Notes From New Vegas 30
Jan. 17th, 2012 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynNotes From New Vegas 30: Gary Oldman Couldn't Play This Kind Of Crazy
When last we saw our heroine, Janice had made it to the doors of the Sierra Madre casino at last. Which was nice, for about two and a half seconds before she got knocked out and thrown on her ass. Story of her life at that point, really. She woke up inside the casino, surrounded by skeletons in pre-war clothes, with Father Jerkface yammering in her ear. AGAIN. Bla bla bla casino security subdued you because you were all gross and radioactive bla bla your 'friends' were here ahead of you but the casino moved them too bla bla isn't it all pretty and quiet without people, just the way the Mojave should be, I AM CRAZY FATHER ELIJAH AND EVERYBODY WHO ANNOYS ME SHOULD DIE. Now go and turn on the casino power.
Seriously. Father Elijah basically said he wanted everybody in the Mojave to die and the whole place to be exactly as quiet and perfect as a sealed casino full of dead people, so Janice had better help him.
Well, y'know, Janice had originally just wanted to kick Elijah in the fork and run like a very runny thing, but now she kinda got the impression she was going to have to do a lot worse than kick. Even if Elijah was somehow as good as his word (HA) and turned off the collar so she could leave, he was pretty much talking about making the Cloud scour every living thing out of the Mojave. Which, no. Janice kind of liked living things. Even if they tended to try to bite her face off. So that meant finding Father Jerkface and killing him a lot. Unfortunately, she wasn't going to have much of a chance on her own, so she had to either lure ol' Crazypants out or find the other three people. Who knew, maybe she could do both and get Dog and God to eat him.
'Course, she had to survive the casino first. Place was crawling with hologram security. The lights barely worked, but the holos were everywhere, complete with blasting lasers of painful lasery death. Well, it was a casino. They had priorities. Janice did too. Number one: not dying. She found a couple of computer terminals that controlled things to do with the security system, but they didn't let her turn anything off, and one of them had something weird about ambient sound for different parts of the casino. Whatever. She'd just have to use the one that let her move one or two of the holograms around so she could shunt the damn ghosts out of the way until she found where to go to turn them off completely.
Easier said than done, since each terminal controlled one killer death hologram. And there were speakers making her collar beep in places, too. And skeletons, can't have a properly disturbing journey into the past without tripping over dead people, right? At least the guy with the arms full of liquor bottles died happy, or at least oblivious... the people all piled up behind the locked door from the offices to the lobby, not so much. Janice mostly just stepped over those after a while, since by this point she had a hard time giving a rat's patoot about anybody who'd been dead longer than reborn civilization had existed in the Mojave, and spent a while running around finding hologram control terminals to mess with and hologram emitters to forcibly explode. Those were kind of satisfying. And also kind of necessary because the only way to get to Father Jerkface was to get the casino active again, and that required getting into the electrical closet, and there was, of course, a killer death hologram patrolling there. One that stood between the rest of the casino and its emitter, because there was at least one technologist in the pre-War world who was not entirely stupid in his designs. Horribly, horribly misguided, but not stupid.
Eventually she managed to make it to the electric closet and power up the casino. Father Jerkface started gloating at that point, which she largely ignored, except for two things. One, he said casino security was shutting down, which was nice because really, she was getting kind of tired of being nearly killed by things she couldn't shoot back. And two, something about heading to the lobby once she was done in the back so they could deal with her, significant pause, friends. Now, it's one thing to refer to the attractive person whom you may or may not be bedding as your significant pause friend, but given that the people in question were a chupacabra with DID, a two hundred year old ghoul who didn't even have a nose let alone other significant pause body parts, and a woman who appeared to be still carrying the urge to strangle Father Jerkface for splitting her up with her beloved... well, clearly Father Jerkface expected Janice to hate everybody else as much as he did. And while she might kind of want Dog and God to go tap dance in front of a deathclaw nest if it would just get him to stop talking, Janice didn't really hate any of the others. Heck, if God just kept his mouth shut she wouldn't even hate him.
(Now, at this point in the game it is possible to gamble at most of the roulette and blackjack tables in the casino. There are holographic croupiers and dealers, and several slot machines work. If you win a certain number of chips you get comped, and if you hit 7500 chips total you get a voucher redeemable at the vending machines for 1000 chips- and the casino somehow delivers another voucher to the abandoned bunker back in the Mojave every few days. You can then redeem the voucher in Father Jerkface's vending machine and spend the chips at the machine on various supplies. I actually did this when I was playing because damn, those vending machines are useful, and also I wanted to test the efficacy of certain blackjack strategy charts. Janice, however, would not have done this in-character, because Janice would be hearing the gurgle of Dog and God's digestive tract in the back of her head the whole time, and so would be in as much of a hurry as humanly possible.)
So Janice basically checked a few things around the casino, gathered up some loose chips dropped by prewar patrons- for a place that never had its grand opening, the Casino sure had had a lot of business going on- and headed on out in search of the key to upstairs. Unfortunately, Father Jerkface immediately started blithering again. This time he indicated that the others were scattered throughout the casino, and that the floors of the building were lined with stuff that blocked the collar signals, so she could deactivate or detonate her compatriots' collars and then run to another floor and not have her own get set off in the process. It was why he hadn't exploded all their heads himself. That and something about how he couldn't access the music archives; given that he was telling her to just murder the others because 'they're of no use to us now', it was a real moment of 'cry me a river, white man'.
After some poking around with her Pip-Boy Janice figured out that Dog and God was the closest of the three to her area. What the hey, why not find him and get him to help her with Father Jerkface, right? Right... only, well, you know how God had mentioned back before the Gala Event that Dog might surface if he wasn't kept fed? You know, the part where Janice had to bring him fresh squeezed haunch of Oh God That Used To Be Human? Yeah, well, Dog might have stayed in the cage long enough for God to work the electrical switches, but he was out now- Janice could hear him over the radio. As a matter of fact, the two personalities were arguing, and it sounded like Dog just wanted to kill them both right now and end all the pain and confusion. Given that they were on separate floors Janice almost considered letting him do it. Then she figured enh- Father Jerkface wanted him dead. That was good enough reason for her to go and save his life.
I never said she wasn't petty.
She made it into the kitchen, where Dog had apparently managed to turn on all the gas valves and was planning on setting a fire to escape God's control, and immediately earned the favor of Ferris Bueller, God of Liars once again. It takes a special kind of chutzpah to snap "Dog! Stay! If you don't, Master will be mad!" at a nine foot tall chupacabra offering to chase you and break you until you no run any more. And the Lying God's favor to get the chupacabra to cringe and beg Master not to be mad with Dog. And somebody else's favor entirely- I really don't know whose- to quietly talk Dog into looking inward and recognizing God as himself, and then talking God into recognizing Dog properly as well, and persuading the two personalities to integrate into one.
No, seriously, Janice had just enough skill with words to talk the mutant into integrating his two personalities into one. God pointed out that if she did this, the resultant personality almost certainly wouldn't remember her or be able to help her, and that she'd be alone and at the Old Man's mercy "like Dog... like me", which was probably the nicest thing she'd ever heard God say. THen again, God had basically been an ass because he'd spent most of his existence trying to protect Dog from his own self-destructive impulses, so...
Well, it didn't matter. Janice just didn't want Dog killing everybody, and didn't trust God not to do something else of his own design, so it seemed like the best possible thing to walk them through the integration. She did have to promise God that she'd try to find a way to save herself from Elijah, because otherwise he'd be upset with her, but she was fine with that. She told him to 'go on, let go', and shortly thereafter was confronted with a very confused, blinking chupacabra with a civilized way of speaking and only patchy memories of anything whatsoever. But at least he was sane, and not about to blow up the casino, and not about to eat anything that would set off his collar. And she got good karma for helping the guy shake his mental wrinkles out. Janice really couldn't ask for more than that.
Okay, she could, which is why she turned off every gas valve in the kitchen and then checked the local security terminal to see if she could control anything from there. Nothing of note except some downloadable hologram code, so she grabbed that- you never know what might be useful- and went back to the main casino. Father Jerkface started congratulating her on her accomplishment, said something about accessing the casino music archives now, and oh yeah, there were Ghost People in the lobby, try not to die. And don't try to leave, either, or he'd let her head explode.
Janice would have made some exceptionally rude gestures at that, but she needed both hands to work the holorifle. And the knife, afterwards, because Ghost People just don't die properly until you stabbinate a limb off. By the time she was done she was just too grouchy to waste a gesture on someone who wasn't even present, so she decided to go find Dean and see what she could do about getting him to maybe help her make Father Jerkface sorry he was ever born.
When last we saw our heroine, Janice had made it to the doors of the Sierra Madre casino at last. Which was nice, for about two and a half seconds before she got knocked out and thrown on her ass. Story of her life at that point, really. She woke up inside the casino, surrounded by skeletons in pre-war clothes, with Father Jerkface yammering in her ear. AGAIN. Bla bla bla casino security subdued you because you were all gross and radioactive bla bla your 'friends' were here ahead of you but the casino moved them too bla bla isn't it all pretty and quiet without people, just the way the Mojave should be, I AM CRAZY FATHER ELIJAH AND EVERYBODY WHO ANNOYS ME SHOULD DIE. Now go and turn on the casino power.
Seriously. Father Elijah basically said he wanted everybody in the Mojave to die and the whole place to be exactly as quiet and perfect as a sealed casino full of dead people, so Janice had better help him.
Well, y'know, Janice had originally just wanted to kick Elijah in the fork and run like a very runny thing, but now she kinda got the impression she was going to have to do a lot worse than kick. Even if Elijah was somehow as good as his word (HA) and turned off the collar so she could leave, he was pretty much talking about making the Cloud scour every living thing out of the Mojave. Which, no. Janice kind of liked living things. Even if they tended to try to bite her face off. So that meant finding Father Jerkface and killing him a lot. Unfortunately, she wasn't going to have much of a chance on her own, so she had to either lure ol' Crazypants out or find the other three people. Who knew, maybe she could do both and get Dog and God to eat him.
'Course, she had to survive the casino first. Place was crawling with hologram security. The lights barely worked, but the holos were everywhere, complete with blasting lasers of painful lasery death. Well, it was a casino. They had priorities. Janice did too. Number one: not dying. She found a couple of computer terminals that controlled things to do with the security system, but they didn't let her turn anything off, and one of them had something weird about ambient sound for different parts of the casino. Whatever. She'd just have to use the one that let her move one or two of the holograms around so she could shunt the damn ghosts out of the way until she found where to go to turn them off completely.
Easier said than done, since each terminal controlled one killer death hologram. And there were speakers making her collar beep in places, too. And skeletons, can't have a properly disturbing journey into the past without tripping over dead people, right? At least the guy with the arms full of liquor bottles died happy, or at least oblivious... the people all piled up behind the locked door from the offices to the lobby, not so much. Janice mostly just stepped over those after a while, since by this point she had a hard time giving a rat's patoot about anybody who'd been dead longer than reborn civilization had existed in the Mojave, and spent a while running around finding hologram control terminals to mess with and hologram emitters to forcibly explode. Those were kind of satisfying. And also kind of necessary because the only way to get to Father Jerkface was to get the casino active again, and that required getting into the electrical closet, and there was, of course, a killer death hologram patrolling there. One that stood between the rest of the casino and its emitter, because there was at least one technologist in the pre-War world who was not entirely stupid in his designs. Horribly, horribly misguided, but not stupid.
Eventually she managed to make it to the electric closet and power up the casino. Father Jerkface started gloating at that point, which she largely ignored, except for two things. One, he said casino security was shutting down, which was nice because really, she was getting kind of tired of being nearly killed by things she couldn't shoot back. And two, something about heading to the lobby once she was done in the back so they could deal with her, significant pause, friends. Now, it's one thing to refer to the attractive person whom you may or may not be bedding as your significant pause friend, but given that the people in question were a chupacabra with DID, a two hundred year old ghoul who didn't even have a nose let alone other significant pause body parts, and a woman who appeared to be still carrying the urge to strangle Father Jerkface for splitting her up with her beloved... well, clearly Father Jerkface expected Janice to hate everybody else as much as he did. And while she might kind of want Dog and God to go tap dance in front of a deathclaw nest if it would just get him to stop talking, Janice didn't really hate any of the others. Heck, if God just kept his mouth shut she wouldn't even hate him.
(Now, at this point in the game it is possible to gamble at most of the roulette and blackjack tables in the casino. There are holographic croupiers and dealers, and several slot machines work. If you win a certain number of chips you get comped, and if you hit 7500 chips total you get a voucher redeemable at the vending machines for 1000 chips- and the casino somehow delivers another voucher to the abandoned bunker back in the Mojave every few days. You can then redeem the voucher in Father Jerkface's vending machine and spend the chips at the machine on various supplies. I actually did this when I was playing because damn, those vending machines are useful, and also I wanted to test the efficacy of certain blackjack strategy charts. Janice, however, would not have done this in-character, because Janice would be hearing the gurgle of Dog and God's digestive tract in the back of her head the whole time, and so would be in as much of a hurry as humanly possible.)
So Janice basically checked a few things around the casino, gathered up some loose chips dropped by prewar patrons- for a place that never had its grand opening, the Casino sure had had a lot of business going on- and headed on out in search of the key to upstairs. Unfortunately, Father Jerkface immediately started blithering again. This time he indicated that the others were scattered throughout the casino, and that the floors of the building were lined with stuff that blocked the collar signals, so she could deactivate or detonate her compatriots' collars and then run to another floor and not have her own get set off in the process. It was why he hadn't exploded all their heads himself. That and something about how he couldn't access the music archives; given that he was telling her to just murder the others because 'they're of no use to us now', it was a real moment of 'cry me a river, white man'.
After some poking around with her Pip-Boy Janice figured out that Dog and God was the closest of the three to her area. What the hey, why not find him and get him to help her with Father Jerkface, right? Right... only, well, you know how God had mentioned back before the Gala Event that Dog might surface if he wasn't kept fed? You know, the part where Janice had to bring him fresh squeezed haunch of Oh God That Used To Be Human? Yeah, well, Dog might have stayed in the cage long enough for God to work the electrical switches, but he was out now- Janice could hear him over the radio. As a matter of fact, the two personalities were arguing, and it sounded like Dog just wanted to kill them both right now and end all the pain and confusion. Given that they were on separate floors Janice almost considered letting him do it. Then she figured enh- Father Jerkface wanted him dead. That was good enough reason for her to go and save his life.
I never said she wasn't petty.
She made it into the kitchen, where Dog had apparently managed to turn on all the gas valves and was planning on setting a fire to escape God's control, and immediately earned the favor of Ferris Bueller, God of Liars once again. It takes a special kind of chutzpah to snap "Dog! Stay! If you don't, Master will be mad!" at a nine foot tall chupacabra offering to chase you and break you until you no run any more. And the Lying God's favor to get the chupacabra to cringe and beg Master not to be mad with Dog. And somebody else's favor entirely- I really don't know whose- to quietly talk Dog into looking inward and recognizing God as himself, and then talking God into recognizing Dog properly as well, and persuading the two personalities to integrate into one.
No, seriously, Janice had just enough skill with words to talk the mutant into integrating his two personalities into one. God pointed out that if she did this, the resultant personality almost certainly wouldn't remember her or be able to help her, and that she'd be alone and at the Old Man's mercy "like Dog... like me", which was probably the nicest thing she'd ever heard God say. THen again, God had basically been an ass because he'd spent most of his existence trying to protect Dog from his own self-destructive impulses, so...
Well, it didn't matter. Janice just didn't want Dog killing everybody, and didn't trust God not to do something else of his own design, so it seemed like the best possible thing to walk them through the integration. She did have to promise God that she'd try to find a way to save herself from Elijah, because otherwise he'd be upset with her, but she was fine with that. She told him to 'go on, let go', and shortly thereafter was confronted with a very confused, blinking chupacabra with a civilized way of speaking and only patchy memories of anything whatsoever. But at least he was sane, and not about to blow up the casino, and not about to eat anything that would set off his collar. And she got good karma for helping the guy shake his mental wrinkles out. Janice really couldn't ask for more than that.
Okay, she could, which is why she turned off every gas valve in the kitchen and then checked the local security terminal to see if she could control anything from there. Nothing of note except some downloadable hologram code, so she grabbed that- you never know what might be useful- and went back to the main casino. Father Jerkface started congratulating her on her accomplishment, said something about accessing the casino music archives now, and oh yeah, there were Ghost People in the lobby, try not to die. And don't try to leave, either, or he'd let her head explode.
Janice would have made some exceptionally rude gestures at that, but she needed both hands to work the holorifle. And the knife, afterwards, because Ghost People just don't die properly until you stabbinate a limb off. By the time she was done she was just too grouchy to waste a gesture on someone who wasn't even present, so she decided to go find Dean and see what she could do about getting him to maybe help her make Father Jerkface sorry he was ever born.
