Fallout: Somewhere

Iprovidelittlepianos

Iprovidelittlepianos

Vault Senior Citizen
For the past several months to year I've been working my own little Fallout setting that I have tentatively dubbed "Fallout: Somewhere", because I don't really have a specific location of the U.S. in mind (though I do imagine the setting takes place somewhere in the Great Plains, on the peripherals of the great radioactive Dust Bowl that Cassidy mentions)(Though if it does take place on the Great Plains I wouldn’t mind the name “Great Wastes”). I haven't really worked on the setting for a couple months now but I was planning on writing up my ideas into a semi-professional looking design document and then posting it here for anyone to enjoy and/or critique, or even just laugh at it. But I've been procrastinating a lot and due to my laziness I think I'll just post what I have written so far, which is very pre-first draft stream-of-consciousness shit. For those actually interested in reading this, my ramblings should be somewhat decipherable, but there may be some mistakes and inconsistencies. Scratch that, I'm positive there will be inconsistencies.

Anyway, to make a long story even longer, I'd appreciate it if anyone that reads this could leave some comments or critiques if you have any. Feel free to cannibalize some of my ideas for your own settings.

I'll be posting one faction/location at a time, somewhat in order of importance to the overall geopolitical landscape of the setting, but mostly just in order of when I came up with the idea.
 
Last edited:
The Farm

The largest settlement in a relatively desolate area. The city has more contiguous fertile land than anywhere else for hundreds of miles due to a large underground reservoir of clean water (man-made from before the war). The farmland is located at the heart of the city, with most of the infrastructure of the city being located on the outskirts directly behind the city walls, with granaries and warehouses sparsely placed within the fields. There are many entrances, with a trading post at every entrance, but most of the city near the wall consists of barracks for the many guards and holding pens for the many slaves. The wall is made of scrap metal and wrecked vehicles wrapped in barbed wire and fortified in some areas with sandcrete.

The city produces enough food to be able to feed the surrounding area, but food is not the city’s chief export. The city was built and owned by raiders turned slavers, and slaves are the heart of its economy. The Farm got its name from both being a vast plot of farmland as well as being in essence one big slave breeding farm (although it has only been around long enough to yield one generation of slaves). Most of the food produced goes towards feeding slaves and soldiers, with what little left over sold to outsiders at exorbitant prices. Recently the slave population has gotten so high that there is no longer surplus food, and many lower-performing slaves are culled (agonizingly, to discourage intentional poor performance from those who prefer a quick death to a lifetime of slavery) and fed to other slaves and even soldiers. The soldiers of the Farm are also in danger of becoming slaves as punishment for cowardice or insubordination. Despite the Farm being at its slave population capacity, new slaves are still hunted and brought in to replace weaker ones, with the weaker ones being culled. It is possible for a slave to be freed and drafted into the ranks of the slavers in extraordinary circumstances.

Before the city was built, the farms themselves were planted by a group of survivalists that had survived the war in an underground bunker near what would become the Farm. When radiation levels fell the survivalists emerged and set up a small outpost on the surface above the underground reservoir and began planting crops, possibly from GMOs designed to withstand post-apocalyptic conditions. It is possible that their ancestors are the ones who originally built the reservoir in preparation for the apocalypse. Though they often had trouble with raiders and beggars, the survivalists had plenty of weapons and ammunition to defend themselves. They never allowed any outsiders into their community, and they never allowed giving food to outsiders. It was decided that their arms and ammo would be stored in the bunker for safekeeping, and a minority of the survivalists would live in the bunker to guard it, with the majority living on the surface and tending to the farms. Eventually a warlord managed to band enough gangs of raiders together and overran the farm, enslaving the survivors and building the Farm as we know it in the present. The survivalists left in the bunker didn’t have the manpower to take on these raiders alone, even with all their munitions. The raiders never learned of the bunker’s existence. The survivalists at first attempted infiltration and subterfuge to reclaim their home, but failure after failure resulted in them not even having the manpower to do that, and they eventually resigned themselves to their fate of staying in the bunker forever, surviving off fungal crops and their dwindling supply of pre-war canned and freeze-dried food.

The farm is currently led by the former second-in-command of the warlord who originally united the raiders and took over the Farm roughly twenty years prior. The warlord himself was a giant brute of a man, who managed to unite the raiders not through charisma but through fear. The warlord wanted to continue raiding towns with his raider army for sick pleasure, but his second-in-command was more reasonable as well as ambitious. Second-in-command killed warlord and assumed control of the army, establishing the slaving town. No raider objected to their new leader, this time not only out of fear but out of gratitude for ending the ruthless reign of the warlord, and out of self-interest for the riches that were promised to those who stayed loyal to second-in-command. It is rumored that it took five shots to the head to bring down the warlord, and some say the warlord actually survived, dug himself out of his shallow grave and set off to build a new army to get revenge on his traitorous lieutenant. (You can find the warlord in a small town far away from the Farm. In reality he was only shot in the head twice and dumped in the desert to be eaten by scavengers. A caravan discovered him soon after he regained consciousness and brought him with them to their destination. A bar owner took pity on him and purchased him from the caravan, and she cares for the now very mentally handicapped man. In return he serves as the sole guard and bouncer of the establishment. He has no memory of his past life and no longer has the mental capacity to understand what he did even if you told him. If you are a skilled enough doctor you can safely remove the two bullets from his brain. This will stop his migraines, but he never recovers mentally, probably for the best. If you inform the current leader of the Farm that the warlord is still alive, he will ask you to bring him in dead or alive. If you bring him in alive the former second-in-command will be amused by what he has become and keep him as his personal slave).

There are several ways the Farm can turn out depending on player choices. If you kill all the slavers somehow, you can turn the farm over to any faction that has an interest in controlling it. If you return the Farm to its rightful owners (or instigate a slave revolt), the originally enslaved survivalists and those descended from the survivalists are accepted back into their ranks, but the rest are culled and (if convinced) the survivalists will begin trading food with outsiders. If you betray the location of the bunker to the slavers then the slavers will acquire the weapons and use them to take over towns in the surrounding area, beginning a slaving empire similar to Caesar’s Legion (but only if you’ve eliminated the survivalists at the bunker. If you haven’t, then the slavers will suffer heavy losses attacking the bunker, and after a brief “siege” they give up. The only way for you to enter the bunker is if you have a high enough luck the guard in charge of monitoring for threats falls asleep on the job, allowing you to get close enough that they can’t use their artillery on you. With some convincing they will let you in and accept your help). If you use your science skill to teach higher-yield farming techniques then the slavers will no longer need to cull slaves and ration food (for the time being), and they will begin trading surplus food to surrounding areas again. If you teach the survivalists high yield farming techniques, then they won’t cull the slaves and instead accept all of them into their community (but still have to be convinced to trade food with outsiders). If you lead a successful slave uprising, then the slaves will take over the Farm but won’t trade food with outsiders unless they have been taught high yield techniques. The slaves will rename the city Eden. The bunker survivalists will attack the Farm to reclaim it but will be wiped out by the freed and armed slaves. If the Farm is turned over to the local techno-cult faction (possibly a group of supremacist ghouls that use cybernetic enhancements to make up for what they lack in strength and agility) then the slaves will remain enslaved, but they will be well-fed and treated relatively well (though trouble-makers are lobotomized) and there is plenty of food to trade with outsiders (the Brains do not need to be taught high yield techniques). You can also sabotage the reservoir by redirecting all the water to the bunker. This will completely flood the bunker, killing all survivalists and destroying their munitions, as well as causing the crops of the Farm to die and mass starvation all around.
 
Last edited:
Cyborg Ghouls

A group of ghouls descended from a military research facility within an underground bomb shelter. The shelter had not been adequately shielded from radiation due to the base being top secret and therefore not a target for nukes. However, due to dumb luck a Chinese missile went off course and struck dangerously close to the facility. (Alternatively, the base wasn’t as top secret as the US thought it was, and the Chinese launched a missile there directly). The blast destroyed the surface of the facility, but the underground levels were left structurally unharmed. The radiation killed some of the survivors and turned the rest into ghouls. The ghouls began experimenting on themselves, at first to find a way to return to normal, and when that failed, they began augmenting their desiccated bodies with cybernetic technology to improve their quality of life. The ghouls divided themselves into a caste system, based on how they chose to cybernetically enhance their bodies.

The Soldier caste grafted tailor-made power armor to their bodies and replaced their arms with weapons ranging from giant blades and clubs to plasma cannons, rocket launchers and machine guns. They also gave themselves small robotic arms protruding from their chest to manipulate objects and feed themselves. Their heads have a kind of Robocop look with only their jaws exposed.

The Scout caste was relatively unmodified compared to others (externally at least). They gave themselves robotic legs and arms for enhanced speed and dexterity, and they replaced their eyes, ears, and about half of their brain with advanced sensory equipment. Typically, one eye can see the visible light spectrum while the other can see beyond that, included infrared, ultraviolet, and X-rays. One of the ears is an antenna and is able to receive and transmit radio waves. This allows for pseudo-telepathic communication between Scouts. Soldiers also have radio built into their suits but cannot transmit their thought directly into radio messages like Scouts can. Scouts also have a “third eye” camera implanted in the back of their head to see behind themselves. Their eyes have recording capabilities that give them perfect visual memory, though memory space is limited obviously.

The Brain caste isn’t even recognizably humanoid, as it is simply a necrotic brain hooked up to a supercomputer. This caste forms the leadership of the faction as well as the research and development side of things. Members of the Brain caste are rare and have to prove themselves as geniuses in order to be allowed to modify themselves to the point that Brains are. The Brain caste is very emotionally detached and focused on logic and practicality.

The fourth caste is the Servant class. This caste consists of the ghouls that have mentally deteriorated to the point of becoming too senile or psychotic to be of value to the group as individuals. They are lobotomized and modified to suit the mundane task that they have been assigned so that they can still serve a purpose. They are often used by the Brain caste as lab assistants (and test subjects) as the Brains are unable to move or manipulate objects themselves. Law breakers can be sentenced to become Servants based on the severity of their crime, which is essentially viewed as a death sentence. It should be mentioned that the Brains view converting ghouls to Servants as a generous mercy. Servants are treated with respect by the other castes despite their low status, although the lobotomization means Servants wouldn’t know the difference anyway.

The ghouls are highly xenophobic and see themselves as superior to humans due to their natural immunity to radiation, seemingly eternal lifespans, and technology more advanced than any humans they have encountered, though almost all of them feel insecure about their grotesque appearances and perceived lack of humanity. They do accept outsider ghouls into their ranks, however many of these ghouls end up becoming Servants for one reason or another. The Brains wish to take control of the Farm to provide food for expansion should their experiments manage to find a solution to ghoul sterility. They are hopeful that advancements in cloning will substitute for natural reproduction and they will be able to expand their society and rebuild the wasteland.
 
Last edited:
The Siren’s Cave

Before the war, the cave was used as a landfill for toxic waste and other sensitive materials by the US military. During the process of transporting FEV from West-Tek to Mariposa, a mix-up happened and a giant barrel of FEV was sent to the cave by mistake. After the war, mutated animals were attracted to the radiation emitting from the toxic waste (like the geckos in the Toxic Caves near Klamath). Some of the larger ones even managed to break open the barrels and feed on what poured out. Eventually, a group of rats managed to knock over the barrel of FEV, breaking open the container and spilling FEV goo all over themselves and other rats, lizards, insects and worms nearby, both normal-sized and mutant-sized. This barrel crushed many creatures below it when it tipped over (it rolled and bulldozed over a bunch of bugs and rats), which would have shortly killed them if not for the FEV flowing around them. As they writhed in pain, unable to move, the FEV melted their flesh and fused them together, combining all of them into a single consciousness. This FEV monster was similar to the Master in its ability to absorb consciousnesses into its own, and also had telepathic abilities, but it lacked human intelligence. Though the monster’s mind was powerful it was no more than an animal, and its only motivations were to feed and grow. The monster was unable to move but could use its telepathic abilities to lure in prey and absorb it, adding to both its mass and telepathic powers.

At first it relied on the radiation from the toxic waste to lure creatures into the cave, then it was able to telepathically lure its prey from there. However soon the monster grew big and powerful enough that it could project its mind for many miles. At the edge of its influence it only had a mild effect, but the closer you got the harder it became to resist its pull. Even people could fall prey to this monster, although some were mentally strong enough to resist the effects. Though this monster was never witnessed (at least not by anyone that lived to tell the tale), its presence became known and it was nicknamed the Siren, for its telepathic lure had a similar effect to the mythical Siren’s song. Though it now had absorbed many human consciousness, its intelligence never grew, just its mental powers.

The Siren’s Cave is almost completely coated by bubbling, dripping, noxious biological goo. Tentacles, tendrils, and even human-like arms reach out from beneath this goo to pull down its victims, along with disembodied mouths and teeth. It’s pretty much a cross between the Sarlacc pit and the Corridor of Revulsion with a little bit of Gravemind-infested High Charity thrown in. If you go deep enough into the cave you will eventually be stopped by a solid wall of flesh, possibly looking like a giant squid’s beak. This is the “heart” of the Siren.

Occasionally pieces of the Siren will break off and become its own independent consciousness again. These “offspring” are similar to centaurs and floaters and roam the wastes surrounding the cave, but never wander too far off for some reason, possibly because of a latent telepathic link to the Siren. When a centaur or floater is near the brink of starvation, they will instinctively return to the Siren to be reabsorbed.

If the player is tasked with killing this monster, there are two ways to go about it. First, a psychic nullifier must be acquired, unless the player has the Mental Block perk (which requires a high level and high endurance and intelligence). One of them can be found in a specific location or if the player has high enough luck they can find one in a random encounter. Power armor is also required if the player wishes to travel beyond the mouth of the cave without being instantly devoured (the Siren’s attacks are acidic and will slowly disintegrate your power armor though). The first option is to plant shaped charges around the mouth of the cave to collapse it and seal the Siren away. This option requires high demolition skills in order to know where exactly to plant the charges and how powerful the charges need to be in order to implode the cave as opposed to making an even bigger entrance. This will not kill the Siren, but it will neutralize it as a threat and slow its growth for many decades. The second option requires fighting your way through the cave dragging a nuclear bomb to the “heart” of the Siren, and then setting a timer and running like hell. This nuke is weak enough so that once you are outside of the cave you will not be affected by the fireball, but you will feel the shockwave and radiation. The timer cannot be set for too long because the Siren will devour the bomb to disarm it, you only have enough time to run out of the cave (and if you have a vehicle waiting for you outside the cave you can put some distance between you and the explosion). It is generally very difficult to survive this explosion. It’s also difficult to find a tactical nuclear bomb. This option will send surviving pieces of the Siren flying in all directions, which will then mutate into floaters and centaurs and terrorize the wasteland for years to come. However, the Siren’s consciousness (and therefore telepathic abilities) is no more, most of its mass is disintegrated, and its surviving offspring lack the ability to reproduce. The Siren itself is weakest to plasma, fire, laser, and explosions, in that order, and is immune to physical damage like bullets, melee, as well as acid. The Siren uses melee and acid damage to attack.
 
Last edited:
The Mall

The Mall is a settlement based out of a giant open-air shopping mall. Crops are grown on the rooftops and many of the catwalks to feed the populace. The mall was built in the 2050s and served as a bustling superregional shopping mall for several mostly rural counties. The mall was extremely prosperous until the early 2070s, when it finally began to succumb to the economic decline. By the time of the Great War it was a dying mall with over 75% of its shops abandoned. The Mall is naturally heavily fortified with a lot of chokepoints that make it easy to defend. At the center of the mall is a large fountain (that no longer uses water). This fountain once depicted a father and mother holding the hands of their young daughter between them. After the war, the parent statues were removed so it only depicts a young girl with her arms raised in the air. This fountain is now dedicated to the deceased daughter of the head of mall security that was the Mall’s first leader.

It is the second largest settlement in the region behind the Farm, and the largest buyer of slaves. These slaves are used to tend to the rooftop gardens as they have previous farming experience, as well as used for menial tasks and manual labor. All of these slaves are property of the city itself and not its individual citizens. It is illegal to own slaves for personal use and any slaves of visitors to the Mall are permanently confiscated. The visitor would either be exiled, executed, or enslaved, depending on his build and temperament. The Mall is essentially a draconian police state. The citizens of the mall are obligated to comply with any order given by the guards. Disobedience results in imprisonment, exile, execution, or enslavement depending on build and temperament. All food and water are owned by the state and rationed out to its citizens and slaves. Citizens can buy additional food and water. All forms of recreational drug use and possession is illegal, including alcohol and tobacco (though there is a bar outside the city gates that many drug dealers hang out in). Possession of medicine is also illegal and will be confiscated by the state.

Despite this, citizens of the Mall do have some rights. Citizens have the right to go to prison for minor crimes, as opposed to outsiders who face exile, execution, or enslavement for any crime. Citizens also have a right to food and water when available, and no one is allowed to buy food until each citizen has gotten their ration. Each citizen family is guaranteed a stall to call their home (larger stalls given to larger families), but there is also a strict curfew at night, and everyone (excluding guards) must remain in their stalls until sunrise. Most importantly, citizens have the right to apply for a guard position, which gets them extra rations and privileges (such as medicine for them and their families).

The Mall is run by a council of five retired guards. Only guards may be members of the council, and council members are members for life. They have the option to appoint someone to take over for them in the event of their death, but if no one is appointed then the next council member will be elected. Only guards may vote, and only retired guards may be nominated as candidates. The remaining of the council members each nominate one candidate, but council members are forbidden from voting in this election. Although no election has been necessary in the history of the town, all of this is laid out in the town constitution.

The constitution was written by the founders of the Mall, which consisted of the mall security force as well as a few mall employees and store owners. The constitution was modelled after the American Constitution (at least what they could remember from it) but it attempted to fix what they saw as shortcomings. They all felt that the justice system had been ineffective at preventing the near constant robberies and random acts of mayhem that they had experienced throughout the mid to late 2070s. The head of security was particularly disillusioned with the justice system, as his daughter had been kidnapped and killed by the deranged son of a local crime lord and that the courts refused to convict. This constitution allowed investigations to be conducted swiftly and criminals to be punished brutally. About a generation later some reforms were made to the constitution, namely they added the concept of citizenship and guaranteed all citizens certain rights, as well as adding the concept of slavery and establishing a slave class (which had existed earlier in the form of life-sentenced prison labor, but was now expanded so that children of laborers would also be slaves).

Ironically, the Mall is now more prosperous after the war than it had been in its final years before the war. The Mall is responsible for establishing a currency that is used by many other settlements including the Farm. This currency consists of various denominations of aluminum coins and the Mall pays anyone to bring in scrap aluminum to make more coins out of. Damaged coins can be returned to the Mall and exchanged for newly minted ones, if you can prove it’s not a counterfeit. The Mall is home to many business establishments that you won’t find anywhere else, such as banks, vehicle dealerships and department stores. The Mall is also the only producer of ethanol in the region, so anyone that makes use of vehicles must come to the Mall to refuel (unless their vehicle is powered by batteries, which are less common, or fusion, which has practically unlimited energy but requires specialized knowledge to use safely). The technology to produce ethanol is a closely-guarded secret, and the people of the wasteland don’t even know that it comes from plants (if the Farm is taught this technology they will cease trade with the Mall and effectively go to war with them. The Farm may even switch from slave-dealing to fuel-dealing). The Mall used to purchase crops from the Farm to produce vast quantities of ethanol, but since the Farm has been restricting their sale of food product, ethanol has become scarcer and more expensive. There is also a museum that mostly contains journals of the original settlers of the Mall and details the history of the settlement from its inception.

You will only be let in the Mall if you have a high enough amount of money to spend (or goods to trade). About a week before you first enter the Mall, a terrorist suicide bomb attack had taken place that killed three of the council members as well as their appointees (along with dozens of others). The guards are making great effort to ensure that everyone continues business as usual, but the city is on the brink of chaos. The two remaining council members are an older, more conservative man and a younger, more idealistic and progressive one. The young one will enlist your help immediately but the old one won’t speak with you unless your reputation with the town is high enough. The young one wants you to help elect council members that will help steer the Mall in a more liberal direction (but still ultimately an authoritarian one). He wants to abolish slavery and establish a court system that grants every citizen a right to a fair trial. He also wants to legalize drug use as he believes the laws against it are outdated and hurting the Mall economically. The old one wants you to help elect strong leaders that can maintain the Mall’s military superiority over growing outside threats like the Farm. He wants things to mostly stay the same, but he also wants to institute an emergency contingency that would draft every able-bodied citizen and slave into the guards if war is declared. Any slave drafted into the guards would be freed (along with his family), and any citizen that refused to fight would be enslaved and used to power the war machine at home.

There are three rounds of elections, one for each vacant council seat, but the winner of the second election will always be the opposite of the nominee that won the first election (just to keep the third election interesting). If you do nothing, then the young man’s nominees will win the first election but will lose the other two. A third option is to track down the terrorists who planned the assassination and either turn them in or side with them. Turning them in will get you the reputation you need to talk with the old council member and side with him.

The terrorists wish to completely dismantle the Mall’s government and form an anarchist commune. The terrorists will task you with assassinating at least one of the remaining council members. It doesn’t matter which one, it can even be both, but this will result in the Mall being thrown into chaos and allow the anarchists to seize power after the riots. If you assassinate the old man, the young one will be unable to quell the rebellion and quickly be killed by the mob. If you assassinate the young man, the old one will immediately go on the offensive and declare a state of emergency which instigates a rebellion that quickly and violently deposes him. If the Farm is still around (and has acquired weapons from the survivalist’s bunker), the anarchists will quickly be taken over by them. Otherwise, an anarchist Mall is a freer place to live, though the Vandals will move in and trade will suffer a bit due to the decrease in safety.
 
Last edited:
The Hotel

The Hotel was once a luxury casino resort built on a man-made lake in the middle of the desert. This resort catered to the richest of the rich and could offer them anything that they desired. Even though it was located in a state with relatively strict and puritan laws, the resort was able to bribe the government to allow them to host all sorts of vices. From gambling to prostitution to drugs to hunting exotic animals with any weapon you want, if you had the money you could do it all at the resort. The guests could even pay to witness nuclear bomb detonations in the desert (in fact, this may be the location that you can find a tactical nuke to destroy the Siren), though this was only available if the military was doing a test nearby (but the hotel was able to bribe the government to encourage detonations).

The resort itself was untouched by the bombs and radiation (the structure had been made somewhat radiation-shielded due to being relatively close to nuclear test sites), but its guests and employees found themselves stranded in the desert and cut off from the outside world. The rich guests attempted to establish themselves as leaders and continued to order the employees around as they did before the war, but they quickly realized they no longer had power over the employees and were imprisoned while the employees decided what to make of the situation. As food was quickly running low (they had a garden for some vegetables but, after they had eaten the exotic animals, they had no protein source), they realized that they would have to resort to cannibalism. The guests were promptly eaten. Hunting parties were sent out to hunt more food, but they quickly discovered that the easiest animal to hunt was man. Insects and rodents were eaten when hunts were unsuccessful, but the cannibals felt that humans tasted far better than anything else that had survived the war. From this a culture of cannibalism arose. As humans became more common and mutated rats and bugs grew larger and more dangerous, the cannibals began hunting humans exclusively and even began imprisoning some of them to breed like cattle.

With the advent of the Farm the Hotel has been buying slaves to use as livestock as well. An alliance can be established between them, with the Farm agreeing to give the Hotel excess slaves instead of culling them (including infants, which the cannibals consider a delicacy), and the Hotel agreeing to turn over any people they capture to the Farm to be enslaved (this way the Hotel doesn’t have to waste food resources feeding their human cattle, also the cannibals are far better human hunters than any slaver so the Farm can more easily acquire ideal slave breeding stock). The Hotel itself is three skyscrapers with catwalks connecting them at various floors. It used to be surrounded by gardens, golf courses and other luxuries but these have since been reclaimed by the desert. The lake has dried up, but they are able to acquire enough water through trade and rain collection/purification. The stables that once housed the exotic animals are now used for human livestock.
 
Last edited:
Maple Street

A small farming town that was settled relatively recently. The town was named after the only street sign left standing in the area. It is unknown if there were ever maple trees in this area. This may be the town that the raider warlord was brought to by caravans. The town only has a few dozen residents, most of them farmers. The town also has a saloon/inn, a general store, and a blacksmith. The town operates as a direct democracy and has no formal leadership, but certain residents do hold more influence than others.

The blacksmith is a brooding and mysterious man who came from out of town and offered his skills in exchange for membership in the community. He originally came from a much larger settlement located in a ruined city far away. It is unclear why he left (or was forced to leave) but he makes it clear that he believes larger settlements are corrupt and prefers small town life. The store owner is a physically weak but ambitious man. He is responsible for putting Maple Street on the map and convincing caravans to visit (the town is located about a day’s worth of travel between two popular caravan stops, so it was just a matter of spreading the word that traders could stop in town for the night instead of setting up camp in the wasteland). He wishes to grow Maple Street’s economy to the point that it becomes a caravan stop in its own right, providing more protection for the town (with a non-stop revolving door of caravan guards coming and going) and getting rich in the process.

His plan is to enlist the help of the local bar owner to expand the services it offers to include gambling and prostitution. The bar owner herself doesn’t have anything against this idea, but she is good friends with the blacksmith who begs her not to go through with it. The player can either side with the blacksmith by convincing the bar owner to rebuff the store owner’s offer, or the player can side with the store owner and convince the bar owner to expand her business into other vices (paid for by her new investor, the store owner). The blacksmith will be outraged by this and threaten to kill the player. The player can either convince him to leave town, kill him, or beg for mercy/politely apologize. If the player begs for mercy/politely apologizes, the blacksmith will apologize for the threat and allow the player to leave in peace. A day will pass, and the store owner will be found murdered, and the blacksmith is never seen again, therefore returning the town to the status quo. If the blacksmith is killed the bar owner will regret her decision and drink herself to death, causing the store owner to take ownership of her bar. If the blacksmith is convinced to leave, he will never be seen again. Either way, the town becomes more prosperous and there is a wider selection of items to purchase at the general store. If the bar owner remains alive, she will refuse service to anyone she finds lacking in morality, which helps keep the town relatively free of crime and corruption. However, if she is dead Maple Street will transform into a bustling hive of scum and villainy. Most of the original residents will move away (if they aren’t killed or become junkies), and Maple Street will rely on importing food instead of growing their own, leaving them vulnerable to food shortages (like if, for example, someone sabotaged the Farm).
 
Last edited:
The Racketeers

The Racketeers call themselves the Protection Club. They are a large, well-armed organization of thugs that offer their “protection” to small towns in exchange for unlimited access to any resources the town offers. Some towns are so plagued by raiders that they accept the offer without question, but most towns accept the offer because the alternative is to be raided and slaughtered by the Protection Club itself. The Racketeers stationed to guard a town act more like prison guards than police, and their prisoners are the townspeople who are not afforded any rights or dignity by the guards. They jokingly refer to the townspeople as Protection Club Members. Locations of small towns can be given to the Racketeers for profit. These towns will promptly be invaded by the Racketeers. For example, the location of Maple Street can be given to them, or any villages and homesteads found in random encounters. The player can also give them the location of the Siren, which will severely weaken their numbers and neutralize them as a threat to other towns. A few weeks after you give them the location of the Siren, they will turn hostile (as this will have given them time to figure out why none of their teams sent out have reported back).
 
Vandals

The Vandals are a “gang” of punks, pickpockets, muggers and thieves that infest larger settlements (at least the settlements that don’t shoot them on sight). They often live like raiders, making safehouses in unsettled pre-war ruins and surviving off of what they steal. However, they differ from your typical raiders in that they are rarely violent and never kill except in self-defense. Outsiders refer to them as a gang, but they are more a culture of nomadic thieves.

Their culture is derived from the scavenging lifestyle that many relied on in the years following the war. The more peaceful scavengers formed friendships and alliances with each other for survival and company. Since so many were the only remaining members of their families, they began to see each other as family to help fill that void. As time marched on scavenging became harder due to most places being picked clean, and the environment became less hostile to plant life, allowing many former nomadic scavengers to settle down and start subsistence farming. Some scavengers never gave up their lifestyle, instead continuing to survive purely off scavenging, which now included stealing from the more self-sufficient wastelanders. These stubborn scavengers would form the basis of the Vandals.

Vandals are taught to treat any fellow Vandal with the love and trust you would give to a close family member, regardless of if they’ve even met before. They also heavily discourage drug use; addicts are swiftly exiled. They are identifiable by tattoos on their palms (they often wear gloves to disguise this, or “paint” over them), though otherwise they are often dressed like raiders or hobos. They prefer to use melee weapons, particularly knives, but also clubs, baseball bats, brass knuckles and bike chains. They also are extremely skilled in the production and use of throwing knives. Every Vandal is taught how to use and make throwing knives from a young age. They are the only people to make and use throwing stars. Vandals also tend to be adept pickpockets and lockpicks, and many of them excel at creating mechanical traps.

Art is important to Vandals as well, commonly expressed through graffiti. Each separate clan of Vandals creates their own unique graffiti tag that is used to mark their property, letting other Vandals know to not steal it. These graffiti tags are usually highly intricate to discourage attempts at mimicry. The tattoo on the palm of a Vandal’s hand is the same symbol as the graffiti tag used by the clan they came of age in. It is common for Vandals to leave their native clan after they receive their tattoo to go on a “pilgrimage” of sorts. During this pilgrimage, they either find other Vandal “pilgrims” and form a new clan, or they collect enough valuable loot and return to their native clan. It is the responsibility of a newly formed clan to inform other clans of their symbol but doing favors for clans will encourage them to spread the word of a new clan.

They are a common sight in heavily populated, low-security settlements but most organized settlements (such as the Farm, the Hotel, the Cyborg Ghouls and the Mall) would simply shoot them on sight rather than deal with them. This pretty much just leaves Asphaltown and the Hippocrats. If the Mall is turned over to anarchists, the Vandals will begin infesting the city.
 
Last edited:
Hippocrats

The Hippocrats (sometimes derisively called the Hypocrites) are a settlement of doctors based out of a medical university that survived the war mostly intact. They are one of the few groups in the wasteland that have the chemistry knowledge and equipment to produce medicine and drugs. They claim to be descended from pre-war doctors and professors, but in reality, they were founded by hoodlums and thugs who survived the war and took over the university, killing the surviving students and professors and taking the medical supplies for themselves. At first the thugs used the university’s medical equipment to make drugs, but eventually they learned to make stimpaks, medicine, and how to treat wounds and injuries.

Though outwardly they will say that their society’s goal is to heal the people of the wastes, they charge people for medicine and treatment, and they make a significant profit off of the manufacture and sale of addictive drugs. They are often called hypocrites because they named themselves after the Hippocratic oath but in reality, they seem to be more interested in profit than health (although most wastelanders wouldn’t know the Hippocratic oath, so they’d call them hypocrites because they act like they’re helping but they’re actually doing a lot of harm with their drug dealing). However, they claim that this is the only practical way to carry out their goal of helping the wasteland, as it wouldn’t be practical to give out healing and supplies for free, and the sale of drugs helps decrease the costs of healing for the needy.

The university campus is filled with homeless junkies (either sleeping, tripping, or waiting for a chance to trade some loot for drugs), but only Hippocrats and VIPs are allowed into the university buildings (all connected by tunnel). Because the Mall refuses to buy recreational drugs or allow the sale of them, the Hippocrats charge exorbitant prices for medicine that the Mall will buy. If the Mall legalizes the sale of drugs, then the Hippocrats will charge the Mall standard prices and as a result the Mall will no longer confiscate and restrict the sale of medicine for its own people.
 
Last edited:
The Rubble/Asphalt

The Rubble is the name given to the ruins of a vast pre-war city, likely a state capital before the war. The majority of the city is inhabited by gangs of outlaws and packs of animals that take shelter in the ruined buildings. The sole “civilized” settlement, called Asphalt, is located near the outskirts of the city. The Hippocrat’s university is located near Asphalt as well. Asphalt is surrounded by a wall of rubble for protection and consists of some of the more intact buildings that you can find in the ruined city. Asphalt is heavily populated by wasteland standards (only the Mall and the Farm have higher populations). The population consists mostly of bums, hobos, junkies, outlaws and exiles from other towns. In the town’s early years, they were a frequent target for raids. However, eventually the town became a “tourist town” for raiders to visit and spend their ill-gotten gains on vices like drugs, gambling, and prostitution. Asphalt is currently controlled and protected by a gang of raiders turned security force, although they only enforce order inside business establishments. This gang of raiders was originally created by mobsters that survived the war.
 
I'll stop for now so the site doesn't think I'm a spammer, not sure if that's an issue. Some of these ideas I'm a bit proud of, others are more like filler to me that I can take or leave. Most a combination of both. Possibly more to come...
 
Last edited:
Hardboiled Android said:
Paragraphs would make this a lot easier to read
Click to expand...
Definitely. I’m working on doing that when I can find the time


Ok, divided into paragraphs to make it a little easier on the eyes. This is just a band-aid solution though, as it still needs a lot of cleanup. In the future I will be organizing each of the factions/locations into History, General Description, and Questlines/Outcomes sections, for the sake of, well, organization
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top