It's the stories of those who survived the Great War in which nukes destroyed the civilized world.
I've been wandering around in Zion in the Honest Hearts expansion looking for diary-like notes written by someone who survived the nukes. It's a sad story that explained the background of the Father worshipped by the tribals living in the region.
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Spoiler Alert!
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The "Father in the Cave" was their version of God, except he was a real person (in the game's universe) who survived the Great War in the Zion National Park. Like Las Vegas, the nukes did not hit it, so it had clean water and relatively less radiation, to the point where he could survive short exposure to the radiation level within months.
Randall Dean Clark was some guy who was returning to Salt Lake City from Canada (the US annexed Canada just before the Great War in the Fallout universe) when his engine just stopped. When he saw that the old couple on the opposite lane also had the same problem, he recognized the problem immediately.
The Chinese nukes, as predicted by the media, had finally arrived.
He was lucky he looked at the direction opposite of the explosion, though the old couple was not. They were blinded by the flash that came while he kept his eyes shut once he saw the light brightening everything.
When the bombing ended, he put them of their misery with his gun, then hiked back to Zion National Park which he had passed days before to look for a place to hide.
Fortunately for him, the cave he chose turned out to be some kind of government research site. When the bombs hit, the researchers must have decided to rush home to their families, hence leaving everything behind.
So he stayed in the cave in preparation of the nuclear fallout, and stayed there living on the supplies and whatever water he could find inside.
After two months, he noticed that the water from the stream inside had become drinkable again, albeit with some radiation medicines presumably also from the researchers' supplies, and he could get out for short periods of time to look for help.
Eventually he found new lifeforms outside and edible food.
7 years later, he hiked back to his home in Salt Lake City. Everywhere that wasn't a crater was flattened. He was unable to find his family nor his home at all. On his way back, he found his truck and the other car, but not the bones of the old couple. Nearby, there was tracks of men leading away.
Guessing that they were likely cannibals, he returned to his cave and constructed security measures for his home.
11 years passed before he encountered other survivors for the first time. It was a group of Spanish-speaking people, likely Mexicans. He watched them secretly but never contacted them. Once he helped saved one of the men who accidentally broke his leg by luring the others to him with screams that sounded like that of the injured man. Later when he learnt that the man had an infection, he quietly left a bottle of antibiotics for them.
They thought it was from God.
Sadly, they didn't last long. Hostile survivors from a nearby underground Vault (nuclear shelters built in preparation for the nukes), for some reason, killed the adults immediately upon arrival. The kids and the few women who didn't resist were captured.
Turns out the newcomers saw them as food. None escaped.
Randall, who was trying to find a way to rescue them, had to change his plans. After killing 24 of them (a third of the group), his lair was finally discovered by scouts. He quickly slipped away.
10 months after their arrival, the remaining 34 left Zion. He won.
Unexpectedly, a woman from the Vault people escaped from them and was found by him. Apparently, as a female in their society, life was not good. Therefore he took her in and eventually got her pregnant.
Wanting his new family to live better lives than his last, he even went to the ruins of a nearby city to look for books on medicine to prepare himself for the birth.
Again, tragedy struck. The baby died in a breech position when he started the Caesaeran too late and the mother, who was unconscious from the drugs he gave her for the operation, never woke up.
7 years on, he encountered the Vault dwellers again, though this time he thought the 10 of them were walking corpses. Strangely, they did not smell of decay, but they had turned feral, so he had to kill them all.
He celebrated his 60th birthday 5 years after. Often regretting the deaths of his loved ones and frequently contemplating suicide, he never managed to pull the trigger.
At 70, he discovered a new group of children setting camp at the same spot as the unfortunate Mexican refugees. As before, he secretly listened to them and watched over them. According what overheard conversations, they had escaped from "The School". Its location and purpose was never revealed.
He left them books, starting from storybooks and later moving on to weapons manuals and other practical literature. Other than those, he also left them notes teaching them about morality, always signing as "The Father" because he saw himself as their father of sorts.
At the beginning of the following year, he realized he was dying. He gave them almost everything he had and decided against revealing to them his identity, not wanting to destroy their faith in what he represented to them.
Leaving them his final notes telling them he was going to be silently watching them from then on, he left his cave to find a spot to die at.
And that's where I found his corpse and the final pages of his diary. Not to mention all the loot and his rifle.
The children went on to become one of the peaceful tribes in the region who worship the Father in the Caves as their god and treat his many homes as sacred grounds.
.....
But when I explored the Vault dwellers' camps later, I found a note from the last Overseer of the expedition group saying that they were attacked by the Mexican barbarians, followed by a vengeful spirit who killed the six Overseers before him.
When he was made Overseer, the 34 of them left Zion immediately.
Nowhere did he mention eating the captives.
If I'd read his note before Randall's, it would seem that these explorers were the civilized "good guys" victimized by barbarians and a demon.
Then again, in those times, cannibalism might have started out of necessity.
Hence this story lies in the grey area.
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End of Spoiler!
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Not well written at all, the above, but whatever. I just felt like rearranging what I've read in proper order because I didn't find these notes in chronological order and I couldn't shift them in my Pipboy in the game.
And it's stories such as these that keeps me wandering around in the Fallout games to the point where once I'm sure I'm done with random exploration, I'd check the wikis for places I have yet to visit.
The more of these they make, the more replay value the Fallout games have for me, in addition to the multiple endings.
I think what I'd welcome more, if this is true, would be more novels set in post-apocalyptic worlds.
...
Completed Dead Money. This expansion was surprisingly small.
PC Show is here and I feel like buying an ASUS Eee Pad Transformer. It's very close to what I want.
Initially I wanted a tablet in order to store and display images for my work. This means it needs to be light and has a large screen. Tablet sounded good.
Later I learnt that tablets are terrible for typing. This won't do because it may eventually replace my Acer laptop as my backup computer when it dies. Furthermore, I may need to type in other data for work.
However, netbooks aren't light enough. The lightest I've seen so far are 1.27kg. In contrast, tablets are in the range of 600-700g, ie half the weight of netbooks.
Therefore, the Transformer. The tablet itself is 680g and the dock's weight is not an issue. I'll bring the pad alone when I'm outside and put it back into the dock when I'm indoor. Solution found.
The trouble is that it's priced at S$659 without the dock and S$799 with, which is somewhat unreasonable for a product that's sold for US$399 without the dock in the US.
My solution is to talk to the promoter. Apparently they're offering further discounts if we order the products directly from them outside. Ignoring the legalities, this sounds like a good deal. One has even offered S$100 discount in addition to extra freebies, though he has yet to confirm if that discount applies to the Transformer. It sounds so damn good, it may not be true.
...
Okay, I've cooled down enough now to realize how bad the above decision was even with a $100 discount. I really don't need it. It's just a tablet with a laptop-style keyboard. Let me analyze how it would be used:
As a tablet: bring it around outside, leave the dock (aka keyboard) in the office.
As a netbook: use it for data input in office. Secondary purpose is to use as backup computer when PC is giving me trouble
If so, I could easily just get a tablet and a keyboard. I'm most definitely not going to bring the Transformer with the dock when I'm out. That would defeat the purpose of having a tablet.
Let's see what I'll be able to get for less than $500.
Currently considering the ASUS Eee Seashell 1011PX at $349 (bottom left).
But still more inclined to find a cheap tablet.
Also considering the Sony Cybershot WX7 @ S$399 but... I don't need it. My current camera's still working.
Must... resist... temptation...
You know what? At this rate I'm just going to get a random cheap tablet below $400 that has an Android OS, Bluetooth (for a Bluetooth keyboard) and a USB port (for my mobile modem), then recontract with Starhub for a free phone.
And that's about it.
I'm most definitely not spending over $1k here, that's for sure. I already feel guilty enough as it is for my new PC that I shouldn't have needed if I didn't ruin the processor of the last one.
Then again, the last PC was giving me a lot of trouble.
According to personal experience at the last IT Show, the cheapest items won't be found in the brochures online.
I find it disturbing that I have yet to produce anything that can be sold.
So our President has written a book that will become commercially available after his term ends. This book will cover only a tiny portion of his career.
Not interested. His career, on the whole, was far more exciting than that tiny bit when he was just a union representative.
No, I'm more interested in his experience when he was the director of the SID. I've worked there during NS, so I really want to know how the way they work came to be.
Too bad this dream will never come true. Everything about it is such top secret stuff that is unlikely to get declassified in my lifetime, if at all.
It would make a pretty epic biography though.
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