Happy Fun Wasteland Adventure (A Fallout: New Vegas log)

[Mitillos]

I started this particular F:NV run some time ago, but didn't think about posting it here until now. I will be posting as I remember it, so obviously there may be some inaccuracies here and there. I hope everyone will enjoy the narrative, and maybe feel the urge to also play this wonderful game (or play it again). If you have somehow managed to not know anything about this game that's been around for over a decade, but intend to play it, then be warned that there will be spoilers.

This is the story of Kelsey, a courier with the Mojave Express, who cheated death and became the hero of the Mojave. Kelsey was delivering a package to New Vegas, when she was attacked by some assholes. They stole her package, shot her twice in the head, and buried her. This was quite annoying.

She woke up in an unfamiliar house and was greeted by an unfamiliar man, calling himself Doc Mitchell. He said a robot had dug her out of her grave and brought her here about a week ago, so the doctor could remove all the lead that was in her skull. Miraculously, she survived, and so Mitchell patched her up, fixed her face, and even gave her shoulder-length teal-coloured hair, for some bizarre reason.

Once the shock of being alive again passed, Mitchell had Kelsey test her vitals on what he called a Vit-o-matic Vigor Tester, which to Kelsey looked little more than a repurposed Love tester machine, with seven readouts instead of one. It declared her a Lightweight, an Alert Coyote, Tough-as-nails, a Peevish Librarian, a Smartypants, a Butterfingers, and a Leprechaun's Foot. Meaningless nonsense, to be sure, but Mitchell made a comment about bullets turning around and climbing back into the gun. The long period of unconsciousness had, however, left her muscles sore and stiff, and her demeanour on the surly side, so maybe there was something to this, after all.

Mitchell then had Kelsey do a bit of word association, answer some personality questions, and look at some blots and describe what she saw. She was constantly fighting the urge to roll her eyes, but after all, the man did save her life, so she decided to humour him. To show willing, she mentioned she had some training in trading, fixing things, and rhetoric. She also told him about her fragile bones and poor eyesight. Mitchell said he couldn't help with the bones, but she could grab his spare pair of glasses from his work desk. Luckily, they worked for her, even if they were almost broken.

All medical considerations taken care of, Mitchell returned all the equipment Kelsey had on her when she was brought in, and even gave her his dead wife's wrist-mounted RobCo pipboy and said she should feel free to take whatever else she might need from his place. He compared Kelsey to his dead wife, so the poor old man was probably just feeling melancholic from loneliness. Kelsey asked if he could spare some medical supplies, which he happily parted with, so she thanked him and started looking around the house. She found a chemistry set which she used to make more stimpacks, a broken 9mm submachinegun, which she fixed and took, along with a doctor's bag, a magazine about medicine, a laser pistol with some energy cells, and a fedora. Normally, this might seem like a lot, but apparently Kelsey was somehow ambushed while she was carrying enough weaponry to outfit an average-sized raiding party, what with the throwing spears, machete, shotgun, four sets of armour, and an honest-to-goodness grenade rifle.

Mitchell told Kelsey she should ask Victor, the robot that had rescued her from the grave, about the guys who attacked her. He also mentioned that Sunny Smiles was usually at the saloon, and might be able to help her sharpen her survival skills. Thanking him once again, Kelsey took her leave, and stepped out into the quaint little town of Goodsprings.

And there we have it. Character creation and some light looting of Doc Mitchell's house (though not quite as extensive as most murderhobos are known to engage in). In the next post we will explore Goodsprings, do some tutorials, and see what lies ahead for Kelsey.

[Mitillos]

As Kelsey walked out of Mitchell's house, the pip-boy started bombarding her with notifications. Updates to the operating system, new terms of service by RobCo, an overwhelming amount of unsolicited messages advertising various products and services, and some radio signals. She turned the dial to tune in to New Vegas radio and walked down the dirt path. Almost immediately, she spotted a robot rolling around on one wheel. It had a monitor on the front, with a picture of a happy cowboy face on it. The robot spoke with a southern accent, using a lot of cowboy expressions, and introduced itself as Victor. Victor said he'd seen Kelsey get ambushed, and waited until the culprits left before digging her out and bringing her to Doc Mitchell. While it seemed strange that a robot who had settled in Goodsprings over a decade earlier would randomly be patrolling the cemetery right when Kelsey was being shot there (and for that matter, be waiting outside Doc Mitchell's house just as Kelsey was exiting), she wasn't about to question her good fortune. She thanked Victor and continued exploring Goodsprings.

At this point, it seems like her instincts as a courier started kicking in, because she went around to every house, checking the mailboxes. She found some magazines and bottle caps which she helped herself to, as well as some bottles of sarsaparilla in various crates. One of them had a slightly different cap from the rest, adorned with a star, so she kept it separate, to avoid spending it by accident. She then went to the general store where she met Chet, the owner. He explained ammunition types and weapon modifications to her. He was also happy to buy her spare armours and whatever weapons and items she didn't need any more, in exchange for some ammunition, a shovel, and some more caps.

Shovel in hand, Kelsey made her way to the cemetery up the hill. She seemed to still be a little confused, as she started digging up the other graves. Perhaps she was seeing if she would also find someone buried alive that she could save, in turn. In fact, she only found a silenced pistol and some ammunition. One gravestone also had a pretty snowglobe resting against it, so she grabbed that too. Finally, she got to her own, undug grave. She saw a cigarette butt on the ground next to it. The memories of that night came rushing back. The guy in charge of the others... in his black and white checkered suit... smoking that cigarette and trying to sound cool in a tired, contrived, and rather idiotic manner. She took the cigarette butt and decided that she would return the favour. She would get back the package she was delivering, and put two bullets in his worthless head. And unlike him, she would do it properly.

On the way back, she was approached by a man who introduced himself as Malcolm Holmes. He started saying something about wanting to trade, but he realised that Kelsey could tell he was lying about his intentions. He explained that he'd seen her find the cap with the star and that there was a legend telling of a great prize for whomever found enough of those caps. He also mentioned that some people were prepared to kill for those caps, but that he had stopped collecting them, so he turned away to leave. Kelsey could tell he was lying. If he had truly stopped collecting, then why was he so interested in the cap she had found? She waited until he was far enough, and used her new silenced pistol to kill him. Just as she expected, Malcolm had indeed been looking for the caps; he had six of them on him. Kelsey took them, not sure if she believed the legend.

Kelsey made her way to the prospector saloon. Outside, she met a pleasant elderly man named Easy Pete. He talked about Goodsprings, prospecting, Victor, the New California Republic, and Caesar's Legion and even told Kelsey she was welcome to use the spare bed in his home, seeing how she didn't have anywhere to stay while she was in Goodsprings. Thanking him, Kelsey went inside the saloon, where she found a very pretty young woman and her adorable puppy. Cheyenne barked happily, while Sunny Smiles gave Kelsey directions to a couple of other towns nearby and also told her that she might be able to find some more equipment at the old schoolhouse, if she was any good with picking locks or hacking computers. Kelsey kept asking the same questions over and over, just so she could keep listening to her lovely voice. Her aural lust briefly satiated, Kelsey mentioned that Doc Mitchell was the one who had recommended she find Sunny, to help her with her survival skills. Sunny was happy to do so, and asked Kelsey to meet her behind the saloon.

When Kelsey got there, she found Sunny and Cheyenne waiting for her, near a row of empty sarsaparilla bottles, lined up on a fence. Sunny gave Kelsey a varmint rifle and had her shoot three bottles down. Kneeling for stability and looking down the iron sights, as Sunny suggested, Kelsey was able to shoot accurately enough, despite her relative unfamiliarity with firearms. Seeing her latent talent, Sunny suggested Kelsey come with her to hunt some geckos. These mutated lizards were a hazard to travelers, so Sunny hunted them, and sold their meat and hide to traders. Agreeing, Kelsey followed Sunny and Cheyenne south of the town. The first two pairs of geckos were taken down easily. Cheyenne, in particular, seemed to have it out for them. She rushed them, growling and barking, tearing them limb from limb even after death. The third group consisted of three lizards, and they were attacking a woman from Goodsprings. With little regard for her own well-being, Kelsey pulled out her machete, jumped down a small cliff, and rushed the geckos, screaming like mad. When the red mist cleared, the geckos were all decapitated, and the woman was alive, though injured and absolutely terrified. Once she calmed down, she declared she'd tell everyone about how Kelsey saved her life, and made her way back towards the town. She probably used telepathy to do so, because the pip-boy informed Kelsey that her reputation with the people of Goodsprings had improved, before the woman even moved. In fact, it seemed like the pip-boy must have been using telepathy too. Or there was some kind of transmitter somewhere in the town, sending out information about who is liked and who isn't, which is even more weird. I mean, who would maintain it? Who would update it? What if they were somehow shunned by the community? Would anyone ever know? Or was there some sort of appointed committee, that had to approve the changes? By telepathy, obviously, seeing how fast it had happened. Sorry, got a little carried away there and broke the fourth wall, but in my defense, the game started it.

Sunny and Cheyenne caught up and saw the carnage. While Cheyenne happily munched on the gecko remains, Sunny thanked Kelsey and asked her if she was also interested in learning how to make useful items. Agreeing, Kelsey teleported to the cemetery to grab a flower, then to Goodsprings, to grab a plant root from near the schoolhouse. Remembering that there might be unclaimed loot inside, she entered, only to find the place full of mutated giant mantises. After another machete-fest, she took stock of her new life thus far, and thought about the skills she'd been working on getting better at, such as hacking, lockpicking, working with explosives, and so on. She also remembered how much she enjoyed the company of other women (this was probably helped along by Sunny Smiles). She grabbed all the magazines, drugs, and ammunition she found at the schoolhouse (these kids sure knew how to party), then hacked the confiscated items safe and found a stealth-boy. Evidently, some young lad really wanted to spy on his classmates in the restrooms, but the teachers put a swift stop to that. Kelsey claimed it for more wholesome activities, and made her way back to Sunny. After cooking up a dose of healing powder at a campfire, Kelsey was declared ready to face whatever the Mojave had to throw at her and invited to also meet Trudy, the owner of the Goodsprings saloon.

As we continue, the level of detail is likely to go down, since Kelsey will always be picking up whatever money, ammo, magazines, keys, and drugs she finds. It can also be assumed she'll be picking up and drinking all the sarsaparilla bottles she finds, as well as any purified water lying around, despite the fact that this isn't a hardcore playthrough. Next time, we'll finish up with Goodsprings and the surrounding area and start exploring the Mojave a little.

-Edit: Feel free to ask questions, comment, etc.

[Mitillos]

@Ythan: Some of it is pretty neat. For example, the weathered 10mm pistol is one of the best early game weapons. It can also get a silencer mod, as well as a laser sight, so its only "flaws" are basically that 1) it's not a holdout weapon so you can't sneak it into places, and 2) it's eventually heavily outclassed in damage by a large number of non-pistol weapons you find.

As soon as Sunny and Cheyenne left the area, a guy named Barton Thorn ran up to Kelsey, begging her to help him. He said that his girl was trapped on one of the nearby hills, surrounded by geckos. Kelsey wasn't about to let someone be eaten to death by these vicious lizards, so she promised to help, and made her way up the ridge. Half a dozen dead geckos later she made it to the top, but there was no girl anywhere to be found. There was, instead a mattress with some bear traps around it. Barton, who had followed Kelsey at a distance caught up to her and apologised for the trick. He thanked her for clearing the geckos and making it possible for him to get to the hidden stash at the top, after he dealt with her. Clearly, this fink was too stupid to live. He had just witnessed Kelsey kill all these geckos that he was having difficulty with, and hardly breaking a sweat. Yet, somehow, he thought he could take her. Once his corpse settled at the foot of the hill, Kelsey turned her attention to the prize Barton was after. After disarming the bear traps, she thanked the corpse of the prospector who had set up this camp area, took everything of value he had, and made her way back to Goodsprings, to meet Trudy, the proprietor of the saloon.

Kelsey found Trudy at the saloon, arguing with a very aggressive guy. She barely caught the tail-end of the conversation before he abruptly turned away and left. She introduced herself to Trudy, who gave her more information on the guys who had attacked Kelsey. They had apparently been very rude, expecting to be given service and drinks for free, and breaking Trudy's radio when this expectation was not met. After they were done in Goodsprings, they made their way south, towards Primm; perhaps Kelsey would be able to get more information about them, there. After fixing Trudy's radio, Kelsey asked her what the argument with that man had been about. According to Trudy, he was Cobb, a member of a group called the powder gangers, and he was looking for a man named Ringo. Though Trudy told Cobb that she did not know where Ringo was, she was far more inclined to let Kelsey know; Ringo had been part of a caravan which was attacked by the powder gangers. He managed to kill some of the attackers before fleeing to Goodsprings to hide from the retribution of their friends. Kelsey decided to find Cobb and hear his side of the story.

She found him leaning against the wall of a house, keeping an eye on the road passing next to Goodsprings. While incredibly rude, he explained that the powder gangers were convicts, brought over by the New California Republic to Nevada, to rebuild transportation infrastructure, so the NCR could maintain control of the area all the way to the Colorado river and the Hoover dam. Unfortunately, the convicts managed to construct some makeshift explosives, kill their captors, and take the prison over. Now, they were using explosives to raid caravans for supplies, which was how Ringo was forced to hole up in Goodsprings. Having seen the town, Cobb decided that it was now the territory of his part of the gang and was considering taking over. Kelsey bade Cobb goodbye, moved away far enough that he could no longer see her, took out her silenced pistol, and shot Cobb in the head. She then made her way to the gas station where Ringo was hiding, to introduce herself and tell him that Cobb was dead. While thankful, Ringo explained that Cobb's friends would probably still be after him, and he couldn't fight half a dozen armed men alone, or even with Kelsey's assistance. He asked Kelsey to find Sunny and anyone else who might be willing to help out, and then taught her how to play a card game called Caravan.

Caravan seems to garner a lot of hate. To some extent, this is likely because of the unclear instructions on how to play. If I'm not mistaken, Obsidian didn't have enough time to develop it properly (in fact, they weren't given enough time for New Vegas (and KotOR 2, come to think of it - game publishers are awful)), and this shows. There is a fairly simple strategy to beat every Caravan player in the game with the starting deck, by simply using the cards numbered 6 through 10, the knaves, kings, and jokers. With this set up, three cards are generally enough for any pile you want to build into a caravan, whereas all your AI opponents will struggle with all the smaller numbers they bring along, hardly adding to the value of their piles in most of their moves. There's even an in-game challenge to lose 5 games, worth 50 XP, and one has to wonder whether the developers thought they were being nice, giving you a silver lining to your losses, or they realised that the game was so easy you actually had to put some effort into losing.

Due to the lateness of the hour, Kelsey found Sunny at her house, sleeping. She wasn't sure how the arrangements here worked, since apparently this house was shared by Trudy, Sunny, Cheyenne, and that woman Kelsey saved from the geckos earlier. Nevertheless, Kelsey helped herself to the only undamaged book in their bookshelf. It was about sneaking, and it had some tricks Kelsey was happy to learn. She then woke Sunny up, to tell her about Ringo's plan to fight the remaining powder gangers. Sunny, being her wonderful and perfect self, immediately agreed to help. She also suggested that Kelsey enlist the help of Trudy, Chet, Pete, and Doc Mitchell. Each of them would take some convincing, but their assistance would be really useful in this fight. Trudy was easy to convince, as she was still grateful Kelsey had repaired her radio. Chet was reluctant to help, but when Kelsey pointed out that if Goodsprings fell to the powder gangers they'd just kill him to loot his store, he agreed to provide some armour and ammunition. Easy Pete had some spare dynamite, which he didn't want to give to amateurs who'd just injure themselves, but Kelsey was experienced enough with explosives by now, that she convinced him she'd be fine. Doc Mitchell, unable to fight due to his age, offered some of his spare supplies. Finally, Kelsey found Victor and asked him to help too and he promised to be ready for the fight. With the entirety of Goodsprings recruited, Kelsey made her way to Ringo's hideout, to let him know preparations were complete. Soon, Sunny joined them to let them know that the powder gangers were making their move, so all three made their way to the town proper, to join the rest of the townsfolk. With enough experience under her belt, Kelsey was now able to think back to what she had learned, and improve her skills further just before the fight.

With everyone helping, using the extra supplies provided, and Cobb already dead, the fight was very short. Some of the powder gangers were only armed with tire irons and knives, so they were gunned down before they could do anything. The rest used shotguns, but Chet's armour and Mitchell's medicine meant that they were completely ineffectual. One of the powder gangers threw a stick of dynamite, but Kelsey shot it while it was in the air. All in all, an extremely uneventful attack, that would have gone unnoticed but for the stench of fresh corpses, the strengthened sense of camaraderie in the inhabitants of Goodsprings, and the fact that Kelsey was now idolised by the folks of the small town, for having helped bring them together to repel these vicious gangsters (whose group now considered Kelsey the worst person alive, and would shoot her on sight - more of that telepathy at work). Victor had not made it to the fight, and when Kelsey questioned him about it, discovered that he had been remotely hacked and disabled during the fight. Filing that under "Suspicious", she said her goodbyes to the grateful people of Goodsprings, and made her way north, along the I-15.

And this concludes the starting/tutorial area of Goodsprings. So, why are we going north, instead of south? Well, the people who attacked us were apparently making their way to New Vegas, and north is the most direct route to New Vegas. Mechanically speaking, it's because we can explore the area, do a couple of easy quests, and even grab a couple more books. Magazines give large temporary boosts to skills, but books yield small permanent improvements, so getting as many of them as possible is really useful. Experienced players might shout at me for not waiting until level 6 and getting a perk which increases the bonus books give, but as it happens I did not get that perk at all. On a reasonably high int and luck run, it's possible to get every skill to the maximum of 100, even without the Educated and Comprehension perks.

[Mitillos]

The powder gangers' troubles are not over, by a long shot. Let's just say that, since they've decided to shoot Kelsey on sight, turnabout is fair play, and my visual acuity is much better than theirs. Also, turns out that Victor talks in what is known as a western accent, rather than a southern one. As a non-American, I can't really tell the difference.

The long 15. Connecting California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, and Montana. Lifeline of the West. Road leading to Vegas. A horrible death-trap full of misery. Kelsey made it all the way to Sloan, when she was warned not to continue along the road by a quarry worker who introduced himself as Chomps Lewis. He said that when some powder gangers came by and stole the dynamite from the quarry, the place filled with enormous, powerful, and aggressive creatures called deathclaws, so they had to shut the quarry down. When Kelsey said she could take care of the deathclaw problem, Comps replied with unmasked derision. "You'd have to be the meanest, toughest, roughest bastard in the wasteland to have any chance against them, and I don't think that's you." Slightly humbled, she accepted the truth of the situation and decided that her current path was not a good idea. She decided to take a breather at Sloan, so she introduced herself to Jas Wilkins, the woman running the mess hall for the quarry workers. Jas mentioned that, if Kelsey got her a deathclaw egg, she could try making her great-aunt Rose's

chicken

deathclaw egg omelet recipe. If it worked, she would share the recipe with Kelsey, too. After resting for a bit, Kelsey stole and read a couple of books from the workers' barracks (one was about repairing, the other about explosives). Feeling bad about this, she had a look at the camp generator and managed to fix it. She also saw that the workers had a tame mole rat as a pet and it seemed to be limping, so she healed its leg. Chomps said both of these would help with morale in camp, so he thanked Kelsey and gave her some money. He explained that the NCR had replaced caps with paper money back in California and Oregon, and they were trying to do the same in Nevada. Obviously, the people in Nevada didn't want to be economically dependent on the whims of politicians who lived hundreds of miles away, so they were resisting this. As a result, NCR money was worth less than its nominal value, in Nevada. This did not bother the politicians and the wealthy in NCR. The Californian economy was much larger than that of Nevada, and their caravans traded a lot of goods here. This would be an economic war of attrition, so all they had to do was be patient, keep control of Hoover dam, and eventually they'd be able to annex New Vegas. This, of course, didn't much help the workers, whose pay ended up buying less than it should, but that was a story as old as time.

Kelsey took her leave, vowing to return when she was the meanest, toughest, roughest bastard in the wasteland (or at least close to it), and clear the area of deathclaws. She made her way south, towards Primm. She found three small staging areas powder gangers used for their raids, just off the I-15. She killed the powder gangers from a distance and disarmed the mines they left as protection, before continuing on. For the moment, she would avoid the NCR correctional facility that the powder gangers had taken over. She would need more firepower to take on a prison-turned-fort. After an otherwise uneventful journey, she reached Primm. Seeing some tents across the I-15 from the town, she decided to check those out, first. She was immediately accosted by an NCR soldier, who told her that outlaws who had escaped from the correctional facility had taken Primm over. He warned her to keep her distance, but she was determined to gather more information about the guys who had attacked her. Seeing that the NCR had sent here only two soldiers, one medic, one sergeant, and one lieutenant, she decided to give her luck a go and try sneaking into Primm. This, as it turned out, was unnecessary. She found two outlaws near the centre of the town, and two more walking along the broken roller coaster tracks going around the Bison Steve Hotel. She figured that the rest of the outlaws must be inside the hotel. She decided to check the other buildings, to see if she could find any surviving townsfolk, to help her. Unfortunately, the houses in the town were empty. She found the sheriff and his wife in their home, but they had been brutally murdered fairly recently. Down to the last two available buildings to check, she went to the Mojave Express office. It was also empty of life, but it did have one broken down Eyebot. She examined it and determined it was missing some key electronic components, a couple of sensors, and bits of its frame that she could make with scrap metal. A few repairs later, it was floating again, and sporting its shiny identification plate: Eyebot Duraframe subject E, or ED-E for short. She programmed ED-E to follow and defend her, send information on nearby targets to her pip boy, and carry her spare weapons and armour. Around this time, she also randomly remembered that, in addition to the company of women, she enjoyed the company of men.

Running out of options, she made her way to the only remaining building; the Vicki and Vance casino, across the Bison Steve hotel. This time, she was lucky. All the townsfolk were holed up in here, to defend themselves from the outlaws. Thankfully, they didn't start shooting Kelsey the moment she walked through the door, which meant they hadn't been here long enough to start becoming desperate and paranoid. Johnson Nash, the manager of the local Mojave Express outpost had taken charge and led everyone here when the outlaws attacked. He was surprised that ED-E was still functional and was happy to let Kelsey keep him. He explained that the package Kelsey had been carrying was one of a group of six unimportant-looking items (playing cards, dice, chess pieces, and the like) which needed to be delivered to New Vegas via different routes. The order was made by a robot which had a picture of a cowboy face on its monitor and spoke with a western accent. Nash added that the courier who was originally scheduled to carry Kelsey's package had seen she was next in line and declined the job, saying she should carry it instead. Finally, Nash informed Kelsey that the deputy sheriff, a rather useless man named Beagle, had information on the man in the checkered suit, but he was currently held hostage in the hotel and the town couldn't afford to pay his ransom. Most of the rest of the townsfolk didn't seem interested in chatting with Kelsey, so she turned her attention to the one other person who would: a second robot cowboy. This one was a protectron-type robot, with its cranial dome shaped like a cowboy hat, programmed to be a greeter for the casino and to also pepper his talk with cowboy expressions. Kelsey decided that this must have been somebody's fetish, and that more robot cowboys were bound to be roaming around Nevada. This one, named Primm Slim seemed to have something wrong with its sensors. After telling the history of Vicki and Vance, the thief couple, he said that their memorabilia including Vance's submachinegun could be seen in the display cases. The cases were empty, yet Slim insisted he could see the gun and that Kelsey was loco to suggest otherwise. After checking Slim's corrupted memory files, Kelsey discovered that a new thief couple had stolen the gun and reprogrammed Slim to not be aware of this. They mentioned Westside, a suburb of New Vegas, and Kelsey promised to look for them and the gun.

With some trepidation, Kelsey made her way to the hotel, to save deputy Beagle. She was sure that fighting a large gang of convicts with only one robot to help, in a building they'd been using for some time, would be a difficult fight and she'd likely be heavily injured in the process. Thankfully, her worries were unfounded. ED-E turned out to be a terrifying combatant. He killed most enemies in one shot, some of them being reduced to a pile of ash, and they were the lucky ones. Others had to endure electrocution or burning, praying for death for several seconds of excruciating agony. Only the gang leader proved tough enough to survive for more than a few seconds, and he was treated to several 9mm bullets, courtesy of Kelsey's submachinegun. He did have an incinerator, which spat fireballs with alarming range, precision, and explosiveness, so both Kelsey and ED-E needed some quick medical care. Thankfully, Beagle was safely tied up in the kitchen. He promised to give the information he had on the checker-suit man back at the casino, so Kelsey untied him and cleared up the two upper floors of the hotel, before returning to the Vicki and Vance. Beagle told her that the people who attacked her belonged to a group of raiders calling themselves "Great Khans". Apparently they were going to continue south, then east through Nipton, and loop back north on route 95 to Novac.

Before Kelsey could leave, Beagle and Nash asked her to find a new sheriff for Primm. Nash said that she could ask the NCR to send one of their own, or talk to an ex-sheriff in the correctional facility, who might want the job. Seeing as the NCR could spare only 5 men for a standoff with over a dozen of their escaped convicts, she doubted they considered Primm important enough to commit to holding. She decided to pay the correctional facility a visit and see if this ex-sheriff was any good. Undoubtedly, she would have to shoot her way in, but by this point she had absolutely no sympathy for the powder gangers.

The convicts in Primm are actually not marked as powder gangers. Presumably they didn't want to stick around the correctional facility with the other convicts, and simply decided to take Primm over, instead. At any rate, we now have our first (and possibly best) companion. ED-E is an absolute beast in combat, he can carry a lot of your loot, he lets you notice both friendly and hostile targets from a huge distance (even if they are cloaked), he acts as a portable crafting bench and reloading bench, he can [redacted for spoilers], and even [redacted for more spoilers]. I guess what I'm saying is that, we've basically now won the game, and we're just enjoying the story. Yes, I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.

[Mitillos]

So, the bad news is that I had to reinstall Steam, and I think I lost my saves. The good news is I just finished this run a couple of days ago, so now it's all just a question of my memory being good enough. And yes, ED-E is the greatest.

Kelsey left the town of Primm going north once again. She found yet another powder ganger camp and decided to use it as target practice, to test the new combat capabilities ED-E provided. The results were beyond her expectations. Three shots with the varmint rifle, three fewer powder gangers around. And there would be even fewer by the time she was done with the correctional facility. She approached it from the west, where a convenient hill provided both elevation and cover. Four guards on towers, one at the entrance, three more milling about the courtyard. Eight more shots to assorted heads later, the powder gangers lost their defenses. The guard at the entrance had a key granting access to the visitors' centre. Kelsey switched to her submachinegun, confidently strode in, and started spraying bullets in the direction of everyone who pulled out a weapon to attack her. In the end, this amounted more to enthusiasm than skill, because ED-E made short work of all but one person wearing a black cowboy hat. This one survivor was named Meyers and he was the ex-sheriff Nash had heard of. Asking him about his past work and how he ended up in the correctional facility, Kelsey decided she would not ask him to be Primm's sheriff. The man was little more than a vigilante, who proudly declared that sometimes justice was too slow, and he happily took the law into his own hands when he felt this was warranted. She decided to go back to Primm and see if she could find a different solution to the problem, but not before making sure the powder gangers in the remaining three buildings wouldn't be able to continue raiding the area. Most of them went down just as easily at the rest, but the leader Eddie had a bodyguard named Scrambler who fought like a demon, before being burned to ash by ED-E. Kelsey found out that another group of powder gangers followed the original instigator of the jailbreak when he left to go north towards New Vegas, so she made a mental note to keep an eye out for them. After looting the facility she made her way back to Primm.

The townsfolk were still hiding out in the casino, milling about aimlessly. None of them had any ideas on where to find a new sheriff, when Kelsey had a flash of inspiration. She asked Nash if he thought Slim could be reprogrammed to act as sheriff. After all, he was a protectron; basic security programming should already be somewhere in his memory. Nash agreed they could give it a try, so Kelsey got to work. A few minutes later, Primm had a shiny new sheriff, the townsfolk were finally leaving the casino for their homes, and everyone was happy, except Beagle who was no longer deputy. Seeing as everyone considered him the incompetent beneficiary of nepotism, he was left to mope alone about his joblessness, and Kelsey left Primm again, this time due south. A couple of groups of raiders and a couple of abandoned buildings provided a break from the monotony of the wasteland. Eventually, Kelsey spotted a huge statue of two men shaking hands, built over the I-15 on top of a hill. Underneath it was a plaque, identifying the men as an NCR ranger and a Nevada desert ranger, commemorating the unification of the two groups against the threat of Caesar's Legion, an invading army of tribals attacking from Arizona. Just past the monument, Kelsey found NCR Ranger Outpost Mojave (or more simply, Mojave outpost). She got her equipment repaired, played a few rounds of Caravan with Lacey the bartender and merchant, and took some time to rest.

Since Kelsey had already heard from a number of people that the NCR was stretched too thin in the Mojave and that Caesar's Legion was full of sexist slavers, she decided to help out a bit. A tough-talking, whiskey-drinking, no nonsense cowgirl named Rose of Sharon Cassidy was going through a seemingly endless number of bottles, but she was sober enough to tell Kelsey that she wasn't interested in shacking up and had not errands for her, but she could check with Jackson (the commanding officer of the outpost), Ghost (a ranger sniper stationed on the roof), and if she ever went near Vegas, the Crimson Caravan company. Ghost had spotted great plumes of smoke coming out of Nipton and wanted someone to check it out, since she couldn't leave her post. Jackson asked Kelsey to clear out the I-15 from critters, around the base of the cliff. This was weird, since Kelsey had come that way and there was nothing, but she agreed, since it was on the way to Nipton anyway. It turned out Jackson's request made sense, as there were half a dozen human-sized ants there now. they were easily taken care off, though, and Kelsey went East. A few more ants and a few more raiders wanted to start some trouble, but they were quickly and permanently discouraged. Then, Kelsey heard several submachinegun bursts ahead. No bullets seem to be coming her way, so she stealthily approached, until she saw a man and a woman shooting at each other. As she came closer, the man died and the woman grabbed an item from his pocket. She then saw Kelsey and approached her, saying that the man had suddenly attacked her out of nowhere and stole her bottle cap necklace. Kelsey said that those six caps with stars on them were pretty and the woman agreed. However, Kelsey was quite certain she had seen seven caps, so she expressed some doubts about the necklace belonging to the woman. The woman said she didn't want witnesses and attacked Kelsey too, but this was her last mistake. With nine more star bottle caps (as the woman had two of her own), Kelsey approached Nipton and saw that the gate into the town was adorned with gold-trimmed red banners, with the drawing of a bull on them. A man came running and happily shouting about the lottery and how he had won it, but seemed incapable of seeing the need to elaborate in any intelligible way. Kelsey moved further into the seemingly deserted town, and once she reached the street leading to the town centre and the town hall, was met with a gruesome sight.

What is this gruesome sight? Only time will tell. Regarding Primm, you can pick Meyers as a sheriff, or have the NCR assign one of their soldiers, but I find both of these choices and their eventual outcomes quite distasteful. Primm Slim is the only reasonable choice, unless you're doing an evil Legion run as a stupid character, in which case Meyers is probably the appropriate choice. ED-E continues to kick ass, killing everything that dares look at us funny, usually in one shot. The Mojave outpost has one of the few characters who will repair your weapons and armour to full condition (at a fairly high price, but money isn't exactly hard to come by in this game, especially in the second half and the various expansions). Unfortunately for Legion characters, he's an NCR soldier in an outpost full of NCR soldiers, so if you're siding with Caesar you won't really get to use this particular service. At this point, we're probably around level 8, or so. Skill points are distributed so as to ensure we can use the various books (thanks, the wiki) to get every skill to 100 by the end. Perks will go towards intensive training for quite some time, the goal being to get all the stats to 10 (which will in fact require either using a glitch in the Dead Money DLC, or just cheating by using the console for the last 3 points). Since going from 9 to 10 doesn't affect much in pretty much any stat, other than making the stats screen look nicer, I feel zero guilt about doing this. If you don't like this, just imagine me at the end having a 96 instead of a 100 in... I don't know, Unarmed or something, since I don't really use that skill at all.

[Mitillos]

Couldn't ya just drink it like booze!

Nipton's main street was adorned with certain things that Kelsey doubted had been there long. Heads stuck on posts and crucified men lined both sides, and a large number of human remains were still burning in the large pyre producing the smoke Ghost had spotted. The only living things (aside from some bark scorpions that had wandered into a trailer park on the south end of the town) were five men and three dogs following them. The men were dressed in extremely silly outfits, wearing American football gear that had been painted black and adorned with strips of leather, to make it slightly resemble ancient armour to the extremely casual or the extremely generous observer. The fifth man was even more ridiculously dressed, wearing the pelt of a coyote over his head, so that his face appeared under the snout. They seemed to take themselves extremely seriously, because as Kelsey approached, the other men lined up on either side of coyote guy who introduced himself as Vulpes Inculta, clearly (and incorrectly) thinking that this meant "desert fox". He had a sneering attitude, proclaiming the superiority and purity of Caesar's Legion as well as Caesar's intellect and greatness, and belittling everyone they had killed in Nipton for being degenerates, weak, cowardly, and for offering the town's services to anyone who came by. As Kelsey found out later, a man named Steyn had come over from the Hub in the NCR and managed to become mayor of Nipton, planning to make as much money as possible so he could return to the Hub and run for office in the NCR. He decided to allow powder gangers to use the services of the town during the day, and give permission to NCR soldiers to stay in the hotel at night, thus profiting from both groups. Vulpes, knowing about this arrangement, approached Steyn with an offer of a large amount of money in return for letting him and his Legionnaires round up both the powder gangers and the NCR. However, he betrayed Steyn and rounded up all of Nipton, declaring a lottery to determine everyone's fate. Some were decapitated, others crucified, still more burned on a pyre, while some of the women and children were taken as slaves. Steyn himself was burned on a pile of burning tires, and the winner of the lottery was let go, with the instruction to spread the word of what had happened. The same instruction was given to Kelsey.

All this was enough to tell Kelsey everything she needed to know about Vulpes and the Legion, but at this point she got a strange... flashback of sorts, but one she did not recognise as a memory from her own life. In it, she had been a very angry man who had also just arrived at Nipton, was similarly approached by Vulpes and, upon hearing what he had done, growled "I'm going to wear your head like you wear that dog's" at him. Vulpes showed his true colours, panicking and ordering his soldiers to protect him, but the male courier had already got out his grenade launcher and fired a volley of explosives before they could react. The flashback then moved forward, to a meeting with Caesar. Caesar said to past-life-male-Kelsey that he dared to stand before the mighty Caesar, asked what he was thinking, and received the reply "That I'd decorate this tent with your guts" followed by a large number of stab wounds. Caesar's guards, similarly dispatched, the flashback faded away, and Kelsey knew, without a doubt what the Legion was. A bunch of jumped-up self-important guys, who viewed women as little more than sex slaves, people outside their legion as degenerates, and whose leader's intellect was "towering" only in comparison to the men under him, which just meant that the bar was as low as it could be without the aid of excavating equipment. She thought about her future, and how many deaths of legionnaires it held, and this gave her a warm, happy feeling. She was considering killing the ones in front of her right now, but decided that she would defer this particular gratification, despite the ease with which she could utterly destroy these fools. She also decided not to tell people about what the Legion had done here. Why scare people needlessly? She'd tell Ghost and possibly Jackson, but she saw no reason to tell anybody else. She watched the men and dogs leave due east and checked the crucified men. Powder gangers, too heavily tortured to save if she had been inclined to; even getting them down would kill them over several agonising minutes. Instead, she put a merciful bullet in each of their heads. Perhaps to an observer this might look no different than when she killed powder gangers previously, but to Kelsey, the distinction was there and it was important.

After searching the town hall and a few of the buildings in Nipton, she made her way back to the Mojave outpost. Ghost was surprised and angry that the Legion had managed to move so far west, but she thanked Kelsey nonetheless. Jackson wasn't interested in Nipton, but he was happy to hear that the road was clear again and gave some useful equipment to Kelsey as thanks. Happy to have helped the outpost, Kelsey went back to Nipton, and continued to the northwest, following the trail of the Great Khans and the man in the checkered suit, towards the town of Novac. On the way, she was ambushed by a few raiders, but she was thinking about a few suspicious things she had learned in Primm and Nipton, so she ignored them and just let ED-E brutalise them with his zapper. Eventually, she passed by an NCR ranger station, codenamed "Charlie", but the soldiers there didn't seem interested in talking, so she kept moving. Eventually, she saw an enormous dinosaur statue in the distance, and knew she was close. Another raider ambush was quickly dispatched, and Kelsey soon arrived at the town named after a damaged motel sign. This place seemed more populous and secure than Goodsprings or Primm had been, so she decided that it would be a good idea to stick around for a while, although obviously her first priority would be to get more information on her attackers.

So, first off, Caesar (mispronounced by all his loyal followers and himself - yes, I know they *think* they are pronouncing it in correct Latin, but they are not; it should be pronounced kesar, with a soft k, an e like in "left", and a sharp s, since they are emulating the Roman Empire.) and his "towering intellect". It's 4. Mechanically, he is below average in intelligence. In terms of the actual story, well... he's also not particularly intelligent there. He completely misunderstands Hegelian dialectics, and simply couches his shitty, authoritarian, might-makes-right system in flowery language, simplistic analysis, and multiple fallacious arguments. Sadly, you get not opportunity to call him out on all this, but it doesn't matter, because in this particular playthrough, we will not actually get a chance to talk to him at all. Not a single word will be exchanged with this man, Edward Sallow; we will never find out he has a brain tumour, we will not get to hear him tell us about his origins, his philosophy, his plans, or how he is right because he thinks he is. Why? Well, stick around for a few hundred more posts (presumably, at this rate), and you might just find out. :þ

With that out of the way, let's talk about the little vixen dude. A fight with him and his soldiers and dogs in Nipton can be slightly challenging, but it's not that bad, and you can even make it a lot easier if you account for the fact that after they talk to you, they take a very specific path east of the town. Just a few mines can really mess them up, if you are inclined to prepare them in advance. As to why you'd want to attack him, in addition to his attitude and actions, if you tell him that his crimes are inexcusable, he says that all crimes are and actually invites you to attack his group. First time around, that's what I did, and that's what the flashback was about. I didn't actually have the perk to use the text options I included here, but hey, they're pretty great and I want people to appreciate Obsidian's work on this game. So, why did I not kill him this time? Well, I wanted his death to serve an additional purpose with regard to game mechanics. In the end, it didn't, because I was being extra thorough, but I don't mind. We'll get him later.

Also, if you are familiar with the game and are wondering about whether I checked the general store and the paranoid man's house in Nipton: no and yes, respectively.

[Mitillos]

Apologies for talking so long. Start of the semester and all that. Last time, I disappointed Ythan and an irl friend, by failing to eliminate foxo the clown. Let's see if I can get back into their good graces, by helping the town of Novac a bunch, using the various tools of the murderhobo.

Kelsey made her way towards the relatively undestroyed town. Unlike Goodsprings, Primm, and Nipton, Novac did not seem to have any ruined houses with only their frames left after the nukes fell. Or perhaps the people here rebuilt them. At any rate, the first house on the southwest corner of the town had a small yard, used as a farm for brahmin. Strangely, one of the brahmin was a recently mutilated corpse. This piqued Kelsey's curiosity, so she decided to investigate. The couple that owned the place, Alice and Dusty McBride, were hospitable and kind. When asked, they said that somebody had been attacking their cattle at night and had killed more than half the brahmin they had. Fearing for their lives, they hadn't done anything about it, hoping that the assailant would move on. They only knew that the shooting seemed to come from the west. This seemed to indicate an outsider. Kelsey promised to check it out that night. She would check out the rest of the town, and return at midnight to stop the attacks.

Kelsey moved towards the motel with the no vacancy sign, when she was greeted by a familiar voice with a western accent. "Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit, if it ain't my old friend from Goodsprings!", it said. She greeted Victor, happy to see a familiar face, even if it was just an image on a monitor. His greeting was almost (though not quite enough) to make her forget her earlier suspicion about Victor and his inability to help during the fight at Goodsprings. when she asked him how come he was here, he said he got the sudden urge to go to New Vegas. Kelsey wasn't sure what to make of this, given that Victor had happily stuck around Goodsprings for over a decade, but decided not to make a big deal of it. If Victor wanted her dead, all he had to do was leave her in her unmarked grave, but that was precisely what he hadn't done. She went inside the motel, and found the owner, Jeanie May. She was cheery and made a point of mentioning how much she loved Novac, even though "some people didn't appreciate it" as much as she clearly believed they should. She told Kelsey she could buy supplies from Cliff Briscoe in the dinosaur, so Kelsey made her excuses and left. The T-Rex building did indeed have an entrance on its side, and a cozy interior used as a gift shop since before the war. A short balding man ran the store now, and happily traded useful equipment for Kelsey's useless junk she had been hauling. In addition to stimpacks and ammunition, Kelsey bought some useful modifications for some of her weapons, and an MF Hyperbreeder Alpha. This was a laser pistol, capable of shooting 7 times per second, and fitted with a microfusion generator allowing it to recharge automatically, eliminating the need for power packs or ammunition. Thus far, Kelsey had neglected training in energy weapons, but this new acquisition gave her the excuse she needed to start doing so.

Having finished her purchases, she turned her attention to the other door of the building. This one seemed to lead to the front of the dinosaur, so she decided to have a look. In fact, it led to the T-Rex's mouth, used as a sniper nest. A man dressed in NCR military uniform was there, keeping an eye on highway 95 which passed by Novac. He introduced himself as Manny Vargas, a veteran NCR sniper who had settled in Novac with his then-friend Boone (another sniper). Manny explained that he guarded the town during the day, while Boone took the night shift. Apparently, he and Boone had a falling out, so he refused to talk more about him. On the other hand, he was very eager to talk about the REPCONN test site, up the mountains west of the town. He said that the checker-suit man was traveling with some members of his old gang, the Great Khans. He also said he would be willing to share the information he had on them, if Kelsey would go to the test site and get rid of the ghouls there. These were people heavily affected by radiation, with patchy, damaged skin. They could be found all over the wasteland, but some of them would eventually lose their mental faculties and go feral. These feral ghouls would sometimes make their way down the mountain and attack the town, and Manny wanted this to stop. Kelsey promised to help, though she figured this was not an urgent task, given the fact that the ghoul attacks had been happening for a while. She did intend to help, but this would have to wait for a bit. She decided to see if she could get the information before dealing with Manny's request, so she made her way to his motel room. Luckily, his computer had a message from the Khans, thanking Manny for hosting them and saying that they and Benny were on their way to Boulder City. She now had a name. In time, she would have revenge.

While waiting for Manny's shift to end, so she could meet Boone as well, Kelsey introduced herself to the people in the motel. One was an older woman named Daisy, who had worked as a pilot, but was evasive when questioned about this. The other was a man named Bruce, who had fled New Reno in the NCR, when his employer (a casino boss and leader of a mafia family) discovered that Bruce had taken from him the money he was owed and, in Bruce's words, "he might have sort of plowed his daughter a little". He was now looking for work as an entertainer, but this was not something Kelsey could help with. Thankfully, by this point, the guard shift had changed, so she made her way back to the dinosaur mouth, to meet Craig Boone. Initially, he was suspicious and slightly hostile, but then he decided that, as an outsider, Kelsey might be the right person for a task he needed carried out. His now deceased wife, Carla, had been abducted by Legion slavers one night, while he was on watch. Somehow, they had managed to follow a route that kept them hidden, so he suspected that someone from Novac had sold Carla to the Legion. He asked Kelsey to find the culprit and bring them in front of the dinosaur while he was on guard. He didn't want Kelsey to kill them, he needed to do this himself, so he also gave her his beret, to wear as a signal when she brought the right person. Kelsey agreed and left the dinosaur. There was one last inhabitant she wanted to speak to: a man some of the other townfolk had mentioned, called No-bark Noonan. Apparently, he had been given this nickname because "not all his dogs were barking" (though, as Kelsey later found out, he himself believed it meant that he wasn't just barking, but told the truth which had a bite). She made her way to his shack, and asked him about everything that was happening in the town.

And we will find out what he said, next time. Experienced players may be wondering why I skipped one of the inhabitants. I had two reasons, both having to do with the fact that New Vegas is quite a buggy game (for which I place all the blame on Bethesda, its somewhat crappy engine, and its extremely crappy attitude towards Obsidian as the developer of this game). The first bug involves a quest where a certain companion needs to hear what the skipped character has to say. This usually craps up, as do many instances when one character has to hear another say something specific. I was trying to mitigate this issue as much as I could. It didn't really work, so I had to fiddle with the console, but there it is. The second bug is actually a positive one, but I ended up not using it, after all. There is a quest which involves visiting a number of NCR outposts. To avoid spoilers, I will leave the description of the bug for when we get to that particular quest.

Bruce and his dialogue is a bit of an interesting reference. The Fallout 2 player character is a tribal from Arroyo, called the Chosen One. The Chosen One goes to New Reno, does a bit of work for his contemporary head of a crime family named Bishop, then very likely "sort of plows Bishop's daughter a little". And his wife. Some years later, a Bishop child is born who, unlike the other Bishops, enjoys roaming the wasteland. Eventually, he takes control of New Reno, subduing the other crime families there. This is the Chosen One's child, and the Bishop from whom Bruce is running. If you've played the first two games (and I believe they are great, so you should), New Vegas has a large number of interesting and fun references to them.

I haven't been mentioning any new perks I got, largely because I don't actually remember the order in which I got most of them, so I'll just list them now. In addition to the ones I already alluded to (Cherchez La Femme, Black Widow, Intense Training a whopping ten times), the perks I grabbed on level-ups are as follows:
- Animal Friend (first level): This one makes animals not be hostile towards you, unless you attack them. I got this one right at the end, when I ran out of things I explicitly wanted to get, and I was already at max level, so I didn't need to keep getting more kills. The second level makes animals fight on your side, but honestly this playthrough was already too much of an overkill to justify conscripting some poor coyotes and molerats to fight for me.
- Better Criticals: This one makes your critical attacks even more powerful than critical attacks normally are. It's not quite as good as in the first two games, where better criticals unlocked the possibility of insta-kill attacks, but it's still a good one if you have a decently high crit chance.
- Broad Daylight: Use the Pipboy light while sneaking. I don't see so well with modern murky brown graphics, so this was really useful a lot of the time.
- Burden to Bear/Strong Back: These two increase the weight you can carry. Pretty self-explanatory.
- Finesse: Higher critical chance. This used to be somewhat less useful in the first two games, because slayer and sniper could make all your attacks automatic criticals, but now it's pretty great to pair with Better Criticals above.
- Heavyweight: Weapons that weigh 10lb or more have their weight halved. Another one for increasing carrying capacity. Depending on how many weapons (and which ones) you are carrying, this one can be much better than the other two, above.
- Light Step: Don't trip ground-based traps. As I mentioned, I don't spot things well in this game. This was a really useful perk for me.
- Rad Absorption: Your radiation level goes down over time by itself. It's not a huge deal, since RadAway is all over the place. I picked it just because I liked the idea and didn't particularly want any other perks.
- Silent Running: No penalties on stealth when going fast. This was just a quality of life perk, so I could move faster without worrying.
- Toughness (twice): More damage reduction, so less damage taken from enemy attacks. Self-explanatory and very useful.
- Vigilant Recycler: The first thing this perk does is give you more drained energy packs of all types (equivalent to spent ammunition) when you use energy weapons. You can recycle these drained packs. The second thing this perk does is make it so 3 drained packs can be converted to one usable pack, rather than the normal 4. These two things are not useful. The wasteland is absolutely littered with energy packs. You will easily end up with thousands of each of these by the end. The third thing this perk does is give you recipes for making optimised variants of these energy packs. This is a fantastic thing, that anyone who plans on using energy weapons (other than the self-powering ones) should pick up. All optimised versions of energy packs do 30% more damage and bypass 5 points of an enemy's damage reduction (instead of the normal 2), for a mere 10% increase in the amount of damage the weapon takes from use. Also, in hardcore mode, where ammunition has weight, optimised packs are 40% lighter.

[Mitillos]

Hello, young man. Fine weather for flying. And yeah, if you do things as they come up and move towards Vegas more slowly in the second half of the journey, Novac is pretty much designed to be your base of operations. Legion and raider random spawns are far from the town, there is a doctor with cheap services, Cliff has a good inventory for buying and selling stuff, and as Ythan said, you can get your own motel room, initially at low cost and eventually for free, once the folks at Novac like you enough. Also, the motel itself has a Mojave Express mailbox, so if you have encumbrance issues, it's a good place for solving them. Obviously, Kelsey won't have such problems, since she avoids taking too much junk and also because of her stats and perks. She also won't be sticking around for now, but it's still a nice thing to have, just in case. And now, on with the story.

Recording from Kelsey's Pip-boy of her conversation with No-bark Noonan:

N: Who sent you? I ain't talking. They tried to get me to talk before, but I didn't say nothing. And I don't aim to now, by gum.
K: I don't mean any harm.
N: We'll just see about that. You come any closer and I'm liable to stick you with my stickin' knife. Ol' Sticky's feeling mighty ornery this day.
K: We can talk from this distance.
N: You sure, now? It's kinda hard to hear you.
K: You said you'd stab me with that dirty knife.
N: Okay, okay. Just speak up a little. But not so much that They hear you. They got people everywhere, always listening.
K: Why do they call you No-bark?
N: Cause they know I ain't just barking here. What I say's got bite, 'cause it's the truth. Them quack doctors can say what they want about all the radscorpion stings that done pierced my skull. I know what I seen.
K: I'm looking for a man in a checkered coat. Have you seen anyone like that?
N: Sure have. Camouflage, that coat was, trying to hide from extra terrestrials what can only see in black and white checkers. But they're not fooled 'cause he forgot to put the checkers on his face. I told him so and he seemed to take it to heart. They stayed here a night, and was up by the dinosaur talking to the sniper fella with the moustache a couple of times.
K: What's been going on in town?
N: There's been things of a disturbing nature going on at the McBride Corral. Seems every night one of their herd meets a most unnatural death, and always there's holes all over the body. Work of the chupacabra, the livestock vampire, says No-bark, but they don't pay no mind. Too many holes, they say, and there's bullets in them. Well, says No-bark, we got a chupacabra with an automatic weapon. And that's when they get real quiet, 'cause now they see the predicament we're in.
K: What else do you know about the deaths at the corral?
N: I come face to face with the chupacabra himself one night whilst I was investigating whether this gecko was hiding his treasure from me. He was the meanest, ugliest chupacabra you could imagine. Had two heads, and fangs down to the ground. Best I could tell, anyways, since when he come up to me he was invisible. Had himself a blunderbuss what would rotate and shoot bullets real fast out of a backpack. Never seen nothing like it. Walked right past me having an argument with somebody. But I only saw the one chupacabra, so I guess the other fella had to be invisible too. Only more invisible than the other one.
K: Is anything interesting happening in the area?
N: Folks'll tell you that they seen ghouls up near the rocket factory. Sensationalist hooey, cooked up by superstitious yokels seeing phantoms of their own imagining.
K: Who do you think is actually at the factory?
N: Ghosts. Commie ghosts what don't know they're dead. Hoping to steal our rockets so they can fly up and paint the moon pink and draw a Lenin face on it. I seen one of them disappear and reappear before my very eyes. Although being a scientist, I have to admit I might've just blinked for longer than usual, what with the shock of seeing a commie ghost and so forth.
K: What do you know about the abduction of Boone's wife?
N: Seen it all. Seen shadowy folk come to his room and leave again in the middle of the night. Thought one might've gone in the lobby, too, for a spell. Could be that person went in to get something. Or use the john maybe. Mighty interesting either way, you ask me. I thought it was cannibals, come to eat us all for sure, so I kept out of sight. But now I know better.
K: Who was it?
N: Molerat men, come up from the Underneath to steal young women with promises of riches and fancy mud mansions with all the latest designer appliances. They covet our ladyfolk's long hair for wigs, it's said, being either bald or balding themselves.
K: I have to go now.
N: Let me know if you meet anyone suspicious.

Recording end.

Reading between the lines of this man's insanity, Kelsey gleaned some useful information. The cattle were being killed by an invisible assailant, or possibly two. Having already found a few stealth-boys herself, she was sure this would be something similar. It also looked like the REPCONN issue might involve similar technology. Thankfully, ED-E's sensors were really useful in spotting even invisible foes. Also, the Legionnaires who had kidnapped Carla had briefly gone inside the motel lobby. That was a small room and at that time, Jeanie May would still have been there, so she would definitely had seen them. Since her only comment about Carla was that she was snobby towards Novac, Kelsey decided that some judicious use of stealth might be warranted here. It would have to wait, though, as it was close to midnight, and she had a slaughter to prevent.

Kelsey went around to the northwest side of Novac and started carefully moving southwards, keeping an eye out for the telltale shimmer of stealth boy use. She was not disappointed. A large humanoid talking to itself was skulking behind a rock near the McBride farm. Since it would be difficult to properly aim for its head, she decided to exchange accuracy for firepower. She took out the incinerator she had got at the Bison Steve in Primm, and started lobbing fireballs at the shimmering form. It reacted immediately, but by backing up and continuing to fire towards it, Kelsey kept out of harms way. ED-E also started shooting the enemy with its zapper, and in seconds, it was reduced to a burning corpse. It turned out to be a nightkin. An enhanced supermutant, an elite of the supermutant army from decades ago, the rumour being that they were all insane. This one certainly was. He was carrying a holotape on which he was complaining about the brahmin screaming in his head whenever he closed his eyes. This explained the slaughters, and Kelsey was confident they would end now. She would notify the McBrides in the morning.

Kelsey then snuck into the motel lobby. As she had hoped, Jeanie May had already left for her house. Kelsey found a safe behind Jeanie May's desk and picked its lock. Inside, she found all the proof she needed. A bill of sale, confirming that the Legion had purchased Carla Boone and her unborn child as slaves from Jeanie May Crawford. They paid her one thousand caps for Carla with the document guaranteeing the additional payment of 500 caps on successful delivery of the child. Kelsey was livid beyond belief. She made her way to Jeanie May's house and let herself in. Suppressing, with significant difficulty, the urge to kill her right there, she woke the woman up and asked her to follow her to the area in front of the dinosaur structure. She agreed and they made their way there, Jeanie May asking what this was about and Kelsey walking in silence, a grim look on her face. They arrived at the spot, and Jeanie May once again asked what Kelsey wanted. Kelsey said "I like to show slaving scum how pretty I look in this", and wore Boone's beret. Before Jeanie May could finish uttering a surprised "What?", a single bullet had gone through her head, ripping the whole thing off her neck. Kelsey kicked it as hard as she could, muttering "bitch", and made her way to the sniper nest. Boone thanked her for investigating for him and bringing the culprit for him to take his revenge. He gave her a spare beret from his old regiment and said he would probably move on from Novac, but had no concrete plans. Kelsey convinced him to travel with her, pointing out that she was likely to meet a lot of Legion scum, and snipers work better in teams. In the morning, Kelsey told the very grateful McBrides what had happened with their farm, and was given the key to her own motel room to use as she pleased, from Cliff Briscoe. All this taken care of, she and Boone took off along the 95 going north, with ED-E beeping happily along.

In New Vegas, you are allowed a team of two followers at a time, one humanoid and one non-humanoid. We currently have the best team mechanically. Much, much later we're going to take them to this one place and it's going to be glorious. Boone is a great sniper, and he makes enemies glow with a faint red outline when you are aiming. With ED-E already making enemies more visible and three powerful ranged attackers, we can now eliminate most threats before they are anywhere near us. I actually won't be keeping him long, for now, because this is, in fact, more overkill than I actually need for a complete cakewalk, but for a first-time player or higher difficulties, your first two followers are extremely effective in ranged combat. Note that Boone will shoot Legion and some Great Khans on sight, so you can't exactly have him with you if you want to go near Legion territories and not slaughter everyone, which we will do at some point. Also, Boone's beret is great. It gives the usual +1 to perception that most headwear does, but also increases critical chance for our attacks by 5%. Due to a bug, it can be worn with riot gear helmets, but I don't really like how that looks, so we won't be doing that. Also we've got Four-Eyes, so we'll be avoiding helmets anyway. We'll be wearing the beret and glasses for pretty much the rest of the game, save for when they are taken from us.

Also, Jeanie May is utter and complete scum, as is all of the Legion. Seriously, anyone who actually likes the Legion as anything other than the bad guys, should have a good long think about their moral compass and how it fucking broke.

[Mitillos]

Fun fact: The voice actor for Noonan has voiced... well, hundreds of characters from all sorts of things, including almost a dozen or so in New Vegas (not counting random NPC barks). Basically, if you see an old man in New Vegas, chances are Peter Renaday voices him. He voices half of the [redacted for spoilers] group.

Honestly, the text just can't do him justice, so I found a video. It's almost identical to the conversation I transcribed. Enjoy.

[Mitillos]

Kelsey, ED-E, and Boone walked north a short distance, before spotting a scrapyard next to a house. A woman was sitting outside with her six pet dogs, every single one of them a really good dog. The woman introduced herself as Old Lady Gibson, and her dogs were Rey, Reina, Basura (which was an unfortunate name, in Kelsey's opinion, for such a really good dog), Colmillo, Fiel, and Audaz, all of whom were really good dogs. Rey, who was a really good dog, seemed old and had a bit of trouble moving around but, being a really good dog, he still showed his affection both to Old Lady Gibson and her visitors. ED-E really enjoyed playing around with the dogs, who were all really good dogs. Gibson explained that she and her now dead husband had been prospectors and had gone through the REPCONN facility several times, salvaging everything they found of value and bringing it to their scrapyard, where their really good dogs could help guard it from thieves and raiders.

Kelsey was chatting with Gibson and petting her really good dogs, when the subject turned to the nearby solar power plant Kelsey had spotted on top of the hill just to the north. It was called HELIOS One and, before the war, belonged to the Poseidon Energy conglomerate. After the war, the insular technohoarder group known as the Brotherhood of Steel managed to take control of it, before losing it to the NCR in a very bloody battle, their superior technology having not helped them against the NCR's superior numbers, tactics, and combat experience. When the fighting was over, the Mojave chapter of the Brotherhood, previously operating unrestricted in the area, had diminshed in numbers, status, and power, and the NCR had a damaged solar power plant, which they used to supply additional power to camp McCarran (their Vegas-adjacent headquarters), as well as the New Vegas Strip (so that they could get benefits from Mr. House who was in charge of Vegas). Upon hearing all this, ED-E started playing a message recorded by a researcher named Wheatley, who was in charge of the eyebot development project. He had sent ED-E to the Enclave base in Navarro via its Chicago outpost, but clearly ED-E had been attacked before getting to his destination, eventually ending up in Primm.

After trading a few goods with Gibson and playing a bit more with her really good dogs, Kelsey was about to leave due north again. She stopped when Mr. New Vegas mentioned the Legion taking over the nearby town of Nelson, on his radio broadcast. Figuring she was as close to Nelson as she was likely to ever be in this journey, she decided to make her way there, if only to give Boone the opportunity to keep his skills sharp by practicing on some Legion scum. She went back to Novac and took the road east, past a toxic waste dump, and towards Nelson. On the way there, she found an NCR checkpoint, with a few soldiers milling about. A ranger named Milo was in charge and stopped Kelsey to inform her that the NCR had locked the area down, because of a hostage situation. Kelsey offered to help and, with a little convincing, Milo agreed. The hostages were three NCR soldiers who had been captured by legion and crucified in Nelson, believing that the NCR military would avoid attacking if it meant potentially causing the soldiers harm. Milo agreed with this view, so he wanted Kelsey to kill the hostages, and free the way for the military to charge in. Kelsey was horrified at the idea and said she'd rather free them, but Milo said that she'd only get herself killed that way. Boone agreed with Kelsey, but Kelsey saw she couldn't change Milo's mind, so pretended to agree with the mercy killing plan, so Milo led her to a ridge overlooking the small town. He said he would offer her cover, so she started sneaking towards the three crucified men. Whenever she saw a Legionnaire, she would hide, lob a fireball with her incinerator in their direction, then let Milo, ED-E, and Boone fill them with lead and electricity as they tried to run away from the flame. With this strategy, she managed to stay completely incognito in Nelson, until every Legionnaire milling about had been pacified.

Kelsey then simply walked up to the soldiers, untied them, and led them back to Milo, who was shocked but pleased. Boone thanked Kelsey for recognising other options were available and that mercy killing was a last resort only. Kelsey was curious about his sudden candour, so she questioned him on the subject. He told her that the reason he knew his wife was already dead was that he had killed her. She was surrounded by hundreds of Legionnaires when he finally tracked her down after they kidnapped her. He knew that he wouldn't be able to kill all of them, but he needed to spare her and their unborn child the fate of living as slaves for the Legion. He took the shot and ended her life, carrying the weight of this act with him ever since. He seemed to believe that this was part of some kind of cosmic punishment that he had somehow earned, but refused to continue the conversation at this time, so Kelsey dropped it. She disagreed with this idea of some kind of balancing karma, because she knew that no convenient circumstance was going to visit punishment on Benny for putting her in a grave. She had to do that herself. She just hoped she could help Boone see this too, so he could change his outlook. At this point, an NCR soldier came over and gave Kelsey a radio she could use to call in support from the NCR. This was their way of thanking her for her services so far. Knowing how stretched the NCR was, she recognised the importance this little piece of equipment held, both as a symbol and as a lifeline to the NCR. She said her goodbyes to Milo and went back on her northward walk along the 95, stopping only by the Gibson scrapyard to spend a few minutes playing with Gibson's really good dogs.

Firstly, Gibson has six really good dogs. Secondly, and for full disclosure, I actually skipped a bit of story, here. Just south of Nelson is the Techatticup mine, which is also controlled by the Legion. On your way there, an NCR soldier asks you to save his friends who are imprisoned inside. There's not much to say about this, really. I went in, kept myself hidden and let ED-E and Boone massacre the Legionnaires. The reason I keep hiding from them is that I want to see how long I can maintain a perfectly neutral reputation (i.e. gaining no fame and very little infamy) with them, just by not making the killing blow and by being hidden when my companions finish them off. I actually manage to remain neutral with them until the bit where [redacted] shows up in [redacted] after you [redacted] and [long redacted] on his behalf. Anyway, Legionnaires dead, NCR soldiers saved, quest-giver thankful, NCR gives me emergency radio at this point, if I'm not mistaken. I don't actually ever use it, because unlike my companions, the NCR troops can die and I really don't need the help.

Gibson and her really good dogs live very close to a solar plant, which is placed pretty much where a real-world one actually exists, but is modeled after a different one. In fact, a huge number of locations in the west coast Fallout games are at least close to real-world counterparts that they are either referencing or modeled after. Obsidian (and previously Black Isle and Interplay - same people to a large extent) really did their research and thought very carefully about how society might pick up and continue after a nuclear war. This attention to detail and reasoning is very obvious in a lot of their games. Also, they gave Gibson six really good dogs.

The Brotherhood of Steel have been around since the original Fallout. They are exactly as I described above. They hoard advanced technology (laser weapons, power armour, and anything of comparable technological sophistication) and try to keep it out of the hands of everyone else, even if it means forcibly taking it. Their reasoning is that humanity isn't ready for such technology and only they can be its responsible guardians, or some such nonsense.

The Enclave were the antagonists of the second game. They are what remained of the US government and its military, after the war. They are also going around and killing people for being genetically impure due to exposure to radiation and other factors. This, of course, makes them enormous hypocrites, given that they are just as "infected" as their victims, with their most powerful soldier being one of the probably three most mutated people in all of Fallout canon. He really is an interesting case study, showing the folly of militarism, but that's not really important for our game. Suffice to say that the Enclave were a bunch of quasi-fascist elitists decked out in the most powerful military toys, with everything that this entails. I'm glad I destroyed them in Navarro.

Finally, Gibson's dogs are all really good.

[Mitillos]

Dear old friend, remember when we did a whole lot of evil shit, and that one tribal came along with his two pet dogs and one pet robot and supermutant Worf and albino deathclaw and they destroyed our entire operation and it made us realise that actually our views were kinda completely stupid.
I may be paraphrasing slightly.

[Mitillos]

Plasma is cooler than lasers there I said it.

I will agree that the green bolts are a lot more satisfying to see flying towards enemies than the piddly lights most laser weapons have. The melting effect is also rather more visceral than when lasers turn enemies to dust, although both are a bit annoying when it comes to looting. Still, not as bad as in the first two games, where certain death animations meant that the inventory would just drop to the ground and you had to pick each item up individually, which was difficult even at the highest brightness levels and meant that some useful item might be hiding behind an utterly useless one that was too heavy and made you unable to pick other items, so you had to move a bit, drop it, and go back to sifting through the loot. Actually, one time, I somehow managed to pick up an entire library shelf in Fallout 1. No idea how it happened, but then I just went to a bedroom and set it down right on the bed. It was weird, especially in isometric.

Mechanically, most plasma weapons in New Vegas shoot very slow projectiles and that can be annoying, but there is one rifle we will get to that shoots plasma shots twice as fast as regular plasma rifles, all but eliminating this problem. Unfortunately for plasma fans, there is an even better rifle that is technically laser, which I will end up using more, because it's just so much better (with only three areas in which it's worse than said plasma rifle, but none of them will matter by then).

At this point in the story, Kelsey is using a silenced pistol (10mm or .22) for stealth kills, the silenced and scoped varmint rifle for stealth kills at a great distance, the incinerator for large groups, or enemies that are hard to properly aim at, so explosive fireballs will have to do, the broad machete for melee stuff (rarely needed, but sometimes a scorpion glitches into the ground and can't be shot), and the service rifle or hyperbreeder pistol for other situations. The only ones of these we will keep using until the end are the silenced pistols. The rest will get replaced by more powerful stuff.

[Mitillos]

Oh, god. That's hard to answer. They're both so great to listen to and they both play Big Iron, which is basically about 75% of what determines if a station is good. I guess Mr. New Vegas has the edge because 1) he's available throughout the wasteland, 2) he has a lot more fun stuff to say, and 3) he doesn't stop halfway through the game. :þ

[Mitillos]

The trek along the 95 was mostly uneventful, with only a small band of raiders, a few giant ants, and an itinerant man with a guitar making camp by a billboard. He explained that he was looking for his father who had abandoned their family, to either talk to him or punch him (he seemed uncertain on which he would prefer). Eventually, Kelsey made it to the intersection with the 93, where about half a dozen people seemed to have settled at least semi-permanently. A father and daughter had determined that, with the I-15 being closed, there would be a lot more people coming from and going to the NCR along the 95. With the 93 going east to Hoover dam, this area was ideally situated for getting all the significant traffic of New Vegas, so they set up a kitchen, bar, and shop, calling this the 188 Trading Post, indicating that at least addition was not lost when the nukes fell. An NCR arms merchant and a trader for the Gun Runners company also saw the opportunities in this area and came along as well. A child with a strange metal and leather head ornament was sitting near a strange collection of junk, and a young pretty woman in a brown robe was having a meal near the bar. After trading more junk for useful stuff, Kelsey had a quick chat with the child, who seemed to believe he could hear other peoples' thoughts when he took off his headgear. He said that his junk collection contained the thoughts of people who made the items, so he collected them to hear the thoughts they had when creating the items. This didn't make sense to Kelsey, since some of the items were clearly of pre-war construction and made in automated factories, without a single human even touching them (let alone making them) before they were brought to a store to sell. This notion of "thought" going into the creation of goods was in contrast to the realities of capitalism and automation. The child offered to sell Kelsey some thoughts about her, or the surrounding area, or "everywhere", by taking off his headgear (or "medicine" as he called it), but it sounded too much like fortune telling, so she politely declined and went back to the bar area.

She thought that some privacy might be called for, so she told Boone they would part ways. He said he would be in Novac and left, and Kelsey turned her attention to the pretty lady in the robe. She had a great sense of humour and greeted Kelsey with "No offense, but you look like you've traveled a long way down some bad roads. Where'd you come from?". Hearing the reply "The grave", she managed to suppress her shock and continued with "Huh. Well, in that case I take it back. You look pretty good, given the circumstances. Well, welcome, then. I'm Veronica. I live in a hole in the ground". The hole turned out to be a bunker, which she said she left to buy some supplies for her family. She told Kelsey that she had a run-in with the Brotherhood of Steel and asked her if she knew anything about them. Kelsey mentioned their obsession with advanced technology, given that this was really their defining flaw, to which Veronica said she couldn't afford anything like that. They had a pleasant chat and then Veronica asked where Kelsey was headed. "Going to see an old friend" she responded darkly, to which Veronica said "This is quite a journey you're going on, then. Must be an interesting relationship to have brought you all this way." and asked to come along. When Kelsey questioned her about her reasons, Veronica said she wanted to see more of the wasteland and if she could learn more about how the different groups survive in it. Kelsey, delighted to have a pretty face and a sharp wit along, immediately agreed, to Veronica's delight. Veronica then revealed that she had been a little dishonest earlier and that she was, in fact, a member of the Brotherhood of Steel. Kelsey was slightly annoyed at the lack of forthrightness but knew that the Brotherhood didn't have many friends in the wasteland, so she could understand why Veronica might not want to advertise her allegiances. They spent some more time talking about Veronica, her old mentor and previous Elder of the local Brotherhood chapter (a man named Father Elijah), her ex-girlfriend who had left the Brotherhood (a woman named Christine Royce), her hopes and aspirations (to wear a pretty dress), and her immediate goals in the wasteland (to explore it and learn more). She said she was good at punching and could help take devices apart and put them together.

With the meal and chat completed, Kelsey and Veronica collected their stuff and started walking along the 95 due east to Boulder City, following Benny's tracks, with ED-E beeping happily along. The walk was uneventful until they got to the ruins of Boulder City, marked with a memorial stone. It listed over a hundred names of NCR troopers who had died in the first battle with the Legion at Hoover Dam. Kelsey spotted an NCR officer nearby and approached him, but he informed her that they had an active stand-off with some Great Khans who had taken two NCR soldiers hostage and were holding them in a couple of buildings in the south part of the town. Kelsey knew she had caught up with her attackers and offered to help negotiate the release in return for letting the Khans leave. The lieutenant in charge had heard of Kelsey and decided to trust her, so she was allowed in. She made her way to the Khan hideout and went in. Thankfully, the Khans had enough presence of mind to realise she wasn't acting hostile, so they let her through without trouble. Their leader, Jessup, was flabbergasted that someone could survive getting shot through the head twice. Given the Khans' respect for strength and toughness, perhaps this helped calm him down enough to ask Kelsey what her intentions and those of the NCR were. Kelsey said that if he released the hostages, she would smooth things over with the NCR and the Khans could walk out in peace. The alternative was dying either to NCR bullets or starvation, so he agreed. Unfortunately, the NCR officer in charge had received orders to go in, guns blazing and hope that the hostages would survive. Given the stupidity of this plan, and the fact that she had already secured an agreement that included the release of the hostages, she berated him for even considering following this order. The officer saw that Kelsey was right and said he'd let the Khans go. With the stand-off ended, Kelsey went back to Jessup, to tell him the good news. He thanked her and also gave some more information on Benny. He had betrayed the Khans, refusing to pay what he promised them, and abandoned them to return to New Vegas. Apparently, he was the manager of one of the casinos, called The Tops. He also gave her Benny's cigarette lighter, and asked her to shove it up his ass when she found him, before leading the Khans on their long walk back to the rest of their tribe.

The kid with the headgear is called the Forecaster and his headgear is a psychic nullifier (a useful item in the last part of the first Fallout game). The thoughts he sells are basically subtly hinting at the plot. While I decided not to include them above, I will mention one part. If you ask him to think about "Here", he says some cryptic nonsense about the trading post and then "With regret comes a girl... smiling sad, brown robe, name Veronica, half here. Wraps her and her heart up like a pack, in the pack, a key, some say. Forecast: Cloudy, with a chance of friendship".

The NCR-Khan stand-off at Boulder City can be completed in a few different ways. You can go in guns blazing and killing all the Khans, you can sneak in and free the hostages, so the NCR troops start killing the Khans, you can bribe the NCR to let the Khans go, you can go in and kill the NCR troops instead so the Khans can go, or you can do as Kelsey did, and use speech to get everyone to collectively calm themselves and leave. This last option gives a large reputation boost with both the NCR and the Khans. Obsidian's philosophy on roleplaying is that there should be as many different solutions to problems that one would reasonably consider as possible, and this mentality shows up in a lot of New Vegas quests. Rather than the usual choices of "be the good guy" and "be the bad guy", you are instead asked to decide what course of action makes sense to you and what your character can actually pull off, given the development of their skills. Sure, there's a karma mechanic, but it's almost an afterthought, or if you prefer a holdover from the previous games.

And now let's talk about Veronica Santangelo, the naive young girl from California with stars in her eyes and a pneumatic gauntlet on her hand, as she describes herself. She's great. She's great at punching, she has a great sense of humour, she punches things dead, she wants a dress, she gleefully punches every enemy in sight, she pines for her lost love, she enjoys punching things, she misses her mentor and how he taught her things other than punching, she questions authority and wants to change the Brotherhood, she punches anything that would cause you harm, she wants the Brotherhood to have more compassion for the rest of humanity, she's almost always upbeat (particularly when punching things), and she loves running up to enemies and punching them really hard. Usually they die in one punch, especially once you get her a better gauntlet to punch with. Also, she's one of only two companions who understands sneaking and keeps quiet when you crouch, the other one being Boone. Even ED-E beeps when you crouch and all the other humanoid companions have quips for when you sneak. One would expect at least [redacted] to keep quiet when sneaking, but nope. Although that's more understandable what with the [redacted] and [redacted]. Anyway, back to Veronica, the companion perk she gives us is probably the most useless one in the base game. Basically, she can act as a workbench, allowing you to craft items as you would at one of those. This is doubly unnecessary because if you have the Lonesome Road DLC, ED-E can act as both a workbench and a reloading bench (allowing you to break down and craft ammunition, as well). This itself is unnecessary (as is Veronica's perk), because the wasteland is full of workbenches and reloading benches that are very easily usable and don't require you to go through a radial menu to click for dialogue, then pick the dialogue option to get to the workbench menu every time. And since you exit the workbench menu whenever you craft an item, if you want to do more than one thing at a bench, you might as well just find a physical bench which, again, are everywhere. Honestly, it was an interesting notion, but it didn't really help in KotOR II, and it doesn't really help here. But that's OK, because we're taking Veronica along, not for her item crafting, but for her funny comments and her punching. As I mentioned, you can only have one humanoid companion with you at a time (excluding glitches), which is why I sent Boone back to Novac. We'll pick him up again, when we're about to do some stuff that I want him along for. In general, I'll be using other companions only when doing their own sidequests. For the endgame, I'll be taking Boone along, but for the majority of the game, we'll be sticking with ED-E and Veronica. Note that in higher difficulties, you might want to give her an energy weapon and tell her to go ranged (which makes her sad, you punch-hating monster), at least when going up against really strong enemies, like deathclaws. Also, I barely scratched the surface with her dialogue here. It really is a delight and I advise you to find more of it, because she's pretty great. If someone intends to play the game and stream it to the discord, that'd be cool and they could mention it here and also take the time to showcase a bunch of stuff I'm skipping (hint, hint).

Anyway, now we found the Khans, and we know that Benny is in charge of a casino so he's definitely in the Strip. Time to basically ignore him for tens of hours and go sidequesting like crazy (to the immense aggravation of a good friend of mine), because that's just how I enjoy playing this game.

[Mitillos]

Let's see some examples of how the various Fallout games deal with the concept of deciding the fate of a town:

Fallout: Junktown. Killian, the mayor who also has a general store is a bit authoritarian when it comes to justice. Nevertheless, the townsfolk generally approve of him and his stance on crime. One person who doesn't like it is Gizmo, who owns the local casino and does some illegal deals with the Hub. He wants Killian dead and has sent several assassins over the years, with the most recent one making the attempt in the player character's presence. Killian knows Gizmo sent the killer, but has no evidence of this (Gizmo has been careful to keep his hands clean every time), so he asks you to get the evidence. When you go to Gizmo, you can get him to hire you to try killing Killian. You either get the evidence and kill Gizmo when he resists arrest, or kill Killian (and possibly the Junktown law enforcement officers). Accordingly, Junktown either ends up having no crime so it becomes a safe and fair place, or it becomes more prosperous, with Gizmo making even more money than before.

Things you have to do: Talk with people, selecting appropriate dialog based on how well you yourself understand human interaction. Combat with either Gizmo or Killian.

Fallout 2: This game is all about you deciding the fate of the various towns you visit. Fallout 1 was this too, but to a lesser degree. But to take just one example: Gecko. It's a ghoul town near Vault City, and it has a semi-functional nuclear plant. The plant is spilling radioactive coolant in the water, which, while not a problem for ghouls, is causing illness in Vault City (a place full of elitist shitheads), so the leader of Vault City asks you to deal with the radiation. Alternatively, the leader of the ghouls believes this will cause Vault City to attack them, so he also asks you to deal with the problem. Just to punctuate that the ghoul leader is right, the head of the Vault City guard asks you to scout the area surrounding Gecko, but doesn't tell you why. Here's what you can do:
0) Ignore the quest entirely. Vault City attacks and destroys Gecko, believing that the ghouls are the reason for the radiation.
1) Destroy the plant (or con a technician into doing it for you). The reactor has a meltdown, Gecko is destroyed.
2) Fix the plant. This will require obtaining a missing part, then either programming a robot to install it, or convincing a technician to do it, instead. Vault City and Gecko form an uneasy truce.
3) Fix the plant and then optimise it to produce more power by using Vault City technology and data to improve its production. Vault City attacks and enslaves Gecko, to take control of the power plant. (I told you they were shitheads.)
4) Fix the plant, optimise it, and then get a holodisk with economic data showing how an alliance would benefit Vault City more, and deliver it to Vault City. Vault City and Gecko form an alliance.

Things you have to do: Talk to a bunch of people (I think half a dozen), get them to give you items that will solve the issue, use your character's skills to fix and optimise the plant, and, importantly, pay attention to people and their behaviour and outlook, so you can tell who is or isn't a shithead.

Fallout 3: Megaton. An asshole on a tower considers the town an eyesore in the horizon, so he wants you to blow up the nuke it's built around. A guy in the town wants you to disarm the bomb, instead. You either disarm the bomb with an easy explosives check and tell the guy you did, or you rig it with a fusion charge and go to the tower and blow it up. Megaton ends up either destroyed or not.

Things you have to do: Pretty much exactly what I listed above.

Fallout New Vegas: Goodsprings. You can either help the townsfolk defend themselves from the powder ganger attack, or help the powder gangers attack the town. The fate of the town will also depend on whom you side with overall, in the game.

Things you have to do: Talk to people and convince them to help one side or the other. Specifically, if you side with Goodsprings, you can use your skills to convince Trudy, Chet, Easy Pete, and Doc Mitchell to help out. If you side with the powder gangers, you can convince Chet and Doc Mitchell (by lying to him) to help out. In both cases, you can also kill key people in advance, to make the fight easier. Kelsey killed Cobb in advance, as I mentioned earlier. In my evil playthrough, I actually killed every single human in Goodsprings before the attack. The only ones left were Victor and the bighorners.

Also note that I'm only giving overviews here, except in the case of Fallout 3. There, I described the quest pretty much in its entirety. This is a nonsense moral choice. In Fallout 1, maybe you believe that a mafia-type boss is better than an authoritarian who is tough on all crime. In Fallout 2, maybe you don't care about the ghouls, or maybe you think Vault City is shit, or maybe you just form some opinion about each group, and you can decide what you think is the right thing for you to do. In New Vegas, you might believe that the powder gangers are stronger and fighting them is not a great idea, or maybe you want to get their help later, or you think that the people of Goodsprings should be protected from this attack, or whatever. In Fallout 3, you can either blow up a town, or not. There's no real thought behind it, it's just "do you want maximum negative karma so you can have that from the start for your evil playthrough, or are you roleplaying as someone who isn't completely insane?"

[Mitillos]

You heard correctly about Junktown. Originally, Junktown would remain small under Killian, because people would steer clear of the guy who sent people to the gallows too easily, while Gizmo would make the town prosperous and safe, if only to protect his own wealth and comfort. And there's a deep question of morality, there: can future prosperity justify a murder and a whole lot of other crime, in the here and now? My answer is "no", because ultimately, the potential for prosperity was always with the city. If the townsfolk aren't willing to oust an authoritarian and work on improving their community, why should they be given the improvements through the immoral acts of others? Not to soapbox too much, but one can also expand this to questioning the prosperity of the western world, which prospers from the past and present exploitation of the global south.

Ghouls are great, but also fairly ugly, partly due to facial asymmetry. This is one of the many reasons there's in-game bigotry. As to why a player might dislike them, sure that's more iffy, but here's one way it can happen: You play Fallout 1, go to Necropolis, find Seth, he's an unbelievable dick to you, so you start shooting ghouls on sight. Then you go to Fallout 2, find Vault City, and maybe you're a bit of an entitled shithead like they are, and you like the idea of a gated community with special privileges, surrounded by a bunch of second-class non-citizens, or, let's face it, slaves, so you take a liking to Vault City. Then the leader of Vault City tells you the ghouls are responsible for the radiation, so you go and kill them. Looking at real life, it's not that far-fetched.

As for the factions, that's exactly it. You do your thing, and the various major and minor factions make up their mind about you based on your actions. And if you do too much stuff the major factions dislike, they might even attack you on sight, making it impossible to side with them, because you pissed them off too much. You are not just a passive observer of a fight that basically is being acted out for your viewing benefit.

Spoiler: (Massive Spoiler)

The fight for the Hoover dam is coming and you are in part responsible both for seeing it through and deciding the outcome.

Also, New Vegas understands that not every game has to be about the brotherhood being the good guys, the enclave being the bad guys, and the supermutants being angry orcs with more battlelust than brains. The brotherhood were never really the good guys. The enclave is destroyed. The supermutants always had nuance. Bethesda sucks at understanding the world of Fallout and sucks extra hard at complex storytelling. These are the truths of Fallout New Vegas.

[Mitillos]

Ah, an interesting one. Here's my take:

Mutant ending means that the Master basically takes over all of the west coast. We know that by the end of Fallout 1, he takes control of everything in southern California, expanding out from LA and eliminating the Followers of the Apocalypse. The NCR is never formed and its entirety will eventually become part of the Unity. The Hub and Necropolis are also overrun with supermutants. The BoS attempts to hold out, but it is eventually destroyed too. The Mariposa military base remains under the control of the supermutants, and is used to make more and more of them, getting fresh people with every vault opened and with every new community subjugated by the Master's army. This is at 2161.

Using the same resources as the NCR did, but in a more efficient and single-minded way, he expands north and east. In the east, he overruns Arizona. The tribes there are taken easily, having little in the way of defenses against the onslaught. To the north, the Master finds the Shi in San Francisco. They have a fairly small fighting force, that cannot withstand the supermutant assault, despite their advanced weaponry (after all, the supermutants have gatling lasers and plasma rifles too). The Master gains substantial technological advancements from the Shi and continues expanding north. New Reno is easy pickings due to superior firepower, and provides a substantial boost to supermutant numbers. Redding, Vault City, the Den, Klamath, all fall almost casually to the Master. Considering the rate of expansion the Master showed once he had his initial foothold, this takes a couple of decades, at most.

At this point, the Master controls the Mariposa facility, San Francisco, and Navarro. Camp Navarro is not established by the Enclave. The PMV Valdez is never disabled by the Enclave in San Francisco. The Enclave never finds the FEV materials and research in Mariposa. Even if they try to do these things, the supermutants are there, and the Enclave has lost its technological advantage. They lose to superior numbers. The master takes the fight to the oil rig and eliminates, absorbs, or mutates every member of the Enclave.

The Master spreads his Unity outwards. Nevada falls, but I won't elaborate due to spoilers. Utah falls, similar to Arizona. The Master prevents the events of Fallout 2 and New Vegas from taking place and possibly Fallout 3 and 4 as well. His army is long-lived, so their sterility is irrelevant to the question of success.

Basically, the Master has an almost 80 year head start on the Enclave and only one goal: assimilation. Defeating him in Fallout 1, either by convincing him his plan won't work the way he thinks it will, or by blowing him up with a nuke, or by killing him in direct combat, is the only way to save what remains of the world. He intends to take over and, once he has reached a certain threshold of power, resources, and area under his control, he will be unstoppable in the post-nuclear world, where most people are in tribes, too far away and mistrustful of each other.

In short: Muties curbstomp Enclave.

[Mitillos]

As Kelsey was about to leave Boulder City, a familiar monitor showed up, wheeling along towards her. Victor had once again managed to somehow be on the same route as Kelsey, despite the fact she had deviated quite a bit from the route to New Vegas. Seemingly oblivious to this, Victor once again tried to direct Kelsey towards New Vegas, by suggesting that this was probably where Benny had gone to. Kelsey decided to wait and see what would happen if she let Victor wait for her in Vegas for a while, so, once he started towards the tall tower to the west, instead of following him, Kelsey went east, towards the dam. She wasn't particularly interested in it, but she figured ED-E would enjoy the sights. Also, when she got to the visitor centre, she saw another snowglobe, like the one she had found at the cemetery. When nobody was looking, she swiped it from the receptionist's desk and left, making her way west, in a more or less rambling pattern, to see more of the Mojave.

Alas, the wasteland did not hold any significant points of interest, and she inexorably made her way towards the tower jutting out from the Strip. Northwest of the 188, she found the Grub n' Gulp rest stop, another attempt to capitalise on the inaccessibility of the I-15. It didn't seem to be doing quite as well as the 188, so Kelsey moved on due north. Soon, she found herself at the Aerotech Office Park. Pre-war corporate offices were mostly in ruins, but the NCR had fortified them and made a refugee camp out of what remained more or less intact. Kelsey decided to make a short stop. Here she met Bert Gunnarsson (a ghoul doctor, doing his best to help the refugees and destitute in the camp), Frank Weathers (a farmer from Junktown in the NCR), and Captain Parker (the NCR officer in charge of the camp). Both Frank and Parker had work for Kelsey. Parker mentioned some refugees going missing from the camp, without signs of struggle. He had heard a rumour that they were taken by some Westside scavengers and asked Kelsey to look into it discreetly. Frank had brought his family to Vegas, hoping to make his fortune gambling. Predictably, this did not work out, so they were forced to return to the NCR. Unfortunately for them, a Legion patrol attacked them near Searchlight to the south, and took Frank's wife and children while he hid from them. He begged Kelsey to save them from a life of slavery. She agreed to take on both tasks and left due north, once more.

Eventually, Kelsey arrived at the New Vegas medical clinic. Doctor Usanagi of the Followers of the Apocalypse was in charge and she offered medical services for a reasonable fee. She explained that the Followers believed that the technology for basic necessities (like food, water, and medicine) should be shared, not hoarded. When hearing this, Veronica twitched slightly. It was unclear if she was upset at the implication against the Brotherhood or if her reaction was due to her agreement with Follower philosophy. Of more interest to Kelsey was the fact that Dr. Usanagi offered to install various implants which could augment Kelsey's abilities. After giving almost all her money and being under the knife for a total of 27 hours, Kelsey had every single implant the doctor could offer. She felt stronger, tougher, smarter, healthier, and even luckier than before. Unfortunately, she also felt a lot poorer than she'd been since she left Goodsprings, so she needed more immediate work. Luckily, next to the clinic were the headquarters of the New Vegas branch of the Crimson Caravan company, that Cassidy had suggested might have some work for Kelsey. Alice McLafferty, the manager, said she needed someone to deliver an invoice to Camp McCarran for her. This was on the other side of Vegas, so not exactly helpful to Kelsey in terms of her current money woes, but she took the job anyway. She also bought two books from a trader named Blake: "Tiny, Tiny Babies: All You Need to Know About Pediatric Medicine" and "Stress and the Modern Refugee: A Primer". She was hoping they might contain medical information she didn't already have, but unfortunately, they did not. She didn't mind, though. She'd find someone who needed these books, eventually. It was quite obvious that medical knowledge was one of the most important things in the wasteland and Kelsey also believed it should be shared with everyone. And with that, Kelsey, Veronica and ED-E entered Freeside, the poor shanty surrounding the gated community of New Vegas.

In terms of distance traveled, this was probably the longest update so far. There are a lot of locations on the way from the dam to New Vegas but I'm ignoring them, either because they have nothing of real interest, or because we'll be dealing with them later. We also picked up a quest that will take us all the way to the southeast corner of the map, far to the east of Nipton. We could have easily dealt with those quests then, but I wanted to talk to Frank, since it makes more sense to learn of his family and go looking, rather than just randomly go looking in Legion territory. As for the missing refugees and Westside, that's (obviously) on the west side of New Vegas, just like Freeside is on the north. Both of these areas are remarkably undeveloped and poor, because... well, we'll get to that when we meet a certain person.

The implants cost 48,000 caps. This is basically why I've only been buying the bare minimum. I wanted to have as much cash as possible for this. There are nine implants here, and you can get as many as you have points in endurance. One of the implants improves endurance (in fact, there is an implant for each of our seven primary stats), but that doesn't increase the number of implants you can take. This, incidentally, is why it might not be a great idea to start with any stat at 10. If you do, you can't get the corresponding implant, which only costs money and a bit of time (both of which are available in huge amounts), rather than stat points which are more limited. The remaining two implants increase damage threshold (damage blocked) and let you regenerate health over time, respectively.

As for the books, they are for a later quest. In fact, there are three ways to do it, so we don't need the books, but I like the idea of giving the books to a doctor who needs them, rather than just telling him stuff in a quick lesson. Realistically speaking, he might forget what we told them. The book will be there to read, at will.

At any rate, we are finally in New Vegas, though not the Strip. Soon, we shall meet the various colourful characters of the lovely area of Freeside. By the way, if anyone else is reading and has comments, feel free to post. Don't just force Ythan to be the only one making the effort!

[Mitillos]

A slum, right next to the immaculate Vegas Strip. A sight familiar to most pre-war urban areas; indeed any place with wealth disparity. Robert House, the enigmatic owner of the Strip made sure to keep his area clean and well-patrolled, but he had absolutely no interest in Freeside and Westside. He possibly even considered their existence a good thing, as it would allow the visitors to New Vegas to see how much better the Strip was in comparison to not only the rest of the Mojave, but the immediate areas that he was not managing as well. As for herself, Kelsey liked Freeside (and even Westside) more than the Strip. They lacked the wealth, but they also lacked the pretense, the scheming, and the snobbishness of the Strip. She knew that the Followers of the Apocalypse had been using the old mormon fort in Freeside as a camp for the destitute and those in need of medical help. Kelsey and Veronica liked this, so they decided to pay the fort a visit and see if they could help out in any way.

The administrator was a woman with the most solid-looking mohawk, who introduced herself as Julie Farkas. She could probably help a lot more people than she currently was, if she spent less on hair gel for keeping that thing so spiky. She had a work area and bedroom in the corner of the fort, where Kelsey found another snowglobe. Clearly Julie and the rest of the Followers were overworked, because when asked if she needed any help, she was overjoyed and said there was always something needing to be done. First, Julie asked Kelsey if she could spare any medication, as their stocks were low. They needed Med-X (a powerful morphine-like painkiller), Rad-Away (a chemical that removed radiation from the body), and Fixer (medication for curing addiction). Luckily, Kelsey could easily spare 10 of each, having hoarded them in her travels, for just such an eventuality. This was more than enough to help the Followers with their immediate stock issues. Kelsey pointed out that what the Followers needed was a steady supply. Julie said that unfortunately the Followers had had no luck in that regard with any of the merchants, so she asked Kelsey if she could try finding them a supplier. She also asked Kelsey to find and help cure two men, Bill Ronte and Jacob Hoff, of their addiction to chems. They had been working for the Followers as a machinist and a chemist respectively, when they got hooked on some street drugs. Kelsey agreed to help, seeing that the Followers were the best group to help, for the benefit of everyone in Vegas.

Next, Kelsey introduced herself to a glum-looking researcher who was keeping away from everyone else. He said his name was Arcade Gannon and he seemed to be very apprehensive of both ED-E and Veronica. It soon transpired that, while he shared the rest of the Followers' goals, he didn't have their optimism. He tried in vain to hide this behind a carefully constructed acerbic verbosity, but nobody was in any way fooled by it. When asked personal questions, he would joke about deflecting them to obfuscate his past association with a fascist paramilitary organisation. Rather sad, really. Kelsey decided that he'd feel better getting away from his fruitless research, and helping the people of the Mojave in a more direct manner, for a while. He took some convincing, but eventually he agreed, so Kelsey told Veronica they'd hook up again later at the 188 and had Arcade replace her.

With ED-E bobbing happily along and Arcade flinching every time the eyebot changed floating height, Kelsey moved further into Freeside. In the alleys, a very hungry-looking child was chasing a large rat. Kelsey took out her machete and deftly chopped the rat's head. The child, happy to finally get some meat, thanked her and carried the corpse off. Further ahead, a man waved Kelsey over to a dead-end. He showed her a corpse by some dumpsters and explained that he had died because he too had been gullible enough to fall for this trick. Sadly for him, Kelsey and ED-E had more than enough firepower to lazily destroy him and his two friends waiting to ambush anyone unfortunate enough to wander here. Finally, Kelsey found Jacob. He was sitting in a ruined building, looking at the pretty colours that his most recent hit. He said that he regularly bought drugs from a guy named Dixon. Luckily, Dixon was right across the street, so Kelsey decided to have a chat with him about his drug pushing. Seeing him, she could tell that he was a heavy user himself, but it was clear that the drugs he sold to others was of lesser quality. He admitted as much, saying that because Jacob and Bill were from the NCR, he didn't care what happened to them. Kelsey threatened to spread a rumour that the NCR was supplying Dixon with drugs to keep the people of Freeside docile. Knowing that the people of Freeside were very unhappy with the influx of people from the NCR, he was terrified at the prospect and agreed to stop selling to Jacob and Bill. Kelsey returned to Jacob, who was devastated to hear this. He asked Kelsey for enough doses of Fixer to get him through the week, but she suggested a mixture of Fixer, Psycho, and Buffout would help with his withdrawal long enough for the Followers to help him the rest of the way. He really was a brilliant chemist, and realised immediately that Kelsey's idea would work, so he agreed to go back to the fort. And with that, Kelsey moved on to the next part of Freeside, determined to do more good.

And we are now inside Vegas. Just not the Strip, yet. The Followers of the Apocalypse were introduced in the first Fallout game. They started as a tribe from Dayglow (formerly San Diego) that managed to spread to the Boneyard (formerly Los Angeles), where they decided that humanity needed to work together towards a better future. Despite their name and insignia (an encircled cross with fleur-de-lis endpoints) they are not religious or cultish. They are secular, they are pacifists (almost naively so), they believe in knowledge for its own sake, and they believe that the benefits of this knowledge should be shared with all of humanity. Basically, they are the most lefty and progressive faction in the Fallout world. They do not like the colonial imperialism of the NCR, and they dislike House's feudal imperialism and the Legion's fascist imperialism even more. From conversation with Arcade, we can even learn that Caesar was with the Followers in the NCR, before deciding that he had a better way to run things. Kelsey will be joining them as soon as she can. Because she also made a donation to their clinic, she will be able to join the Followers once Julie's quests are done. There are, in fact, a number of further opportunities to build reputation with them, and I will try to do all of them, because the Followers are the only good faction.

Arcade is our next follower. I want him around right now, because we're going to do a couple of things that will be relevant to him, but like with most followers, I will only keep him around for what is basically his own sidequest. No hate for the guy, he's great (especially if you give him a powerful energy weapon, which I will), but I like Veronica and Boone even more. Come to think of it, all the allies you get are great. Kinda makes me pine for the original games, where you could have a small army with you and the game engine didn't go out of whack from it. Anyway, Arcade. He can be persuaded to join through a speech check, or if you're already at the highest reputation with the Followers, or if your intelligence is very low (he feels sorry for you), or if you flirt with him (guys only, so Kelsey can't do that). Just like Boone, Arcade won't join you if you've got a good reputation with the Legion, because he isn't into fascism, slavery, and all the other disgusting stuff the Legion is known for.

Dixon is an asshole, but his sentiments are widespread in Vegas and the Mojave. People don't like the NCR for throwing its weight (both military and economic) around, they don't like the NCR people who have come over to Vegas (calling them squatters, at best), and they don't like the fact that the NCR has made deals with House and is getting preferential treatment over them. And while they will lash out at possibly the wrong targets, harming innocents like Bill and Jacob who were only trying to help (Dixon calls them eggheads, saying they make things more confusing), the people of Freeside and Westside have a point. The NCR is not good. Just as the Legion is trying to rebuild the world in the image of a misunderstood and idealised Rome, the NCR is trying to rebuild the world in the image of a misunderstood and idealised America. And, already, a mere century and a bit after being founded, the NCR is already as deeply mired in the same social, political, and economic problems as America has been for decades in our world. Political corruption, a scramble for resources, excessive militarism, huge wealth inequalities, NCR is already showing the symptoms of the failed system it attempts to emulate. The people of the Mojave understand this, and they want neither the NCR nor the Legion to be in charge. This may seem to only leave Robert House as the remaining option, but he is not a better leader than the others, and the people who live outside the Strip are well aware of this. His ideal Vegas is also based on the economics of capitalism, but without the idealised notion of a republican democracy somehow being a fetter to its excesses. No, to House, the excesses are part of the goal. He is, in a way, the more Randian side of American worldviews, despising democracy and blaming it for the nuclear war. While his goals and methods makes him a better choice than the Legion, they also make him worse than the NCR.

So, how should the player character proceed with this game, once it becomes clear that we have to select one of these powers to put in charge? Kelsey, having learned a little about each side, has already decided that the NCR is the lesser of three evils, so that will be her answer.

[Mitillos]

A fourth option might be nice. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be another faction with the power to keep Vegas, though, so Kelsey doesn't really have a fourth option. Arcade said something about leaving Vegas independent, but he's just being idealistic, because that's obviously not going to work. Even if the Legion and NCR are pushed back, Mr. House isn't going to give his wealth up. And if he were somehow eliminated too, the various raider gangs would just attack Vegas and make things even worse. Kelsey doesn't like this, but she is pragmatic, so she's going with the solution she finds more palatable than the rest: the NCR.

[Mitillos]

I think you only lose teammates if they die (in hardcore mode or [redacted]) or if you go legion. Boone and Arcade want nothing to do with you if you're siding with the legion.
As for Boone being pleased, oh we are getting to that. A very long time from now, but it's going to happen.

[Mitillos]

Boone won't join you (or threaten to leave) if you're anti-NCR, but he will also do that if you have a positive reputation with the legion. Of course, if you have him along, it's somewhat difficult to get a positive reputation with the legion, because he shoots them on sight. And they are also hostile to you regardless of what you've done, if Boone's there.

[Mitillos]

Apologies for the delay. It's midterm season and I'm invigilating all the time. I'll get back to this once that's all done.

[Mitillos]

Yes, I hope my students do well. :þ

[Mitillos]

Invigilates like you belong on a cross.

[Mitillos]

After this long hiatus, I can finally get back to this. So, let us continue on, with the adventures of Kelsey. We will put the fun in funeral, the laughter in slaughter, and the lit in unrelenting obliteration (as much as is seemly). Though not in this post. We're super peaceful in this one.

Moving on through the next part of Freeside, Kelsey could see that there were more people walking around. They were all young-looking men, with greased up hair in a distinctive style. They seemed to come and go around (as well as into and out from) a building with a huge sign that read "King's School of Impersonation". She made a mental note to visit the location later, but first she decided to go north from there. A scantily-clad street crier had shouted "Hungry? Thirsty? Horny? The Atomic Wrangler has you covered!", so she decided to check the place out. It turned out to be a small casino, where one could gamble, watch some live entertainment, get food and drinks, and hire prostitutes. When Kelsey went in nobody was performing and all the prostitutes were otherwise occupied, but that was not a problem, since she came here for information and to try making some more money with her new probability calculator implant. Also, she figured she'd check if there were any jobs needed doing. Freeside was such a mess that this was almost inevitably going to be the case.

She decided to play some blackjack, so she wouldn't need to argue too much about payment for whatever odd jobs the owners had. She exchanged some legion coins for chips, sat down at the blackjack table and quickly realised that the deck was almost uncannily working for her now. Pretty soon, a small crowd had made its way to watch her play. This meant that more people were also playing, so the floor manager offered her some alcohol and a snazzy suit as gifts. However, pretty soon she had managed to win over five thousand chips, and so he decided to cut her off. Thanking her for her patronage, he asked her to stop gambling and sample the rest of what the casino had to offer. Kelsey didn't want to be difficult, so she exchanged her chips for caps and went to talk with the two people tending the bar.

They turned out to be the owners of the casino, Francine and James Garret. At first, Kelsey thought they might be a couple, but in fact they were twins. And, as expected, they had a couple of jobs that needed doing. Francine told Kelsey that there were three people who owed her and James some money, and she needed someone to collect from them. As for James, he wanted to expand the business, so he needed a few more prostitutes, for clients with... special requirements. He mentioned that a wealthy client had a thing for ghouls and cowboys. Also, a lot of customers had expressed an interest in what he called "the boyfriend experience" with "a smooth-talking boyfriend". Finally, he said that "there's these disgusting robot fetishists you may have heard about? Well, those creeps want a sexbot". Kelsey thought James was trying a bit too hard to portray himself as someone disgusted with this last one. She agreed to deal with both requests and then brought up the subject of medicine for the Followers at the fort. The Garrets had medicine and alcohol to sell, so she guessed they'd be able to supply the Followers too. They said they could, but they would want the Followers to help improve their distilling process with their technical knowledge, in return. Kelsey thought about this for a moment, and decided that this was probably the best offer the Followers would get, so she'd have another talk with Julie Farkas. She thanked the Garrets for their time and left the Wrangler.

Her business at the casino concluded for the moment, Kelsey continued exploring the area. In a broken down building next to the Wrangler, she found Bill Ronte. Like Jacob, he looked completely (and understandably) wretched. He reeked of stale alcohol and was clearly scavenging around in an attempt to find anything to sell to get some more rotgut. Said attempt was futile, as there was nothing to find and nobody to buy from, since Kelsey had scared Dixon away from his two victims. Unlike Jacob, Bill wasn't a chemist, so she decided to recommend a slower but more mundane cure to him. She said that the Followers could give him regulated doses of alcohol along with some Fixer. By decreasing the dosage over time, he could kick the habit in a matter of weeks, if not days. He considered his options and after hearing that Julie was the one who asked Kelsey to get him back, he made up his mind. He thanked Kelsey and made his way to the fort. Kelsey hoped that this would make Julie Farkas more amenable to the suggestion that she help casino owners make stronger booze... She still wasn't completely sure how to convince her, so she decided to think a bit more on how to convince Julie. Across the street, she could see a man with heavy armour and a plasma rifle. He was standing in front of a building with a sign reading "Silver Rush". She recognised it from the radio broadcast as one of the sponsors of Mr. New Vegas' show. Apparently, they dealt in energy weaponry, the one type of weapons the Gun Runners refused to trade. The reason for this was that every caravan they had stocked with such weapons was attacked. Believing this to be the work of the Brotherhood of Steel, the Gun Runners decided to abandon that particular market and stick to conventional weapons. In turn, this meant that business boomed for the Silver Rush, as they didn't seem to be under attack for their incredibly powerful weapons. Kelsey wasn't particularly interested in buying from them, but decided she could go in just to browse a bit.

Alright, more Freeside stuff to do. We'll be going to the school of impersonation at some point, but for now I want to deal with other stuff, first.

All the casinos in this game have a limit for how much money you can win before you are no longer allowed to gamble any more. The more wealthy casinos have a higher limit. There's an achievement for being banned from all three casinos on the Strip, but there's also three more casinos you can gamble at. One is the Wrangler, one is in the DLC, and the last one... well, we'll see, since we'll break the bank in all of them. This will be extremely easy with blackjack and a luck of 10. Basically, the deck really does work for you, at this point. With a luck of 10, every time you hit, you're almost guaranteed to get a good draw. If you have a 16, the next draw is very likely to be a 5. If you have 10 or 11, doubling down will almost invariably give you another 10. You'll probably lose a few hands here and there, but getting to the maximum allowed winnings, even with bets being capped at 200, is almost trivial. This is only one of the reasons that lack of money isn't even close to being an issue in this game.

I don't really have much else to add here, except that midterms are over, so I should be able to keep posting until early- to mid-December, at which time there will be another break for more invigilating and grading.

[Mitillos]

The man in front of the Silver Rush building turned out to be a guard, named Simon. Simon informed Kelsey that she had to leave her weapons with him to go inside, to avoid any unpleasantness. She agreed and walked in, only to be stopped by more guards inside. They said that Mrs. Van Graff was in the middle of some business negotiations. Kelsey could see this, as there was only a chain link fence. The negotiations seemed to be about a late payment and involved bringing in some poor wretch who had somehow displeased the Van Graffs and making an example out of him with a laser rifle. Kelsey decided she wanted nothing to do with these people and left, stopping only to collect her weapons from Simon.

Kelsey decided she might as well go and deal with the quests the Garrett twins had given her. The first of the people with a debt to Francine was a woman named Lady Jane, sitting around near the gate to the Vegas Strip. The gate was guarded by several securitrons with pictures of cops on their monitors, stopping visitors to ensure they had either a passport allowing entrance to the Strip, or enough money to reasonably spend at the casinos. One man tried to run through them, but they gunned him down. If this was how Mr. House conducted his business, he was scarcely better than the Van Graffs. Deep in thought, Kelsey kept walking until she found Lady Jane. At first, she claimed that all her belongings were left in her caravan which she had to abandon in a cave when it was attacked by some critters. Kelsey wasn't convinced, and after some questioning, she admitted that she had some of the money and a few random items (read: junk) she could spare. Kelsey wasn't in any mood to argue, so she decided to pay Francine the remainder and sell the junk. After all, the loss would be minimal, Kelsey now had enough money, and Jane just wanted to get back to California and start over.

With that taken care of, Kelsey went back to the outer area of Freeside. She found the second person, Santiago, near where Jacob had been. He claimed that he had no debt and that he was a VIP. If he had tried this a day earlier, Kelsey would have threatened to kill him, but now she just didn't care enough. She changed the subject and told Santiago that the Garrets were looking for a suave male prostitute, hinting he could pay his debt to them that way. He agreed and left for the Wrangler, while Kelsey made her way to the last target, a ghoul named Grecks. He was upset that he could no longer get free drinks and that the Garrets didn't forget about his tab, but he gave the money without any argument. Kelsey expected him to ask if she wouldn't mind covering some of his debt, since he was evidently broke. Had he asked, she probably would have agreed, but he didn't even seem to consider the notion, so she thanked him and went back to the fort. There, she found a ghoul in a cowboy hat and leather duster with the cynicism of her considerable age and a penchant for some of the... more extreme kinds of fun available in the Mojave. At first, Beatrix Russell wasn't particularly interested in becoming pimped to freaks with a thing for necrosis and bullwhips, but when she was told she would 1) be independent and could choose her customers herself and 2) get an employee discount on the booze at the Wrangler (which would now be improved with Follower know-how), she left immediately.

Julie was not thrilled about dealing with the Garrets. From where she was standing, they were part of the problem, pushing cheap booze and drugs to Freeside. Improving their still would just mean they could do it even more, causing even more work for them. Kelsey pointed out that, since they'd be getting free medicine, they'd be able to expand their operations, mitigating the additional problems caused and being able to do even more good in addition to that. It was not a perfect solution, but then a perfect solution was impossible in an ignored slum right next to the gated playground of the wealthy. Julie could see the wisdom in this and, reluctantly, agreed to the deal with the Garrets.

For their part, the Garrets were very happy they could improve their alcohol production and that two of their three debts were collected. Francine asked Kelsey if she could also deal with another matter. Their previous debt collector, a man named Caleb McCaffrey had left Freeside for the Strip with a large sum of money he was supposed to collect for the Garrets. She wanted him dead and his hat brought to her as proof. Kelsey said she'd deal with him if he saw him in the Strip. The Garrets were also happy to have Santiago work for them and, while Beatrix, being female, wasn't quite what the original client wanted, would certainly be a welcome addition to their staff. All that was left was finding a sexbot, for which someone had suggested looking at the Cerulean Robotics building in the north part of Freeside. Meanwhile, people in the area were getting to hear that Kelsey was the one responsible for the increased amount of both booze and medical care available, so she was viewed as a friend of both Freeside and the Followers. In fact, Julie offered to let Kelsey join the Followers, something Kelsey was sure would make Veronica really happy. So, Julie gave Kelsey a key and directions to the Followers' hideout some distance west of Vegas and told her to help herself to any of the equipment she might need in there, as well as the beds available.

Feeling good about herself and her new associations, and determined to help as many people as she could, Kelsey left for Cerulean Robotics.

The Van Graffs are... pretty terrible. If you ask for work, they start out innocuous enough, asking you to be a door guard with Simon. You are supposed to be respectful, not start any fights, turn away "drunks, punks, and capless vermin", and not let anyone through without patting them down for weapons. The second job is to make a delivery to a suspicious looking man some distance east of Vegas. He is, in fact, in Caesar's legion, so the Van Graffs are the kind of scum that would sell energy weapons to slavers. If you do both jobs, they then ask you if you want to take a third job, which they won't reveal unless you agree to do it first. The job is to bring Cassidy to them from the Mojave outpost so they can kill her. Of course, to the Van Graffs, all of this is "just business".

Lady Jane's caravan is indeed in a cave, way southeast, further than Novac. You can go there, fight some huge rat, and get her stuff to pay back the Garrets with, but honestly I didn't feel like doing that. Santiago will pay his debt if you threaten him and there is a second man you can hire for the suave boyfriend experience thing, near the gate to the Strip. Caleb McCaffrey was in the Wrangler before and we could have introduced ourselves, but there was no reason to do so. There's also another person we could talk to in the Wrangler, but he can wait until he's part of a quest.

The Followers' safehouse has some equipment available, beds, fridges that spawn random food items, and a Follower who visits from time to time and sells medical supplies. Julie also gave us a lab coat when we joined, which is nice (if slightly pointless) of her. By the end of this, we will have access to three of the four available factional safehouses, as well as ownership of seven rooms in various locations. We already have the one at Novac, we'll get one at the Wrangler, and there are another four at various casinos in the Strip. There's also one in the best DLC, which will be all kinds of fun in itself, when we get there.

Anyway, we have joined the Followers, the only faction in the entire canon of Fallout who are trying to do any actual good. This is not an exaggeration. There are better and worse factions in Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas, but only the Followers are actually looking out for people and working for the benefit of everyone. The most you can say about some of the other not-evil groups is that they're just doing their best to survive and flourish without trying to hurt others. The only ones who are a force for good other than the Followers are the original Rangers, who were formed to fight slavers. Laudable and important, even if it's not quite as far-reaching as what the Followers do. Unfortunately, over time, the Rangers became little more than a highly trained group within the NCR military. By the time of the events of New Vegas, they're again fighting slavers, but this is incidental. The slavers are Caesar's legion and the rangers are only fighting it because it threatens the resources which are currently under NCR control. Even the best of intentions cannot make one immune to the realities of political corruption; the Rangers uphold a system which is exploitative, despite the fact that fighting exploitation was the entire reason they were formed.

[Mitillos]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's a lot worse, but the Van Graffs are horrible and gross in a very particular manner. Specifically, they are only interested in their profits. They are willing to do all the stuff they do, just to maintain the cashflow and for literally no other reason. Now, I'm not going to say that this is unique to capitalism, but hierarchical systems (including capitalism) are more susceptible to this behaviour, simply because there are no competing voices in the room. Whereas in a more democratic system of ownership and use of the means of production, you'd expect some of the stakeholders to be at least a little ethically opposed to the idea of selling to murderous slavers, given that those murderous slavers will eventually come for your family.

And before anyone accuses me of arguing politics too much, 1) it's economics, and 2) you're reading a log of a playthrough for a Fallout game set in the west coast. If you don't want political commentary, this is the wrong game for you, like, three times over. (I'm joking, they are great games and if you think you don't like politics, you need these games even more in your life than anyone else does, if only to help you understand yourself better.)

The walk to Cerulean Robotics was fairly uneventful, as was the search of the building itself. A few large rats and some broken robots were around, but they were of little consequence. In a corner of the workshop area, Kelsey found a functional protectron which had not yet been programmed, sitting idly in its recharge bay. The programme to convert the protectron into a sexbot was fairly easy for Kelsey to write and, a few hours later, the machine was active. It called itself a "Fully Integrated Security Thechnetron Officer" (which Kelsey shortened to "FISTO"), and requested that Kelsey "assume the position". She decided to test her work, to make sure there were no flaws that needed rectifying or any other kinks in the system. Once she was pleased with the outcome, she sent FISTO to the Wrangler, and walking unsteadily, made her way there too. When she got back, James was thoroughly thrilled at the idea of owning a sexbot, though he tried to pretend this was because of how much money it would make for them. His sister rolled her eyes but made no comment.

Kelsey decided to explore the area around Vegas a little more, so she left Freeside for Westside. This particular slum seemed even poorer than Freeside. There were certainly no casinos here, but the people seemed more self-sufficient. The biggest problem, at first glance, seemed to be the regular skirmishes by drugged up Fiend raiders from the south. The people here had formed a militia to fend them off and, with the help of a large supermutant named Mean Sonofabitch, they seemed to manage. Apparently, the supermutant had been held in captivity by bigots who had cut off his tongue and tortured him. A man named Klamath Bob had unsuccessfully tried to buy him from them to set him free, but they were not interested. Instead, a Nightkin named Tabitha came and freed him, visiting violence on his captors. So, Mean decided to come to Westside and find the man who had tried to free him. The two of them became friends and joined the militia to protect others. In addition to the militia, the people of Westside had formed a cooperative for growing and distributing crops to everyone in Westside, which also generally seemed to work fairly well.

Unfortunately, the edges of society also tend to attract crime, so Kelsey knew there were bound to be certain problems here that a tight-knit community might not want to learn about. She knew that the abducted people from Aerotech were likely taken by scavengers from this area, so it was time to investigate. Looking around the southern part of Westside, she found two very shifty looking men named Dermot and Saint James. They were very evasive when asked about people going missing, but thankfully they were also not very bright. They mentioned Aerotech, even though Kelsey hadn't, all but incriminating themselves. Unfortunately, this was too flimsy to pass muster with the NCR, so Kelsey decided to do some more investigating. Thankfully, all the evidence she needed was in their rooms, behind locked doors Kelsey could sneeze open. She found a teddy bear which presumably belonged to an abducted girl and (more importantly) a ledger of all their sales. The sick bastards had been selling people to the Fiends who, in turn, would kill off the ones they didn't care about and keep the rest as sex slaves. Motor-Runner, Nephi, Cook-Cook. Kelsey would be sure to search for them, but for now she had smaller fish albeit nearer at hand to fry. She confronted Dermot and Saint James with the evidence she found and they attacked her. Her savage grimace was almost grin-like, as she stood there unfazed, letting ED-E zap and fry them. The rest of the inhabitants of Westside seemed uninterested in leaping to their aid and when they learned of what they had done, they thanked her for what she'd done. The only one who wasn't thankful was Marco, the owner of the apartment building where the two coyotes lived (as well as the pimp for all the prostitutes in the same building). He was upset he'd lose the rent money they paid him and was completely uninterested in the source of said money. What pre-war societies had said was true: landlords truly are worthless parasites.

Kelsey decided that informing Parker could wait a while longer, since the people that were missing were clearly already dead and the coyotes, likewise afflicted, would trouble Aerotech refugess no more. So, she decided to make her way to Camp McCarran to deliver the Crimson Caravan invoice she had. The base, set up in an old disused airport, was fairly large and full of soldiers, but Kelsey didn't feel like socialising at the moment. She simply made her way to the head scientist, Thomas Hildern and delivered the invoice. He seemed to want to give Kelsey another errand, but she had too much on her plate at the moment, so she said she'd be back later and left. Arcade was familiar with Hildern and told Kelsey that he was a good example of "big picture" obsessions going too far, with individuals becoming numbers and statistics. She could see his point. The man had no social graces, so he probably had no interest in people as people to begin with. Probably thought of himself as an intellectual based on this alone. Unfortunately, if he wanted a job doing, it probably was something that would affect a lot of people, so she felt that she couldn't afford not coming back for it later. Deep in these troubling thoughts, Kelsey started to make her way back north and then east, towards the Crimson Caravan headquarters.

So, Kelsey had a high programming skill and was able to programme a sexbot. But what if a character doesn't? Well, there's a programming terminal access card in one of the lockers. But what if you're playing on a laptop with a small monitor and don't see very well, so you can't find the key? Well, you can pick the locker's lock (or just turn your flashlight on, I guess). But what if your lockpick skill isn't high enough? Well, you can ask a merchant in Freeside to write a programme for you. Generally speaking, you will have options. The developers did their best to make it so that any character build would work in this game, even the ones with low skill.

If you have Wild Wasteland activated, the first time you exit Cerulean Robotics three old ladies attack you. Americans do love Monty Python, I guess.

Regarding the missing people, you can take the teddy bear back to Captain Parker and he will identify it and say it belonged to one of the missing girls. The ledger is fairly disturbing too, with all the details it gives, as is Marco's lack of interest in the matter, beyond the question of rent money. Landlords, parasites, etc.

The conversation with Arcade after meeting Hildern gives us 2 trust points with Arcade. This is good for reasons. Later in the story reasons. We also got 2 history points with Boone, back when we rescued those three NCR hostages from the Legion in Nelson, which is also good for later in the story reasons. We also triggered one of the nine things Veronica wants to see, in terms of exploring the wasteland sand seeing how people live and survive. Specifically, talking to Julie Farkas about giving her some of our spare medical supplies. There were also two other triggers we missed, because we had Arcade along (talking to Gloria Van Graff and Thomas Hildern respectively), but it's fine, because we only need three of the nine triggers, so we should be able to deal with that, in due course.

[Mitillos]

Has it really been a week? Damn, it has really been a week. And in about a week, it's going to be final exam time, so I'll be a little busy then. We'd better see how Kelsey is doing, before she gets bored and annoyed, and decides to just start killing everyone* in the Mojave, just for funsies.

*Children, your currently active companions (except in hardcore mode), and [redacted] can't be killed.

Kelsey took a longer route back, going through North Vegas Square which, unlike Freeside and Westside, was not walled off the Mojave with barricades. The locals here had a few problems they asked her to help them with. As NCR moved more and more into Vegas, people from there tended to come to the strip for gambling and prostitution. But then, as they found themselves too poor to make it back home, they would move into the poorer areas of Vegas, causing problems for the locals. Additionally, there was a gang of greasers in the sewers, raiding the area. Both groups were convinced to move on for some caps, and this left Kelsey with the last problem to solve. A gang of thieves wanted to make one last big score, stealing from the Crimson Caravans. According to a note Kelsey found in the gang's hideout, they recruited the daughter of the accounts manager, and were planning to have her steal the money for them. Afterwards, they would leave town, possibly taking her along for... unsavoury and nefarious purposes. Said daughter didn't know all this. She was just a naive young woman, upset at her parents and her life as a farmer with her mom. But when she read the note, she quickly changed her mind and decided to give life with her parents another chance. And with that, Kelsey went back to the Crimson Caravan company, to report that she had delivered the invoice to Hildern.

Alice McLafferty was pleased with Kelsey's work and asked her to help with another matter. One of the big investors of the company had pressured them to give an executive position to his corrupt and lazy son. After his lack of managerial skills caused the New Vegas branch to perform poorly, Alice was sent to fix things. She knew that the only way to make the branch properly profitable was to get rid of this Henry Jamison. So, she asked Kelsey to convince him to resign his position. He was easy enough to find, as he was in the Wrangler, playing the slot machines and losing a lot of money. He owed a lot of money to the Omertas, the group running Gomorrah, one of the Strip casinos. The idiot let slip that he didn't have the money yet, so Kelsey threatened to go and let the Omertas know this if he didn't resign his position. Scared stiff, he agreed, after calling Alice a number of expletives.

Kelsey was getting sick of Vegas and its trite intrigues, so she decided to explore the Mojave a little more. She left due South, until she found a large building surrounded by some friendly Mr. Handy robots. This building had once housed the headquarters of the Rocket Engineering and Production Company of Nevada (or REPCONN), an aerospace company bought out by RobCo before the nuclear war. As Kelsey found out later, the buyout was pushed by a mole installed by RobCo, who subsequently sold RobCo trade secrets to Poseidon Energy. Arcade mentioned some things about their history and how RobCo made REPCONN work on plasma weaponry, as well. Deciding to learn more about this, Kelsey went inside. The building was bustling with as much activity as it ever had; RobCo believed in automation above all else, so as much of the day-to-day work as possible was assigned to robots. Even now, there were sentry bots hidden in secret areas in the walls for security, Mr. Handys were going around performing maintenance and cleaning the place, and one robot acted as a tour guide through the company's exhibits, showcasing all their inventions (with very non-credible positive spins tacked on). Once the tour was over, Kelsey decided to extend it to the entirety of the building. She found out that the robots used rudimentary facial recognition software to identify employees, so she accessed the company's database from one of the terminals and replaced one of the faces with her own. Just in case things went wrong, she also found the locations where sentry bots were hiding and jammed the mechanisms so they couldn't get out to attack her. She checked every room she could, to make sure there would be no surprises. There was one steel door with electronic locks beyond her skills, but all the other rooms were accessible.

Unfortunately, RobCo was also a huge believer in very strict hierarchy, so employees who worked on the first floor were generally not given access to the floors above, unless their work called for it. This meant that, when she got to the second floor, Kelsey had to sneak around undetected until she found another terminal so she could once again make her face acceptable to the robots here. The third floor was more of an issue. There was no facial recognition database for that, so eventually a robot spotted Kelsey and demanded a password. Consumed by panic, she blurted out "ice cream", which somehow worked. Thanking her incredible luck, Kelsey looked around. She found a lot of info on the company, including details of a powerful plasma rifle they were developing. Apparently, this was going to be sent to the US Department of Defense (and Poseidon Energy was informed of this, so they were likely going to try stealing it), but the nuclear war delayed these plans. Kelsey also found two dead paladins from the Brotherhood of Steel. Clearly, they had not managed to guess the password. They had a holodisk instructing them to come here for certain components. Kelsey took this, as well as their heavy power armour. She used one suit to patch the other one up as much as she could. She couldn't use the armour herself, but she figured that Veronica could. And since she always preferred to fight by punching, giving her extra protection might be a very good idea.

On her way down, Kelsey realised that there was a room in the second floor she hadn't secured on her way up. Inspecting it, she found that most of its floor was destroyed, which meant she could finally see what was behind the locked steel door. This was the room which held the Q-35 matter modulator, the plasma rifle that REPCONN had been working on. The quantum plasma modulation matter injection rifle was a far more powerful version of the standard plasma rifle. It used half as much energy per shot but fired twice as fast, with faster-moving bolts (the major drawback of plasma weapons) which were slightly weaker but resulted in more damage over time, it was sturdier so needed less maintenance, it had a more responsive trigger, and it was only two thirds as heavy.

Grinning manically, Kelsey made her way out and to the 188, to give Veronica her new armour. While they were talking, a broadcast came in on her Pip-Boy radio. A man introducing himself as Jed Masterson, a caravan boss for the Happy Trails Caravan Company. His caravan was organising an expedition to Utah and advertising positions for guards and anyone who needed to join the caravan (especially if they had a Pip-Boy, with its convenient cartographic software). On a whim, Kelsey decided to join them, so she said goodbye to Veronica and made her way to the passage north of the Mojave.

Visiting REPCONN with Arcade gives us another trust point with him. We will be getting 3 more at a later time (I think 5 are needed, but I'm getting 6 to be safe), but for now we're ditching him. In fact, at this point, we're ditching ED-E, as well. The Northern Passage leads to the first DLC that we will be going through (and, in my opinion, the least enjoyable one). Allies generally can't follow you into the DLC areas (most of which have their own companions available), so we're leaving ED-E and Arcade behind on this one.

We will be using the Q-35 a lot for the foreseeable future, although in some cases we will be switching to the incinerator for lobbing fire a bit more indiscriminately at a distance, a machine gun for when precision is an issue, and a silenced pistol when we need stealth. Other than that, plasma shots will often reduce targets to puddles of green goo, so that's the aesthetic we will be introducing to Utah.

The password for the third floor is available if you have high luck or very low intelligence.

[Mitillos]

Kelsey got to the northern passage and found the man who was sending out the invitational broadcast, Jed Masterson. Though an experienced caravan master, he had never been through Zion valley, which was why he was anxious to hire someone with a Pip-Boy to come along. He explained that the route they used to have to northern Utah and New Canaan was no longer usable, so they would need the mapping function to stay on the trail through the valley that the New Canaan tribe used themselves. Jed told Kelsey she had some time to get to know the rest of the caravan and leave whatever personal items would slow her down in a secure crate in the passage.

Jed had brought three caravan guards from his company along, and his broadcast had attracted one more mercenary. One of the guards, Stella, was a middle aged woman from New Reno, who left it so she could escape the sleaze when she was young. Having spent most of her early adulthood as a sheriff in Caliente, she got bored of her life there and joined Happy Trails as a guard. She enjoyed roaming the wilderness, so she was pleased to be going through Zion, especially now that she was sure there would be a map. The mercenary was less happy that Kelsey had joined. Ricky was wearing a jumpsuit from vault 22 (which he called two-two) and a Pip-Boy 3000 (which he called a pit-boy). He clearly had no idea what it was and how it worked, especially since it did not; it was broken and only marginally more useful than a bracelet. He had clearly got a spot on the caravan by pretending it was working and he knew how to use it, so Kelsey's presence could only make his position more tenuous. Nevertheless, Kelsey introduced herself and was instantly treated to his lack of charm. Ricky started conversation by making a clumsy and casually misogynistic pass at Kelsey and got angry and self-important when it didn't work. He claimed that he once killed three "deathjaws", which were like deathclaws only with bigger teeth, except there were four of them, by shooting them in the eyes. Knowing that at most this would enrage a deathclaw, Kelsey decided to have some fun and see what other "adventures" he would claim. Ricky insisted that he was a great shot and always killed by shooting the eyes. In fact, he said, he once did that to "one of them Steel Brotherhood assholes", with his 11mm machinegun. Given that 11mm ammunition had been made obsolete three centuries earlier and Brotherhood of Steel armour eyeslits were bulletproof, Kelsey had to work hard to stop herself from bursting out laughing.

Having observed his behaviour during their chat, Kelsey could tell that Ricky was addicted to Psycho. When she confronted him with this he got angry and left, shouting something about leading the caravan to an ambush. Everyone else seemed happy to see him go and since they had more space now, they could carry more stuff. And so, the caravan set off towards New Canaan, a town built on the ruins of Ogden, inhabited by the tribe calling themselves New Canaanites. Jed Masterson took this opportunity to talk to Kelsey about New Canaan and its recent history. He said they were honest traders and good fighters, and very devoutly religious. However, one of their number had apparently left New Canaan and its mostly peaceful life, to join Caesar's legion as one of its most brutal members. Joshua Graham was Caesar's first war chief, known as the Malpais legate, and a source of shame to the New Canaanites. He led Caesar's army to victory after victory, until he set his sights on Hoover dam. The NCR managed to defeat the legion, and Caesar decided to make an example of his legate, for committing the sin of failure. Graham was covered in pitch, lit on fire, and thrown into the Grand Canyon, without even making a sound. Then, the slaves and the newer tribes that joined the legion started saying that Joshua Graham hadn't died, but rose as The Burned Man, walking the wastes. Caesar promoted a new legate, Lanius of Arizona, and ordered Graham's name expunged from history, but the legend had taken hold. And whether he lived or not, Graham was now a source of shame both to his tribe of New Canaan and the legion he led... At this point, Jed quoted some of the New Canaanite scripture he had learned from his dealings with the tribe: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion."

It took the caravan several days to get through the passage and to Zion canyon, previously known as Zion National Park. It was a lush valley, rocky yet not wanting for greenery. Unfortunately, it also did not want for enemies. There really was an ambush waiting for them; tribals with submachineguns were waiting over the cavern opening they had just exited. Kelsey's new plasma rifle turned them all into puddles of green goo, but it was too late. Everyone else in the caravan was dead. Unfortunately, the trip here included some steep descents, so Kelsey wouldn't be able to retrace her steps. She would have to find another way out of the valley. She started walking along the only available trail and soon found another young tribal, who thankfully wasn't attacking her. In fact, he had witnessed the fight and invited her to come with him to meet Joshua. He introduced himself as Follows-Chalk, a trainee scout from the Dead Horses tribe. He explained that "Joshua" was Joshua Graham, the man leading the Dead Horses against their enemies, the White Legs (who were also the ones who attacked the caravan). Deciding that the enemies of the tribe that attacked her were likely to at least be welcoming, Kelsey agreed to follow. After all, she was also curious to see if this Joshua Graham was the same person Jed had talked about.

The journey was almost entirely uneventful. At some point, Follows-Chalk heard some noise and urged Kelsey to hide. The noise came from an enormous mutant bear (or Yao-Guai, as he called it) attacking a very large gecko. This variety of green gecko was much larger and tougher than most Mojave specimens, yet the bear tore it apart with ease. Follows-Chalk explained that the canyon animals were very agitated these days and that this was bound to affect the Dead Horses' bighorner ranging, but the other scouts ignored his worries. He suspected that a calf might have got separated from the herd, as this would cause the entire herd to become more agitated until they found it. Kelsey said maybe she could try looking into it if she had time later. She started to wonder why she was always so compelled to help people, even as she was the one in desperate need.

After a short trip, along and through Virgin river, they finally arrived at the Dead Horses' camp at eastern Virgin ridge and around the entrance to Angel Cave. Kelsey went inside, to meet Joshua Graham.

Welcome to Zion, the location of the Honest Hearts DLC. I'm already so bored I want to die. Joking aside, the Honest Hearts DLC is the weakest of the lot. I find the storyline a bit trite, the quests a bit simplistic, the exploration a bit pointless, and the plot kind of annoys me. The trope of the civilised white man, the noble savages, the latter following the former, and the former saving the latter, is a tired and harmful one. One could say that, given the post-apocalyptic setting and the fact that the civilised white man is also technically a tribal might give a little leeway to Fallout's use of it, however said leeway ends quickly, once you start talking with Joshua Graham and get info and history on everyone involved. The possible endings (i.e. your choices) are kind of shit, too, largely for the same reason (and we'll get to that eventually).

Finally, the whole place is kind of boring. In all the other DLCs and the main game, I did my best to explore as much as possible, just to see what fun stuff I could find. In Zion, I mostly just wanted to be done and leave ASAP. The only exploring I did was to find four special crates (three, really; one of them is next to Joshua Graham when you meet him), and that was just because they had a very small chance to randomly spawn skill books as their loot. It was all a complete waste of time, none of them had books in my playthrough. Anyway, I won't explicitly be going over that in this thread, so, over the next few posts, pick three random spots and mentally insert "And then Kelsey decided to go inside a nearby cave for absolutely no reason, rummage in a crate for a few moments, and then come out immediately after".

Ricky is a disgusting moron. He talks about the radiation giving him a third, glowing testicle, "to let you see what you're working with", if you're female. If you find yourself in this situation, try not to react with disgust, because he just gets emboldened and continues to be a creep. Instead, either say you'll bring your tweezers (requires a perk) or that this will let you see where you're shooting (guns skill), and he'll get scared and offensive. Or, you know, pick what dialogue you want, it's an RPG. Anyway, getting rid of Ricky or blackmailing him into carrying some of your stuff allows you to bring along 100lb of equipment, instead of 75. Kelsey left the excess stuff with ED-E back in the Mojave, so this is plenty for her needs.

If you have Wild Wasteland enabled, when you approach the Dead Horses' camp, one of them comes out and happily pumps his fist in the air at you. He is mostly a generic tribal, but his name is Two-Bears-High-Fiving. See, back when we started the game, Doc Mitchell gave us an inkblot test. One of the blots is two kabuki actors dressed as ninjas, bringing their hands together during a dance where they combine their powers to fight the evil shogun and rescue the noble daimyo and his beautiful daughter, while the two aspects of divine beings that granted them their powers look on and are revealed to be in fact parts of the same being, now reunited. For some reason, a lot of people instead see "two bears high-fiving", so someone made a mod just to add that option in the dialogue. This was a very popular mod and Obsidian decided to acknowledge it by adding this character. This was actually a rather nice thing, because it was also an indication to the modders that Obsidian was supporting them.

[Mitillos]

Joshua Graham was... a bit of an asshole. The kind of asshole who couches his disgusting rhetoric in pretty words and religious dogma to avoid confronting its true effects. He tried to pretend that his experiences with Caesar made him a more thoughtful and wise man, but it was clear that he still had the same chip on his shoulder as when he had been a legate for Caesar. He wanted to kill off all the White Legs for destroying his tribe, but he claimed that his reason was that they had insulted his god and that this demanded "correction". This put him slightly at odds with the other New Canaanite who had managed to make his way to Zion, a man called Daniel. Just as Joshua was training the Dead Horses for combat, Daniel was with another tribe (the Sorrows) and trying to guide them spiritually. Daniel believed that it would be better if these two tribes left Zion, rather than confront the White Legs, because fighting would somehow make them lose their innocence, whatever that meant.

Joshua explained that New Canaan had been destroyed by the White Leg tribe, probably at the behest of Caesar, in an effort to kill Joshua. He also mentioned that the various tribes in Utah had signature weapons. The Dead Horses had war clubs, the New Canaanites had .45 auto pistols, the Sorrows had Yao Guai gauntlets, and the White Legs had SMGs they had looted from a military armoury. While those might be a bit of a threat at mid-range, Kelsey felt sure she had the advantage with her plasma rifle and incinerator, as long as she managed to keep from getting ambushed. Joshua also mentioned something about expecting a different courier, sent by Caesar to assassinate him. Everywhere Kelsey went, there seemed to be tiny morsels of information about this guy, though little of substance.

When Kelsey mentioned that her goal was to go back to the Mojave, Joshua reminded her that her journey to Zion included going down a lot of paths it would be difficult to climb up. She would need a map to help her. Thankfully, Daniel had such a map and would undoubtedly be willing to part with it, if Kelsey was willing to help the New Canaanites, Dead Horses, and Sorrows. Joshua said he would allow Follows-Chalk to guide Kelsey to the Sorrows' home, if she first collected some useful equipment for them to take to Daniel. Kelsey agreed and set off, taking a detour towards the bighorner grazing grounds first. She learned from Follows-Chalk that the beasts loved Banana Yucca fruit, so she collected some and asked the scout to remain behind. She then used a Stealth-Boy to go completely invisible, so she could go through the grounds undetected. Pretty soon, she found the lost calf. Though it couldn't see her, it could smell the Banana Yucca when she brought it out, and followed Kelsey all the way to its mom. Follows-Chalk was extremely grateful about all this.

The items Joshua wanted were fairly mundane. First, there was a crashed bus, with a couple dozen children's skeletons. These were pre-war cub scouts, so there was bound to be some sort of navigation equipment somewhere in the wreckage. Kelsey found a couple of broken compasses and used them to make a new one. Second, there was a fishing lodge near the river, and Joshua was sure Kelsey would be able to find something to help the tribes communicate more effectively. Indeed, a pair of walkie-talkies were safe inside a locked cabinet. Third, Joshua wanted long-lasting food and some medical supplies. A general store and a ranger station had these, as well as another snowglobe. Normally, Kelsey would have wondered if Joshua was making her fetch these things for his amusement, but he had mentioned that the tribals had a taboo against entering pre-war buildings. Follows-Chalk, being younger, seemed to be very skeptical of said taboos and was interested in learning more about the people he and the others in Zion called "civilised". When Kelsey returned to Joshua, she mentioned this and he said she should share her thoughts with the young man. So, she suggested to Follows-Chalk that both "tribal" and "civilised" life had their problems and benefits and he should make up his mind about which was better only after observing both. The young man was deep in thought all the way to the north end of the valley, where the Sorrows made their home. Once they arrived there, he bade Kelsey good bye, and left for Virgin in the south.

Daniel was extremely thankful for the equipment Kelsey had collected and even more thankful when he learned she had a lot of spare healing powder to give him and the Sorrows. Kelsey decided to rest here, near the waterfalls for a while, before seeing what additional tasks Daniel would have for her.

It's final exam time, so I'll be somewhat busy until early January. I'll do my best to not let the thread die completely in the meantime. Anyway, we're burning through the Honest Hearts quests, largely because I'm not including "and there were some fairly weak and easily dispatched enemies and creatures" every 50 feet we walk. Basically, Zion has a bunch of White Legs with their war mongrels (dangerous in large groups and up close, but not a huge threat from the numerous vantage points you can use), mantises (as weak as ever), cazadores (as annoying as ever but we're pretty high level by now), yao guai (same as the White Legs), and some green geckos (the giant ones are dangerous, but, again, range is our friend). There's also some spore plants (based on venus flytraps) in a few caves and some out of the way areas, spitting poison at you from decent range, but they're little more than an annoyance. Lob a few fireballs in their direction and they'll burn fairly quickly.

So, we have two "civilised" New Canaanites (basically future Mormons) who are divided on whether the tribals they lead should fight for their land or leave it for a place where their enemies can't follow. And I can see the arguments clearly: the White Legs will never stop chasing them because they want to get in the legion, if the tribals fight them they will be no better than them, showing weakness only encourages the enemy to take a more offensive posture, constantly seeking war means you never stop fighting, and so on. But not even once does anyone suggest "hey, how about we ask the tribes what they think is best?" You know, maybe give them a bit of fucking agency? It's fine that they're not all uber-capable combatants like their Mormon friends or whatever, and if they decide to stay and fight they can ask for help with training and so on. This doesn't take away their agency. Or if they want to leave, they can ask for help with whatever supplies and equipment will help them, that's cool too. But deciding for them without even once checking how they feel about things is extremely condescending. Good thing they're just collections of 1s and 0s, but still. You *can* have a cool interaction with them, where you talk with one and use your intelligence to figure out bits and pieces of the mish-mash language they use when they're not speaking to you in English to make things simpler, but that's about it. It's all pretty interesting and people have asked the developers about the whole thing. The Dead Horse and Sorrow tribes came from a place called "Res" east of the Grand Canyon, a.k.a. the Navajo Nation in our world. Their ancestors were those who lived there, as well as tourists who got trapped there and in Utah when the nuclear war broke out. As such, the Dead Horses speak a pidgin of English, German, and Navajo, whereas the Sorrows seem to be using a pidgin of Spanish and English, and possibly a bit of Japanese. Which makes sense, if access to the rest of the world was gone.

The agitated bighorners are an interesting idea for a sidequest. If you stay close to them too long, they attack you, which would cause your companion to attack them back and if you (or your companion) kill too many, you fail the quest. Unfortunately (or fortunately), high sneak skill (e.g. the maximum of 100 one gets from using a Stealth-Boy) makes it impossible for them to detect you, and leaving Follows-Chalk further back means he can't be detected either and also won't attack, so this quest can be made very trivial.

The conversation with Follows-Chalk about "civilised" and tribal life basically makes him decide whether to leave his tribe and explore the wasteland or not. Minor spoiler here: both his endings are kind of terrible. Either he stays, becomes filled with regret, and gives up on his dream to explore distant lands, or he decides to go, argues with his family, leaves, and is never seen again. Honestly, the endings in this DLC are pretty terrible all around. You can get a decent ending for one character (our second companion, coming up soon) and for the Happy Trails caravan company, but everyone else has to endure whatever nonsense we cause. That's right, a company that isn't even in Zion is the only group we can actually help with a positive outcome. Which we won't. To do so, we have to side with Joshua and kill the White Legs, but I already did that in an even earlier playthrough, and I'm a complete and utter achievement hound. Therefore, Daniel gets his way. In some ways, I can't wait until I actually do my evil playthrough. Get into Zion, be ambushed, kill Follows-Chalk, the entire valley goes into a panicked frenzy, I murder everyone, and then just fuck off back to Vegas.

[Mitillos]

Is he too single-minded to notice the lack of births? I think it comes down to that. I think he probably would notice, which then means we have a new question: What would he do about this? If he doesn't realise before a good chunk of humanity is mutated, then he has doomed the species and presumably kills himself like in Fallout. But what if he sees the supermutants are not fertile while there are still a lot of humans around? Does he give up on the plan? Does he try to modify the FEV and the supermutants? Does he keep a population of humans as breeding stock for creating supermutants? I think then it comes down to the morality of Richard Moreau. He couches his views in what he incorrectly calls logic, but he is just a misanthrope. This is completely unsurprising, given the fact that he comes from Vault 8, or in other words, Vault City. (s Imagine my surprise at learning that elitist, classist, slaver scum like them could cause the biggest threat to humanity since nuclear war /s). They kicked him out because he committed murder, so, yeah... I think the only answer I can give is: bleak.

[Mitillos]

Entirely possible. Which just goes to show, even if you're 5 guys (burgers and fries?) it's still a good idea to listen to other people.

[Mitillos]

Alright, I think it's time to do the thing Ythan indicated she was eagerly awating.

Daniel was a more even-tempered man than Joshua. He was not consumed with anger, but he was also consumed with the patronising, moralising attitude that Joshua had, as well. The two tribes seemed willing to follow the two Canaanites wherever they led... A misplaced sense of respect, perhaps, but unlike Joshua and Daniel, Kelsey understood that this was their mistake to make, not hers to prevent. She did try to give people a few hints that absolute trust in someone might be foolish, but she didn't push the point any harder than that. After all, she was more interested in finding her way out of the valley and getting back to the Mojave. She found Zion grating, possibly due to the influence of Joshua, Daniel, and even Caesar, the one who had sent the White Legs here...

Daniel introduced Kelsey to Waking Cloud, a very sad-looking young midwife in the Sorrows tribe, who was willing to be Kelsey's guide in Zion for the tasks the Canaanites wanted Kelsey to carry out for them. She would need to carry these out, whether the plan was to follow Daniel out of Zion or to follow Joshua and take the fight to the White Legs. Given that some of these tasks would involve significant risk, Kelsey knew this would go better if she first earned her respect. She decided to ask her about the tribe's signature weapon. Waking Cloud was wearing a gauntlet fashioned from the hollowed out paw of a Yao Guai. When asked about this, Waking Cloud was taken slightly aback, but then instructed Kelsey to talk to the tribe's shaman, White Bird. The old man was sitting in a cave of his own, overlooking the Sorrows camp from atop a waterfall. He was cooking something and did not seem surprised to see Kelsey. Before she could speak, he turned to her and told her that she would need to receive sacred visions of truth. He instructed her to bring him three sacred datura roots to make tea for her. As it happened, she had randomly picked up a few on her way here, so she wordlessly handed them over. Looking nonplussed for a few short moments, White Bird took the roots and put them in the pot over his campfire. He then took an earthenware mug, dipped it in the water, and proffered it. Kelsey took it and said she didn't understand what she must do. He replied "Take drugs. Kill a bear." He looked expectant, so she downed the bevera-

Wobbly!

Whoosh!

ZOOM! ZOOM!

Geckogeckogecko

flameflameflame!

gecko

mantis

gecko

mantis

gecko

mantis

gecko

mantis

mantis

lalala!

White

Legs

White

Legs

!

MURDER! DEATH! KILL!

giggle goggle gaggle

ZOOM! ZOOM! ZOOMY-ZOOM!

CARNIVORE PLANTS

FLAAAAAAAAAAAAME!

ZOOM! ZOOMY-

vomit!

Lalala!

ZOOM! ZOOM! ZOOM!

MURDER! MURDER! MURDER!

BEAR

ON

FIRE!

Plasma! Plasma!

FOUR

BEARS

ON

FIRE!

Plasma! Plasma!

---

Later, Kelsey regained consciousness, just as she was handing the enormous Yao Guai's paws to White Bird. She was still feeling weird, so she fell asleep and by the time she woke up, he had made a gauntlet for her, calling it She's Embrace. He thanked her for putting the Ghost of She to rest and said that the Sorrows would always remember and respect her as a great hunter and protector. Waking Cloud certainly seemed a lot less distant, so Kelsey decided that this was alright and she'd put that experience behind her post-haste. The two of them left the camp, to carry out Daniel's tasks.

Lol, the sorrows fight with their bear arms. And now, so could we. In theory. We won't, for two reasons. The first is that Kelsey hasn't been training her Unarmed skill much, since there is no point to do so, as she fights with ranged weapons. The second is that this is an underwhelming weapon. If I were playing a punchy character (which I intend to, for my evil run), I would go to the Gun Runners, buy an upgradeable power fist and all its modifications, and have a much better weapon much earlier.

The "take drugs kill a bear" dialogue line only appears if you have Wild Wasteland enabled. Normally, White Bird gives a bit more detail about the task. Anyway, yeah, he has you take drugs, your screen gets a few annoying effects fading in and out, you go find this one enormous flaming bear, take it down to half health, it spawns three fake clones of itself and then you kill it. You loot its paw, take it to the shaman, and the drug effects wear off.

I use mafSilver (the only reasonably good theme, I will be taking no questions about this), and the colours I chose make some of the text unreadable for me. I suspect there is no theme that won't cause a problem with at least some of the text.

Next time, we will carry out Daniel's tasks.

[Mitillos]

The tasks set by Daniel were mostly straightforward. Kelsey would have to make sure the yao guai wouldn't interfere with the Sorrows' plans, clear the way from whatever traps the White Legs might have set up, weaken the White Legs' combatants, and retrieve a map that would allow the Sorrows to flee to the east.

The last task was fairly easy. The cave in which the map was located, situated just southwest of the Sorrows' camp, was mostly safe, with just a few mutated venus flytrap plants posing any threat. Kelsey couldn't understand why the Sorrows hadn't simply recovered the map themselves, but Waking Cloud explained that the place was taboo to them. In fact, the young woman was only willing to go into the cave because Kelsey had to and only if she promised to be respectful of this sacred place. Not wanting to argue religion with the Sorrows, Kelsey did her best to carry out this task as fast as possible.

Moving further south, Kelsey and Waking Cloud came to a staging area the White Legs hat set up. Three war camps, each with a few heavily armed warriors, some wardogs, and their ceremonial war totems. Waking Cloud suggested stealing the totems to demoralise them, but Kelsey didn't feel like wasting time sneaking around. After all, the White Legs might decide that Caesar's favour was a more powerful help than the totems. Wasting no time, she took the initiative, and killed all the White Legs in the area, as well as two giant geckos that wandered near the fight.

East, across the river from the war camps, was a central path between the Sorrows and the Dead Horses. A scouting party of White Legs had set up some bear traps were patrolling the area. Once again, Waking Cloud wanted to avoid confrontation. She suggested letting the scouts move and disarm the traps once they were out of sight. Kelsey explained that they would just set more traps once they found out their traps were gone. It was becoming clear to her that the Sorrows were very good hunters, but were severely lacking in combat against other humans. Thankfully, Kelsey did not, as the White Leg scouts learned to their great albeit brief surprise.

The last task involved a large cave the Yao Guai nested in, further east. This was also close to the path connecting the two tribes, as well as the trail east, so if the bears decided to come out and hunt, they would cause serious problems for the Sorrows. Kelsey didn't feel like exploring the entire cave to make sure it was clear, so instead she brought some explosives along. She would place them in select locations in the caverns, to make sure that the bears could only exit into areas that were too far from the action to cause problems. Waking Cloud was surprised that for this last task Kelsey opted for stealth, but decided not to question her about this.

On the way back, Kelsey tried to learn more about Waking Cloud. She didn't share a lot, but she did mention she was anxious to rejoin her family. When the White Legs invaded Zion, the children, elderly, and sick evacuated, including Waking Cloud's three children. Her husband volunteered to guide the evacuation, but this was some time ago and the hunters who stayed behind have had no news. When the two of them got back to the Sorrows' camp, Kelsey asked Daniel about the previous evacuation. He tried to pretend he didn't have news, but Kelsey could tell he was lying and pressed him on this. He revealed that the evacuees were intercepted by White Leg warriors and her husband died to allow the rest to flee to safety, but asked Kelsey not to reveal this information to Waking Cloud, for fear she would not be an effective intermediary between himself and the rest of the Sorrows. Barely able to mask her disgust, Kelsey told him she had a right to know. He questioned who she was to decide to place this burden on her, completely missing the irony of his decision to hide the truth. Kelsey said as much to him and he reluctantly agreed that Waking Cloud should be told. Kelsey immediately found her again and told her what had happened. She was incensed at Daniel's presumption, but agreed that she needed to concentrate on the problems with the White Legs and that confronting Daniel could wait until later.

By that point, Joshua had also arrived with plenty Dead Horse scouts. It was time to decide whether to evacuate or take the fight to the White Legs. Both the New Canaanites agreed that, since they each favoured a different course of action, they would listen to the unbiased outsider's opinion. It was up to Kelsey to decide what to do next.

And next time, she will. Which is utter bullshit. The tribes should be deciding this stuff for themselves. Doesn't even have to be democratically, given that these religious assholes are allergic to equality. There are such things as tribal elders, tribal councils, and so on. Whatever, we'll fix their problems, if only because the way home is held hostage behind them and Kelsey isn't about to massacre the entire valley for it. Even though she very easily could. And this is the real evil option here, which the game doesn't advertise. You could skip all this shit by killing people. An expedient solution, which the player can take to avoid having to do the more socially responsible thing of offering something of value (work) in exchange for the thing of value she needs (the map to leave). Even at its worst, New Vegas is a better roleplaying game than pretty much every other game with a moral choice system out there.

Waking Cloud's sidequest is also a (minor) choice. You can tell her the truth and risk her getting angry at Daniel, lie so that she is temporarily mollified, or agree with Daniel to not bring the topic up. Here, again, Daniel shows his paternalistic, arrogant, and selfish attitude. He lies to us and himself that his lies are for the benefit of the Sorrows, but in reality he's just treating the tribe like children. Anyway, the decision affects what happens with Waking Cloud at the end of the DLC (just as Follows-Chalk's interest in experiencing life in civilised lands affects his ending). In this case, she will forgive Daniel, and take another husband, from the Dead Horses. And make him stay close to home. If we had lied to her, she'd turn bitter and cause problems between the Sorrows and the New Canaanites.

Not really much to say about the tasks Daniel sent us to do. You can do one of two things for them (other than getting the map he needs), but there isn't much meat to them either way. What might be slightly more interesting is something I avoided talking about: Randall Clark. He was a soldier who lived around the time of the nuclear war and took refuge there after the nukes fell. Eventually, he became a figure of worship for the Sorrows, who believed him to be the god that the New Canaanites (i.e. mormons) worshipped. A lot of caves in Zion have his makeshift camps in them, including his logs, so one can learn a lot about him (and even find his remains), but honestly... I wasn't very interested in his story. I guess I'll mention that when a bunch of Vault dwellers from Vault-22 had escaped to Zion, a woman in the group separated from the rest because the men mistreated her, only to get caught in one of Clark's bear traps. And then she became his wife. After he nursed her back to health, but still.

[Mitillos]

What's your hunch?

[Mitillos]

Correct! Of course, I already said I'd do that, back in post #69, but still. :þ

Kelsey realised that the Sorrows were hunters, not warriors. She believed that an assault would lead to too many unnecessary casualties. And for what? So that Joshua could indulge in his bloodlust, while claiming that his religion's moral code justified anything? If his plan involved using the strengths of the Sorrows in some way, perhaps by teaching them guerilla tactics to use against the White Legs, maybe Kelsey could see the wisdom in it. But as things stood, she did not consider that option a reasonable one. Not that Daniel's plan was much better. When the White Legs managed to catch up to the Sorrows again, would they continue running? Eventually, there would be no more places to run. She tried explaining to Waking Cloud that their priorities should be on creating strong defenses and improving their combat skills and technology. Then, they would be able to either negotiate peace or defeat the White Legs, from a position of strength. Annoyingly, Daniel and Joshua could easily help them with this, but neither of them seemed remotely interested in doing so.

When Kelsey told the Canaanites her opinion, Daniel was delighted and Joshua was annoyed. They seemed to expect this, however, because the entire camp was ready to go at a moment's notice. Daniel left with the Sorrows, but Joshua joined Kelsey. He requested that they go interfere with the plans of the White Legs, if only to help the Sorrows' escape go more smoothly. Kelsey shrugged and agreed. Their first target was an old ranger station very close to the Sorrows' camp, which the White Legs had converted to a combination storehouse, watchpost, and prison. The goal here was two-fold. Kill the White Legs before they could spot the Sorrows escaping and letting the rest of their tribe know, and release three Sorrows prisoners held there, so they could join the rest. This proved extremely easy, due to Joshua's combat presence. He rushed the White Legs, ignoring the bullets hitting him, and easily killed them with his .45s.

Their second target was a bridge to the south-east, leading to the trail the Sorrows would need to use. The White Legs regularly patrolled and trapped this bridge, so they'd have to kill the patrols and disarm the traps. This proved a little harder to do, because of interference from geckos, some yao guai that were trapped outside their cave, and even some cazadores. The five-way battle was hectic and violent, but between Joshua's pistols and Kelsey's plasma rifle, in the end they were the only ones left alive. Crossing the bridge, they arrived at the burial mounds of the Sorrows. Several White Legs had taken it upon themselves to desecrate the area. Some Sorrows hunters had noticed this and were sneaking around, preparing to attack them. Kelsey wasn't about to let her previous efforts go to waste, so she snuck to their hiding spot and told them to rejoin the escaping convoy, promising to stop the White Legs. They were disappointed, but agreed to this, so Kelsey and Joshua set about killing the White Legs.

By this point, the Sorrows had made it past the bridge and were on their way to the tunnel they would use to escape. Unfortunately, the White Legs expected this, so a warband led by their leader, Salt-Upon-Wounds, was in a stand-off with the Sorrows. Kelsey and Joshua started shooting at them from a distance, at which point Salt-Upon-Wounds shouted that he would kill all of them and earn the approval of Caesar. Kelsey aimed her plasma rifle at his head and shot him once. His warriors stared in fear as he melted into a green puddle, but not for long, as Joshua's bullets made sure they would never again be afraid of anything. Joshua removed Salt-Upon-Wounds' helmet and power fist and offered these to Kelsey. He also gave her his armour and pistol, and offered her a copy of the scripture of his religion. She refused the last item instead getting the map back home from Daniel, and leaving for the south.

And the first DLC, Honest Hearts, is over. At the end, you also get Follows-Chalk's headdress (a baseball cap sporting a number of tribal adornments), as well as Daniel's outfit and hat. The only item I find useful in there is Joshua's armour, but I won't really be using it. We're going to get some armour I prefer pretty soon anyway, so all of these items will be stored in ED-E.

So, what happens if you decide not to evacuate? Well, there are no sidequests, you just go on a massive killing spree with Joshua, towards the southwest of the valley. Eventually, after killing dozens of warriors, you find Salt-Upon-Wounds, who is being threatened by Joshua and begs you to make him stop. You can either talk them down and have the White Legs leave, let Joshua kill Salt-Upon-Wounds and let the rest go, or kill the leader yourself. Then you are given the same items and leave for the Mojave.

In both cases you are treated to a slideshow, telling you the consequences of your actions and the future of the tribes and people you met. Most of the time, either the ethics of a choice or the outcome in the ending slides will be enough for me to decide what I think the best course of action is. Not so in Honest Hearts. As I mentioned in a previous post, there are no good options, there are no good outcomes in Zion. Here, one really has to decide what they themselves believe is the best of a bad situation and go with it. At least we gave Waking Cloud some peace of mind.

[Mitillos]

Honestly, the problem here was all the "civilised" people. Caesar manipulating the White Legs so they'd handle his personal vendetta against someone nobody cares about any more, Daniel treating the Sorrows like children, Joshua using the situation as an outlet for his anger and feelings of impotence...

Well, that's the problem, internally. As a player, my problem was that I personally found Zion boring. Usually in New Vegas, you have some idea of what you are doing for each quest. In Honest Hearts, you can switch your brain off for a few hours, following the arrows on the map, and the only time you might get confused is during the drugs thing. I think this makes this the least enjoyable of the DLCs. There's two more that are alright, and one I consider really good. I'm just not sure how to do a write-up for it, because more than half of it is dialogue. Maybe I'll try to find a youtube video again, like with No-Bark.

But yeah, fuck Zion, hooray for the Mojave, where a courier can actually do good.

[Mitillos]

Apologies for the long absence. I was distracted by other things.

The White Legs kept their word. Kelsey's journey back to the Mojave was without incident and soon she was reunited with ED-E and Veronica. She decided to make her way from the Vegas general area towards the southeast, picking up whatever jobs needed doing along the way. Their first stop was camp McCarran, as Kelsey knew that the director of the science department had some work for her. When they arrived, Veronica was surprised at the number of NCR soldiers milling about. Then again, she knew that the Brotherhood had lost Helios to NCR's superior numbers, so this was not particularly surprising. Hildern was no less pompous than the previous time they met. He asked Kelsey to search Vault 22 for some data on food production, to help avoid shortages. This seemed straightforward enough, but as Kelsey was leaving, Hildern's assistant told her that others had been sent there previously and didn't make it back. One of these missing people was Keely, a ghoul working as a researcher for the OSI. The assistant, Angela Williams, was anxious to have Keely return safely, so she asked Kelsey to keep an eye out for her. Promising she would, Kelsey returned to Hildern, to ask him why he had not mentioned the previous attempts and the danger entailed by the task. He foolishly tried to claim it didn't make a difference, not realising that this would normally have resulted in him getting punched by both women standing in front of him. He was lucky, however, as something he said triggered another audio log in ED-E's memory banks. This second file was intended for scientists at Navarro and informed them that ED-E contained a large number of data on several subjects of research. Hildern seemed about to suggest that they leave ED-E with him, but seeing Kelsey's look, he thought better of it and kept quiet.

The group left McCarran and made their way towards Novac. From the sounds of it, Vault 22 had been used for botanical research, so there was probably plenty of food there. From Williams' description, Keely also sounded like a very tough and capable ghoul, so she'd probably be fine, even if they didn't make a beeline straight for her. Besides, she felt guilty about tricking Manny, so she wanted to go and deal with the feral ghoul problem, if she could. Stopping only to trade for a few items and supplies at the 188, they made their way through Novac and towards the mountains just west of the small town. The moment they were out of hearing distance, a feral ghoul started rushing them along an old disused road. It didn't make it far before ED-E had burned it to a crisp, but it was still disconcerting. It seemed to have no sentience left and it was still radioactive. After two centuries, most ghouls were emitting at the level of normal background radiation, so this was very unusual. More unusual still, the amount of radiation dropped after a minute or so. Continuing along the road towards the REPCONN test site, they were attacked by several more of these feral ghouls, as well as a nightkin, hefting a thick pole of rebar with concrete on the end, and using it as a makeshift hammer. For some reason, he was not invisible, despite the preference nightkin had for using stealthboys at all times.

Eventually, the group made their way to the test site. A large sculpture of a rocket dominated the area in front of the old office building. Across from it was an enormous dome, evidently covering the launchpad. They made their way inside and found a nightkin fighting three feral ghouls. All four of them were incensed at the interruption and attacked Kelsey, but thankfully Veronica was now strong enough to kill all of them with one punch each. Once they were dispatched, an intercomm on a nearby wall crackled and a voice instructed them to come to the top floor through the rocket construction area on the east side of the building. This meant fighting several more feral ghouls, but at last they had found someone willing and able to speak, so they made their way there.

Alright, we're at REPCONN's test site. This quest will take a while, so this is a short post because of that. I hope to have the entire thing be covered in the next post.

The comment about the number of NCR soldiers was the second trigger we needed for Veronica. A third one will be coming in the very next post, and then we canfinally find out what that's all about. Similarly, ED-E has revealed both his hidden audio logs, so now we're just waiting for the other shoe to drop on his storyline.

Not much else to say here. Vault 22 can wait, and it will. We'll be dealing with the REPCONN test site and afterwards we'll be making our way to the southeast of the Mojave, to see what's going on there.

[Mitillos]

Holy shit, a third person posted! Hello, Cheetory. Are you enjoying Kelsey's story? I hope everyone is, although so far "everyone" has basically been Ythan and my non-ms friend (and both apparently

are

enjoying it, so that's good).

At the top of the stairs and past a secure door, Kelsey found the man speaking on the intercomm. He was a short, balding man named Chris, speaking in a gravelly voice and apparently under the impression he was a ghoul, calling Kelsey a "smoothskin", with the inflection of a racial epithet. This explained why he had sought this place out, as the entire floor was full of ghouls, though thankfully none of them had gone feral like the ones in the surrounding area. Their leader was a glowing ghoul, named Jason Bright, either conveniently or ironically. He explained that he and his followers had congregated here to undertake a "great journey" that he had "seen visions of", sent to him by "the creator". Unfortunately, some "invisible demons" decided to take over the basement and were threatening the ghouls with death, thus preventing them from accessing the launchpad. A number of them were driven mad, from a combination of being stuck here for too long and the radiation that had changed them, and were confined to the ground floor. The "demons" had let a few of them loose outside, which is why they had caused problems for Novac. It was clear to Kelsey that these "demons" were nightkin; also that this journey was likely to lead to a great many deaths among the ghouls. However, both Jason and his followers insisted on going through with it. Given that the alternative was to let them all go insane and then be killed by either equally insane supermutants or the snipers of Novac and possibly other towns, Kelsey decided to help them out. Veronica was very interested in what Jason had to say about his group looking for some kind of "promised land", as this reminded her of her mentor in the Brotherhood, Father Elijah. She finally decided to tell Kelsey what had been on her mind for a very long time. She could see that the Brotherhood had to change its ways, if it hoped to survive in the wasteland. Other groups were doing much better, simply because they were willing to cooperate and share technologies, instead of hoarding them for fear of misuse. She asked Kelsey if they could go to the Brotherhood bunker soon, so she could try to convince the elder of this. Kelsey agreed to go there, the next time it would be convenient. For now, however, there were more urgent things to take care of, so she asked Veronica and ED-E to stay with Jason while she scouted the basement out.

As expected, the "demons" in the basement were nightkin. Their stealth-boys made them invisible, but anyone familiar with the technology and patient enough to sit staring, could spot the telltale shimmer that sometimes accompanied the mutants, as they moved too near a wall. Thankfully, Kelsey had brought a few stealth-boys of her own, so she was able to sneak past the mutants milling about and get to their leader. This particular nightkin, Davison, had two characteristics that stuck out. The first was that he was not using a stealth-boy at that moment. The second was that he had a brahmin skull on a desk, apparently calling it "Antler", talking at length with it, and even treating it like a superior. Clearly, the nightkin insanity had affected this poor soul, as well. Thankfully, he was lucid enough to explain that he and his companions were here looking for a large shipment of stealth-boys (hundreds of them), which they needed because they were close to running out. He said that if they could get to it they would leave, allowing the ghouls access to the basement. Unfortunately, they hadn't found it yet, and there was one room they could not access. A ghoul holed up in it with a bunch of powerful weapons and filled the place with traps, killing several nightkin who tried to go in. Kelsey didn't feel like fighting a large group of nightkin, so she agreed to try to get the shipment from this ghoul.

The ghoul turned out to be Harland, a mercenary who joined Jason's group as a bodyguard, in return for ammunition and "companionship with the fine-looking ghoulettes" who were willing to provide it. As it happened, he and one of said ghoulettes go separated from the rest of Jason's group (as well as each other) when the nightkin arrived, and were now trapped in the basement. He managed to set up a defensive position on a raised platform in this warehouse and used dozens of bear traps and landmines to keep the nightkin at bay. He was used to rough living, so he was fine with having to get sustenance from whatever vermin were unlucky enough to come through here, as well as setting aside a corner for relieving himself when the need arose. He was, however, more than happy to leave, if he could be reunited with his companion. He asked Kelsey to find her for him, so they could reunite with the group upstairs. Getting somewhat annoyed, Kelsey left to explore the rest of the basement, for the missing ghoul.

Thankfully, this task was not very difficult, as the nightkin were completely unable to detect her, not being used to having to deal with anyone but themselves using stealth-boys. She was even able to steal a key from one of them, which gave her access to the innermost area of the basement, where she found Harland's missing friend. Sadly, she had already died. Apparently the nightkin had imprisoned her and left her to starve. Kelsey returned to Harland to tell him the bad news. He seemed to expect as much, but he was still saddened by this. Thanking Kelsey, he made his way back to the top floor. Kelsey disarmed all the traps she could find, and looked for the stealth-boys. What she found, instead, was a computer terminal with several messages sent and received, concerning the shipment of stealth-boys being sent there by mistake and then returned immediately. Just as Harland had been waiting in this room unnecessarily, so did the nightkin waste their time looking for stealth-boys here. When she explained this to Davison, he initially disbelieved her, but then decided that Antler agreed with Kelsey and so he took the rest of the nightkin and left, following this next clue to the shipment's whereabouts. At last, the ghouls could access the basement. On hearing the news, Jason thanked Kelsey and directed his group to the launchpad, somehow managing to get the feral ones to follow, as well. He said that they had to start making preparations, but they would need more help, if they were to manage to make this journey. He asked Kelsey to talk to Chris in the control room overlooking the launchpad, so he could explain to Kelsey what else they would need to use the rockets.

Kelsey decided to use this opportunity to ask Jason about Chris and how he joined them. Jason said that Chris had left human society and decided he was a ghoul. When he first arrived, the ghouls tried to convince him he was, in fact, human, but this only managed to anger him. They soon discovered that he was much more skilled in matters of technology than they were, so they decided that he was sent to them by "the creator" to help them with their "great journey". They did not intend to take him with them, as the radiation would almost certainly kill him, but they needed his help, so they decided to drop the subject of his humanity. Kelsey joined Chris and immediately told him to stop thinking he was a ghoul. Predictably, this angered him, but it also allowed Kelsey to discuss the subject with him, without the pretense the ghouls operated under, thus getting to the source of his delusion. He was originally in Vault 34, but unlike everyone else there, he was more interested in making and fixing machines, than shooting things with guns. Unfortunately, he was also something of a neurotic hypochondriac, so he was convinced that being forced to work on maintaining the vault's nuclear reactor was irradiating and mutating him. When he started losing his hair, he was convinced that he was turning into a ghoul. As Kelsey was more familiar with psychology than Jason's group was, she slowly managed to convince Chris that the reason he was up here and not at the launchpad was not so he could "oversee all repairs", but so he would not be killed by the radiation.

Once he realised his folly, Chris was enraged. The ghouls had tricked him! He felt betrayed, upset, and vengeful. He would sabotage the rockets, and kill the ghouls that had so cruelly lied to him all this time. However, Kelsey was expecting all this and calmed him down. She explained that it was his own insistence that he was a ghoul which caused all this, and that mass murder would not make his anger subside. In fact, he could take pride in the fact that he would help these ghouls and they would praise his name for helping them on their journey. And even if he'd be left behind by the ghouls, he could now go to the nearby town of Novac, as the hero who stopped the feral ghouls from repeatedly attacking. All of this seemed to help, and Chris calmed down enough to see how everything Kelsey said both made sense and was in his benefit. So, he explained that there were still some repairs he needed to carry out, but he would also need Kelsey to find and bring two things that the rockets would require to fly. The first was a cluster of control modules. Unfortunately, salvagers seemed to have taken the available ones from REPCONN. The second was some atomic fuel, in a properly sealed container. The fuel here had leaked out over a century ago and was now inert and unusable. Kelsey left the test site, thinking about where she might find these items.

And this quest is big enough to warrant more than a single post. In fact, its scope is fairly small, as it's only concentrating around the REPCONN test site and Novac areas, but as we have seen, it's got layers of subquests. Which you don't have to do. You can go into REPCONN guns blazing, kill all the ghouls, then go back to Manny and tell him the job is done. Or you can agree to help them, kill the nightkin, and then help the ghouls go on their journey. Or agree to help the nightkin too, kill Harland, then have the nightkin leave, then help the ghouls. Or even do what we did, then help Chris sabotage the rockets. Or find the dead ghoul, kill Harland for wasting your time, find the shipment info, kill the nightkin for wasting your time, get told that there's more work to be done on the rockets anyway, kill the ghouls for wasting your time, go back to Novac and kill Manny for wasting your time, then probably have to kill everyone else in town, because they'll be hostile to you. Or another option, that I'll mention next time.

Note how the more evil choices are generally the more expedient ones, which help the player out in the short term, but also carry risks (e.g. death from combat). This (as in all of New Vegas, not just this one quest) is one of the more nuanced moral choice systems in video games. You don't get more attractive/ugly as you do good/evil stuff, people don't know that you're good or evil from things you've done elsewhere. You do a thing and depending on whether said thing is going to help others or harm them, they react appropriately. It's still not a perfect system, what with everyone in a given town instantly knowing through telepathy that somehow you were involved in some way (whether positive or negative) with whatever event took place, but games always come with limitations and this is one of the least intrusive ones. And it makes slightly more sense as a reputation you get with a given group, rather than a good-evil karma measurement (which, as previously discussed, does exist, but only Cass really cares).

Also, I want to point out how sad the stories are in REPCONN. A group of (let's face it) complete idiots, letting religion guide them to a nearly completely suicidal predicament, with the only way out being a marginally less suicidal one. A second group, suffering from what is basically an addiction, developing a severe monomania for something that isn't even where they're looking. A romantic fool, holding out hope that his companion would return, despite not doing so in weeks. A genius idiot, who overfixates on minor things. And not a single one of them trying to meet the rest halfway in candid conversation, if only to get out of their current stalemate. One could make allowances for the nightkin in their basically-drug-addled state, but everyone else is just being an asshole, as self-centred as a gyroscope.

Now, where can we find some rocket fuel and thruster modules...

EDIT: I forgot to mention. Veronica has asked us to take her to the Brotherhood bunker. This means that her personal quest, I Could Make You Care, is now properly activated. Hooray!

[Mitillos]

Technically, he left his vault before that faction formed.

Kelsey decided to visit the only salvager she knew in the area: Old Lady Gibson and her really good dogs! What do you mean she's only going there because she's missed the really good dogs? You be quiet. Anyway, Gibson had indeed salvaged some working thruster control modules and, since she was never going to find another buyer for this kind of equipment, agreed to sell them for 250 caps. Kelsey played with the really good dogs as Gibson looked around for the things. The dogs were really good and tried to catch ED-E as he floated around. The transaction thus completed, Kelsey left Gibson and her very good dogs in search for the radioactive fuel the rockets needed.

Chris had mentioned a pre-war chemical plant just east of Novac, so she made her way in that direction. The plant, Clark Field, was in ruins and overrun by really angry and slightly radioactive geckos. After eliminating them from a distance, Kelsey noticed a run-down car with a corpse in a radiation suit next to it. This was good, as she wasn't keen on approaching the highly radioactive ruins. The corpse belonged to a prospector who decided to call himself Mr. RADical, after he found the aforementioned suit and found that it protected him from radiation. According to a holotape journal he kept, he believed that the suit offered complete protection from radiation, even going so far as dismissing his radiation poisoning symptoms as "something he ate". The poor, stupid bastard decided to go to increasingly radioactive places and this was the result. Luckily for Kelsey, he had even managed to acquire some of the stuff Chris needed for the rockets. Kelsey made sure it was properly sealed, took it, and made her way back to the REPCONN facility.

The items were in good condition, so Chris was able to finish the necessary repairs to the rockets. Jason made a long, boring, meaningless speech about the promised land and thanked the two humans for helping them along their great journey, for which one step remained. Someone would have to go to the top floor of the facility and activate the launch sequence from there. Chris wanted to stay and monitor everything, so this task fell to Kelsey. She made her way upstairs and reached the observation deck for the launch tests. Fiddling around with the console, she found the destination of the rockets. Doing some quick calculations, she realised that the rockets wouldn't quite get the ghouls as far as they intended to go, so they'd be faced with a long trek afterwards. To make this shorter, she altered the trajectories slightly, to make them land closer to the intended destination. And with that, she turned towards the missile silo, and started the launch sequence.



Pleased with a job well done, she found Chris and they made their way back to Novac, were he would resettle and try to get over his embarrassment over the fact he believed himself to be a ghoul for all this time.

Alright, Come Fly With Me is done. (The quests in New Vegas are named after songs, mostly, but not always, country songs.) In my actual playthrough, the launch was during the day, but I couldn't find a video that was just the unbugged good ending in the day. Oh, and don't worry about that one rocket that veered off course. It somehow makes it there fine, too. Still, bang-up job there, REPCONN.

Gibson normally wants 500 caps for the modules, but will give a discount with barter or speech, or even give them for free if a male courier flirts with her. As for the isotope, the shop in the dinosaur statue in Novac has a bunch of rocket souvenirs from REPCONN, all of them containing the actual radioactive rocket fuel. Five are enough for Chris, but you have to buy the entire stock to get them. Or pick the lock to the room they're kept in and steal them. So, yeah, REPCONN was selling these things with a radioactive isotope in them, as souvenirs for kids. Presumably by actually marketing them as containing "real rocket fuel inside!". Isn't that a quintessential '50s American business thing? The retrofuturism of Fallout is magnificent in how well it satirises us.

So, the alternative way to do this quest (other than what was in the previous post) is to sabotage the flight, even after you tell Chris not to sabotage it. That's right, you can tell him he's not a killer and he couldn't live with himself if he did it, but then go and do it yourself. Why? Well, what if he changes his mind and tells the ghouls that you were planning to sabotage the rockets with him? Then you lose the element of surprise, you anti-ghoul bigot. Or maybe you can find Chris in Novac afterwards and tell him that you sabotaged the rockets and he gets pissed off at you because those ghouls declared him a saint. I'm not sure if he turns hostile on that, as I've never done it. I'm doing a super-evil legion-sided playthrough now and in that one I just convinced him to sabotage the launch himself. My character is too stupid to do the sabotage: He has low intelligence, which is why he will join the legion. That's right, I'm calling out all the legion fanboys out there.

Also, Gibson's dogs are really good. Here are Rey, Basura, Reina, Colmillo, Fiel, and Audaz from the Fallout wiki.

[Mitillos]

With the ghouls gone, the people of Novac considered Kelsey one of them and were also glad to have Chris join them. Presumably his technical skills would be really useful to them. Cliff Briscoe, who ran the gift shop in the dinosaur, had taken over the motel after Jeanie-May's death. To show the town's gratitude to Kelsey, he offered her a room of her own in the motel. It was nice and cozy and had clothes, food, and drinks that the previous tenant had left behind. More importantly, it had a bed, and Kelsey was badly in need of some rest.

When she woke up, ED-E's speakers started up again. Another voice, very different from the ones in the logs started speaking. Veronica was startled by it; she recognised the voice from the transmission, as it belonged to Lorenzo, a knight from the Brotherhood of Steel. Lorenzo said they picked up some transmissions about ED-E and would be interested in examining the little robot, so he invited Kelsey to their bunker in the Hidden Valley between Sloan, the NCR correctional facility, Black Mountain, and Primm. Veronica looked like she was about to comment on this, but ED-E had a second message coming through. This was from an April Martimer, a scientist with the Followers of the Apocalypse. She made a similar invitation, pointing out that unlike the Brotherhood, they would share the technology with everyone for the greater good. It was obvious that this stung Veronica's pride a bit, but she couldn't deny it was all true. They would take ED-E to the Followers, so that the information he had could be studied and disseminated. However, this would not be for some time. They would first explore the rest of the south-east of the Mojave, before making their way back to Vegas.

The only hostiles they encountered on their way southeast from Novac was a group of Viper bandits armed with explosives. They didn't put up much of a fight and the wildlife didn't seem interested in Kelsey's little group at all. After a short journey, they saw an enormous antenna on top of a nearby mountain. Carefully climbing up they found a small NCR military outpost, Ranger Station Echo. As with most such ranger reconnaissance and observation stations, there was a ranger in charge, a communications officer responsible for sending information to headquarters, and a few soldiers. The strange part was that, other than the ranger and comm officer, everyone here was a ghoul. They were mostly surly, but not unfriendly and, after a brief respite, the group continued along the road southwest.

Eventually, they came to an area that seemed to be covered in a strange green fog. A small squad of NCR soldiers stopped them from going any further. The sergeant in charge, a man named Astor, said that the radiation in the area made the place very dangerous and advised Kelsey to take appropriate precautions if she intended to go into the nearby destroyed town of Searchlight. He explained that the Legion had somehow found out that some nuclear waste had been stored in the town during the nuclear war. Two of their legionnaires had managed to sneak in and open the containers with the radioactive material. They died immediately, but so did everyone else in the area. Astor and his squad only managed to survive because they were on patrol at the time. Everyone else was either dead or had become a feral ghoul. Kelsey told him she'd have a look in the town and he asked her to return the dogtags of his ghoulified comrades, if she could.

The third and final shoe in ED-E's quest has officially dropped. It's a floating robot in the shape of a ball, it can wear three shoes, if it wants. As mentioned above, we will be taking him to the Followers at the Old Mormon Fort, in Freeside. More on that when we get around to it, though.

Searchlight has a green filter over it. It's quite radioactive and, unlike most radioactive places, it's radioactive over a very large area. The way radiation works in the game is that when you are exposed to an area or object that is radioactive, you accumulate rads at a rate which depends on the strength of the source and your radiation resistance. For every 200 rads you get a more severe form of radiation sickness and at 1000 rads you die. Our 10 endurance gives us 20% resistance, and a space suit the ghouls at REPCONN left behind gives us another 40% (this will be our penultimate armour; we'll switch to another one eventually, but most of the game we'll be a 50's conception of a spacewoman, with a red military beret and glasses). A single dose of Rad-X is enough to raise us to the cap of 85% resistance for 4 minutes. Eventually, we can also take the radiation resistance perk, which is enough to also get us to the cap (as long as we wear the space suit), without using our meds. This will not be enough to stop all radiation, obviously, but it will reduce it to manageable levels. Any radiation we do take, we can eliminate with RadAway. I am happy they changed this from how it used to be in the original Fallout games. In those, there was a chance of getting addicted to the stuff. Since I didn't like the idea, I avoided using them (and all other addictive substances), but in New Vegas it's perfectly safe to take these babies by the armful. The other option for getting rid of our rads is a perk called rad absorption, which simply removed rads over time. I will be taking it, but it's unlocked at level 28, which is a very long way away. For reference, I think we're around level 18 or so, at this point.

We'll be in the south part of the map for some time, as we have a bunch of things to take care of. So, settle in, and grab your favourite green-tinted glasses, as Kelsey gets constantly hit with enough radiation to turn her into every version of the Hulk out there.

[Mitillos]

I just finished my super-evil Legion run... Generally, when it comes to RPGs with a morality system, I consider it a good idea to play both sides, to see everything the game has to offer. Games like KotOR, KotOR 2, and Jade Empire had such light/dark side paths, so I played them twice when I got them. But I wasn't really having fun the second time around. I was hating my choices. I wanted to play light side, again. With New Vegas, I did a Legion run because of the steam achievements. (Yes, I am an achievement hound.) But I still hated my character and having to control him. I wanted to change course and help the Mojave, instead of enslaving it. I think that actually speaks to Obsidian's designers' and writers' skill. They made me feel disgust over a bunch of 1s and 0s, just like they did in KotOR 2. Bioware also did that in the other two games I mentioned above, but not quite as strongly. Anyway, the saves for that game are now deleted, for ever. Next time I see Legion, they die in interesting ways.

Now I'm only missing two achievements, and they are for siding with [REDACTED]. That's right, I left the best for last, because I knew I would need it, after being a Legion shithead.

[Mitillos]

Going through some personal stuff, so thread is on hiatus for now.

[Mitillos]

The personal stuff got replaced by work stuff, but now things have settled down, so back to normal. I actually typed up this post before the hiatus, but accidentally lost it before hitting submit...

grumble grumble...

Going through the radiation-filled Searchlight was more of an annoyance than anything. There were a few radscorpions and several ghouls dressed in NCR military uniforms. Thankfully, ED-E's sensors didn't depend on sight, and Veronica's fists worked in close quarters only, so the low visibility in the haze didn't really matter. The ghouls did indeed have dogtags, so Kelsey collected them for Astor. Unfortunately, while he said there were 10 missing members in his squad, she only found 9 ghouls roaming the area. She decided to check the various buildings, for the last one, but only after she boosted the Searchlight defenses a bit. NCR had set up automated turrets protected by sandbag walls all around the town. Since nobody had maintained them for a while, they eventually stopped working, but the control stations were still active. Kelsey hacked as many as she could and re-enabled the turrets, just in case more enemies showed up, and started going through any buildings that were still standing.

The police station and fire station were locked, so she doubted a ghoul could have made its way in. The school was open, but there were only a couple of geckos inside. The two churches were destroyed, but their basements were still intact. One had more geckos looking for food, but the other was actually populated. This second church basement had been used as a storage facility for the NCR military and was full of useful equipment. Three prospectors were also here, looking for a shipment of radiation suits that was supposed to have been sent to Searchlight. Their leader, Logan, said they were hired by the Crimson Caravan company to scavenge whatever equipment they could find in the police and fire stations. Kelsey managed to hack the NCR terminal and find out that the shipment never made it to the town. The crates made it to Nipton, but then were taken by the Legion. The prospectors didn't want to go outside with all the radiation with no protection, so Logan offered Kelsey a share of the pay from Crimson Caravans if she would go and find them the suits. She agreed and went back to exploring Searchlight.

A single house still stood, miraculously undamaged, on the edge of the town. Kelsey did find the last ghoulified NCR soldier, Kyle Edwards, inside, but amazingly he was not feral. He was simply sheltering here, away from the radscoprions and more or less waiting for death. She explained to him that Astor thought the entire squad had gone feral and had asked Kelsey to put them out of their misery, but she wasn't about to kill a non-feral ghoul. Edwards believed that his soldier days were over, but Kelsey told him about Ranger Station Echo and how it was staffed almost entirely by ghoul soldiers. He agreed to go there if Kelsey would clear the area of radscorpions (as he was phobic) and make sure that Astor and his remaining squadmates weren't going to just kill him on sight.

Though Kelsey had killed several radscorpions before checking the house, there were several more around, including a couple of really large ones. Thankfully, they were just as easy to kill as the rest, and soon there was a clear, safe path between the turrets to the north of Searchlight. Astor was also not interested in killing Edwards if he wasn't feral, so Kelsey went back to deliver the good news to Edwards. He thanked her, left his dogtags, and left for Echo. Astor was glad to have the whole thing tied up without loose ends and was impressed with how quickly Kelsey had finished this. He asked her if she would be willing to do one more thing for the NCR. He had reports that the Legion had set up a staging area in Cottonwood Cove, to the east of Searchlight. This gave them a foothold on this side of the Colorado, which is how they managed to take Nelson and Nipton, as well as send their raiding squads in the Mojave. He knew that they were too well-defended for an assault in Cottonwood, but it would be very helpful if Kelsey got information on the Legion's troop movements, so that the NCR could properly defend their supplies and any trading caravans. As she wasn't associated with the NCR, the Legion would probably not attack her on sight. She agreed to go, once she finished a couple of things she still needed to take care of, and made her way towards Nipton, to find out more about the missing supply shipment.

So, Edwards can be dealt with in several ways. You can kill him, you can pickpocket him, you can lie to him about having killed the radscorpions, so they kill him when he leaves, you can persuade him to attack Astor in self-defense, you can convince him to leave the army and try for a different kind of life. Or, you can send him to Echo, if you have already visited it. He will make his way there and, as long as he's not killed by random enemies or get stuck in the geography, you can find him there later.

Logan's quest points us towards Nipton, to see if anyone there saw what happened to the supplies. Unfortunately, as we already know, the town was killed by Legion, but we'll have a quick shufti, just in case someone made a not or something.

Not really much else to add here. We're at a point in the game where I'm mostly just taking care of various quests, while building up the will to go to another DLC.

Oh, right. I recently went to Searchlight again with the Animal Friend perk. Most geckos don't attack you when you have it, so searching the school and first church basement was a weird experience.

[Mitillos]

Ooh, the Arcade subforum is visible again! Honestly, I completely forgot about this thread until now. Let's see if I can get back into the groove.

The trip to Nipton was uneventful, but it was nice to be out of the green haze for a while. When she got there, Kelsey realised she had not explored the second largest building in the town. In her haste to find out what the smoke and lottery were about, she had walked right past the general store standing just past the west entrance to the town. The place was ransacked and mostly empty, but one man sat in a chair in front of the cash register, holding his legs. When he saw Kelsey he immediately became annoyed and distraught, calling her the Powder Gangers' grim reaper. He seemed convinced she was here to kill him, but made no effort to prevent this. After Kelsey calmed him down, the reason for Boxcar's passivity became clear: both his legs were broken. He had been the second place winner of the legion's twisted lottery. He explained how the powder gangers had planned to wait for some NCR soldiers to go to the town brothel, let them fall asleep, and go in and grab them to ransom off to the NCR. Unfortunately for them, the legion had its own plans and they got caught up in the middle of it.

Since Boxcars was clearly in pain, Kelsey gave him 5 doses of Med-X to help him get through the ordeal (though he wouldn't let her splint his legs to help them heal faster). He was, however forthcoming with information about the missing NCR supplies, saying he saw "some Legion assholes carrying crates to a cave north of here" before they enslaved a lot of people in Nipton and took them East. It was clear he just wanted Kelsey to leave, so she obliged. She was fairly certain he intended to take all the Med-X in one go, sinking into painless overdose and death, but she felt there was nothing she could do about this, so she left.

The cave proved fairly easy to find and indeed held the missing supplies, including enough radiation suits for the prospectors in the Searchlight church basement. And so, Kelsey made her way back to them, so she could finally get on with the salvaging. Logan and his men were as surly and stand-offish as ever, but they didn't seem to be having any misgivings about bringing Kelsey along. And so, the group left the basement, to ransack the abandoned Searchlight police station.

And we will be seeing how that goes, in the next post.

Boxcars obviously has a different reaction if you are friendly with the powder gangers, but in both cases he just wants some Med-X, i.e. morphine. Although he indicates that he will be using it to OD, he never actually does, as this would probably cause even more issues than this guy already does. Specifically, if you meet him when you first come to Nipton, there is a chance his conversation will go buggy and you won't be able to get the supplies for Logan. Therefore, I ignored him until now. His comment about the Legion enslaving people also opens a quest where two powder gangers are being held by a small Legion raiding party in a temporary encampment between Novac and Searchlight. It's one of those things that will be taken care of without being properly spelled out in the story.

As for Med-X, it reduces damage you take and is addictive. I only held onto some to give to Julie Farkas in the Mormon Fort and to Boxcars here. At this point, I stop getting any more Med-X, because I want to ensure I have absolutely none on me when we get to... well, you'll see, eventually. Since money isn't an issue and the difficulty setting is low (so damage isn't a big deal either), I don't need Med-X. I do still need Rad-X and Radaway, what with Searchlight being an annoyingly irradiated area, but thankfully those aren't addictive, as I previously mentioned, so you can down them like m&ms. Eventually, Kelsey will have a perk that slowly reduces her radiation level over time, so Rad medication will become less relevant as well.

[Mitillos]

Somehow, there were feral ghouls in the police station. A locked building, with no apparent entrances. Kelsey started wondering if the cops and criminals had turned feral and were trapped inside by the rest of the town or the NCR. Nevertheless, they were easily dispatched now, and Kelsey liked to think she was putting them to rest, after all this time. Logan said they needed to find anything branded by the NCR and related to weapons, computers, or radios. A short search yielded three guns, three grenades, and some computer and radio parts that could be salvaged.

With nothing else to do at the police station, the group moved on to the fire station. This building was also locked and intact and did not have any ghouls. What it

did

have was a radscorpion the size of a large truck, and her brood. Thankfully, despite her impressive size, she was not significantly tougher or stronger than the (significantly smaller) giant scorpions one could find in the rest of the wasteland. With Veronica punching the stinger clean off the tail, and ED-E frying the creature's brain with his zapper, the fight was hectic but short and one-sided. A quick search of the building yielded more weapons and parts, so Kelsey was ready to finally leave this forsaken town. Unfortunately, Logan and his fellow prospectors had other plans. They never intended to give Kelsey her cut of the endeavour, so once they confirmed that they had everything of value, they attacked Kelsey. Kelsey wasn't sure why they expected to fare better than the scorpion who could kill them by accidentally walking over them, but once they were dead, she didn't even feel like grabbing the salvage, so she just left.

On her way out of Searchlight, Kelsey decided it was time to check out the foothold the Legion had secured on the west side of the Colorado. Cottonwood Cove was apparently a small bay surrounded by hills. It didn't sound particularly defensible to Kelsey, so she assumed the reason the NCR couldn't do anything about it was that it couldn't spare enough soldiers to counter the Legion's numerical advantage. In fact, on the hill northwest of the Cottonwood, Kelsey found an abandoned sniper station. Presumably an NCR ranger or two had been keeping an eye on Legion movements here, but were found and eliminated.

When she approached Cottonwood, Kelsey was stopped by a legionary, asking her what business she had here. Relying on the fact that she only fought the Legion at Nelson, and managed to remain unseen by everyone there until they were all dead, Kelsey managed to convince him that she was just a trader and was allowed in with a warning to not try anything funny. It was a good idea not to bring Boone here, as he would probably have just started shooting everyone, and Kelsey had a stealthier mission to carry out here.

Logan is a fucking idiot. And yeah, that's pretty much it. Scorpion's impressive, though, especially if you're a bit underleveled.

The sniper nest overlooking Cottonwood has a locked gun case which requires a lockpick skill of 100 (i.e. maximum) to unlock. Inside is the Gobi Campaign scout rifle, a unique version of the sniper rifle. There is a theory that this was the gun Boone used to kill his wife when she was being taken by the Legion as a slave, but as far as I can tell, this is just speculation. As for the rifle, I never use it and I never give it to Boone, either. If I'm using ranged weapons, I prefer energy, burst, or silenced weapons, depending on the situation. As for Boone, I think it's better to give him the anti-materiel rifle. If you give him both, he will select the Gobi, because it lists a higher DPS, but this is because of its higher rate of fire. The A-M rifle has the highest damage per shot of every conventional weapon. In fact, the only weapons that do more direct damage per shot are the Gauss rifle, the missile launcher, and the nuke launcher (as well as their unique versions). With this kind of damage, Boone can one-shot most enemies from a great distance, so higher DPS isn't as important. Especially since ED-E can easily take care of that, with his zapper. People might tell you that Boone's strength is 7 and the A-M rifle requires a strength of 8, but this just reduces accuracy. Boone's accuracy is so high that he can afford the penalty. So, yeah, my advice: Don't give Boone any rifles other than the A-M. And don't forget to give him incendiary and armour piercing ammunition for it.

Cottonwood is not hostile to you, unless you bring Boone along or start attacking. I think this is true, even if you have the worst possible reputation with the Legion. There's something about them not having received your description, so they don't know who you are, or something. I think that the idea is that this is one of the two places where, if you decide you want to side with the Legion, you can get started with doing quests for them, so you kind of need them to ignore your past animosity, as it were. In this case it's all moot, since Kelsey has managed to keep a neutral reputation with them.

Next time, we finish Cottonwood.

[Mitillos]

Kelsey has to struggle to do it, because she's fighting the instinct to tear their oesophagi out with her teeth.

[Mitillos]

The buildings in Cottonwood were mostly unusable and unused. Most of the legionaries had tents with bedrolls in for sleeping. One of the surviving buildings had apparently been a rest stop for fishermen, attached to a jetty for small boats to go out into the river. It was overlooked by a cliff, with a truck parked precariously on the edge, facing away. There were two other standing buildings: one was used for storage, the other looked like a headquarters, with a cage attached. At one time, the cage probably held dogs, but now it was occupied by three humans. A middle-aged woman and two children in their teens. All three had collars around their necks. The legionaries were not paying them much attention, so Kelsey approached surreptitiously to find out more.

The captives turned out to be Frank Weathers' family. They explained how they were ambushed by the Legion near Searchlight and how Frank hid instead of helping. They also mentioned that he was an abusive husband and father, so they were in no hurry to return to him, but they'd still like to escape their predicament of both being in a cage and wearing explosive collars. Kelsey was fairly certain she could unlock the cage and disarm the collars, but she couldn't be sure the legionaries wouldn't simply spot the fleeing captives and kill them. Instead, she found the slave master, and convinced him to sell them to her at a reduced price, by pretending that the daughter had pustular hypomyalgia (she felt really proud she came up with this on the spot). She then released the family who thanked her profusely and left for the old mormon fort, where the Followers of the Apocalypse would surely help them.

With the rescue completed, Kelsey turned her attention to Astor's request. The ground floor of the HQ building was unoccupied. It took only a few minutes to bug the radio and collect the raid intel. Unfortunately, the troop movement information was in the personal quarters of the centurion, on the floor above. While Kelsey was trying to figure out how she would get access to that, she heard the door above open and slam shut. Not daring to believe her luck, she exited the building and hid, waiting. Seconds later, the centurion walked past, towards the tents, presumably for an inspection. She couldn't afford to not act, so she rushed upstairs and found the info she was looking for, as well as some comic books about a barbarian hero. Smirking, she left both the building and Cottonwood, and made her way back to the outskirts of Searchlight, to report her success to Astor. He was pleased at the amount of information they would now have about the Legion's movement in the entire Mojave. Kelsey asked him if there was anything else she could do and he jokingly said something about going there and cleaning out that camp. When Kelsey agreed to do it, he was genuinely shocked and didn't think it could be done.

Kelsey, on the other hand, was convinced that it would be incredibly easy. She sent Veronica back to the 188, and went to Novac to get Boone. Kelsey felt he would get some much needed catharsis out of this, plus he'd be needed if her plan didn't work. When she told him they'd be going to Cottonwood, he said that he wouldn't hold back if he saw any Legion soldiers. Kelsey agreed, but asked him to follow her lead. They returned to Cottonwood, but instead of descending towards the Cove, they walked past all the crucified people and further south. They made their way on the ridge overlooking the cove, with a truck parked precariously on the cliff. Kelsey had been correct. She had recognised the markings. The truck was carrying radioactive waste. She opened it and let the barrels tumble down, towards the Legion camp. The assorted screams were brief but satisfying. These monsters had received the same fate they had inflicted on Searchlight. Boone's twisted grin, almost a grimace, said everything. The Legion had a lot to answer for.

With all this done, Kelsey dismissed Boone and started her trek towards the 188, to meet up with Veronica. On the way there, her pip-boy caught a strange transmission. A woman kept repeating a message, advertising a location she had never heard of: "Come to a place where wealth, excitement, and intrigue await around every corner. Let go and leave the world behind at the Sierra Madre grand opening, this October. We'll be waiting." Kelsey decided to take the slight detour, to track the signal and see what this was all about.

And, as promised, we finished Cottonwood. There's still a couple of things to do here later, but the legionaries are all dead. There will be radiation here for the rest of the game, I think, but it won't be as much as Searchlight. And no green haze.

If your character doesn't have enough skill to convince the slave master the girl is sick, the lie they tell is that the girl had vagina dentata. The slave master counters that he inspects all the captives himself, and there was no "dentata". I mention this, because I want to leave nobody in any doubt about the nature of the Legion. The middle-aged woman would be made a worker. The boy would be made a soldier (or a worker, if too old to be indoctrinated). The girl would be made a sex slave, hence the aforementioned inspection. For all their talk of civilisation, the Legion really is the most depraved bunch around, except for possibly the drugged-up fiends.

I know that some might say that killing the legion off with radiation makes us "as bad as them", but what's important here isn't the what or the how, but the why. The Legion kills to invade and because they consider those outside their group lesser and deserving of death simply for not being like themselves. We kill the Legion to protect those it seeks to destroy. And, while radioactive waste might seem like a bit much, this is Fallout. The entire region has already been hit with a lot more radiation that won't be going away. This is small stuff, by comparison, and it can't be compared to the same action in a non-irradiated area.

The real reason I brought Boone was the same as when I took him to Nelson to rescue the captured soldiers. This is worth another 2 of his history points, where he explains a bit more of his background and lets us do his companion quest.

The transmission at the end was, in fact, in our radio from the moment we left Doc Mitchell's house. But what could it mean!? We will find out, next time.

[Mitillos]

Begin again in the night
Let's sway again tonight
Your arm on my shoulder
Your cheek against mine
Where can we go
When will we find that we know

Where can we go
When will we find that we know
To let go
Begin, begin again tonight

[Mitillos]

The signal seemed to be coming from just northeast of Nelson. It took Kelsey a while to pinpoint the location, but eventually she found an entrance to a bunker. It was unmistakably of Brotherhood design. Kelsey stationed ED-E just inside the entrance, so he could keep guard if anyone tried to attack from outside. The entry room was partly covered in rubble and was otherwise empty, except for a somewhat recently killed man in a jumpsuit. The only exit was a staircase leading underground, to a hallway. A four-way intersection led to a collapsed and blocked corridor to one side, and an intact but messy room in the other. Broken computers, scrap metal, destroyed books, and what looked like a vending machine that Kelsey couldn't use. She returned to the corridor and continued along. It led to a room with half a dozen cots and a radio on a table in the middle. This was the source of the signal. Kelsey walked in.

Gas sprayed from around her. Her consciousness was fading. Two large arms carrying her. Couldn't react...



Kelsey woke up in a cobbled courtyard, lit by faint wall lights. All her equipment was gone. She was wearing a jumpsuit and an explosive collar. She also had a strange-looking gun and some microfusion cells that it presumably used as an energy source. She slowly managed to stand up and saw a large fountain in front of her, in the middle of the courtyard. Above it she saw the hologram of a woman, but before she could approach, it changed to the face of an old man with a beard.

And this is the second DLC, Dead Money. In fact, this was the first DLC to be released, but Honest Hearts is easier and I consider it worse, so I wanted it out of the way. I didn't think of including the intro video for HH, but this one is a bit more poignant anyway. Anyway, Dead Money. The whole DLC is a reference to the (book and) movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, with Humphrey Bogart.

The idea of the DLC is that it's a bit of a survival-horror thing, which is why all your equipment is taken from you at the start. If a player went in with a couple hundred stimpacks and a couple dozen doctor's bags, and one of the high-end weapons, a lot of the challenge of the DLC would be gone. (As it happens, because I played in a low difficulty setting and did my best to do some relevant stat-maxing in advance, most of the challenge is already gone, but that's OK, I'm here for the story.)

This loss of equipment was one of the two reasons players were a bit upset with Dead Money. The second reason was that once you were done, you couldn't return (except by cheating with the console) to deal with anything you forgot to do the first time around. This was why in Honest Hearts, they did allow you to take 75 (or 100) lb of stuff with you. In the remaining two DLCs you keep all your stuff. Also, you can return to all the other DLCs at will, unlike Dead Money.

[Mitillos]

The man started barking out orders at Kelsey immediately after threatening to explode her collar if she disobeyed. She could tell that this was no idle threat, so she had to play along, for now. He explained that he had trapped the bunker so that anyone curious and greedy enough to look for the transmission would be brought here. Unfortunately, the place was designed to identify objects that did not belong; such items would be taken back to the abandoned bunker, which explained why Kelsey's equipment was gone.

The man explained that Kelsey was standing in the courtyard of an area called Villa. To the south lay the exit towards the abandoned bunker, now locked until the man had what he was after. To the west, the medical district with a clinic full of auto-docs and the Puesta del Sol area, set aside for housing the maintenance crews of the entire resort. To the east, the residential district for the casino's high rollers and entertainers and the Salida del Sol area, with a church and housing for the casino staff. Finally, to the north, a sealed and apparently impregnable fortress: the Sierra Madre casino and resort. This was the old man's goal. A heist to enter the casino's vault and obtain its technological secrets. But, as the old man had found to his dismay, it would take at least four people to open the casino, to begin with. And so, he began abducting anyone who seemed to him greedy enough to want the treasure of the Sierra Madre, to use in his plans. Most died due to greed, stupidity, or lack of skill or strength. But he was willing to try over and over, no matter how many lives were lost. And now that Kelsey was here, she would be his next assistant, willing or not.

The old man explained to Kelsey the various defences of the place and instructed her to collect the other three members that had survived thus far. They would be needed for the next part of his plan. To ensure co-operation, he had manipulated the collar signals in such a way that, if one of them exploded, they all would. He believed that this would be enough incentive for all four participants to comply. He instructed Kelsey to start with the supermutant in the police station in the Villa. With that, his face was replaced with the hologram of a woman and Kelsey started making her way to the police station.

And now we know why we are here. There is going to be a heist, and we will take part. The old man actually chides you for blindly following the pip-boy to this place, like a slave to it.

The Sierra Madre casino and resort was built by a very wealthy man named Frederick Sinclair, as a place for those he deemed elite enough to go there and live in luxury, away from the horrors of the coming nuclear war. The idea was that the visitors would spend their day enjoying everything the casino had to offer: gambling, and entertainment. The currency would be Sierra Madre chips, both betting chips for the casino games and electronic chips to use in the vending machines, designed to provide food, drink, medication, and even clothes, as needed. Unfortunately for Sinclair, the war came before the project was completed. Furthermore, a strange red cloud filled the area surrounding the casino, with horrific results.

I like to view the Sierra Madre as a criticism of the strange instinct the rich have, which compels them to try to protect themselves from species-wide problems (ones that generally they cause), by separating themselves from the rest of humanity (for example, a certain moronic owner of a car company, a bird-themed company, and other companies, who has a plan to colonise another planet). Such attempts can only fail spectacularly, or go horribly right.

Special mention should also go to the Sierra Madre chips, to be used with the vending machines. These are supposed to create autarky for the resort, meeting everyone's needs. There are at least four problems with that. First, what happens to a guest who runs out of chips? After all, a casino's games always favour the house, since that's how casinos make money. Second, the vending machines can't be stocked permanently. Between the guests and staff, eventually food will run out, since the Sierra Madre has no way to obtain more food. Third, as we will find out, the chips can be forged with enough technical expertise. As any economist will tell you, too much money for not enough goods leads to scarcity, inflation, and devaluation. The Sierra Madre exchanged chips for dollars, so presumably it was not intended as a permanent fixture. Post-war, it would probably become a regular casino. Anyway. Fourth, as we will find out, the vending machines also provide drugs, guns, and ammunition, if you can get the right codes. This can only have one outcome: The Sierra Madre casino and resort turns into the thunderdome from Mad Max. Actually, I'm in favour of that, carry on and godspeed, Mr. Sinclair.

Anyway, let's close this incredibly long explanation section by talking about the dangers Kelsey will be facing in the Villa and its surrounding areas.

First, any radio transmission will interfere with her collar's signal and, after a few seconds, make it explode. Any AM/FM radio or ham radio we see can be turned off or destroyed to prevent this. There are also speakers that will do the same to us. The speakers with a bluish light can be destroyed, but the ones with a reddish light cannot and have to be turned off from a terminal (if one controlling them exists).

Second, the red cloud is incredibly toxic and corrosive. There is no defence against it. If you walk in, you start losing health, and the only way to stop losing health is to get out of it. Most of the time, it's possible to navigate around it, but if you're stuck in it, run as fast as you can to find a safe area.

Third, the workers were caught in the cloud and it changed them, into what are now known as ghost people. They have lost all personality and thought and only want to kill everything they see. Additionally, reducing their health to 0 is not enough to kill them. After a few moments, they will get up with full health and start fighting again. To keep them down, one needs to sever one of their limbs or their head. In other words, always double-tap, and triple-tap, and keep tapping until something comes off.

[Mitillos]

Getting it is not the hard part; it's letting go.

Kelsey's first stint through the Villa alleys was mostly uneventful. In addition to all the Sierra Madre chips scattered everywhere, she found a knifespear stuck in the ribcage of a skeleton and took it. This was a lucky find, as she didn't much like the idea of firing a gun and drawing the attention of the ghost people, if she could help it. She also found a terminal that controlled a hologram, programmed to eliminate hostiles in the area, including the ghost people. This way, if she needed to retreat to a safe area, she knew where one could be found. Fortunately, she only found a couple of radroaches and one of the ghost people on the way to the police station. The knife spear proved immediately useful, as it tore right through the abominations limbs.

In the centre of the main room of the station was an enormous holding cage with a nightkin supermutant inside. His chest had been carved and now the word "DOG" could be seen quite clearly in scar tissue. He seemed to be talking to himself about his "master" and ignored Kelsey completely. The only danger in the building were the various radios that could trigger her collar, but since the interference effect was on a timer, she had no trouble finding safe areas and disabling or destroying the radios. Exploring the police station, she found some armour, a police pistol, ammunition, medicine, a number of other random useful items, and several codes for getting additional products from the vending machines, including weapon repair kits and ammunition. She now felt much safer and more prepared to take on the horrors the Sierra Madre held.

Kelsey continued down to the basement of the station, where she was greeted by a recorded voice. It sounded intelligent but menacing and instructed her to go through the entire basement, to find a holotape. It explained that it was forced to put Dog in the cage upstairs to stop him from disobeying, and that Kelsey should play the holotape for Dog to hear. Since Dog was ignoring her, she decided to try this. The holotape was a recording of the voice from the basement, saying "Dog, back in the cage". The moment the supermutant heard these words, his stance and facial expression immediately changed.

The supermutant now spoke with the voice from the recording, and spoke of Dog as a different person, one consumed by hunger and blind obedience, one whom this personality both despised and wanted to protect. She thought about the carved name on his chest and how it would look from the mutant's own point of view, from above or in a mirror... this other personality was named God. Dog and God, sharing a body, one always ravenous, the other always controlling. Dog wanting to obey the bearded man, God wanting to eliminate him, instead. They revealed that his name was Elijah. Dog was the one who had brought the unconscious Kelsey to the Villa, at the old man's behest. Yet, he was not wearing the collar that the old man claimed would be there. It turned out he had eaten it, which unfortunately did not diminish its functionality.

God was initially unwilling to go anywhere, hoping to draw Elijah out by staying in this cage. However, as Kelsey explained, Elijah could simply send someone else, with his own commands for Dog, forcing him to come out. Coming with Kelsey was the best way to keep his mind out of the cage and hopefully create an opportunity to get at Elijah. And so, he agreed, unlocked the cage, and followed Kelsey back to the central fountain.

Part 1 of act 1 is done. We have out first companion, a very tough nightkin supermutant with two distinct personalities vying for control of the body. As with all nightkins, he was created by the Master before or during Fallout 1. And, as with all nightkins, the Master's harsh conditioning and prolonged exposure to stealth boys has caused a mental condition. In other cases it can be paranoia, schizophrenia, and other related conditions at varying degrees of severity; here it seems to be dissociative identity disorder. The subservience created by the Master gave rise to a voice of reason, and the subsequent destruction of the Master and his mutant army brought this voice to the surface, as a distinct personality. It is important to note here, that the two personalities both dislike what the other does but also have an instinctive need for the other.

Mechanically, each of Dog and God can be a companion who is really strong and tough, and good at melee combat. We can make Dog come out with a recording of Elijah ordering him to do so (God loathes this) and God with his own tape we already played. God gives us a perk that prevents us from triggering traps (trip-wires, mines, bear traps, and the like). As it happens, we already have the perk Light Step which does the same thing. On the other hand, Dog will devour fallen ghost people to ensure they don't get up and can even teach us a perk that makes them more likely to die without dismemberment. This is also useless, because of our knifespear, which does a lot of limb damage. In other words, it doesn't really matter which one you pick, so I will stick with God, as he is the more rational-sounding one, and I don't want to upset him needlessly. If you have Wild Wasteland enabled, Dog will sometimes go "OMNOMNOMNOM" when eating a fallen ghost person, so if that's enough to sway you the other way, go for it.

Speaking of our spear, Kelsey grabbed a duct tape and a cosmic knife from the police station, as well as all the Abraxo cleaner she found (we need a total of 9). Once we have these and two more cosmic knives (which we will soon find in the clinic), we will be able to upgrade our knife spear. First we will turn the cosmic knives to clean cosmic knives, then attach all three to our knife spear to make a clean knife spear. This will increase its damage from 20 to 25, its critical chance multiplier from 1 to 1.2, but most importantly increase the limb damage multiplier from 1.5 to 3. Additionally, one can repair the clean knife spear with regular knife spears and throwing knife spears, which about half of the ghost people will be carrying in large numbers. In other words, we will be turning the combat of this DLC into a joke leaving only the stealth and pathing challenges, which aren't all that challenging. The remaining ghost people will either have bear trap fists (punch and snap!) or gas bombs they love to throw at you, making them most annoying (albeit least common) of the group.

I will not be going through all the history of this place, which we can find in a huge number of logs and emails left in the computer terminals all over the resort. That would be entirely too much work. However it is an interesting story, so if you're curious about everything that led up to where we are, I highly recommend playing New Vegas and enjoying it first-hand. And then coming to this thread and posting your experiences as they contrast and relate to Kelsey's adventures. Now I need to stop, because I've been typing this up for the last couple of hours, and I'm getting a bit of a headache.

[Mitillos]

The knives are made from an alloy called saturnite and are "impossibly sharp" (the cooks at Sierra Madre kept cutting their fingers and cutting boards). They do indeed come from another area. There are a lot of things that come from that area, and I will talk about all that when we're there.

[Mitillos]

The second ally Kelsey needed to recruit was in the clinic, in the medical district. Thankfully, this area was very close to the Villa centre and also fairly safe. A few ghost people and radroaches were easily dispatched, as were a couple of speakers interfering with the collars. The clinic itself held a new type of danger: a guard hologram. This hologram had a set patrol route it kept to (in this case the first floor of the clinic), and attacked anyone it detected, after a few moments of targetting. Unfortunately, being made of light, it would be impossible to damage the hologram directly, so Kelsey had to find another way to deal with it. A terminal controlled its behaviour (though it lacked an off switch), and allowed Kelsey to switch its patrol route to the ground floor instead. Sneaking around the other side of the building, Kelsey managed to get to the first floor without being seen, where she found the weakness of the hologram. A control emitter was responsible for maintaining the hologram in a given area and could easily be disabled or destroyed.

With the hologram disabled, Kelsey could explore more freely. Upstairs, she found a key for the basement. There, she could use a computer terminal to turn off the speakers in the clinic, giving access to the entire building, including the various patient rooms with auto-docs. The last one of these was occupied. A young woman with a shaved head and a lot of scars was unconscious inside. The most prominent and recent scars were on her throat and, as it turned out once she was woken up, were the result of her vocal chords being severed. Combined with some nerve damage meant that she couldn't speak or write, leaving only gestures and tapping noises for communication. Thankfully, Kelsey was able to decipher the signs the young woman was using.

Her name was Christine and she was a member of the Brotherhood of Steel. She was trained in all forms of combat and was here hunting Elijah, who was considered a traitor to the brotherhood. She had chased him through an area called Big Mountain, but had been injured and had only managed to get here recently. Unfortunately for her, she had fallen in the same kind of trap as Kelsey had, her unconsciousness allowing someone to stick her in the auto-doc and perform clumsy surgery on her. After Kelsey explained the situation, Christine agreed to come with her, on condition that they not let Elijah escape. Thus, they made their way back to the fountain.

Part 2 of act 1 done. Christine is very nice if you're not rude to her. Also, she was Veronica's girlfriend, before Elijah started his shit which incidentally culminated in driving them apart. Before anyone asks, we cannot reunite them. Firstly, because there are technical limitations regarding moving people between DLCs and secondly because they have both moved on by now. Obsidian doesn't like romance much, and views most romance arcs in rpgs a bit of a crutch that fails to mask generic writing. They didn't include romance in KotOR 2, either. There were mentions of romance, and characters speaking or discussing such things, but no romance quest where you pick the correct dialogue options and get in a relationship with the character in question. And, honestly, I applaud that.

Christine is not as sturdy as Dog/God, but she can use pretty much any weapon you find. She also jams radios and speakers, so that you get a few seconds of warning static before the beeping begins. This basically means you have more time to find and destroy or turn off whatever is causing interference, which is generally pretty useful.

Anyway, we're done with the easy parts of the resort. Everywhere else is going to be full of ghost people, traps, speakers, and a lot of cloud-covered areas. In all honestly, it's mostly tedious than anything else, but the characters and story logs help by adding interesting bits to this DLC.