read: he wants Chugchug to carry his useless ass). I gave him a qualified ‘yes’ to shut him up, but now that I look at the charts, this fucking castle is wayyyyyy the fuck east. It's well beyond any of our recon runs to date, even further beyond our sphere of influence. I get he doesn’t like robo-daycare, but is this really a priority right now? A radio tower? What about Zimonja? Oh wait, that’s right, he didn’t want to take Zimonja, and had a pretty little bitchfit when I took it anyway.

  Anyway, Garvey’s already rushed off to “marshall forces” for the attack. Thing is, I didn’t commit to a specific date, or anything really. Oh well, I’ll get there when I get there. In the meantime I guess Preston can keep rallying and consolidating the eastern Minutemen. Or, he won’t do any of that, and will just wait for my arrival like a fucking stooge. Ugh. At least he’s out of my hair.

• [01-Mar-2288] Mama Murphy literally begged me for some buffout today. I caved pretty quick. I mean, who am I to deny an old lady some relief from this nightmare? Besides, Preston is fuck knows where away east, so it’s not like I’ll have to suffer his passive aggression over it anymore. I was always pretty skeptical of her beatnik woowoo ‘I can see the future’ shtick, but what happened next was pretty fucking compelling. Instead of the vague allegorical dribble she normally slurs out, she starts getting into real specifics. Like, access codes and blow by blows. She also nearly stopped her heart chomping down pills.

  Could all be bullshit, but if she really can see the future… well, that’d be quite something.

• [03-Mar-2288] Geoff Harvey gave me a heads-up on Rob and Elaine Paula shooing away some settlers at Tenpines today; a colourful lesbian couple, 'Motorella' and 'Ball-peen.' To be fair, Ball-Peen does look pretty mean, but I don't like the Paulas acting like they have the right to say who stays and who goes at Tenpines. So what if they were there first? When they were there, it was literally a leaky shack, a campfire, and an open-air shit-hole. I've built it up to be the biggest mall in the Commonwealth Wasteland, hell, I've even installed a goddamned cocktail bar. Fuck those guys.

  So yeah, I invited Ball-Peen and Motorella to stay. Turns out Ball-Peen is a mechanic, and a blacksmith. Lucy's Constables recently pinched our last armorer for criminal negligence, so I offered her the job. She looks the part, too: built like bear, and fond of checkered flannels. It'll be good to have someone handy around. As for Motorella, well, she's a pretty thing, but also pretty useless. Can't fix shit, can't fight, doesn't seem to know much about anything. Ball-Peen and her are a package deal, though, so I gave her a green light to open a 'fashion boutique.' Fuck me, what a pair of characters.

• [04-Mar-2288] Didn’t think the day would come, but here it is: I’m out of steel. Lumber too, for that matter. It’s actually indicative of how things have changed. When we were a smaller posse, armed to the teeth, all we perpetually needed was copper, grease, and duct tape: weapon mods and special projects. The scope of operations has simply increased beyond my most fanciful expectations. I must have almost 50 followers between all the established Minuteman settlements. I’ve picked Concord and Lexington clean, and then some.

  I wanted to expand scavenging options, but Harvey thinks the solution lies in trade. Basically, overproduce and sell the surplus for scrap. Thing is, that'd involve handing over large amounts of valuable commodities to third parties - it might be easier, but it also strengthens our rivals, and feeds the raiders. Also, couldn't help but find it convenient that Harvey advocates for the path that makes him even more indispensable than he is. I told him to stick with scavenging without explaining why, just to test him; he complied.

• [06-Mar-2288] Sanctuary has graduated to become a water treatment facility - not less than 100 litres of purified water gets pumped out of Sanctuary every day (then delivered across the Northwest by Harvey’s dozen-strong provisioner network). Tenpines, Sanctuary, and Greygarden are the main agricultural hubs, but I have big plans for the Abernathy farm - I’m going to plant a whole field of Razorgrain, (if I can just find enough of if). With a steady supply of grain and clean water, we’ll be unstoppable. I have put the word out for the Minutemen to report any signs of Shaun, with a growing force such as we are, there might actually be a chance. At least, to find out what happened to him. At this rate, if he is even alive, he might hear about me first.

• [07-Mar-2288] Some mutants trashed Abernathy’s Tato plot. No big deal, I’m planning to switch it over to wholesale Razorgrain cultivation anyway. I’ll just tell Blake to pull the Tato plants entirely...

HOME

When I was a young girl, I was insanely curious. Now that I am older, I find myself curiously insane as well.

I grew in a normal family, a nuclear family. My mother, father, and I all lived in a quaint little house in a quaint little town. My mother was, like most women those days, a housewife. She cooked, cleaned, and took care of me while my father worked. My father was a mechanic that typically specialized in cars but would sometimes also work on other machines. My family was devout, going to church every Sunday. We were patriotic, God Bless America and all that. We watched baseball in the afternoon and the evening news afterwards. My mother sometimes made a cherry pie to share with the neighbors. Everything about my childhood was stereotypical and normal. Except me.

Where other girls looked to follow their mothers and learn to be the best lady they could, I wanted to build things. I wanted to learn things. I was fascinated by everything in the world. Medicine, Science, Technology, you name it. My father would scold me that these things were not proper interests for a young girl but my mother always managed to get him to drop it. I never thought about doing the things others girl did. No, I was going to be an Engineer, a Doctor, a Scientist. I would build robots. I would cure cancer. I would solve the world’s energy crisis.

One day, something strange occurred. My father came home early from work. He was coughing up blood and looked deathly pale. My mother took him up to the hospital immediately, he couldn’t even protest. The doctor said that my father was suffering from something called radiation sickness. He had been working on a leaky fusion engine for a car for too long and had taken in too much of the radiation seeping out. I didn’t know what radiation was but I didn’t want to look foolish in front of the doctor so I didn’t ask. When I asked my mother if there was anything we could do to help my father, she said “We can pray.” And so I did. I prayed to God for my father to get better and eventually he did. I knew God had heard my prayers and helped my father but a question nagged at the back of my mind: Why had God let my father get sick in the first place?

It was a few more years before I would hear the word “Radiation” again.

My mother was always telling me that I sat too close to the television.”Radiance,” she would say. “You’re going to hurt your eyes sitting that close.” I didn’t listen but then again my mother hadn’t warned me that the television might explode. But that’s what it did. While I was watching a baseball game, a power surge ran through the house causing the lights to flicker. The television on the other hand couldn’t handle the power flux and chose instead to explode. There was this bright flash and thundering sound before everything went dark.

When I awoke, I found myself in the hospital only this time I was the one in the hospital bed with my father looking over me. I had lots of bandages all over and a small sensor keeping track of my heartbeat. The doctor was talking to my mother about my condition as I started to come to. “It’s a miracle.” He said. “The radiation has gone far too quickly to be normal.” Apparently, the television had irradiated me badly when it exploded but by the time I awoke, most of the radiation had dissipated and my major cuts had healed, much quicker than was usual. The doctor said I had a guardian angel watching over me. Specifically, one who ate radiation.

It was in that hospital bed that I realized that my name, Radiance, was oddly close to the word “radiation”. For the rest of my childhood, I would wonder if this was coincidence. Was I just “the light of my mother’s world” as she had attributed my naming to, or had my parents inadvertently caused God to curse me with an ironic radiation demon to follow me around?

After I got out of the hospital, I went to the library. I would learn everything I could about radiation. Where it came from, what it could do to you. My father seemed particularly disturbed when his 10 year old daughter asked about nuclear reactors at dinner one night. My mother assured him that this was just one of my “phases”. Just like airplanes, light bulbs, and the American revolution, this was just something I would learn a lot about and then move on when I was satisfied. Unfortunately, I would never be satisfied with how much I knew about radiation.

I was sixteen when my radiation angel stuck its nasty fingers into my life again. My mother developed skin cancer from all the sun she got working on her garden. Radiation had descended from the heavens and poisoned her. As I found myself in that hospital again, I could feel my demonic angel watching over my shoulder, a wicked grin on its face. The medical team performed radiation therapy over the next few weeks. I found it curious that radiation was both the problem and the solution. However, God did not spare my mother and she died in that hospital. At that point I had all the evidence I needed, God had cursed me. I cursed him right back.

After my mother passed away, my father cracked down hard on my studies and hobbies. No more science, he declared. Men were scientists, not women. No more medicine, men were doctors. No more robotics, men were engineers. He decided, without me, that I was to go to an all women’s school where they would teach me to be a real lady. I protested severely. The fight lasted days. Finally a compromise was made. I would not study science nor home economics, instead I would study law.

Law school was not difficult for me and I still found time to sneak in time studying physics or botany or whatever I wanted. I had decided that I would specialize in medical law, ready to defend victims of tragedy from further injury from insurance companies. When I graduated, my first real case just so happened to involve a patient with severe radiation burns. When I won the case for my client with ease, it became clear that I should accept my curse and once again entangle myself with radiation. From that day forward, I was the Commonwealth’s first and only Radiation Lawyer.

I met my husband in a bar of all places. He was on leave from the military and charmed me with his ability to compete with me intellectually. I’ll be honest, I was particularly interested in him because he was an engineer for the army and built robots, something I had always wanted to do. A year after that night, I found myself married and a mother, beginning a new part of my life which was proving to be fairly quaint. That is, until the bombs began to drop.

As I stood on that hill watching the mushroom cloud develop, a single thought occurred to me: “The True Power of Radiation Has Been Unleashed.”

Pavlov walked through the frozen tundra of what was once northern Canada, covered in snow. Pavlov is here on a mission: find a pre-war military bunker with supplies, and then mark it with a beacon. This would not be easy, considering the amount of snow and land Pavlov would have to go through just to find it. He continued his journey, with his Sniper rifle in hand, and braved the frozen wastes.

Pavlov had walked for about two hours, and was getting tired. He then saw a small spot in the distance. He looked through his scope, and saw than it looked like it was a radio tower. "May this is it. Maybe this is the place". Pavlov thought. He slung his rifle across his shoulder and began running as fast as he could. It was getting dark, so he ran just a little faster. He felt like he was running on rusty knives after all the walking he had done. He got to the small tower building. He got to the door, but it was locked. "Shit" said Pavlov. He ruffled around in his pockets for a bobby pin and a screwdriver, and he knelt down and began picking the lock.

It took him around ten minutes to pick it, which to Pavlov was rare considering how great he was at this. But, after ten minutes and a couple of dozens of Bobby pins, he was able to open it up. When he opened it up, something rushed at Pavlov, which knocked him down. Something was keeping him down. It was a ghoul.

The ghoul was a glowing one. It tried biting at pavlov's face, and Pavlov could hear the chattering teeth. Pavlov was trying to get his Bowie knife, but he just couldn't reach it. Through sheer will power, he was able to push the ghoul off him, and pulled his Bowie knife. The ghoul was dazed for a moment, so Pavlov was able to attack it before it could. Pavlov pushed the knife into the ghouls throat, which instantly killed the ghoul. He tried to get his knife out, but his knife was wedged into its throat. He put his foot against the ghoul, and forced the body off the knife.

"Damn. That was close" said Pavlov. He looked inside the building: some old cans, stimpacks, guns, ammunition, and other stuff useful in the wasteland. It was not as cold, as the outside, but it could have been worse. He began cleaning the place up, trying to tidy the place up for the night.

He was staring inside the fire. He was able to start a fire inside of a barrel. It felt much better than it orginally was. It had been five hours since he discovered this place, and he liked it here. He had always liked small spaces, so this place made him feel safe. He felt tired, so he decided to sleep. He then laid down on his makeshift bed, which he didn't like, but it could have been worse. He closed his eyes, waiting for tomorrow.

War. It never changed. After the bombs fell, and the world was bathed in atomic fire, it was still the same as before. Men and women from all walks of life, needing something for them and their families; and more often than not, they’d take it if they couldn’t find it. This was the life in the wasteland, when not plagued by raiders, the various settlements and cities would be under different threats; everything from “Would the crops be good this year?” and “Need to fix that lousy water purifier.”, to “Are Deathgators, and Deathclaws gonna try and break down the gates again?” These problems plagued most settlements in the wasteland, across this former great nation, but the latter problem was quite large in the Southeastern commonwealth of the United States.

The year of 2290, a very warm year for the former states of South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. A hot wind whips against the wall of the bar, even though it is getting toward the end of dusk, the air wasn’t cooling down much, and the heat of July was intense under normal circumstances, but this year it was hotter. The bar’s main room was far from unoccupied, but the sound of the bar was near dead silent, apart from the quiet sounds of people enjoying their drinks. White, cracking plaster walls contrasted with the slightly dusty, Hickory floor. No windows were in the old, misshapen frames; and the door was on its last legs as it creaked open once more. 

A man, who couldn’t have been more than twenty, silently stepped through the door frame, scanning the patrons of the bar with his light green eyes; a slight look of nervousness dancing through them. Sharp facial features and a long, thin nose almost like a beak, characterized his face. His hair, sandy blonde, fell against his shoulders. His body, thin and lithe, was draped in chainmail, a gorget, and pauldrons rested on his torso, tinges of rust on the edges that look as if they’re been previously fought away; while jeans and some metal leg guards were strapped tight to his thighs. Leather boots held firm on his feet, appearing to be patched and rugged. A battered, but well taken care of Remington model 8 rifle was slung over his shoulder, while an almost pristine, and out of place looking, long sword sat on his hip. As if he was from some sort of wasteland fairytale."Greetings…” I said quietly as everyone turned to look at him, scanning him over and scowling, before slowly turning back to their drinks, deciding that this man was not worth their anger. The man relaxed as he made his way to the counter, placing some caps down and politely asking for a beer. The bartender scowled and handed him a beer. “You’ve a lot of nerve coming to this town. After what your knightly lot did to us way back when.” The bartender, an older black man with a full beard and large belly. “Y’all from up in the Camdenian Kingdom shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near us down here.”

I sighed, not wanting to incur the bartender’s anger. “I’m sorry that you feel that way. I wasn’t part of the battle of Charleston Rail, but I heard it was brutal from my parents.” He says as he takes a sip from his beer. “I’m not looking for trouble though, just wanted a drink. I’m not part of the knightly order anymore, so no worries about trouble from me; or at least none that started by me.” 

The bartender nods, and looks him over. “Well…as long as your caps are comin’ then the beer is too.” His expression softening slightly as their exchange happens once more. 

I silently sip my drink for a while, looking around at the other patrons, and then back to the bartender. “Do you happen to know of any work available…..um..” I trail off, realizing I don’t know the name of the barkeep, “Where are my manners? I’m Asher Mathis.” I say flashing a warm smile at the man.

The bartender huffs, grabbing a cloth and absentmindedly wiping the counter as he thinks. After a few minutes, he speaks. “Well….if you goes down that street there by the east gate, on the left is Marissa’s Doctor Office. I think she’s been lookin’ for a merc or two to help her with some kind of job.” He gives a short shrug and then shakes his head. “I guess she doesn’t like livin’ here in Lockwood, I think she’s movin’ her practice someplace else. Would ya like another beer?” The bartender asks expectantly as he finishes talking.
Much to his surprise, I stand up and begin to head for the door, much to the relief of the bartender. A few of the other patrons shift in their seats as I walk past them, armor shifting and clinking softly. The warm wind of the night blowing in once more as the door opens and I stride out into the street. The cracked asphalt street is lit poorly by several small neon signs above a brothel and a few stores, along with a few jury-rigged streetlights. I look left and then right, checking for threats as I start toward the east end of the town. Sounds of loud arguing, parties, fighting, and screwing coming from several alleyways. 

I let out a noise of disgust as I quickly walks past these alleys, speaking under my breath as I attempt to navigate the mazelike mess of a town. “No wonder the elders tried to purge this place. It doesn’t seem that productive, nor safe. A mess of greed it seems.” That was Lockwood. On the southern end of the wrecked city of Charleston, was Lockwood. A town made of several walled off streets, protecting the inhabitants from the raiders, Sandwood Mercenary company, and the Deathclaws and Deathgators; all stalking the flooded and unflooded streets of east and central Charleston. In the south, you still weren’t safe; Bloodbugs, Mirelurks, and more crawled through the radioactive marshes, looking for prey.

• ...the raiders that were holding her had her locked in a closet in some clothing emporium over the river. Preston and I kicked in the door, the usual shit. We clear out some junkie mooks on the ground floor, and come to the closet. I pick the lock and inside is Lucy, she’s tied up and bugging out.

  So I untie Lucy, then she lunges forward, knocking me on my ass. I flip over and there’s Lucy, up against the staircase with her hands around a mean looking raider’s neck. She’s reaching around a rusty bracket arching over her head, holding her bucking legs down with her knees, pinning a sawn-off shotgun down with her elbow. I honestly just stood there on the spot, until the raider was limp and twitching under Lucy’s heaving breath. She didn’t say a word the entire way home.

  Next day, she’s at the guard post, cool as ice - like nothing had ever happened. I followed up with Blake; turns out the raider she strangled was ‘Clutch’, the leader of these clowns. They had been periodically extorting the farm, and kidnapped Lucy in the first place. Wowser! Was putting Lucy in charge of security at Abernathy’s a good instinct or what? I’lll have to get her some backup, though, can’t risk her getting mobbed again.

• [06-Jan-2288] Couldn’t sleep. Shaun. Could he be alive, out there, somewhere? I remember taking an ice nap after they murdered my wife and took him - that means it could have happened any time in the last two hundred years. He could have died of old age decades ago (or much younger, of course, in this place). My mind has been returning to Mama Murphy’s retarded suggestion to just go to Diamond City, and ‘ask around’ (yeah, thanks lady, great help). Maybe I should? It’s been months since I entered this waking nightmare, I’m Generalissimo of several settlements of simpering wastelanders, and am possibly the most fearsome bundle of violence in the ruins of west Boston. My headway on finding what happened to Shaun is close to zero, though. Even if he is gone, I ought to find out what happened to him, at least for his mother's sake.

• [16-Jan-2288] I think I made a friend: Geoff Harvey. He showed up at Tenpines last week, having heard our broadcast for settlers. He brought a pretty substantial collection of fine booze, which dovetailed perfectly with our need for a bartender at the fledgling Molerat’s Head Inn. He’s a ghoul, but is all-right upstairs, and lived in the area before the war, (we were practically neighbours!). Anyway, he’s a dry son-of-a-bitch, but makes for good conversation. God, it’s such a relief talking to someone who gets it; someone who knows just how far we’ve fallen, just how fucked up this place actually is.

• [18-Jan-2288]The Minutemen have undisputed authority over the wasteleand Northwest of Diamond City. From Sunshine Tidings, to Sanctuary, to Tenpines Bluff. As fun as it has been to cocktease Preston, I think I will settle Sunshine Tidings after all. I want to try something different there, though. A more martial community, something better suited to this ruthless shithole; less comfortable armchairs, more barbed wire. A ‘barracks’ I guess is what I’m after. Sunshine Barracks. I’m going to take Rainbow Jane from the Red Rocket, and have her oversee the it’s settlement and growth. She’ll be missed, but she is everything I want Sunshine Barracks to be. Just gotta figure out where to put the Basketball court.

• [24-Jan-2288]Fucking Preston Garvey! He’s at it again. I guess the fear of losing me to the Brotherhood has worn off. I visited the construction site at Tenpines Bluff, only to find out Garvey had gone rogue and negotiated a peace with the thugs at Fort Zimonja. Geoff Harvey tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t have any of it (“mew mew ... peaceful solution .... blah blah … enough blood’s been spilled,” I can hear it already). I wanted that radio tower, damn it. All they use it for is to broadcast that one insipid ink spots record they must have found. Garvey is 2IC, though. Having him onside gives me a lot of legitimacy with the wastelanders (many of which hold longstanding sympathies for the old minutemen).

  Nothing to be done about it for now.

• [26-Jan-2288] Random inspiration: writing down so I don’t forget. The CBL: The Commonwealth Basketball League. The Sanctuary Saints, Red Rockets, Tenpine Tops, Sunshine Goodfeels. Any one of them could take on the best 3v3 team Diamond City could scrape together, I’d wager. These idiot wastelanders don’t know the first thing about basketball, though; I bet I could make some ‘modifications’ to the core ruleset. Something a bit more suited to this world; ‘riotball’!

• [27-Jan-2288] I found an open drainpipe not far from the Drumlin Diner hiding a very secure door with an even more secure terminal guarding it. I fancy that I know a thing or two about hacking, but the encryption protecting this door is some next-level shit. What the fuck is this place?

• [28-Jan-2288] Geoff Harvey and I must’ve drunk three bottles of hard liquor between us last night. Harvey was a venture capitalist before the bombs fell, but made a living peddling junk until signing on as bartender here at Tenpines Bluff. I told him I’m ex-military. We joked about how even the apocalypes couldn’t shake out of our career rut, and that we’re basically doing the same thing. A few drinks more and we’re talking about bringing it back for real - me building an actual army, and him investing in local entrepreneurship. Try either one alone, and you don’t get far: raider gang, or brahmin caravaner. But together, we could build a force to be reckoned with. With the backing of a franchise of merchant traders, a small armed force can grow into a proper army. With the protection of a professional armed force, a circle of traders can grow into a regional network.

  I’m seriously considering going all-in with this.

• [29-Jan-2288]Bruce Paula caught some punk from pilfering Tatoes, whilst on guard duty; he put a .38 in his leg and him locked in the shed for me. General Chugchug wanted words. We spoke. The kid spilled the beans as soon as we shook hands; he won’t be pilfering much of anything now. He’s with the crew at Fort Zimonja; they haven't had the balls to hit us properly, but this is the pretext I’ve been looking for. Preston can eat dick, I’m taking Zimonja tonight. Now.

• [30-Jan-2288] Garvey didn’t like what happened with Zimonja. At. All. We were supposed to meet at Drumlin Diner to chart the wastes between there and Tenpines properly. He didn’t show. I do the run myself, scouting the ruins of the Thicket Quarry and Starlight drive-in, only to find he’s not at Tenpines either. Codsworth is, though. Turns out Garvey sent him away from Sanctuary, taking over there himself. Mutiny?!

• [31-Jan-2288] I fixed things with Garvey. I was going to send General Chugchug to sort things out, but Harvey talked me down. He says the time will come, but we need the old-school minuteman cred Preston brings to the table. For now. Harvey’s plan went like a drea: Preston Garvey walked right in on an intervention led by me, for Mama Murphy’s chem problem. When she caved, and promised to lay off the chems, the hostility melted away. Instead of giving me an earful about Zimonja, he’s all on about how inspirational I am, and how he looks up to me and shit. Fucking histrioinic, brownnosing prat.

  This is where things get weird. After Garvey serves me up a steaming tray of sycophantic woo woo, I just stare at him, for like a minute. How does one even respond to that? Well I didn’t know either, but I did get the weirdest urge to flirt with him. Yeah. What the hell? I’ve never swung that way, not sure I do now, either. I don’t even think it was sexual - could my desire to fuck Preston in his stupid mouth be manifesting literally? Well, anyway, I didn’t. Thank god. I mumbled something agreeable, and now we’re all good.

  Jesus, what is going on with me?

• [01-Feb-2288] So Preston and I followed up on the Thicket Quarry; yeah, the one I scouted while he was having his bitch-fit about the punks of Fort Zimonja. The Quarry is mostly flooded, and some scavenger had taken up occupation. My instinct was to scare him off, claim the scrap; why should we acknowledge this geek’s claim to an entire industrial site, over the settlers we’re responsible for? Garvey’s all about the non-aggression, though, so we end up literally walking up to the guy for a chat.

  The good news is we don’t get shot in the face. The guy, ‘Sully Mathis,’ has an attitude, (and a bad vibe if you ask me), but he’s not violent. He wants to drain the quarry and scour it for scrap. Bullshit. He wants to take up residence, and we don’t need strange neighbours. Anyway, he wants help getting the pump to work, and lowballs us to do it for him (a lot easier for chugchug). Preston’s face when I pry this guy for half-decent remuneration: seriously what is this loser’s deal? What?! Should I just accept any deal anyone pitches ever? For fuck’s sake. Does jesus shed a tear everytime I make a few extra caps? God help me.

  We got the fucking pump working, which stirred up some mirelurks. Oh yeah, ‘mirelurks,’ they’re fun. Giant, murderous, anthropomorphic crabs. Not even exaggerating.

• [02-Feb-2288] I came across a couple with their guns on some poor sap, pleading for his life. I stroll on over with polite words and a cocked pipe rifle, but they’re not too receptive. Turns out they think this guy is a synth. So? What is the deal with all this synth shit, anyway? Most wastelanders hate them, but they don’t seem to know an awful lot about them. Seems an awful lot like unsubstantiated paranoia. Then again, I fragged dozens of obviously robotic synths with Danse, when I helped him clear out Arcjet systems, so I guess I’m in no place to judge. Still, I feel disinclined to jump on the synth-lynching bandwagon until I can get a bit more info.

• [03-Feb-2288] Sometimes I forget Codsworth isn’t actually a ‘person’. He was still at Tenpines today. Waiting. Just waiting for days for me to tell him to go back and resume management at Sanctuary. I don’t even want to know the state of the place after a few days without leadership. Heaven knows Sturges’ relentless ‘maintenance’ doesn’t amount to shit, if he even managed to take some time off coveting my power armour. Cunt. Hopefully the Longs held it together. Shit. Fuck it; Codsworth’ll handle it.

• [04-Feb-2288] Starlight Drive-in! It’s loaded with car-husks, lumber, and fully equipped with scavenging facilities. I guess the stack of nuclear waste in the middle of the car lot killed the prior inhabitants. My first thought was to drag all this shit up to Tenpines, but maybe it’d be worth settling it as a forward operating base closer to Diamond City. Not that I’m planning on invading it. Just in case.

  Raising the base off the ground is working wonders for Tenpines - I might try and do something similar here. Erect some kind of rig from the top of the screen, over the car lot, to the ticket office. Riotball team: ‘The Starlight Dazzlers’!

• [06-Feb-2288] I spent yesterday cleaning up the future site of the Sunshine Barracks with Rainbow Jane. It has really scrubbed up. We’ve lifted and stacked all the fallen logs (not to mention a felling a few trees), as well as dismantling junk furniture for scrap, and collecting all the corpses into a stack, presumably for burning later (remarkably, Ghoul corpses don’t seem to decompose at all. Jane says the radiation ‘pickles’ them, sorta.

  Jane took me, that night. Best word I can think for it. I think I sprained my rib, can you sprain your rib? I think I get the nickname now, too. Not sure how to feel about it, or if indeed I should. Not a word was said during or after; straight to work this morning.

• [08-Feb-2288] SWEET VINDICATION! As soon as I saw Preston’s flare go up over Thicket Excavations, I fucking knew it. I almost fell from the top of Tenpines, cackling. That dumb cunt. I get there, and Preston is pinned inside a caravan, surrounded by Raiders, and a loose Mirelurk. CHUGCHUGCHUG! It was beautiful; I made a mural. Preston was rattled, wanted to retreat. General Chugchug doesn’t do things by half measures. There was no argument, I just pressed on, and he didn’t want to leave alone.

  Finally a chance to field test my laser rifle’s beam focuser. Five-hundred-thousand volts of focused optical extasy. I lay upon the brink of that quarry pit and picked off those raider bastards one hot crimson prod at a time. The ferocity of this baby is such that targets invariably burst into flames, if indeed they don’t just disintegrate. I didn’t want it to end. That raider prick Sully never even realised Chugchug had come for him, I doubt he could have seen me clearly all the way from the bottom of the pit. I could see him, though, through my deluxe, custom crystal optics. Hell, I could see the detail on his fresh facial tattoo. Chugchug, goon, chugchug!

  The episode did completely change my mind about the quarry, though - fuck settling there, it’s a literally shooting gallery, and I can’t think of an intelligent way to defend it. Better to keep it as a mirelurk hatchery, I guess; we’ll set up some turrets on those enclosure, and come down periodically to feed them insect husks, or to harvest. It’d make a nice prison, if we end up needing one.

  I think I might stay at Sunshine Barracks tonight.

Edit: This is part 4 in an ongoing series. I ought to just link to the prior entries in this series here:

1. [07-Nov-2287] My Mister Handy asked me if I considered him family...
2. [02-Dec-2287] I cleared the corvega factory of raiders...
3. [25-Dec-2287] Ho ho ho, merry fucking Christmas: six palettes of concrete in a junkyard shipping container...

• ...think of the fortifications we could build with this! Hrm, what should I use this for? The co-op, perhaps? Nah! Let’s use it to make Tenpine Tower! Yeah the Paula’s aren’t going to like it, but they can take a hike. Woohoo the view is going to be glorious. Sorry Preston, but General’s word goes. Suck shit.

• [26-Dec-2287] Ok, have to adjust expectations. I have a lot of concrete, but not enough to build a ‘tower’. It’s still going to be grand, though; perhaps four storeys, raised off the ground, on concrete pillars. We’ll limit entry points to one or two of the columns, which’ll make for nice defensive chokepoints. We will have to leave the crops relatively unguarded with this approach, but I’ll install a fortified balcony overlooking them, so we can at least harry raiders from within the fortress if they go for the tato plants.

• [27-Dec-2287] I just literally stumbled upon a full suit of t51 power armour. Did no-one seriously think to scavenge the highway? I think the radiation might have had a detrimental effect on the faculaties on these ‘survivors’. Unbelievable.

• [28-Dec-2287] Fuck shit fuck. Dogpaste and Sticky Joe are back. Sorta. mutilate bits of them are reforming from the gore. Is it them? Who is doing this to me?! I can’t. I just. Fuck it, from now I cross downriver at the ford. I can’t take this. I can bring chugchug. I’m always safe with chugchug. Chugchugchugchug.

• [29-Dec-2287] When Preston and I had been making our way to rescue Lucy (who I strongly suspect might have ‘rescued’ herself, had we left it to her), we came across the ruins of College Square stations. The place was carnage, looked like some raiders had fortified the plaza, but got overrun by ghouls. That’s going to mean a lot of loot, if we can deal with the ferals. It’s going to be a gay old time. I’ve stripped and cleaned my shotgun, and attached a bayonet; the perfect weapon for when they come in close for a kiss. I’ve gotta admit, I’m excited.

• [31-Dec-2287] Good tidings for new year’s eve: construction at Tenpines is coming along swimmingly. We scavenged half of College square (above ground), but got so much scrap that we’ve been forced to come back to Tenpines to drop off the takings, rest, and go at it again. Any objections the Paulas had to our ‘expansion’ of Tenpines evaporated when they saw Preston and I returning from College Station, literally dripping with radioactive ghoul giblets, carting no less that 500 pounds of scrap. One less problem to deal with. Oh, and I found a Mr Jangles spaceman plushie in a crashed airliner on the way back! Shaun is going to love it; will have to drop it in the crib at Sanctuary tomorrow, before cleaning up the rest of College square.

• [01-Jan-2288] Just found four fusion cores! Time to get my Chug on.

• [02-Jan-2288]Dear diary, today was huge; Preston and I went back to College square this morning, after dropping by Sanctuary as planned, (side note: I swear Mama Murphy hasn’t moved an inch from her fucking chair - she was fucking nodding on med-x when we arrived, not later that 9am. Someone needs to do something about that junkie layabout). Anyway, while we were clearing out the remainder of the terraces around College Square, we picked up a military radio signal, and heard a gunfight the block over.

  Turns out there’s some soldiers in the former police station - yes, ‘soldiers,’ these people were definitely military. Preston immediately recognised them as the ‘Brotherhood of Steel’ - some kind of tech’d-up underground militia. He fucking hates them, and makes no secret of it, (which immediately made me like them). After some guilt tripping, I get him to agree to help them with their feral problem.

  They’re quite the characters, unlike pretty much everyone else I’ve met in the wasteland so far. Quite military, but not in the real, pre-war sense. They’re being led by ‘Paladin (yes, really) Danse’, who took an immediate liking to me after I demonstrated basic aptitude for combat operations.

  Preston is whining like a five-year-old at this point, but caves and agrees to subsequently help with busting into a factory ruin for some signals equipment. While Preston bitches, Danse just gets on with the job. Turns out that the ‘Brotherhood of Steel’ isn’t even weirdest club I’d learn about today, the factory is filled with android ‘Synths’ belonging to some secret society calling themselves ‘the Institute’ (without a shred of irony).

  At the end of it all, Danse actually tries to recruit me. What I would give for a photo of Preston’s stuttering face at this moment. Almost made me accept right there. I told him I’d think about it. Truth is, I’m really coming to enjoy this leadership thing. Yes, sure, I hate the people, but building and defending a growing network of settlements is a real challenge, and welcome distraction from… all this.

  Also, I don’t know the first fucking thing about this ‘brotherhood’ but I am getting definite whackjob vibes from them, and that’s speaking from my goddamned state of mind. I won’t rule it out; it’s good to keep Preston hungry for my approval, but for now I need to focus on building up Tenpines Bluff and Abernathy Farm: food, drinks, electricity, a basketball team - there’s a lot of work to be done for each. Oh yeah, and I totally decided to bolt a tower to the side of that electricity pylon they’re camped under.

• [03-Jan-2288] Sturges asked if he could tinker with the t45 suit we found at the museum of freedom, now that I have a t51 suit. I knew it. Ever since I moved it to the locked garage at Red Rocket, he’s been shiftless - his pointless hammering seems to have intensified, and become more… pointed.

• [04-Jan-2288] Abernathy’s got their other daughter kidnapped by some Raider named Clutch. Fucking how? Do they just not use any of the fortifications I built them? Do they not want daughters? I wonder if I could build scaffolding all the way to the top of that pylon…

  Decided to cut deep into the urban wasteland to retrieve the Abernathy girl. Of course we get intercepted by a squad of super mutants three steps out of Concord. Christ, my power armour is fucked.

  Moved on to defuse a situation at the Drumlin diner. Preston was pleased at the peaceful resolution. Can’t help but feel we’dve been better of killing someone. But who? Going to crash at Drumlin for now, see what I can do to jury rig chugchug back into serviceability.

• [02-Dec-2287] I cleared the corvega factory of raiders for Rob and Elaine Paula, the couple living at Tenpines Bluff. Good lord, did I clear it, though. It was cathartic. My power armour is unfair, untouchable, and soothing as it chugs along. Chug chug chug chug chug. This is more fun than it should be. Rob and Elaine were surprised when I returned; they don’t know the Chugchug. How could they? They want to push me out of Tenpines now that I handled the raiders for them. They’ve got something else coming. Tenpines Bluff is mine.

• [04-Dec-2287] I need to find more raiders to kill. Preston mentioned some farm. Maybe the old beatnik co-op? Shadepine? Something like that, it’s not a place I’dve gone, before the war. Either way, I should check it out.

• [05-Dec-2287] Fuck fuck fuck what the fuck? The raider and dog corpse over the bridge are fucking messing with me. I threw the bodies over the bridge. Next day, they’re back. I do it again. Back again. Did I throw them over the bridge? Fuck.

• [06-Dec-2287] Sunshine Tidings Co-op. I went there with Mr Handy, and messed up a gang of feral ghouls. I enthusiastically rifle through the pockets of any ghouls I slaughter, now. More often than not, they have trinket or ‘keepsake’ stashed. I wonder if it is a ‘keepsake,’ or just the last thing they had in their hand before they lost their mind completely. Does some vestigially human part of them hold on to it dearly? I think so - otherwise surely I’d find more ghouls without anything. They always have something. My heart lifts when I hear that gurgling retch: what will it be this time? A plastic spoon? A toy car? An empty bottle? Such excitement!

  Codsworth and I found a defective Mr Handy. The beatniks that lived here before the war were some kind of robot liberationist whackjobs, and they’d crossed his wires, remade him as a spaced out ‘Professor Goodfeels’. I tried playing with his control console, but couldn’t get him back to regular operation with inputs alone. Then I noticed coordinates for a maintenance centre, to which it could be dispatched. I did so, figuring I could go there later, and try my hand at fixing him with whatever was left on-site.

  Sunshine Tidings Co-op is a quality location. It beggars belief that nobody has taken up residence there. Maybe they did; we found a pretty fresh settler corpse whilst clearing out the ghouls. Seems more like a drifter who picked the wrong place to camp, though. Anyway, the site definitely looks like it could be developed as much, if not more so, than Sanctuary. I can see what Preston sees in the place; we’ll camp here tonight.

• [07-Dec-2287] Jackpot; whilst rifling through an abandoned chapel nearby the co-op, I stumbled upon the backdoor to a massive subterranean raider complex. It was carnage, they never prepared to be attacked from behind. Tunnel by tunnel, I painted the walls red. I think Codsworth disapproved.

  The raiders didn’t even know what was going on until I was at the main entrance, and realised what the facility actually was: a pre-war federal ration stockpile. By then, well over half of them lay dismembered behind me.

  Holy shit, that didn’t stop Codsworth from nearly dying, though. He rushed out in front of the sandbags, buzzsaw flailing. I froze when I heard a blast and stopped hearing his vocoder. Nearly died myself; I was hyperventilating and rocking when the raiders breached the front of the compound. Codsworth charged in after them, pulling me out of it, thankfully. Bless his spirit, but I can’t take that risk.

• [08-Dec-2287] As we came back from the Sunshine Tidings expedition, we came across the smouldering husk of Professor Goodfeels. I broke down: I killed him. What was I thinking? Sending him to his old maintenance depot, halfway across the Commonwealth Wasteland. Why didn’t I leave him at the Co-op? I could have gone to the maintenance centre and retrieved what I needed to fix him. Now he’s gone. I don’t even know what happened. I already killed the raiders on that bridge, and his chassis was already so damaged by the beatniks I couldn’t make out what did him in. Why did I send him to the depot?

  I’m putting Codsworth in charge of Sanctuary. Someone else can cover my six. Dogmeat, maybe? I don’t know, is a dog enough? I’d have to train him. Preston Garvey? Gah, I hate that guy. Rainbow Jane? No, too valuable. Maybe I should roll solo…

• [10-Dec-2287] Enough. That’s the last straw. I pulverised the raider and the dog into a fine paste across the bitumen with shotgun, a baseball bat, and my bare hands. Sticky Joe and Dogpaste! Hahahaha! No more wondering: it’s done.

• [22-Dec-2287] Rolling solo didn’t go well. Jesus-fucking-christ I swear I nearly bayonetted Trashcan Carla, by the Gorski cottage. I was all pumped up and stabby, and she was there. I managed to cover the barely-aborted attempt up, but it was awkward. She’s still weird with me.

  I escorted her to Sanctuary, fuck she’s a dumb cunt. She sold me a perfectly good basketball for FOUR CAPS, not ten seconds after walking past my newly erected basketball court. How does she not know these things go together? I would have paid 100 caps. Who are these people?

  At least the sticky paste greeting us at the minuteman bridge was reassuring. Carla even commented on it.

• [23-Dec-2287] Welp, Preston Garvey officially declared me ‘General’ of the Minutemen. Somehow, this made me lose even more respect for him. If only he knew how I almost disemboweled his favourite trader yesterday. If only he knew a lot of shit.

  I don’t really want to leave him in Sanctuary, so I asked that he accompany me on expeditions. I don’t like how he sort of acts like he’s somehow responsible there. Also, he is actually a good shot, and that laser rifle is pretty serious business. Maybe our security gate will actually stay closed, too

• [24-Dec-2287] Preston Garvey’s motherfucking hat. We got into an argument, I took it, I gave it back. Now he’s not wearing it out of spite, so I have to look at his dumb head. Also, he keeps bitching at me to clean up the co-op. Jesus, if settling it is so important, go right ahead. Why does everyone look to me to do the most basic shit?

  Fuck I hate Preston.I have actually purposefully been doing other shit just to fuck with him. On the plus side, he’s a rabid moralist, and he constantly analyses every single fucking thing I do. Yes, his bullshit is tiresome, but as with Codsworth, I do find it keeps me grounded. Still, part of me looks forward to his untimely death.

So I expanded upon a week's worth of anecdotal bullet points made whilst playing, and ended up with way too much writing: 8 pages worth. So as not to drop too massive of a textdump, I'll post smaller, more frequent entries (every other day or so).

Older Entries:

• Entry 1

#[07-Nov-2287] My Mister Handy asked me if I considered him family...

• ...and I answered 'yes'. I think I meant it, too. I mean, he's literally the last piece of my old life - he's the only one that 'remembers' any of it. The wastelanders, they don't get it; what do they see when they look up at the pre-war flag I hung up over the checkpoint. Why is there an armed checkpoint on my front lawn? The commonwealth wasteland is doing weird shit to my head.

• [09-Nov-2287] Dear diary, today I spent four hours in a tin shed, pinned under near-constant gatling laser fire. Naturally, I didn't have my suit. Every thirty seconds or so, the sentry bot would pause to re-arm and re-target, during which period I would stick my head around the corner and ping it with my pathetically inappropriate pipe pistol. I actually couldn't stop laughing by the end of it. Like, I wanted to, but I couldn't stop. Not the first time, either.

• [13-Nov-2287] People are starting to look to me for guidance. As if I have more of an idea of what to do; I literally just woke up from a 200 year old nap. I'm not so sure they'd be so keen to follow me if they saw me unload a clip of .38's into Shaun's teddy. Then again, I wouldn't say most of them are doing any better.

• [15-Nov-2287] I need to get out of Sanctuary. It's good to have something to work on, but the place, and the people, are doing my head in. Jun and Marcy Long are about as unbearable as each other; their only saving grace is their respective neuroses seem to make them extra-productive. I barricaded off a section of the estate, but that asshat Preston keeps leaving the chainlink fence I erected at the entry checkpoint open. Not much use having a barbed wire fence if it's open, right Preston? Oh yeah, this fuckwit is ostensibly here for security. I physically groan at the very sight of Mama Murphy - ever since I built her that chair, she hasn't lifted a goddamn finger. Finally, there's Sturges; he seemed ok at first, but the more I pay attention, the more questionable he seems. All day he walks around beating against the ruins with his hammer, but they never actually improve in condition. I think he's just milling about, occupying himself with pointless busywork while he eyes my power armor. Oh yeah, he thinks I don't notice, but I do. I've started taking out the fusion cores, and keeping them on my person. Just because he found the suit doesn't make it his, I retrieved the fusion core. It's mine, dammit.

• [16-Nov-2287] Feeling a bit clearer after a day away on patrol. I went back to concord to scavenge for copper. God damned copper, I swear I crack half a boner whenever I spot junk that might have some. Full stag when it's there. Anyway, the expedition took my past that auto-garage with the Red Rocket. It's actually pretty decently equipped. I'm considering setting it up as a sanctuary from Sanctuary, of sorts. I'll need more scrap, though.

• [18-Nov-2287] I found some homesteaders camped under a electrical power pylon. My first instinct was to warn them that it might not be the healthiest place to live; what a laugh. Their daughter was murdered by raiders. I didn't want say anything, but it's little wonder considering they have literally no defensive fortifications. Seriously, no fences, barricades, turrets: nothing. I was actually pilfering their harvest for Sanctuary until some combination of pity and shame snapped the humanity back into me. I guess it's not too much extra work to look out for them too, they're only a stone's throw from that auto-garage across the bridge.

• [19-Nov-2287] Dear Diary, today the universe didn't punch me in the dick. I took a chance on some trader, bought a Brahmin off her for 100 caps. She said it wasn't stolen, but I'd barely finished asking the question before we both realised I didn't care. Anyway, she actually did deliver the beast to Sanctuary. Is it bad that part of me wanted to have to hunt her down?

• [20-Nov-2287] Yep, it's final. I have to set up shop in the Red Rocket. I was in Shaun's room when I realised some whackjob had turned it into a creepy shrine, overflowing with toys and shit. Yep, the whackjob was me. I'm not abandoning Sanctuary, just taking a break. They're pretty self sufficient, now: we've had an influx of settlers. Mostly, they're insufferable, ungrateful, moochers - but they have hands and Cogsworth does an ok job of directing them. I built those fuckers a mess hall and a rec room without so much as a thank you. Except for Dogmeat, hands down the classiest of the lot. I also took as much steel and wood I could carry (suited up); nobody said anything. Good thing, too - we all know who scavenged most of it.

• [25-Nov-2287] Well, I not even a week in, and I've caved. Solitude at the Red Rocket wasn't the panacea I'd hoped it might be. Without the regular insanity of the other settlers, I lost my grip on the passage of time. Today, I woke up naked on top of the awning. How did I even get up there? My first aid kit was also totalled - did I do chems? I don't do chems... I have resolved that I do, in fact, need others. Still, I'm not quite ready to move back into Sanctuary full-time. I've thrown a couple of matresses down on the garage floor - hopefully I'll be able to hand-pick some help that isn't useless or raving mad.

• [29-Nov-2287] Things are looking up. Two new wastelanders have set up shop with me at the Red Rocket; Rainbow Jane and Silent Pete. Pete lives up to his name, which is grand, and is quite content acting as groundskeeper. Rainbow Jane wears a buzzcut, barbed chestpiece, and a wicked pipe rifle; she's on security, and she does not fuck around. Part of me suspects she's ex-raider, but so long as she's remains on point and keeps to herself, I'm not asking any questions. I don't even want to know how she got her nickname.

• [30-Nov-2287] I found some basketball hoops in a scrapyard; maybe I should erect a court on one of the vacant lots in Sanctuary? The Red Rockets vs the Sanctuary Saints, 3 on 3, weekly showdown. Might be good for morale. Or is that completely crazy? I don't even know anymore. Fuck it, I'm putting the hoops up.

10/20/2281 I have been guarding this caravan for three weeks now and they still haven't payed me. We are heading to the HUB, I am hoping that I can find some people who are willing to join up to make a mercenary group, but I might only find a junkie who thinks thinks they have what it takes to traverse the west coast. We ran into a group of corrupt NCR rangers asking for three thousand to cross the border, naturally the caravan driver persuaded them and he only had to pay five hundred caps, funny that, rangers are a lot stupider then you would think. we had set up camp for the night when we got attacked by some geckos, they were huge bigger than anything I had ever seen, and I have seen some pretty big things in my life, I got one of them in the neck with the Chinese pistol, I found on a dead prospector the rest. The other one took a bullet to the head and now I am trying to clean my damn jacket.

10/21/2281 We made it to the HUB today and just my luck I found caravan guard who was going to quit his job, he told me that he would tag along until we got to Junktown, I told Him he had to be ready by six tomorrow morning and he didn't like that idea, but he is only young so it is understandable. I went around The HUB all day looking for any contracts up near Junktown, I only found one which was for some shady fella named Gillian, he wanted me to run drugs up to Junktown I was fine with that but I definitely wont take the main roads after hearing the payment was 3000 bottle caps, because there is a big chance that we will be hunted by his competitors. After having a few beers i decided to get some shut eye when I realized that bloody caravan had my compacter mattress, so now I am writing this entry from the comfort of a hotel room.

10/22/2281 Goddamn my head hurts maybe it cause i drank to much last night or did I dive in to a bin, I can't quite remember so today me and Darren headed off towards Junktown after I tracked down that caravan and maybe took a little more then what was rightfully mine so we had plenty of supplies and drugs. I think raiders saw us as an easy target cause we got ambushed three times, but they all learned their lesson the hard way don't mess with a fifteen year old boy who can shot as fast as a death claw, and a man who most definitely doesn't want to fall prey to the scum of the earth. I have first watch tonight so I took the chance to read a book on ways to set and avoid traps and ambushes, my torch ran out of battery when I was reading the part about avoiding shotgun rigged doors. Any way I am to tired to right and these cateye pills are starting to wear off.

SPOILERS FOR NEW VEGAS AND THE INDEPENDENT STORY LINE

Link to Prologue.

Link to Chapter 1.

Link to Chapter 2.

Link to Chapter 3.

Link to Chapter 4.

Not sure when the next chapter update will be. I've been trying to keep it on a weekly basis, but really, there's no telling. Just stay tuned!

Turns out it is made from prune juice.

Anyway, since I had caught a lull from the constant shit-storm that is life out here in the wastes, I decided to take Sunny’s advice and get some sort of pack from the general store. The general store, there’s really nothing remarkable about it. Small building, with shelves along the sides of the walls holding a random assortment of bits and bobs, and two broken chest freezers that form a walkway up to the counter. There are some lamps around the store, but most of the store’s lighting comes through the windows.

A tiny bit of background info for those who are interested, Nuka-Cola, and also Sunset Sarsaparilla bottle caps, have taken over as the currency of this new world. There’s no longer any standing government to back the pre-war fiat currency, and even the NCR dollar has suffered through dips in value due to raids on the NCR’s gold stores. Caps though, most of the technology to manufacture and paint them was lost when the bombs fell, and there’s a limited supply of them, and they’re backed by the value of water, so this makes them a prime candidate for a new currency.

Anyway, Sunny had given me a substantial amount of caps after our day out in the desert, and I walked out of the store with a new bandolier over my shoulder, a pistol holster which held my 10mm, and a belt with all sorts of different pouches and satchels along it. The bandolier also came with a rifle scabbard on the back, and my .22 rifle slid into it easily, freeing up my hands. I walked up the hill to the gas station and slid the key inside the handle. Turning it, I walked through the door and, to an unfortunate sense of growing familiarity, I found another pistol aimed at my head.

“That’s close enough,” the man said. “Who are you, and what do you want with me?”

“Ringo?” I asked.

“Yeah, and you’ve got about ten seconds,” he said, not taking the gun away from my face. I held the key to the gas station in between me and the gun.

“You think that Trudy would just give this out to anyone?”

“Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t, but you could be in the employ of those Powder Gangers for all I know. Five seconds.” I sighed.

“Listen; I really don’t want to get shot in the head again.” This caused some stir in Ringo, but he kept the gun aimed at my head.

“Again?”

“Yeah, again. The last one managed to put me in the hospital for a few weeks. You think you can do better?” As the words left my mouth, I prepared for darkness to visit me a third time. To my relief, Ringo lowered the gun and holstered it. “Thanks.”

“You’re that courier, right?”

“Yeah. Jaxon.” Now that I could focus on other things, I saw that he wore a brown plaid shirt with a red bandana around his neck with blue overalls. His brown hair was kept short, with a stylized wave through the front of it, no facial hair to speak of.

“Sorry about the gun. Just tense, is all.”

“Trudy filled me in. Joe Cobb wants you dead, and he’s willing to burn this town to the ground to get to you.”

“Joe Cobb ain’t coming after me. Not by himself, at least. I’d shoot him out one of these windows,” he said, motioning to the boarded up windows of the gas station.

“Yeah, but from what I hear, he’s got some friends to back him up. How many Powder Gangers do you think you could take down from in here before they overwhelmed you? Assuming they’d take the harder path of shooting you and not just blowing this gas station up.”

“So what, you gonna help me?”

“Yeah, and I think Sunny’s got something in the works as well.”

“I’m down for any plan that’s not handing me over to the Powder Gangers.”

“Why do they want you, anyway?”

“Well, I work as a trader for the Crimson Caravan Company, and we were coming down the I-15, when we come under fire. Not even a ‘put down your weapons and get your hands up’ type of deal, just bullets flying. We put up a good fight, but we were outnumbered. I killed a few in my retreat, so perhaps they’re out for revenge.”

“Well alright then, just be ready. We’ll report back when we have a plan, but Cobb could start an attack at any time,” I said, turning to leave the gas station. I was almost through when I heard Ringo call out to me.

“Hey, would you like to play some Caravan?” I looked him dead in the face.

“No,” I said, and closed the door behind me. I was pondering if that had been too curt, but the thought quickly left my head when a man with a baseball cap with… goggles over the brim… walked up to me. He wore a short white beard and this tan vest that just seemed to be made of pockets and pouches.

“Well hi there!” he said, all friendly.

“Hey man, how’s it going,” I said, not stopping to talk.

“Names Malcolm Holmes,” he started, following me, “and I hope I’m not intruding, but I’ve got a few things that could benefit a traveler such as yourself.”

“Well thanks man, really, but I have all I need right now,” I said, thinking the conversation over.

“But, I really think you should see what I have to offer. Bullets, pressure cookers, syringes, perhaps?”

“Man, I don’t have any caps right now. See this bandolier, belt, and holster? Guy in the store cut me a deal because I didn’t have enough caps for the stuff. I just gave him all the caps that I had and we called it even.”

“All your caps?” he asked, sounding a little disheartened.

“Yeah, all of them. What’s your deal?” I asked back.

“But that blue star cap… what…” he started, but then tried to retract. “Never mind…”

“Wait, what?” I asked.

“Nothing, nothing, not important. I’ll be going now,” he said, and started to walk away.

“Hey…” I said, but he wasn’t turning around. So I tried something different. “This what you want?” I asked, pulling out the blue star bottle cap between my thumb and forefinger. Malcolm turned and looked at the cap, not breaking any character. “You’re the person I showed this too, a few hours ago, right? You got up and left without saying anything after I showed this to you? I recognize your cap and goggles.”

“Nah,” he said. “Must’ve been some other guy,” he said, and started to walk away again.

“Oh, alright,” I said. I dropped the cap into the dirt in front of me, pulled my pistol, and shot right through the middle of it. He turned on a goddamn dime.

“NO!!!” the man screamed, running over and diving into the dirt with his knees. He found the cap, a hole blasted through the middle of it. “You idiot! Festus won’t take damaged star caps!” he screamed up at me. I crouched down, my pistol still drawn.

“Now, you better tell me what the fuck that thing was and why me destroying it made you scream like a little girl, and then maybe I can put my pistol away.” Malcolm settled, sitting back on the ground.

“This,” he said, holding up the ruined cap, “is a Sunset Sarsaparilla star bottle cap. And from what I saw in the bar, you didn’t know anything about what you had in your hands.”

“And what did I have in my hands?”

“Look, it’s idiotic, but there’s an old wasteland legend that says that somewhere out there is a fabulous treasure from before the war. These caps,” he said, tossing the ruined cap to the side, “are the key to that treasure.”

“Right. And who’s this Festus you mentioned?”

“It’s said that the treasure’s guarded by a man named Festus, and he’s the one who asks for the blue star caps, fifty of them. They say he’s from before the war, and he stands, a lonely vigil, trying to give the treasure to someone.”

“There’s no one that can be that old. It’s been two hundred years since the bombs fell.”

“Maybe, but I’ve known some folks who say they’ve seen him, and they ain’t the lying type.”

“You still collect these caps?”

“Nah, I gave it up a while back.”

“So I assume the reason you’re sitting in the dirt crying over a bottle cap is because you despise litter?” He chuckled at that. “So what kind of treasure is this?”

“No one knows. Money? Weapons? Water? It is, or perhaps was, something of value, and that’s enough to get people motivated. All I know is, you’re supposed to give fifty blue star caps to Festus, and he gives you the treasure” I stood up.

“Alright, well, thanks for filling me in,” I said, holding me hand to him. He grabbed it and I pulled him to his feet.

“One last thing. If you do end up trying to collect more stars, watch out for a man named Allen Marks. He’s killed several people for their stars already.”

“Thanks for the tip,” I said, and he turned and started to walk south. I looked down in the dirt and, finding the cap he discarded, put it into one of my pouches along my belt. I then headed to the saloon, hopefully to find Sunny and start planning what we were going to do about this incoming threat.

Edit: I hate edits on these things, but one was necessary. Not going into detail about where it is because it's not important, it just helps to keep the whole idea of the story in the FO universe flowing better.

SPOILERS FOR NEW VEGAS AND THE INDEPENDENT STORY LINE

Link to Prologue.

Link to Chapter 1.

Link to Chapter 2.

Link to Chapter 3.

Sunny helped me create some healing powder, which is just some ground up white powder to dull any pains you may have, but she suggested that I not sleep in town that night. She said that it would be good practice to find uncovered ground to sleep on, and if I survived the night, to talk to the bartender named Trudy as she had information on who had shot me. So as Sunny headed back to Goodsprings, I went out to find anything I could use as shelter. I eventually found this old torn-up camper from centuries past and decided that it would be fine for the night. I’ve slept out under the stars before, but usually never with this close proximity to any of the Wasteland inhabitants. The chittering of geckos surrounded me the entire night. I kept my hand on the 10mm pistol the entire night, but I awoke to the sun in the east without any incident. I turned the radio back on, and after some news bulletins from Mr. New Vegas, a song by Kay Kyser started chiming through the speakers.

Yippee yay! There’ll be no wedding bells for today!

Cuz I got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle!

Jingle, jangle!

As I go ridin’ merrily along!

Jingle, jangle!

And they sing, “Oh, ain’t you glad you’re single?”

Jingle, jangle!

And that song ain’t so very far from wrong.

Jingle jangle!

So I started back to find this Trudy. As I approached the saloon, I saw an old man with wrinkled tan skin and an unkempt beard sitting in one of the chairs on the front porch. I raised my hand in a greeting, and he tipped his straw hat back at me.

“How are you doing sir?” I asked.

“Fine,” said the man.

“What’s your name?”

“Easy Pete,” was all he said.

“What do you do around here?”

“I take it easy,” he responded. Ok…

“I see. Well, I have someone to find in here.” I motioned toward the building.

“Mhmm.” He slurred out, and ducked his head. I opened the door and closed it behind me. Odd man, I thought.

As I looked around the room, I noticed an argument was happening over by the bar. It was between this dark skinned man in a blue jacket under a flak vest and a white woman behind the bar, but I only heard the tail end of it.

“…you don’t hand Ringo over soon, I’m going to get my boys and we’re burning this town to the ground, got it?” the man in the blue coat finished, with a threatening punch at the end of his words. I studied the five white letters on the back of his jacket. NCRCF. New California Republic Correctional Facility, the local prison. Shit.

“We’ll keep that in mind. Now, if you’re not gonna buy something, get out,” replied the woman. Blue Coat pushed past me angrily as he left the bar. The woman then looked over to me.

“Well, you’ve been causing quite a stir. Glad I finally got to meet you. Welcome to the Prospector Saloon,” she said.

“Thanks. Are you Trudy, the bartender?” I asked her.

“Yes I am.”

“I’m Jaxon, pleased to meet you.”

“Sorry you had to see that mess. It looks like our little town got itself dragged into the middle of something that we don’t want anything to do with.” I pointed over my shoulder with my thumb.

“That guy has on a NCRCF jacket and he’s just walking around. What’s up with that?” I asked, bewildered.

“Did you not hear?” she asked.

“I’ve… kinda been out of the loop.”

“Well, few weeks ago, the prisoners of the NCRCF notice a lack of security, due to General Oliver calling all available soldiers to patrol the Colorado River. They killed all of the guards stationed there and have claimed the place for their own, calling themselves ‘Powder Gangers’. They’ve taken to raiding and terrorizing the outlying areas.”

“But, they’re prisoners. How did they take on a squad of security guards?”

“I think your answer lies with whoever thought it would be a good idea to give hardened criminals access to dynamite. But he’s probably dead now.” I chuckled and sat at the bar.

“Right, so who was that guy?”

“Miscreant by the name of Joe Cobb.”

“Yeah? And what does he want?”

“He wants a fellow by the name of Ringo that we took in a while back.”

“Who’s Ringo?” Trudy sighed.

“About a week ago, this trader, Ringo, comes into town. Survivor of an attack, he says. Bad men after him, needs a place to hide. We figured he was just in shock, so we gave him a place to lie low. We didn’t actually expect anyone to come after him.”

“So where is he now?”

“He’s holed up at the abandoned gas station up the hill.”

“You really think that if you give him over to Joe Cobb, he’ll just leave Goodsprings alone?”

“Honestly… I don’t know. I just wish that that Ringo would sneak away one night and take the Powder Gangers with them.” She hung her head.

“And, how high of a chance do you think that has of happening?” I got her to smile at that.

“Probably not much,” she said.

“So what are we going to do about him?” She shook her head.

“Killing Cobb is just going to bring down more heat from the Powder Gangers, I can tell you right now.”

“Then we’ll deal with that when the time comes.” She relented.

“If you are thinking about doing anything, talk to Sunny next time you see her. She has a bit of a plan going. And talk to Ringo when you can,” she added, handing me a key. “To the gas station up yonder.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Before I go check this out, I heard you were the only person to see who the people who attacked me were. Is that true?”

“Yeah, though they weren’t here for long. Came in here, thought they were gonna get free drinks. I got ‘em to pay up though. One bastard broke my radio,” she nodded over to her radio which sat silently at the bar. “But you don’t need to worry about that. They said they were heading to the Strip, but avoiding the I-15. Fella wants to get there but avoid the I-15, he’d have to go east. Take Highway 93 up. Probably went through Primm.”

Primm. That’s where I took the job that landed me here. I had a few things hidden away there too. But first...

“Let me check out that radio of yours,” I told her.

“What?”

“Bring it over here, trust me.” She brought it over in front of me, and I looked it over. “No signs of external damage, which is fine.” I looked at the back panel. Flathead screws held them in place. “Do you have a butter knife?” She produced one and handed it to me. I undid the five screws that held the back in place and took it off. The interior looked ancient, which it was. Circuit board, diodes, capacitors, everything looked undamaged, except for this tiny little wire dangling free inside it, with an identical looking empty slot which looked like it was connected to the speaker. Simple to fix. I plugged the wire back in its place with a click and turned the radio on. A slow Western ballad started to hum from the box.

I'm so blue without you

Thought our love was true

Then you found someone new

“You fixed it! Awesome!” said Trudy.

I put the back of the radio back on, screwed in the screws, and handed it to her. She set it up behind her on the shelving behind the bar. She looked at it, beaming, then turned back to me.

“That’s just great. Have a drink on the house. What'll it be? Beer?”

"I'll just stick with a water, thanks."

"Nah, you go over there and grab a Sunset Sarsaparilla out of the machine." She motioned to a vending machine along one of the walls. I went over to it and looked it over. The words "Sunset Sarsaparilla" were plastered over the front of the machine.

“Sunset Sarsaparilla?” I asked her. “Any good?”

“Fine as fine can be. Just take one.” I opened the little latch window of the machine and pulled out a brown bottle. I stuck the bottle in the opener built in the machine and pulled down, the cap loosening from the rim of the bottle. I started walking back to the bar with my drink, but as I was walking, I noticed a small metallic clinking sound, and I looked back at the machine. On the wood floor was the bottle cap, which had bounced out of the cap receptacle. What caught my eye, however, was the underside of the cap. A glowing five point blue star, like I had never seen before, was etched on to the surface. I picked it up and walked back to the bar, eyeing the little trinket.

I sat next to a gentleman wearing a baseball cap and goggles on the brim, rolling the cap between my thumb and my forefinger. I leaned over to him with the cap pointed toward him.

“Hey, you ever see anything like this?” I asked. He looked at the cap intently, then at me with the same look, and then left the bar without saying a word. “Alright man, sorry,” I said to no one. I tucked the cap into one of my pockets, as I’ve always been a bit of a collector of things.

Trudy was cleaning some glasses over at the other end of the bar. I took a swig of the sarsaparilla and swirled it in my mouth a bit. After swallowing, I yelled over to Trudy.

“Is this made with prune juice?”

Edit: formatting numbers and things.

SPOILERS FOR NEW VEGAS AND THE INDEPENDENT STORY LINE

Link to Prologue.

Link to Chapter 1.

Link to Chapter 2.

Krrrrshhh.

Ping.

Krrrrshhh.

“You’re an excellent shot.”

Ping.

Krrrrshhh.

Krrrrshhh.

Sunny had taken me out back of the bar and had set up some old empty bottles along one of the fences. It stretched a little ways out, and I was firing at the side of an old dilapidated barn.

“Try crouching down, it’ll help you with your control.” I followed her advice and bent a knee to the ground. The sights did seem a little more stable.

Krrrrshhh.

Krrrrshhh.

Krrrrshhh.

“There you go, good job.”

Krrrrshhh.

Krrrrshhh.

Krrrrshhh.

Krrrrshhh. All the bottles were gone.

“You’re doing really great, you know.” I stood back up.

“Thanks Sunny,” I said.

“You ever in the NCR militia?”

“Nah, but I’ve seen some people who thought they’d take what was mine,” I said with a smile. She smiled back, but continued on.

“You know, there are a few other things that I could show you if you wanted. There’s usually some geckos up at the water source that you could use for target practice. Feel like practicing with a moving target?”

“Sure, I could go for that,” I replied.

“Great!” Sunny said. She threw me a little box of .22 ammo shells, which I put into my pocket. “Next time you’re at the General Store, you should invest in a satchel. Or a pack.”

“I’ll check into that next time I’m around there, thanks.” And with that, we set off towards the south. We walked for a few ways, the rock formations starting to poke up out of the ground around us. A small water tower poked up in the distance, but Sunny brought us to a halt.

“Hear that?” she asked. There were chittering sounds coming from up around the water tower. “Up over that ridge, a small group of them. This one’s all you.” I nodded and climbed to the little incline and looked over. The sun of the Mojave beat down upon my head, neck, and back, and through the sweat that started to sting my eyes, I saw them. I’d seen them before, in small packs up in the higher elevations, but never this close before, about twenty feet in between me and them. Yellow to orange compound eyes the size of baseballs, with a mixture of white grey to deep blue all over their scaly bodies. They stood on two five-toed feet and stood about two feet high with identical arms coming out their torso, another “miracle” of the radiation. Their lips curled back to reveal many tiny sharp teeth. Their spine stretched down and then curled upwards in a tail, no more than a foot long. Ugly little things, but they are, by far, not the worst that the Wastes have produced. There was about three of them shuffling around, digging around the base of the water tower. I put one of them in my sights, and wouldn’t you know, it looked right at me. I let off a shot and it fell to the ground dead, but its two friends started with a full on sprint right at me, jaws completely hinged as far back as they could go. I pulled back the bolt and aimed down at another one and fired a shot. It tumbled forward over itself dead, but the last one was on close approach, about ten feet away from me. But a shot rang out over my right shoulder, and it too tumbled forward dead. It was Sunny.

“Hey, thanks for that.”

“No problem, but it sounds like there’s some others a little farther down the road, and someone’s screaming!” She jumped down from the ridge that we were on. “Come on!” I followed suit, reloading as I ran. There was another gecko pack, only two, digging for water a little farther away from the last place. We dispatched them both, but we hadn’t found the source of the scream. We ran a little farther and found a woman trapped on a rock surrounded by five geckos, trying to shoo them away with a cleaver. We dropped them as well. The woman was from Goodsprings and didn’t think that a trip down to the water towers was going to be much trouble. We got her sent back towards the town, and then, as it was getting late, we started a campfire.

“I got one last lesson if you’re interested,” said Sunny as we sat around the fire.

“What would that be?” I asked.

“Bring back the root of a Xander plant and some broc flowers. Then I’ll show you how to make some healing powder.”

“You… have those on you right now, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s not about me. It’s about you. You gotta learn how to find these things, and when you do, you bring them back here and I’ll show you how to make a healing powder. So unless you want to take a knife and slice your hand open you better go find them and bring them back here. Broc flower, you’ll find that around the old school house, and Xander, you can find some bulbs at the graveyard. Sun’s going down.” She was right about that, so I set off back toward Goodsprings. Broc flower was easy enough to find, growing up the sides of the dilapidated school house. I had to put some holes in some Giant Mantises, another oversized creature, but they’re basically harmless.

The graveyard is on top of a hill overlooking the town, and these huge flying insects tried to take a few stabs at me. I gunned them all down, and started to look around. The bulbous plant wasn’t hard to find, with long leafy green stalks coming out the top of it. Next to it however was a two foot deep shallow grave, freshly dug. I knelt beside it and looked around, but recognized it almost immediately. It was my own. Week and a half ago I was tied up and shot in the head and wasn’t given a second thought. And here I was now. The cigarette butts still littered the ground from where Checker Suit had stomped them out. I picked up one and examined it. At the point where the filter met the paper, there were two small bronze colored letters printed on to the paper:

L S

Lucky Stripe, a brand more popular with the Vegas elite. Definitely not something you’d normally see around here. I put that and a few other butts in my pocket. I turned to leave, but something caught my eye. A grave with a wooden cross as the tombstone, with a name etched on it.

Delilah Mitchell.

Doc Mitchell’s wife. I thought back to what Doc Mitchell had told me whenever I was in recuperation, that he knew what it was like to lose something. In that instant, I felt this feeling building inside of me, a feeling of regret that I wasn't able to be there in her final days, that perhaps I could have made a difference with something. I mean honestly, I couldn't have done anything for her. I didn't know her and this was all before I was born. But no one had been able to help her, and I felt sorrow and anger for that.

I put it in the back of my head as I began to make my way back to Sunny Smiles.

SPOILERS FOR NEW VEGAS AND THE INDEPENDENT STORY LINE

Link to Prologue.

Link to Chapter 1.

I hadn’t been outside for the entire week that I had been recovering. The eastern sunrise blinded me as I exited Doc’s house, but soon, everything came into focus. I looked down at my Pip-Boy, 7:46 AM it read. Goodsprings was this homely town with not too much to look at. Only reason the town existed was the source of water a little further south. Even then, it was little more than a ghost town. Prospector Saloon, Goodsprings General Store, some houses like Doc’s, but that’s all it was. Anyway, I looked down at my Pip-Boy and turned it to the radio signals screen. Two signals popped up, one with the call sign “Mojave Music Radio”, and the other, “Radio New Vegas”. I selected Radio New Vegas, and the Pip-Boy emitted a crackling sound for a few seconds, but then the sound of an older man’s voice came through the speakers.

"This is Radio New Vegas, and I'm your host, Mr. New Vegas. And in case you're wondering if you've come to the right place, you have." Interesting. "I've got news for you. Citizens of Outer Vegas are flocking to the Strip in droves amid a wave of terror caused by a band of raiders known as the Fiends. Those who can afford passports say that the added security is well worth the price of admission. In other news, word out of Camp Golf is that many NCR Rangers can expect re-deployment in the near future. One anonymous soldier said, it was part of a new strategy. These headlines were brought to you by Vault 21. Vault 21: everything's better... when you experience it in a vault. Got some Dean Martin coming up talking about the greatest feeling in the world; love. Ain't That a Kick In the Head? It sure is, Dino, it sure is." The myriad of trumpets, saxophones, trombones, and drums soon followed, and then the voice of Dean Martin sang out the lyrics to this three-hundred and twenty-year-old song:

How lucky can one guy be?

I kissed her and she kissed me.

Like a fella once said,

Ain’t that a kick in the head?

Well, doesn’t get more appropriate than that, I thought. I started to make my way towards the saloon, hoping to find this Sunny Smiles that Doc had told me of, when this securitron rolls up to greet me.

Securitrons are these big one-wheel one-leg blue robots that try to keep the peace on the Strip as a sort of police force. And they’re fucking huge. Five to six feet across at its shoulder with about a foot of depth to their bodies, and then narrowing like a triangle down to where their leg sprouts. One metallic alloy arm descends from each of its “shoulders” and ends in a strange claw hand with three pincers. A big antenna extends from the top of its body and rotates quickly, and a speaker is mounted right under that. What always got me though was the foot-by-foot screen which displays a black-and-white caricature face of a policeman. However, it’s incredibly rare to see one outside of the Strip, and even more rare to see one with a different face. In place of this one’s cop face was this jolly-looking black-and-white cowboy caricature; cowboy hat, neckerchief, and a cigarette in his mouth to boot.

“Howdy, pardner!” Great. “Might I say, you’re lookin’ fit as a fiddle.” Just… great. Those words rang from the speaker in a rough metallic Western voice.

“Do… do I know you?” I asked.

“Well, you might not know me from Adam, but I sure know you, pardner. I’m the one that dug you up outta that grave up yonder.”

“Which makes you Victor?”

“Well shucks, secret’s out.” He chuckled. Strange to me that a robot would do that.

“Well then, thanks for digging me out of that grave. Honestly.”

“Don’t mention it! I’m always ready to lend a helping hand to a stranger in need.”

“So how did you happen to find me?”

“Well, I was out for a stroll that night when I heard the commotion up at the old bone orchard. Saw what looked like to be a bunch of bad eggs so I laid low. Once they’d run off, I dug you up to see if you were still kickin’. Turns out you were, so I hauled you off to the Doc right quick.”

“Did you get a look at any of them?”

“Fraid not. I hid till they were long gone. Perhaps someone in town knows more.”

“Oh. Well thanks anyway Victor.”

“Anytime, friend,” he, I suppose, said, and rolled away on his one goddamn wheel. I was only a few yards away from the saloon at this point, so I headed on in. It was dark with few lights, but they had a pool table with some lounging chairs on the right side of the room, some booth seats, and the bar on the left side far side. I was greeted by a snarling dog.

A side note, don’t ask me how, but even dogs outside the vaults remained basically unchanged from their pre-war counterparts. I mean, most of the small breeds are gone, because life is awful and everything dies horrifically, but every now and then you’ll see some big breeds out roaming the Mojave. A miracle actually, considering the horrors that stalk the Wasteland currently. Brahmin cattle now sporting two heads, every single one of them. Bighorn sheep growing to double or triple their size, fur turned to rust-red, now just called Bighorner. Giant ants; don’t even need to tell you about them. And radscorpions. Things can reach up to eight feet in length, twelve feet from claw to tail. All from the radiation. But none of those hold a candle to the others; the monsters that aren’t supposed to be out there. Fuckers at Big Mountain thought it would be great fun to make them, but that’s a different story for later.

“Cheyenne, stay!” said the dog’s owner. She was sitting at the bar at work with a small disassembled rifle, but turned around after she called the dog to heel. She was a woman of distinctively Native American looks, although with contrasting dark red hair. Her voice was high itched but not shrill, with a sweet tint of a Native American, and probably a little bit of Mexican, accent. She wore a standard set of brown leather armor, with all these pockets and zippers to hold various things. Broc flower, xandar root, white horsenettle, agave; standard survival plants. Leather is a sign of a survivalist. “Don’t worry,” said the woman. “She doesn’t bite. Unless I tell her too.” I chucked.

“Haha, well, thanks for not giving the order. Sunny Smiles?”

“Yeah. Hey,” she started, “hey you’re that courier that got shot up at the graveyard right?”

“Ah… yeah, that was…” she cut me off.

“Doc Mitchell sent you to me to help you learn to survive out here, right?”

“You’re two for two right now,” I laughed.

“Well, I’m not doing anything right now, so how about we go and do this?” She walked back to the rifle and had it reassembled with an astonishing amount of time. She checked the sights, loaded it, and then tossed it to me, a little .22 caliber bolt action rifle. “Safety’s off.”

“Ah. I see.” She giggled.

“Haha! C’mon, round back!” She disappeared around a corner behind the bar and returned with her own .22 rifle. “You ready?” she asked, but didn’t wait for the answer. She tossed me another box of .22 ammo, and went through the back door of the building. She left it ajar.

“I suppose I have to be,” I said, and followed her through the door, closing it behind me.

Link to Prologue.

First sound that I heard was the rhythmic whish whish whish of a ceiling fan. How… was what I thought first, then; how am I asking how? I gather that I’m on a bed and I feel… I don’t know, well enough, I suppose, for whatever the hell I went through. There’s a splitting pain across my temples and also light pouring through the window. I try to get up off the bed, but a voice of an old man stops me, a touch of a western twang on his voice.

“Woah, easy there, easy. You’ve been out cold a couple of days now.” I look for the source of the voice, and he’s sitting right next to my bedside. Eyesight’s a little blurry to begin with, but I see that he’s Caucasian, white-headed, balding, stereotypical western bushy moustache, wears this brown pearl-snap collared shirt with black suspenders to brown pants, and a red bandana with a white design on it around his neck. I closed my eyes and reclined on the bed.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Well, from what I gathered, you were shot in the head by a group of thugs, buried up by the old water tower, and none of them thought much else of it. Victor saw it all happen from a distance ‘n went up there after they left. He dug you back out and brought you to me.” I rubbed my eyes, and then my hand found its way to the stitches on the left side of my forehead, and then around to the back of my head. “Clean entry ‘n exit. I mean, if you can call it clean. You were pretty bloodied up when you were brought in here. But I reckon I did my best, and it seems you pulled through.” I let out a long sigh.

“Thanks doc. What’s the damage? I… well… I don’t have any caps on me right now, they took those too, but back in Primm…”

“Nah, you don’t go worry about a thing right now. Didn’t cost me much, a few blood bags, thread, ‘n a few hours work. I’m just surprised that you’re up and talkin’. Do you feel any different than from before you got your brains rattled?” I chuckled. It hurt.

“You’re a funny man, doc. Different? I feel like I’ve got a car sitting on top of my head and I could lay here forever, but nah, nothing too extremely different.”

“Well, I’ve got some meds to help with the recovery, Med-X to help with the pain, and Buffout to get everything stitched together again. Usually addictive, but if I ration them accordingly, you should be fine.”

“Thanks doc. I will reimburse you for your time and resources, though.”

“Sure you will. But first, what’s your name?” My name.

“Jaxon. Yours?”

“I’m Doc Mitchell.” The good Doc stood up. “Welcome to Goodsprings.”

After that, he left, and I drifted back into sleep. I spent the next week there, drifting in and out of periods of consciousness, a guest of Doc Mitchell’s. We’d talk a bit whenever he’d come by with food, administer drugs, or do small brain function tests. Found out I was in his house, which he also used as a makeshift clinic. No one else knew I had been shot, other than Victor, who I was very interested in meeting. I learned that Doc had grown up in Vault 21 on the Strip, but went wandering when the city came back to life. He moved around after that as a travelling doctor, but eventually returned to New Vegas to marry some girl he grew up in the vault with. He and his wife were heading to California, somewhere that had the NCR flag flying over it, but her body couldn’t handle it. She’d grown up in a pristine vault, and that doesn’t help you against dirt and grime. She died when they hit Goodsprings, and Doc’s been there ever since. Told me she was buried up close to where they found me.

At the end of that week, I felt well enough to be up and around walking, so I figured that I should be getting out Doc’s hair. My old clothes were unwearable, so he gave me this old Vault 21 suit he had lying around. The day I left, we met at the door.

“So, how do you feel now? Still feel like you got a car on top of your head?” I smiled.

“Not so much Doc, just a Bighorner today.” We both chuckled, and Doc produced a sack.

“Here, these are yours. Was all you had on you when you came in.” He handed me the sack, and I dumped out on a nearby table. Four stimpaks, six bobby pins, and my delivery order from the Mojave Express. "And if you’re heading back out there, you oughtta have this." He produced what seemed to be a giant metal cuff with a 4x3 inch screen with all sorts of knobs and buttons on it, with a speaker coming out of the side, along with a glove. “They call it a Pip-Boy. Gave all of us one when we turned ten in the vault. Ain’t much use to me now, but you might want such a thing, after what you’ve been through.” I slipped the glove over my arm, and Doc opened the Pip-Boy and clasped it around my wrist. As it clicked around my arm, the screen flashed a bright light, and then settled down with an image of a caricature of a man with his arms and legs outstretched in a walking fashion, outlined in a faint blue glow against the black screen. “Comes with a local map, radio, monitors your heart beat, your body, but most importantly, comes with a Geiger counter.” I turned the dial on it, until it came up with the map of Goodsprings.

“Again Doc, thanks for everything,” I said.

“So, you going back to Primm?” I thought hard on the question I had been avoiding, but decided that it needed an answer.

“Perhaps at some point, but not right away. I need to find some people first.”

“You’re goin’ after the people who shot you.” I could tell that there was a tad bit of disapproval in his voice.

“I have a delivery to make." I could tell he wasn't satisfied with the answer. "And want to find out why a shiny poker chip was enough to get me killed. Finding them solves both of those problems. ”

“Well, I don’t need to tell a grown man about revenge and graves, but I hope you take care of yourself. One last thing,” he said. He reached to his holster and pulled out a 10mm pistol. Its metallic finish had become glossy due years of exposure, leaving a more washed-out gray color to the body of it. He held the handle toward me. “Came from the vault, but I don’t really need it anymore.” I took hold of it, and noticed that it was missing the clip. “Never had any reason to keep it loaded,” Doc said, handing me the clip. I pulled the slide back, locking it into position.

“Ever been fired?” I asked.

“A few times.”

“Thanks,” I said, loading the clip into the handle. It clicked into place, and I hit the release. The slide slid forward, bringing the round into the chamber. The metallic swish was deafening, seeming to echo throughout the house.

“Ever fired one before?”

“Haven’t we all?”

“While that may be true, I suggest that you find Sunny Smiles. Get on down to the Prospector Saloon, that’s where you’re most likely to find her during the day. She’ll teach you how to live in the desert.” He held out his hand toward me. I shook it. I think I felt… sorrow, for me, when our grips connected. “It’s a hard life out there son. Try not to get yourself killed, I might not be there next time.” I nodded, and he walked back in to his house. I placed my hand on the door knob, and opened the door to the Mojave.