Notes From New Vegas 17
Nov. 21st, 2010 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynNotes From New Vegas 17: I Swear, If We Find Orks Down Here...
When last we saw our heroine, Janice had caught a Legion spy on behalf of the NCR. She figured that after something like that she was entitled to go and deal with finding shiny shiny farming tech in Vault 22, wherever the heck that was. Dr. Hildern had marked it on her Pip-Boy map. She'd just never been there. Time to have a trot out in that direction, and then she and Ronnie could head back to Hidden Valley and deal with the Brotherhood being dorks.
Word of advice: if you know where a location is based on the map in the Pip-Boy, and your compass shows it as being straight in front of you and you think you are very close to it but there is an inconvenient land formation in your way, don't bother trying to climb it. Just go around and find your way in from the side or something. Nine times out of ten, climbing over the hill or rock ridge or whatever it is will only bring you sadness as you realize that you have at least another ridge to climb, maybe more. The tenth time'll get you, er, cazadors. Just trust me on this, the straightest line between two points is not going to be the shortest way there.
Janice eventually found her way to the general area of Vault 22, by which time she was tired, dirty, and angry. The sight of a whole valley full of more greenery and plants than she'd ever seen before in her life was oddly appealing, right up until the sign that read "BEWARE THE PLANTS- THEY KILL!!". Oh, and until the mantises started popping out of the undergrowth. Turns out it's really hard to see green bugs in among lots of green plants, who knew. It was a harder fight than she'd guessed, mostly because the bugs just kept popping up and trying to rip her and Veronica apart and because ED-E, for no good reason, kept flying low enough to get a bug leg that damaged his components. What the hell, dude. You're a flying eyeball robot with a laser. Try, you know, flying.
Once she and the others managed to kill absolutely positively every exoskeletal wrtech in the valley they pressed on into the Vault, where they found a lot of plants growing in places they shouldn't, a lot of fungi growing in more places they shouldn't, and an active computer terminal with notes Janice could only assume were from Keely. They recorded the notes, slugged their way in, and started looking for anything that would let them download data for Dr. Hildern or point them at Keely's current location. What they found instead were:
- Bugs
- Plants
- Bugs hiding in the plants
- Creepy inarticulate green humanoid things that would leap out of the plants and try to twist their heads off
- More bugs
- A broken elevator
- Again with the plants
- More of the green humanoid things
- Plants that spit horrible toxic goo
- More bugs
- Room after room of plants clustered around huge ventilation grilles that looked suspiciously like the FEV exposure chambers in Vault 87 in Fallout 3
- Doors that they couldn't pick and had to go back and find key cards to get through
- Huge ragged openings in the walls that led into weirdly green-litten cave systems full of bugs
- A locker with HEPA filters in it, which seemed weird but eh, what the hell, might as well take 'em and see if someone'll buy them
- Notes from Keely on a few more computers
- Notes from the original Vault residents talking about maintenance procedures and mysterious noises and odd illnesses and OH GOD THIS ONE DEAD GUY'S CORPSE GOT UP AND TRIED TO ATTACK THE MEDICAL STAFF
- More bugs
- A jar of some kind of food additive
That last got left exactly where they found it. By the time Janice picked it up to read the label she'd drawn the inevitable conclusion that this place was not a place of honor, so to speak, and that even if she found a bottle of distilled water that had been hermetically sealed and locked in a vacuum container inside a magnetic containment field she probably wouldn't be willing to drink it. Turns out it's harmless and can be used for a minor quest objective later on but let's face it, Janice was expecting to find out that she had to go up against killer mildew or something like that. Especially when she finally found her way into the gigantic weirdly green-litten cavern full of mantises and spitty plants and nearly lost ED-E to the damn bugs again. Jesus, robot, what's the point of you being able to fly if you're going to die of ground-bound bugs?
Anyway, at that point she was in a really bad mood and wishing like anything that she had some kind of breathing mask because she didn't trust the local air. Everything in the cavern got killed. Seriously, she and Veronica and ED-E marched from one end of the cave to the other and killed absolutely frigging anything that so much as blinked at them funny, up until they finally found Keely, who turned out to be a ghoul and a bit of a sourpuss. The first part was actually why she was still alive. Apparently the creatures in the Vault had carried her off to feed to the spitty plants but the plants didn't want to eat her. She told Janice and Ronnie that this place was dangerous and fatal and that she had a plan to purge the whole sorry mess, and to come to her base of operations on the oxygen recycling level of the Vault in order to put it through. Janice was only too happy to comply. This place was nasty.
Come level 2 and Keely told Janice that she had an explosive gas that could be distributed through the ventilation system to scorch all the airborne spores before they could escape the Vault, but it had to be detonated close to the source or it'd go inert. Or something like that, anyway; Janice didn't entirely understand what she was being told, only that she had to make gases go boom and not die in the process. Keely told her what the vents looked like and told her where to find some explosives, and then wished her luck and said she'd be waiting and monitoring the situation. Charming. Then again Janice couldn't entirely blame her for not wanting to get out and do more explosive shootey stuff. She'd clearly been busy working out how to ultimately defeat the death moss, she was entitled.
Well, Janice found her way to a set of vents that matched Keely's description, but they were at the end of a very stubby hallway that didn't really allow for an attempt to heroically outrun the explosion. Most of the scenarios Janice constructed for that area ended in horrible splodey death. She eventually decided to take a chance with a nearby door that looked pretty sturdy and a hit of a drug called Turbo, which was said to have the effect of making you move so fast that time seemed to slow down around you. Take the Turbo, throw a stick of lit dynamite, slap the 'close door' button, and dive through the door. Seemed like the best chance of not winding up crispy giblets, and she could probably asksome medical type to help her out if the Turbo did her harm. Besides, maybe it'd screw up any spores in her system.
It worked. Which was good, because that was a SPECTACULAR explosion- she got to watch it through what must have been a reinforced window. It would've been a very, very messy death. She turned around to make sure Ronnie and ED-E were all right too, and that's when she spotted the download terminal for the data Dr. Hildern wanted on the research in that place.
Now, there's a lot to be said for 'here is the data on horrible things that happened, pls to not be repeating, kthx'. On the other hand, Janice had repeatedly been attacked by unthinking plant-men that were almost certainly the result of fungal spores taking over dead bodies and operating them as homicidal meat puppets. The NCR was at war with Caesar's Legion and was losing a lot of people. It would probably look at the data on the place and go 'screw the farming potential, let's reanimate us some enemy corpses and point them at their former comrades'. Which, while possibly hilarious in a horrible kind of way, just did not do. Janice left the data exactly where it was and everyone went back to Keely, who was glad to delete the data and said some very uncomplimentary things about Dr. Hildern in the process.
Janice and company stumped back over to McCarran after that. Hildern flipped his lid and called them all accomplices and fumed and shouted a lot and then demanded that they leave at once. Janice was really only too happy to do so, because the man, as had been noted before, was a pompous twit. The other scientist, Dr. Williams, was grateful that Keely was alive and thanked Janice and Ronnie for risking their necks. Janice was just glad to have an excuse to leave the place at that point, so she made polite good-byes to Dr. Williams and she and Ronnie and ED-E set out for Hidden Valley and the Brotherhood of Steel's secret bunker.
When last we saw our heroine, Janice had caught a Legion spy on behalf of the NCR. She figured that after something like that she was entitled to go and deal with finding shiny shiny farming tech in Vault 22, wherever the heck that was. Dr. Hildern had marked it on her Pip-Boy map. She'd just never been there. Time to have a trot out in that direction, and then she and Ronnie could head back to Hidden Valley and deal with the Brotherhood being dorks.
Word of advice: if you know where a location is based on the map in the Pip-Boy, and your compass shows it as being straight in front of you and you think you are very close to it but there is an inconvenient land formation in your way, don't bother trying to climb it. Just go around and find your way in from the side or something. Nine times out of ten, climbing over the hill or rock ridge or whatever it is will only bring you sadness as you realize that you have at least another ridge to climb, maybe more. The tenth time'll get you, er, cazadors. Just trust me on this, the straightest line between two points is not going to be the shortest way there.
Janice eventually found her way to the general area of Vault 22, by which time she was tired, dirty, and angry. The sight of a whole valley full of more greenery and plants than she'd ever seen before in her life was oddly appealing, right up until the sign that read "BEWARE THE PLANTS- THEY KILL!!". Oh, and until the mantises started popping out of the undergrowth. Turns out it's really hard to see green bugs in among lots of green plants, who knew. It was a harder fight than she'd guessed, mostly because the bugs just kept popping up and trying to rip her and Veronica apart and because ED-E, for no good reason, kept flying low enough to get a bug leg that damaged his components. What the hell, dude. You're a flying eyeball robot with a laser. Try, you know, flying.
Once she and the others managed to kill absolutely positively every exoskeletal wrtech in the valley they pressed on into the Vault, where they found a lot of plants growing in places they shouldn't, a lot of fungi growing in more places they shouldn't, and an active computer terminal with notes Janice could only assume were from Keely. They recorded the notes, slugged their way in, and started looking for anything that would let them download data for Dr. Hildern or point them at Keely's current location. What they found instead were:
- Bugs
- Plants
- Bugs hiding in the plants
- Creepy inarticulate green humanoid things that would leap out of the plants and try to twist their heads off
- More bugs
- A broken elevator
- Again with the plants
- More of the green humanoid things
- Plants that spit horrible toxic goo
- More bugs
- Room after room of plants clustered around huge ventilation grilles that looked suspiciously like the FEV exposure chambers in Vault 87 in Fallout 3
- Doors that they couldn't pick and had to go back and find key cards to get through
- Huge ragged openings in the walls that led into weirdly green-litten cave systems full of bugs
- A locker with HEPA filters in it, which seemed weird but eh, what the hell, might as well take 'em and see if someone'll buy them
- Notes from Keely on a few more computers
- Notes from the original Vault residents talking about maintenance procedures and mysterious noises and odd illnesses and OH GOD THIS ONE DEAD GUY'S CORPSE GOT UP AND TRIED TO ATTACK THE MEDICAL STAFF
- More bugs
- A jar of some kind of food additive
That last got left exactly where they found it. By the time Janice picked it up to read the label she'd drawn the inevitable conclusion that this place was not a place of honor, so to speak, and that even if she found a bottle of distilled water that had been hermetically sealed and locked in a vacuum container inside a magnetic containment field she probably wouldn't be willing to drink it. Turns out it's harmless and can be used for a minor quest objective later on but let's face it, Janice was expecting to find out that she had to go up against killer mildew or something like that. Especially when she finally found her way into the gigantic weirdly green-litten cavern full of mantises and spitty plants and nearly lost ED-E to the damn bugs again. Jesus, robot, what's the point of you being able to fly if you're going to die of ground-bound bugs?
Anyway, at that point she was in a really bad mood and wishing like anything that she had some kind of breathing mask because she didn't trust the local air. Everything in the cavern got killed. Seriously, she and Veronica and ED-E marched from one end of the cave to the other and killed absolutely frigging anything that so much as blinked at them funny, up until they finally found Keely, who turned out to be a ghoul and a bit of a sourpuss. The first part was actually why she was still alive. Apparently the creatures in the Vault had carried her off to feed to the spitty plants but the plants didn't want to eat her. She told Janice and Ronnie that this place was dangerous and fatal and that she had a plan to purge the whole sorry mess, and to come to her base of operations on the oxygen recycling level of the Vault in order to put it through. Janice was only too happy to comply. This place was nasty.
Come level 2 and Keely told Janice that she had an explosive gas that could be distributed through the ventilation system to scorch all the airborne spores before they could escape the Vault, but it had to be detonated close to the source or it'd go inert. Or something like that, anyway; Janice didn't entirely understand what she was being told, only that she had to make gases go boom and not die in the process. Keely told her what the vents looked like and told her where to find some explosives, and then wished her luck and said she'd be waiting and monitoring the situation. Charming. Then again Janice couldn't entirely blame her for not wanting to get out and do more explosive shootey stuff. She'd clearly been busy working out how to ultimately defeat the death moss, she was entitled.
Well, Janice found her way to a set of vents that matched Keely's description, but they were at the end of a very stubby hallway that didn't really allow for an attempt to heroically outrun the explosion. Most of the scenarios Janice constructed for that area ended in horrible splodey death. She eventually decided to take a chance with a nearby door that looked pretty sturdy and a hit of a drug called Turbo, which was said to have the effect of making you move so fast that time seemed to slow down around you. Take the Turbo, throw a stick of lit dynamite, slap the 'close door' button, and dive through the door. Seemed like the best chance of not winding up crispy giblets, and she could probably asksome medical type to help her out if the Turbo did her harm. Besides, maybe it'd screw up any spores in her system.
It worked. Which was good, because that was a SPECTACULAR explosion- she got to watch it through what must have been a reinforced window. It would've been a very, very messy death. She turned around to make sure Ronnie and ED-E were all right too, and that's when she spotted the download terminal for the data Dr. Hildern wanted on the research in that place.
Now, there's a lot to be said for 'here is the data on horrible things that happened, pls to not be repeating, kthx'. On the other hand, Janice had repeatedly been attacked by unthinking plant-men that were almost certainly the result of fungal spores taking over dead bodies and operating them as homicidal meat puppets. The NCR was at war with Caesar's Legion and was losing a lot of people. It would probably look at the data on the place and go 'screw the farming potential, let's reanimate us some enemy corpses and point them at their former comrades'. Which, while possibly hilarious in a horrible kind of way, just did not do. Janice left the data exactly where it was and everyone went back to Keely, who was glad to delete the data and said some very uncomplimentary things about Dr. Hildern in the process.
Janice and company stumped back over to McCarran after that. Hildern flipped his lid and called them all accomplices and fumed and shouted a lot and then demanded that they leave at once. Janice was really only too happy to do so, because the man, as had been noted before, was a pompous twit. The other scientist, Dr. Williams, was grateful that Keely was alive and thanked Janice and Ronnie for risking their necks. Janice was just glad to have an excuse to leave the place at that point, so she made polite good-byes to Dr. Williams and she and Ronnie and ED-E set out for Hidden Valley and the Brotherhood of Steel's secret bunker.
