vault66 | MONTH 3 LOG

Entry tags:

MONTH 3 LOG

WHO: Everyone
WHERE: Vault 66
WHEN: Month 3
WHAT: The pods and the vault door opens
WARNINGS: Violence, likely language

AWAKENING

You awake laying on your back in an, admittedly comfortable, pod. You can't move anything but your eyes, can't even feel your body yet. How you got here or why is a blank. You may have been in the middle of your day, asleep, or even- for what you remember- should be dead. Then a screen directly in front of your face flickers to life and in crisp, black and white displays: DON'T PANIC. The following video then plays:

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The screen flickers again and reads: CONGRATULATIONS ON PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE! WELCOME TO VAULT LIFE, CITIZEN. WELCOME TO YEAR: [ERROR]. YOUR PERSONAL BELONGINGS ARE LOCATED IN [FILE CORRUPTED. SEE SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR]. ENJOY YOUR STAY AND THANK YOU FROM YOUR FRIENDS AT VAULT-TEC.

The pod then unseals and you are able to, unstably at first, climb out of the pod. Your body may feel foreign for a moment- perhaps entirely foreign if you suddenly find yourself a human, ghoul, or super mutant for the first time. But whatever your form, you have two items on: a bright blue jumpsuit with the number 66 in yellow on the back, and a mechanical device known as a Pip-boy sealed onto your arm. If you click on the buttons it takes you to an instruction screen.

You look around to find yourself in a room of other pods. Some are just opening, other people looking as confused as you climbing out. Others remain closed with the status of 'STASIS' on the screens attached to the pods. The rest of the room is less than impressive. Computer systems that seem out of place compared to the technology level of the pods are scattered across the room, apparently running the chambers. Trying to access them, even for the most talented hacker, will simply result in SEE OVERSEER being displayed. There is large metal door leading to the rest of the vault, a lever on the wall next to it that will cause it to open.

Welcome, dweller, to vault 66.

VAULT OPENING, THE CELEBRATION

It’s finally here, at long last. In the lead up to the Vault opening, Louis has turned the recreation area into a celebration. It comes with a modest feast! A whole cake, some tasty cola, and grilled meat (if you helped kill the radroaches or mole rats, you know where that meat came from). He even found some old party decorations that were supposed to be used when the Vault was unsealed after the war. The original party, of course, was supposed to be a few hundred years ago. The colors are faded and it’s horribly water stained, but the HAPPY VAULT DAY banner still holds. There are even party hats, for the particularly festive.

The event starts first thing in the morning and will last until early afternoon, when the Overseer announces it’s time to gather in the entry way for the main event.

WARRANTY FORFEIT IF UNSEALED

The time has finally come for the Vault to open. After walking down a corridor of rusted and corroded radiation scanners and security terminals, characters are face to face with the ground level of a huge elevator shaft. At the very top, the four yard thick monstrosity of a door that has sealed the Vault closed for several hundred years. Despite its age, the old girl is as functional as the day she was made. Looking up from the bottom of the shaft, characters can see an intricate formation of deadbolts, gears, and other machinery holding the door in place.

Captain Simmons, the robot in charge himself, has come out to do the honors of opening the door. At an innocuous enough computer station, he plugs in the very tip of one of his three robotic arms to begin the unlocking sequence. What follows is a good minute of flashing lights, warnings that the door is being unsealed, and the grind of machinery as the locking mechanism unengages. The large, gear shaped door at the very top of the elevator shaft pulls back slightly, turns, then begins its descent down towards the gathered group. Make sure you’re not directly under it, Vault-Tec did not install any safety mechanisms to stop the door/platform from crushing anyone standing beneath it.

The door isn’t the only thing that comes down, however. The moment the door begins to lower, water rushes in after it. From the sudden activation of all pip-boys in the area, characters can instantly determine this is heavily irradiated water. It pours in until there is roughly two feet of the stuff on the floor of the entry way, then finally seems done. As if this weren’t enough, however, things come in with the water. Most of them small, about the size of your average radroach, scampering around and jumping at whatever source of fresh meat they can reach. There’s about half a dozen of these hatchlings. Two of them, however, are huge. Standing at about six feet tall, they look like a cross between a gigantic horse-shoe crab and an alien invader: mirelurks. And they aren’t pleased to find themselves suddenly stuck in a Vault.

Simmons immediately starts shooting and hovering away from the group, trying to distract the creatures from the gathered characters. Fighting may solve the problem, assuming no one is killed in the process. Fleeing back into the Vault, closing the heavy entrance door, and just letting the things starve to death for a few weeks is certainly an option. As is rushing the elevator and getting the hell out of the Vault while Simmons is distracted, but whether you’ll ever get back in again unknown. Whether you help, run away, let them kill Simmons then help, or another choice entirely is up to you.

Happy Vault opening day!

GENERAL EXPLORING

Remember the rest of the vault awaits. This includes the three Mr. Handy’s and a Mr. Gutsy floating around, as well as more radroaches and mole rats wandering around the many corpses/blood splatter patterns.

OOC NOTES

To talk to a specific NPC one-on-one, leave a comment on their thread below.

Looking for loot in a specific area? Looking for a specific item/kinds of item in general? Ask here and we’ll let you know.

If you have any OOC questions, please leave a comment here!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[That's a horrible thought, arming themselves for more of these things. There could be as many up there as there are roaches down in the vault.]

Better hope they're not diseased!

[Or have poison claws or something. He's trying to avoid Yunlan's fate of getting scratched; saying behind the mirelurk as much as possible, while going for the legs with kicks and the longer piece of the pool cue. It snaps further after his third hit on a leg, but the mirelurk gets more unsteady as it shifts its weight to the remaining uninjured legs.]

How many legs do they have!?

[He has not bothered to count.]

I'll wash up! It's fine -- [He dodges a bit faster this time, avoiding the snapping claws as he darts in to slam his baton into the joint of the next leg on the same side. It'll go down faster if it's unbalanced, probably, and it seems to be supporting most of its weight on the four biggest legs. The others are more weapon-y. So, once it's got three down, it should go.]

Hey, so! I'm thinking-- [One more whack, and that leg crumples; the thing thumps heavily to its belly in the swirling muck with a weird screech, and Yunlan dances back out of the way of its claws, letting it focus on him.]

-- never mind! Go for it, Jiro!

[As soon as the mirelurk hits the water, Jiro's climbing on top of the somewhat slimy shell. The logistics of his plan have proven too be awkward. He holds onto the edge of the shell with one hand, having to discard the broken pool cue and keep just the sharp piece. He can't really see what he's doing, as the creature's face is set back underneath the shell. His first attempt at poking out an eye just hits the hard exoskeleton. The second one ends up too close to the mouth and the mirelurk clamps down on the spear point.]

Fuck you, crab thing! You're going down!

[He reaches down in front of its face; he'll either get his fingers bitten off or figure out where an eye is and... squish it? A great plan.]

[The mirelurk writhes, smaller clawed limbs reaching up to snap viciously at the hands on its face, and Yunlan bites off a curse and shifts his grip on his baton. Jiro's not getting that spear back out of its mouth without the thing relaxing, and he's way more likely to get fingers bitten off than do anything useful groping at its eyes.]

Hey! Catch!

[He tosses the baton, then throws a fast kick at the thing's big left claw, trying to distract it from going after Jiro for long enough to let him catch the weapon.]

[Jiro narrowly avoids getting his fingers bitten off, as he jerks his hand away to catch the baton. He's getting annoyed with this stupid crab, and he's going to repeatedly hit it in the face with the baton until something breaks.]

[He might've had some moral qualms about the poor mutated once-human thing in the labs, but Yunlan's not going to waste one second of regret on this thing having its face beaten to a pulp-- and Jiro seems to have that under control. He can hear the exoskeleton cracking, the wet snap like breaking bone under that attack, and after two or three blows the waving of the claws is getting a lot less coordinated and dangerous.

That's about when one of the little ones takes a chunk out of his damn leg.

His boot takes most of the force of the snapping claw, but that one broke the skin too: Yunlan rounds on the thing and punts it with all the force he can bring to bear. There's already water in his boots, squelching around his toes and probably irradiating the fuck out of his feet, but from the cloud of red spreading in the murky liquid around his ankle, it broke the skin pretty good.

He spares a glance around. Simmons is still potshotting the things with his laser gun, the other residents are fighting or out of the way, and with this big crab thing down he thinks the tide might be turning.]

Hey Jiro! Let's take out the rest of those little fuckers-- [He raises his wrist, where the pip-boy is still chattering away.] -- so we can get out of this water before the radiation gets us!

[Fuck the radiation. He forgot all about it, tuning out the beeping, but now it's all he can hear and it's irritating. Jiro reluctantly stops beating on the mirelurk; its claws weakly snapping and flailing around. He slides off its back and stomps through the water to the smaller mirelurks who seemed to be congregating around Yunlan.]

Want this- Is it bad?

[His first question was going to be about the baton, but the blood in the water stops him. He cracks the baton down on one of the smaller mirelurks as he waits for an answer.]

[He flexes his foot. The cut burns, but it's not making it hard to move -- just painful. He'll whine about it later, he decides, and shakes his head.]

Just a scratch -- I'll live.

[The sharpened pool cue in the creature's mouth is drooping from twitching jaws, but it's got some tooth marks in the wood now too. Yunlan dodges a flailing claw to step in and go up on tiptoe, yanking at the stake. Eh -- it'll do.

The other half got dropped in the murk, and who the fuck knows where it's gotten to now?]

Trade you? [He holds the weapon up, shooting Jiro a grin before he turns to kick another of the little crab things, hard. This one's carapace makes a cracking noise as it tumbles, but it gets back to its feet faster than he'd have liked.]

Yeah.

[He tosses the baton over, kicking one of the mirelurks out of the way for the moment, but it will be back. The little ones pose their own problem of having a smaller target of soft bits to get to.]

[On the plus side, they're smaller and easier to stomp. Yunlan's going after his slightly smashed kicking target, and trying real hard to stomp it: it's radroach size, more or less, but he almost falls over on the first stomp when his foot skids over its tougher carapace.]

Shit! Okay, fine. [Baton smashing it is! It takes three hits before the carapace really caves in, and he takes a few more scars across his boots from flailing claws in the process.]

[Jiro would prefer to stomp on them too, but they're slippery as Yunlan just demonstrated. He flips one over onto its shell to get at the underside with the sharpened stick. The softer stomach is easier to penetrate, but it still take a few tries to stab through it with wood. Pulling the stick out isn't easy either, and he gets a few scratches from weakly snapping pincers in the process. Captain Simmons should just give everyone laser guns and this would have been taken care of already.]

[Captain Simmons absolutely should have given them all laser guns, but it's not like they knew the door was under some kind of radiation swamp full of monster crabs. Live and fucking learn!]

Like the shishkabob action! [He's grinning, annoyance beginning to fail under the pressure of fey adrenaline as he whirls and starts beating another of the little crabs into the muck. This is great, he's getting in the swing of things.

Crab number three is when he puts his bleeding foot down on something under the dark water that rolls sideways, his ankle twists, and he goes right down with a yelp. The little mirelurk's not coming for him -- its carapace is caved in good -- but there are two more converging on what's gotta look like newly defenseless prey.]

[Yes, enjoy the fight, Yunlan! This is the adrenaline Jiro feels all the time; he'll regret it later, and have nightmares about the life draining in the eyes of the mirelurks, but he has to designate everything down here as 'other' to compartmentalize. It's a distinction he's never made, not even with demons, but this is a matter of survival. Still, in the moment, he relishes stabbing them and watching Yunlan beat the shit out of them with a baton.

Until he falls, and takes all of Jiro's burgeoning respect with him.]

You gonna let these fucking crabs kick your ass!?

[He yanks the stick out of his current victim, and heads off the mirelurks going in for the kill.]

Need a hand?

[He's smirking with almost glee. No one can say he wouldn't be an asset on the surface now; not while Yunlan is this pathetic and Azula ran the fuck away - and they were supposed to be the leaders.]

Could use a hand. [He's just about to surge back up to his feet, but when he puts his weight on that ankle he just rolled, he goes an unappealing shade of gray. Probably not broken! He didn't hear any cracks. But, oh boy, that's not taking his weight right anymore.

He tosses the baton to his free hand and reaches out: he's taking that 'hand' literally, because he's going to have to haul himself back up.

Luckily the mirelurks are coming to them. He won't need to move much.]

[He'll help Yunlan up, but not without more teasing.]

I can't believe you broke your foot on a fucking crab.

[The mirelurks don't seem to have any cohesive strategy, just finding their way over mindlessly. Their number has noticeably decreased since the door opening, but a lot of them got in.]

Actually I think it was your pool cue!

[Or a rock, or something. Rolled like a pool cue, though.]

It's hard to watch your footing in this muck.

[This isn't stopping him from giving the approaching mirelurks a murderously enthusiastic grin; sure, his foot hurts, but he doesn't have to think about it as long as he doesn't put too much weight on it.

The first mirelurk to come within range is getting a baton directly to the face.]

[Oh. Well.]

Sorry.

[Should he have even apologized? Socializing is hard. Back to stabbing mirelurks a little too viciously.]

[It's, like, half a social grace, which is a big deal coming from Jiro. Yunlan gives him a sidelong glance, then grins.]

Still the fucking crab's fault, though.

[And, here's to smacking them in the face again! The one he'd just gotten takes a few more blows before it goes down for good. His baton's sturdier than Jiro's stake, but it's doing less damage per hit, being blunt and all.

The other big crab's occupied on the other side of the entryway, and the ranks of little ones are thinning.

Finally, Yunlan straightens from bludgeoning a little crab flat, and realizes there aren't any more on their way.]

-- How're you doing?

One left!

[Its legs twitch as he stabs it for the third and last time. The carcasses of the tiny army are half sinking into the muck. The beeping on the pip boy is once again an annoyance as soon as there's no more mirelurks to kill.]

Nice. [Yeah, that screeching radiation warning sure is a thing. Yunlan sucks in a deep breath, tests his ankle, and starts limping stiffly for the corridor.]

Oughta -- get out of here, get a shower...

[Possibly patch up those scratches and figure out how to do something about his twisted ankle... he's going to have to be more careful. Or talk Simmons out of a gun so he doesn't have to play ancient warrior again. He'd barely pulled it off when he was impersonating Kunlun.]

[Jiro tosses the sharpened end of the pool cue into the water. It's all irradiated and he won't use it again. The baton is probably okay; no porous surfaces. He follows behind Yunlan, not offering help, but should his ankle give out again, Jiro will be there to... mostly laugh.]

[Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. Yunlan does wind up having to stop and clutch at the door frame as he hauls himself up out of the water; his Vault suit's a total loss, too. Good thing there are extras, he still can't sew.]

So! You all right?

[Yeah, he's definitely just pausing to make conversation, not waiting to see if his ankle can take his weight without all that water making it a bit easier on the joint. Ignore the way he's kind of gray and sweating. It's fine.]

[Ugh. Small talk.]

I'm fine, but you're not.

[He has a few scratches, and they might get infected, because he's going nowhere near Charlotte, but that's a future problem.]

Hold onto me if you need too.

[There's less mocking in that, but it's not exactly a friendly tone either.]

[It's not a friendly tone, but the offer's friendly. Yunlan accepts Jiro's reply with a nod, considers him for a long moment, then transfers his grip from the edge of the door to Jiro's upper arm.]

Much obliged. Mind if I lean on you back to the men's bunk room? I think I can take it from there.

Yeah, whatever.

[He'll just head down the hallway, and make some attempt at conversation.]

Think everything up there is giant? Spiders, ants; ants could kill everybody if they were that big.

[His topic choices leave much to be desired.]

MONTH 3 LOG

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