RobCo, Outcasts, And All The Film You Have
Aug. 1st, 2012 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aaaaaaaagh_skyThere's an envelope left with the Bar, a thick, heavy one. Inside is a sheaf of paper. There are photographs attached to the paper, and a great deal of explanatory text along with each one; in a few places the photographs are inserted more or less mid-sentence. They're in black and white, all of them, and they resemble Polaroid photographs, although they're a bit larger than the standard size.
"Okay, so," says the text in Ellen's handwriting, "I've been taking pictures whenever I could on this project. Here's what I've got for the past week or so."
"This first one is the eight of us working on the project, and four of the five robots we've got to help out. Number five is working the camera- anyway, the four people in the middle, in the robes? Those are the Scribes. That's the non-combatant order within the Brotherhood of Steel- they do our research and our engineering and all of that good stuff. The blond guy is Scribe Thornburgh and the two women are Scribes Younes and Sprunk, they're Order of the Quill- our historians. The other guy, the one with the dark hair and the big eyebrows? That's Scribe Cancio, from the Order of the Sword. They do weapons research. He did a lot of work on my Tesla cannon Mjolnir when they were developing it- I know he's only about my age, but they start doing science pretty young in the Brotherhood... The three people in combat armor are Initiates. Dimple's going into a Knight's rank when all of this is over- that's, um. Like being an enlisted man, basically. Reuben's going to be doing the same. Jarvis is going to be in training until he can test straight into Paladin rank; that's my rank, it's the lowest kind of commissioned officer. You get people who do that sometimes."
"I'm the one on the right, in the power armor. That used to be standard issue for a lot of the Army before the Great War. It holds up really well under fire, and my suit was a prototype with some other neat stuff about it. I can tell you about that later. The robots are the kind this factory used to build before the War. There were five working ones left in the factory when Alyx and I found it- I can tell you about her later. They don't need to sleep or eat or anything else, just cool down and recharge from time to time, and they can each do the brute labor of about five human beings, so you can imagine we've really been working them on this. They're all armed with lasers, too, so they can defend themselves or the area they're stationed in. That's why they're called Protectrons."
"Okay, next picture. This is the first windmill we built. I got the basic plans for it from somebody here- Robo, his name is, I'll introduce you to him if you want. We had to adapt them a lot because lots of the parts just aren't available in the Wasteland, and I wanted to be able to build them without having to turn elsewhere for supplies. So we went out and raided as many old vehicles as we could for parts- there's magnetic alternators involved, among other things- and cut down the remains of pipes and rebar and sheet metal and other things for parts, and we worked them into airfoils and all the rest, and then we cut down the remains of wires from these huge old towers that you see in all kinds of places in the Wasteland. I guess they were for electricity transmission... anyway, the windmill took a while to persuade to work, but we connected it to the factory- that building in the background- and we've been getting decent electricity out of it ever since. Enough to run the mainframe computer and keep all the lights on! - the working ones, anyway, we've still got to fix some of those..."
"This is a close-up of the Brotherhood flag we've got flying from the windmill. It seemed like an appropriate place to put it. The stripes are because the Founder was an American soldier who survived the Great War and he didn't want to abandon the flag entirely. The other part's our emblem. The gears represent engineering knowledge, the sword is our will to defend, the wings are the uplifting hope that the recovery of lost technology offers all of mankind after the Great War, and the circle represents the unity that makes us a true brotherhood. That includes the women. Two out of three of the highest-ranked people in the Capital Brotherhood are women. The name's not meant to exclude anyone."
"This is the factory mainframe computer. It takes up two whole rooms. It's only had access to emergency power through a solar array on the roof these past two hundred years, so it's mostly been idle this whole time. Alyx and I got it up and running on that power some months ago, and she was able to bypass security and we got some information out of it. Scribe Sprunk's been spending most of her time here getting everything she can out of its databanks now that there's enough power to run it properly, and there's schematics in there for virtually everything RobCo ever built. And for all the systems that make up the factory, too- so now we know what we're going to need in order to repair the place, which is a definite plus. I mean, it doesn't make finding all the parts any easier, but at least we know what's going to be involved now."
"This is an automated laser turret Scribe Cancio built for the area defense system. He's going to install a bunch of them on the outside of the building, and on some of the windmills once we get more built, because otherwise we're going to have to have guards on duty all the time. The Wasteland's so far from being civilized it isn't even funny, and even if humans stop trying to attack anything that moves or steal anything that's not nailed down, there's a lot of wildlife that can do a lot of property damage out there."
"Speaking of wildlife, we spotted a couple of deathclaws in the distance the other day. Those are nasty. They're about twelve feet long and those claws will go right through combat armor, and the hide's tough as anything. The Initiates are all on edge because they're the first line of defense against those things until we get the laser turrets up. I'm going to be out there with them, of course. There's no point in having heavy weapons and power armor if you're just going to order people around from somewhere safe. I can show you the weapons later if you want, I bring them here to practice."
"Honestly, though, I wasn't nearly as worried about the deathclaws as I was about these guys. These are Brotherhood Outcasts, and they've been in the area for ages. The Outcasts used to be soldiers under Elder Lyons' command, but... well, the Brotherhood of Steel sent Elder Lyons east from California to recover whatever tech he could from the area. He decided that protecting the local population came first and tech recovery came second. A bunch of his soldiers disagreed with that so much that they grabbed whatever weapons and armor they could carry and went AWOL years ago. They got hold of an old pre-War facility called Fort Independence and established themselves there. They think Elder Lyons is a traitor to the Brotherhood mission, and they all want to testify against him when someone finally makes contact with California again. Elder Lyons doesn't want a shooting war with them, but... well, they're jerks. I'm sorry, I don't like using that kind of language, but it's a little hard to describe them otherwise. They won't protect Wastelanders because 'any two people can make another person, but the secrets of making a P94 plasma rifle are all but lost'. I think you get the idea."
"Fort Independence isn't all that far from the RobCo factory area, and their patrols take them through the area from time to time. They've hassled me in the past because I was poking around somewhere they thought was too advanced for a dirty Wastelander like myself- they want to preserve technology and keep it out of the hands of people too stupid or dangerous to deserve it, and that's... pretty much anybody who isn't Brotherhood, as far as they're concerned. Never mind that they've had years to try working with the place and never bothered so much as clearing the molerats and radroaches out, they wanted me to leave the factory before I did anything catastrophically stupid. Their words, not mine."
"It only got worse after I actually joined the Brotherhood, because for most of that time if I was at the RobCo place, I was there by myself. They refused to believe I was with Lyons, even though they knew he recruits outsiders- most people in the Brotherhood are born to Brotherhood parents. Elder Lyons does things a little differently because he's practical about that kind of thing... anyway, some of the Outcast patrols threatened me and the project when I was going there solo, before I was promoted to Paladin. To keep anything useful away from the thieving primitives who were willing to lie about where they got their gear. The only reason I didn't get shot long before was because I'd helped some of them recover a prewar armory once, before I knew what jerks they were, and I guess Protector McGraw was grateful enough to tell them not to try. This is him, by the way. All the Outcasts paint their armor black and red to distinguish themselves from 'Lyons and his citizen soldiers'."
"Anyway, there were some patrols while we were working on the windmill, but none of them got close enough to make contact with. We spent the whole time pretty much on edge. Scribe Cancio stayed awake three nights running to work on the turrets and on amping up the Protectrons' built-in lasers, just in case there was trouble. I camped out on the roof a couple of times in my stealth suit- I can show you that sometime if you want, it basically bends light around you so people can't see more than a little blur in the air. It's prewar tech, they made it in Red China. I wore that and took my Gauss rifle up on the roof so I could keep an eye out just in case, because the Initiates are pretty decent but they're still a little raw in a firefight, and I didn't want trouble starting on their watch."
"When the Outcasts finally showed up, a couple of hours before dawn, it wasn't a patrol. It was an actual squad, and they had a couple of robots with them, and Protector McGraw was there too. That's... oh, gosh, he's about equivalent to a senior colonel in the pre-War army, I guess... anyway, that's not something that happens lightly, so we were all braced for trouble. They stopped some distance away, inside my Gauss rifle's range but out of range of effective laser fire, and they just sat there for a while. I think they were testing us, to see if we'd start shooting."
"We didn't. The Initiates wanted to. Scribe Cancio was about ready to pick up Mjolnir and start firing- that thing was designed for anti-aircraft duty, it had plenty of range... but I ordered everybody to stand their ground. We weren't about to start a shooting war. If the Outcasts wanted one they'd have to start it themselves."
"It just went on and on and on like that, for absolutely ever it seemed like, and around about dawn one of the Outcasts went for his laser rifle exactly like he was going to start shooting at us. But he never did. He just drew it and aimed, and then Protector McGraw put a hand on his arm and he lowered the rifle, and that's when they sent up a signal flag and asked to talk."
"That's why I have that picture of Protector McGraw. I took it when he came over to us to verify everything his men had been telling him ever since they started harassing me at the factory, and he saw the windmill, and the robots, and the lights in the factory and everything. He saw the printouts Scribe Sprunk had, of the factory equipment, and he saw the turrets Scribe Cancio had been building. He looked at all that, and he looked at us, and he said, "So, Lyons is finally doing his job after all, huh?"."
"And that was it. They're not going to harass us any more unless we bother their patrols. They're... not reconciled with Elder Lyons, and I don't think they ever will be. The Brotherhood Codex doesn't allow for that kind of forgiveness, just for separation. But they're satisfied that the job is legitimate now, and that Elder Lyons isn't as 'bad' as they thought he was. I'm just going to let them keep on believing that. There's enough hostility in the Wasteland as it is. "
"I've got some more pictures if you want. Come and find me, and I'll show you."
It's signed Paladin 101 (Ellen Park).
"Okay, so," says the text in Ellen's handwriting, "I've been taking pictures whenever I could on this project. Here's what I've got for the past week or so."
"This first one is the eight of us working on the project, and four of the five robots we've got to help out. Number five is working the camera- anyway, the four people in the middle, in the robes? Those are the Scribes. That's the non-combatant order within the Brotherhood of Steel- they do our research and our engineering and all of that good stuff. The blond guy is Scribe Thornburgh and the two women are Scribes Younes and Sprunk, they're Order of the Quill- our historians. The other guy, the one with the dark hair and the big eyebrows? That's Scribe Cancio, from the Order of the Sword. They do weapons research. He did a lot of work on my Tesla cannon Mjolnir when they were developing it- I know he's only about my age, but they start doing science pretty young in the Brotherhood... The three people in combat armor are Initiates. Dimple's going into a Knight's rank when all of this is over- that's, um. Like being an enlisted man, basically. Reuben's going to be doing the same. Jarvis is going to be in training until he can test straight into Paladin rank; that's my rank, it's the lowest kind of commissioned officer. You get people who do that sometimes."
"I'm the one on the right, in the power armor. That used to be standard issue for a lot of the Army before the Great War. It holds up really well under fire, and my suit was a prototype with some other neat stuff about it. I can tell you about that later. The robots are the kind this factory used to build before the War. There were five working ones left in the factory when Alyx and I found it- I can tell you about her later. They don't need to sleep or eat or anything else, just cool down and recharge from time to time, and they can each do the brute labor of about five human beings, so you can imagine we've really been working them on this. They're all armed with lasers, too, so they can defend themselves or the area they're stationed in. That's why they're called Protectrons."
"Okay, next picture. This is the first windmill we built. I got the basic plans for it from somebody here- Robo, his name is, I'll introduce you to him if you want. We had to adapt them a lot because lots of the parts just aren't available in the Wasteland, and I wanted to be able to build them without having to turn elsewhere for supplies. So we went out and raided as many old vehicles as we could for parts- there's magnetic alternators involved, among other things- and cut down the remains of pipes and rebar and sheet metal and other things for parts, and we worked them into airfoils and all the rest, and then we cut down the remains of wires from these huge old towers that you see in all kinds of places in the Wasteland. I guess they were for electricity transmission... anyway, the windmill took a while to persuade to work, but we connected it to the factory- that building in the background- and we've been getting decent electricity out of it ever since. Enough to run the mainframe computer and keep all the lights on! - the working ones, anyway, we've still got to fix some of those..."
"This is a close-up of the Brotherhood flag we've got flying from the windmill. It seemed like an appropriate place to put it. The stripes are because the Founder was an American soldier who survived the Great War and he didn't want to abandon the flag entirely. The other part's our emblem. The gears represent engineering knowledge, the sword is our will to defend, the wings are the uplifting hope that the recovery of lost technology offers all of mankind after the Great War, and the circle represents the unity that makes us a true brotherhood. That includes the women. Two out of three of the highest-ranked people in the Capital Brotherhood are women. The name's not meant to exclude anyone."
"This is the factory mainframe computer. It takes up two whole rooms. It's only had access to emergency power through a solar array on the roof these past two hundred years, so it's mostly been idle this whole time. Alyx and I got it up and running on that power some months ago, and she was able to bypass security and we got some information out of it. Scribe Sprunk's been spending most of her time here getting everything she can out of its databanks now that there's enough power to run it properly, and there's schematics in there for virtually everything RobCo ever built. And for all the systems that make up the factory, too- so now we know what we're going to need in order to repair the place, which is a definite plus. I mean, it doesn't make finding all the parts any easier, but at least we know what's going to be involved now."
"This is an automated laser turret Scribe Cancio built for the area defense system. He's going to install a bunch of them on the outside of the building, and on some of the windmills once we get more built, because otherwise we're going to have to have guards on duty all the time. The Wasteland's so far from being civilized it isn't even funny, and even if humans stop trying to attack anything that moves or steal anything that's not nailed down, there's a lot of wildlife that can do a lot of property damage out there."
"Speaking of wildlife, we spotted a couple of deathclaws in the distance the other day. Those are nasty. They're about twelve feet long and those claws will go right through combat armor, and the hide's tough as anything. The Initiates are all on edge because they're the first line of defense against those things until we get the laser turrets up. I'm going to be out there with them, of course. There's no point in having heavy weapons and power armor if you're just going to order people around from somewhere safe. I can show you the weapons later if you want, I bring them here to practice."
"Honestly, though, I wasn't nearly as worried about the deathclaws as I was about these guys. These are Brotherhood Outcasts, and they've been in the area for ages. The Outcasts used to be soldiers under Elder Lyons' command, but... well, the Brotherhood of Steel sent Elder Lyons east from California to recover whatever tech he could from the area. He decided that protecting the local population came first and tech recovery came second. A bunch of his soldiers disagreed with that so much that they grabbed whatever weapons and armor they could carry and went AWOL years ago. They got hold of an old pre-War facility called Fort Independence and established themselves there. They think Elder Lyons is a traitor to the Brotherhood mission, and they all want to testify against him when someone finally makes contact with California again. Elder Lyons doesn't want a shooting war with them, but... well, they're jerks. I'm sorry, I don't like using that kind of language, but it's a little hard to describe them otherwise. They won't protect Wastelanders because 'any two people can make another person, but the secrets of making a P94 plasma rifle are all but lost'. I think you get the idea."
"Fort Independence isn't all that far from the RobCo factory area, and their patrols take them through the area from time to time. They've hassled me in the past because I was poking around somewhere they thought was too advanced for a dirty Wastelander like myself- they want to preserve technology and keep it out of the hands of people too stupid or dangerous to deserve it, and that's... pretty much anybody who isn't Brotherhood, as far as they're concerned. Never mind that they've had years to try working with the place and never bothered so much as clearing the molerats and radroaches out, they wanted me to leave the factory before I did anything catastrophically stupid. Their words, not mine."
"It only got worse after I actually joined the Brotherhood, because for most of that time if I was at the RobCo place, I was there by myself. They refused to believe I was with Lyons, even though they knew he recruits outsiders- most people in the Brotherhood are born to Brotherhood parents. Elder Lyons does things a little differently because he's practical about that kind of thing... anyway, some of the Outcast patrols threatened me and the project when I was going there solo, before I was promoted to Paladin. To keep anything useful away from the thieving primitives who were willing to lie about where they got their gear. The only reason I didn't get shot long before was because I'd helped some of them recover a prewar armory once, before I knew what jerks they were, and I guess Protector McGraw was grateful enough to tell them not to try. This is him, by the way. All the Outcasts paint their armor black and red to distinguish themselves from 'Lyons and his citizen soldiers'."
"Anyway, there were some patrols while we were working on the windmill, but none of them got close enough to make contact with. We spent the whole time pretty much on edge. Scribe Cancio stayed awake three nights running to work on the turrets and on amping up the Protectrons' built-in lasers, just in case there was trouble. I camped out on the roof a couple of times in my stealth suit- I can show you that sometime if you want, it basically bends light around you so people can't see more than a little blur in the air. It's prewar tech, they made it in Red China. I wore that and took my Gauss rifle up on the roof so I could keep an eye out just in case, because the Initiates are pretty decent but they're still a little raw in a firefight, and I didn't want trouble starting on their watch."
"When the Outcasts finally showed up, a couple of hours before dawn, it wasn't a patrol. It was an actual squad, and they had a couple of robots with them, and Protector McGraw was there too. That's... oh, gosh, he's about equivalent to a senior colonel in the pre-War army, I guess... anyway, that's not something that happens lightly, so we were all braced for trouble. They stopped some distance away, inside my Gauss rifle's range but out of range of effective laser fire, and they just sat there for a while. I think they were testing us, to see if we'd start shooting."
"We didn't. The Initiates wanted to. Scribe Cancio was about ready to pick up Mjolnir and start firing- that thing was designed for anti-aircraft duty, it had plenty of range... but I ordered everybody to stand their ground. We weren't about to start a shooting war. If the Outcasts wanted one they'd have to start it themselves."
"It just went on and on and on like that, for absolutely ever it seemed like, and around about dawn one of the Outcasts went for his laser rifle exactly like he was going to start shooting at us. But he never did. He just drew it and aimed, and then Protector McGraw put a hand on his arm and he lowered the rifle, and that's when they sent up a signal flag and asked to talk."
"That's why I have that picture of Protector McGraw. I took it when he came over to us to verify everything his men had been telling him ever since they started harassing me at the factory, and he saw the windmill, and the robots, and the lights in the factory and everything. He saw the printouts Scribe Sprunk had, of the factory equipment, and he saw the turrets Scribe Cancio had been building. He looked at all that, and he looked at us, and he said, "So, Lyons is finally doing his job after all, huh?"."
"And that was it. They're not going to harass us any more unless we bother their patrols. They're... not reconciled with Elder Lyons, and I don't think they ever will be. The Brotherhood Codex doesn't allow for that kind of forgiveness, just for separation. But they're satisfied that the job is legitimate now, and that Elder Lyons isn't as 'bad' as they thought he was. I'm just going to let them keep on believing that. There's enough hostility in the Wasteland as it is. "
"I've got some more pictures if you want. Come and find me, and I'll show you."
It's signed Paladin 101 (Ellen Park).