Chain 144: Fallout

Chain 144: Fallout

Location: Caesar's Legion territory, New Mexico, 2275
Age: 23
Identity: Lone Wanderer
Drawbacks: [+200] Hated

[Free]      Skill: Medicine
[Free]      Skill: Repair
[Free]      Skill: Science
[100/1200]  Chemist
[200/1200]  Educated
[400/1200]  Jury Rigging
[1100/1200] Certified Tech
[1200/1200] Highwayman

Showing up in the middle of an apocalyptic wasteland with the Legion nipping at my heels is definitely not something anyone with a lick of sense would want to have happening to them. And yet, that's where I am. Sure, they're not actively calling for my head, but they're doing everything but. There are certain ways to ensure my neutrality, even with them being as totalitarian as they are, and still have freedom of movement - so signing up and working for the Mojave Express gave me a reputation as someone who could be relied upon to get anything anywhere it needed to go, no matter what.

I did what I could to make the wasteland a better place while I was doing that. I took on any number of side jobs to that end, but running around as a courier gave me a chance to do a great deal of good. There was a stretch of land, the Divide, that I used when I was doing overland travel - even had a Highwayman that I'd rebuilt to that end. It served as a place for my companions to set up shop as a headquarters while giving them the freedom to do as they pleased elsewhere, but I didn't expect it to turn out to be as popular as it was. Makeshift headquarters turning into an actual settlement. The Courier's Mile, some called it, since it served as a shortcut that not many would otherwise take between places.

Of course, the NCR saw what was there and decided to try and muscle in where they could. Bringing civilization with them, or so they claimed. An independent community, with the NCR entering it, on the edge of contested territory? That was just an open invitation to Caesar's Legion to start playing stupid games.

It didn't help anything that I ended up walking through during a particular and was accosted by the NCR forces, who wanted to know what I was trying to deliver. Not that I knew - but it ended up being a trigger. A trigger to the missiles in the Divide. While the silos didn't open, the nuclear warheads still exploded underground, and so many detonations in such a small area had horrible effects. The Conspiracy and many of the civilians scattered to the winds, having been forewarned as I saw things going south in an unavoidable way, but the NCR and Legion forces had... worse fates.

Of course, this was far from the only thing I was doing. It provided me a reason to be in this region, to go through NCR and Legion territory and beyond, but my real goal from day one? Meeting up with the Enclave. Helping them put certain pieces together, give them reconnaissance reports from across the country (even if it was primarily the southwest and west coast). Give a few hands with putting pre-war tech together and teaching them how to do the same. Providing a few choice documents to aid them and getting myself well-enough acquainted with their structure so that I would be taken seriously, even as an outsider.

A Highwayman is a very handy thing when you want to get from point A to point B in a hurry, even when point A is New Vegas and point B is what's left of Washington. Especially as Washington was in the process of being rebuilt, having had discourse with President Eden and emphasizing the importance of providing for all Americans. Demona even got in on the fun - it was unsurprising for her to make her way into their structure, and Vice President Dominique Destine tampered what would have been some of the worse excesses of the Enclave.

It certainly made things a mite more confusing for a certain former resident of Vault 101 when he found that the purifier his father had worked on had been put in full service by the budding United States government, which had established a program to educate individuals and compensate them for rebuilding efforts as civilization grew. Super mutants were of course still shot on sight, but ghouls? So long as they weren't feral... granted, they were arguably second class citizens, but most proved their worth. Whether it was a matter of doing work that no one else safely could, or having knowledge that had been all but lost. And certainly there were issues with mutations in otherwise healthy looking humans - but geneticists were busy at work and often screened for viable or non-viable babies. Radiation in the womb is a terrible thing, and they'd learned that long ago.

In 2280, President Augustus Autumn was sworn in to the Presidency, Dominique Destine stepped down from the Vice Presidency in favor of being the Secretary of State, and the rebuilding continued. They didn't lie to their citizens and say that everything was perfect... but they were still there, and they could rebuild. The department of the army paid its members well, and the sight of the Enclave soldiers patrolling in Tesla and Hellfire power armor to ensure the protection of those living within and protecting the restored Columbia Commonwealth was common. Even moreso as they began the reclamation of the surrounding territories - within only a handful of years, they'd recovered the East Central and Southeast Commonwealths and were looking to expand to the Gulf and New England after perhaps a decade. With a decade and some competent leadership, they'd recovered a third of the territory east of the Mississippi; all it took was slapping the hell out of anyone who was on about this Pure Human nonsense, as every citizen in America was an American, so long as they were still human. Super Mutants and feral ghouls need not apply.

Though I ensured that rumors persisted of a safe haven for mutants out west, and the ones who were less hostile or more intelligent went that way. So long as they didn't cause any issues, the Federal Government had no issue granting them safe passage out of their territory.

While I continued my travels, the Enclave were in active talks with the Texas Commonwealth, which had been restored under a government that similarly looked back to the Old Days with a nostalgia eye, and the Midwest Commonwealth, which had a pseudo-paramilitary government in the Midwest chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel... which, shockingly enough, seemed to actually have its head on straight. A far sight straighter than any of the other chapters, at least.

And that's to say nothing of the weirdness of the fact that yes, there ARE actual aliens, that they're in orbit, and they've been abducting people for ages - though the few surviving soldiers were returned to Earth and joined the Enclave rebuilding efforts. Last I'd heard, Elliott Tercorien was helping establish a clandestine intelligence agency; the alien ships themselves, however, were annihilated.

But everything changed when the day came that one of my fellow Couriers didn't show when expected - leaving me to deliver a certain platinum poker chip to New Vegas.

Just another milk run, right?