Fallout: Seattle - Session 1

After I finished Fallout: Two Sun, I had the idea for a "DLC" adventure set in Seattle. I didn't have a whole lot of ideas I liked, at first. The breakthrough came when I remembered Jeffrey Linn's Flooded Seattle Map. Not only did this create a lot of unique terrain for the players to explore, it also reduced the amount of the city I had to fill out and detail. So I worked on it for a couple weeks, and ran the first session.

 

After nuking Two Sun, Scythe and Spider made it all the way to Washington in their fusion powered M113. Then the casing on the ACAV's fusion core failed, and they had to find a new one. Spider stayed behind to guard the vehicle, while Scythe took the new friends they made along the way North to the Drowned City, to find a new one.

 

(I had three returning players from the Two Sun series, but only one of them brought a character from that game. The others made new ones)

• Elizabeth "Scythe" Forscythe, scavenger from the ruins of Two Sun
  
• Professor Delores, high powered scientist and Amazon
• Dr Emily Ridgeway, surly drugrunner
  
• Chews on Fat, smooth talking tribal and "honorable cannibal"

Play began at Thanh Tran, an old Vietnamese cultural center in South Seattle, which now sat right on the waterfront in the flooded city. Chews On Fat, descended from a tribe of Chinese-American internees, angrily began tearing the anti-Chinese propaganda posters down, but was interrupted by Harbormaster Osman, owner of the docks and restorer of canoes and wood burning steamboats.

Osman gave the Seekers a basic rundown of the situation in the Drowned City.

Based on the previously linked map by Jeffrey Linn

 

• Bainbridge
• That’s Pirate country. Not somewhere you go without serious firepower, or an invitation.
• Capitol Island
• Used to be a tribe that lived there. Now the place is overrun with Orclaws and killer robots. Couple of students from FU went out there to do a research paper a little while back. Told ‘em it was a dumb idea, but did that stop them?
• Denny Reef
• Steer clear of there. The water is infested with Orclaws who tear everything to shreds. The Pearl Divers might know more.
• Gun Runners
• Just head East down the coast. Can’t miss ‘em.
• Establishing Shots
• Great place to grab a drink. Odabashian took some Shi up there a little while ago.
• Lahar
• Big field of radioactive mud. I’ve heard tell of creatures living in the ooze
• North Seattle
• Used to be an alright place, until a raider tribe took it over. They grab everyone they can as slaves and send ‘em North to a dig site up at Lahar.
• Queen Anne
• One big heranadon roost. Keeps the scavengers away, at least.
• University District
• You don’t want to go there, friend. It’s full of talking metal fish, who sink your boat and throw you out - if they don’t just drown you.

 As for where they could find a fusion core,

• Those creepy cyborgs at the Zymogenetics plant are probably fusion powered. Good luck killing one, though.
• The Shi at Establishing Shots were looking for someone to do a little work for them. They’re from the bank, so you know they’re rolling in caps/
• I heard about some out of towners up by Northgate who brought some serious tech in with them. They might have a core.
• The pirates have an old fusion powered boat. I doubt they feel like sharing, so you’d have to take it from them.
• The Pearl Divers could pick up a core off the ocean floor for you, but they’ve got bigger problems to worry about at the moment.

The Seekers decided to wait on buying a boat until they had talked to the Pearl Divers, in their headquarters up the coast at the Admiral Theater. They stopped by High Point park to get a better view of the Sound, then proceeded to the theater.

The Pearl Diver tribe earned their living by diving to the ocean floor (200 feet below the surface) and collecting treasure. The Scientifically inclined Seekers noted that diving this depth without any coutnermeasures against nitrogen issues was almost biologically impossible - the Pearl Divers were probably mutated by a combination of wild strain FEV, radiation, and centuries of selection pressure. They also had a symbiotic relationship with the pacific tree octopuses that lived on the islands - working together to collect loot from the ocean floor.

The place was full of Pearl Divers, clad in raincoats and accompanied by the tree octopuses, who swung from lamp posts and scurried along the rain soaked pavement behind them. The Divers let the Seekers into the theater after a brief interrogation about the purpose of their visit. Squid, Chief Pearl Diver, was obsessing over a huge grid map of the city. Everyone was carrying hunting rifles and the walls were decorated with barnacle encrusted junk from the ocean floor.

Squid explained that the Pearl Divers were at war with the Krakens, a tribe of slavers who lived in North Seattle. The Pearl Divers gave treasure from the seafloor to the Gun Runners, who supplied them with weapons. Problem was, the Gun Runners also sold firearms to the Krakens, in exchange for the profits from slavery.

The Seekers asked if the Pearl Divers could help them find a fusion core. Squid offered her assistance finding one on the ocean floor, if they could handle two problems:

1. Winning the war against the Krakens
2. Dealing with the swarms of Orclaws that lived in Denny Reef, the place most likely to hold a sunken fusion core

The two problems were related. The Orclaws once lived in harmony with a tribe called the White Spots, who were cruelly betrayed and enslaved by the Krakens. The Orclaws held a vigil over the drowned ruins of downtown Seattle, angrily killing anything that entered until their lost podmates were returned to them. 

So just fix all that and yeah, she'd get them a fusion core.

The Sentinels decided to visit the Gun Runners. If they could convince them to stop selling to the Krakens, that would give the Pearl Divers the edge they needed. They marched back down the coast to the old garage where the Gun Runners had set up their workshop. Ada was eager to sell them weapons, but not interested in cutting off trade with the Krakens. Unless the Pearl Divers got her some pre-war weapon prototypes sunk off Denny Reef. The same area infested with Orclaws. The Seekers saw a pattern emerging. They bought some throwing spears from the Gun Runners and went back to the docks at Thanh Tran. They bought a canoe and set out into the Sound.

Their first destination was the Establishing Shots bar. The pre-war tower was only half submerged, and the bar was in the revolving restaurant at the top. It was a long climb, about 400 feet of metal staircases. At the top, the Seekers were welcomed by the super mutant bartender Edison and his apprentice Cray. He offered them a free round of distilled beverages, to give them a taste of what he had to offer.

• Bog: Whiskey made from decaying, compressed organic matter. Boosts armor and damage
  
• Grog: Rum made from pre-war sugar snack foods. Boosts HP
  
• Spruce: Clear spirits flavored with pine, citrus and blackberries. Boosts crit chance
  

Edison

 

There were three Shi drinking at a table in the bar. One introduced himself to the Sentinels: he was an Agent of the NCR's Economic Stabilization Bureau, part of the anti counterfeiting task force. Someone in the Drowned City was making bottlecaps with a press, and his group was in charge of shutting down their operation. Unfortunately, his team had taken a hit and weren't in any shape to finish the job. If the Sentinels helped, he'd pay them handsomely. The Sentinels inquired further, and his forensic expert explained the situation: someone in North Seattle was minting new caps and tumbling them with radioactive dust, to disguise them as the real thing. They were spending the caps at the Gun Runners' outlet store on the Wedgewood Peninsula to buy weapons. The Gun Runners hadn't proven receptive to the Shi's request for an interview. They could take the news back to headquarters, and possibly start an economic war. They'd rather take care of the situation here in Puget Sound. If the Seekers could find the press and shut it down, the Shi would furnish them with the fusion core they needed.

The Sentinels also asked Edison if he had any work for them. He offered 200 caps for samples of pre-war brews from the South side of Seattle, near Georgetown. They'd be underwater, but the Sentinels could loot a pre-war dive shop in North Seattle to find SCUBA gear.

The Sentinels decided to start smaller and visit Queen Anne island to find some loot, just North of Establishing Shots. Everyone warned them that this island was a rookery for heranadons - giant storks with 20 foot wingspans. The Sentinels promised to be careful.

The island was full of treasure, beneath mounds of blackberries and towering evergreen trees. The Sentinels recovered a stun gun and some rockets from the old houses. Then a pair of heranadons approached. The Sentinels spotted them and hid, but Chews on Fat wanted to kill one of them for a trophy. He tossed a spear at it and wounded it. The bird lunged into the window of the house, narrowly missing Chewie and blocking the window so the other bird couldn't attack. Scythe stunned it with a lucky shot to the head, and Professor Delores killed it with her sledgehammer. The other bird tried to get them, but ran away after they pelted it with spears and lasers. They quickly dragged the corpse into the house, retrieved their spears, butchered it, and took the cleaned corpse back to the boat.

The Seekers sold the taser and the rockets to Edison. They made a lovely waterproof cape from the beast's blue and grey feathers, which Professor Delores put on. They gave the heranadon corpse to Edison, so he could soak, dry, glaze and roast it for everyone to eat. They were so annoyed at carrying the body up 400 feet of stairs that Scythe fixed the bar's elevator, earning a free bottle of grog from Edison. Dr Ridgeway bought a bottle of bog with some of her earnings from scavenging. Professor Delores used her mixology knowledge to combine the two into a cocktail that gave the benefits of both, without stacking the intoxication penalty.

 

The team decided to go back to Queen Anne and search for more treasure. They recovered some shotgun shells and a suit of security armor, but were chased off by five heranadons, who only avoided attacking because of Chewie's convincing threat display. The Exiles rowed their canoe back to the bar, took the elevator up to the top, and paid Edison the group rate to sleep there for the night.

Next day, the Seekers charted a course for Slaver Bay. They sailed North for Green Lagoon, but were waylaid by a group of singing buccaneers in a wood burning steam launch. These were the Seafair Pirates - raiders who found a case of old tapes documenting an ancient ritual of blood and booze practiced by the pre-war Seattleites. The Seekers had been told that they loved to steal things, but loved adventure and excitement even more. So they offered them the Seafair Pirates a parlay. They heard the slavers in the North had a huge stash of bottlecaps and were digging for buried treasure. They were planning a raid, and wanted the Seafair Pirates to come with them and claim a share of the treasure. The boatswain was agreeable to the proposal, and only extorted the Seekers for a flask of whiskey and some energy cells for their laser rifles. He told them to call him on the shortwave tomorrow once they'd reconnoitered the target of the raid. The Pip Boy Scythe got from Vault 25 would work.

With that arranged, the Seekers rowed into Slaver's Cove. They noticed right away that the Krakens - the raider tribe that controlled North Seattle - were also armed with newly manufactured long guns and, like the Pearl Divers, also kept tree octopuses as pets and war animals. There weren't actually that many slaves around, but there were a lot of banners and flags with a big S on them, which also appeared on the nylon tunics worn by the tribals.

The toughest of the slavers, Humboldt, asked the Sentinels what their business was in Kraken hunting grounds. The Sentinels explained that they were here to buy slaves, and also to take some diving equipment from the old Lighthouse Dive Center. Their plan was to undercut the Pearl Divers, attacking their bottom line and directly benefiting the Krakens. Humboldt wasn't convinced. He "invited" them at gunpoint to visit the Chief.

The Chief's longhouse was an old school. He held court in the lunchroom, where one of his slaves lounged naked on a couch dragged in from the teacher's lounge, eating blackberries and drinking spruce. This guy obviously wasn't a tribal, he had eyeglasses and only a handful of octopus ink tattoos. He observed the Seekers with mild interest, and was about to strike up a conversation when the Chief burst in. He wasn't selling any slaves, only buying them. But he was happy to let the Seekers take the diving equipment, in exchange for a bottle of liquor. The Seekers tried to bargain him down and get it for free. He decided to introduce them to the "outlanders" who he sold the slaves to.

The Outlanders lived in an apartment building across the street from Northgate mall, just a mile South of lahar. The Seekers could see the steaming field of radioactive mud stretching out to the horizon. The mall had been converted to a slave barracks, but was empty at the moment - slaves working out at a mysterious dig site in the mud. The apartment was fortified and sealed air tight. There was a vertibird parked on the roof of the attached movie theater. The Chief hammered on the intercom. Ten minutes later, a soldier in power armor with yellow bug eyes came out of the airlock, plasma rifle slung at hip level.

 

The Chief asked if the Sentinels could scavenge the dive shop. The Sergeant told him she didn't care what some tribal did with pre-war junk. Then she actually looked at the Sentinels. They didn't look like tribals. She asked them if they knew how to read. They told her they did. She brought them into the lobby of the apartment building - not the sealed interior of the building past the airlock, but out of earshot of the tribals. She told them she had work she needed done, that she couldn't trust the tribals with. She'd give them a machine that could make as many bottlecaps as they wanted. All they had to do was

• Get her a book on viticulture
• Get her several doses of Fixer
• Deal with the robots infesting the dig site at the old Mercy Arcology

Professor Delores' scientific knowledge gave her a good working understanding of viticulture. The Seekers were able to do the first job by just answering questions and writing down what she knew. Over the conversation, they figured out why the Sergeant wanted to know more about winemaking: she came up with it during a "morale building exercise" with her squad, as something they could do in restored America. She gave up on restoring America a long time ago, but she promised the guys she'd get them the winery. The slaves digging at lahar were supposed to be excavating Vault 10, so her squad could take their GECK. Then they'd fly over the mountains and disappear. And the tribals weren't bringing in slaves like they used to, so if the Seekers could clear out the Mercy Arcology of robots so the vertibird could winch out the old digging machine there, that would be just super. As a good faith payment, she gave them a sack of 500 freshly minted bottlecaps. Then she gave them a radio frequency to reach them on and kicked them out.

The Chief pretended he hadn't been listening at the door. He invited the Seekers back to the school for drinks to celebrate. On the way back, Humboldt whispered to the Seekers that things hadn't always been this fucked up. They used to be part of the same tribe as the Pearl Divers - the Ink Spots. They were even friends with the White Spots, the people they had betrayed and enslaved. It wasn't right. But there wasn't anything he could do about it. The Chief liked the outlanders, they made him rich and powerful. Maybe if they did something to make him feel small, like taking one of his slaves, he'd turn against them.

Back at the longhouse, the Kraken Chief poured spruce for everyone. Professor Delores drank him and his octopus under the table, while the rest of the group conversed with his favorite slave, the guy they met earlier. Turns out, he was one of the researchers from Followers University, who came to the town to study the orclaws. He went "undercover" with the Krakens and managed to find some surviving White Spots. He learned their songs. If he could just get back to Olga (the other researcher) on Capitol Island, he could find a way to talk to the orclaws.

The Seekers had already disabled the Chief and his octopus with alcohol, but the guards outside were an issue. The players came up with a complicated plan where they switched clothing, dressing up Sean the researcher as one of them so that he could leave the longhouse and the guards would be none the wiser. That meant that one of the players had to stay behind and sneak out later, since the guards would notice if one too many people left the building. So Scythe stayed behind and got caught trying to sneak out, and made up an elaborate excuse about strip poker. Which the tribals had never heard of, so she had to explain card games to them. She claimed the other characters had wandered off with her clothing, and she needed to find them. They followed her around in the dark to make sure nobody tried to kidnap her (she was a guest of the Chief and they'd get in trouble), until she stumbled back to the canoe. Sean was hidden in the gunwhale, so the guards never realized he was gone.

The Seekers rowed back to Establishing Shots. They bought Sean some pants and a coat from Edison's stock of tourist trash. They had a plan for tomorrow:

• Take Sean to Capitol Island to meet up with Olga and compare notes, then find a record store and build a sound system to communicate with the Orclaws
• Lure the Enclave Deserters away from their fortified apartment by radioing that the Seekers had cleared out Mercy Arcology, and they should fly out in the vertibird to winch it up
  
• Recruit the Orclaws to free the White Spots in an assault on the slave barracks at the same time as the Pirates launched their raid
  
• Recruit the Pearl Divers to attack the Krakens at the same time as the Orclaw and Pirate raids

Along with assorted Gun Runners shopping and looting and exploration.

 

 

So far, so good. The players met most of the factions and chose a path forward. They seriously considered finishing the Enclave quests to get the bottlecap press (and take it out of commission for the Shi for a fusion core). They had already got 1/3 of the Sergeant's jobs done, and the next two didn't seem that difficult. But Chews on Fat was adamant that helping old world slavers was unacceptable.

 

The value of the Barter skill really came to the fore this session. The Seekers tried to negotiate better deals for every transaction, and failed most of the time.

 

I went a little easy on the players in a couple places, letting them weasel their way out of what should have been shootouts. First when they pressed their luck going back to Queen Anne after killing a heranadon, and again when they made some truly lame excuses to the Krakens at Slaver's Cove. And sidelining the combat encounters means that all the perks and stat points the players have sunk into fighting are less useful. But "diplomacy now, combat later" is a good way to let players actually choose what they want to do with a sandbox, instead of having their side chosen for them when a faction attacks them.

More to come after next session.