Some years ago, out New California way, our Storyteller found himself on a trail he had
walked many times before- gathering stories, and learning a thing or two about this wild
wasteland of ours.
It was then that he ran into the one they call “Ranger Helen Tanner”.
You see, this Ranger was looking for someone; a nasty feller who was high-tailing it to
the Commonwealth.
She was poised to bring him to justice, and she needed our Storyteller to do it.
So they traveled together, and somewhere along the way you could say they became friends.
In their quest to capture the outlaw, they met other wastelanders too and soon had a
posse of their very own.
This man they were chasing was no ordinary brigand.
He was a tinman of sorts, a cyborg created by the New California Republic using the DNA
of some long dead hero.
His kin weren’t what made him bad though.
In his mad quest for power, he clocked a body count so high it’d make a deathclaw blush.
So you can understand why our gang didn’t fare so well when they finally cornered him.
Our Storyteller was knocked unconscious, and when he woke, the Ranger was gone, and another
of his posse lay dead.
Years went by, and the Storyteller searched the Commonwealth for any sign of his old friend
the Ranger, but he turned up nothing...
That was until a Diamond City Private Investigator uncovered a lead that pointed to Nuka World.
Welcome to Cappy's Cafe, Stranger.
What'll ya have?
Whataya got?
We only got three things here: Chems, liquor, and Nuka Cola.
Too bad.
I got me a hankerin' for...
Sunset Sarsaparilla.
We don't care for your kind around here, stranger.
How 'bout you wander on up to Maine and get yourself a bottle of Vim?
*group laughing*
I suppose you Nuka World folk are what they
call "Brand loyal".
But this place isn't just about Nuka Cola, you know.
Sure, when folk think of Nuka World, the first thing that comes to mind is rivers of glowing
blue soda, and animatronic pop bottles walking around.
But this theme park was so popular that the Nuka Cola Company built several other attractions
nearby.
Galaxy Zone was what people in the Back When times thought the future would look like.
They were off a bit about how things turned out, though.
Ain't that the truth.
And when folks weren't thinking about the future, sometimes they'd get to thinkin' about
the past.
They wanted to get a taste of the old pioneer days, so they built themselves a dude ranch
on the western frontier of Nukatown USA.
Called the place Dry Rock Gulch.
Tinhorns could go there to rope mechanical horses, flirt with anamatronic saloon gals,
and draw iron against a pokey robot deputy.
But that was all just a show for the tourists.
There weren't any real gunfights in Dry Rock Gulch until...
The gunfight at Buttercup Corral.
One evening, two hundred years after the Great War, a Ranger came to town.
She was a gin-u-wine daughter of the West, and this dude ranch feared her.
The cardboard townsfolk closed up their shutters, and the plastic tumbleweeds scurried out of
her path.
Even the bloodworms were afraid to crawl out of their holes, because they saw this ranger
carried the Big Iron.
None of the robot cowboys in Dry Rock Gulch had the grit to ask why she was there, but
if they had, she woulda said-
I'm to kill the man that done me wrong.
Now, the man who done her wrong, wasn't exactly a man.
He was a... tinman of sorts.
His body was a machine, forged by blacksmiths out in California.
His brain was cooked up in a pot of snake oil by a team of quacks in white coats.
Legends say that his metal veins had a single drop of blood from a long dead hero running
through them.
But, if that's true, this rotten apple fell far from the tree.
He was the meanest son of a gun to ever walk the land.
He could strangle a yao guai with his bare hands, Nightstalkers died when they bit him,
and he once killed the entire town of Saint Louis single-handedly.
He didn't come to Dry Rock Gulch alone, though.
He had used a bit of that hero's blood to brew up a posse of his own.
They all looked just like him, were just as mean, but all they could say was their own name.
"Vault Dweller."
This here tin man and his gang of homunculi had killed one of the Ranger's friends, turned
her dog against her, and dragged her away to a far off land.
But the ranger somehow got away from them, out in the wilds of the Glowing Sea.
Before she left, she grabbed two things-
The Big Iron?
Yup.
And the other thing?
Now friends, I don't know much about this world, but I can tell you this:
A girl loves her dog.
Now, this Ranger's dog was just a dog brain in a jar- But, with her pooch, and her shootin'
iron, she gave the Cyborg the slip.
Took her years to recover, but she eventually tracked down the tinman and his gang again.
Learned they had come to Nuka World, and not to visit the gift shop.
Right in the middle of Dry Rock Gulch was a place called Buttercup Corral, where the
metal ponies spent their days.
It was there that the Ranger caught up with that posse of clones.
The Tin Man himself was nowhere in sight, but the Ranger was happy to throw down with
his look-a-likes.
It was over in a second and the ponies gathered round.
There before them lay the bodies of the dwellers on the ground.
Oh they might have went on living but they made one fatal slip.
When they tried to beat that ranger with the big iron on her hip.
So what happened then?
Did the Ranger catch this guy, the cyborg?
Nope, but she ran into an old friend, and they went looking for the cyborg together.
*scoffs*
Nuka World's a big place.
The Ranger and her friend didn't know where to start.
So her friend went into a raider bar and lathered the local desperados until someone spilled
the beans.
He'd be pretty stupid to come here alone looking for a fight.
We'd have him outnumbered seven to one.
He ain't stupid, and he ain't alone.
That's what storytellers call a "Paradigm Shift".
Most of those sequoia revolvers only hold five cartridges.
But Tanner's gun was customized to hold six.
That's why I think of it as-
The Big Iron!
A man in a blue Vault-Tec jumpsuit.
With the number 13 on his back.
Where is he?
There's no one here like that.
Anyone tough guys show up and, Overboss Colter makes 'em fight in the gauntlet.
Maybe he's in disguise.
A new guy in one of the gangs, that keeps a low profile.
Might talk funny.
California accent like mine.
Yeah, there's a new guy with the Operators.
He says "Pop" instead of "Soda" and he says words all funny, like he can't pronounce Bumper
Cars and Safari.
The Safari.
That's where he's going.
Let's "mosey".
Wait.
I gotta know.
How you'd get away?
The cyborg.
You gave 'em the slip in the Glowing Sea.
And why is your dog just a brain in a jar?
Now that is a story for ano-
*gun shot*
Are you still saying that after all these years?
You really haven’t changed a bit huh?
I was about to say the same to you.
Raider scum.
You wanna tell me, why the hell someone doesn't come to Nuka World and just kill every damned
one of these bastards?
You wanna tell me what happened in the Glowing Sea?
Want to tell me what happened to ED-NA?
That... is a-
I know…