Jump 059: Fallout

Jump 059: Fallout

Location: Mojave Wasteland, 2275
Age: 22
Identity: [-100] Courier
Drawbacks: [+200] Wild Wasteland, One Hander

[Free]      Tag: Science
[Free]      Tag: Repair
[Free]      Tag: Outdoorsman
[100/1100]  Chemist
[200/1100]  Lead Belly
[Free]      Pathfinder
[500/1100]  Cyborg
[Free]      Physical Enhancement Implant: Strength
[600/1100]  Physical Enhancement Implant: Perception
[700/1100]  Physical Enhancement Implant: Endurance
[800/1100]  Physical Enhancement Implant: Charisma
[900/1100]  Physical Enhancement Implant: Intelligence
[1000/1100] Physical Enhancement Implant: Agility
[1100/1100] Physical Enhancement Implant: Luck

Completely replaced management. Vastly shifted goals. Years of research and development. A century of secrecy, of planning contingencies, of sending out agents for careful infiltration, of knives in the dark. What did the Enclave have to show for it?

A nation in development, that's what they had. A restored United States.

First and foremost, they had the United States Army. Any soldier would be more than a match for what they would encounter in the wastes, short of a Deathclaw, thanks to cybernetic augmentation. If regular soldiers weren't sufficient... well, there was a reason that the Archer pitted them against the Brotherhood of Steel. The Brotherhood may have sent missions out to the eastern coast and the midwest before the Enclave subjugated them in a series of daring strikes, but the data and material they obtained allowed for the development of advanced power armor that could stand up to anything short of a tactical nuclear blast. And, of course, this also left the Brotherhood's bunkers free for the Enclave to use before their coup over the fledgling New California Republic. Instead of the two-headed yao guai, the flag flown was a variation on the pre-war national flag.

Secondly, the Archer may have frustrated the Enclave's initial plans by destroying any sources of FEV in California, but he was also a genius and had left a great deal of data at their disposal. While much of it was highly advanced, he'd refined the pre-war rippers to a more robust and damaging design, and these chainswords served very effectively in the hands of the infantry. Composite armor, too, was of a higher quality than anyone could get. They had the appropriate tools in their hands to pacify the wasteland.

And thirdly, the Archer had left them seeds. Wheat, he'd called one set, another an herb, and a variety of hardy tree saplings. None of them were anything that were recognized, though the trees appeared to be fruit-bearing hybrids, but they could all grow in any terrain more fertile than sand. The Enclave had expanded greatly over the past fifty years, in fact, with these staple crops growing even during a drought that drove numerous villages and cities to side with the Enclave - or rather, with the United States.

By 2270, the Enclave had established nominal control of the Northwest and Southwest Commonwealths and were casting their gaze east. But that gaze was returned by Caesar's Legion, a Roman-inspired dictatorship that ran on the back of slave labor and was content to slaughter their way through civilian populations until they yielded. In the Legion, the Enclave saw a dark reflection of themselves, of what they might have been had the Archer not ... intervened.

And speaking of the Archer, a courier was found to be in their employ that bore a remarkable resemblance, a former soldier with a goodly amount of augmentation on top of his natural gifts. The Legion, too, used couriers as the Enclave did, and for the same purposes. Certainly, certain non-aligned individuals needed to handle discreet or urgent deliveries, and both sides also kept a hands-off policy despite knowing that the other side was using them for limited espionage purposes.

The Courier in question, however... while he was no Archer owing to his bum left arm, he still accomplished everything he set out to do. Unfortunately, at times his actions had unintended repercussions, and the worst of those failures was at the Divide, where a package he was carrying detonated un-launched nuclear weapons that the Enclave had yet to remove from their silos. There were others, of course. He'd made both enemies and allies over the course of his journey. But the few remnants of the Brotherhood of Steel hounded his heels, with one particular Elder having a grudge against him.

It was quite unexpected, when his journey ended in an abrupt double-tap to the head in a small backwater town outside of New Vegas. And what was even more unexpected for all involved was that he clawed his way out of his shallow grave, holding himself together long enough for a doctor to dig out all the bullet fragments.

(The Brotherhood of Steel, meanwhile, had evacuated to the Capitol Wasteland. They were too busy fighting raiders and super mutants to establish a firm foothold. No Project Purity, no DC Enclave... and no Liberty Prime. What would they have done with it, sicced it on the raiders fighting a guerilla war?)