Part 17: There's an Old Sheriff in Town

Update 17: There's an Old Sheriff in Town



After an eventful drive, our initial entrance into Broken Hills didn't start out well.

"Did anyone else besides we and I feel a bump right there at the end?"

"Good thing we don't actually have a license plate."



"Just try to relax, old timer. Need me to help you out?"

"You're goddamn right, yes! I can barely move! Now mind you, I ain't whining. I've had worse scrapes. Why this ain't nothing compared to that mix-up years ago with the Cola truck down south a ways. Ya shoulda seen it kid, caps everywhere!"

"Wow! Imagine someone running across that in the desert! They would've been rich!"

"You bet. Arrgh! Oww! I hate to put a damper on this scintillating conversation, but if you could help me out from under this bumper I'd appreciate it."

"Okay. Sulik, on three me and you and we and I or whatever lift. Cassidy, you pull."

Once we pulled him out the old ghoul just got right on up and tottered off.



Down at the other end of the center of town a green giant with a freakin' mini gun strapped to his arm was watching the whole commotion with a smirk on his face. I'd never actually seen one, but I was pretty sure I was looking at a super mutant. The real puzzle was why there wasn't move running and screaming going on. He didn't look hostile, so I struck up a conversation.



"Who are you?"

"I'm Marcus. Helped build the place. Now I'm sheriff."

"Holy shit. Bet you don't have many people break the law."

"You helped build this place? That must have been a long time ago…"

BTW, Marcus is voiced by Michael Dorn. If you don't know who that is I can't help you. Now, imagine all of his lines in that voice.



"Huh. Can't have been my ancestor. He didn't leave survivors."

"No, that was Jacob, from the Brotherhood of Steel. He'd sworn some oath to destroy mutes. We tussled for a while - probably a day or two. After a while, we just started laughing. What was the point?"

"Then what?"

"We became friends. Headed off together. Then other people started following us. Guess they figured if they weren't safe with a mute and a Steel Knight, safe just wasn't going to happen."

"That's actually pretty reasonable. So why here?"



"I still can't get over the fact that your buddy was a guy from the Brotherhood."

"Damn right. Best friend I ever had."

"Yeah, right! You would've dipped him just like everyone else."



"We be thinking your moral compass might be pointin' kind of north by north west."

"We had this argument all the time. I miss that hard-head."

"What about the Master's hatred for humans?"



"So what kind of better way are we talking here?"

"The Master wanted to elevate everyone to his level, so we wouldn't fight each other anymore. He was convinced we wouldn't do it by ourselves - couldn't. We had to be forced to evolve."

"Do you still agree?"

"While Jacob was alive, I thought the Master was wrong. But it seems that while some men can heed the call and rise above it all, most just run away. Jacob heard the call and embraced it. So did the Vault Dweller. But no matter how many rise above, the masses will always destroy them, right? "

"The Vault Dweller founded a village and Jacob built a town with you. It sounds like you admired and hated the Vault Dweller at the same time. So, got anything that needs done in town?"



"Sounds okay.. anything else?"

"Got some people missing too. If you find 'em, I'll pay you $500."

"Hell, I'll do it for free. I'll probably stumble on more than $500 worth of stuff while I'm looking for them."



After that I decided to start looking around before I dealt with the mine. Some of the people weren't exactly the friendliest. Somehow I felt like the woman running the general store had a very specific kind of undesirable in mind.



There was a nearby outfitter's store that needed some help out in the brahmin yard. $100 a day wasn't much, but I was feeling a bit strapped for cash so I went along with it.



Do it for five days, and you get a special perk that grants a bonus of 5% to speech. This is actually more useful than it sounds, as there are a few fairly difficult speech checks.



In between shifts at the brahmin yard I went out and met the people in town. An old doctor told me his entire life story, and because I'd been kind enough to listen to him offered to patch us up for free. Considering how many times we got shot that was a hell of a reward.



A local pharmacist gave us a different view on the history of the town, claiming that Jacob was the actual founder of the town and that Marcus had taken over later. Considering that Jacob claimed this all happened 80 years ago and he wasn't there at the time, I didn't think much of his version of the story.



Unfortunately for him, he also couldn't keep this mouth shut. Instead he tried to recruit me to break a couple of his friends out of jail. I agreed...



And then walked the two blocks over to where Marcus was standing and told him about the whole mess. Ten minutes later Jacob and his assistant joined his friends in prison.



There's enough of an experience boost with turning them in to get us up a level. Points go in to Lockpick, Small Guns, and a couple into Energy Weapons. We might even be halfway decent with them by the time we actually get a ready supply of ammo.



Another spectator introduced himself as something of a treasure hunter, and I filed his name away for later reference. He claimed that he had quite a reputation, but I'd never heard of the guy.



I heard shouting from a nearby house and wandered into a domestic dispute. I just couldn't look away until they were finished… given how long super mutants and ghouls apparently lived, they could have been practicing this argument for decades.



On the north side of town the first house on the right had a cloud of buzzing flies surrounding it, like there was something inside they just couldn't wait to get. I let myself in to a fetid odor like the worst unwashed socks and rotting meat rolled into a ball of stench, emanating from a shouting ghoul.



"Who are you and could you reek any worse if I just killed you?"

"I'm Eric. I used to run the hotel in town, but I had to sell it because of my fly problem. I also ran the tavern, but had to get out of that, too, for the same reason. Finally I used to run the generator, but flies kept getting into it."

"So did they finally just decide to pay you to not go outside and draw flies into the rest of the town?"

"That's not the issue here. There's a power generating station downtown that controls the power to the city. If you could just go there and get permission to give me a little more energy for my air conditioning, I'd be grateful."

"I think the entire town would be grateful. So yes, I'll do that."



Right behind Eric's house I found a manhole positioned directly in front of the toilet in an outhouse. I couldn't see a happy ending to this, but the last time I was looking for a lost object I had found it in a sewer...



Turned out the entire place was full of giant ants, which was a considerable improvement over what I'd expected. A single bullet from my revolver was usually enough to put them down, and Sulik and Cassidy made a hell of a mess.



Down a dead end in the caverns I found the missing people that Marcus was asking about, being nibbled on by ants. My first thought was subterranean orgy gone wrong, but then I noticed the bullet wounds.



I found a note on one of the bodies from someone named Francis to Zaius, the mine foreman, indicating that they'd actually killed ll of these people in a plot to implicate Jacob. I kind of felt like an asshole now since there actually had been a mutant conspiracy, but that didn't mean he wasn't also a criminal. I was going to have to handle this without letting the sheriff know.



Still thinking about the whole thing I climbed up a nearby ladder and kept walking around until I found myself in a building full of ghouls that looked ancient even for their kind.

"The Old Ghoul's Home?"

"It's kind of a joke. There ain't any ghouls but old ghouls. We're all sterile, see, but we're incredibly long-lived. We're the first and last generation of ghouls. This is a place for those of us who just wanna rest for a while."

"So is that what you're doing? What's your story?"

"I'm Typhon. Y'ever hear of Set? He used to run the old-time town of Necropolis. I'm his son. Got born before the radiation hit us, so I grew up mutated. Ain't been been any other way for me."

"Set? I heard he was a total bastard!"



"think growing up ghoul made it a little easier on me."

"I see… anything else you can tell me?"



"What kind of favors are you talking about?"

"I'm an old guy, an' I don't get out too much. Ain't got much chance for action, y'know what I mean? So what I want is a Cat's Paw Magazine."

"I've got a couple. Take your pick."

"Ooh, twins. You can come back for it in an hour."

"I'll come back, but… uh… you can keep the magazine. I really don't think I'm going to want it back."



"I'm Luke. This is Sulik, and this is Cassidy, and this is Vic."

"Don't mind us, this is just what we do."

"The reason I ask, you see, is because my wife is missing. I don't know where she is. She's been gone for days. I've asked around town, and no one has seen her. Can you find her for me?"

"Oh… uh… what's she look like?"

I already had a sinking feeling, but I had to be sure.

"She's blonde, sexy, and has the most incredible singing voice… I last saw her, walking around this area. She didn't like mutants or ghouls, so she wouldn't have been near any of them. Nobody knows where she went. It's like she just disappeared."

"…that's enough."



"There was also a letter on her body saying she was part of a conspiracy to kill all the mutants in Broken Hills. You know anything about that."

"Oh my God! I… I can't believe that… it's not… I suppose it may be true. She seemed to hate every mutant and ghoul she came into contact with. I never knew why."

"I don't think they're going to believe you didn't know anything about it when this story breaks."



He left town shortly afterward. I don't know where he went, but it had to be a clean break from the memories of losing his wife.



Across the street there was a lab with a guy in a lab coat and what appeared to be a tame radscorpion. Sulik wanted to just go in and start smashing, but I had to find out what the hell was going on here.



"You tried it out on a plant?"

"Of course I tried it out on a plant! I'm trying to increase intelligence from the ground up!"

"So have you made anything that works?"

"Yes, I have, thank you very much! You ever hear of 'Mentats'? I helped develop a method of ready mass-production of that chem! And others! Lots of others!"

"All right, all right. Say, I'd like to try out my skills against your scorpion."



You might not believe me, but that little bastard could pick locks and knew his letters. I'm a bit skeptical about his using morse code on the eye test, but considering that he beat me at chess I had to give him the benefit of the doubt. We tied on the other two tests.



I found the plant in a field, talking to anybody who would pass by. It says a lot about Broken Hills that nobody considered this at all strange.



He wasn't exactly happy where he was planted, and being a plant he couldn't exactly get up and move… luckily the doctor hadn't started working on that idea. I did him a favor and replanted him by the Old Ghoul's Home so he'd have some people to talk to.



As a reward, he taught me a chess Maneuver that the scorpion couldn't see through called the "Flying Liver Attack." Considering that just the name of an organ meat would be enough to distract the scorpion, I had to try it out.



Turned out that the scorpion was a really sore loser.

"We and I be smashing now!"

After that, walking over to the mine and finding out what was up with the mine seemed like a really good idea.