Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Day 1: Monday, 18/10/77

New journal finally arrived today, two weeks late. A new record for the postal service. I will be sure to thank them with a grenade through their office window at soonest opportunity. Or maybe send them a package of C4. I don't know. Haven't decided yet. Depends how easily I can find high explosives around here. I bet Tom Baker down the street has some I could borrow. Nora says that I can't keep planning domestic terrorism whenever I get angry; I say anger has nothing to do with it. I will wipe those post office fuckers out with military precision. They've had it coming for a long time.

In other news, I have not yet shot myself in the head to escape the constant squalling of my beloved infant son, whose existence I continue to regret every single day. Everything about this situation is horrible, and his constant shitting, pissing, and crying in the middle of the night makes me pine for my days of freezing my balls off while being shot at by the Chinese. If this keeps up, I might just cave in and go see Hawthorne for some Daytripper. Anything to ease the pain of this nightmare that my life has become.

Day 2: Tuesday, 19/10/77

The new Mr. Handy, Codsworth, continues to address me exclusively as "Mr. Fuckface." I have repeatedly asked him not to, but apparently, there exists no setting to change the designated owner's name once it's been set. This seems like a glaring oversight to me, but hey, what do I know? I'm just an ex-soldier with a highly improbable variety of skills. I'm sure the geniuses at General Atomics had many good reasons why the owner's name had to be carved in fucking stone like this, just like I'm sure I had many good reasons for inputting that name at the time, even if I can't remember them now for the life of me.

Nora finds it funny. She would do. That woman has always delighted in my suffering. I wish she would just murder me for the insurance already and get it over with. The suspense is dreadful.

Day 3: Wednesday, 20/10/77

No matter how much I drink, the pain never really goes away. I can still hear my wife's nagging voice, and my son's constant bawling. Sanctuary is anything but. It is a limbo between this world and the next, an expanse of endless torture and monotony. I lived my life outside the light of God, and so I am damned to this domestic hell. Nora is my jailor, and Shaun is my penance. Forgive me, oh Lord, I knew what I did was wrong, but I could not stop myself.

On the other hand, my new horror novel is going great.

Day 4: Thursday, 21/10/77

Finally quit my job today. Told Mr. De Santa right to his face exactly what I thought of him, and good God was it satisfying. I've wanted to punch that asshole since I started there, but this was the next best thing, especially when I told him about the ground dogshit I put in his coffee. But that's all water under the bridge now. At last, I can finally pursue my real dream - driving monster trucks.

It'll take some doing, but I'll get there eventually. Cousin Dale said he'd help me. He's coming up with the kids soon anyway for the barbecue, so I'll talk to him about it then. I did try to warn him that he's inviting disaster on us, putting Jean and Nora under the same roof again, but of course nobody listens to me. I guess we'll both just have to live with the chattering for a couple days. If I can find my earplugs, I should be able to manage.

Day 5: Friday, 22/10/77

Those lost dog posters are still there around Concord. It's been a month since the mutt ran off, and still nothing yet. It's a shame; I liked that dog. He was one of the more dependable people in my life, if you can call a dog "people." But he was also probably the smartest of us, because he got out while he still could. That's more than I could ever do, and I envy him for it. Wherever he is now, I hope he's alright.

Got the Veteran's Hall speech tomorrow. I still don't get why those chucklefucks are so honoured to have me. Sure, I killed a whole bunch of commies and got some medals, but you'd think they'd want to distance themselves from me after how many public urination charges I've been brought up on. Once or twice is excusable, but the Boston Bugle described me as a "serial offender" and a "public menace." Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all ashamed of any of it, and I'd do it all again in a heartbeat if I could. I'm just confused why they aren't.

Day 6: Saturday, 23/10/87

So somebody nuked Boston today. That was kind of a downer.

Well, more accurately, they nuked it about two hundred years ago, and I seriously overslept. And then some nice people came by to murder my wife and steal my son while I was asleep, which I didn't entirely appreciate either. So it's been kind of a shitty day.

It started as an ordinary Saturday morning. Nora was bothering me in the bathroom, looming behind me in the mirror like a spectre from my nightmares. Shaun was crying again. Codsworth kept calling me Fuckface. Standard stuff. Then some Vault-Tec fuck came to my door, and wouldn't take no for an answer, so I signed some papers in hopes it would make him go away. But turns out he may have saved my life, because not two minutes later we got the warning that the nukes were inbound. We rushed for Vault 111, and made it inside just as the bomb hit Boston. I actually saw the mushroom cloud.

How in Christ's name we survived, I have no idea. At the very least we should've all been blind with third degree burns. I guess it was a magic nuke. But we did make it inside, along with a few of the neighbours, and the Vault-Tec people gave us these stupid blue jumpsuits and put us through processing. We were led into these pods, which they told us were for decontamination or something. I don't know. I wasn't paying much attention at the time, what with, y'know, the world ending. So before I even thought to question it, Nora took Shaun and went in one pod, and I sat in the one opposite, whereupon we were all promptly frozen.

I woke up a short time later from my perspective, though I don't know how long it actually was, and that's when some bald fuck and his entourage came in, shot Nora, and took Shaun. Fucker looked me right in the eye as I was struggling to get out, and ordered them to put me back on ice. When I finally got out again, they were long gone, and everyone in the vault was dead. All the neighbours died in their pods, and the Vault-Tec staff apparently killed each other in a mutiny over two hundred years ago, making me the sole survivor of Vault 111.

Except Shaun. Fuck. Okay, sole survivor of Vault 111, except Shaun. And maybe those other guys. I don't know if they were Vault-Tec or not. Sole survivor except for Shaun and maybe those other guys.

Actually, screw it. Let's just say I'm the sole survivor. It's catchier.

Anyway, I've since made my way back to the surface and back to my house. It's sure been... interesting. The vault was full of giant mutant cockroaches, and I had to fight my way out past them, but I found a gun, a police baton, and some stimpaks along the way, along with some food and a few other knick knacks. My best find was one of those Pip-Boys. It comes with a GPS, Geiger counter, and an assisted targeting system. Also plays holotapes, and opens Vault-Tec doors, apparently. It even runs Red Menace. As far as consolation prizes for the death of my family goes, it's okay.

Wish I could've gotten the sweet-looking gun I saw in the Overseer's office too, but the cabinet was locked up good. I'm gonna have to practice my lock-picking and come back for it later.

I found the surface air breathable once I escaped, and my Geiger counter didn't immediately go off, so it looked safe to go ahead, despite all the skeletons still hanging around. The forest is still here, and the world's still alive at least, if not in good shape. Most of the animals seem to have mutated, like the bugs in the vault, but... it's life, I guess.

Somehow, Codsworth was still there when I got to the house. He's just been hanging around in Sanctuary for the past two hundred and ten years, slowly going crazy from isolation, though I was able to break through it with some pressing. He even still calls me Mr. Fuckface after all this time, because like war, some things never fucking change. Don't get me wrong, though, I am glad he's here. A little familiarity is good, considering how much else has changed, and the fact that he's maintained his programming all this time is also helpful, because it means he still recognises me and obeys instructions. I'm also pretty sure he's the sole reason the house hasn't collapsed over the past two centuries; some of the others on the street weren't so lucky.

It's a weird feeling, standing in the ruins of my old home. Just yesterday for me it was a perfectly normal neighbourhood. Now it's a rotting corpse. And I guess everyone I ever knew must be dead now, which isn't a fun thought. I mean, I'm not gonna miss most of them, but they weren't all awful. I liked most of my family. A few coworkers. John and Barry from my old squad. And my barber Lucius was alright. The rest of the human race can go fuck itself, though.

But still, to think they're all suddenly gone, just like that. Even Nora. I never even got to serve her the divorce papers.

I'm not completely sure what to do next, so for now, I'm just hanging around. Codsworth helped me clear out some mutant pests from the other houses on the street, and I've since put him to work tidying the place up. All the walls and ceilings are rusted through and full of holes, and the bed's broken besides, so I'm not gonna be staying in the house tonight, but I figured I'd at least get all the leaves, rubble, broken furniture, and mouldy carpet out. If I patch the walls and ceiling up, it might be liveable again one day, but it'll need a lot of work. I might have to pull down some of the other houses on the street for building materials. Could be something to do with my time. Not like I got anything else to do now.

Oh fuck, that's right, my son's still missing. I keep forgetting that.

But those are problems for later. Right now I'm hunkering down in Tom Baker's shelter, since it's the only place around with a bed that's not exposed to the elements, and Codsworth informs me that "radstorms" are a concern around here now. Can't say I'm looking forward to dealing with that, but at least I found some RadAway while scavenging around the neighbourhood. Some drugs, too. Thank you, Hawthorne - I'll shoot one up in your memory.

Still, there's one last thing bothering me about Sanctuary, beyond the obvious. I think somebody was here recently, or maybe several somebodies. I had a walk around the backwoods near Vault 111, and found a crude shelter directly overlooking the vault entrance, with a strange symbol on it I didn't recognise. There wasn't much there, but somebody left some candles and some cartons (?) of water there.

This wouldn't be very suspicious on its own, but I also came across a burning campfire and cookpot by Ted Russell's place while I was helping Codsworth clear the neighbourhood. If the cookfire had been dead, I wouldn't have thought much of it. It's only natural that survivors would pass by or camp here at some point in the last two hundred years. In fact, Codsworth told me a lovely story about a survivor who camped here about a decade after the bombs fell, until another completely unrelated survivor came by, shot him, and ate him. But burning fires are evidence of recent occupation, and Codsworth doesn't recall seeing anybody that recently.

Somebody was here just before I was. Maybe somebody watching the vault entrance. Could it have been the kidnappers? I don't know. But it's interesting, isn't it?

Well, all that can wait for tomorrow, I guess. For now, I need to try and sleep, if I still can.

Perhaps then, I might be able to wake from this nightmare.

Day 7: Sunday, 24/10/87

The Sanctuary spring cleaning project has been going well, even if it is technically still autumn. Codsworth worked all through the night clearing out the houses around here. Everything broken and rotten beyond repair he moved into a big pile and burned, and everything else I've been breaking down and trying to salvage. Got a few containers for small parts like screws and gears, some stockpiles of wood, metal, and other general materials, and I was able to find some tools and workbenches around.

I've moved my operations into the Rosas' house for now. That sheltered driveway of theirs makes for a good outdoor workshop where I can work on my guns and such. I set my stockpiles and tools nearby, and moved the workbenches and Hawthorne's old chemistry station there. Also the campfire and cookpot I found by Ted's place, since obviously none of the ovens around here work anymore. Might try and fix one of the electric stoves if I can slap a generator together. I can totally build a generator, I'm sure. I was an electrician for a time.

I've been trying not to rush through my rations too quickly, since I probably got really lucky finding so much preserved pre-war food in the houses around here. I mean, two hundred years is a damn long time; surely most of the Commonwealth will have been picked clean by scavengers after that long. So in the interest of making what I have last, I decided to harvest the meat from those giant mutant cockroaches and cook it up before it spoiled, since they were big enough to have some on them. I can't say it's the most appetising thing I've ever eaten, but I had worse in the army, so I can manage. For post-apocalyptic cuisine, it's passable. And the Pip-Boy seemed to think it was safe to eat, so there's that.

Was thinking I might try some fishing as well, but I didn't see any in the river. Don't know how the radiation would've affected marine life, but I'm sure it must still be around somewhere. I'll have a look next time I'm on the coast.

I found something interesting while walking by the river, though. There was a dead man on the other side of the bridge from Sanctuary. And not a two hundred year old skeleton, like the poor bastards around the vault. A fresh corpse, no more than a couple days dead, apparently killed by some equally dead hairless dog. I guess I found the guy who lit the cookfire. He didn't look familiar, though. Definitely wasn't the bald fuck. Not sure why he was watching the vault then, unless it was somebody else.

He had some good stuff on him, though. Stimpaks, a shotgun, some shells, and some fresh clothes. Yes, I stole a dead man's clothes; all the cops are dead, so who's gonna stop me? Just needed a quick wash to get the blood off. It's still better than wearing musty old pre-war shit from a suitcase at least, and I really don't want to traverse the wasteland in a bright blue jumpsuit, since that's just begging to get shot. Besides, my new outfit is full leather; aside from being better protection, it just looks sweet. I feel like a real post-apocalyptic survivor in this get-up. Might see if I can add some shoulder pads and under-armour too.

I'm liking the shotgun too, so I took it back to my new workshop and fixed it up a little. Nothing too spectacular; just sawed off the barrel and repaired the receiver. Optimising it for close quarters, in case some fucking mutant jumps out of a bush and tries to gore me. I have no idea what kind of shit could be out there, so I want to be prepared before venturing out. Did a little work on my 10mm pistol from the vault, too. New sights and such. Had to tear a few bits of junk from around the neighbourhood apart for all the components, but that's alright. Nobody's left to give me shit about it anymore.

Other than that, just continued to clean the place up a little. Toppled a few dead trees and had Codsworth saw them up for planks. Started a compost heap in the backyard with all the dead leaves. Moved some of the salvageable furniture from the other houses into the Rosas' place. Pretty normal stuff. Also collecting up anything I could find with copper in it. I can make wires with copper, which will be essential for getting a generator running. Just need to melt it down. I might need a forge. That's okay. I can totally make a forge. I was a blacksmith for a time.

It's getting late now, so I'll be going to bed after I've finished this entry. Just been re-reading this old Grognak comic before I do. Somehow the thing was still on my kitchen counter after two hundred years; I guess those glossy covers are really waterproof.

I'm doing okay, though, for my second day in the new world. I'm alive, I'm productive, and I've got booze, chems, and a gun. I've been through lower points. This is still better than high school. And prison. And Anchorage. And being married to Nora.

God, I hated that woman so fucking much.

Chapter Text

Day 8: Monday, 25/10/87

Did some more exploring today, a little building, and a lot of discovering.

Day started off with my new morning ritual. Cooked up and ate the disgusting mutant flies for breakfast. Bottled some water from the river and boiled it for later. Walked around directing Codsworth what trash and foliage to clear today. He's done a good job cleaning this place up so far. Sanctuary was pretty overgrown with bushes, vines, and brambles when I got here, but that flamethrower of his is pretty handy for clearing it out. We've almost got the road clear now. Hope he doesn't run out of fuel for it anytime soon, because there's only so many places to go for it.

Made some interesting finds while exploring the neighbourhood. I already cracked all the safes and terminals within the first couple days, but the more I snoop around, the more turns up. I found a duffle bag up on Tom's roof with some .38 rounds and a shitty makeshift rifle in it. Some bastard stashed a pair of hand grenades in the mailbox by the bridge, beating me to my attempt to bomb the postal service by over two hundred years. And a surprising number of houses have turned up tins full of bottlecaps, all helpfully labelled "CAPS" in identical handwriting. Either my neighbours were all a bit weirder than they let on, or this is again the work of various post-apocalyptic survivors passing through over the years. My money's on the latter.

Speaking of money, I've collected a good amount of gold, silver, and dollars while looting the neighbourhood, and now I'm wondering how much of it is still worth anything. Are there still any banks or traders around that accept dollars or are interested in gold? I know silver at least has plenty of practical uses, but the apocalypse must've done a real number on the economy.

I've been wondering about how much is left of society. I was fiddling around with a radio I found earlier, and to my shock, when I turned it on, it actually got a signal and started playing music. Not just music, but a voice, too. Something called Diamond City Radio. Even had sponsorships. My Pip-Boy picks it up too. I listened to it for most of the day, and I'm reasonably sure that it's not a pre-war recording; no radio station in my day would've hired a DJ this terrible. But it was annoyingly short on information about the wider world. I know Diamond City must be some sort of post-apocalyptic settlement, because I've lived in Massachusetts most of my life and never heard of it until now. But I don't know anything else about it, like where it is, how big it is, how far its reach extends, or what it's like beyond the fact that it has a radio station with sponsors.

I guess that's something positive, though. American enterprise survived, despite everything. Eat it, you dirty fucking commies.

But even if there is some city of survivors out there, I still don't know what they use as currency, or whether gold or silver would even be considered valuable to them. Actually, I don't even know if they'd buy scavenged goods at all. I mean, it's been two hundred years. That's got to be enough time for some sort of local government to establish itself in the region. What if they have laws and trade restrictions about what's legal to scavenge? What if I roll up to Diamond City or Concord with my cart full of gold ingots and pocket watches, and I get put in front of a firing squad for "stealing" from some rich wasteland assholes that think they have a legal claim on it?

Well, fuck that. Sanctuary is mine, goddamn it. I'll kill everybody in the world all over again before I give one square inch of this place over to those Diamond City bastards!

With that in mind, I've started thinking of ideas for fortifying this place in case of an attack. My mind immediately went to those giant security turrets that were getting popular right before the bombs fell. You know, the ones which immediately kill any employee that sticks their head outside their cubicle without an ID? Yeah, those. Those were great. I want to build one. If I can find the time and parts, I could probably slap one together. I was a security engineer for a time. But that might be a little much for now, so I'm considering some low-tech alternatives first. Mines would be good, but I may have to settle for caltrops. Might be able to use the grenades to rig the bridge to blow, but it's not really worth it. Too short a drop, plus I use that bridge too.

I did get a pretty good generator rigged up, though. Took most of the day, and I had to get some pretty difficult parts to make it work. Carved rubber off of tyres and cut ceramic from broken toilets and such. Scraped oil droplets from the bottom of used cans. Used up more copper than I would like. But I got it running. It's noisy and an eyesore, but it works. I even hooked it up to the Rosas' house and got a fluorescent light working in the garage. Had to cannibalise another light for parts, but hey, omelettes and eggs. Now I have light to work by even at night. More time in the workshop means I can get more done in a day.

I've settled in for the night now. Treated myself to some BlamCo instead of more cooked insect, since I think I've earned it, and started typing this entry. Still feels weird using the Pip-Boy for this instead of a book, but I'm getting used to it. Mostly I'm just annoyed that my new journal took so long to arrive, and then I got less than a week's use out of it before the fucking world ended.

And while I remember, I also want to say that it's bullshit that my brand new journal that I kept hidden under the bed rotted away to nothing, and yet Kenny's tax returns still litter the floor in his house even after two hundred years of wind, rain, and insects. They're dirty as shit, clutter up the place, and we can't even burn them without releasing toxic chemicals everywhere, and yet they're still here and clearly legible, while my journal isn't. I fucking hate synthetic paper, just like I fucking hated Kenny. Fuck you, Kenny. Pay your goddamn taxes.

Day 8 - Part 2: Monday, 25/10/87

Just a quick addendum, before I go to bed. When I first got back to Sanctuary a couple days ago, Codsworth gave me this holotape he found of Nora, addressed to me. I'd completely forgotten about it until now, but I just found it again in the shelter and gave it a listen.

It was a recording of her and Shaun. Probably an old one, given that she mentions us both rejoining the workforce. Not sure why she never gave it to me in person, but I liked how she called me "kind," "loving," "funny," "a great father," and said I had the "patience of a saint." All without a hint of irony or sarcasm, too. She must've been really high at the time.

I agree with the "funny" part, though; I am hilarious, as Mr. De Santa can attest.

Still, despite everything, listening to it, I do... kind of miss her. Just a little. I may have had my problems with Nora, but we did care about each other once. I think we really rushed into the whole "marriage" thing, and I was definitely not ready to be a father, but there was once a time when we were happy. She didn't deserve to go out like that.

I guess that's why I still carry our rings, to remember the good times. Maybe one day, I'll even look back on our marriage fondly.

I just wish she didn't fuck so many other men.

Day 9: Tuesday, 26/10/87

Ventured out from Sanctuary for the first time today. It was something, alright.

I found another duffle bag by the dead guy and the hairless dog as I crossed the bridge. It was up on a ridge, so I missed it before, but it had some molotov cocktails and another one of those shitty makeshift rifles in it. Then I came to the Red Rocket truck stop just across the bridge, where I found a stray German Shepherd.

I was surprised to see an animal which didn't look mutated at all, especially just after passing that dead hairless dog again, but this one seems pretty normal. Even better, he's tame. He listens to commands, does tricks, everything. He even let me dress him up in a little red bandana, because fuck anyone who says I don't have a sense of whimsy. Well, he started following me around, so I guess I have a dog again now. Feels nice. I'll be sure to take better care of this one.

While at the Red Rocket, we were ambushed by some more mutants. Looked like molerats. They burst from the ground and swarmed us. One bit me, which I would be normally worried about, but the Pip-Boy says I didn't contract anything, and its medical diagnostics are pretty sophisticated. This was right after I found the dog, so he helped out. Held a couple of them still while I got shots off. He's a very good boy.

We hung around a while after that. I explored the truck stop to see if there was anything there, and there was. Some food, some money, a few valuables, and a lot of junk with usable parts. More importantly, there were a good number of workbenches there too, and a firepit with a spitroast. If I want something lower maintenance than Sanctuary, it would be a good place to set up, but I didn't seriously consider it at the time. I just stashed most of my goods, including the shitty pipe rifle, intending to pick it up on the way back from Concord.

I also found a cave under the station, mentioned in a terminal entry. Looks like the guys running the place were using it to store waste. There were more of the creatures down there, but we killed them pretty efficiently. I had to take some Rad-X for the excursion, but it was worth it. Found some good stuff down there, including a safe with some ammunition and valuables, and a half-drained fusion core. Also picked up some strange fungi. Gave them a scan, and the Pip-Boy says they're safe to eat, despite one of the species glowing bright green. Have some doubts about that, but if it's correct, then that's another food source in the wasteland. I'll give it a closer study later.

I cooked up the mutant molerats for lunch, since they were there and they were fresh. They had a little more meat on them than the bugs did. Still not much, but it tasted better at least, and I had some to save for later. But their other products were much more interesting. I think I could make some decent leather out of their skins if I treat them properly, which I think I could do. I used to be a tanner. And their teeth could be useful as well if I can grind them down. Bone dust is a key ingredient in crude cutting fluid, which will be essential if I ever want to get those turrets up and running. Not that there's much of that just in molerat teeth, but I need to get it from somewhere.

I could always just start grinding up human skeletons, I guess, but I feel that'd be just a bit much for only my fourth day in the wasteland.

Well anyway, it was past midday when we reached Concord. We had a run-in with another variety of giant mutant bug, feeding off a dead two-headed cow of all things. They took a few more bullets than the ones in Sanctuary, but they were nothing special. Collected some more meat from them, since I'm curious how wasteland beef tastes, then we went to loot a nearby house. I found it strangely full of pre-war food still, even though there were supposedly people living around Concord. A still locked safe upstairs, too. Had a basic 10mm, a silver hairbrush for some reason, really nothing special. Sleeping bag upstairs in the corner. Baseball bat by the door, which I took. Post-apocalyptic ruins weird me out a little.

When we finally got into Concord proper, I started hearing shots. I wasn't especially eager to walk into a firefight, but I figured I'd go see what was happening. Some guys were shooting at some other guys holed up in the Museum of Freedom. I didn't know if I should be taking sides, so I decided to wait it out and see who won, but then one of the guys in the street saw me and opened fire, so the choice was out of my hands.

It's been a while since the last time I was in a real firefight, but the old instincts were still there. Just point and shoot. Don't stay in the open. Take cover while you reload. Only good communist is a dead communist. Et cetera. But these guys weren't even commies. At least commies understand small unit tactics. These guys were just human garbage. I killed all the ones in the street, and I'm pretty sure some of them didn't even notice me, too busy shooting at the guy on the museum balcony, probably while strung out of their minds on something the bastards didn't want to share with me.

Said guy on the balcony was Preston Garvey, a Revolutionary War reenactor who takes himself far too seriously for someone who looks so stupid. Dresses like it's 1765 and calls himself a Minuteman. But this isn't just something he does for kicks. He's the last living member now, but he claims there used to be an entire organisation of these historical cosplayers, and they fancied themselves actual spiritual successors to the real Minutemen. Protectors of the people at a minute's notice, just like them. Except they sucked at it, apparently.

Preston called me from the balcony after the fight, asking me to grab a laser musket from one of his dead friends and run into the museum to save everyone's asses. To my credit, I did try, but the laser musket is a piece of shit. It's a homemade single-shot laser rifle that you need to crank to charge. I don't understand the point. All that time and effort just to build a weapon that sucks almost as bad as an actual musket. I cranked it up to full charge, walked through the front doors, and got off one shot at one of the two guys above me. I nailed him in the chest and hurt him pretty bad, but he didn't die, so I was just left with my dick in my hand while the two guys above shot back at me, and I couldn't return fire because the laser musket needs you to crank a goddamn winch to reload.

In the end I just dropped it and killed them both with my 10mm pistol, with a little help from the Pip-Boy's assisted targeting. I've never felt like such a dumbass in all my life. I could've been killed!

Once I got rid of the caveman gun, though, the rest of the museum was pretty easy to clear. Shot one guy on the lower level. Next floor up, got the jump on two more with one of those frags I found in the mailbox. Then sneaked past another two on the top floor that were trying to break into Preston's room. They gave up and headed back, and I ambushed them with a shotgun to their faces as they came through a door. That's when I got to properly meet Preston and his entourage of circus freaks.

Okay, maybe I'm being unfair. Most of them seem pretty normal. The only freaks are Preston and this old lady called Mama Murphy who claims she can see the future by getting high. I was ready to write her off as crazy, and to be honest, I'm still not ruling it out, but actually, one of her predictions already came true today. She also has some uncanny knowledge about things she has no right knowing, and was the only person of the group who had any practical advice about tracking down Shaun, which, yeah, I should probably get around to doing at some point.

But the raiders attacking them were still coming outside, so Preston directed me into the basement to go pick up a fusion core from the generator. By luck, a vertibird crashed into the museum's roof when the bombs fell, and one of the soldiers left their power armour up there. With the fusion core, I was able to get it running again. I was a power armour trooper in Anchorage, so I hopped in and took it for a spin. Tore the minigun off the vertibird, then just jumped down and started firing. Landed directly on top of one poor bastard and pulped him.

I don't know how many people I killed. I only know that it was a lot. And then, just when it was almost done, some new monstrosity came crawling out of the sewer, just to confirm for me that every situation, no matter how bad, can always get worse. I don't even know how to describe it. It was all claws and teeth and horns. It looked like an actual demon, and it tore right through the power armour the one time I let it get close. Lucky for me there were still a good number of raiders alive when it came out, so I was able to pump fire into it while it was busy carving up all the expendable people. Used the minigun to blow up the cars on the street as well, just for good measure. It fell over and died shortly after it reached me, and thank fucking God it did, because I doubt I would've survived a second swipe of those claws. Definitely not a third.

The most galling thing was, even after it was dead, there were still a few raiders left, hanging around to take potshots at me. I don't know if they sensed weakness or if they were just high out of their minds, but if I saw some guy tank all my shots, mow down all my friends, and then single-handedly kill Satan himself, I would take the opportunity to leave. But I guess that's just what smart people do, and there aren't any of those left now.

The power armour was wrecked after the fight, and I was bleeding pretty bad, so I got out to heal up. The stimpaks left me pretty dehydrated, but other than that, it was alright. I went back inside to see Preston's gang. That's when Mama Murphy brought up Shaun, despite me never mentioning him, and said I should head for Diamond City. Considering she correctly predicted the sewer monster's appearance before it happened, I'm genuinely considering it. She also told me that my new dog's name is Dogmeat. Not the name I'd have chosen, but he does answer to it, so I guess that's another thing she was right about. Either she's a real psychic, or she's a spy for the kidnappers. Either way, I've got someone to pump for information about the bald fuck. Only question is, will it be through drugs, or torture? Decisions, decisions.

I stayed behind after they left to loot the museum and the dead raiders. Best things I found were an issue of RobCo Fun which still had a copy of Atomic Command with it, one of those rare Vault-Tec bobbleheads, and some armoured leather pads which I can wear over my regular clothes. Should provide some extra protection, and I think I can sew some extra pocket space into them if I can find a needle and thread. I used to be a pretty good tailor.

I also found a lot of weapons, armour, explosives, and ammo the raiders brought with them, some more food, more cash, more valuables, and a few useful components. But in the end it was too much to carry, so I stashed most of the guns and raider armour in a trash can, minigun included, and took the lighter gear back to the truck stop using the power armour's enhanced strength. When I get the chance, I'll return to Concord for the rest of it and pick through the other buildings while I'm there. The raiders are bound to have left more behind.

I stayed at the truckstop a while to get my bearings and do some inventory on what exactly I had, most especially with the power armour. There was a good work station there to hang it up, so I parked it in, hooked it up to the Pip-Boy, and ran some diagnostics. Like I said, it's not doing too good, but I think I can salvage it. A working suit of T-45 would be very useful for surviving out there, especially if there are more of those monsters around.

And speaking of the monster, yes, you'd better believe I carved it up and cooked it for dinner. I'll try anything once, and I like to put my experience as a sous-chef to work whenever I can. It had a lot of meat on it, enough for several whole steaks, and it's definitely... flavourful. Not bad, but not great. It's filling, at least. I wouldn't go out of my way to hunt for it, for several obvious reasons, but I'd definitely eat it opportunistically if I ever have to kill another of these things. Sadly I couldn't get much decent hide from it, since I'd riddled it with so many bullets, but I did manage to rip off one of its hands. This thing had some absurdly sharp claws; I might be able to fashion them into a decent weapon.

I headed back home after dinner, and of course, once I got there, I had to deal with the circus again, which I wasn't looking forward to. Yes, they weren't just in Concord for no reason; they came specifically to settle in Sanctuary.

Obviously, I have very mixed feelings about this. Sanctuary is still my neighbourhood, and I don't remember inviting them, so naturally my first instinct when I heard where they were heading was to either tell them to fuck off, or to jump back in the power armour and get ready to stand my ground. But I kept quiet and didn't do either, because the more I thought about it, the more I realised I can use these people. Preston and pals being here represents exploitable labour, the very thing that made this country great in the first place. They're all on my home turf, personally in my debt, and most of them seem weak-willed and of questionable intelligence, so I'm pretty sure I can get them to do whatever I tell them to. And that's to say nothing of Mama Murphy's potential uses if she's legit. I can work with this. I've certainly worked with less. 

Preston also had the nerve to ask me to go help out a whole different group of yokels whenever I'm done here. I tried to tell him how nothing could possibly interest me less, but I guess Garvey doesn't understand sarcasm, because he seemed to take my response as a yes. Apparently, nothing less than directly telling this guy to go fuck himself will get through to him. I don't know whether to be annoyed by that, or happy that I finally have someone around who's stupid enough to insult to his face without him realising it.

Anyway, it's getting late, and I've had a busy day, so I'm gonna turn in. We'll see what the morning brings. Hopefully, if I'm lucky, I can wrangle these vagrants into being useful.

And if not, I can always shove Preston's laser musket straight up his ass.

Day 10: Wednesday, 27/10/87

God, these people are fucking miserable.

I've been trying all day to whip Garvey's mob into shape, but Sturges is the only useful one of the bunch. He at least had the initiative to grab a hammer and try to fix the walls in the Rosa house. It was a wasted effort, because Sanctuary's houses have more holes in them than Swiss cheese, but at least he was trying to do something. Preston just spent the whole day walking back and forth like a beat cop with that laser musket of his, apparently in anticipation of a sudden attack by exactly one raider.

Mama Murphy did even less. She just wandered around in a daze and asked me for jet, which seems to be some sort of inhalant. Never heard of it before, but I picked up some of it off the raiders yesterday, so I gave it to her, much to Codsworth's disapproval. She told me something vague about a bright heart, and then started demanding a fitted chair before she'd tell me anything more useful. I'm still wondering if there's anything to her abilities at all, or if I'm just being taken for a ride.

But Murphy's a questionably crazy old lady and a drug addict, so I didn't expect anything from her in the first place. The Longs have no such excuse.

I can't tell which of the couple I like the least. Jun, the husband, is a pathetic sadsack because they lost their son, which sucks, but he should really just get over himself already. I lost my entire family and saw the world end less than a week ago, and you don't see me crying about it. I tried to be understanding with him, but he just would not stop moping all day. And then there's his wife, Marcy, who's just a straight-up bitch. Nora would've liked her. I'm seriously considering drowning her in the river if I ever catch her alone at night around here.

But the worst thing about having these people here is that they're all a lot harder to control than I thought they'd be. The Longs will reluctantly do as they're told after a swift kick in the ass, but Preston and Murphy were adamant on being useless, and Sturges was very much of his own mind about what needed to be done today. I wanted to get to work on my turret project, but he wouldn't help because he wanted beds first. Apparently, all these losers slept on the ground last night, because the travelling circus didn't bring so much as a sleeping bag with them, and Sanctuary doesn't have a single intact bed anywhere aside from Tom's shelter.

So we built beds. We salvaged scrap metal from the collapsed homes for basic bedframes, and we used the seat cushions from all the old chairs and sofas around the neighbourhood for mattresses. They don't have any covers, and they look pretty damn dirty and uncomfortable to me, but I don't know what else Sturges was expecting. Making a real mattress like mine requires industrial processes. I can't make mattress springs out of old tin cans (at least in these conditions), and God only knows where I'd find enough clean cotton or memory foam to fill it. I can't even make old-timey straw beds for them out here, because I don't have any straw. If it was pre-war quality beds they wanted, then they should've stayed in Concord. I'm sure there must be some over there.

Aaaaand I just remembered that there were several good quality beds in the staff quarters of Vault 111. Oops. Better not mention that to Sturges.

Next, he wanted a water pump. A water pump. I asked what in the hell he was thinking, and for some reason, Sturges seemed to be under the impression that the groundwater around here would be clean, unlike the nearby river, which is irradiated. Why he thought that, I have no idea, because I don't see any reason for the ground over here to be any less irradiated if radstorms really are a thing like Codsworth claims. I mean sure, the rest of the environment is clean for some reason, but the radiation in the river's gotta come from somewhere. So I had to carefully explain to him that no, building a water pump right next to an irradiated river would not magically produce purified water. If that's what he was after, we were going to need to build a purifier.

And so I talked myself into an even heftier task, which took up most of the afternoon. At least I already had a working generator handy, so power wasn't an issue, even if I was annoyed that we had to disconnect it from my new fluorescent light. If I can find some more copper wire, I might run a power line and reconnect it later, but that's a big if at the moment. But between me, Sturges, and Codsworth, it didn't take as long as it could've. We got it over with reasonably quickly. Even Dogmeat helped out, fetching tools for me. He's very well-trained for a stray.

After that was done, Sturges finally remembered that humans also need to eat. Why he didn't bring this up until near the end of the day, after it was too late to go hunting or scavenging, I have no idea. These people are all very lucky I had food to spare, and the good grace to share it after all the bullshit they've put me through lately. But it wasn't going to keep much longer anyway, so I figured I may as well. Sturges and Dogmeat were useful today, so they got to share a deathclaw steak with me (I'm told that's what the monster from yesterday is called). Everyone else were not, so I served them molerat, except for Marcy Long, who got leftover bloatfly.

I'm not going to be providing food for these people every day, though, so this was the point I finally found something for the Longs to do. The Rosas had a garden out back, and there's still some melons and gourds growing there somehow, even two hundred years and a nuclear winter later, so I told them to begin cultivating more. There's something growing around the back of Tom's place too, which I also ordered they begin farming. Looks like a mutant species, because I've never seen it before. Sturges called it a "mutfruit." Marcy said it was a wild bush, and refused to plant anything from it. I asked her what the practical difference was between wild and domesticated mutfruits. She shrugged. I told her to shut the fuck up and get to work on it. That seemed to convince her.

Finally, right as the day was closing out, Sturges asked me to set up some kind of defences. I almost laughed in his face, because that's what I'd been trying to do all along before these jokers came in and used up all my time and resources on building beds and water purifiers and micromanaging a farm, and what the hell else was Preston doing all day if not providing security? But fine. I don't particularly trust Preston Garvey and his plasma matchlock to defend this whole place by himself either, so I agreed to take care of it.

I'm not sure I have the parts left to make that turret anymore, though, so I hammered together some caltrops to scatter over the bridge instead, and dipped them in some toxic chemicals for a little extra sting. I also ordered Codsworth to construct some wooden barricades along the road and riverfront for everyone to cower behind, which should hopefully be ready by tomorrow morning. I figure if Preston really fancies himself the defender of Sanctuary, he can at least defend us from behind proper cover. Maybe if he's lucky it'll buy him enough time to take out a second or even a third raider with his nuclear bow and arrow before he's shot to death.

But that was the last task of the day, and so now I officially wash my hands of these people. I think they have more than enough to survive on their own from here. As long as Jun and Marcy don't fuck up the farm, that should take care of at least some of their food needs. Not all of them, because it takes a long goddamn time for a melon to grow, but I refuse to hold their hands any further than this. They're post-apocalyptic survivors and in their thirties; if they don't know how to hunt, forage, or scavenge on their own by now, then helping them stay alive any longer would just be polluting the gene pool anyway.

Still, at least Codsworth is happy with the new neighbours. And Dogmeat has settled in well too. I dragged over a doghouse from the Russells' place for him, and put it just outside my house. He seems to like it. Gives him somewhere to sit where he can see everyone, and he can get out and run along the roads whenever he wants to. He likes to go bother Preston and Murphy.

Tomorrow I'm gonna head back over to Concord and get the rest of the guns I left behind. I'm not sure whether I'll ever find enough ammo to use that minigun again, but I want to have it handy if I ever do. And then I'm gonna see what I can do about repairing that power armour.

Day 11: Thursday, 28/10/87

It's been a pretty exhausting day. I didn't sleep well last night, so I was tired for most of the day. Still, I think I got a lot done.

First thing, Codsworth came with me and Dogmeat to Concord to help with the salvaging. We picked up some Mr. Handy parts and fuel from the ruins of the local store, collected everything I left behind the other day, and took it back to the Red Rocket. That stash included a pretty good-looking drum-magazine shotgun, an odd kind of combat rifle which fires .45 pistol rounds for some reason, and of course, the minigun.

I even took the other electric throwing rock I left behind in the museum. It may be useless in its current state, and Preston may be an idiot, but I've had some ideas about it. I think I may be able to at least improve the design somewhat. The slow rate of fire wouldn't be such a deal-breaker if the single shot it fired was at least worth it, but the capacitor's total shit, and you can't crank it more than once before it overloads. If I could crank it four or five times and build up a stronger charge, then it might be a worthwhile weapon against a single bigger target, like a deathclaw. So I'm going to look into that if I ever find the parts, but it's very low on my list at the moment.

I did decide to keep the .45 rifle after I dropped off the rest, since it's a decent ranged weapon which I had ammo for, but I'm sticking with my sawed-off for now and leaving the drum shotgun. Sawed-off just feels better to me.

After that, we made a second trip back to comb through the rest of the town and see if the raiders left anything else behind. To my slight confusion, it turns out they didn't, but the long dead people of two hundred years ago certainly did. The local workhouse, the speakeasy, the church, and all of the homes that weren't boarded up still had uncracked safes, useful salvage, and even food in them, not to mention skeletons. Codsworth made it sound like the raiders had been living there a while, but most of the place looked like it hadn't been touched since the bombs fell. I don't get it.

Can't complain, though. Concord had a lot worth taking. Picked up lots of good parts, including aluminium, adhesive, and oil. Lots of ammunition in the safes, including some weird-looking cells for some type of energy weapon, as well as more of those crappy makeshift guns for some reason. I thought they were just a post-apocalyptic trend, but I guess the people of Concord were also into homemade firearms? Most of them are only good for copper and spare screws, but they had some better ones than the raiders, at least. I found a bolt-action sniper rifle which fires .308 rounds, so that's useful. I have a weapon with a scope now. I just hope it doesn't explode in my hands.

Also picked up a machete and a combat knife in the speakeasy. Quite a creepy scene I found them in. Found a skeleton lying on a bed with a store mannequin in one of the rooms, with the knife just under the bed, covered in old bloodstains. And just over in the bathroom was another skeleton in the tub, missing its skull, which was in the toilet. And someone had posed several more mannequins around it with machetes. No idea what to make of that. It's either a raider prank or a two-hundred-year-old murder scene. Pretty weird either way.

I took the skull with me.

We also went exploring the sewers under Concord. I wanted to find out where the hell that monster came from, so we went down the hole it came out of. There wasn't much worth noting down there. A magazine, a fusion core, a raider's chem stash, some Vault-Tec lunchboxes. Few bits and pieces from the maintenance supplies, rolls of duct tape and such. Another skull. But mostly I just came across a bunch more mutants. Molerats, radroaches, another dead two-headed cow which I think the deathclaw might have dragged off, and some sort of giant crab creature. I skinned and harvested everything that looked good, so I brought a lot of fresh meat back from the second Concord trip.

It was getting late by the time we got back to Red Rocket, so I didn't stay long. I cleaned the meat and hides, broke down most of the weapons and aluminium cans for scrap, and cooked up dinner. Tried the crab monster this time. It was decent. Actually tasted a lot like crab. Rest of the meat I put in the icebox.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. I got the icebox working yesterday. Red Rocket's still on the national grid somehow. Go figure.

I would've liked to stay there longer, but I had to get back to Sanctuary before dark, and I was already getting tired by then. I'll have to get back to Red Rocket tomorrow to continue my work, because there's so much still to be done. I've gotta tan those hides, sew pockets into my armour, fix up the power armour, and all sorts of other shit. And maybe once I get all that done, I'll see about looking for Shaun in Diamond City. Can't go on a vengeance quest unprepared!

Day 12: Friday, 29/10/87

Another busy day.

I found some herbal remedy down in the sewers the other day (it was clean, I swear), which was supposed to be good for insomnia, so I took it last night hoping it would help me sleep. It did not. So first thing I did today was head back over to Red Rocket and whip up some antibiotics at the chemistry station. Nothing I haven't done before; I did it all the time back when I worked as a biochemist. And most of what I needed can be found in stimpaks anyway, though I did have to improvise a little. As it turns out, that glowing green fungus from the cave works a treat for this. If I had more stimpaks to spare, I'd manufacture a few more, but as it stands, I could only afford to make two doses. But I've been feeling much better since taking them.

I spent most of the rest of the day there. I tanned those hides I collected from the molerats and the brahmin (two-headed cow thing), and made enough leather to add sizable pockets to all my armour pieces. Still had to cannibalise most of the other leather armour and even a teddy bear for parts, but at least it'll stay tough and hopefully hold up to fire. Now I can carry a lot more on me than when I was just using the mailbag.

Did some work on the power armour, too. It's not quite ready yet, but it's looking much better. I had to use some steel to fix up most of the heavier damage, and I've added some aluminium plating on the arms and helmet to reinforce it a little. Should hold up a little better to damage now, and it looks a lot nicer after covering up the rust. Still gotta do the legs and chest, but I need more adhesive and aluminium to finish re-plating it.

Other than that, I just gotta fix up the power systems. I already had to do some rewiring while repairing the damage to the chest piece (tore some circuitry out of a hot plate for it), but I can't account for the power drain yet. The suit eats through fusion cores at an alarming rate. Those things can power entire buildings for two hundred years or more and still be fine, but the armour drains them dry in a matter of hours. That isn't natural. I'm damned glad the suit has good radiation shielding, because those cores must be leaking like crazy for that to happen.

Anyway, back in Sanctuary now. I finished most of my work over at Red Rocket early, and there's not much more I can do about the power armour for now. Fixing the fusion core problem will probably require parts from another power armour frame, and God knows where I'll find that, so I've decided to come back to that project later. Instead, I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon putting up a pair of poles outside my house, using pipes from the collapsed houses.

The first one I used as a flagstaff. I pulled my old trifold flag out of its box to let the Stars and Stripes fly, to remind Preston and the others where they stand. No matter what's happened, no matter how long it's been, Sanctuary Hills is still American soil. This is the country I bled for, and as long as I still draw breath, I will keep its memory and its values of liberty and justice alive, in honour of those I served with who gave their lives for America and its people.

The second pole I turned into a badass spike, and lined with barbed wire and skulls, to remind Preston and the others not to fuck with me.

Day 13: Saturday, 30/10/87

Ventured out again today to see what was around. Nothing much was happening in Sanctuary. Sturges finally built Mama Murphy her fitted chair, and she asked me for some more chems, Mentats this time. I got another vague, rambling prophecy from her about a fat man and Lilly June on the rocks or some shit, but other than that, it was looking like it'd be another slow day.

I went out to Concord again to see if there was anything there I'd missed. I remembered seeing a cool-looking motorcycle which I wanted to see if I could fix up, but it doesn't look like it'd be worth the work, especially not if it'll divert time and resources from fixing the power armour. But I did meet another friendly face there.

While I was looting Concord the other day, one of the places I went was the car park behind the Museum of Freedom. Someone had set up a campfire there, but at the time there was nothing there but some bloodbugs, some dead guys, and a few supplies which I took. Today, however, the bodies were gone, and a travelling doctor had taken over the campsite.

We didn't talk much, but I bought a few supplies from her. As luck would have it, I'd been having Codsworth carry around all our pre-war money in case we came across a merchant, because Preston said that dollars are still worth something in the wasteland, just they're not the primary currency anymore. Bottlecaps are. One of many strange things I learned that day I met him, but luckily by then I already knew where to find several stashes of caps, and the raiders also had a few. So I traded Dr. Anderson two hundred of these bottlecaps (about half of what I had) and all of our pre-war money for a pair of blood packs, some better herbal remedy, and some Addictol, since she didn't have any Fixer. Supposedly Addictol is better because it doesn't make you nauseous like Fixer, but I always say you can't beat the classics. No pain no gain.

Anyway, since it wasn't far from the car park, I figured I'd pay a visit to Thicket Excavations and see how it was doing after two hundred years. As it turns out, the quarry was completely flooded. Not sure how that happened, but some of the old temporary offices were still around near the top level. I went in and started scavenging and looking through terminals, thinking the place was empty, before suddenly running into a guy who was staying there. I think he was called Sully.

Sully either didn't notice or didn't care that I'd just stolen most of his possessions, including his holotape journal, and he offered me a job. Having read his journal, I was more than a little suspicious of his motives, but I also knew how invested he was in this idea, so I was able to talk him up to 125 caps for the job. I may not know how much exactly that's worth, but it was up a lot from his initial offer, so I think I did good.

He wanted my help in draining the quarry. All I had to do was swim down through the water and turn some valves. I wasn't thrilled by this idea, but with some Rad-X I didn't take too many rads, and it was over pretty quickly. I'm a pretty strong swimmer, since I used to be a diving instructor, so it worked out at 125 caps for about ten minutes of work, which sounds good to me. Of course, we got attacked by more of those crab monsters afterwards (Sully called them mirelurks), but the four of us made short work of them.

It was still early when I finished there, and when I looked at my map, I realised I wasn't that far off from the settlement that Preston asked me to help. I'm really not interested in his Minuteman malarkey, but I figured if there was civilization close by, I might as well go there and see if we could at least do business. So I headed up into the hills, following the road.

It was a pretty wild journey. I shot a two-headed deer. I climbed up a billboard. I was jumped by a screaming green-skinned giant and his huge mutant dog, both of whom we narrowly managed to kill, though Codsworth took some hits. Then we came to a crater with the smaller, more hairless variety of mutant dogs. We ended up shooting all of them too, though one was a real persistent bastard. We found some medical supplies in the crater, and even a double-barrel shotgun not dissimilar to my sawed-off, though it looks like it'll pack more of a punch.

From there, it wasn't long before we reached the settlement, Tenpines Bluff. And wow, after all the hell we went through to reach it, let me tell you, it was so not worth it. When Preston said it was a settlement, I was picturing a town. Tenpines Bluff is barely even a homestead. It's a miserable rundown shack with two dirty mattresses on the floor for its only two residents. They had a shitty little farm where they grow disgusting mutant tomatoes, and the woman pointed a gun at me when I arrived until I mentioned them calling for the Minutemen. She mistook me for one of them, and asked us to go kill a bunch of raiders for her by ourselves.

It was close to the end of the day, so I agreed, hoping they'd have a place for me to stay so long as I was helping them. And they did. On their third dirty mattress, completely soaked through with rainwater, lying under the open sky in the bombed out ruins of a house where a bunch of radroaches jumped out and bit me.

So of course I told them to go fuck themselves and had to backtrack all the way back to Sanctuary in the dark, just to sleep on a less damp mattress in Tom's shelter. And of course I got my first taste of a radstorm along the way. The sky turned green, and my Geiger counter ticked with every thunder strike. I hate the Tenpines Bluff lady so much, and I regret not shooting her in the face when she first pointed that gun at me. Never again. This can't happen again. Next time I venture out into the wilderness like that, I'm bringing a proper sleeping bag, even if I have to make one myself.

On an unrelated note, Sturges and the others have been making an effort of clearing out the Rosa house and making it liveable. They've swept all the floors, torn out the broken sink and toilet from the bathroom, removed the broken fridge, and even cleared the pile of tyres and debris outside. Sturges is also putting together some wooden walls in an attempt to at least cover the holes. I still say it's a lost cause, but good for them, I guess. I wouldn't consider any of the houses in Sanctuary habitable by pre-war standards, but seeing the squalor of Tenpines Bluff made me realise just how low the bar actually is.

I think I'll head south tomorrow.

Day 14: Sunday, 31/10/87

So, the south road turned out to be pretty fucking brutal.

I went through Concord and started walking down towards Lexington. I wasn't far outside the town limits when I ran into another trader on the road, Carla. She was friendly. We flirted a little, and she gave me directions to Diamond City, which sounds like it's in Boston. I was gonna look at her wares, when suddenly we came under attack from a rogue Mr. Gutsy.

For a glorified robot butler, I want to say Codsworth held his own admirably. At least, he didn't explode. But the Mr. Gutsy is a military model, and they build them tough. I took a few bad burns, but the leather armour held up. Nothing some stimpaks couldn't fix. I also took some Psycho and Med-X for the pain. The problem is, I didn't have any armour-piercing rounds, so it was a pretty frantic fight. I did a lot of running and jumping around, since there wasn't any decent cover on that road aside from a small mound.

I was carrying the pipe rifle when it came over the hill, so I shot at it with that first on reflex. The .308 rounds put some dents in it, but not nearly enough to put it down, and I didn't have many. It was pretty slow firing, too. I switched out to the combat rifle while Codsworth kept it busy, but that didn't perform much better. Then the cars started exploding, which didn't help matters. When one of the explosions damaged Codsworth bad enough to shut him down, I just said fuck it and started throwing frags while unloading on it as fast as I could with the 10mm. The individual shots weren't as damaging, but at least the pistol fired fast enough to make up for it.

Finally, after using up most of my ammo, I killed the fucking thing. But by then all the gunfire had attracted a new problem. Two more of those giant green men came running down the road at us, one of them with an automatic rifle, and the other with a super sledge. The hammer guy I let get in close before dropping him with a sawed-off shotgun to the face, and the other I took out from a distance with the sniper.

When the dust cleared, I was still alive, Dogmeat was limping, Carla was gone, and the road was on fire. Dogmeat seemed to be fine after a stimpak, but Codsworth needed an emergency reboot to get him going again, and we hurried back to Sanctuary for repairs.

So our first excursion didn't end so well. I took some time to come down from my high, fixed the worst of the damage on Codsworth, and spent the rest of the afternoon at Red Rocket preparing some emergency repair kits so I can fix Codsworth in the field next time. The robot had some useful parts in it for that, at least.

I also had to rethink my choice of weapons, both for their combat effectiveness and for supply concerns. I'm very low on ammo for all the guns I've actually been using, and none of them were very good against the Mr. Gutsy except the 10mm, for sheer rate of fire. This was a wakeup call that my arsenal was dangerously lacking in automatic weapons, but fortunately for me, the super mutant solved that concern, so I've added his combat rifle to my loadout. I also picked out an automatic pipe rifle from the pile of spare guns I haven't scrapped for parts yet, because .38 rounds are the one ammunition type I'm not low on. That and energy cells, but I haven't found anything that uses energy cells yet. Maybe if I'd managed to find Carla after the fight...

While I was killing some time, I also mixed up some more antibiotics. Sanctuary has a lot of clean water to spare since we built that purifier, and I've picked up a good number of stimpaks from roaming around, so I figured why not. Also got a chance to flex my chemistry skills a little by mixing up a RadAway-based brew. It's pretty nasty. Uses toothpaste and human blood as ingredients. But it should actually be more immediately effective this way. Flush the whole system immediately. I even solved the dehydration issue. Only problem is I'm pretty sure it'll give me the shits real bad. I mean, RadAway already does, and this is basically super RadAway. So yeah. Not looking forward to drinking this. Emergencies only.

Finally, since I wasn't heading out again today, I also put together some camping supplies. Made a simple tent and a dog bed out of old carpet around Sanctuary and a basic cooking pot for the road. Next time I pass through Concord, I'll also pick up that old sleeping bag I saw in the house there. It's not much, but it means I won't have to keep coming back to Sanctuary every night. I might even be able to stay at the Red Rocket from now on when I'm in the area. Sanctuary's my home and all, but it's just not the same with Preston and the lot there. I'm not even sleeping in my own house anymore.

We'll try the south road again tomorrow. I would like to finish work on the power armour first, but without the supplies I need, it's just not happening. If I'm ever going to finish it, I need to find new places to scavenge, because there's sure as shit nothing else around here. But we're a lot better prepared now, and unless we run into another rogue robot, we should be fine. But, discretion being the better part of valour, I think we'll just run from the next one if we can.

I fucking hate Halloween.

Chapter Text

Day 15: Monday, 01/11/87

I have not had a fun day.

It started with the crossroads. After my usual morning rituals, I suited up in my power armour and headed back with Codsworth and Dogmeat towards the road where we got fucked by the rogue Mr. Gutsy yesterday. I still haven't fixed the power drain issue, and the armour plating wasn't finished, but after how badly that last fight almost went, I didn't want to take any chances. But I at least figured that it was unlikely we'd be attacked twice on the same road in just two days.

I was very wrong about that. At the very same crossroads, in the exact same place we were attacked last time, we ran into a gang of raiders. Fortunately, we killed all of them without taking too many hits, but it's never a good sign when the first thing you do with your day is kill three people. At least they had some ammo and supplies to scrounge, and I'm always on the lookout for decent leather.

After that sorry mess, we spotted what looked like a camp, and went off-road a little to see what was up. At first I figured it was where the raiders had been staying, so I looted it, not that there was much there. Then some guy in an old pre-war flight suit suddenly showed up. Just like that Sully guy, he either didn't notice or didn't care that I'd taken all his shit, so I didn't point it out to him. He just wanted to sell me armour. Some of it looked decent, but I didn't exactly have the caps to spare, so I just traded some light stuff for all his .45 ammo, since it fit my rifle.

A little way down the road, we passed the old Drumlin Diner, where some wastelanders were in an armed stand-off. The place isn't a diner anymore, but some woman and her son were still using the building for a trade post. There was a man and a woman outside demanding caps from them. I thought they were raiders at first, but these guys at least had the decency to not shoot us on sight, so I returned the courtesy after they got the guns out of my face. Turns out the trader's son owed the guy for some jet, and she didn't want to pay, so he wanted my help ensuring their compliance. I talked her into paying up, and we resolved the situation. Got two hundred caps for it. Not bad at all.

I stopped there a while to do some haggling with the both of them. The chem dealer had a nice stock, but nothing I didn't already have, so again I just bought all the spare .45 rounds he had. Trudy, the one who actually runs the diner, had some more interesting stuff. I sold her some of the gear I scavenged from the raiders, and bought back a lot of junk and maintenance materials from her in return. She had duct tape, Wonderglue, aluminium cans and trays, all sorts of things I needed. Best thing she had was a biometric scanner. Non-functional, but those things have fiber optics and nuclear material, and that's just what I needed to finish fixing up the chest piece of this power armour.

She also had a really nice Chinese sword for sale which she claims used to belong to a general. I personally doubt that, but I did always like those swords. I used to have quite the collection of them in my army days, until the CO confiscated them and told me to "cut the serial killer shit." Still don't know what his problem was; it's not like commies are human. But Trudy wanted two thousand caps for the one she was selling. No thank you. Even if she was telling the truth about who owned it, you don't get to charge that much extra for antiques when everything in the fucking world is an antique now. If she ever comes down on the price, I might consider it.

I wanted to head back to Red Rocket after that and use the parts I'd purchased to finish fixing up the suit. But I figured the parts weren't weighing me down that much, and it was still early in the day yet, and we had already come out this far, so we may as well push ahead. And so we did.

There was a lot along that road, and we got side-tracked a lot. I keep seeing all these things and places that are different now. It reminds me of when I was a kid and we used to explore old abandoned buildings, and climb over burnt-out cars at the scrapyard, and go to all sorts of other places we weren't allowed. But now everything is a wreck or an abandoned building, and there's nobody left to tell me what is and isn't allowed. Some of these places still creep me out, but they're also kinda cool in a way, at least when they aren't just plain confusing.

One of the things we found on the road was this truck. I think it might've been heading for the diner when the bombs fell, because it had all these vending machines and ice boxes and other stuff on it. And what baffled me was that it was just sitting there, out in the open, on a road which obviously sees a lot of foot traffic, and the vending machines were still fully stocked. They weren't even locked! I could just open them up and grab myself a Nuka Cola or whatever. It's just like back in Concord. How has nobody looted these places in over two hundred years? What's going on here? Am I missing something? Or is everyone in the world but me just blind and stupid?

Off the road, we also spotted an old military bunker. Had an eyebot out front guarding the place, but it wasn't hostile, so we just waltzed on in. Again, the place was untouched, but at least there was a reason this time, between the guard robot and the locked gate. Needed to hack a terminal to get to the good stuff. There was a box of explosives there, and a broken robot I got some parts and cells off of. I even found a laser pistol to use them with. Convenient, since I was just complaining about that the other day.

After that we came to a house, where yet another trader was staying. If you're counting, that's five traders now I've encountered along that same stretch of road. I've started mentally referring to this place as "Merchant's Row." She wasn't selling anything too impressive, though. The most interesting thing about her was that she had a pair of armed guards protecting her, which at least puts her in the top two smartest traders I've met so far.

Back on the road, we passed another truck, which I was annoyed to find was locked up tight, and then we came to a derailed train. Again we went exploring, and this time it really paid off, because we found a second suit of power armour on one of the cars! It was locked behind another reinforced gate, but the connected terminal was still working somehow, so I got inside.

Sadly, the new suit's power systems don't look much better than my own, and it's just as rusty as mine was when I found it, as well as missing both its arm plates for some reason. Not sure where they went; I looked around for them, but they weren't in the cage. But I can always use a second suit, so I immediately decided I was bringing it back to Red Rocket. Only problem was, I was still wearing my own suit, and I can't pilot two at once, so I had a dilemma.

What I ended up doing was hiding my good suit nearby with the core removed so nobody could steal it, swapping out the new armour's good core for my shitty depleted one, and using most of its remaining charge to sprint back to Red Rocket full-tilt in the new suit, while Codsworth stayed by the train to keep watch. Then once I'd got back, offloaded everything I'd found, and taken the core out, I went back for my original suit, this time avoiding the main roads and moving a little quieter, since I didn't want to attract anything else that might want to kill me.

It was pretty exhausting and not fun, but at least I have something to show for all of it. And Dogmeat got a nice workout today, so that's good. He's taking a rest right now, while I've been spending the rest of the evening making some final fixes to my original suit. With all the aluminium, I've been able to finish the last of the plating, and the nuclear material from the biometric scanner helped out a bit with the power systems, though not nearly as much as I would like. I'm still pissed that I actually found a second power armour frame like I wanted, and it's got the exact same problems as the first one. What are the odds, right? But even if it's not optimal, at least it's usable. That's something, and realistically, it's probably the best I can expect right now. I mean, this is two hundred year old technology.

There are still a few further modifications I could probably make beyond fixing the power drain, but for now, I'm reasonably satisfied with the state of my armour. I'm considering this project complete until further notice. With the loadout I have now, I'm pretty confident I can get to Boston in one piece, and maybe there I can start looking into what happened to Shaun. At the very least, I can get as far as Lexington. Maybe while I'm there I might even stop by the Corvega factory and wipe out that raider gang that the bitch from Tenpines was complaining about; I'm sure they have plenty of interesting stuff there.

Day 16: Tuesday, 02/11/87

Headed back out today. For once, the road south of Concord was pretty quiet, and we got to the outer limits of Lexington without encountering anything that wanted to kill us. But our lucky streak ran out as soon as we moved into the town itself, where we were suddenly attacked by a horde of actual fucking zombies. Apparently Lexington missed the memo about what kind of apocalypse we had, because the town is full of dead men with half-melted faces, some of them glowing bright green or covered in giant tumours all over. It's disgusting.

I remember Preston mentioned something about "ghouls" back in Concord, irradiated people who look sort of messed up. He said that most of them were just like us, but some of them go feral and attack people. Well, I guess that was a fucking lie, because I must have killed like thirty of the fuckers today, and I still haven't found a single one yet that didn't want to eat my brains. They don't even know how to use weapons; they just bite and scratch and throw themselves at me like animals. I'm adopting a shoot on sight policy for these things. Fuck political correctness.

But the zombies weren't the only ones determined to make sure I had a shitty day. Shortly after shotgunning my way through the first wave, I spotted the raiders who lived here, and one of them was walking around in power armour of his own up above. His looked a lot more jacked-up than mine, and had a very "raider" flair to it, but this still wasn't a guy I wanted to be careless with. Wearing power armour requires specialised training, even a shitty suit like his. Unless you strip out the joint servos, I guess, but good luck doing that without the technical know-how. Either way, working power armour here meant that somebody in Lexington knew what they were doing.

Despite the noise we made fighting the ghouls, the raiders didn't see us at first. I was tempted to look for a good sniper position and see if I could shoot the guy in the head from far away, but he had a helmet on too, and even the visors are bulletproof on those things; no way was I punching through that with my pipe rifle. So I made the call to sneak around behind some other buildings and climb up closer to them so I could toss a few grenades his way.

This was, in my opinion, a brilliant plan that would have gone flawlessly had we not been attacked by another legion of the damned on the way up the stairwell. How the Christ the raiders had so many feral ghouls that close to them without realising it, I have no idea. I'm also equally stunned that said ghouls managed to miss the raider gang entirely and go straight after us instead, and that it took as long as it did after we began fighting for the raiders to notice us. I was blasting zombies in the face, Codsworth was shouting his battlecries, the ghouls were screaming, and it still took like two minutes for the raiders to join us. They could have dropped a bunch of grenades down the stairs at any point in that fight and taken us all out. Thank God they didn't, I guess.

So we missed the opportunity to handle them quietly. It was a full-on shootout by the time we reached the top, and wouldn't you know it, the power armour raider brought a goddamn Fat Man to the party. Lucky for us he only had one mini nuke, and he missed. My own armour held up, and I was able to get around the corner and toss grenades out at him. As you'd expect, they didn't do as much to him as they did to his buddies, but they softened him up enough that I was able to get some shots through.

We were fighting on this walkway that ran behind some billboards, and he fell off after I shot him in the face with a 12-gauge. I'm actually not sure where he went, because I couldn't find his body afterwards, but I'm about 60% sure he's dead. He didn't show up again after that, and he lost a lot of blood. But the good news is he left his Fat Man behind on the bridge, and I even found a mini nuke for it later in one of those Pulowski shelters. Still haven't fired it yet, but if it turns out I'm wrong and that guy comes back later, at least I've got an answer for him.

Codsworth and Dogmeat needed some attention after the fight, so we took a break for lunch at another Red Rocket near where we came into town. We went back later to loot the raiders' bodies, but there were still a few others prowling around who'd missed the fighting. I shot a few in the backs of their heads with the sniper, and of course we ran into more ghouls as we combed the back streets and ruined buildings. Saw some weird shit along the way, like the skeletons of some bank robbers who apparently died mid-heist, and a body that someone had stuck in a basketball hoop. We collected up everything of value along the way and brought it back to the Red Rocket, and by the time we were done, it was getting close to sunset.

We've camped down in an old laundromat for the night. It's small and there's only two exits, so Codsworth can keep watch on both at once, and it's easily defensible while still leaving a route for escape if the raiders come for us. It's actually quite cozy in here, despite the entire human skeleton stuffed into one one of the machines. I even found a book to read. We'll get some rest here tonight, and then tomorrow morning I'll take a look at the factory.

I have a feeling this will take a while.

Day 17: Wednesday, 03/11/87

Taking on Corvega was not easy. Lucky for us we didn't come across any more raiders in power armour, but this was still a big gang. It took hours to get inside, and hours more after that to clear the place out. We dealt with most of the raiders in town yesterday, but the exterior of the factory was still crawling with them this morning, and they had the high ground. I was able to find some cover and snipe most of their sentries off from a distance, but it still wasn't ideal, especially after they found us and started shooting back. The turret out front also took a few more bullets to bring down than I would like.

We didn't go through the front entrance, despite the noise we made shooting up the place. That was mostly just to pick off some exposed targets while we had the chance. We actually got into the factory by sneaking in through an old drainage pipe. There were some more turrets down there waiting for us, since the raiders had trouble with ghouls coming in that way, but it was definitely the right call, because the main entrance was even more fortified when we came up behind it later.

We blasted our way in and fought our way up through the factory from there. It's a pretty big place, so some of them didn't hear us right away, and we got to clear it floor by floor, but Jesus, it was still a war of attrition with these guys. I said I lost count of how many men I killed in Concord. Well, I lost count again in Lexington, but over the past couple days, I'm sure I've more than tripled that. Even once I cleared the factory floors, I still had to go out and kill the rest of the guys on the roof. This gang was practically a fucking army. I am a living god.

Needless to say, the power armour was pretty damaged again by the end of it, and I needed a few stims along the way. Codsworth got pretty banged up too, but it was nothing we couldn't fix. Sure glad I prepped those repair kits before we left Red Rocket. So once I was sure we were the only things left alive in this place, we stopped for some R&R. The raiders had a lot of booze and chems here, and I've been taking full advantage of that. I deserve it after that ordeal.

Between that we've also been combing through the factory, seeing what other goodies they left behind, and besides the usual, there's been a lot. I found a Vault-Tec bobblehead and a copy of Grognak #4 - In the Bosom of the Corsair Queen, among other things, and I picked up a pretty nice .44 revolver off one of the raiders. Though the most interesting thing I found was actually the boss's terminal.

Turns out this guy Jared was the one who sent the raiders I killed in Concord. I thought they were just a local gang that lived there until Preston's posse blundered in like idiots, but actually, they were part of the Lexington gang. Even more interesting, this guy knew about Mama Murphy and her visions. Knew her from when he was a kid or something. He'd been trying to replicate her abilities by taking shitloads of chems, but he couldn't do it. Then someone saw Mama Murphy travelling with Preston, and this guy ordered the attack specifically to capture her. That's pretty crazy, but it's also the strongest evidence I've seen so far that Mama Murphy is legit. I mean, shit, just how many people did this guy kill or lead to their deaths because he believed that strongly in her abilities? He must've seen some pretty convincing stuff. Fucking psychics, man.

Aside from that, yeah, just the usual. I've got more guns and leather armour here than I know what to do with, and that's not even getting started on the usable parts I've found. This factory's a goldmine for some of the things I've been looking for, aluminium especially. Only problem is transporting it all back. I'll have to think about how to approach this.

I'm still not done looking around outside, either. Lexington is a big place, and I'm sure there's corners I've missed. I'm determined to get my money's worth out of this place, and between the pre-war ruins, what the raiders left behind, and everything I've already collected in this factory, I'm going to. Just might need to do some repairs to the power armour first. It's what's kept me alive so far. I'm not taking a single step outside without it.

Day 18: Thursday, 04/11/87

So I took a step outside without the power armour today, and I got shot.

Okay, I didn't actually leave the factory naked. I'm not that stupid; I'm just drunk. But I did leave my power armour hanging at the Lexington Red Rocket after doing some maintenance on it, and I was ambushed by some more raiders while running back to the factory for parts. I shouldn't have done that, because I knew full well that I hadn't been completely thorough with Lexington, but there we go. Lesson learned. Cost me a few stimpaks and damaged the leather a little, but I'm fine now, and they're not, so whatever.

We spent the morning moving everything we looted from the factory out to the Red Rocket. I would've just left it to Codsworth, but I can carry a lot more than he can, and I didn't want to spend the whole day on this. It took a few hours, but eventually we got everything there. I separated the stuff into piles. Piles of food, piles of guns, piles of leather armour, etc. There was too much there for us to take it all back without one of those pack brahmins, so I made the hard call. Decent guns like shotguns and 10mms we put aside to sell. All the shitty pipe weapons we broke down for screws and copper and stuff. The leather armour we tore apart for scraps, as usual. And all the other junk I broke down as best I could and kept only the useful stuff; I don't need to drag half a ton of steel back to Sanctuary.

Codsworth didn't like that for some reason. He was fine with scrapping the weapons and armour, but he was pretty insistent that we needed a proper workbench like we have in Sanctuary for the rest of it. I honestly don't know what his deal is? Sure, I appreciate a good workbench, but it's not like you need one to just smash shit apart with a hammer; that would just be silly.

Speaking of Codsworth, he got awfully sappy on me today. It was really weird and out of the blue. He started talking about his feelings, about how he coped after the bombs fell, our "love and kindness," and all this other weird shit. I don't know if I even believe robots are capable of emotions in the first place, yet here he was, delivering this overly sentimental and completely unprompted speech while we were supposed to be working, all while still addressing me as Mr. Fuckface, because that's what he's pre-programmed to call me. I blame Nora for this. If she hadn't insisted on enabling the simulated personality, maybe our robot wouldn't have developed so many emotional issues.

We did another sweep of the town after we were done, just to see what else was around and if we'd missed anything. There were a few places of note. There was a pharmacy, but it was mostly destroyed inside. We found a couple raiders living in some apartment buildings. A few others had set up shop with some turrets in some ruins on the north side of town. And we also checked in on the Mystic Pines retirement home. Mystic Pines actually turned up a surprising amount. There was a locked storage area with some stuff, a fusion core in the basement, and a copy of something called Tales of a Junktown Jerky Vendor. More on that in a bit.

The two most interesting places were the Slocum Joe's and the Super Duper Mart. The Slocum Joe's because while exploring the basement, I actually found a secret elevator hidden behind a bookcase, straight out of some old pulp detective serial. I really wanted to see where it led, but I couldn't get it working. You can't imagine how disappointed I was. I'm going to be thinking about that all night now. And as for the Super Duper Mart, I intentionally left that until last to search, because I knew it was a big place and I was expecting it to be occupied. Turns out I was right about that, but I'd been expecting stragglers from the raider gang, not more ghouls.

It was a tough fight in there. They kind of sprang on us all at once. The place was pretty quiet when we first entered, but then they all started waking up and coming at us in waves. I shot a few from across the store with the pipe rifle, but most we dealt with in close quarters. Pretty much all my guns got their turn today. Disintegrated a few with the laser pistol, pulped some with the shotgun, mowed down some more with the combat rifle, and the 10mm and the .44 both came in handy too. I even caught a few with mines. The cryo mines I picked up from that bunker were particularly effective. Freeze the fuckers solid mid-lunge, and then they shatter when you punch them. I really want that cryo-gun I saw in the vault now.

Eventually we cleared the place, including all the backrooms, the loading bay, and even the adjacent parking garage, though it wasn't easy. To my increasing lack of surprise, there was still food and medicine and decent salvage all over the store, and even a fusion core, though at least in this case I can sort of understand why the local raiders never bothered; I wouldn't want to fuck with this many ghouls without power armour either. I did find some dead Minutemen around the place, though. They were all dressed similarly to Preston, and even had the same stupid fucking laser muskets. I'm beginning to see why this faction got wiped out. 

We spent the last stretch of the day clearing out the store and taking everything of value back to the Red Rocket. But one last thing I found while going through the place was another Junktown Jerky Vendor book, but different from the one I found in Mystic Pines. The one in Mystic Pines was subtitled Take Your Business on the Road, while this one was called The Art of Haggling. I'm very interested in both of these, because on a quick read, they actually don't appear to be pre-war. I think these might possibly be post-apocalyptic publications, likely left behind by wastelanders. I think the one in the Super Duper Mart might've belonged to the Minutemen. I've only skimmed them so far, but I intend to give both of them a full read when I have the time.

I'm 90% sure we're done with Lexington now. Aside from the Slocum Joe's elevator, I can't see anything else interesting here. The town and the factory are both quiet, and everything worth collecting I've already added to the stockpile. Tomorrow's going to be a lot of busywork, breaking down the Super Duper Mart salvage, running stuff to Trudy at Drumlin Diner to sell, and taking the rest back to the other Red Rocket at Sanctuary. At least I'll have Codsworth and the power armour to help carry it all.

Overall, I'd say it's been a productive few days.

Day 19: Friday, 05/11/87

My back is fucking killing me. I've been walking back and forth between Lexington and Concord all day, hauling shopping carts full of metal and leather, guns, tins of food, Nuka Cola, alcohol, and all sorts of other shit I picked up. The one consolation is that power armour makes you both stronger and mostly bulletproof, so I was free to get drunk and high on the journey without too much worry. It numbs the pain a little, and for the monotony, there's always Diamond City Radio. This shitty fucking DJ almost starts to grow on you when you're out of your mind on Daytripper.

Anyway, Trudy bought most of what I was willing to sell. She took all the spare guns I hadn't broken down, a good amount of pre-war food, meat from the raiders' fridges and coolers, chems and cigarettes, and all the pre-war money I had on me (which was a lot, since I literally had a bankload of it). She offered a price for the Fat Man as well, but I'm keeping that.

Everything we didn't sell we hauled all the way back to the Red Rocket outside of Sanctuary, though it took us a couple trips. The place is pretty cluttered now with all the scrap metal and other materials we brought, but it's still good to be back again after spending so long away in Lexington. And now that we are, I'm just gonna take it easy for the rest of the day. I've been pretty busy this week. Maybe I'll stop by Sanctuary a while and see how they're coming along. Say hello to my dear friend Preston.

Or maybe I can just drink some more. That's also an option.

Day 20: Saturday, 06/11/87

I guess I'm just not the type to be idle for too long, because I spent the rest of my day yesterday working on my guns. In hindsight, I probably could've done better if I wasn't drunk, but still, I think the modifications turned out pretty well. I switched out the barrel on the .44 Magnum, since I wasn't a fan of the snubnose, and replaced the grip with a better one. Then I also did work on the 10mm. Added a better sight, for one thing, and built a suppressor.

Though I like the results, this is one of those bad decisions I probably wouldn't have made while sober. Despite all that time we spent scavenging Lexington for Wonderglue and duct tape, I'm already almost out again, since only a fraction of what I find is actually usable. This would still be fine if I had at least used what I had sensibly, fixing up just the guns I actually need, but instead I modified two different sidearms, when I probably shouldn't even be carrying both of them at once.

This is a lesson hard learned from Lexington. Though I was right to recognise that going out without an automatic weapon was a bad idea, going out with two was overkill, and just weighed me down unnecessarily when I already had a lot to carry. Multiple sidearms also overcomplicates things. From now on, I'm restricting my loadout to one sidearm, one automatic, a sniper, the sawed-off, and a knife. That's already more than enough to put down anything that moves aside from maybe a deathclaw. I'll just switch around my choice of sidearms and rifles depending on what I have the most ammunition for. For now, that's the 10mm and the pipe rifle.

I did make one more major change to my arsenal today, though, and that was after my visit to Thicket Excavations.

See, the whole reason I knew there was a raider gang in Lexington was because those settlers at Tenpines Bluff claimed that they were harassing them. Now, in hindsight, that may have been bullshit, because I know from experience now that Lexington is a long fucking way from Tenpines, and I can't see any good reason why a gang that large would come all that way just to raid some shitty little farm that barely supports two people, not to mention that I didn't see any mention of Tenpines anywhere on the raiders' terminals. But I figured, since I'd actually gone and done as they'd asked anyway, it couldn't hurt to let them know and see if I'd get anything for it. So I started walking back up that way, and that led me past the quarry again, now fully drained.

And just what had my old friend Sully decided to do with the fruits of my labour? Why, he'd turned it into a base for his raider gang, of course! Also a mirelurk farm. Raider base and mirelurk farm. Creative combination. I do approve. I just don't approve of getting shot at.

So you know how this song and dance goes. I pulled out my rifle, went in there, and I killed every single motherfucker in that quarry. Most of them I sniped from afar. A few I had to go down to get up close and personal with. It got a little hard to see after it started raining, and there were some areas I just didn't have a good line of sight for. Sully was there. He wasn't happy to see me. I cut off his head with a machete. It all became kind of a blur after a while. I was high on Psycho and Med-X for a lot of it. I even let the mirelurks out of their cages just so I could punch them all to death. Reminded me of my mall cop days.

When I came down, I picked through the place and collected up everything worth taking. Aside from a magazine about tattoos, most of it was pretty standard, but one of the best things I found there was an old .308 hunting rifle with a scope attachment. It easily outclasses the bolt-action pipe rifle I've been using until now, so of course I switched it out immediately, though I did have to do some quick work on it at a bench first. I mean, it had a fucking bayonet on it. What use is a bayonet on a sniper rifle? What is this, 1914?

Surprisingly, it didn't take all that long to loot the quarry. Just a couple hours or so. You'd think it would take forever with all that climbing, but fortunately for us, Sully got the elevator working again after I drained the place, so we just worked our way down, put all the loot on the elevator at the bottom, and left it at the top to come back for later. It's mostly just the usual stuff. Guns, food, spare parts, etc.

We did still go to Tenpines after that. They didn't have much to say for themselves about the raiders, or much to offer me for all my time and sacrifices. Just a thanks and a promise that the two of them totally have the Minutemen's backs now. Great. I'm sure Preston will be thrilled. The support of these two random hicks in the ass-end of nowhere will surely make all the difference.

As for us, we just headed back, grabbed the stuff from the quarry, and then went home. I've made a few more minor modifications to the hunting rifle, mostly replacing the stock to support the barrel length better, but I can't do much else beyond that right now, because I don't really have the materials at the moment. So for now I'm just sitting around, bored, staying out of the rain. Maybe I'll tidy the place up a little? Sweep the floors, that sort of thing. Red Rocket is great as a private workshop, but I feel like it could be more homey. A tent and sleeping bag is fine for the trail, but I can do better than this.

Let's see what I can come up with.

Day 21: Sunday, 07/11/87

So Preston anointed me the game master of his little LARPing group today.

I have no idea what the fuck he's thinking. I like to think I've been reasonably civil with these people, at least as much as they deserve, but I've made no secret of the fact that I don't especially like any of them, and I don't know what gave Garvey the impression that I cared about any of his Minuteman shit. Willingness to help his sorry ass is not a desire to, and by my reckoning, I've already done more than enough for these people. And I did that because I (perhaps mistakenly) thought that any of them were worth more than the air they breathe, and might be able to help me out with my Sanctuary restoration project. Alas, there was precious little of that, and a whole lot of me getting roped into things I did not ask for.

I still accepted the job, of course. I find the entire concept of the Minutemen utterly asinine, but if Preston is willing to explicitly grant me authority over him, then who am I to turn it down? If nothing else, it at least makes my leadership in Sanctuary official. Maybe now Sturges will finally shut the fuck up and do as I tell him. And if the Minutemen ever do eventually expand as Preston is (naively) hoping, then maybe I can even recruit some competent people. Assuming, of course, that there are still competent people in 2287, and not just raiders and dirt farmers.

Codsworth approved of my choice, at least. In fact, he gave me another huge sappy speech about how he thinks I'm a hero or something, just because I shot a bunch of people. I'm growing increasingly concerned by these outbursts, and I think he might be malfunctioning. It's probably too late to actually do anything about it at this stage, but I do know that I don't need an emotionally compromised robot following me around. Codsworth is useful for carrying small things and sometimes burning shit alive, but frankly, he's not the best help I could get for that anyway. He's not a Mr. Gutsy, and he's not built for the stresses of the wasteland. I've had to run field repairs on him way too many times these past few weeks, and I only have so many repair kits on hand. If I can't even rely on him to be objective on top of that, then it's not worth it. He's far more useful for construction and maintenance anyway.

Speaking of which, Sturges and the others have been busy while I was away. For one thing, they actually tore down the old Whitfield house. It was already totally collapsed inside, so it's not like there was any reason to keep it up, but I'm impressed they actually pulled down the whole thing and cleared it that quickly. Now the foundation is exposed, and they've just got this big open area where they've got these stacks of metal sheets and beams right next to the garage. I think they've cut down a few more of the trees in the area too.

As for the Rosa house, they've put up a few wooden walls around the garage so it's less open, and also blocked all the windows. It's a little less drafty, I guess, but they still haven't done anything about the holes in the roof. I see evidence that they tried, but the holes are still there, and the house still looks like shit. I keep telling Sturges it's a lost cause. They'd be better off building a whole new structure. Seriously, the floors are wet in that house. Their beds are soaked through. What the hell do these people think they're doing?

Well, I didn't want to stick around to witness that slow-motion trainwreck any longer, so I'm back on the road again now. This time I left Codsworth behind at the Red Rocket and told him to tidy up the place some more, while me and Dogmeat are travelling with Preston. I still question his intelligence, but he's explicitly named me his leader and will do as I say, and besides which, stimpaks are easier to come by than robot repair kits and Mr. Handy fuel, and with a bag or a pack he can carry a lot more as well. He's basically the dictionary definition of a useful idiot. I guess we'll just have to see how much I end up regretting this.

On to Lexington.

Chapter Text

Day 22: Monday, 08/11/87

Discovered further evidence that Preston is a fucking liar this morning. We were following the road from Lexington to Cambridge, when along the way we came across this ruined house. Only it wasn't empty. Oh no. It was being guarded by a bunch of jackasses with laser muskets. Jackasses with laser muskets calling themselves the fucking Minutemen. So much for Preston's group being the last, I guess. You'd better believe he had some explaining to do after that, because he told me he was the last member until he put me in charge, and I sure as hell did not recruit these people.

As it turns out, they were friends of the hicks from Tenpines Bluff, and one of them was even a veteran of the original Minutemen, coming out of retirement. They'd heard we were starting back up again, so they thought they'd just put on the uniforms and start patrolling. Nevermind the little things like establishing a chain of command, or finding out where the leadership is based. Goddamn does this organisation lack discipline, and this is only day one.

At least they also started calling me "general" after some browbeating from Preston, but I've gotta say, I really don't feel in charge right now. If any ex-Minuteman out there can just put on a uniform, show up, and claim to be a part of the organisation again without my say-so, then doesn't that call my supposed authority into question? It's definitely not encouraging, especially since my sole claim to legitimacy rests on Preston fucking Garvey, who said that there were no other Minutemen left to dispute his choice. But he's obviously and provably wrong about that, so what's stopping any other group of ex-Minutemen out there from naming some other sorry fuck their general and ignoring me?

Well, if anyone ever does challenge me for leadership, I'm not gonna fight them over it. If I put the work in, I could maybe see the Minutemen being useful to my goals one day, but right now it's just an empty title that makes this one kinda dopey guy follow me around. The free help is appreciated, sure, but there's no service Garvey provides that I couldn't also get from hiring mercenaries. A Minuteman civil war just wouldn't be worth it for me right now.

This is why I'm far more interested by the other group I met today.

It was a little while after the Minutemen encounter, just after we came to the outskirts of Cambridge. As has become my routine, we made a beeline for the local Red Rocket, where we settled in after killing some bloatflies. We had lunch, and I did some work on my 10mm pistol, swapping out some parts on it since I found another 10mm in the Minutemen's house with a better grip and barrel. The sounds of a radio led me to an abandoned camp on the station's roof, where someone had left some food and a pretty decent sniper rifle. It was higher quality than mine, so I swapped out for the new one and handed over my old rifle to Preston. He still insists on carrying his gamma-powered throwing spear as a backup, but any concession is a victory at this point. If I ever do take full command of the Minutemen, then they're going to use actual fucking weapons, or so help me God.

But while I was on the roof, I started hearing a lot of gunfire in the distance. Preston was worried that someone was in trouble, and said we should go help them, and I'm not against helping people so long as there's potentially something in it for me, so we followed the noise until we came to the Cambridge Police Station. We found it under attack by a swarm of those undead freaks, while a group calling themselves the Brotherhood of Steel held them off, led by a man in a full suit of power armour named Paladin Danse.

Despite their silly name, the Brotherhood of Steel fascinate me. Although there are only three of them left at the police station now, they claim to be part of a larger military organisation based somewhere outside the Commonwealth, and from the way they conduct themselves, I can believe it. They showed military discipline and tactics while battling the ghouls, they fight out of duty rather than for pay, and they even talk like soldiers, especially when they call outsiders "civilians." Paladin Danse in particular seems like a natural-born soldier. He reminds me a lot of Sgt. Kimball from Anchorage, actually, only without the constant stream of racial slurs.

So after we blasted away the ghouls, me and Danse got to talking about the Brotherhood of Steel and their mission in the Commonwealth. He claims that they're an organisation dedicated to keeping mankind from abusing dangerous technology again, to prevent another catastrophe like the bombs. I mean, personally, I'd blame the fucking Chinese for the current state of the world, not technology in general, but I can understand why the distant descendants of those who survived might not care about the nuances anymore, given what we left them. Still, it's a noble sentiment at least, and as I later learned, abuse of technology may well be a more prevalent issue than I first thought.

Because of how helpful we were fighting the ghouls, and because my own power armour made me an asset, Paladin Danse wanted our help retrieving a deep-range transmitter from the nearby ArcJet Systems building. He reluctantly agreed to pay us for the effort, though Preston wasn't happy with me for asking, so after a quick stop to rest and resupply, we made our way over there while Danse's subordinates remained to hold the fort.

ArcJet wasn't too far out of our way, but the road there wasn't a simple walk. We ran into a few feral dogs, bloatflies, and even a gang of raiders along the way, just under the bridge across the water from the old Beantown Brewery. But none of that was much of a challenge for two men in power armour, even with Preston lagging behind us. Inside ArcJet was a different story, though. That's where we came face to face with the Institute and their synths.

There wasn't much time to discuss it during the mission, but basically, synths are humanoid robots, supposedly created by a shadowy group of scientists called the Institute, which makes me think of the old Commonwealth Institute of Technology, though I don't know if there's any connection for certain. They're pretty creepy-looking and have some real fancy energy weapons. Almost pristine, in fact, which is a first since I've been out here. They were also immediately hostile to us. Danse says that the Institute littered the Commonwealth with these things, and Preston backs him up on that. If that's the case, then I can see why a group like the Brotherhood might be necessary out here.

It was tough going, fighting through all of them, especially when we reached the core of the facility, and I had to activate a rocket test-fire to burn all the synths coming for us. Paladin Danse just barely made it through the blast doors in time. But what's important is that we all made it out alive and completed our objective. Danse got his transmitter, and I got his laser rifle out of the deal. Not exactly the pay I was expecting, though it's a nice rifle, I'll give it that. But the more interesting development was that he also made me a job offer. He was impressed by how I handled myself in there, even if the operation didn't exactly go smoothly, and he wanted me to join the Brotherhood.

I'll admit, it wasn't an easy choice. Military life was pretty rough, and I picked up more than a few scars in the line of duty, and going back to that without even the promise of steady pay doesn't exactly sound appealing to me. But on the other hand, just living in the wasteland is already like going back to that. The only other times I got into this many firefights on a daily basis were in the military and during my competitive paintball days. So actually having real military support out here instead of just Preston can only be an improvement on my circumstances, at least so long as the Brotherhood missions don't cut into my own plans too much.

So I agreed. I'll have to see how this Brotherhood thing pans out in the long term, but I'm willing to give anything a shot, and their mission at least seems worthy. I don't consider myself an idealist, but I understand fighting for a cause, and saving mankind from technology run amok makes more sense to me than trying to personally protect every shitty homestead and pissant farmer in a thousand square miles. It's a more practical goal, that's for sure. And besides all that, I just can't help but like Paladin Danse, even if he seemed like a hardass at first. He takes himself seriously, knows what he's doing, and he has no time for bullshit, which I can respect. He probably wouldn't make a very good drinking buddy, but he's the kind of guy I'd want next to me in a foxhole.

Preston complained about my decision, of course. Something about "trusting the Brotherhood's good intentions" too much. I don't know where this sudden arbitrary skepticism of his came from, since he doesn't seem to know any more about the Brotherhood than what Danse told us, but I suspect it's mostly jealousy and maybe a touch of personal resentment; the Brotherhood actually sound like they have their shit together, unlike the Minutemen, and when Danse offered me the job, I note that he didn't extend the invitation to Preston. I think he probably took one look at the laser musket on his back and immediately judged that this man wasn't worth his time, which I can totally understand.

Still, this kind of shit is why Danse has my respect and Preston doesn't; one minute he's giving me a hard time about asking for pay for helping the Brotherhood, and then when I decide to keep helping them for free, that's also wrong. I can't win with this guy.

Well, we made our way back to Cambridge after that, stopping along the way to loot the bodies of those raiders by the bridge, as well as harvest some meat from the dogs and bloatflies we killed. I'm not exactly eager to eat dog, having had pets most of my life, especially since we've still got plenty of food left at the moment, but Preston recommended not letting it go to waste, and he might have a point about that. It might be worth something to a trader if we can find one soon, so I've got it packed away in a cooler downstairs for now.

We're back at the Cambridge Police Station now. Have to say, it feels weird being back in this place again all these years later. I still remember spending my 25th birthday in the drunk tank here. But it's a more comfortable base of operations than the Red Rocket. Even if the heating doesn't work, it's still much warmer being behind solid walls with no holes in them, and I'm glad to have a place to get out of my power armour and rest. Danse even gave us one of the back rooms to store some of our gear while we're operating in the area, which we probably will be for the foreseeable future. We're a long ways from Sanctuary now.

Tomorrow I'm going to have to think about which agenda to pursue. I've made a commitment to the Brotherhood now, and I don't want to disappoint Paladin Danse on my first day, but we do have other business in the area still. Preston wants us to go see some settlement across the river that he heard needs help, and I need to at least pay lip-service to this Minuteman thing if I want to keep benefitting from his help. And there was a lot of nice-looking gear in ArcJet that I want to go back for whenever we can. I guess we'll have to see how it goes.

Bring on the morning.

Day 23: Tuesday, 09/11/87

Not a fun day today. Lots of running back and forth, shooting ugly monsters, and carrying heavy loads, but at least we got a lot done.

Started out heading for that settlement Preston wanted us to check up on, Oberland Station. Turned out to be another huge waste of our time. It was just Tenpines Bluff all over again; two lesbians living on their own with a shitty little farm in the middle of nowhere. At least they weren't living in quite as much squalor as the losers over at Tenpines, but I still wasn't impressed. I don't know why they don't just move into the nearby brewery instead. But I haven't been inside, so who knows? Maybe it's totally collapsed in there or something,

So I asked them what the problem was and what they needed the Minutemen for, and it turns out, they don't. Not really. They don't have any raider problems or anything. There's just this fucking place miles and miles away, halfway back to Sanctuary Hills even, with something living in it, though they never specified what. I don't see how it could possibly be a threat to them all the way out here, considering they have a fucking river between them and it, but they want it cleared out regardless. Near as I can tell, they're hoping some friends of theirs can move in after.

This really doesn't sound worth my time, and I was planning to tell her to fuck off after she told me where the place was, but the bitch actually walked away from me before I could respond, as if the conversation were just over. Preston also seemed to take this as a confirmation that we're doing this, because as soon as she walked away, he wanted to talk. I made the mistake of indulging him, and he immediately began singing my praises, talking about how I'm one of the good guys and what the Minutemen need, and I seriously can't tell if he actually means it or if he's just trying to butter me up so I don't leave his ass for the Brotherhood.

Well, I still don't intend to actually clear this other place anytime soon, but I figured there was no point in vocally refusing anymore, since it would just piss Preston off, so I let them all assume what they will. It's not like this errand is particularly urgent anyway, so I can probably justify putting it off if Preston ever whines about it, and maybe if we ever end up back that way, we might look into it. But other than that, I'm gonna say that her friends are shit outta luck.

As for us, we headed back across the bridge past the Beantown Brewery and ran into a pair of super mutants (the greenskins I keep running across). Some coordinated sniping took care of them without a fight, but one of them had a real interesting-looking gun on him.

It's some kind of assault rifle, I think? It fires .556 rounds at least. But it's bulky and cylindrical, almost more like a machine gun. I'm pretty sure it was manufactured, because it's not crappy enough for the super mutants to have made it, but I can't find a name, a logo, or even a serial number on this thing, so I don't know who made it. I have no idea what this is, and considering I used to work in a gun shop, that bothers me. I still took the mystery gun back to the station later, but I really don't like it; just looking at this thing makes me uncomfortable, like it just doesn't belong somehow, like it shouldn't exist. It's creepy. Give me a good R91 anyday.

So after that we headed back to ArcJet, and Preston and I swept the facility for resources to take back to the police station. It took a few hours, and we had to do a couple runs each, but we brought back some good stuff. Aside from all the usual haul, we brought back all those fancy Institute guns, a stealth boy, a book, a Tesla magazine, some fusion cores, and even a Fat Man, which is one hell of a problem-solver. Though by far my favourite item from the load is this homemade cannon called the Junk Jet, built by a resentful technician just before the bombs fell, who I think was planning to kill his coworkers. I can relate. I found it while trying to power up an elevator for Paladin Danse yesterday, and I knew that I had to come back for it later. It's super heavy, and it absolutely would not be practical to use in a fight, but I love and adore this thing, and I swear I will kill somebody with it some day in honour of the fucking legend who made it.

Once all that was done, we stopped for a late lunch at the police station, where we had venison. I actually shot two different radstags today, one just outside ArcJet and another by the Red Rocket this morning, so I cooked them up for everyone. The Brotherhood appreciated a change from their field rations at least. Well, Danse and Haylen did, anyway. Rhys was still an asshole.

I guess I haven't talked much about Haylen and Rhys. They're Danse's subordinates, and they gave me my first assignments for the Brotherhood today. Haylen is a field scribe, which means she's the team's support, the one who does all the technical work and logistics. She wants me to go retrieve some technology from someplace way north of here. It's a bit out of my way, so I told her it may take me a while, but she seems fine with that. Not sure how much leeway I have with the job, but I guess we'll find out.

As for Rhys, he's a knight, a soldier under Danse's command. He's also an asshole, as I said. Passed up the chance to bang the cute scribe just because he's that dedicated to fucking himself with his own gun, and thinks I'm a "loner" and "not the military type," despite me being a military veteran currently travelling with someone. So I guess he's also a shitty judge of character on top of everything else. I don't exactly blame the guy for distrusting me, since even I'm not sure yet if I'm going to remain loyal to this organisation, but I still don't like his attitude. He reminds me of Humphrey from the butcher's shop, always giving me the stink-eye, always expecting me to quit. Well, guess what? Humphrey was right. I was always going to quit. But I wasn't going to "accidentally" chop off his fingers until he decided to be an asshole about it. If Rhys isn't careful, he might also have an "accident."

At least his assignment was a little more local. He wanted me to go kill all the ghouls in and around the metro station, because he hates their stupid disgusting faces, so at least we have something in common. From what I can tell, the nearby College Square used to be a raider hotspot, but then the ghouls moved in and wiped them all out, probably a little while before Danse and his team got here. I kind of wanted to trawl through the raider fortifications and see if they left anything good behind, but we already brought back a huge load of stuff from ArcJet already, and going through all the ruins around College Square would probably take us another day. So we just killed all the ghouls in our way and headed down into the metro.

It was simple work. The automated messages are still going on down there, which was damn annoying while we were clearing the place, but ghouls are pretty stupid and seem to have poor eyesight, so it didn't take us long.

The biggest challenge was actually putting up with Preston's unsolicited opinions on Paladin Danse and the Brotherhood. He didn't outright say that he doesn't like them because he has a small penis and Paladin Danse's massive fucking laser rifle makes him feel inadequate, but that's definitely the feeling I got from it. Mostly he tried to frame it as a question of whether or not the Brotherhood were worth our time compared to our duties as Minutemen. I said that I think killing monsters is always worth our time if it means they're not going to be a threat to people anymore, and the ghouls in College Square are indeed an immediate threat to the Brotherhood. I also asked him why he was suddenly so averse to helping people, and he didn't really have an answer for that, so he just apologised and thankfully shut up for the rest of the day.

It was worth it for other reasons, too. Even if we didn't bother with the rest of College Square, we at least dragged another good haul out of that hole in the ground. Just the usual stuff like food and chems and usable parts, as well as a few weapons and scraps of leather armour from the dead raiders. There was a readable issue of Live and Love down there too, but that's about it.

We're back at the station again now, settling in for another night. I'm just having a read of these magazines over a Nuka Cherry. My power armour's looking a little banged up, so I might need to do some work on it tomorrow. Not sure what to do next after that. Could head back north, take care of Haylen's assignment, maybe even appease Preston at the same time, but I'd hate to backtrack on someone else's account after coming out all this way. I'm half-tempted to put it all off for later and push on towards Boston tomorrow. I came out here to find Diamond City, didn't I? I'm supposed to be doing something important there. I think I recall something about my genetic offspring? Perhaps?

In all seriousness, yeah, I do want to get back on the hunt for Shaun sometime soon, or else my bitch wife is going to haunt my nightmares for the rest of time. As soon as I'm done with the Brotherhood's assignments, I'll get right back on that. Let's just hope they don't take too long.

Day 24: Wednesday, 10/11/87

Well, that didn't go according to plan. I was just trying to head north towards Wicked Shipping to get this component for Haylen, and instead I ran across an automated hydroponic garden and got roped into another job by some robots.

Graygarden, they call it. I remember hearing about it on the news back before the bombs fell. Looks like it was completed shortly before everyone I ever knew died screaming in fiery nuclear doom, and the place has been running itself all this time. Just like Codsworth, the Mr. Handys in charge here have simulated personalities, and they're at least smart enough to get on with their jobs without human supervision, because the greenhouse is still growing fresh produce, albeit with the usual wasteland mutations. I mainly dealt with two of them, White and Green. White was the one who convinced me to deal with a water problem they were having, while Green was ostensibly a trader, but mainly just gave me free caps because robots are fucking stupid and his game show host personality was exploitably broken.

Anyway, driven by the promise of reward, I headed down to the Weston Water Treatment Plant with Preston and Dogmeat to see if we could deal with their contamination. Along the way we investigated a homestead with a rather spacious basement full of lab supplies (which looked recently lived in, given the fresh tato we found down there), and also a truck on the road by the waterfront, where we found the skeleton of a long dead soldier on a bedroll. Sad scene. Makes me wonder what the days immediately after the nukes dropped must've been like. But his little camp was good for ammo and grenades at least.

The fog was rolling in by the time we reached the plant, and there were super mutants camped all over the exterior, so we laid mines around our position and camped up on the hill, sniping them from afar. It took the ugly bastards a while to figure out where we were, and predictably, several charged towards us and straight into the mines. One of them was carrying a mini nuke and blew himself sky-high. Glad he never reached us. A few got around our defences and we had to kill them up close, but overall, I'd say it went pretty smoothly.

Well, aside from when we tried to head down, and Preston got trampled from behind by a mad diseased radstag, but honestly, that was just fucking hilarious more than anything.

It didn't take long to sweep the super mutant camp. They'd set a few traps, but nothing big. We did our usual scavenging, but left the weapons and armour since they weren't worth the time they'd take to break down without a bench. Then we headed inside and down to the bottom level, after a brief detour to check out the roof. The whole place was flooded down there and inhabited by mirelurks, which obviously wasn't good, though it looks like the real source of the problem was that cholera outbreak they had going on. Another big event I remember seeing on the news, and quite the scandal, though what surprised me was learning who was behind it. Saul!

Yeah, turns out my boy Saul made manager at Weston, and it looks like he remembered me after all those years, because he actually took my suggestion to cut costs for the company by recycling the wastewater. I wasn't even being serious about that, but the madman actually went ahead and did it. They even promoted him for it! I always knew he had it in him. Fucking legend.

But as much as I love this classic Saul move, it still left me cleaning up after his mess as usual. The turrets were still on in the basement, so we had to fight our way through until we could reach the terminal to deactivate the rest, and Preston was an idiot and got himself shot several times by running ahead instead of sticking behind cover. The guy just ate through my stimpaks today. He's very lucky that they were all shallow wounds, because I would not have had the patience to dig bullets out of him more than twice today. And even when we were done with the turrets, activating the pumps to drain the floodwater just exposed us to a huge nest of mirelurks. I tried to fight them tactically, tossing grenades, laying the last of our mines in their paths, funneling them down a narrow chokepoint to blast their faces with a shotgun, but Preston still managed to fuck things up.

At one point, the dumbass actually fell off the catwalk and into the water. Not because it was slippery or sagging down or anything. He was just standing at the edge, firing at the crab fuckers with me, and then apparently forgot where the floor was and walked off the edge. And of course there were still mirelurks in the water at the time, so they swarmed him and dragged him under. I called out to him and fired a few shots in their general direction, but honestly, I gave him up for dead after a couple minutes and just proceeded with the mission. Somehow he survived and crawled his way out of there without me, which is good I guess, though it still mystifies me how Preston has defied natural selection for as long as he has.

We finished off the last of the mirelurks together once the place was completely drained, and collected a good amount of meat and eggs from them. The rest of the facility turned up some good scrap as well, and an issue of Picket Fences survived down there long enough to teach me a few interesting things about patio furniture. Draining the water also effectively solved the contamination problem, so we took the elevator back to the surface and dragged our haul with us back to Graygarden.

Supervisor White's promised reward turned out to be fresh produce from the garden, which is not exactly what I hoped for, since we're hardly hurting for food. But Preston actually redeemed himself somewhat by negotiating an arrangement where Graygarden would provide food to Sanctuary and some of our other settlements in exchange for the Minutemen's services, spinning this whole ordeal as an example of our protection rather than a simple mercenary job. He may have even actually meant it. And it worked! The robots went for it! They agreed to supply the Minutemen and let us use Graygarden as a stopping point. Definitely saved us some time, being able to drop off our haul from Weston here instead of dragging it back to Cambridge. Green purchased some of it too.

We've bedded down in the nearby homestead for the night, since Graygarden itself doesn't have any actual shelter, where I've been reading my magazine and writing this journal over a Nuka Cola and steak, while Dogmeat plays with his teddy bear. Preston likes to get conversational of an evening, and out of necessity I've had to tell him a bit about Vault-Tec, my old life, Shaun, and why I'm doing all this. Not that I particularly wanted to, but he only follows me out of personal loyalty, so I can't exactly shut the guy out, otherwise he might start missing Sanctuary and wondering why he's bothering with me. He took it all in stride at least, and didn't press any further about me being a two-hundred-year-old popsicle. He also told me a little more about Mama Murphy and her prophecies. If even half of what he said was true, then her power might be more real than I thought.

But more importantly for now, Graygarden has got me thinking. Today might very well have been a turning point for me, because I'm still not sure if I see much of a future in the Minutemen, but I'm beginning to see the potential for one, at least. They say an army marches on its stomach, and Graygarden solves that particular logistics issue rather neatly. If we're going to raise the Minutemen as a new regional power, then securing a reliable food supply is a major strategic victory, which I think even Preston can see. We'll need more than this, of course. More farms, more settlements. It might be more work than it's worth in the end. But it's a start. I see the glimmer of something here, and it may end up being helpful to the Brotherhood too.

I just hope I don't end up regretting this.

Day 25: Thursday, 11/11/87

It was a sunny day today, and things didn't start off too badly. I was almost fooled into thinking that it wouldn't be violent and horrible as usual. It started off with us finding a Jalbert Brothers site not too far from Graygarden. There were a bunch of molerats there that we had to shoot, of course, but the crazy, murderous, radiation-worshipping cultists that had apparently been living there were all dead already by the time we arrived, so I thought we'd dodged a bullet, or more likely several. We just harvested some meat, looted some bodies, picked up a few useful or interesting items such as the mini nuke, and made some vegetable stew for brunch, since bacon and eggs was obviously out of the question. It was a nice, easy start to the day.

From there we headed west and came to the Rocky Narrows Park, where we had a run-in with a couple of bears. Danse's laser rifle tore through them after a few good shots, and we got some good meat from them. I considered cooking it up for later, but I didn't want to go back, and we couldn't use the campfire that was already there at the campground, because it was situated directly next to a bunch of radioactive barrels. That wouldn't usually be a problem, because radiation mostly just makes me laugh now, but my power armour isn't gonna protect my food from getting irradiated (and besides which, this armour gets covered in blood and all kinds of other filth on a daily basis, so cooking in it would be even less sanitary than wasteland cooking usually is).

Speaking of my power armour, the core was starting to get low now, because I still haven't figured out what's causing the power drain, and it's still leaking like crazy. I was beginning to contemplate heading back to Graygarden and dropping off the suit with the robots before it died completely, but luckily, we came across a generator with a fresh core around the back of an old shed before it came to that. After fighting off some bugs, we took it and changed it out, and I thought things were looking up for the day. And that's when I heard the ominous stomping in the distance.

So, those big green guys? The super mutants? It turns out that they can grow pretty tall. Much taller than humans. About thirteen fucking feet, in fact. They throw boulders, use fire hydrants on sticks as weapons, and apparently eat deathclaws.

I was pretty fucking terrified to learn all of this, as you can imagine, but the monster didn't notice us right away, so we at least had some time to calm down and think. I didn't want to fight this thing, but at the same time, I didn't exactly want to let it live either. The way I see it, something like that just shouldn't exist, and even if I had walked away today and said it wasn't my problem, it was going to become my problem eventually if it kept growing. The last thing I needed was Preston hounding me back out here one day because another settlement needs our help, only for this big bastard to come along and squish me. So best to nip this problem in the bud, I thought.

Preston took a high position to cover me, and I sneaked around as best I could in a full suit of power armour to lay a trail of plasma mines. We caught the thing's attention before I was fully done, but I was able to throw out the last of them as I was running, and fortunately, the dumb bastard stepped on every single one. Even then, he still needed some additional gunfire to put him down, but sure enough, we killed him. Preston was euphoric, of course. Myself, I needed some chems to calm my nerves. I was right in the firing line with that thing. I could've died.

Well, we looted the monster's little camp and collected some deathclaw meat. He had a few trinkets. From the camp, we saw some sort of settlement up on the highway, but I'm not sure what it is. We were considering heading there next, since it's in the direction of Wicked Shipping and the land the lesbians wanted cleared, but there was a shack on stilts built over a toxic waste pool a little ways to the south, and I wanted to check that out first.

The shack was nothing special. One ghoul in there, wearing a lab coat oddly enough, but it went down as easy as any other, and there wasn't much worth taking in there. Not that I stayed long to search, because the radiation was pretty heavy in there. Preston had to stay outside the whole time. But the important thing is that while we were there, we spotted something else to the west. The federal ration stockpile, where a raider gang had made their base.

It was getting dark by the time we approached the base, but Preston was fully in favour of a night attack, and I agreed. For his part, he just saw it as part of our mission, wiping out raiders and other local threats for this new settlement we were supposed to clear a way for. Personally, I just wanted all of these federal rations. Not because we didn't have enough food, but just because of the principle of it. These rations are mine. My fucking taxes paid for them, goddamn it! THEY'RE MINE!

The attack went well. Less stress-inducing than the battle with the behemoth, at least. We scouted the place first, and I noticed an unattended suit of T-51b in a container near the outskirts, so I left my suit, snuck in, and stole it before the battle really began. It already had a core of its own, so it was usable, and it denied the raiders a key asset. They still had guard dogs and turrets, of course, but they weren't too much of a challenge for us. Then once we breached the doors, we had to kill the rest of the gang inside, but they were spread out and isolated through the tunnels, and a few well placed grenades took care of the interior turrets.

We set to looting once we cleared the place, and it was kind of a treasure trove. The rations I fought so hard for were actually the least interesting part, though they certainly didn't disappoint. There's even a few bottles of Quantum in here, which were hard to get even before the apocalypse. But we've also dug a new set of power armour and three fusion cores out of this place, a stealth boy and a covert operations manual, plenty of aluminium cans and other spare parts that I could make great use of if I only had more glue, and there was even a still burning fire where we could cook our meat. We ate well today. Deathclaw steaks for Preston and Dogmeat, and I got to give nuclear mutant bear a try. Tastes a lot like regular bear, funnily enough.

The terminals here were interesting too. This gang was led by a lady called Red, and they were feuding with another gang based out of the Beantown Brewery, who kidnapped her sister and were possibly holding her hostage to extort Red's gang for MY rations. At least, that's what she thought was happening. I kind of get the impression that the Beantown gang killed her sister and were faking some of the letters, but whatever. Not my problem. Red's dead, baby. Hopefully that means the Beantown gang will starve. Or maybe if they're smart they'll notice that farmstead directly next to them and, y'know, raid it.

I don't even feel bad. That dumb bitch from Oberland had the General of the Minutemen right there, willing and ready to help (as far as she knew). All she had to do was point to the nearby brewery and ask me to kill the raiders. I might've even done it, if only for the free beer and to appease Preston. But instead she used her one opportunity to ask me to run halfway across the Commonwealth to clear some real estate for her friends instead. Frankly, she deserves whatever happens next.

We'll be heading out again tomorrow. The other end of these tunnels emerge underneath a lonely chapel a little ways north of where we started. It's pretty close to the area we're supposed to clear, so we'll take care of that first thing tomorrow morning, if there's even anything left to clear after Goliath and the raider gang. And in the meantime, since we've got nothing better to do, I'm giving Preston some rudimentary power armour training so he can use this second suit. Not the most relaxing way to spend an evening, but hey, maybe it'll save future me a few stimpaks.

Day 26: Friday, 12/11/87

Well, we cleared the Sunshine Tiding Co-Op and its surrounding environs. It wasn't too hard. The place was just a couple of barns and a few rundown cabins full of bugs and ghouls. We killed them all in about twenty minutes. The bigger challenge was the settlement up on the highway we saw yesterday. It turned out to be the base of a mercenary company called the Gunners, the same group that wiped out the original Minutemen at Quincy. I was in favour of leaving them alone, but Preston insisted that they would be a threat to any new settlement here, so we took a stroll over to wipe them out.

The Gunners are interesting folks. Not that I got to actually talk to any of them, since they were all too busy screaming and choking on their own blood, but they've got some high-grade equipment. No power armour or anything, but they had US Army combat armour as standard issue, and one of them even shot at us with a plasma rifle. This interests me because from their equipment and tactics, I strongly suspect that they're another military descendant organisation like the Brotherhood of Steel. I guess the US Army remnants in the Commonwealth must have found themselves without a country to serve after the bombs fell, and turned into mercenaries over time to survive. That's what I would do. Maybe a few splintered off into raider gangs too, and that's why they can jury-rig their own power armour and know how to use it? I don't know, though.

We dropped off the Gunners' equipment at the co-op, along with everything we looted from the federal ration stockpile yesterday, since it's apparently gonna be a new settlement. There's a Mr. Handy roaming the place, which some hippies living here before the war programmed to be docile, so we left it alone to hopefully deter anything else from moving in. I wanted to set it to guard protocols, but that just made it follow me around endlessly, so this'll have to do.

Wicked Shipping still awaits, so we had to head north across the bridge, but we made a slight detour first to check out Walden Pond. I was curious to see if Thoreau's cabin was still there, and Preston wanted to check out the only other point of interest in the area to make sure it was clear of raiders. Turns out we both got what we wanted. I got to see Thoreau's cabin and hear the automated tour again for the first time since I was a kid, and Preston got to satisfy his bloodlust and shoot a bunch of people in the gift shop basement. Aside from the usual stuff, we found a book, a good quality pipe wrench, and another issue of Tales of a Junktown Jerky Vendor down there. This issue was titled Why I Sold My Mother, so you know it's gonna be good. Preston even got a history lesson out of the adventure. Fun times.

After a quick trip back to the co-op, we crossed the bridge. I got a fright when we walked past this vehicle, and there was a ghoul up on the side of the bridge, just sitting there, watching us. It creeped me the hell out, but I shot it before it could get up and jump us. Unfortunately, its body fell off the side, so I don't know if it had anything good on it. Not that ghouls usually do, but sometimes you get lucky and find a roll of duct tape or a pocket watch.

Further up the road, within view of Concord, we stopped to check inside a wrecked bus. We were close to Wicked Shipping now, but again, we got distracted and wandered off the path after we were attacked by bloatflies. I fucking hate these things, and I try not to leave any of them alive whenever we run into a swarm, so I pursued them a little ways into the forest. Preston got a little confused, and punched a radstag for some reason. And that's when we saw the raider shack in the distance.

I wanted to go check it out, thinking it was another shitty homestead, and it kinda was, but the couple living there were dressed in raider armour and shot at us, so we killed them. They had a chem station and some food there, though, so it was good for us. I spotted that old military bunker off Merchants' Row in the distance, so that gave me an idea of where we were, and that's when I realised that we were close to Wacky Wayne's cabin, so I went to go find it. I figured if Thoreau's cabin was still intact after all these years, surely Wayne's was too, and I wanted to find out what happened to him after the bombs.

Nothing good, apparently. The government built an electrical tower right on his lawn, and he was assembling a bomb in his basement to take care of it when the nukes dropped. I respect the effort, but it looks like the poor bastard turned into a ghoul before he had the chance. He was still down there in the basement when I arrived. I had to put him down myself. Real shame. Wacky Wayne was a hell of a guy back in the day. Knew how to party, too. He even still had a few ghoul groupies lying around on the floor upstairs. I'll miss the crazy fucker.

Oddly enough, he also had an issue of the Wasteland Survival Guide down there with him. The Guide to Diamond City, of all things. Don't know how long it's been there, but I guess it gives me some comfort to know that Wayne survived at least a few years after the end, if he was around long enough for Diamond City to exist in his lifetime. Not that I'm surprised by this at all. If anyone could've survived a nuclear apocalypse, Wayne Gorski could've. The man was like a human cockroach. I'm still impressed by the way he just got up and kept drinking after that biker smashed that bowling ball over his head. God, there was so much blood. I can almost still hear Nora's screaming now. That was a pretty great night.

Anyway, since we were so close to home, I decided against heading to Wicked Shipping right away. My power armour was pretty badly damaged after the last two days, and I wanted to head back to the Red Rocket to fix it. On the way, we passed by a farm in the distance, but we didn't go over to it. I wanted to check it out on the way back to Wicked Shipping, but yet again, something else came along, because when we got back to Red Rocket, Codsworth was there, along with a couple of alleged Minutemen.

One of them was one of the chucklefucks from near Lexington. The other was another "new recruit," who'd shown up in Sanctuary after hearing about us on the radio. I wasn't happy about this, but at least this time they both fell in line and addressed me as "general" without having to be told. I was also a little better disposed towards these ones because they were apparently there to protect my property. According to Codsworth, the Red Rocket came under attack from super mutants while we were away, so he and the Minutemen recruits in Sanctuary came running to defend it. The mutants made a bit of a mess of the place, but they didn't damage anything important, and it looks like nothing was stolen, so... I guess they get a passing grade. Barely.

I would've scored them much higher if they weren't carrying fucking laser muskets, but I guess you can't have everything.

I told Preston to handle the new recruits, and took care of the repairs to my power armour first. Codsworth helped speed up the process considerably, and we were able to get back to Sanctuary Hills before evening. I also swapped out my silenced pistol for my revolver while I was at the Red Rocket, since I'm running low on 10mm rounds but have plenty of .44. I'm beginning to wish I kept that weird bulky assault rifle with me too, because I'm starting to run low on microfusion cells as well, and I've got all these .556 rounds here I can't use.

So we're back in Sanctuary now, and the place is looking... different. Codsworth and Sturges have been busy since I've been away. They've built it into something of a shantytown. After many futile attempts at repairs, it looks like Sturges finally gave up on trying to make the houses habitable, and just started building whole new structures with the available wood and scrap metal, like he should've done all along. They also tore down the last of the collapsed houses, chopped down a few more trees, cleared a lot more of the clutter, and tore apart more stuff for scrap, including the streetlamps, mailboxes, and even some of the cars. Including mine. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

As for the new shacks... they're not great? You can actually see through the gaps in the wood in places, so they're not well-insulated. But after travelling this wasteland for about three weeks now, and seeing what passes for shelter out here, I have to admit... I've seen worse. At least Sturges thought to put actual roofs and doors on these shacks. They'll still be cold at night, but at least they won't be wet so long as they keep away from the walls.

There's a couple of them around the place, not all in convenient locations. They built a small one right next to the Rosa house, near the stockpiles, sort of square-shaped, with space for a single bed. I think it's Sturges' personal quarters. The other is bigger, and built right in the middle of the road in front of the Sumner house. Not where I would've put it, but I guess there's no cars anymore, so they don't see a need for the road. It's a long, sort of T-shaped building with doors at both ends. They've moved their beds into it already, so I guess it's a communal living quarters. And there's a half-constructed second floor in progress with a Minutemen flag hanging on the exterior. The stairs are outside, but they've got most of the walls for the upper floor erected, and it looks like they're planning for a third.

How is all of this possible in such a short time, you may ask? Well, partly though the magic of cheap, non-professional construction, like I said. But it's also because Sanctuary has actually grown in population somewhat since we left. Apparently one of the first things Sturges built once we were gone was a radio tower to advertise that Sanctuary was open for business, hence Diamond City Radio finding out about us. New settlers have been gradually trickling in for the past week or so, contributing their help to the construction, and traders have been showing up with them to keep the place supplied.

Part of me is impressed that Sturges managed all of this on his own. The better part of me is more annoyed at him for overstepping his authority and inviting a bunch of hicks that I haven't vetted into my home without permission. Unfortunately, it's too late to kick any of them out now, but I made sure to lay down the law so that they all know who's in charge. I went though our old bedroom closet and dug out Nora's pillory board from her BDSM phase, and I set up some public stocks to lock Sturges in for the night. The new folk were pretty surprised by this, and Preston had no idea how to react, but Mama Murphy and the Longs at least had the sense to shut up and not question me. Sturges started apologising pretty quickly, but he's still gotta serve his sentence before I let him out. If you don't establish ground rules and consequences with these people, they'll never listen to you.

I'm also re-recording Sturges' settlement broadcast in my voice. It's too late to stop people from coming here now, but if they're going to come anyway, it may as well be with my explicit blessing, otherwise I'll look weak for not being able to prevent it. At least after this, there should be no doubt who's in charge here.

Time to call it night now, I think.

Day 27: Saturday, 13/11/87

Finally got to Wicked Shipping today and retrieved that reflex capacitor for Haylen. Took long enough. There were a bunch of ghouls in our way too. Not that I have a problem with blasting ghouls with a shotgun; it's actually kind of therapeutic sometimes. It's just that it sometimes comes with additional risks, such as today, when I missed a shot in an enclosed space and a fucking truck exploded and levelled the shed. That's the sort of thing I can do without. To be clear, nobody was hurt; we saw it coming and had plenty of time to get away. But it's a lot harder to loot smouldering ruins than an intact structure.

But anyway, all that wasn't until after lunch. Before we got over to Wicked Shipping, we actually went to check out that farm from yesterday first, and met this travelling dog breeder along the way by the old water tower. He was reluctant to part with his dog, even though he makes a living from selling them, but I convinced him that Sanctuary would be a good home for him, and gave him a fair price to take him over here. I figured with me, Dogmeat, and Preston all away so often, this place could use a good guard dog for security. And everyone loves dogs, so that's a bonus.

We came to the Abernathy farm soon after, a family homestead that's apparently been around for several generations. I got to talking with the man of the house, the Minutemen came up somehow, and then he started talking about how his daughter died standing up to raiders. But he wasn't a pussy about it like Jun Long. He just wanted revenge, and his daughter's locket back, which I can respect. He said the raiders are holed up at a satellite station east of here, and asked if I wouldn't mind kicking their asses for him.

And yeah, normally I'd say, "fuck no, I'm not dying for a locket. Go kill them yourself." But power armour makes for incredibly asymmetric warfare, and hey, wasn't I just talking before about how I'll need to get support from more farms before really giving this Minuteman thing a go? And besides, slaughtering raider gangs is usually worthwhile in and of itself. Good salvage is worth its weight in gold out here, and daddy needs more Wonderglue. So I agreed. Preston seemed to like this, because he started talking about me and the Minutemen again soon afterwards, but it was mercifully brief this time, and it was mostly just him apologising for shoving his responsibilities onto me. Little late to apologise for that now, I think, but better late than never, I guess.

I also got to talking with Abernathy's other daughter (the one who didn't get shot), and she offered to pay me if I helped harvest the watermelons. Not sure why she wanted to hire a farmhand for fifteen minutes of work instead of just doing it herself, but I'm not complaining. Easiest forty-five caps I ever made.

While we were out there, a trailer outside the farm made me ponder one of the great mysteries of the wasteland again when I discovered that it still had salvage inside. Nothing spectacular, of course; a couple bullets, some Rad-X, duct tape, the usual. It's just... it confounds me how these kinds of places haven't been stripped bare already. There was a mattress in there, so it was obviously some poor wastelander's camp at some point, but I asked the Abernathys, and they weren't aware of anyone living there recently. So I'm just left wondering, how long does stuff like that trailer have to just sit there, within spitting distance of this farm, before someone thinks to walk over, check inside, and take any of this obviously useful salvage? I mean, I'm not crazy, am I? I can't be the only one in the wasteland with a sense of curiosity, can I? What's going on?

Well, after we got paid for the melons, we made our way towards Wicked Shipping. We found another abandoned shack along the way, and killed some bloatflies. Then we actually got to the fleet lockup itself, killed the ghouls, and retrieved the component, which I've already spoken about. There were a few other interesting finds there. An issue of Grognak the Barbarian. A holotape indicating that the business owners were involved with the infamous Eddie Winter. A load of cash. Though I'm most excited about the master key for all of Wicked Shipping's trucks. I'm pretty sure this'll even open that one on Merchants' Row that I couldn't get into. Yay!

We walked north from there to get back to Sanctuary through the hills, and ran into an old ranger cabin along the way. We found another Wasteland Survival Guide there, this one about self-defence, along with a holotape and the skeleton of some pre-war runaway girl. Preston wondered what her story was. Myself, I'm far more curious about whoever the hell left this Wasteland Survival Guide here. Post-apocalyptic literature turns up in the strangest of places.

Really, even if you're just some poor wasteland lowlife who'll sleep on any crusty mattress you find, how fucking lazy do you have to be to not even toss the two-hundred-year-old skeletons out first? I noticed this back in the federal ration stockpile too. The raiders had built fortifications and turrets and shit everywhere, so they obviously put a lot of work into making the place home, but they still didn't clear out the skeletons. Why wouldn't you clear out the skeletons? Do wastelanders just not care? Do they just see corpses as part of the scenery and not even think about it? Preston doesn't really have any answers either. He just puts it up to raider behaviour, but why do raiders behave like that?

We got back to Sanctuary a little while ago, crossing the river to the south. There was a tank on the island there with a medical box inside. We had to shoot some bloodbugs in the river. Also more bloatflies back at the cabin, come to think of it. Actually, whenever we go anywhere in the wasteland from now on, just assume that were assailed by swarms of giant fucking bugs the whole way unless I specify otherwise. The things are everywhere out here. They're not even really worth mentioning at this point.

Since getting back, I've been continuing to fix up the power armour. I've concluded that there's absolutely nothing I can do about the core drain without a completely new frame, but that doesn't mean I can't improve the armour and software. I calibrated the shocks on the left leg, which should improve performance, though I haven't got the resources to do the same for the right leg yet, and I got the recon sensors in the helmet working, which should give me a minor tactical edge in combat. Can't get the targeting HUD or sensor arrays going at the same time, though. That's kind of stumping me for now. I'm sure I could do this if I had the technical manual, but I've got no fucking idea where I could find one.

So I hit a wall with the power armour. Not enough parts, and not enough technical training. It's disappointing, but it happens. So for lack of anything better to do, I decided to give it a fresh coat of paint, since we had some buckets spare. Preston hit on the idea to paint it in Minutemen colours. I'm not wild about it, personally, but he's got a point that the General of the Minutemen should be wearing their symbol, and seeing Minutemen in power armour should at least signal to the Commonwealth that we mean business. Maybe people will be more likely to trust us this way. At the very least, it shouldn't leave any doubts to my identity or authority the next time we run into any "new recruits."

With that done, there's nothing left to do but sit around the fire, read, and enjoy a meal. Sturges has served his punishment, and the new settlers are all getting to know each other. Preston showed me how to mix up this drink called a Dirty Wastelander with whiskey, mutfruit, and Nuka Cola, and it's actually not bad. I guess he does have his occasional uses after all.

I think I'm almost getting used to being out here.

Day 28: Sunday, 14/11/87

An unusually murderous start to our day. My secondary assignment from Danse required us to head east, to Malden, coincidentally in the same direction as the satellite station that Mr. Abernathy wanted us to exact vengeance upon. This time I decided to go north of the river and around the lake by the foothills, a route that led to two separate encounters with two lone wastelanders.

The first was a guy living with his dog in a lone shack up in the hills. His dog went for us, Preston shot it, the guy shot at us, and we killed him. Pretty stone cold. Preston insisted that the guy was a raider, and that we were in the right, though how he's so sure of this, I have no idea. Maybe he's not, and is just trying to reassure himself. The guy's clothes were vaguely raider-ish, but near as I can tell, he was just living on his own with his dog in the middle of the woods. Not sure how that constitutes raider behaviour, but oh well. I suppose it's really no different than that couple we killed in the woods. Still, just to be safe, and to make Preston feel better, I burned the shack to the ground. Zero evidence. I am not sure that it actually made him feel any better afterwards, but whatever. Burning things is fun.

The second encounter, not far from there, was a scavenger who was overly protective of his honestly pretty meager haul. We probably could've backed off, but he pulled a gun on me, and I didn't like that, so that man is dead now. He died over a bucket of drinks and a box of Fancy Lads Snack Cakes. Life comes at you fast in the wasteland.

We made it to the robotics disposal ground after that. There was a Fat Man and a mini nuke there, an issue of Hot Rodder, a fusion core, and a deactivated sentry bot. Some kind of prototype? I considered reprogramming it to serve me, but that didn't seem to be an option with the command holotape, so we just set it self-destruct instead. It killed a few nearby molerats in the process, so we got some scrap, spare fusion cores, and meat out of the deal. We collected the spoils, and made for Satellite Station Olivia.

This is where we came to other major find of the day, yet another new suit of T-45 power armour, right next to a crashed vertibird. We had to supply our own fusion core to get it running, but fortunately, we had just come into an abundance of those. Even more fortunately, Preston was free to pilot it, since I made him leave the new T-51b suit behind to save us from chewing through our fusion cores twice as fast. To my eternal frustration, the T-51b turned out to have the same issue. And so did this suit, incredibly, but working power armour is still great to have, and even better to keep out of raider hands.

When we got to the satellite station, it was under attack by... molerat suicide bombers, I think? They had mines strapped to them and were going after the raiders. Yeah. Not sure what the hell that was about, and the terminals inside the station didn't provide any context. But I got to fire a Fat Man at the raiders on the tower outside, so that was fun.

We headed in and got into a shootout with the rest of the gang. Explosives and a few .44 rounds to some skulls took care of them. Inside, we found another mini nuke, a fusion core, a minigun and ammo, general supplies, a hell of a lot of radroach meat, and some books and magazines, including another US Covert Operations Manual. Oh, and of course, how could we forget, Abernathy's locket. It was in a toolbox of all things. Lucky for him I'm the kind of guy who habitually checks inside random toolboxes.

We were pretty weighed down with salvage coming out of Olivia, so I made the call to press on to Tenpines and drop it off there, since it's an allied settlement. We found a dead guy along the way with a shopping list on him from a "Dr. Forsythe," asking for medical supplies. I guess he was a courier. Not sure where he was coming from, or where he planned to get these supplies, because there's no way Tenpines would've had them, but that's a mystery for another day.

It was getting late when we got to Tenpines, and it wasn't the warmest welcome we could've hoped for. Apparently they suffered a raider attack while we were away, and weren't too happy that the Minutemen hadn't helped. I pointed out that this might have something to do with the fact that she sent me to exterminate a raider gang all the way in fucking Lexington, while somehow forgetting to mention the other, much closer raider gang based in the satellite station just over the hill. I told the woman that those guys were much more likely to be the ones raiding their shitty little farm, and also that she's a fucking idiot, and that made her go real quiet. But since we killed the Olivia raiders too now, hopefully that should be the end of it.

Still, Preston felt bad for them after seeing their shitty living conditions, and wanted the Minutemen to do something more to help these people. Personally, I'm content to let natural selection take hold at this stage, but he swayed me by showing a way to mix water, corn, mutfruit, and tatos to make a vegetable starch which makes for an incredibly effective adhesive. Adhesive being my main supply problem at the moment, you can see why this made a convincing case to me. I would literally kill a dozen men for a single bottle of non-dried Wonderglue right now, so if Tenpines Bluff can solve that issue for me, then fine. If it's protection they want, then they can have those two chucklefucks full-time. If they want better homes, then we'll send Sturges to build them some. We'll gentrify the shit out of this place if that's what they want. My only condition is that they give me those fucking tatos.

Those tatos belong to the Minutemen now.