Notes From New Vegas 23
Dec. 12th, 2010 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynNotes From New Vegas 23: AGAIN? What, AGAIN?
Hi, everyone. Sorry this one's so late. RL takes precedence, and when you work for a financial services firm and it's Sarbanes-Oxley audit season, it takes a lot of precedence.
When last we saw our heroine she and Ronnie the slightly disgruntled scribe were heading back to Hidden Valley to turn over the reports from the three scouts Elder McNamara had sent out. All well and good, except for running into scorpions along the way, over and over and over and OKAY YES WE GET IT THIS IS THE SOUTHWEST, ENOUGH WITH THE DAMN SCORPIONS. Sheesh. Fortunately Ronnie was perfectly happy to punch them until they exploded, and Janice had her Q-35 Matter Modulator to turn them into goo (well, sometimes- the rest of the time they just died), so they made it back to the bunker okay. Janice kinda tiptoed past Paladin Hardin because she really wasn't in any kind of position to tell him what was going on- "yeah, I'm doing favors for the guy you're trying to oust because he won't let you out of the bunker" doesn't look good- and handed McNamara the reports. Dude looked positively thrilled at what he saw and said he'd have to think about it, but he had one last favor to ask. Apparently there was a system that created sandstorms at night on a regular basis to keep people from finding the bunker or stumbling across the Brotherhood patrollers in the dark, and it was breaking down from overuse, and air quality in the bunker was starting to drop, and could Janice look for replacement parts in area Vaults, and how many people are having flashbacks to Fallout 1 now? yeah, thought so.
Anyway, Janice said all right and went to go talk to Senior Knight Lorenzo, who was in charge of the project. Nobody said anything whatsoever about her robot not being with her. I'm going with the theory that Lorenzo had heard about the conservative Paladins being asses and didn't really feel safe being pushy after something like that happened, because he was willing to talk anyway- and because he freaked out when he heard that McNamara had asked Janice to go find the parts. Apparently Lorenzo had suggested searching area Vaults for parts before and the people they'd sent to do it never came back, and now he had a guilty conscience and was afraid Janice's blood would end up on his hands as well. He still told her where to look, though, which was about the point where Janice started going "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF". Because if there was one thing Janice did not want to do that day, it was go back into Vault freaking 22.Or Vault freaking 11. Granted, it could've been worse, Lorenzo could've said the parts they needed were in Vault 34, but regardless, Janice didn't want to go back to the Planet of the Orks or the Vault of Shirley Jackson. At least the third Vault he suggested she check was somewhere she hadn't been yet- Vault 3, out on the southwest fringes of Vegas...
Janice and Ronnie set off for Vault 11 first, since it was closest. Much to Janice's relief, nothing seemed to have taken the opportunity to retake the Vault since she and Ronnie had killed everything that moved. Much to Janice's acute, acute displeasure, searching the Vault from top to bottom yielded nothing useful. In fact it only revealed that the one place left to search was under water. Under radioactive water. Granted, she didn't have to go digging key cards out of dead glowing guys' pants this time, but still! The Brotherhood OWED her for the damage their idiocy was doing to her genes, thank you very much!
Vault 22 was next, even though it was farther out than Vault 3. Mostly this was because at least she knew where it WAS. There were still bugs roaming around the place despite the sporesplosion Keely had had Janice set off, so those died in large number, but it still wasn't as bad as it had been the first time. Well, okay, the part where the room they needed to search was sealed off by a deadfall neither she nor Ronnie was capable of moving and had to be reached by going back into the creepy green-litten cavern and climbing up until they reached that level from the other side, that part was nasty, but it could've been ever so much worse. Janice could just about live with that.
And then there was Vault 3.
Now, up until this moment, every Vault Janice had encountered had been built into mountainsides or other geographical formations well away from population centers. According to the marking Lorenzo had made on Janice's map, Vault 3 was inside the urban zone around Vegas. Janice figured if she set off from Camp McCarran she'd be able to get treated for her radiation exposure and load up on some supplies before going into the unknown, so she did that... and found out in the process of talking to various NCR folken that Vault 3 had become home to the crazypants chem-addled raider wackos we all know and hate, the Fiends. So basically, she and Ronnie were heading straight into the fortified den of people too high to know they were being slaughtered. Great, just great. On the bright side the NCR was offering a bounty on several Fiend leaders if Janice could bring back their heads, or in one guy's case just his helmet, so if she survived she'd have a nice chunk of change to show for it, but let's go over that part again: a whole tribe of raiders with guns, no morals, and so many chems they wouldn't even notice if they lost an arm. Ya-huh.
Around about now Janice seriously considered telling Ronnie to go away and saying "screw the Brotherhood, I'mma go ask the Followers if they have any job openings". But she thought about it for a while and, y'know, didn't really relish the idea of what would happen if she did. See, Veronica knew most of the people Janice knew, and knew the kinds of things Janice did for a living, and was perfectly capable of punching a radscorpion the size of a Corvega until it exploded. Ronnie might not be happy with the Brotherhood right now but if Janice told her that she wasn't going to need Veronica's company any more, Veronica would sooner or later realize that Janice wasn't going to finish finding what the Brotherhood needed to survive. And then the girl with the Punch Of Kill Everything would hunt her down and cave in her skull while she slept. Whereas if she helped Ronnie out with some skillful enough sneaking and lying, she stood a snowball's chance in hell of taking out the Fiends' leaders and throwing the whole bag of weirdos into disarray for long enough to search Vault 3 and then get out alive. So... yeah. Vault 3. She'd do that.
I won't go into much detal about what happened next, except to say this. There is something about realizing that you just beheaded a psychopathic rapist with a thing for fire who goes berserk at the thought that someone harmed his pet two-headed cow. I am not sure what that something is, but there's definitely something about it. It's up there with beheading the drug fiend named after a Mormon prophet- I swear, I'm not kidding, his name is Driver Nephi- who uses a golf club as a melee weapon of deadly force. It was called Driver Nephi's Driver.
....Yeah.
Alas, the third beheading wasn't nearly as interesting; that Fiend was just some speed freak with a thing for dogs. Oh well. Janice brought all three heads back and turned them over to the NCR officer who'd told her about the bounties; he made some nasty comments to each of the dead heads and congratulated Janice on a job well done before handing her a lot of caps. She ran into Corporal Betsy on the way out, and Betsy made some disgruntled noises about not having been able to kill the rapist herself- but she then congratulated Janice and gave her caps too, since at least the guy was dead. So that was all right.
From there it was a quick side trip to a local vendor to get some more microfusion cells for Ronnie and to get the power armor touched up, and then it was time to go tromp off to Vault 3.
Hi, everyone. Sorry this one's so late. RL takes precedence, and when you work for a financial services firm and it's Sarbanes-Oxley audit season, it takes a lot of precedence.
When last we saw our heroine she and Ronnie the slightly disgruntled scribe were heading back to Hidden Valley to turn over the reports from the three scouts Elder McNamara had sent out. All well and good, except for running into scorpions along the way, over and over and over and OKAY YES WE GET IT THIS IS THE SOUTHWEST, ENOUGH WITH THE DAMN SCORPIONS. Sheesh. Fortunately Ronnie was perfectly happy to punch them until they exploded, and Janice had her Q-35 Matter Modulator to turn them into goo (well, sometimes- the rest of the time they just died), so they made it back to the bunker okay. Janice kinda tiptoed past Paladin Hardin because she really wasn't in any kind of position to tell him what was going on- "yeah, I'm doing favors for the guy you're trying to oust because he won't let you out of the bunker" doesn't look good- and handed McNamara the reports. Dude looked positively thrilled at what he saw and said he'd have to think about it, but he had one last favor to ask. Apparently there was a system that created sandstorms at night on a regular basis to keep people from finding the bunker or stumbling across the Brotherhood patrollers in the dark, and it was breaking down from overuse, and air quality in the bunker was starting to drop, and could Janice look for replacement parts in area Vaults, and how many people are having flashbacks to Fallout 1 now? yeah, thought so.
Anyway, Janice said all right and went to go talk to Senior Knight Lorenzo, who was in charge of the project. Nobody said anything whatsoever about her robot not being with her. I'm going with the theory that Lorenzo had heard about the conservative Paladins being asses and didn't really feel safe being pushy after something like that happened, because he was willing to talk anyway- and because he freaked out when he heard that McNamara had asked Janice to go find the parts. Apparently Lorenzo had suggested searching area Vaults for parts before and the people they'd sent to do it never came back, and now he had a guilty conscience and was afraid Janice's blood would end up on his hands as well. He still told her where to look, though, which was about the point where Janice started going "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF". Because if there was one thing Janice did not want to do that day, it was go back into Vault freaking 22.Or Vault freaking 11. Granted, it could've been worse, Lorenzo could've said the parts they needed were in Vault 34, but regardless, Janice didn't want to go back to the Planet of the Orks or the Vault of Shirley Jackson. At least the third Vault he suggested she check was somewhere she hadn't been yet- Vault 3, out on the southwest fringes of Vegas...
Janice and Ronnie set off for Vault 11 first, since it was closest. Much to Janice's relief, nothing seemed to have taken the opportunity to retake the Vault since she and Ronnie had killed everything that moved. Much to Janice's acute, acute displeasure, searching the Vault from top to bottom yielded nothing useful. In fact it only revealed that the one place left to search was under water. Under radioactive water. Granted, she didn't have to go digging key cards out of dead glowing guys' pants this time, but still! The Brotherhood OWED her for the damage their idiocy was doing to her genes, thank you very much!
Vault 22 was next, even though it was farther out than Vault 3. Mostly this was because at least she knew where it WAS. There were still bugs roaming around the place despite the sporesplosion Keely had had Janice set off, so those died in large number, but it still wasn't as bad as it had been the first time. Well, okay, the part where the room they needed to search was sealed off by a deadfall neither she nor Ronnie was capable of moving and had to be reached by going back into the creepy green-litten cavern and climbing up until they reached that level from the other side, that part was nasty, but it could've been ever so much worse. Janice could just about live with that.
And then there was Vault 3.
Now, up until this moment, every Vault Janice had encountered had been built into mountainsides or other geographical formations well away from population centers. According to the marking Lorenzo had made on Janice's map, Vault 3 was inside the urban zone around Vegas. Janice figured if she set off from Camp McCarran she'd be able to get treated for her radiation exposure and load up on some supplies before going into the unknown, so she did that... and found out in the process of talking to various NCR folken that Vault 3 had become home to the crazypants chem-addled raider wackos we all know and hate, the Fiends. So basically, she and Ronnie were heading straight into the fortified den of people too high to know they were being slaughtered. Great, just great. On the bright side the NCR was offering a bounty on several Fiend leaders if Janice could bring back their heads, or in one guy's case just his helmet, so if she survived she'd have a nice chunk of change to show for it, but let's go over that part again: a whole tribe of raiders with guns, no morals, and so many chems they wouldn't even notice if they lost an arm. Ya-huh.
Around about now Janice seriously considered telling Ronnie to go away and saying "screw the Brotherhood, I'mma go ask the Followers if they have any job openings". But she thought about it for a while and, y'know, didn't really relish the idea of what would happen if she did. See, Veronica knew most of the people Janice knew, and knew the kinds of things Janice did for a living, and was perfectly capable of punching a radscorpion the size of a Corvega until it exploded. Ronnie might not be happy with the Brotherhood right now but if Janice told her that she wasn't going to need Veronica's company any more, Veronica would sooner or later realize that Janice wasn't going to finish finding what the Brotherhood needed to survive. And then the girl with the Punch Of Kill Everything would hunt her down and cave in her skull while she slept. Whereas if she helped Ronnie out with some skillful enough sneaking and lying, she stood a snowball's chance in hell of taking out the Fiends' leaders and throwing the whole bag of weirdos into disarray for long enough to search Vault 3 and then get out alive. So... yeah. Vault 3. She'd do that.
I won't go into much detal about what happened next, except to say this. There is something about realizing that you just beheaded a psychopathic rapist with a thing for fire who goes berserk at the thought that someone harmed his pet two-headed cow. I am not sure what that something is, but there's definitely something about it. It's up there with beheading the drug fiend named after a Mormon prophet- I swear, I'm not kidding, his name is Driver Nephi- who uses a golf club as a melee weapon of deadly force. It was called Driver Nephi's Driver.
....Yeah.
Alas, the third beheading wasn't nearly as interesting; that Fiend was just some speed freak with a thing for dogs. Oh well. Janice brought all three heads back and turned them over to the NCR officer who'd told her about the bounties; he made some nasty comments to each of the dead heads and congratulated Janice on a job well done before handing her a lot of caps. She ran into Corporal Betsy on the way out, and Betsy made some disgruntled noises about not having been able to kill the rapist herself- but she then congratulated Janice and gave her caps too, since at least the guy was dead. So that was all right.
From there it was a quick side trip to a local vendor to get some more microfusion cells for Ronnie and to get the power armor touched up, and then it was time to go tromp off to Vault 3.
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no subject
Date: 2010-12-13 01:58 pm (UTC)...if I figure it out, I'll let you know.
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Date: 2010-12-13 03:04 pm (UTC)