Fallout: The End…

Last Time on Fallout Girl, we were faced with some dick asking us to kill some jerks, and you guys rightfully said no. Let’s see how that all ends up, shall we?

So out in the streets outside the watershed, we run across Larry here, the first of the Super Mutants stationed here in the Necropolis. He doesn’t bother us as we approach, instead mentioning something about ‘the boss’. I’m actually not sure who he refers to here. Played it a couple times, and there’s a couple of people he could call ‘the boss’, some of whom might actually hit you.

The first one is inside the watershed here. Harry. They’ve got theme naming. Harry spots Athena coming up, dressed in a very flattering set of bloodstained spiked metal armor, face flushed and jaw clenched from the frustration of having to deal with a total dick, killing machine in her hand. He sees how pretty she is. He tells her so.

Athena could respond by smacking his face across the room, but we’re going nonviolent here, so she chokes back the bile and butters him up instead. We get our first real look at Super Mutants here. They’re much larger, uglier, and dumber versions of humans. Have difficulty talking, parts of their bodies so overgrown they have to hold them up with straps. Thinking’s a bit of a problem for them. Harry here, he realizes she’s a normal human, says that he’s supposed to take normal humans to “Lou Tenant”, but doesn’t want anything bad to happen to her so he lets her through, but tells her to be quick about it.

Most of the time, gender doesn’t matter in the original Fallout. This is one of the few times it does. Male characters, or female characters with less charisma than Athena, have to convince Harry that they’re actually robots instead of humans to get through there. Fail the speech check, you get a fight, which, once again, is probably the second most consistent companion-killer in the game. You can also choose to let Harry take you to his leader and end up with an early look at an end-game area and boss, but that also ends with all your stuff being taken away from you, with you locked up in a cell, surrounded by a whole bunch of better-armed version of these guys. Something of a challenge option for stealth-based characters, certain doom for all other builds. Recent success notwithstanding, Athena is not a stealth-based character. Let’s take the road better-traveled.

Anyways, Harry lets us through. Next room over in the water shed is the broken water pump we were informed of previously. If you need a refresher, the Necropolis has two sources of water, this water pump, and the computerized water-filtration system that probably has the water chip we’re looking for. The pump’s not working, so they’re completely reliant on the thing we need to render inoperable to save our people.

In the back is a ghoul that’s locked up for reasons. We’ve got no real reason to do this, but after joining the circle of thieves, Athena’s starting to get a real itch to practice her skills. Just for fun, she picks his cell door open. In return, the ghoul tells us a bunch of stuff we already know. Ok. It also mentions something about some wild glowing ghouls downstairs.

Then, we vacate the water shed, and head down into the sewers again (ugh) using the manhole by Larry. We want to fix the water pump so as not to doom the entirety of the Necropolis, but we need some more parts for that. The leader of the peaceful ghouls we talked to earlier mentioned that there were some suitable parts in the sewers, but none of his friends survived the trip to go get them. Because they’re pacifists. You might have noticed, Athena is not.

We’re immediately set upon by rats. We shoot them. I could give you the usual play-by-play, but they’re rats. There’s no way to make that interesting.

There are some giant rats there. We shoot them too. Same results.

At the end of this section of the sewers, we run into a worthless pile of trash. Which turns out to be exactly what we’re looking for. We take the junk we find back to the lair of the peaceful ghouls. The leader there confirms that we can use it as parts to repair the water pump. He also slips us a couple of electronics magazines. We spend the next several hours studying them, and somehow, from the electronics guides, gain the information we need to repair the mechanical water pump. Good show.

Back at the water shed, we work over the pump. Even with the recent boost to our repair skill we got from those magazines, Athena’s not the best at machines, and it takes us many tries to get the pump working again. But finally, Athena manages to slot the garbage into place, and it starts churning up water once more. Now we can take the water chip without worrying about dooming the entire Necropolis to death by dehydration.

There’s a ladder heading underground in the back of the water shed. We take it, and for once, don’t wind up in the sewers.

We’re immediately confronted by a pair of glowing ghouls, who don’t appreciate our presence there. The imprisoned ghoul we released mentioned them, saying that they’re stronger and more immediately aggressive than your garden variety ghoul.

They’re certainly more aggressive. They don’t live long enough for us to ascertain their strength.

At the end of the little underground space we find ourselves in, we see the opening to a vault, just like the Water Merchants suspected. It doesn’t look very good. Door blasted right off, covered in rust, most of the computers inside aren’t very operable.

The original Fallout only gives you a bit of information about it, but this is Vault 12. Way back when, in the days of the Great War, when the bombs that ruined the world were dropping, people flooded into this vault, seeking safety from the ensuing maelstrom. They should have been much like our vault was, full of people sheltered from the horrors and brutalities of the outside world. But their door malfunctioned. It never closed.

The people inside were protected from the initial blasts, but not the radiation that followed. The ghouls we’ve been seeing here in the Necropolis used to be those residents, but twisted by the radiation, became what they are now. Many, like Set, lost their minds and turned into dicks.

All vaults we run into follow the same layout, so we know pretty easily where we’re heading. We could stop in on the residential floor, but the entire vault has been picked over very well, and there’s not anything useful left in here. We go straight to the administration floor.

The only ghouls still hanging around in the vaults are the glowing ones. The ones inside, we can just walk by. They don’t bother us. Amidst all the computers that are supposed to be managing the operations of the vault, there’s only one that’s still working. The one managing the water filtration system.

It does have a working water chip installed. Once again, it takes Athena a few tries, but gingerly, carefully, she teases the chip out. The computer shuts down, but overhead, Athena hears the water pumps kicking in. She’s got the chip. Her vault is saved. And the people of the necropolis still get to live, as well.

That has to be corrected. Athena makes a pit stop on the way back to the Vault. Specifically, she heads to Set’s church.

He’s not willing to talk to her in the daytime. Oh well. I wanted to show you just how much of a dick Set is so you know I’m not just making things ups, but I’m not willing to wait around for that. Remember that ‘kill the mutants’ quest he wanted to send us on? The crazy dangerous murder machine? I took that on a test run, off screen. We succeeded, but it cost us Dogmeat’s life. So you guys made the right choice. Your reward for that is somewhere between 50-200 caps and some random knickknacks depending on how much Set’s assistant likes you. A pittance. For reference, Athena’s carrying in the area of 11,000 caps on her right now.

At any point in talking with him, if you give him a response even slightly negative, including calling him on how chump his payment is, every ghoul within earshot goes aggro on you. So, Set’s a dick.

But not for much longer. I couldn’t get him pissed off at us if he’s not actually willing to talk, so Athena pulls out her gun and just shoots him for being a dick. Actually, she shoots his assistant, because their sprites overlapped and I clicked the wrong one, but you get the idea.

Set responds by knocking a shot off against Athena’s armor. The assistant also gets into a position to take a shot, but misses, and Dogmeat lays into him after that. Tycho unloads his shotgun into Set’s bodyguard, and the rest of the ghouls in the church start moving into combat range.

This is a fight that can get out of hand pretty quickly, if you don’t stay on top of it. There’s a huge amount of ghouls in this church. The only ones that are truly threatening on their own are Set and the two he keeps around him, but if you don’t take them down before the rest of the crew get there, they can overwhelm you with numbers.

We make a good showing of it. We take down the assistant and bodyguard, but Set is still standing when the first of the horde reaches us. This could get a bit tricky.

Dogmeat piles on Set while the wimp ghouls start slashing at Athena. Set gets low enough in hp that he starts popping stimpaks. Wait, other people can do that too? No fair. Athena takes a potshot at him her next turn, then does the same. Nearly all the ghouls are targeting her, which is fine, she’s the most survivable of the crew, but it does mean she has to stay on top of the health game.

Between the three of them, our crew is able to gun Set down over the next turn. Unfortunately, by the time they do so, our friends find themselves completely surrounded by ghouls wielding spears and knives.

The battle devolves into chaos from there. Those ghouls aren’t much on their own, only hitting for a few HP and folding after a good shot or two. But there sure are a lot of them. And they swarm us. Mostly around Athena. In fact, almost entirely around Athena. And this is a problem. Sure, they’re only hitting for a couple hit points a shot, but when Athena’s getting hit a dozen times a round, that adds up.

Athena has three real options for what to do on a given turn. She can attack, she can heal, or she can move. She has enough action points to do two of those three each turn. You might think, in this situation, the solution is to hunker down, firing once then healing each turn. That’s a decent enough answer. But remember, I am a tactical mastermind, so I have to pick something that excels beyond that. Need to keep up my reputation. Instead, I have Athena stick and move, firing once then creating some distance as she navigates into the skewed pathways created by the pews. These guys are entirely melee attackers, which means they need to be close to strike. Athena’s under no such restriction. That gives her a lot more control over the battlefield, as the enemy has no choice but to follow her wherever she heads. Also, since you guys picked the bonus move feat last time around, her ability to create some distance while still keeping up the offense is pretty good, at the moment. She uses it, thinning out the crowd while limiting the amount of attacks the enemy can muster as they have to waste their own AP following after her.

Eventually, she finds herself in the middle of a group of pews, the horde forced to line up in order to get at her. Tycho and Dogmeat end the enemies distracting them, and our group starts chewing up the enemy line from both ends. They don’t last long after that.

The enemy gone, we loot the place. Not a whole lot of value here, but a few skill-boosting magazines, and a lot of caps. We loot the bodies, and find too many guns for us to carry. What’s up with that? Who has too many guns? I didn’t know that was even a thing.

Anyways, our business is done. We got our water-chip while still saving all the ghouls in the necropolis, except for the ones we killed. I’d call that a job well done. Athena starts blazing the trail back to Vault 13. It takes days to get there, but she whiles away the time thinking about how much of a hero everyone’s going to say she is.

One random encounter with a bunch of giant rats and one with a giant scorpion later, she finds herself at the entrance to the Vault at like five in the morning. People are barely awake. Adulation will come after everyone’s up, I suppose.

The overseer’s awake, though, Athena reports in to him. Wants to talk about letting people leave the Vault, as, you know, giant man-eating creatures and horrible mutants and the complete collapse of any real peacekeeping aside, it’s very pleasant out there. No, that’s a lie.

Overseer Jacoren rightly has priorities, says she’s earned the right to talk but they’ll do it later. First, he wants to talk survival, makes sure the chip works. He tests it, it doesn’t, everyone’s doomed. The end.

No, just joking. It works. The vault is saved. Crisis over, everyone gets to live, and Athena and Ed (RIP) and Talius (Maybe RIP) are the only ones with any scars to show for it. And Athena got to discover what a badass she is in exchange! Happy endings all around!

Just one last bit, the overseer wants a report from Athena on what went on out there. She’s up for it. She’s got quite the story to tell. A tale of an unquestionably strong and beautiful heroine braving the dangers of the wastes and overcoming all challenges. She heads to one of the admin rooms to write it.

24 hours later, she’s done with that. And you know, we saved our vault! 2000 people, all of whom owe us their lives! Certainly no more dangers out there whatsoever, no more challenges to over come. Athena’s going to rest and relax for the rest of her days here in the Vault. Thanks for being along with us on this ride, everybody! We’re totally at the end of the game now. Check back next time for whatever series I decide to go on next, now that this one is completely and utterly over with!