Fallout: Two Sun - Session 3

The third and final Fallout: Two Sun session! The version of the rules I used can be found here.

We had a trio of returning players this time:

• Wilbur "Spider" Webb, Odd Job Man - Vault 24 Exile
• Alex Bradshaw, Technician - Vault 24 Exile
  
• Elizabeth "Scythe" Forscythe- Scavenger retained by Vault 25 for odd jobs

Last session, the Exiles retrieved a vital computer component from the Pima Air and Space Museum, bringing it back to Vault 25 - along with a super mutant programmer and his retinue of autocannon armed sentry bots. That brought the Legion onto the Vault's doorstep. Which meant the Overseer had another job for the Exiles: finding weapons of mass destruction to disperse the barbarians at the gate.

The Blue Hoods used their fully functional GECK to fabricate a badass vehicle for the Exiles to travel in. Fully tracked, lightweight, armored, CBRN sealed, and with a plasma rifle in the turret.

 

I think this one's by Malaysia Model Kits

The Exiles had two options: a CIDR base holding New Plague germs in Marana, to the Northwest, or an unfired Titan silo holding a nuclear warhead in Glass Valley to the South. They chose to go South for the missile. The plan was to hook up a remote operating device to the missile silo's control network, allowing the Blue Hoods to fire the missile by radio if the Legion refused to negotiate.

Because none of the Exiles knew how to drive, the Blue Hoods took the liberty of kidnapping a slave from the Legion who could help. Gasket used to be a Highway King, a raider tribe that terrorized Arizona with salvaged vehicles, until the Legion hemmed them in with landmines and roadblocks and wiped them out. She was happy to be behind the wheel of a vehicle again, and even happier to run over the people who had enslaved her.

With a suite of other useful equipment in hand, the Exiles mounted up, and Gasket took them down the bumpy trail, through Pima Wash and down into the alluvial plain of Two Sun.

 

The Exiles parked the ACAV at the trailhead to confer with the Blue Hoods. Marcel the scout suspected the Legion were bringing up large caliber rifles and indirect fire weapons to attack the sentry bots guarding the perimeter. The Exiles didn't wait for that to happen. They surged forward in the 113 and Gasket took them offroad. They plowed through the suburb and massacred a contubernium of legionaries posted up in the back yard. None of the Legion forces arrayed were able to keep up with the fast moving APC.

 

Almost none of them, anyway.

 

Imagine one of these, but the size of an emu and with a guy riding it

 

A group of Compache foederati rode between the houses on their enormous terror birds, pursuing the ACAV. The Exiles peppered them with gunfire, but one managed to leap aboard and attack Alex, who couldn't traverse the plasma rifle in the turret to hit him. The red-banded auxiliary shredded his armor with a couple swipes of his raptor gauntlet. Then Scythe and Spider shot him and he fell off the APC.

Gasket wanted to drive downtown and run a bunch of people over. The Exiles overruled her - the absolute last thing you want for your armored fighting vehicle is to get surrounded with enemy infantry in a built up area. So she took the car in a wide arc, East and South, then back toward Glass Valley.

Gasket almost hit a gila dragon in Harlan Heights. The giant lizard would have totaled the ACAV, or at least immobilized it while the monster chewed on the vehicle. Scythe warned her in time, and she swerved around the beast - which rolled over and went back to sleep in the sun.

The next encounter with Compache riders went much the same as the first. The Exiles had more luck fending them off with gunfire, but still had to pry the bravest and fastest guy off the back of the AC as he beat the shit out of Sycthe. Onward to Glass Valley.

The valley, true to its name, was a scorched malpais of radioactive glass. The Exiles popped the Rad-X the Blue Hoods had given them. Gasket popped a benzedrine and took them forward into the maelstrom. The road ahead was blocked by the hulks of wrecked cars, which were crawling with dozens of radscorpions. Gasket took the car around and offroaded South.

They drove past a huge blast crater and stopped before hitting Sahuarita. The cars at the intersection were stacked to make a palisade, and the Exiles could see figures moving around behind the barricade through their binoculars. They decided to cut West and keep moving.

As they moved further South, the roads were blocked with cars - this time deliberately piled to make more barricades. Gasket took the APC off road again, drove past a couple suburbs, and promptly hit an anti-vehicle mine just west of La Canada Norte.

Alex leapt out to knit the broken track back together. The group was dangerously exposed, out in the open near a cluster of houses. Nobody attacked them while Alex got the problem fixed, but as he finished adjusting the track tension, a group of armored figures crept out of the housing development to engage the Exiles. They mostly had assault rifles that couldn't hit the Exiles at this range, but a couple of them had proper battle rifles that proved more of an issue. Spider replied with his .50 caliber rifle and the attackers scrambled for cover. Everyone mounted up and Gasket peeled the fuck out - only to be stopped by a sixth armored man, wearing a power assist harness that let him move and attack with incredible strength and speed. He got bogged down in a close quarter fight with Scythe and was shot to pieces by the other exiles while fighting for control of her gun. She yanked his body on top of the ACAV and they continued to the silo.

The Exiles examined the dead man. He was a ghoul, and beneath the power assist tac rig he wore the uniform of a pre-war airman. His armband read: 570th Strategic Missile Squadron.

 

The 570th Strategic Missile Squadron Insignia

The approach to the silo was harrowing. One of the military ghouls fired a rocket from a hidden trench system, which narrowly missed the ACAV. The Exiles replied with a withering hail of assault rifle, plasma rifle, and .50 caliber rifle fire, churning up the position and killing three of the defenders. The remaining pre-war ghouls retreated down the line of trenches and into the silo.

The Exiles debated how to get into the silo. Alex's Repair skill came in handy again. He knew that the door of a Titan missile silo was incredibly thick and heavy, but set on a hinge with a counterweight. If it was unlocked, a child could push it open. He didn't have to destroy the whole thing, just the locking mechanism. Gasket kept the engine running to feed power to the plasma rifle in the turret, and Alex focused fire on the patch of door protecting the latch. He melted through the exterior and the door swung open - in time for another squad of airmen to show up. This time bolstered by another tac rig trooper and a guy with a minigun.

The guy in the power rig dashed forward and took cover behind the base's radar array. The Exiles, sensibly, focused their fire on the minigunner. They were one point of damage short of stunning him, and he replied with a hail of withering fire that seriously wounded the whole group, incapacitating Gasket and Spider. The Exiles applied stimpaks and struggled to bind their wounds and return fire. Then the tac rig guy dashed forward and took Alex's head off with a punch from his ballistic fist.

Spider tried to surrender. Scythe dropped the power assist trooper with a well placed burst. The wounded Exiles retreated into the now open silo. They reloaded their weapons, treated their wounds as best they could, and watched the door for intruders. A figure stumbled through the door and Scythe fired a burst - killing Gasket.

 

With little prospect of fighting their way out, the two survivors pushed inward - into the missile silo.

The signs helpfully pointed the way to the control room. Spider snuck up on the two troopers guarding it and killed them with a fragmentation grenade. The room was practically a shrine, decorated with paintings and murals and bits of scrap pinned up into collages. An altar to the missile that the survivors of the 570th Strategic Missile Squadron had spend the last two hundred years guarding.

 

With Gasket and Alex dead, the surviving Exiles didn't know how to hook up the remote operating device to the control console. Thankfully, they did know how to tune into the base's radio system and phone Vault 25 for a clue. Adrian and Overseer Marlowe were able to talk them though installing the device, but there was a problem. Unless the Exiles could secure the room, the remote device wouldn't be safe - the 570th would just disable it, rendering the remote control nuclear missile useless as a deterrent.

Spider and Scythe decided to skip to the end and launch the nuke at Two Sun. The Overseer concurred with the plan, but warned them that this would leave them stranded outside Vault 25, with a nuclear dustbowl between them and safety. They didn't care, they wanted to accomplish the mission. Overseer Marlowe thanked them for their service. If they somehow fought their way through the atomic horror outside, Vault 25 would be waiting for them with open arms - after decontamination, of course.

The nuke was almost distressingly easy to launch - the Five Seventies had stripped out all the failsafes and choosing a target was like picking a spot on the map with their finger. Then they slapped the button at the center of the shrine.

For a moment they were afraid it wouldn't work - that the 570th hadn't kept every system working for the last 200 years.

Then they heard the grinding of the enormous concrete hatch, as the hydraulics levered it aside.

Then the whole room began to rumble.

After the missile left the silo, the Exiles left the control room, looking for another way out of the bunker. They needn't have worried. The Five Seventies, who had gotten as far as the corridor outside the control room, were bent in prayer, heads to the floor in the direction of the missile's travel path. The Exiles went back outside and got into the M113. They engaged the environmental seals and drove South, away from Two Sun and Vault 25. They had had enough with genocidal blind people. After doing their bidding and killing a few thousand people.

Ending Slides

Caesar's Legion

Slaves and soldiers perished alike in the bombing of Two Sun. The survivors abandoned their sieges of the Brotherhood and Vault 25, and fled back toward Phoenix. Fearing radioactive contamination, the city's Prefect had the roads blocked, and the refugees slaughtered. With the loss of the city in a slow smothering of atomic dust, Caesar turned his gaze Westward, toward a land less polluted by mankind's mistakes: the Mojave Wasteland.

The Followers of the Apocalypse

The Two Sun Followers of the Apocalypse died in the bombing of Two Sun, incinerated alongside the Legionaries they had reluctantly worked alongside, and the wastelanders they had tried so hard to save. The Followers back West were at least spared the embarrassment of their errant outpost's collaboration with the Legion becoming public knowledge.

The Brotherhood of Steel

The Brotherhood of Steel waited out the atomic incineration of Two Sun in their silo, secure against the torrent of atomic fire. Their decision to isolate themselves had paid off again. They would survive this, as they had the bombs two hundred years ago.

The Compache
With their alliance with the Legion suddenly terminated, the Compache fled the ruins of Two Sun. They enjoyed brief sport hunting Legion refugees from the city, but soon migrated South into the wastes of Mexico.

Vault 24

Trapped by the atomic blast and with resources dwindling, Vault 24's slow decline accelerated a little when old Dan Watanabe finally snapped and shot the tyrannical overseer in full view of everyone. His on-the-spot coup sparked a minor civil war - which at least reduced the number of mouths to feed.

Vault 25

With a fully functioning GECK, a matter fabricator, and a wealth of scientific and technical knowledge, Vault 25 sealed itself away again. In ten years, or a hundred, they would emerge back into the world, to reclaim the wastes in a new era of blue hooded power. The Overseer used the upgraded foundry to cast a braille plaque in honor of the Exiles. Generations of vault dwellers would run their fingers over the raised lettering and think of the four brave wastelanders who saved the Vault from the barbarians at the gates - at the cost of destroying the world outside the vault with them.

I enjoyed this a lot. The system was a little clunky in places, most of which were also an issue with the original Fallout games - high level combat is ridiculously swingy, with attacks either bouncing off armor or totally liquefying their targets. Still, the heavily modified Delta Green rules were enough to get everyone through the content, which all the players liked.

I don't know if I'll ever run more Fallout, but I'll post the documents I used to run this game soon, in case anyone else is interested.