vault66 | MONTH 2 LOG

Entry tags:

MONTH 2 LOG

WHO: Everyone
WHERE: Vault 66
WHEN: ???? – Day 1, Month 2
WHAT: The second wave of pods open
WARNINGS:Reference to suicide, TBD

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:

Watch on YouTube

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.

THE VAULT EXPANDED

In the month following the first pods opening, Jiro and Elizabeth DeWitt enlisted the help of the Mr. Handy ‘Louis’ the clear the debris and create a stable passageway to the rest of the testing area. Slightly smaller than the rest of the hallway, there is still plenty of room for people to move in and out of the area without discomfort.

This portion of the vault, if possible, is even dirtier and more decrepit than the rest, having been cut off from even the most basic maintenance for an untold period of time. The emergency lighting has been cut off to this area, leaving the whole zone in the dark besides what little light comes through the newly formed passage.

Those willing to venture into the area will find this isolation has allowed a handful of more intimidating creatures than radroaches to establish a home (though there are still roaches, just fewer than are found in the rest of the vault). Several breaches in the metal walls along the hallways open into small tunnels, which the occasional mole rat will venture out of. Though usually only appearing alone or in pairs, these creatures are even hungrier for fresh meat than the radroaches and will attack with their huge, sharp, pointy teeth. If killed, they could supply a decent (if slightly irradiated) source of meat for a while, along with hide to make more reinforced clothing. But taking one down without proper weapons will likely require some teamwork.

There are several important (and often concerning) areas to find in this zone. First are two firmly sealed doors, one at the upper corner of the new area and one at the lower middle. Each door has a very helpful (currently unlit) sign over it: ENTRANCE and OVERSEER, respectively. Next to each is another of the computer terminals characters have grown used to seeing around the vault.

Next are Testing Areas 1, 2, and 3. Each of these testing areas has an observation room with a smaller containment chamber attached to it. The doors to the observation areas can be pulled open with enough effort, allowing entrance to the small room filled with chemistry glassware, lockers, and tables covered in long since rotten scraps of paper and books. The doors to the containment chambers, for the moment, remain sealed shut with yet more computer terminals next to them. These doors look weaker than the ones sealing off the entrance and overseer area, and can possibly be broken down with time and effort. But characters will want to think long and hard before doing that. Each observation room has a bullet proof, reinforced one-way window that allows characters to look into the containment chamber without whatever is in the chamber being able to see them. And the chambers are occupied.

Testing Chamber 1 (WARNING: SUICIDE) contains the corpse of a super mutant splayed on the ground. The walls around it are dented, and its head caked in long dried blood. Anyone with passing medical knowledge can observe the super mutant apparently killed itself through repeated blunt force trauma, banging its own head against the walls and door until death.

Approaching Testing Chamber 2 causes character’s pip-boys to start crackling a warning of increased radiation. Standing in the observation chamber the levels are low enough that it isn’t healthy, but no one is going to die without prolonged exposure. The source of the radiation is clear, inside the chamber is a corroded barrel of radioactive waste. Along with it, a grotesque creature that is very clearly alive, moving around and around its small, enclosed space.

Testing Chamber 3 also crackles with radiation, though the source of this isn’t a barrel. Rather, a walking, emaciated corpse shambles about the containment chamber. Other than the walking corpse bit, there’s two characteristics which stand out: the corpse is glowing an eerie yellow-green with an inner light that pulses as it walks and it’s wearing the torn remains of what is very clearly the same blue and yellow jumpsuit all characters arrived in.

GENERAL EXPLORING

Whether you venture into the new area of the vault or not, the rest of the vault awaits. This includes the three Mr. Handy’s floating around, as well as more radroaches 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!

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"No fucking idea," Jiro shrugs. He's not a tech guy, and the amount of intelligence or sentience the robots possess isn't something he can really remark on. "Louis, the French one, is an asshole and I haven't talked to the others."

Jiro is the asshole in probably everyone else's opinion, though.

"This way."

Out of the reactor room, it's not far to the room of skeletons near the male dorm. Whatever was in there before has been moved out and it's stacked high with bones in various states of connected.

"There's... a lot."

"You're not kidding." The cheerful grin falls away from his face as he surveys the stacked skeletons. Theorizing about murder is one thing around the occasional mysterious long-dead corpse; but all of these? Plague? Battle? The scale of the threat in this dusty old cave looms up and up over him, a wave that could sweep away their few living souls in an instant.

Despite his cranky companion, he feels very alone.

The fear lasts a few seconds before he gives himself a mental shake -- the best way to get swept under is to stop treading water, after all. No stopping allowed. Not until he's worked himself into being too tired to dream.

"Good news if they built this place to hold that many people," he tosses off, setting down his armful of remains on the nearest stack. The skull rolls to its side, jaw sagging from weakening hinges. "There'll be plenty of capacity for us. Anybody found the door out yet? Or is that still on the agenda?"

Jiro watches the skull fall with seeming disinterest. It's more of internally forced desensitization. He's seen monsters eating people and discarding the too-tough-to-chew heads in piles higher than these stacked skeletons. He needs to stay distanced from it all, at least for now. Even if he ends up being more of a jerk to cover any vulnerabilities.

"Not yet. Elizabeth and I opened a cave-in, though, and there's a section that hasn't been explored too much yet. Not sure if the maps show everything either, you know? There could be hidden tunnels or exits only that Overseer person knows about."

He'll assume Yunlan looked at the computers in the pod room and knows who the Overseer is.

"You think the Overseer's alive?" Yunlan blinks at him. "With how long it looks like most of these guys have been dead, I figured he must be toast. Wait-- he hasn't communicated with you guys, has he?"

Or she, to be fair-- but he figures the odds are on the Overseer being one of their skeleton buddies, and skeletons don't care.

"No, I don't think he's alive!"

That sounds just as crazy to him.

"I meant that things aren't on the map because only the Overseer had that information and not whoever was stuck here."

He should have said knew, but verb tense isn't something he'd think about being picked over by the more observant people, like cops. He's never been the most articulate person either.

"Oh, okay, I get you, I get you." Yunlan laughs easily, brushes some of the grime off his hands on the seam of his overalls, and reaches out to give Jiro a comradely slap on the back. "You had me worried for a minute there. You know -- 'ten people trapped in an underground compound with two hundred corpses and an all-knowing Overseer'? Last time I saw that movie it didn't end so well for the non-Overseer types.

"You're right on about the Overseer probably having some of that info, though. I'd love to find the guy's desk, see if he was one of those sorts who put his password on a sticky note."

He barely holds back the urge to punch Yunlan after the back slap, but he gets a pointed glare. Jiro cannot be down here with all these horribly cheerful people for another week or he'll scream.

"You think there's just a password that opens everything?"

That would be a much quicker escape than trying to build a bomb and blowing open one of the tunnels. Which is Jiro's escape plan, should they be stuck down here for another couple of weeks.

Ah, that glare at the backslap. It's just like being around old Chu again -- although, of course, he doesn't actually know Jiro. He should hold off on pushing too many of his boundaries until they're good enough friends that he won't end up bludgeoned and stuffed under some air handling equipment.

Say, two or three days.

"This place has to have some way of knowing who the Overseer is," he points out. "Master passwords, code keys -- now that's something to ask the robots."

"Is a code key different than a password?"

At least now there's someone who seems computer savvy. At that thought, Jiro has a question.

"Okay, this is gonna seem weird, but... what year were you from?"

They've established there's some alternate dimensions and time travel bullshit happening.

"Something physical with the code in it--" Yunlan spreads his hands. "You know, those dongle things. I wasn't our tech guy, I just know enough to tell a techie what to do."

He frowns, then adds, "--2018. Can't say when they might've frozen me down here, but I don't look much older than I used to, so!"

"The fuck is a dongle?"

It's mostly rhetorical, because he doesn't care what it is in the end.

"Yeah... 2017 for me, but there's people here from 2050 and 1910. So if you wanna go with the frozen angle, it's gotta be at least over 30 years for you."

"Not surprised," Yunlan sighs, "last I knew, there weren't a bunch of fallout shelters full of sci-fi cryogenic pods sitting around in mine shafts, either. The weirdest part of that is thinking that shit was around in 1910.

"Even the computers are way too recent to be that kind of vintage."

"It's all messed up like that. The shit in the kitchen, appliances and whatever, they're from the the 50's or 60's. Did you see the fucking jukebox?"

Granted, he's not sure the computers are actually newer than that era either; they're certainly nothing like those in 2017. But there was spacecraft and shit in the 60's, right? Nothing makes sense. Unless they're all affected by radiation somehow and are delusional thinking they're from different times and universes.

"What, it's not just retro style?" Yunlan blew a breath out, and tried wiping his hands on his pants again. He could still feel the slick, grimy residue of decay from the bones. "None of it's 1910s, though. That was... what, the Boxer Rebellion? No, that was a bit earlier. Anyway.

"You said universes? How do you know?"

"Because shit is different for us," he shrugs. "Demons exist in my world, people with superpowers in Sandy's, Elizabeth had robots made from people in 1910 and some sky city. We're all from some kind of version of Earth."

So far anyway. He won't rule it out that someone shows up from Mars or something.

"Some things are the same, geography for the most part I guess. No one remembers a nuclear war between China and America, though."

"And you're sure none of them are just other planets? 'Earth' has to be a common name."

Technically, he's got 'demons' and superpowers where he's from; the robots and sky cities he'll admit are a little weird.

(All of this is more than a little weird-- keep treading.)

"And it'd make sense none of us remember a nuclear war. That would've happened after the whole vault setup, right? Post-2050."

"Other planets, universes, dimensions, what the fuck ever! It doesn't matter!"

He's going to hate every time someone else comes out of those pods and he has these conversations again and again.

"The next person who shows up might be from 3090 and throw all this speculation off anyway!"

He kicks the skeleton pile in frustration.

"Whoa, calm down." Yunlan reaches out to catch Jiro's upper arm. "Kick the walls, not the dead. We don't need any pissed-off ghosts added to the bullshit we've got on our plates right now."

Letting his hand fall back to his side, he steps back, calculating his pose to unthreatening and rueful: hands a little spread, shoulders relaxed, smiling with the eyes. "Sorry. We're all under a lot of stress here, I know. Why don't you tell me about your world while we go pick up some more of these poor bastards?"

Fuck this guy. Placating language the 'all in this together' schtick do not help in the least. Before he gives any more thought to it, Jiro's picking up the nearest femur and swinging it at Yunlan. There will be no stories about his world for the time being.

"Don't look at me like that, you piece of shit!"

With empathy or whatever that is.

Ah, fuck. Yunlan throws up an arm to block; the femur hits it with a sickening crack, a bone-breaking noise. Not his bone, he doesn't think.

"Hey, shithead!" he yells, grabbing for Jiro's wrist. If he makes the grab good, he's going to give it a twist, forcing the other man to drop his weapon. Jiro's got a lot of reach on him; this isn't a fight Yunlan wants to draw out any longer than he has to.

Not least because he'd rather not hurt the guy. It's not like there's a lot of them around. Infighting's a waste of time and resources. Plus-- well.

If Jiro's any good in a fight, he's enough bigger than Yunlan that this could end badly.

"Sit the FUCK down and give it a rest!"

When his wrist is turned, he drops the bone and it clatters to the floor. Jiro used to be a good in a fight, but all of his 'natural' ability was derived from a demon at the core, and he's found himself slower and less coordinated since arriving here. Though even at his worst, he's been fighting all his life, and his instinct is to throw a punch immediately with his free arm. It's aimed at the wall, at least.

"Don't tell me what the fuck to do!"

It comes out too petulantly, so he growls after for an added attempt at intimidation.

That punch goes into the wall: good. He wants to bust up his own knuckles, Yunlan isn't going to stop him. He keeps his grip on Jiro's wrist, firm enough to discourage any more bright ideas about violence, and glares up into the guy's face. What is he, like, twenty? Younger?

Maybe this is hell, and for Yunlan's sins he gets to handle teenagers who are even worse rebellious little shitheads than he was at their age.

"Don't do stupid shit and I won't have to tell you what to do. What's your malfunction? You think you can pop a guy in the head with human fucking remains because he apologized for pissing you off? I take it back, I'm not sorry! You need to handle your own shit, Jiro."

Fuck. Yelling at him gets him to calm down more than apologizing did. This guy's reminding him of his grandfather, who would have said the same things. Always said these things. He yanks his wrist out of Yunlan's grip.

"I'm handling it!"

He's really not, but he hasn't killed anybody yet.

"Sure you are." Yunlan takes a step back, flexing his fingers; well, it's not his arm that had anything break. Must've been the dry femur that cracked. "You keep handling it, and we won't have any more problems."

He blows out a breath, looking around at the skeletons. This room is giving him the creeps.

"--Look, I'm gonna go wash up, and then I'm going back to poking around the reactor level. You want to come, you can. If not, good luck with this."

"I have other things to do."

He picks up the broken femur to toss back on the pile of skeletons.

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wildguardian - 2020-06-02 04:39 (UTC) - Expand

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