Jump 060: Fallout: New Vegas

Jump 060: Fallout: New Vegas

Location: Goodsprings, 2281
Age: 28
Identity: Wild Card
Faction: The Kings
Drawbacks: [+100] Courier 6
Scenario: Lonesome Road

[Free]      Wild Wasteland
[300/1100]  A Delivery Service You Can Count On
[Free]      Every Man Is A King
[500/1100]  Junk Rounds
[800/1100]  Finishing Touches
[Free]      Pip-Boy
[850/1100]  Snow Globes
[900/1100]  Vault 13 Canteen
[1100/1100] Sierra Madre Vending Machine

>"Whoa, easy there. You've been out cold a couple of days now."
"Mmph... feels like someone did a nine-millimeter tap dance on my braincase."
>"You're not wrong. Well, let's see what the damage is. Can you tell me your name?"
"Folks around here have called me Archer."
>"Well, can't say that's what I'd have picked... funny, I thought you had a scar on your forehead a minute ago..."
"Oh, yeah, me and scars don't get along. Lot more miles on me than it looks like."
>"If you say so, son. Now, I hope you don't mind, but I had to go rooting around there in your noggin to get all the bits of lead out."
"Ah! No wonder I can think again. Things get so fuzzy when I take one to the head, it takes ages for the bullets to come out if someone doesn't pull them out, for some reason."
>"Right... well, no sense keeping you in bed anymore."
"Ah! Yes indeed. And you, doctor, have done me a kindness. When you have dire need, call on me, and any favor I can grant is yours. Here, I'll even sign a contract to that effect if you like. One good turn deserves another."
>"Holy Jesus! Did you just- from flames- how did you pull off that trick?"
"Oh, sorry, the devil tried to press-gang me a while back, but I punched him back to Hell. Got a few souvenirs, though. Feel free to look it over at your leisure, I'm going to go check out the town and get my bearings."
>"Honestly... that is not the most unbelievable thing I've seen in my lifetime. I don't know if you're some kind of psyker or what, but I'm happy I could help, son."

Ah, New Vegas. A land of opportunity, straddling the Old World and the New. A place where every man can be a King. A place where fortunes are won and lost in the space of a day, but in the end, the House always wins. A place where a courier can buy the ingredients in bulk to cook several lifetime supplies of Mentats after getting lucky at the Lucky 38, and attending to a few other errands such as bypassing security and meeting Mr. House in person, and giving him an offer on behalf of the US government.

>"Why have you... done this? You fool... you've killed me!"
"Not in the least. I thought you would appreciate a glass of wine unlike any other."
>"Are you... a madman?"
"Oh, no, I'm much worse than that. Like you, I am one of a handful of one-eyed men in the land of the blind. Drink."

A place where said courier can catch up with Benny at the Tops and laugh it off, tell him whatever his bullet did it fixed his bum arm and thanks for that, then sit down to a brahmin steak dinner with him, and explain it was all business, and business is business no harm taken, but that the chip is US Government property until it gets to his destination. And as a duly appointed Secret Service agent-

>"Wait a tick, baby, you said you were a courier."
"Note the first word in that title, Benny. SECRET service."

-be needing to take that back to its owner, but if it's any consolation I'll make sure he can make it back to the Legion camp without having his legs shot out from under him by the snipers. You know, all those snipers wearing the Federal Ranger longcoats, carrying around gauss rifles? Those guys, that have been taking potshots at Legionnaires across the river, to relieve boredom? Maybe you heard of them, about the Federal sniper that emptied Vulpes Inculta's braincase from a mile and a half away outside Nipton? Yeah. Good decision, oh and here's the bullet the doc scooped out of MY braincase, enjoy the little souvenir, be seeing you Benny.

I took a trip up to Utah, kept a caravan from being gunned down, but sent them back to safety while I pressed onward to deal with the problem of the White Legs.

"Oh, I believe I know you. Joshua Graham, yes?"
>"Ah, a courier, if not the one I was expecting."
"I am seldom what anyone expects. I may be a guest, but I bring bread and wine, if you will dine with me."
>"I see no reason not to."

And so, with a little soul wine, the Burned Man found his wounds healed. The flame within him burned strong, after all, and he deserved to be rewarded for it. The White Legs, on the other hand... well, let's be frank: they were prosecuting a war of genocide, and they were treated as such. There's little room for mercy in the wasteland.

After dealing with all of that, however, the Enclave - I'm sorry, they're not the Enclave anymore, they're the federal government again - gave me a mission: track down and locate the rogue Brotherhood of Steel elements in the area. It seemed that after they'd brought the hammer down on Lost Hills, there were some that had fled to the hills, and some of their elements were expected to be in the area. They were a threat, if only theoretically, but their real concern was with a particular member of the Brotherhood that was known as Father Elijah.

I infiltrated the Brotherhood's bunker and confronted their leadership, explained everything to them and expressed that the government was willing to grant clemency to them as long as they would toe the line - absorbed back into the military. When they raised objections about the government's past sins, their own past offenses were pointed out, and they were questioned as to whether they should be punished for their forebearer's sins. In the end... well, more skilled negotiators than I would be sent in to deal with their eventual joining under the federal government's aegis, but they wholeheartedly endorsed my mission against Father Elijah and made their rejoining the United States contingent on Elijah being dealt with. They imagined it to be an impossible task.

Tracking him was actually surprisingly complicated. My trip to Big Mountain was .. well, let's be frank it was positively harrowing, nightmarish mad science gone amok, and for the first time in a long time I actually used fully out-of-context abilities to make a good warding schema around Big MT, to ensure they would be cut off from the rest of the world and vice versa. Two reasons. One, dangerous mad science. Two: cazadores.

After that, my trail went lukewarm, but I eventually tracked him to a bunker he seemed to be operating out of. Which, of course, turned out to be a trap... and just my luck that what Elijah used on me was enough to knock out a super mutant. Didn't expect to wake up in the Sierra Madre resort, but the best way to deal with such a trap is to play along. In the end, the hostages kept in place by Elijah were repatriated - Dean Domino toured New Vegas, drunk on his newfound riches. Christine Royce was healed properly and reunited with her lover Veronica, and the Mojave Brotherhood of Steel began negotiations with the United States. God eventually found the mutant settlement at Jacobstown and joined it. But Father Elijah found himself locked in an empty vault. As for the technological wonders of the Sierra Madre... well, it would have been irresponsible to not let the government know about it, and so the secret service took a few examples of technology to reverse engineer before leaving the whole area, the corrosive cloud being simply too much to deal with.

Dealing with the Divide was... interesting. In another world, Ulysses would have eschewed both the symbols of the new world in favor of the old. In this world, he was an iconoclast, dismissing new and old alike, wanting a clean slate. But really, any fool could tell you how bad an idea it is to launch nuclear missiles in this day and age. Frankly it was a shock that the ICBMs here were this intact, but a matter of quick talking got him to at least defer their launch. After all, those weapons tried and failed to kill a nation once already. ED-E was able to override the launch, and after the dust all settles, Ulysses chose to wander the wasteland alone.

Oh, right, the Legion. I nearly forgot.

The reason that the US government hadn't committed to a full fledged attack against Caesar's Legion was because they chose their stalemate as a good time to reorganize the federal government. Smaller states, rather than massive commonwealths, a more decentralized structure, as it had been centuries before. Once that had taken place, it made certain matters of logistics much more smooth.

Well, that, and the fact that their eventual offense at Hoover Dam didn't just decapitate the Legion due to their technological edge in terms of having vertibird gunships and Hellions to rain down on jumped-up tribals with a sense of smug superiority, but they also moved their forces strategically to strike the entire front simultaneously... and keep up the pressure, their army running a blitzkrieg of immense proportions as they liberated entire states in their push east. Utah. Nevada. Colorado. Arizona. New Mexico. Texas.

They'd delayed and stymied the Legion, taking the inevitable losses in the short term, so that they could go all in. Once they finally dropped the hammer the breadth of the restored United States tripled. And with the technological plunder the Archer had provided, they were able to not just root out the Legion, but hold the territory too.

Ring a ding, baby.