Episode 4: Joining the Responders

Flatwoods Sign with an Ominous Point of Pride

The night after I met Duchess and Mort, I stayed in the little motel next to the Wayward. The next morning, my priority was to get a full set of leather armor in case those raiders showed up again. Leather armor might not look like much, but with some metal plating between the layers, it can save your life...at least in theory. 

The Overseer had left her CAMP set up across the road from the covered bridge, complete with armor and weapon benches. I didn't see any robots around to help with the crafting, but I figured she wouldn't have left the benches if they weren't functional. So I decided to select the plans I wanted, provide the materials necessary for crafting a chest piece, and see what would happen. I then headed out to try to find some food, and when I came back a few hours later, it was done. Turned out that I had enough raw materials to make two leg pieces to complete my set, and once that was finished I was ready to head into Flatwoods to find some supplies.

Some men had set up a roadblock just southwest of the Overseer's CAMP. They hadn't bothered me the previous day while I was working on the armor, but it wasn't clear what their goals were. To avoid any trouble, I decided to skip the road and follow the river to get to town instead. The river's edge is mostly out of sight of the road, and there were many plants that I thought I could either use, or maybe sell to Duchess, when I returned. 

I already knew that I could use Snaptail to make sugar, and that Bloodleaf, Snaptail, and Firecap could be combined to cure diseases. We had a class in the vault on useful plants of Appalachia, including postwar mutants that were brought back by our early Scout Bots, and I still had notes on my Pip-Boy about their qualities and a few recipes. The Snaptail and Bloodleaf were pretty common, along with a glowing green mushroom that I collected just in case. Along the way, I met a couple of settlers who were trying to find bits of gold in the river using little metal plates. One of them gave me an Unstoppables comic book to read. They seemed friendly enough, but weren't yet having much luck finding gold.

Cultist Suicide Camp Between the Wayward and Flatwoods

The eeriest thing I've seen so far was a camp along the river between the Wayward and Flatwoods. I found five bodies there, all recently deceased. There was still a fire burning at their cooking station, so it had to have happened within the past day. They all wore masks that looked like a skull wrapped up in strips of cloth, with little fake horns sticking out from their heads. I found these ornate goblets with a few drops of the drink that ultimately killed them dried to the side. 

At first, I thought they might have accidentally drunk something poisonous, but then I found a note that suggested they were some kind of religious group and that they were looking forward to the afterlife. So I think they drank whatever the poison was on purpose! Seeing as how they didn't need their tents anymore, I decided to take one. I guess you could call it a survival tent. It would keep the rain off my head until I could build my own CAMP, and might be useful on long foraging trips.

I left the riverside when I came to a bridge. The city of Flatwoods was to my left, and the first building I encountered was something called the Green Country Lodge. It used to be a place for people to stay when they travelled by car, I think. I found a couple of settlers there trying to make a home out of it. One of them offered me some Radaway, which I accepted with thanks. 

Most of the rooms at the lodge had been boarded up, but there were two or three spaces that were accessible. One room was a gym with a bunch of lead weights. The lead would be great for making ammunition, so I took some of them to scrap later. I was also excited to find a Nuka Cola in a vending machine out by the pool! I wonder why it would still be in there after all this time? Makes me wonder if some of the robots running around are still supplying the machines. I tried it and it still tasted halfway decent. About the same as the Nuka Cola we had in the vault, except warm in this case. It would be great if I could figure out how to create a refrigeration unit someday.

Flatwoods turned out to be quite a good place to pick up materials for building and crafting. I was surprised it hadn't already been picked clean by the recent settlers. Aside from basic resources scrapped from items containing steel, aluminum, plastic, and so on, I found a few useful things - a couple of different lighters that work, so fire-building will be easier now. I found a nice, clean-looking hairbrush so I can keep my "award-winning" hair looking nice. I also found three rolls of toilet paper that seemed to be in good enough shape to use! One frustrating thing was that I found a locked safe and a locked supply pantry that I couldn't open because the Overseer didn't provide us with picks. We got training on how to pick locks, but no tools to do it! I got lucky, though. Just as I was heading out of town for the day, I found a bobby pin in a box near a weapons workbench in town. I think I can use it to help with picking some locks, but only until it breaks. I'll need to try to find more.

Dead Mole Rat at the Green Country Lodge

The trip into Flatwoods wasn't without danger. At the Green Country Lodge, I was attacked by two mole rats. I remember seeing footage of these taken by one of the Observation Eyebots. Mole rats have these underground tunnel networks and can pop up and attack quickly when a person or creature gets near. My new armor was helpful in limiting the damage they did to me, but they still drew some blood. Testing of mole rat meat in the vault showed that it was edible, so I harvested a bit of it to eat later.

I was also attacked by giant roaches several times while exploring Flatwoods. Roaches mostly seem to inhabit buildings, though I found two at some kind of covered space with benches along the roadway near the lodge. Roach meat is also supposedly edible, but I think I'll start with the mole rats and see how desperate I am before trying the roaches. I also killed a three-headed possum during my visit and harvested some meat from it. 

There were human bodies all over the place in Flatwoods. Not out in the streets, but on the porches of many of the houses. Some had been dead for at least several months. Some were probably newer settlers who had died in the past couple of weeks, suggesting there are still many dangers around the town. Some of the long-dead people were carrying holotapes. Apparently someone had asked the survivors of the war to record their survival stories, so I was able to learn who some of these people had been, and how they came to be here. I decided to keep the holotapes. I might put them together into a single holotape someday so their stories aren't forgotten. Most of them were here because they were working with a group called the Responders.

Two Responder Protectrons Trying to Recruit New Volunteers

The Responders were in control of Flatwoods until fairly recently. I would guess they've only been gone a year or less. I found several of them dead, so I think something bad must have happened. Some of their infrastructure is still up and running, though. There are a handful of working computers in town, some of their robots patrol the roads leading out of town, and they have an automated system for signing up as a volunteer. There's even a merchant robot that I found pacing around outside the church building. I read a diary entry that said the Responders began as medical and firefighting folks working to help survivors from the war.

I met an attractive woman named Heather Ellis in an old restaurant building across from the church. She was a big fan of the Responders and had even completed the automated Responder training. She was wearing a paramedic's uniform with the Responder logo on it (a red heart with an EKG line running through it, on a white background with a blue border). She said the Responders were all gone now, which was disappointing, but she asked if I wanted to join? I really like the idea of what they were trying to accomplish. It's basically the same goal that we were given by the Overseer - to help rebuild Appalachia. I started to wonder if some of the Responders might have come back with all of the new settlers? Maybe I could find some of them and start working with them. If not, I wonder if following their example, and learning more about what they were doing, would be a way to achieve the Overseer's goals?

I didn't find the Overseer on my first trip into town. I had one place left to explore, called the Vault-Tec Agricultural Research Center. Heather told me that the place had a lot of good salvage, but that it was overrun with "Feral Ghouls". I decided to come back and tackle that after I had carted all of my junk back to the Wayward so I could start building a CAMP. I would need a camp if I wanted to attract the raiders with the Crane Treasure Hunting sign. I also wanted to see if I could reprogram one of those Responder robots to come work for me at my CAMP. I thought that might speed things up. So I spent the next couple of days working on building up a CAMP and processing the materials I had acquired in Flatwoods.

Tristan's First CAMP just Northeast of the Wayward

Once I had a place to stay, and had gotten started on the Crane Treasure Hunting sign, I decided to head back into Flatwoods. After thinking on it for a few days, I decided to go ahead and join the Responders, even though they might not be around anymore. They would be a good model for the work the Overseer wanted us to accomplish, and maybe I could find some sign of them in another part of Appalachia. I also wanted to check out Vault-Tec Agricultural Research Center and see what I might find there. I hoped to plant a garden at my new CAMP, and thought that there might be useful tools, seeds, etc. to help me get started. I crafted a good supply of ammo out of the lead weights I found at the lodge, so I felt confident that I was ready to check the place out.

Signing up to be a Responder Volunteer was really simple. I was directed to obtain a water testing kit from Kesha McDermott. I thought I was out of luck, since all the Responders seem to have disappeared, but they have a directory of people on the volunteer terminal that records the last known location of all of the Responder leaders. They must must have been using satellites to track them somehow. Most of the locations were in Morgantown, but the terminal said Kesha was last known to be by the river over near the Agricultural Research Center. I assumed I wouldn't find her, but I headed over there and sure enough, I found her body lying on the bank beside the river. It was sad to see her like that. But her test kit was still there, so I took it and started collecting samples from the designated locations to do a proper test of the drinking water.

Vault-Tec Research Center from Across the River in Flatwoods

Soon after I found the body, I got an alert on my Pip-Boy about a problem with the Mr. Handies over at the Research Center. A voice came on saying that the Mr. Farmhand units were out of control and that the supervisors needed to be killed and then the server rebooted. This message made me wonder if maybe the Responders were still somehow active after all! There was mention of something called the "Forest Watch". Listening to the robots vocalize as they attacked me, I got the impression that they were searching for any kind of organic matter, including human bodies, and they were willing to kill us to get what they needed! 

I must say, I was really pleased with the performance of my new leather armor during this battle. It did a good job of blunting the damage from the robots' lasers. It took some time, but I used my hunting rifle to pick off the supervisors from somewhat of a distance, and then I fought my way through a bunch of Mr. Farmhands to get to the computer terminal in the basement of the Research Center and reset their targeting parameters to disregard humans. Fortunately, the Mr. Handies mostly went down with just one shot to the head, but destroying them did seem like a waste of good machinery.

I ended up with a bunch of wounds from the battle, but all of them were minor because of the armor. It held up very well to laser fire. There were some feral ghouls around as well, but not many. They're surprisingly fast, though. I learned to let them get in close before firing so that I don't miss. I'm definitely getting better at handling both the pistols and the hunting rifle. And I picked up some useful salvage from the destroyed robots and the Research Center itself.

I also found a holotape left by the Overseer. She seems to be traveling around to places she knows from her life before the vault. Her next stop is a town called Sutton. But I wonder if she stayed there, or moved on to a new place? I'm thinking that it could take a long time to find her if she keeps moving around like this.

Water Contamination Analyzer in the Flatwoods Church

With the Mr. Farmhands taken care of, I went and collected a water sample from the pump by the community garden in town, and then took it to a testing machine at the church. The water was found to be highly contaminated, as my Pip-Boy had been saying. But completing the task triggered another one related to hunting and cooking up Brahmin meat. It seems that the first priority of the Responders is to make sure volunteers know how to properly decontaminate water and thoroughly cook food. Smart, I guess. There are lots of diseases that come from improper preparation of food, and with the fairly high radiation levels in the water, improper decontamination could lead to long-term health problems.

When I had completed my tasks, I was made a "full" Responder volunteer and rewarded with some plans for making my own chemistry and tinker's benches. Those will come in handy, someday. 

I guess it's time to finish up the Crane Treasure Hunter sign and see what we can do about Duchess's raider problems. They haven't come back in the days since the first raider visited, but Duchess is clearly getting impatient with me. She keeps making comments about the things she can't do, or that she has to worry about, until the raider threat is dealt with. I had hoped the situation would resolve before now, but it looks like I will have to get involved after all.

I'll write more about that if I survive the next few days.