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.

"No fear. Me save hooman!" Dareal hollers at Link, vexed that the mole rat wasn't dead yet. He attacks once more, a tad overzealous with his motions but with wholly good intentions.With one mighty chop, he severs the snack's right leg, causing it to bleed out rapidly. The mutant picks up the amputated leg and waves it in front of Link, blood still spurting from the wound.

"Good eating, hey."

He proffers with a grimace (the best he can do instead of a grin).

Link backup as Dareal brings his machete down in a devastating attack. Looking around, he searches the area for more enemies.

Kyle joins the rest, for once he's doing a confident strut. "I actually hit something," he exclaims. He then proceeds to slip on some rocks, and he stumbles the last few steps over, only barely managing to not fall.

"So we're assuming the Mole Rats did this?" he asks pointing to the door. "Or merely scavengers come to pick at the remains of whatever waits for us inside?"

"Hey, Groggie. There's another rat over here." Kenzie points with the barrel of her 10mm to the dead mole rat. "Died of lead poisoning." She says with a straight face.

"I doubt a few rats could have done all this damage." She answers Kyle. "I think we still need to search the property and find these ghouls."

Before this little ambush happened, I heard something scurrying around inside the house. It may be another mole-rat.

Link moves back up to the front door and stands off to one side. Glancing at the others, Link nods his head. Ready when you are..

"Extra crunch. Tasty."

The mutant is unfazed by the bullets in his snacks; he gathers up the mole rat corpses and stuffs them...somewhere. As his sidekicks discuss what to do, Dareal's one-track mind only thinks of the prize on the roof. It'll be cramped inside the house, anyway; the small hoomans wouldn't appreciate him stomping and knocking things over.

"Me go smack turret."

He attempts to clamber onto the roof using his raw strength. These bulging and oddly misshaped muscles aren't just for show.

Rubbing at a tender spot where the rat tried to bite through her jump suit, Kenzie joins Link at the door with her pistol in hand. She nods to him. "Let's do it so we can get back to town."

Seeing Dareal climb the roof Kyle jumps back. "You think the roof'll hold?" he asks as he joins the rest at the door. Pistol ready in case of more trouble.

"I wouldn't count on it." Kenzie responds to Kyle's concerns and gives a glance upward, before switching on her Pip-boy's flashlight mode. "Things just might get D'real down here..."

More then likely, he'll fall through on his own. We may as well get started on searching the inside of the house. Link says as he copies Kenzie and turns his own Pip-boy flashlight on.

The mutant waves a free hand at the hoomans flippantly, to brush-off their misgivings, and then calls down to his doubters, O ye of little faith, "Sssh. No wake turret!"

He returns to the task, grumbling all the while.

Link looks around before entering the house, but does not see any further enemies with his quick glance.Dareal begins climbing the side of the ramshackle house. Wooden boards, screws, and shingles go tumbling down towards Kenzie and Link as they prepare to enter the house. Thankfully, they were given enough warning and are able to easily dodge the obstacles as they come. However, just as they flip on their pip-boy flashlight and begin to head inside, a loud CRASH erupts from directly above them. A ginormous, dirty, green foot suddenly hangs mere inches from their faces. As Dareal began walking over to the turret on the roof, he misstepped and his foot fell through a crack in the roof, his leg snagging a wayward nail on its way down.

These fools. How could they ever doubt the mighty Grognak!

Dareal finally manages to scramble up onto the roof despite his clumsiness, and as he gingerly switches stance from a crouch to a standing position - he eyes the turret; his prize is within grasp at last.

He waits with bated breath to see if the turret will target the cunning hero, but instead a small puff of black smoke betrays its defective nature—which big brain Super Mutants will say it's because machines can think too hard too, and such occurrences can be fixed with a meaty smack to the malfunctioning contraption—whereupon Dareal realises that nothing blocks his way.

Throwing caution to the wind, he saunters over to the turret with his arms outstretched—ready to rip it off from its mount—and in doing so, he's completely unprepared for the moment his foot breaches the roof. Even more surprising is the sudden pain of something sharp dragging along his leg. His response to the laceration is to roar in rage as he waggles his foot around.

After he's had his temper tantrum, he sheepishly calls out, "Help?"

Kyle makes a not so manly yelp as the foot comes crashing through the roof.

"Never mind the mole rats, one of my friendss going to give me a heart attack," he mutters as he gets his breath back.

Still he moves forward and tries to push at Dareal's foot from beneath.

"Hey, Big Guy." Kenzie calls out loud enough for the large green fellow on the roof to hear. "What are you waiting on? Kyle has already removed the nail and the broken roofing from around that big green foot of yours."

Help was asked for, and help was lent without conditions or outright refusal much to the mutant's gratitude.

With his foot finally clear of the shoddy roofing(first the bed and now this; inanimate objects evidently harbour a grudge against Dareal—he can't quite enunciate why this is so, but give or take a few hundred years, he might stumble upon Newton's law of gravity—), he pokes his ugly face down through the hole, searching for his savior.

Another grimace(grin) is offered as he gives his thanks to the hooman, "Me thank strong one."

He withdraws his visage from the hole, rays of sunlight streaming down in his absence, and then a moment later - a green thumbs-up is shown. This time around, instead of standing - he'll crawl on all fours toward the turret. A hero never gives up.

~Dareal~Dareal crawls on over to the defective turret. The red light watches him approach, and though it perceives a threat, it is helpless to do anything about it as another spark shoots out the side of it. ~Everybody Else~

The rest of the group begins heading inside the house. The small adobe farmhouse is a wreck. The first thing that registers is the stench, like something died, rotted, was burnt, then died and rotted again. The tiny entrance room opens up into a small living room. Off from the living room there are two doors, which look to lead off to a bedroom and a kitchen.

In the living room, furniture has been overturned, and the floor is scattered with broken picture frames, simple jewelry, and blood-soaked farm tools. A slow, quiet dripping sound draws the characters' attention to an archway leading to the kitchen. On the wall, beside the archway, is an old ghoul woman wearing a bloody nightgown, her rotted skin falling away from her face in folds that flap about in the breeze. A garden hoe is thrust through her sternum, impaling her to the wall.

You recognize the impaled ghoul as Theresa. Theresa’s eyes are frozen, wide with fear, and her chin is slumped down towards her chest. She’s not breathing.

Link is momentarily stunned as he sees Theresa. Figuring that they were dead, Lincoln is still shocked by the savage attack. It took someone or something with exceptional strength to do this damage.

Kenzie activates the camera mode on her Pip-boy and snaps off a couple shots of the ghoul impaled to the wall, for proof to the sheriff. "Well. We found one. Where's her other half?" She questions and moves for the kitchen to take a look for the other old ghoul.

Lincoln follows Kenzie into the kitchen. As he moves Link jokingly says..Do you think all of our jobs will be this easy?

Kyle goes over to the body. He starts looking it over, seeing if there's any signs of who or what could have done this.

Dareal lacks the self-awareness needed to feel embarrassment for his current scenario(although once bystanders recover from the shock of witnessing a mutant crawling on the roof - they might be tempted to do so on his behalf if they're not the alarm-raising type).

When he's within reach of the prize, Dareal wraps his legs around the turret and goes in for a viselike bear-hug. All Super Mutants knows that if you do a physical task with a modicum of resistance, the proper technique is to grunt as loudly as you can. That's a sure-fire way to assert dominance. Strange sounds that can hardly be classified as intelligible escapes his mouth as he tries to yank the turret from its mount.

~Rooftop~

And assert dominance over this poor turret he does. The wavering red light seems to quiver in defenseless fear as Dareal wraps his legs around the turret and yanks it out of the roof, the frail wooden boards bending and snapping as the hunk of metal is ripped free.

~Living Room~

As Kenzie takes the snaps of the female ghoul's body and Kyle takes a closer look, it's evident that she put up one hell of a fight. Her face, arms, and hands are badly bruised and cut, which is doubly impressive since a ghoul's skin is usually bruised and rotting away anyway.

~Kitchen~

The kitchen is in surprisingly good shape for being at least 200 years old. The kitchen seems pretty clean and tidy and everything but the wallpaper looks pretty well-preserved, which looks similar to the ghoul's skin as it wrinkles and sloughs off the wall. A single drawer has been open and bent crooked, with utensils and knives strewn about the floor underneath it.

Where the floor in the living room was covered in clutter and dirt, the floor in the kitchen is freshly mopped, besides the trail of bloody footsteps that leads from the living room, through the kitchen, and out the back door that gently creaks ajar in the breeze.

Lincoln takes a quick look around, trying to see if there's anything useful.

Lincoln begins investigating the kitchen, and notices underneath the counter with the messed up drawer is a gun rack affixed to the back wall, only problem is that it's empty.

Lincoln notices the empty gun rack but continues casing the joint, and eventually in one cupboard he stumbles across a perfectly ripe-looking Mutfruit.

Lincoln quickly puts the Mutfruit in his pack. Continuing on Lincoln searches the rest of the house.

Dareal crowns himself a victorious hero; the conqueror of turrets far and wide.

Nevermind the fact that this particular one was busted and had yet to fire a single bullet; the metal beast was doubtlessly crippled by fear in the face of an indefatigable adversary. The mutant tucks his hard-earned prize into the crook of an arm, and then plummets off the roof in the only way a seven feet tall meatbag can.

"OooOOOoooOOoo. Where all?" he calls out as he circles the perimeter of the house in search of his sidekicks.

Kenzie points out the bloody footprints on the clean kitchen floor leading out the open back door. "Looks like whoever impaled Theresa exited out through the kitchen door."

"I'm going to check the bedroom and see if our missing ghoul is back there." She announces and promptly exits the kitchen. Pistol in hand and flashlight lit, Kenzie proceeds to the bedroom and peeks in carefully.

If nothing immediately urgent or dangerous occurs, she steps in and searches the room.

While the two other takes the kitchen and the bedroom, Kyle looks closer at the living room. "I'll stay back here," Kyle replies to Kenzie.

~Living Room~

Kyle searches the living room more thoroughly, but does not find anything else that seems of significance, though, it does seem odd that all of the picture frames scattered around the floor are empty or have little scraps of a picture left in them, as if the pictures held within were torn out.

~Bedroom~

The bedroom, like the kitchen, is well-kept and clean. The bed is neatly made and the clutter is surprisingly sparse. However, upon the bed is a pile of glass shards of old shredded pictures. Underneath one of the pillows is a heart-shaped locket with two ancient-looking pictures inside of it. One is of a man in his late thirties who stands with a goofy grin on a clean front lawn, crossing out the FOR in the FOR SALE sign in front of what is unmistakably the house the party is currently within. The is viciously scratched out with a sharp object. Under the other pillow is a bloody handkerchief. Moving to the small closet, Kenzie notices that hanging within there is only women's clothes and a bunch of empty hangers.

~Backyard~

Link enters the backyard. Like the front, a shoddy, vine-covered fence closes in a small area in which the entire ground is completely filled with Melons. So much so that it is hard to find a path through the thick, intertwining and interlocking vines. However, it's not hard for Link to notice the bloody footprints that lead to a small red shed in the far back left corner of the yard. The shed has a single white door on the front of it that is currently shut, and appears to have a small window on the wall that Link can see.

~Everyone~

Just as Link begins heading outside the back door, everyone hears three sounds suddenly break the overhanging silence that fills the homestead, all originating from within the red barn. Two long, painful-sounding coughs and a deafening shotgun blast. Then silence again...

Kenzie takes the locket, then searches through the clothing, before looking under the bed. She is down on her hands and knees with her flashlight on, when the sound of the shotgun alerts her to something happening outside. She scurries up, grips her pistol and heads back toward the kitchen to see what's is transpiring out the back door and in the direction of the barn.

The sound of the shotgun blast causes Kyle to duck to the ground. Crawling on all four, to the closest window, or, if it's closer, the door to the backyard. He takes a careful look outside.

The sound of the shotgun blast, makes Link react on pure instinct. Bring his pistol up, Link moves quickly, but carefully to the red barn.

Once there Link pauses to see if he can hear anything and then opens the door. Letting his pistol lead the way, Link steps I side the barn.

The sound of gunfire reminds Dareal of the time he saved the hoomans. Here, perhaps, was someone in need of aid.

As a hero, duty calls. He doesn't hesitate to follow Link to the barn, still clutching the turret under one arm as he makes his way over. The mutant wields the machete with the other hand, holding it aloft; the gore from the molerat stains the jagged metal.

"Wait me, hey!" he says as Link steps inside.