Chain 146: Fallout 4

Chain 146: Fallout 4

Location: Sanctuary Hills, 2287
Age: 34
Identity: Drop-In
Drawbacks: [0] All Roads, Sole Survivor

[Free]      Crafter
[200/1000]  Benevolent Leader
[800/1000]  SCIENCE!
[1000/1000] Companion Import: Demona, Conspiracy

Before everything started off here... after New Vegas I saw to it that the Enclave government received all of the tech I could give it. Or at least, the native technology of this world. Although this included the Sierra Madre vending machines, I ensured that I'd provided detailed schematics of how to recreate it in full working order - and programmed to be able to create replacement parts, so that new ones could be deployed as long as one existed. You want to know what becomes a more stable currency than caps? One that can be used by a matter converter and can't be counterfeited. Not quite Star Trek's replicator-level technology, but close enough to accelerate the restoration of the United States handily. (It also accepted any inorganic material - which gave people a reason to clean things up.)

By 2290 the restoration of the United States stretched from the Mississippi to New England, and while negotiations were slow with Texas, trade was established with the NCR through New Vegas - even though they were suspicious of anything that the Enclave touched, they quite simply could not say no, even though they knew the eventual end would be the US Government taking control of the NCR and splitting it into its pre-war territories.

In any event: it had been October 2291, before I abruptly found myself within a vault full of cryogenically preserved corpses, and once I got my bearings, all indications were that it was instead October 2287. As I walked through the vault, I summoned up the shade of every one of the deceased - one of them briefly misidentified me as her husband, Nathan Howard, before I pointed out that he was dead too, and probably did not have a brass eye. Even summoned up his ghost to make sure. Of course, they asked me to look after their son - after all, they'd both died the day their son was taken from them.

And so the journey began, and I followed the footsteps that another might have walked. Although Preston Garvey was encouraged to settle in Concord rather than Goodsprings, and I left him and his group of survivors to their own purposes for the most part. Although those purposes included encouraging Preston Garvey to reestablish the Minutemen - so long as they were loyal to town governments and weren't a paramilitary power in and of themselves. To that end... I put him in charge of logistics and set up an assembly line in order to ensure that anyone who joined up had equipment. Sure, it started out with combat armor and short-barreled laser muskets, but over the course of a year it was normal to see them marching two by two with T-51 power armor and gauss rifles.

In any event, though, I followed the footsteps that Nate would have taken to find his son, but I held back quite a lot less than I otherwise might have. Nick Valentine was an interesting guy, and he was startled when I offered him some upgrades, but he took them after a good amount deliberation. Piper... well, she had her role in helping too, but more importantly I put her in touch with Preston to publicize the exploits of the Minutemen. Lorenzo Cabot had the crown ripped off of his head after I disabled the nanotech holding it there and stripped his powers from him, and though I ensured his sanity returned, I did nothing to remove the agent from his blood that resulted in clinical immortality. I referred his family and himself down to DC, and told them the government would be more than happy to sponsor their research.

As for other issues however... well, Conrad Kellogg? I teleported outside the bunker he was in, walked through the Synths within and seized control of them via technopathy as they neared me, and they marched in lockstep behind me as I went to meet him. He assumed it was an Institute trick of some sort, but I informed him that he was sadly mistaken, and referred him down to DC as well, after I gave him a treatment of Cabot's serum and pulled out the implants the Institute had given him. I think that feeling someone reach into your skull and abdomen and pull out implants without doing any physical harm is what shook him most, though, more than summoning up shades from his past so that he could make peace with them.

It wasn't too difficult finding the Institute after that, though they were... less than happy about watching me seize control of every first and second generation Synth that was in range and sending them marching to the Corvega factory that I'd repurposed, putting them to work at upgrading themselves to MY specifications and producing equipment as I saw fit. (The Minutemen had to get their equipment from somewhere, after all, and the irony of doing it this way was delicious.) Really, all I had to do was bait the trap - I mean, man the factory - and watch for the Coursers to come in, plant a tracking charm on them, and then apparate next to them after they teleported.

I was there far of their planned schedule, and Shaun seemed rather irate that I expressed no interest in the fabricated child version of himself. He understood a bit more when I pointed out that I was not actually his own father, because the corpse was still in the cryo tube and long dead - he sent someone to verify while we talked, and I explained that I happened to be a traveler from the southwest that shared his father's face. A traveler associated with the Enclave, which would be making its way to the area in the next several years. Then I punched him in the nose to cure his cancer and pointed out that he was a fucking idiot, but if he thought the Institute was the only chance for life in the wasteland, it should join with the Enclave which was the only chance for government in the wasteland.

Shaun kept me under armed guard until they had confirmed that he had a clean bill of health, if at the cost of a broken nose, which raised more questions that I answered with, "I'm a wizard, I ain't gotta explain shit. Also, your third generation synths are just force-grown human clones and have free will, coursers are just cybernetically upgraded versions of the same, please revise your policies accordingly while I go downstairs and burn out the FEV lab." By the time he could protest, I'd already apparated away and used a bit of carefully directed fire to make a great many things disappear, before I headed out to cure a man named Virgil. Then I refined the cure, aerosolized it, and proceeded to set up stations to restore every Institute-spawned super mutant to a human state. Sadly, half of them ended up going crazy anyway, but at least I'd given them a chance - notable exceptions that retained their sanity included Swann, Erickson, and an intellectually challenged fellow who refused to stop calling himself Strong.

And then the Brotherhood charged in, with a fucking zeppelin of all things. It was a bizarre waste of energy to keep it hollow and suspended in the air by propellers, all considered, but it certainly answered the question of what the Capitol Brotherhood did after the Enclave had whipped them. Apparently they just kept slowly heading north, building this monstrosity from the wreckage of Liberty Prime after the Enclave had destroyed it. Which was all well and good, until they began trying to "tax" settlements by enlisting outsiders to get food and supplies from them. Food and supplies that, sometimes, they couldn't afford to spare. And while they did do some degree of good, such as wiping out super mutant infestations and the like before the mutants all began disappearing, they seemed to do more harm than good. Especially when they began getting hostile toward the Minutemen when they tried to "tax" a settlement under their protection.

Despite the Brotherhood having the tech edge, the Minutemen had the manpower and home field advantage, not to mention my favor, and I am not ashamed to have been biased in this conflict. On the plus side, the zeppelin the East Brotherhood fled in was able to reach the Midwestern Brotherhood where many of them were assimilated. Maxson himself, however, was not among the survivors that fled into their arms; he talked about taking on the Institute. Right up to the point that Paladin Danse exposed him as a Synth. Kind of amazing how quickly a bit of planted evidence can erode trust - after all, hadn't he delivered them right into the Institute's hands, without so much as a plan to deal with the unified resistance they now encountered?

While things calmed down, the Minutemen took control and a regional government was formally established.I decided it might be better to keep my head down from that point forward, lest I be roped into helping more settlements. Though the Minutemen were rather well-equipped by the time it happened, the factory of synths was vacated overnight, the lines returned to their previous state when it had been a car factory. The Institute ended up following my suggestion and joining the US Government - the logistical implications of teleportation changed everything. When the federal government came to negotiate in 2292, they brought seeds for heartier crops, among other things, and were received quite positively.

When I left in 2297, the Plains, Texas, and the Four States Commonwealth had also been returned to the United States, and while the Midwestern Commonwealth remained under the Brotherhood of Steel's control, it was at least not hostile toward the US. Unlike the NCR, which depended on imports from the US, so its doom had been spelled out clearly enough. Really, the biggest hurtle to restoring the continental United States fully was the Great Khans - they'd absorbed many other tribes, and controlled territory from Idaho to the Dakotas. But... that was a problem for the government to deal with, and people had seen enough war. With the most basic needs handled, people were more interested in diplomacy and reconstruction.

Personally, I was satisfied with how things had gone. Even took a trip to Nuka-World to celebrate. Hyperion had been in orbit this entire time, after all. Since 2275, it had been slowly but surely stripping certain resources from the planet - the radioactive kind, along with the signature for the FEV virus in the caches I'd uncovered over the decades - and adding things such as trees, grass, small animals of various sorts. The former wastelands had begun growing green across the world. Though rebuilding the world's civilization would surely not be an easy road... it was attainable, and I'd done my part to help make it happen.

It's true what they say.

War never changes.

But people do.