Act 1: Scene 1: The Task At Hand

War… war never changes.

The weapons may change, the reasons may shift, the scale may evolve, but the violence remains. No one understands that better than the four wastelanders currently gathered at FoCo's western gate. Three of them witnessed the downfall of everything they loved, everything they lived for, and everything they hated burn down around them mere days ago. The fourth was violently stripped of their old life and formed to a hulking being born to raid and pillage. The fact that they all have survived to this moment is a miracle in and of itself.

The unnamed group of four arrived at the humble town of Four Corners, called "FoCo" by the locals, two days ago to mixed reactions. Some were nervous to let you in, as crazy rumors of the lost vaults live on like the folk tales of old. But Malika Jones, the town sheriff, assured the doubters that if you truly wanted to be there, you'd earn your keep.

She offered you two free stays at the Blowing Wind Bar and Inn to get yourself settled, then she’d have some things for you to do to start proving yourself to her and the rest of the town. The folks who run the Blowing Wind Bar and Inn, a boisterous human man named Cheater Davis, are nice enough and welcomed you in, but had a stern talking to with Malika not to give away their rooms to strangers anymore. The rooms at the Blowing Wind were nowhere near the cleanliness and comfortability of the vault beds, and the walls were anything but soundproof, but you managed to sleep at least.

---

As the rest of the town celebrates their annual Founding Day with lots of food, lots of music, and lots of very alcoholic beverages, you have been tasked by Malika Jones to go check up on an old ghoul couple who lives about a 15 minute walk away from FoCo's ramshackle outer walls. Malika gave you their names: Joseph and Theresa Pedigrue, and a brief description: a couple who was in their basement when the bombs dropped some 200 years ago and were instantly ghoulified, but have been too stubborn to move from their family home since. The old couple makes a trip to town nearly every day to socialize and trade with the town, since they grow the best melons to be found in the New Black Swamp and always sell out. But they haven't been seen in a couple of days, and so as the first test of your character, Malika just wants you to go make sure they're okay. And she warned you, they are a stubborn bunch. Malika knows that Joseph and Theresa have survived for 200 years by themselves for a reason, and isn't afraid for their safety because of you. She marked the location on your guys' Pip-Boys and told you to be back with good news as soon as possible so she could have a drink or four.

The sunset is a dull shade of pale yellow as it frames the guards up in their watch stations on either side of the massive wooden gate that acts as the main entrance and exit from the small town. They each say "HOLD", and then sweep the perimeter through their rifle scopes. After a few moments of still silence, they look to the guard in front of you on the ground with a thumbs up, and the guard before you unlocks the gate and swings it open, motioning you to pass through the 10-foot wide gateway, out into the jagged ruins of this pre-war rural small town.

Lincoln cautiously steps forward and scans the area. With a practised ease he draws his pistol and moves forward a few more feet. Satisfied that there's no immediate threats, he glances over his shoulder and hives the signal, to his comrades, that it's safe.

As the others move up, Lincoln finds his thoughts drifting back to the last couple of days. When he first arrived to the city, Link wasn't quite sure what to expect. After what they went through to get this far, Lincoln was slow to trust the people of FoCo.

Yet, they provided food and shelter...and needed help in return. It reminded Lincoln of some of the tests he was ran through....this just wasn't as lethal. So Lincoln accepted the job and will do everything in his power to bring everyone back safely.

Kyle follows the rest, though he looks longingly back to the town. At least there's a bed there, and food and drinks. Sadly, very little paper to uselessly push around so he finds himself once more heading into the "wilderness."

A wet sound and a disgusting feeling up his shin makes him look down at his shoes. "Crap! Literal crap! Someone could have warned me about that brahmin shit."

He takes out a handkerchief, tries to wipe out the worst of it. He considers what to do with the handkerchief before he just tosses it aside. Realizing the rest has gone on ahead, he hurries to keep up. Hopefully that was the worst that would happen this trip.

Dear Pip-Boy...you bastard...

Liberation: Day 3

I am Mackenize Morgan Haversham or so the many forms I've filled out for my automated jailers have so informed me over the last twenty years. That's the name always at the top of my questionnaires. I prefer Kenzie.

Find myself in the settlement of FoCo, after a harrowing escape from Vault 36, dodging feral ghouls that ate many of us survivors, and making the acquaintance of a larger-than-life fellow who claims to be a real iconic comic character come to life in the wasteland. I've been keeping mostly to myself the last couple days, even from the two others from the vault. No surprise there, huh?

Apparently, its Founder's Day and a celebration is under way. Well—for everyone except us that is. I can't help but see a bug-eyed robot superimposed over her features when FoCo's Sheriff Jones informs us that we have to start proving ourselves. I'll admit her packaging is an improvement over our last testing units, but seems the intent is all the same. Do this or you don't get to eat, drink, or whatever. Just when will the testing and proving end? Perhaps I'll start my own experiments and see who passes.

So, here we are. Performing a wellness check on some old ghouls. Ghouls ate some of us when we emerged from Vault 36, but we're now supposed to care what's going on with these two? Pffft!

---

Kenzie trudges out of the gate of FoCo with the small band of outsiders, waiting for the proverbial trap to spring.

Dareal knew he was in trouble when he sat on the threadbare bed at the inn. The wooden frame snapped beneath his weight leaving him sprawled out on the dusty floor. In the dimmest recesses of his mind, he had a complaint, and it was this: the bed should've been properly tested for load-bearing; specifically, to bear the weight of a Super Mutant. Not that there are many choices out in the wastelands, but still, he had a very important complaint, and he articulated it thus:

"Bad bed. Unworthy of Grognak."

A hero has a responsibility to shoulder, and so Dareal informed Cheater Davis of the terrible quality of the bed and let him know, in no uncertain terms, that for an inn - the service was in poor taste. For instance, as he took out his trusty machete and placed it on the counter, a better frame for the bed would be one made of metal. Wood was just asking for trouble. It would've happened sooner or later. The fault lay with the innkeeper. It couldn't be helped, you understand? This was accompanied by an unhelpful shrug.

Regardless, he made a true-blue (in this case, green) promise to Davis that when the sheriff came calling (how could such a squishy hooman that look more like a baby be a sheriff? Ahh, head hurt. No more think.) for him and his new sidekicks to earn their keep, that he would scavenge for scrap metal. It was the least he could do.

So, here he stands; towering over the hoomans, machete at the ready, his chest puffed out with all the machismo he can muster.

"Me go first."

An expression of confusion momentarily flickers across his mean mug as he surveys the ruins.

"Er—where go we?"

Kyle is already breathing heavy as he catches up to the group. It's going to be a long day. "Yay far in yonder direction big guy," Kyle says pointing in the direction they were given, though hoping that they'll stop long enough for him to catch his breath.

Cheater Davis listened to Dareal’s complaints and suggestions about his bedding situation just nearly as intently as a mole rat would listen to the deep intricacies of the latest gossip in town. But eventually assures Dareal that if he can bring any usable scrap metal back from scavenging, that he'd pay for it, and with a couple of caps, might be able to help fix you up something more your style.

---

The group of 4, led (mostly) by Dareal, (with a tiny bit of guidance from those with Pip-Boys,) make their way through the empty town streets, some with cleaner shoes than others. Rows of hollowed-out houses and rusted-to-hell vehicles line the silent streets. The only sounds are of the wind caressing the barely-living leaves on the nearly-dead trees trying to push one last gust of life back into them (or to finish them off for good, hard to tell), and the gentle, distant sounds of music and revelry that trickle in with the breeze once in a while.

After 15 or so minutes of tense walking, the group comes upon a small one-story house, held together by duct tape and prayers. A sloppy wooden fence supported by chicken wire lines the perimeter of the small yard, which bristles with melons. How they manage to ward off the predators of the wastes is a mystery at first. That is, until a small turret resting on the roof flashes a red light, catching everyone's attention quickly. The light blinks a few times, but the turret has no other immediate reaction.

The front door to the house is broken in half and set akilter and ajar, and the gate of the fence is rattling softly as the breeze pushes it open and closed over and over, but otherwise the house sits in silence before the group.

Dareal has encountered similar turrets during the good old raiding days. His former brethren used to lay waste to these annoying stingers with a hail of bullets and grenades, creating a pretty light show as they sparked and exploded under the relentless assault. The simple-minded mutant desires to see such a show again, and even more excitingly, they make for good scrap metal.

He bellows, pointing at the blinking light atop the roof,

"Me want. Me go!"

Lincoln carefully watches the house and surrounding area carefully. After a few moments of seeing nothing move, he carefully begins to advance forward.

Just as Lincoln hears Dareal say something about the turret and then he sees the mutant charge forward. Looks like our friend is as subtle as a Brahmin stampede. Link says to himself as he watches the mutant.

Continuing to move, Lincoln moves up to the front door and looks it and the inside of the house over.

"Guess he never heard of slow and steady wins the race," Kyle says before trying a, in his eyes, safer approach. He tries to go the long way round and sneak up on the house.

Registering in her mind the presence of the turret and her companions' trajectories in approach of the house and property, Kenzie sets off in a tangent parallel to the property fences so as not to remain in a direct line with any of them, in the event of the defensive mount going off.

As Dareal breaks down the front gate to the fence and sprints towards the front door of the ramshackle house, he smashes three or four melons on his warpath to the house and juicy bits go flying into the air. The turret light swivels and follows Dareal and Lincoln as they approach the house, but the rest of the turret remains still before a small stream of smoke billows out the side. The turret is malfunctioning and in need of repair, and doesn't currently seem to be much of a threat.

Lincoln peeps his eyes and ears past the broken front door but sees nothing other than a messy small foyer and another door just inside, blocking sight into the rest of the house. Lincoln heard something from within the house, like a dragging or digging sound, but can’t really make out what it is.

Kyle sneaks off to the outside corner of the house and Kenzie to the corner of the yard.

---

Just as the group gives each other a glance to make sure everyone is good, two mole rats come bursting out of the ground, one at the feet of Kenzie and the other at the feet of Dareal Grognak. Their stench is almost as nasty as the appearance of their dried and stretched skin and unnervingly long front teeth. Dareal sees the mole rat ready to pounce and smacks it back to the ground, but the other catches Kenzie off guard and leaps onto her chest. Its teeth sink through the jumpsuit and draw blood before it jumps off.

Lincoln spins around as he hears the sounds of combat. Sighting in on the Mile Rat attacking Kenzie.

"OOow! You nasty little sh..!" Kenzie takes a few steps back from the mole rat and retaliates with a bark of her 10mm pistol.

Seing the Mole Rats, Kyle draws his pistol and fires at the one who attacked Kenzie, figuring that the other one will soon be snapped in two or something like that.

As the group reels from the sudden emergence of the mole rats, Lincoln and Kyle are just a tad bit too trigger happy for the moment, and the mole rats, in their crazed state of life, don't even realize as they dodge out of the way of their bullets. But Kenzie's shot sinks right into the mole rat's thick hide.

Coming off the last bite, Kenzie sees the mole rat about to jump for her, and ducks out of the way as it springs over her head and lands on the other side of her. But the second time around Dareal wasn't as lucky, and the mole rat got him right in the arm! Dareal has to shake his arm vigorously to get it off of him.

Today must be Dareal's lucky day. Firstly, the turret (which can be scrapped, but don't ask about ownership) and the mole rats that have served themselves up on a platter. Spit-roasted mole rats over an open fire make for good eating.

The mutant emits various noises of delight as he hacks away at the soon-to-be-dead snack with his machete.

Cursing to himself, Link readjusted his aim and fired another round at the Mole-Rat.

Kenzie continues her dance with the over-sized rodent. "Get off of me..." She scolds the pest and side steps back again to get in her shot. She fires.

Kyle will keep firing at the same mole rat attacking Kenzie. Hoping it will be more successful than his first shot.