The Volunteers (AKA The Dirty Half-Dozen, The Six Wanderers)

Bob Perce (Herodian)
Colt Riffle (Gigermann)
Dr. J. Turk (CommJunkee)
Lance Bennett (Ronnke)
Lenny Leonardo (Melissa)
Romeo Sylvester (Herodian, for absent Rigil Kent)

The One Where They Looted Vault 15

It was early when the Volunteers met with the Raiders and Tandi in their cave headquarters. Wasting no time after securing the agreement to take her back to her father so she could nick the Vault 15 keycard, they packed up and headed back North to Shady Sands. They camped off the trail in the evening, and around the fire, they made their plans with Tandi: she would be returned to Aradesh, her father, at which point he would give them the name and whereabouts of his contact in Junktown, as promised; afterward, they would wait around town for a day or two for Tandi to steal the keycard—she already knew the code (her birthday)—and once secured, escort her to Vault 15, where they would check the place for a spare control chip; presuming all is well there, they would then escort Tandi back to the Raiders’ camp, concluding their business as agreed.

fo-shadysands

26 Dec 2161

The group arrived at Shady Sands around midday. Sly and Lenny took Tandi to the town hall and presented her to her father—the reunion was…a bit cold, to no one’s surprise—and told him mostly the truth, that they had reached an agreement with the Raiders. Aradesh was glad to see that the Volunteers had accomplished his mission, and he kept his word, giving the name of the contact in Junktown as Killian, who could be found at the general store there—he would know how to locate a new control chip. Aradesh expected he would accept payment in “services rendered.” Rather than accept as payment the name of someone they might have stumbled across in a location they might have ended up anyway, Sly suggested that Aradesh might grant them a future favor instead; he agreed. As they left, they could faintly hear sounds of a father/daughter argument kicking up.

Meanwhile, the other vault-dwellers had congregated at the town’s trading post. Colt and Lance looked over the available goods and did some trading. After the meeting with Aradesh, Sly showed up and started chatting up the locals there for more info about the outside world, while Bob listened in and people-watched. Turk left to see the town’s doctor, joined by Lenny, to see if he had any meds for sale; he ended up purchasing some Rad-X and Radaway with the extra bottlecaps they got from trading, Lenny having negotiated a lower price for the lot. After they returned to the trading post, Lenny went straight for the gambling tables again, staying late into the night, after the others had gone to bed back at the town hall.

27 Dec 2161

In the morning, at breakfast, Tandi slipped Sly a note that said “Meet outside town after sundown ready to go.” The Volunteers spent the day purchasing food for the trip, packing up the brahmin (now being referred to as “Betsy”), and leaving, making a show of going South before circling around to the East of town, where they waited out the remaining daylight for Tandi to arrive. And arrive she did, solo, as anticipated; she demonstrated no fear of the dark or the wilderness, impressing her escorts. The group decided to move on in the dark for another mile or two to get a little farther from town before settling down for the night. They struck camp in the morning after an uneventful night and continued on into the mountains toward Vault 15, expecting a two-day trek, at least.

fo-ghosttown1

fo-eyebot

Around midday, they spotted what remained of a small town in the distance ahead. They brought forward binoculars and scopes to observe for signs of activity, and seeing none, were about proceed to check it out when a flying, metallic object sped down the town’s cross-street and continued North, out of sight—Colt being familiar with pre-bombs military hardware suspected it to be an eye bot, but since it wasn’t loitering in the area, they figured it wasn’t a threat. Lance headed straight for the rusty, abandoned car in the middle of town to look it over, and found it to have a functioning reactor (that they had nowhere to put), plus some random items in the trunk. Everyone else scouted around the handful of ruined buildings still standing, and found little else of note.

29 Dec 2161

The rest of the journey to Vault 15 passed without incident, and they found the entrance, disguised as an abandoned shack. Tandi swiped the keycard and punched in the code, and the massive vault-door opened. Inside, the power was still warming up as they gazed in wonder upon the near-duplicate of Vault 13, the only home they had known for their entire life.

fo-vault1

fo-hydroprocesor

The Volunteers “forgot” about the Raiders intention to move in to the facility, and started looking to take whatever they might need that wasn’t nailed down. Turk went straight for the med bay and checked out the autodoc—in excellent condition—and started digging through the available meds. Colt headed to level three to the security office to check the CCTV system for signs of life in the complex, and found none. Sly found his way to the Overseer’s offices to look at the vault’s records, and downloaded them to his Pip-Boy. Bob and Lenny entered the living quarters and started going through the apartments, one by one, looking for useful supplies. Lance headed for the maintenance office, and found it locked; he was about to try to run a bypass when Tandi swiped the master keycard to let him in. It had been emptied of supplies, so he turned his attention to the water purification system, to look at their existing control chip, and finding it in good working condition, carefully pulled it out, and wrapped it in a towel. He called everyone together to see their salvation, their mission objective. However, elation turned to horror as Lance unwrapped the chip and clumsily dropped it to the floor, shattering the vacuum-tubes and rendering it useless.

Notes

  • This was the first session to involve a lot of trading/scrounging, and as such, kinda dragged a bit in those places; we’re working on that. Also noteworthy: the GM wasn’t prepared for trading at Shady Sands’ trading post (which doesn’t actually exist in the original), and booted up a saved game of Fallout to find a store to get its available items
  • Players of the original Fallout will notice that Vault 15’s condition is rather different from the game—probably closer to its Fallout 2 condition, minus the occupants
  • Lance’s player had planned all along for him to end up breaking the chip, for story purposes, but when he made his Klutz check, he rolled a 17 anyway—the Universe agreed