Part 32: Go West, Young Man

Update 32: Go West, Young Man



With all of the loose ends tied up, it was time to head west and start looking for signs of the Enclave. Our first stop was the abandoned military base that Goris had told us about to the west of Vault 13.



To be honest, the dilapidated old tents reminded me of nothing so much as the Squat. Of course, some of us had longer memories.

"Hey! I think this used to be my tent!"

"I'm pretty sure there's been some other residents since you moved out."



Inside of one of the tents we found a footlocker with a map and a holodisk. I put aside the holodisk for later, but the map showed a fairly good sized city to the west.



The residents were slightly less friendly than at the Squat. Slightly.



It didn't work out for them, since none of them asked us to help save their cubs and allowed us to win their trust.



There were a few odds and ends of equipment left over, including some ammunition, repair manuals, and of all things a cattle prod. I didn't want to ask any questions about that last one.



"Hey Marcus, do you remember that giant pile of rocks being there?"

"N…ooo….Luke's great grandaddy did a number on the place, but I don't remember him caving in the entrance."

"Huh… you know, I've got an idea."



"This might be the most makeshift, idiotic thing I've ever seen."

"We be thinking that we want to watch this. From away. A long way away."

"Yeah, I'm not helping you push that thing. You want to try and clear a rockslide with dynamite on a stick it's all you."

"Eh, between the combat armor and the implants I'll be fine."



"See, if it's stupid and it works it's not stupid."

"Nope, it's still stupid."

5000 XP for opening a door in a way that poses no risk to you what-so-ever. You use a pipe that's on the ground right next to the mine car, and there's dynamite in the area. That's what we call balance, folks. Still, not going to turn down that much easy experience.



This is enough to pop us up to another level, meaning we get a perk. There's only 1 Perk in the 21st level tier and we don't quality for it, so we'll just pick up Living Anatomy. For single shot weapons +5 damage is a pretty nice bonus and the bonus to doctor and first aid isn't bad.



I went ahead and dropped the points into small guns, since energy weapons aren't exactly impressing me at the moment.



Just inside the entrance to the base we found soldiers in enclave uniforms who'd evidently lost a fight of some kind. They were still pretty fresh, suggesting that the collapse of the front entrance must have happened fairly recently.



The place was full of mutated rats, but down a long hallway we found a perfect test subject for the mad doctor's serum.



It still needed some work.



Fighting through the rats we continued to find Enclave corpses, as well as a broken generator that I fixed. Considering this was the third generator I'd fixed in the last couple of weeks, I could see a real future for myself as a generator mechanic if this whole 'saving my tribe' thing didn't work out.



The generator powered a nearby elevator, which made me wonder about how whoever the Enclave had been fighting had managed to get up the shaft.



There were more corpses scattered around on the second floor, including one that was still clutching a plasma pistol. Evidently it hadn't done much to help him.



At the end of the chamber there was a small room hiding his presumed killers, a group of super mutants wielding heavy weaponry. They weren't any happier to see us, and were very much of the shoot first, loot the bodies second, and ask questions never school of thought.



The narrow hallways magnified the sound of gunshots and drew more company from down the hall. Since some of them were using flamethrowers I hustled to keep out in front of my less fireproof companions.



They came on in a continuous stream, but there was enough time for me to pick a strategic doorway to shelter in and pop some stim packs. Even decent armor and my implants were only doing so much.



Eventually they stopped coming and we had some space to breath and use stims on people who weren't me.



Some of them even had powerfists, although I was actually happier to see those than a flamethrower or minigun. I went ahead and picked up every powerfist we saw since they were lighter than the other hardware and would still be valuable.



One of the super mutants was just sitting in a room down the hall facing the wall. The door was opened, suggesting that someone had walked out of there and was in the pile of bodies we'd left down the corridor… but for some reason this guy just didn't feel like walking over there.



Once we killed him, we went ahead and raider the medical supply cabinet to refill our stocks. I'm not sure I want to know why they had a set of pliers in there, but I guess you could call those a medical tool in some cases.



The rest of the super mutants were chilling out in a barracks of some kind, and hadn't gotten around to wondering why their friends hadn't come back. Considering that these guys seemed to be on the slower end of the super mutant intelligence scale they might even have forgotten about them.



Even after clearing out the main room, there was still one guy sitting off alone in his own tiny room even after we were firing off large pistols, automatic shotguns, and a freaking Bozar less than 50 feet away. I can only guess that he must have been deaf.



One of the cabinets had the real prize: a full suit of power armor in pristine condition.



Even with that we were loaded down with gear, so we headed back to the surface to lighten the load a bit. There was some minor grumbling along the lines of "my leg is about to fall off" or "I think I'm bleeding out" but everybody was fine in the end.



Power armor provides 5 AC over combat armor, increases your damage absorption (but not damage resistance), and gives you three additional points of strength while you're wearing it. 75 pounds of additional carry weight is nothing to sneeze at, and this helps counteract the penalties for using heavy weapons without enough strength.



With that we headed for the city marked on the map, a place called "San Franciso." I could only hope that they would have something worth trading all of these flamers and power fists for.