Finding Dave

North of the de facto borders of the Capital Wasteland, the terrain turns rocky and a stone massif begins to thrust itself towards the sky. What had been rolling hills and the occasional ridge gives way to more vertical, less hospitable terrain, dusted with scrubby brush and the long-dead remains of spindly trees. A ghost of green covers the occasional patch of lowland soil, the only sign that here, it's technically spring.

Ellen's got her Chinese stealth suit on, but the headpiece is pulled down around her neck, and a pair of oval-lensed red-striped goggles covers her eyes. As Dogmeat sniffs furiously at the ground around them, she scans the landscape. "I have no idea what half of the trails I'm seeing are," she says of the trackless terrain, "but there's a definite streak of 'humans were here' heading up that slope to the northwest."