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| View of the Surrounding Area from Vault 76 |
After reaching the bottom of the stairs and killing the two red-star robots, I decided I needed to find myself some kind of shelter. Clearly Appalachia is a lot more dangerous than the Overseer had expected, and if I wanted to survive, I needed a home base and some food and other supplies to see me through.
According to my Pip-Boy, there was some kind of house to the west, an old lumber mill a little further south, and another house further away to the southeast. The main trail seemed to be heading south, but I thought I would start with the closest place, which was southwest of me, and then explore the others. I knew there was a good chance I would find one of the other teams settled in at these nearby places, even though we were told to spread out, but I thought it was worth the chance to find out if anyone knew anything about what happened to my team.
I started walking west, keeping to the higher ground so that I could see what was coming below. Soon, I ran across another badly decayed body. It didn't look like it had been disturbed recently, which made me wonder if anyone from the Vault had come this way. Or maybe the healers from the other groups cautioned against searching these bodies in case they had some kind of disease?
My need to survive the day won out over my fears of some unnamed disease. The man had a machete by his side, but I already had one that I got from the two women I spoke with earlier, so I checked the body carefully for anything else. All I found was a nearly illegible note written to Paul (the dead guy) by someone named Maria. He was supposed to spend a few days watching our vault to see if anyone came out of it. Looks like Paul was killed before he could report back, and Maria didn't bother to come looking for him. That made me sad.
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| The Moonshiner's Shack South and West of Vault 76 |
The house I was looking for turned out to be two poorly constructed buildings mostly containing a bunch of junk. The most interesting thing was a fermenter, apparently used for making alcoholic drinks, and a robot-assisted weapons workbench, which I would have loved to spend some time fiddling with. But there were already two men there, calling themselves settlers, who had just arrived at the place recently and were trying to fix it up so they could move in.
They told me the fermenter was for making a kind of drink called Moonshine. I forgot to ask what the name means. There was a partial jug of the stuff still in the building, along with the dead body of a settler who had apparently come to this place some days earlier and been killed. Oddly, they hadn't removed the body yet. Maybe because of the smell? I wondered if they were planning to use the structure or maybe just burn it to get rid of the body, but I didn't ask.
When I first arrived, the two men were under attack by these giant forest ticks. The ticks are aggressive and very fast. They grab hold of a victim and quickly suck their blood, filling up like a balloon as they draw it in. To give you an idea of how dangerous they can be, there was a dead, two-headed Brahmin outside which might have been one of their victims. I helped kill two of the ticks, using my machete, and one of the settlers offered me some Radaway in appreciation for my help. Probably should have refused, since I already had some, but I decided not to let politeness get in the way of survival. If the settler felt he could afford to offer it, I could take it and just say "Thank You."
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| Giant Tick with a Belly Full of Blood |
I found a good vantage up above the lumber mill to have a look around. There were some robots on treads running around in the fields near the mill (see photo below, in the middle right), but no sign of any other activity. From there, I could also see what looked like a farm in the distance. I thought that might be the perfect place for me to settle, with easy salvage available at the mill. The farm was probably already occupied, but I figured it would be worth a look. By this point, the sun was getting lower and I figured I might only have a couple of hours of daylight left, so I headed down the hill to see what I could find.
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| Small Pond to the North of Gilman's Lumber |
I first encountered a small pond to the north of the mill. It was kind of a peaceful spot, except for the frenetic lumber robots running around talking about trees being the enemy. At least they had a target other than me. Something to be thankful for, I suppose. There were a few Snaptails growing around the pond, as well as a Firecap. If I couldn't find anything else for dinner, I figured I could at least cook those and put something in my stomach. Even better, I found a bottle of whiskey in the blue cooler in the boat!
I also collected some water there, but my Pip-boy told me it was radioactive, so I would need to decontaminate it before I could drink it. One of the settlers at the Moonshine shack had mentioned needing water, so I gathered as much as I could carry and headed back up to the shack to see if they would let me boil it there. I was able to use their cooking setup, and that (surprisingly) seemed to remove most of the radiation. At least my Pip-Boy stopped complaining. I left some water with the settlers, and ended up with a couple of days' supply for myself.
The lumber company still had a lot of wood lying around, including some long, straight logs that would be perfect for making building materials. There was still some junk in the two buildings, and I found a couple of skeletons of people long dead. One of them had a note that sounded like it might have come from before the bombs dropped. The fact that nobody had bothered to move these skeletons and take over the place told me that I probably shouldn't try to stay here overnight. Turns out the place was infested with Giant Ticks, just like the Moonshine Shack up the hill.
One of them got hold of me and nearly sucked me dry of blood before I finally killed it. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but I started to feel light-headed almost right away, as if the tick was drawing off enough to slow the blood flow to my brain. Maybe it did!
I tried to shoot it with my gun at first, but it moved so fast that I used up my last two remaining bullets without hitting it. It got hold of me while I was switching to the machete. But I finally killed it, and eventually three others. Jumping up onto something didn't help because they are pretty good leapers. An all around nasty new addition to Appalachia.
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| Bus Where I Spent My First Night (Outside Gilman's Lumber Mill) |
It was getting late by this time, and rather than go explore the nearby farm, I decided it was best to hunker down for the night and go have a look in the morning. I considered staying on the upper floor of the mill, but with those ticks running around, I just didn't feel comfortable in such a wide open space. I wanted something a little more enclosed that could be shut off from Outside. I ended up spending the night on a bus I found on the road just outside the mill. I found a skeleton inside it, which was a little unsettling, but I managed to pull the door closed and move the skeleton aside so I could sleep on the long seat at the back of the bus. There were two bottles of beer in a little carrier on the seat next to the skeleton. The bottles were dusty but they were a nice treat. Dinner consisted of raw Firecap and Snaptail because I didn't have a way to make a fire yet. Not very satisfying, but at least it stopped the grumbling in my belly for awhile.
It got really cold overnight, which I wasn't expecting, and in the morning the skin on my face and neck felt very hot despite the chill in the air. I remembered learning about sunburn in my survival course but forgot all about it once I left the Vault. I decided I would need to find a hat of some kind to protect myself from the sun.
The morning was cold compared to the day before. I wasn't used to this kind of change in temperature. Inside the vault it was almost always a steady, comfortable temperature except for a few of the machine rooms that could sometimes get hot. The vault suit did a decent job of keeping me warm in the areas that were covered, but I could feel the cold air on my cheeks and hands. It made me realize there would be a number of challenges to living Outside that I hadn't really thought about.
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| Dried Up "Scorched" Statue Outside Wixon Farmhouse |
The farm near Gilman's Lumber Mill was identified on my Pip-Boy as Wixon Homestead. It was a dangerous place, overrun with these diseased humans with this raw looking red skin and strange green growths. They must have once been human, and they could still speak a few words and even wield weapons, but they seemed to have lost their humanity. Later, Duchess at the Wayward would tell me that they're called "Scorched". Several of these Scorched seem to have died standing up and then just dried out into statues holding various poses. It was really creepy.
Scorched are very aggressive. When I came across the first live one, it made a kind of hissing noise and started shooting at me right away. No warning. Fortunately, it wasn't a very good shot. I killed the first one with my machete after taking a minor wound, and then once I had its gun, I used it and the ammo I picked up to kill the rest. When I was done, I had three different types of new guns that used two different kinds of ammo. The best one seemed to be a pistol that my Pip-Boy identified as a 44 caliber manufactured gun. I also got a 308 handmade bolt-action pistol, and a 308 short hunting rifle. That gave me four different guns in total. I also picked up two more handmade pistols similar to the one I found by the vault entrance, and that gave me a chance later on to disassemble two of them for parts and to think about ways to improve them.
Not knowing which type of ammunition would be most common, or when I would have an adequate supply, I decided to keep all four types of guns, but to carry the 44 caliber on my hip and the hunting rifle in my hands. That way, I could use the rifle for distant targets, and the pistol when they got up close. I stored the others in my little pack.
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| Dead Scorched with Green Crystals Growing From Body |
I didn't come out of the battle with the Scorched unscathed, but was able to use a Stimpak to keep going. That left me with only three, and it was only my second day! The Wixon Homestead had several buildings in addition to the main house and quite a bit of junk. There were also robot-assisted workbenches in each of the outer buildings. One had a weapons bench, one an armor bench, and one a tinker's bench! I had scavenged a couple of pieces of leather armor by that point, and used the armor bench to repair them and clean them up. It wasn't much protection, but somehow I felt a little less exposed while wearing them. Maybe they would at least protect me from those blood-sucking ticks! I also took a closer look at my guns and tried to see if there were ways they could be improved. I found plans in the weapons workbench that were promising.
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| Wixon Homestead Cat |
Out in the yard, I found three or four chickens. I killed one and figured I would cook it up for lunch, but couldn't find a way to make a fire, so I ended up just carrying it and hoping to find a stove or way to make a campfire soon. I also found some carrots out in a garden beside the house. I ended up eating a couple of these for lunch.
All of the dangers I had faced in less than a day made me think that maybe my safest bet would be to head to the Wayward and see if there were fewer threats there. The answer turned out to be no! But it seemed like a good idea at the time, so after a few hours at the Wixon house, I continued on down the road toward the Wayward.
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| Covered Bridge Leading to the Wayward |
Turns out I didn't have that far to go. I came across a covered bridge that led across a wide stream and there was the Wayward to my left.
I'll write more tonight about the situation I found at the Wayward. Quite the introduction to the way of life Outside!
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