Notes From New Vegas 14
Nov. 21st, 2010 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynNotes From New Vegas 14: Okay, Okay, I'm Doing The Main Plot Now
Okay, so, our heroine's lesson in the banality of evil is over and done with, at least for now. Janice and company have emerged from Vault 11 and headed for the nearest safe place they know, which is the 188 Trading Post where Janice found Veronica. It occurred to Janice at about this point that poking around in the desert to avoid the people who shot her in the head was mostly getting her shot at, attacked by things that wanted to chew her face off, and treated to horrible revelations she didn't partiuclarly want in the first place.Tracking down the guy who'd shot her in the first place couldn't possibly get worse than that unless he was a deathclaw breeder or something. Manny Vargas had said the guy and his Khan buddies had headed for Boulder City, and there was a sign for Boulder City on one of the roads leading away from the 188. So... yeah, sure, why not. She sold as much of the stuff that she and Veronica had found in Vault 11 as she could at the 188, bought some supplies, and headed the merry band on out.
It was a pretty uneventful trip, for once, which was nice. ED-E shot a couple of giant bugs but other than that nothing tried to attack them, even if by that point Janice was half-convinced that anywhere that open was likely to be hiding a deathclaw in the grass. They found an abandoned railyard and picked it over a bit, but there wasn't much there worth noting, so they kept on moving and finally got into Boulder City proper, where there was a memorial to the NCR soldiers who'd died holding back the forces of Caesar's Legion at the First Battle of Hoover Dam. They'd lured the Legion guys into the city and set off a buttload of explosive booby traps, thereby breaking the back of the Legion thrust but kinda demolishing most of the city in the process. Oops. Also they found a bunch of living NCR soldiers, which was something of an improvement- if there were NCR forces here Janice figured she wasn't going to get shot at quite so much. They had a saloon in town, which wasn't much of anything to report, but which was a reasonably civilized place to sit. When Janice asked about Khans and a guy in a checkered coat, she got directed to the lieutenant in charge of the local NCR presence.
Turns out that the Khans were in town, all right. They'd taken a couple of NCR soldiers hostage and were holed up in the really ruined part of Boulder City. Given what Janice had seen of the city already, this was the equivalent of a resident of Chicago or Hoboken saying that something was happening in the area of the city where the voting process was seriously corrupt. Janice thought about this for a bit, and seriously considered encouraging the lieutenant to send in some ninja types to slit all the Khans' throats while they slept... then figured nah, they'd probably have done that already if they had access to ninjas. After a little more consideration it occurred to her that criminals were a superstitious and cowardly lot. If the Khans in there recognized her they'd probably freak out over her not being dead, which would give Veronica time to punch them and ED-E time to laser them in the eyes. If they didn't recognize her, they had no real reason to shoot, since she wasn't wearing NCR clothes. She could probably get in there and talk to the Khans and find out why the hell they were shooting couriers and taking their crap. If she got the soldier hostages out so much the better.
So, into the ruins she went. The lieutenant really hadn't been exaggerating. The area was just shy of the Biblical description of the utter destruction of the Temple- there were a few places where one stone was left stacked on top of another, but not many. The Khans were mostly at that end of the ruins, so that's where Janice went. Nobody seemed to recognize her or want to give her or Ronnie any trouble, which was just fine with her. Granted, she got a little nervous when she found out the Khans' local bigshot was holed up in the last standing building in the area, but... eh, closed space meant close quarters, and close quarters meant RONNIE PUNCH!, so she'd deal. She headed in.
Let me tell you, Internets, it is gratifying to hear an NPC go "Holy shit! You're that courier we shot in the head!" and flail at the sight of you. Janice blandly told him "I got better" and was rewarded with muttering about how he'd always thought 'we Khans were hard to kill'. After some more banter he was more than happy to tell her that Evil Chandler Bing was a guy named Benny, and Benny had screwed the Khans over and left them here in this shithole town, and if she saw him again would she mind shoving this up his ass as a special present from the Khans, 'this' being an engraved cigarette lighter of Benny's. Janice liked the sound of that, so she said okay, and then she suggested to the guy that the Khans consider letting the hostages go and leaving. He wasn't too keen on the idea. Couldn't really blame him, since he'd been screwed over recently once already, but she managed to convince him she could get the Khans safe passage out of the area and trotted off to find the lieutenant.
Who, in the best tradition of giving the player a chance to be a two-faced double-dealing jerkwad, told her that he was grateful for her intervention but he'd just received orders to kill the Khans, whether they lost the hostages in the process or no.
Now, for some people I guess this is an ideal situation. You get XP for the Speech challenge and the diplomatic solution, and then you get to kill everything that isn't wearing an NCR uniform and get XP for that too, and you go on your merry way. But Janice had, like I said, already had her lesson in the banality of evil. She told the lieutenant that she'd negotiated for the hostages' release on the condition that the Khans got to leave alive, and that if he had any kind of honor at all he'd accept that. He thought for a bit and then agreed, and the Khans got to leave and the hostages got to come back, and Janice got a dose of fame with both the NCR and the Khans. Yay.
At this point, tracking Benny down and yelling at him for shooting her vaguely appealed to Janice. But only vaguely. She wasn't exactly familiar with the Strip, or with Vegas in general, so she figured- eh. Might as well mosey northward and see if she could pick up work along the way... on the other hand she wasn't all that far from Novac, and she had equipment that needed repairing. Veronica's skillz were mad and l33t, yo, but some repairs called for parts. Might as well head back to Novac first and hit Old Lady Gibson's Scrapyard And Random Repairs Of Random Crap, then mosey north. You wanted to be prepared when you were going to a big city, right? Right.
Okay, so, our heroine's lesson in the banality of evil is over and done with, at least for now. Janice and company have emerged from Vault 11 and headed for the nearest safe place they know, which is the 188 Trading Post where Janice found Veronica. It occurred to Janice at about this point that poking around in the desert to avoid the people who shot her in the head was mostly getting her shot at, attacked by things that wanted to chew her face off, and treated to horrible revelations she didn't partiuclarly want in the first place.Tracking down the guy who'd shot her in the first place couldn't possibly get worse than that unless he was a deathclaw breeder or something. Manny Vargas had said the guy and his Khan buddies had headed for Boulder City, and there was a sign for Boulder City on one of the roads leading away from the 188. So... yeah, sure, why not. She sold as much of the stuff that she and Veronica had found in Vault 11 as she could at the 188, bought some supplies, and headed the merry band on out.
It was a pretty uneventful trip, for once, which was nice. ED-E shot a couple of giant bugs but other than that nothing tried to attack them, even if by that point Janice was half-convinced that anywhere that open was likely to be hiding a deathclaw in the grass. They found an abandoned railyard and picked it over a bit, but there wasn't much there worth noting, so they kept on moving and finally got into Boulder City proper, where there was a memorial to the NCR soldiers who'd died holding back the forces of Caesar's Legion at the First Battle of Hoover Dam. They'd lured the Legion guys into the city and set off a buttload of explosive booby traps, thereby breaking the back of the Legion thrust but kinda demolishing most of the city in the process. Oops. Also they found a bunch of living NCR soldiers, which was something of an improvement- if there were NCR forces here Janice figured she wasn't going to get shot at quite so much. They had a saloon in town, which wasn't much of anything to report, but which was a reasonably civilized place to sit. When Janice asked about Khans and a guy in a checkered coat, she got directed to the lieutenant in charge of the local NCR presence.
Turns out that the Khans were in town, all right. They'd taken a couple of NCR soldiers hostage and were holed up in the really ruined part of Boulder City. Given what Janice had seen of the city already, this was the equivalent of a resident of Chicago or Hoboken saying that something was happening in the area of the city where the voting process was seriously corrupt. Janice thought about this for a bit, and seriously considered encouraging the lieutenant to send in some ninja types to slit all the Khans' throats while they slept... then figured nah, they'd probably have done that already if they had access to ninjas. After a little more consideration it occurred to her that criminals were a superstitious and cowardly lot. If the Khans in there recognized her they'd probably freak out over her not being dead, which would give Veronica time to punch them and ED-E time to laser them in the eyes. If they didn't recognize her, they had no real reason to shoot, since she wasn't wearing NCR clothes. She could probably get in there and talk to the Khans and find out why the hell they were shooting couriers and taking their crap. If she got the soldier hostages out so much the better.
So, into the ruins she went. The lieutenant really hadn't been exaggerating. The area was just shy of the Biblical description of the utter destruction of the Temple- there were a few places where one stone was left stacked on top of another, but not many. The Khans were mostly at that end of the ruins, so that's where Janice went. Nobody seemed to recognize her or want to give her or Ronnie any trouble, which was just fine with her. Granted, she got a little nervous when she found out the Khans' local bigshot was holed up in the last standing building in the area, but... eh, closed space meant close quarters, and close quarters meant RONNIE PUNCH!, so she'd deal. She headed in.
Let me tell you, Internets, it is gratifying to hear an NPC go "Holy shit! You're that courier we shot in the head!" and flail at the sight of you. Janice blandly told him "I got better" and was rewarded with muttering about how he'd always thought 'we Khans were hard to kill'. After some more banter he was more than happy to tell her that Evil Chandler Bing was a guy named Benny, and Benny had screwed the Khans over and left them here in this shithole town, and if she saw him again would she mind shoving this up his ass as a special present from the Khans, 'this' being an engraved cigarette lighter of Benny's. Janice liked the sound of that, so she said okay, and then she suggested to the guy that the Khans consider letting the hostages go and leaving. He wasn't too keen on the idea. Couldn't really blame him, since he'd been screwed over recently once already, but she managed to convince him she could get the Khans safe passage out of the area and trotted off to find the lieutenant.
Who, in the best tradition of giving the player a chance to be a two-faced double-dealing jerkwad, told her that he was grateful for her intervention but he'd just received orders to kill the Khans, whether they lost the hostages in the process or no.
Now, for some people I guess this is an ideal situation. You get XP for the Speech challenge and the diplomatic solution, and then you get to kill everything that isn't wearing an NCR uniform and get XP for that too, and you go on your merry way. But Janice had, like I said, already had her lesson in the banality of evil. She told the lieutenant that she'd negotiated for the hostages' release on the condition that the Khans got to leave alive, and that if he had any kind of honor at all he'd accept that. He thought for a bit and then agreed, and the Khans got to leave and the hostages got to come back, and Janice got a dose of fame with both the NCR and the Khans. Yay.
At this point, tracking Benny down and yelling at him for shooting her vaguely appealed to Janice. But only vaguely. She wasn't exactly familiar with the Strip, or with Vegas in general, so she figured- eh. Might as well mosey northward and see if she could pick up work along the way... on the other hand she wasn't all that far from Novac, and she had equipment that needed repairing. Veronica's skillz were mad and l33t, yo, but some repairs called for parts. Might as well head back to Novac first and hit Old Lady Gibson's Scrapyard And Random Repairs Of Random Crap, then mosey north. You wanted to be prepared when you were going to a big city, right? Right.
