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Notes From New Vegas 60
Notes From New Vegas 60: Back To The A-Plot
When last we saw our heroine, it was late in 2013 in RL and I was just sure I was going to do these things more often. I'm sorry it got away from me. I've had a terrible urge to go back to the Wasteland lately, though, possibly because I'm really tired of post-apocalyptic/dystopian settings that are top-heavy on zombies or arbitrary sorting of people into arbitrary categories. Possibly just because the Capital Wasteland and the Mojave Wasteland are warm, and I've just lived through Boston's snowiest winter on record. Who knows. Point is, I fired up the Xbox the other day and took me down some notes, so we're going back to Janice now.
Anyway. Janice had just gotten finished with having Rex the Abomination of Science treated for his little case of two hundred year old squishy brain and was forced to face the fact that she didn't have any side quests left, so it was time to head to New Vegas and see about tracking down Evil Chandler Bing (remember him?) for having shot her in the head. And she really stuck to that idea, too, for all of about five minutes. She'd spotted a radio mast on the way into Jacobstown, after all, and it didn't look rusted or rotted or anything, so maybe there were people there, and if there were people there, maybe they had alcohol, because she REALLY needed to think about ANYTHING IN THE WORLD OTHER THAN BRAINS. Turned out when she got there- after killing a number of mantises, the damn things were everywhere- that it was an NCR military installation of some kind. The lead ranger, Kudlow, asked Janice if she'd seen the Great Khans lately, since apparently a group of them had recently left the area around Red Rock... Janice gave what information she could and then turned around and left, because honestly, trying to bother your way into a military installation never ends well whether or not they have booze on hand.
There was another brief side trip on the way out of the valley. It involved an abandoned mine. There were horrible gilled Swamp Things in it. How a bunch of lakelurks had gotten there from Lake Mead, Janice did not know and did not want to think about, but hey, violence beats thinkin' about brains. And speaking of violence, once she gave up on finding anything worthwhile in Ruby Hill Mine, Janice ran into another Legionary assassin. As her companion Arcade said, “What a shame.” I wouldn't even bother mentioning him except for the fact that he was so eager to inform her that THE CAESAR HAS MARKED YOU FOR DEATH that he outran his two companions entirely. Since they didn't have line-of-sight on her when she killed him, the other two Legionaries didn't turn hostile when Janice walked up to them; I'm going with the idea that in-universe they were on the younger and punier side and she was splattered in enough blood that when they saw her approach they both spontaneously decided that THE CAESAR HAS MARKED SOMEBODY ELSE CONSIDERABLY EASIER AND LESS HORRIFYING FOR DEATH BECAUSE FRANKLY WE'D LIKE TO MAKE IT HOME IN ONE PIECE, ARE WE ALL GOOD WITH THAT.
Which made them rather cleverer than the next encounter on the way back to Vegas, which went something like this:
- I hear growling
- Oh, look, oncoming Fiends
- Oddly enough Rex does not appear to be the one growling
- Janice by default does not growl
- Arcade, where did you get the portable mankiller chainsaw weapon?
- “I'm really very boring, you'd get better stories from a Freeside junkie” - riiiiiiiiiight. C'mere, you've got gore on your glasses.
That, fortunately, was the last bout of gratuitous violence between Janice and the city. Her approach from the mountains brought her to an area of Vegas with high walls that were patrolled by human guards with assault rifles of various ages and makes, surrounded by stacks of flattened pre-War cars, and lit with seriously bright floodlights. Apparently this was Westside, and apparently it was quite possible to go into there, but c'mon. The standard Vegas wall is just a high wall with barbed wire on top. The Westside walls were steel backed with sandbags and the entrance was deliberately narrowed by those flattened cars in ways that did not so much suggest 'security' as they did 'cattle slaughterhouse delivery chutes'. Either they really didn't want people getting in without the option of shooting 'em, or they really didn't want people getting out. Frankly, it was a better-controlled entrance than the one at the old prison she'd encountered way way back at the start of all this. If Evil Chandler Bing was in there, he could stay there, because Janice wasn't doin' it.
She did eventually make her way around to a viable gate into Freeside, which was exactly as she remembered it. Exactly. I don't think she got more than three blocks into the area before she was greeted by one of the Homicidal Stupids. Not only that, there were still corpses lying around on the pavement from... well, it was either her last visit or somebody well armed's last visit, kind of hard to say at that point. Somehow she'd have thought the Kings would've at least tried to cut down on the smell. Or possibly just tried to pick over the corpses for stuff to sell at Mick and Ralph's.
Didn't much matter, regardless; she had to get to the Strip. Which had its own wall and floodlights and a gate flanked by sandbags and patrolled by four or five Securitrons, but it also had this going for it: she could see the lights of several operational casinos on the other side. And the gate was also wide enough for five or six people to go through at once, which was nice. The robots warned anybody who got too close that they had to SUBMIT TO A CREDIT CHECK OR DISPLAY A PASSPORT. I'm honestly not sure how they were going to RUN A CREDIT CHECK since nobody in the setting even has electronic funding. I suppose it was more a case of SHOW US HOW MUCH MONEY YOU ARE CARRYING ON YOU RIGHT NOW. JUST PULL OUT THE BOX ALL YOUR BOTTLECAPS ARE IN, WE CAN JUDGE THE WEIGHT RIGHT HERE, but... whatever. Janice was just about ready to ask some questions when a guy in the standard clothing of the Homicidal Stupids charged past her, headed straight for the gate.
SPLORT.
“PLEASE SUBMIT TO A CREDIT CHECK OR DISPLAY A PASSPORT.”
I don't think Janice could get the bag full of money out fast enough.
Fortunately the Securitrons decided she had enough money to get into the Strip without being splorted. On the other side of the gate there were a LOT of lights, the kind of lighting you only get when there's an actual power source somewhere rather than generators running off two-hundred-year-old batteries, and a lot of people in pretty nice clothes. There were speakers on some of the buildings and streetlamps, blaring Dean Martin in all directions, and there were NCR soldiers wandering around looking drunk. Arcade didn't seem to think much of it- he was saying something about it being all right if you liked giving your hard-earned money to terrible people- but Janice didn't notice, because AAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH VICTOR THE COWBOY ROBOT WHERE DID YOU COME FROM WTF.
Seriously, the Securitron next to her had that freaky grinning Vegas Vic face on his midsection TV screen, and the same voice Janice remembered from Goodsprings and Novac. “Howdee pardner! Consider me your personal welcome wagon! Now hear this- the head honcho of New Vegas, Mr. House, is itching to make your acquaintance. Head on over to the Lucky 38." Janice just kind of made a few uncomfortable “okay, sure, right away” noises and then spent some time looking for a paper bag to breathe into until the thing left. Fortunately there were distractions in the area; the Lucky 38, a pre-War casino built to look like a roulette wheel, was on the left hand side of the street, and the skankiest prostitutes in the history of skank were on the right. Seems the Gomorrah casino paid its staff enough to buy corsets, booty shorts, and electrical tape for their nipples, then told them to go out on the street and attract business.
Arcade didn't have a whole lot to say about that.
Anyway, Janice managed to get her act together enough to walk up the steps of the Lucky 38, which was apparently a Big Thing; there were people on the street who were wearing more than the hookers and they were all muttering about how this wasn't going to end well. At least, until the Securitron at the Lucky 38's entrance suddenly switched on the Vegas Vicface and greeted her with a spiel about how Mr. House was waiting for her and while she'd be given a suite in the casino for her friends, they were going to have to stay out until after she'd met with the man upstairs. That didn't make Janice especially comfortable, but on the other hand, nobody was asking her for her weapons or telling her there was going to be an anti-violence field, so... yeah, okay, if it got her answers she'd deal with it.
That's it for the moment. I have more notes, but I'm at a Starbucks and I can only buy so many drinks before I start feeling like I ought to give up the seat. More later, when we go INTO THE STRIP (dun dun DUNNNN).
When last we saw our heroine, it was late in 2013 in RL and I was just sure I was going to do these things more often. I'm sorry it got away from me. I've had a terrible urge to go back to the Wasteland lately, though, possibly because I'm really tired of post-apocalyptic/dystopian settings that are top-heavy on zombies or arbitrary sorting of people into arbitrary categories. Possibly just because the Capital Wasteland and the Mojave Wasteland are warm, and I've just lived through Boston's snowiest winter on record. Who knows. Point is, I fired up the Xbox the other day and took me down some notes, so we're going back to Janice now.
Anyway. Janice had just gotten finished with having Rex the Abomination of Science treated for his little case of two hundred year old squishy brain and was forced to face the fact that she didn't have any side quests left, so it was time to head to New Vegas and see about tracking down Evil Chandler Bing (remember him?) for having shot her in the head. And she really stuck to that idea, too, for all of about five minutes. She'd spotted a radio mast on the way into Jacobstown, after all, and it didn't look rusted or rotted or anything, so maybe there were people there, and if there were people there, maybe they had alcohol, because she REALLY needed to think about ANYTHING IN THE WORLD OTHER THAN BRAINS. Turned out when she got there- after killing a number of mantises, the damn things were everywhere- that it was an NCR military installation of some kind. The lead ranger, Kudlow, asked Janice if she'd seen the Great Khans lately, since apparently a group of them had recently left the area around Red Rock... Janice gave what information she could and then turned around and left, because honestly, trying to bother your way into a military installation never ends well whether or not they have booze on hand.
There was another brief side trip on the way out of the valley. It involved an abandoned mine. There were horrible gilled Swamp Things in it. How a bunch of lakelurks had gotten there from Lake Mead, Janice did not know and did not want to think about, but hey, violence beats thinkin' about brains. And speaking of violence, once she gave up on finding anything worthwhile in Ruby Hill Mine, Janice ran into another Legionary assassin. As her companion Arcade said, “What a shame.” I wouldn't even bother mentioning him except for the fact that he was so eager to inform her that THE CAESAR HAS MARKED YOU FOR DEATH that he outran his two companions entirely. Since they didn't have line-of-sight on her when she killed him, the other two Legionaries didn't turn hostile when Janice walked up to them; I'm going with the idea that in-universe they were on the younger and punier side and she was splattered in enough blood that when they saw her approach they both spontaneously decided that THE CAESAR HAS MARKED SOMEBODY ELSE CONSIDERABLY EASIER AND LESS HORRIFYING FOR DEATH BECAUSE FRANKLY WE'D LIKE TO MAKE IT HOME IN ONE PIECE, ARE WE ALL GOOD WITH THAT.
Which made them rather cleverer than the next encounter on the way back to Vegas, which went something like this:
- I hear growling
- Oh, look, oncoming Fiends
- Oddly enough Rex does not appear to be the one growling
- Janice by default does not growl
- Arcade, where did you get the portable mankiller chainsaw weapon?
- “I'm really very boring, you'd get better stories from a Freeside junkie” - riiiiiiiiiight. C'mere, you've got gore on your glasses.
That, fortunately, was the last bout of gratuitous violence between Janice and the city. Her approach from the mountains brought her to an area of Vegas with high walls that were patrolled by human guards with assault rifles of various ages and makes, surrounded by stacks of flattened pre-War cars, and lit with seriously bright floodlights. Apparently this was Westside, and apparently it was quite possible to go into there, but c'mon. The standard Vegas wall is just a high wall with barbed wire on top. The Westside walls were steel backed with sandbags and the entrance was deliberately narrowed by those flattened cars in ways that did not so much suggest 'security' as they did 'cattle slaughterhouse delivery chutes'. Either they really didn't want people getting in without the option of shooting 'em, or they really didn't want people getting out. Frankly, it was a better-controlled entrance than the one at the old prison she'd encountered way way back at the start of all this. If Evil Chandler Bing was in there, he could stay there, because Janice wasn't doin' it.
She did eventually make her way around to a viable gate into Freeside, which was exactly as she remembered it. Exactly. I don't think she got more than three blocks into the area before she was greeted by one of the Homicidal Stupids. Not only that, there were still corpses lying around on the pavement from... well, it was either her last visit or somebody well armed's last visit, kind of hard to say at that point. Somehow she'd have thought the Kings would've at least tried to cut down on the smell. Or possibly just tried to pick over the corpses for stuff to sell at Mick and Ralph's.
Didn't much matter, regardless; she had to get to the Strip. Which had its own wall and floodlights and a gate flanked by sandbags and patrolled by four or five Securitrons, but it also had this going for it: she could see the lights of several operational casinos on the other side. And the gate was also wide enough for five or six people to go through at once, which was nice. The robots warned anybody who got too close that they had to SUBMIT TO A CREDIT CHECK OR DISPLAY A PASSPORT. I'm honestly not sure how they were going to RUN A CREDIT CHECK since nobody in the setting even has electronic funding. I suppose it was more a case of SHOW US HOW MUCH MONEY YOU ARE CARRYING ON YOU RIGHT NOW. JUST PULL OUT THE BOX ALL YOUR BOTTLECAPS ARE IN, WE CAN JUDGE THE WEIGHT RIGHT HERE, but... whatever. Janice was just about ready to ask some questions when a guy in the standard clothing of the Homicidal Stupids charged past her, headed straight for the gate.
SPLORT.
“PLEASE SUBMIT TO A CREDIT CHECK OR DISPLAY A PASSPORT.”
I don't think Janice could get the bag full of money out fast enough.
Fortunately the Securitrons decided she had enough money to get into the Strip without being splorted. On the other side of the gate there were a LOT of lights, the kind of lighting you only get when there's an actual power source somewhere rather than generators running off two-hundred-year-old batteries, and a lot of people in pretty nice clothes. There were speakers on some of the buildings and streetlamps, blaring Dean Martin in all directions, and there were NCR soldiers wandering around looking drunk. Arcade didn't seem to think much of it- he was saying something about it being all right if you liked giving your hard-earned money to terrible people- but Janice didn't notice, because AAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH VICTOR THE COWBOY ROBOT WHERE DID YOU COME FROM WTF.
Seriously, the Securitron next to her had that freaky grinning Vegas Vic face on his midsection TV screen, and the same voice Janice remembered from Goodsprings and Novac. “Howdee pardner! Consider me your personal welcome wagon! Now hear this- the head honcho of New Vegas, Mr. House, is itching to make your acquaintance. Head on over to the Lucky 38." Janice just kind of made a few uncomfortable “okay, sure, right away” noises and then spent some time looking for a paper bag to breathe into until the thing left. Fortunately there were distractions in the area; the Lucky 38, a pre-War casino built to look like a roulette wheel, was on the left hand side of the street, and the skankiest prostitutes in the history of skank were on the right. Seems the Gomorrah casino paid its staff enough to buy corsets, booty shorts, and electrical tape for their nipples, then told them to go out on the street and attract business.
Arcade didn't have a whole lot to say about that.
Anyway, Janice managed to get her act together enough to walk up the steps of the Lucky 38, which was apparently a Big Thing; there were people on the street who were wearing more than the hookers and they were all muttering about how this wasn't going to end well. At least, until the Securitron at the Lucky 38's entrance suddenly switched on the Vegas Vicface and greeted her with a spiel about how Mr. House was waiting for her and while she'd be given a suite in the casino for her friends, they were going to have to stay out until after she'd met with the man upstairs. That didn't make Janice especially comfortable, but on the other hand, nobody was asking her for her weapons or telling her there was going to be an anti-violence field, so... yeah, okay, if it got her answers she'd deal with it.
That's it for the moment. I have more notes, but I'm at a Starbucks and I can only buy so many drinks before I start feeling like I ought to give up the seat. More later, when we go INTO THE STRIP (dun dun DUNNNN).
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She's going to go through the A-plot like a lightsaber through a wet paper bag. :-D