Thursday, August 26, 2010

Nos' Adventures, 8-22-77

August 22, 2277:


Despite the conditions, we managed to sleep decently enough – staying in bed until well after ten in the morning. It was good to give the stress of the previous day – both mental and physical – a chance to heal a bit.

After getting up, we had breakfast and lamented the lack of bathing amenities.

Once that was out of the way, we un-barred the second floor door, and used the skyway to get a peek outside. No new Raiders had moved in, though a couple of yesterday’s corpses appeared to be missing. Carried off by local fauna, we figured. The local carnivorous wildlife could certainly eat well following us around.

Since it appeared safe, we packed up our gear and headed out the front door, immediately tracking due south towards the ruins of DC proper.

We changed direction midway, to stay outside the ruins and head back towards the bridge that would lead towards home.

On reaching the bridge, we stopped; hearing gunfire in the distance. Lots of gunfire. Someone was having one hell of a shootout to the south.

We crept as far as one of the pylons for a destroyed second bridge. Further south, we could clearly see Raiders on one side of the river, engaged in a firefight with…

…Well, I’m not sure what they were, exactly. Were this a fantasy novel, I’d have sworn to you they were some form of ogre. Eight odd feet tall, green skin, heavily muscled, and extremely violent by the look of it.

The ogres were on the opposite side of the river, and were clearly beating the Raiders.

We moved further south, staying as low and quiet as possible; stopping again at an entrance to the metro system.

We could hear the remaining Raiders yelling from here. Something about “muties”. The rest was too difficult to make out with anything resembling certainty.

Whatever they were, the green things were hostile, and good at it.

I quickly improvised a rest, and took aim across the river – hoping to use the still-living Raiders’ fire as cover so that the things wouldn’t notice me surreptitiously helping the other humans out.

The big things were damnably tough. Chest shots barely fazed them, but head shots seemed to be every bit as effective on the ogres as they were on humans.

Unfortunately, the ogres were more skilled at killing than the Raiders were at surviving. I ran out of Raiders to use as cover before I ran out of monsters to shoot in the face. When the last Raider fell, there were still two of the green things standing – though both were bleeding, they didn’t seem to be perturbed by it.

Object of their rage gone, the ogres simply stood there, seemingly unsure what to do now.

I took the initiative, and used a trick I learned from the great Sergeant Alvin York; who said that when shooting at a line of turkeys, you always start at the rear so that the front birds didn’t know their friends were dying. The trick, it turned out, also worked on Germans.

I had to assume that if it was good enough for the Kaiser’s men, it was good enough for putting down these monsters.

My first round went into the monster in the rear, who of course was not being paid attention to by the one in the front. Putting both down had only taken a few seconds.

No more movement was visible on either side, so we moved in to loot the dead like any self-respecting vultures would.

These Raiders had been much the same as the ones Ria and I had been dealing with – armed primarily with light arms, generally in poor condition and with small amounts of ammunition.

I was surprised to find that my Pip-Boy informed me that the GNR signal was now coming in strong and clear. Before re-crossing the river to retrieve the ogres’ equipment, we stopped and listened.

I was disappointed to find that the station was not all Guns ‘n Roses. Rather, the station was named Galaxy News Radio; a sad coincidence. Sadder still, because the DJ had a screw loose. This Three Dog was a self-indulgent, pretentious twit. Something about a “good fight”, trees in the wasteland… Mention of a Brotherhood of Steel fighting said good fight. Still no detail of what exactly this Brotherhood was.

Heard an interesting warning of a place to the west, name of Evergreen Mills that was supposed to be a major Raider encampment. I filed that bit of info away for later as a place to pick up even more weapons.

We were on track to becoming veritable wasteland gun-runners.

When the prattle stopped, and the music started, we killed the broadcast and crossed the river to retrieve the other loot.

The ogres had had considerably better arms than the Raiders. We picked up several assault rifles of various flavor, and a couple more shotguns.

Now loaded down with enough arms to equip a few complete fireteams, we decided to call it good and make for home.

The trip home was thankfully uneventful. We stopped off in Megaton first; unloaded our excess arms and ammunition, and got the reward from Moira for the little jaunt through mine country.

That done, we headed directly back home.

As a faithful drone of Vault 101 maintenance, I’d had to make new keys for locks plenty of times, when the originals were lost or broken. Thankfully, this allowed me to make use of the workshop downstairs to get working keys for the doors to our new home. While not a security system worthy of the name, it would at least deter casual interlopers, or at the very least allow us to know when the place had been entered by the kicked in door or broken lock.

Unlocked and inside, we stowed the weapons we had decided to keep for later inspection and/or maintenance, dumped our armor, and declared that nothing more productive would be done during the day.

After all, there was a shower and a bed and a fridge full of food that all had our names on them.

10 comments:

  1. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised to drop by between levels of Doom to find not just one, but TWO new chapters of Nos' Adventures! I was beginning to worry that you'd given up on it, but I'm happily mistaken.

    Now I feel kinda goofy that I got discouraged and frustrated with the Doomworld geeks and deleted every post from my blog. I'm gonna have to get around to posting something new about my WIP...

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  2. Oh, there's been a myriad of things in the way.

    Writer's block, housework, sleep deprivation, depression.

    Hadn't given up by a long shot; I just didn't feel like bothering.

    But whilst laying in bed this morning trying (unsuccessfully) to go to sleep, I was struck with ideas for where I want the story to go in the near future. Trouble is, to get there I had to write through the current block where I had the 8-21 entry left hanging.

    So since I was up anyway this morning I just sat down and hammered my way through to be able to move on to more fun areas.

    I worry about the balance sometimes, though. I have this odd worry that people aren't going to like it as much if it's too much text and not enough visual aids.

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  3. Well, I worry about that and the wanton brutality and death.

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  4. Also!

    Don't get discouraged, etc. Doom's not my game, but your maps looked plenty good to me.

    Good as anything can in 256 colors, at least :p

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  5. Thanks for the vote of confidence. I'm not giving up yet either, but I just had one of those moments we females often have and simply deleted all the blog posts. I'm still working on a huge map though, and when I feel I have some areas completed to the extent that they are screenshot-worthy I'll post some pics on the blog.

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  6. Besides, I think there are only three people alive who have looked at that blog anyway. Okay, maybe four...

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  7. I look at it Herculine I just never know what to say on it and I feel the need to spam Matt's blog right now with this post.

    Along with wanting more of Nos Adventures.

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  8. Argh! You fans and your demands!

    Seriously, though; I'm not stopping the Adventures or anything, and since I brute-forced my way through this last writers' block, the story's going to get better (at least in my opinion), since it can move on to new places I've had inspiration for.

    It's just that... other things have been drawing my attention this weekend. Went and bought a stack of novels and manga last week. Just about through them, though.

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  9. What? READING? Who does THAT anymore? Well, it does have pictures, so I suppose it doesn't count...

    Seriously though, I love to read too. When in more confined environments I've read the entire INVADERS PLAN decology by L. Ron Hubbard and all the DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN novels I could get my hands on. In the realm of graphic novels I of course love WATCHMEN and V FOR VENDETTA and think both those movies were sorely lacking. Lately, however, I can't seem to see the pages of books very well with this computer screen mounted to my face.

    Maybe I need to get locked up again...

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  10. Not all graphic.

    I did pick up the latest volumes of the three series I actively read: Season 2 volume 2 of Rosario + Vampire; Volume 5 of Samurai Harem; and volumes 4 and 5 of Sumomomo Momomo: the strongest bride on Earth.

    And yes, I do realize the great irony of a guy like me being hooked on silly highschool harem comedies.

    But, I did also pick up volume 14 of Hideyuki Kikuchi's Vampire Hunter D novels (also, translators? All kinds of fuck you for breaking Dark Road up into two novels. I want the ending now, damn you!) and Nemesis by James Swallow - the latest in the Horus Heresy series from the Warhammer 40k universe.

    Of course, I was also buying this month's issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine at the same time, so I did get some odd looks...

    I'd been being good and saving my monies, but I was going nuts. TV is a wasteland, FFXII is turning out to be garbage, and I'm spending entirely too long on 4chan again.

    I figured I needed to get away from the computer for awhile, and $75 was less important than what's left of my sanity.

    Haven't been able to get too heavily into western graphic novels. Most follow the comic book theory of "VIOLENCE VIOLENCE VIOLENCE LOOK AT ME I'M FUCKING NUTS IMPLIED NUDITY HAVE WE HAD SOMETHING BLOW UP IN THE LAST TEN SECONDS?"

    Like watching a hollywood flick except that I have to read at the same time.

    Did read Crossed recently though, which was surprisingly good and a semi-original twist on the whole zombie apocalypse thing.

    Used to be heavily into comics, but lost interest about '95. There was a pair of things that finally got to me.

    "Superman is dead! OH WAIT NO HE ISN'T LOL"

    and Magneto ripping the adamantium (a non-ferrous metal, I might add) out of Wolverine but him somehow still having the claws. Fucking retcons.

    Within a few months I those I had pretty much lost interest and went over to proper novels exclusively.

    Ended up getting into manga early last year when Rosario + Vampire premiered here in the states (since I love harem comedy and I love vampires and the anime version isn't due to be dubbed anytime soon), and gradually noticed other fun series as I spent time looking around the racks.

    Have developed quite the taste for Ken Akamatsu's work... much as it shames me to admit it.

    Still try to read real printed-word novels when I see something that interests me, but not much does these days. So much is hackneyed re-dos of shit that wasn't any good in the 70's. The few series I did like had their run and ended - probably for the best in all, but when the author doesn't do any more work in the same genre after that it makes it difficult to find new books to read.

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