Don't care about a nickname. Just call me chief or something if you really must.Pfft, alright. Sleep tight.Mmmyep. You lay back and drift away into sleep, having slept in far worse conditions than this. Adrift ont he clouds of imagination, you dream of another life, another time.
By morning, you don't remember a thing. You wake up very early, and enjoy your morning routine of drinking a mouthful of water and making sure your hair is still an unbreakable slab of pure charm and gel. You should get a comb or something, one of these days those hairs might just move. Even concrete cracks, after all. You briefly consider hiding a few things in the ashes, but you can't think of what, exactly. Still, you are free to do whatever. Your guests seem to have neglected posting a guard, which is a very odd amount of trust. You step outside, climbing up the ladder, and then you find out that they DID post one guard. Outside. Guessing from a singular dead ghoul at the front, you figure he's a decent fighter, if nothing else. You don't remember this guy that well, but you think he was the second in command? He doesn't seem to have a weapon on him, though.
Oh, hey. How are you? I'm... good. Kind of weirded out how you didn't post anybody to guard, though.If you were g-going to k-k-kill us, you wu-would have. No need t-to wait for us all to sleep, first. What if I changed my mind.T-then we'd be fu-fu-fu-fu-fucked, w-wouldn't we?Right. Well, I guess you got lucky... Want some water?F-for real?Yeah, sure. I got some bread, too. Never quite got around to eating that, might as well share. Once you break the crust that shit doesn't keep, anyway. Huh. T-tryin' to get in our g-good books, are you?Yeah, whatever. What does your crew do,anyway? M-mercs. M-mostly. Not t-to the p-point that we, uh, have a nuh-name. Really. You don't look armed.The rest are a bit more visibly armed. I'm a bit more hands-on.He holds his hand up, and reveals some dangerous-looking spiky brass knuckles on his fingers. His other hand is also covered in brass knuckles, though they lack the spikes. Looking at the ghoul shows an indentation on his skull, and some dried blood.
W-wandered in here a few hours ago. Didn't p-put up much of a fffu-fu-fight. Good. Any friends of his around?N-no. They went b-back to lying around when t-the storm d-died down. It's the rads in the ash.Suddenly, you hear a voice from right behind you. Somebody else is climbing up the ladder.
Ah, there you are. Your, uh, child woke up everybody when she noticed you were gone. She didn't mean to, mind you, she just yelped. Yeah, she's, uh... not my kid. She just kinda sticks with me.Fair enough. You fellas want some bread? I... What?Bread. You fellas want some?At what cost.Free. I'll have tenderloin cut it. We should all be able to get a slice, at least....Why not. Sure. Mighty kind of you, stranger.Yeah, yeah. I guess I'm feeling altruistic.What?Means d-doing things for other p-people without expecting anything in return.I doubt that, but I won't say no to it. Eating with the mercs was rather enjoyable, all things considered. The tanks are nice, and the talk isn't nearly as awkward as it would have been. In fact, you even manage to sell some of the chems, as the group is rather liberal on it. You didn't even need to use your planned euphemisms, you just straight up sold some chems. You went on the rate of 20 caps per chem. They're worth more, but this is kind of "hot" material, and you don't feel like starting some haggling procedures.
The talks prove to give some interesting tidbits, as well.
What I do? Well, mostly I do what I need to survive, or remove boredom. Sometimes those things don't mesh together well. Sort of like us, I suppose. Hm... Maybe I could call on you fellas in the future? If I need the numbers or something.Kin of a weird way to meet an employer, eh? Shoves a shotgun in your gob, and then offers you a job.S-shut up, Rotface.Yup.Don't mind him. We love the stinker, but he tends to speak before he thinks. You end up making about 120 caps from the drug trade, selling all your psycho, mentats and buffout from Blitz' "pack". They didn't want anything else, so Tenderloin gets to keep her bit of drugs. For better or for worse. She doesn't even let you look inside that readily, you guess the trust isn't quite there yet. She likes you, sure, but that doesn't mean enough to her at the moment.
You leave only a little while later, picking up the shield on your way out. With most of the loot spread out or gone, you don't have any trouble carrying the thing, though it's still heavy as all hell. Well, with both hands you can heft it around well enough. You are noticeably slowed, however, and take longer to get somewhere. And, sure enough, you can't avoid meeting something. You see a dark figure under the ash, and when you approach (with your gun out, of course) you figure out what it is. It's a dog. A damned ugly mutt, at that, with plucks of hair gone. The most striking feature is that, while most of the brown and black fur on its back is gone, leaving visible red flesh, it managed to keep hold of a large pluck of hair on the snout. It sort of looks like a moustache, really. When it notices you, it whines and starts limping towards you, the hind leg looks wounded. Looking a bit closer to where it was buried, you can see a corpse. Tenderloin is quick to pull it out of the sands, causing the dog to bark plaintively. The man must have been beaten to death by a ghoul, guessing from the frozen expression of fear and his arms being locked in a defending position. Odd that the dog survived, and that there's no ghoul corpse or anything around.
The dog isn't massive, and it isn't aggressive. That leg is looking pretty bad, though...
What do you do here?
Statistics and inventory.
Combat Stats
HP: 190/215
Limb health: No issues
Weapons: .357 revolver (Six shots) (requires 0.3 second to fire, 0.7 to cock the hammer for the next shot) (reloading takes 0.7 seconds per bullet) (Can be "aimed" for a bonus to hit and allowing you to hit specific parts of the body) (Loses accuracy beyond 10 meters, by 5 percent per meter) (60 percent chance to hit, not modified for range) (does 36 damage)
Sawed-off 12gauge (2 shots) (requires 0.2 seconds to fire) (Reloading takes 2,5 seconds) (Cannot be aimed with precision, but you can still get a bonus to hit if you take care to aim) (Loses DAMAGE, not chance to hit, beyond three meters. 10 dmg per meter) (Does 70 damage) (70 percent chance to hit Currently held by Tenderloin, temporarily
9mm pistol (kind of alright) (13 bullets remaining) Requires 0.2 seconds to fire. (Reloading takes 1.5 seconds) (Can be aimed to a specific body part) (Loses accuracy beyond 12 meters) (70 percent chance to hit, not modified for range) (15 DMG)
Grenades
Molotov Cocktail
Ammo:
30 .357 bullets
36 12-gauge shotgun shells
4 20-gauge shotgun shells
33 9mm bullets
29 .22 rounds
Inventory
Comfy Bloodstained Raider Rags (1 DT) (Light armor) (equipped)
Scrap armguard (1 DT) (low quality) (equipped)
Scrap Leg armor. (1 DT) (low quality) (equipped)
Box of drugs
Two Water bottles
Six empty water bottles
Awkward backpack
Five doses of Jet
Seven leather arm scraps
Massive spiked shield
Two stimpacks (Heal 30 HP)
Two units of Nuts and Bolts
Emergency Shank (unequipped, takes 0.3 seconds to take out. 0.5 seconds to stab something)
649 caps
S.P.E.C.I.A.L.
STRENGTH 7
PERCEPTION 5
ENDURANCE 6
CHARISMA 7
INTELLIGENCE 4
AGILITY 5
LUCK 6
Barter: 35
Energy Weapons: 15
Explosives: 15
Guns:38
Lockpick: 30
Medicine:13
Melee weapons: 19
Repair: 35
Science: 13
Sneak:35
Speech:25
Survival: 27
Unarmed: 19
PerksLevel-up perks
Iron Stomach: Your extended life as an outcast left you with a strong stomach. Radiation and general filth does not affect you nearly as much
Weird Wasteland: Maybe it's that blow to the head, but things seem a little more loopy and funny. Some things seem to happen that shouldn't. Well, it's nothing bad, at least.
Cold as Ice: You're not exactly the pinnacle of romance, and why would you be? You easily see through people trying to manipulate you, but you suffer a -15 to all convincing checks.
Big Dog: Stature doesn't matter when you can bark like a true master. Whenever you need to incentivise a collection of people towards violence, you gain +15 to it (note: this is both a convincing check and a BUFF check. People love some motivation!). Also, you have some new dialogue to reflect this big dog 'tude.
Tanooki Perks
Party membersTenderloin: Wields two machetes.
Heavy Machetes: Onehanded. Takes 0.2 seconds to swing from a readied position, almost a full second to swing again. Does 25 damage on a successful strike. Dual-wielding allows for attacks to be twice as fast, although the basic swing will not speed up.
10mm submachine gun. (0 shots, empty magazine!) (fully automatic, fires at 15 rounds per second.)(reloading takes 4 seconds (Insufficient Guns skill!)) (can be aimed with precision) (burst causes 5 rolls to be done for damage, with an accuracy debuff of 2 percent per shot) (Effective range is 14 meters, loses acc by 5 percent per meter beyond that) (15 dmg per shot) (70 percent base chance to hit.)
Status: Healthy.
Blitz: wields 9mm pistol. Magazine is 12 bullets. 13 with the chambered round.
Varmint Rifle (5 shots) (Requires 1 second to fire) (Reloading takes 7 seconds to fire) (Can be aimed with extreme precision) (Effective range is 60 meters, Loses accuracy at 1 percent per meter beyond that) (Does 28 damage per shot) (80 percent chance to hit) (Blitz' chance is 70 percent)
Status: Healthy.
Quest logFalse-flag
Kill Sodom's men (Optional: Keep the clothing as intact as possible)
Mess with the deal
Make a clean escape
Get money from Bartholomew
Addiction status: You're feeling the shakes coming on, but it'll take a bit before it's there...
EXP 'till next Level-up: 80/600 (armed opponent: 20XP)
Woops, forgot to add the money. I mean, "you slap the pip-boy to fix the glaring discrepancy that in no way was unintentional." Good thing you spotted it, right, it's just extra challenge, yes!