Defilers! Ye dare enter the kingdom of Ludd? Unannounced?!?
And you must be Ludd, if I’m not mistaken?
Son of a-
*scared beep*
Ye shall address us as King Ludd. Our followers have been humbled in defeat, yet we are still
a king.
You’re a first generation mutant. Handcrafted by The Master himself.
This is Ludd? I imagined he’d be shorter… …A lot shorter…
Ye have befouled the blood of our subjects with medicines of the old times. A single
day ago, these trespasses would have brought your death.
And what about today?
Today? We are broken…
Thrice we have seen horrors wrought by those bearing the cursed number 13. A century ago
The Master perished in fire kindled by the one they call “Vault Dweller”. Though
King Ludd was not there, we felt it in our mind.
When the Master died the first generation super mutants were scattered. You were left
leaderless.
Yes. Two score years ago we watched from Broken Hills as the setting sun was dwarfed by The
Chosen One's retribution.
The defeat of the Enclave.
Since The Chosen One rekindled the fires of the Great War we have walked the road that
connects this river with the West. We… I taught those who would listen about the downfall
of the old world. Factories spewed weapons, and men wielded power they did not forge themselves.
The humans of the old world were fools! Did they make the bombs they unleashed? Cage the
atoms? Understand the fire their hands did seize? No! We hammered the metal of this sword
with our own hands. It is pure. Now a machine wearing the face of The Vault Dweller lays
waste to all we have built. Our knights disappeared on their patrols, guards vanished from their
posts.
Then he came with dogs coated in metal- abominations. The innocent were killed in their sleep…
*sad beep*
The robot with a human brain. The one that killed your people. We're trying to catch
it.
They say the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Will you help us?
“What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What
dread grasp? Dare its deadly terrors clasp?" May ye die at the hands of this abomination,
or it at yours. I care not.
I think he’s done talking.
We've done all we can here. Let's not push our luck.
Think we’ll run into more trouble on this side of the river?
Anything NCR intel can tell us Ranger?
Huh...? Sorry. I can’t get what King Ludd said out of my head. It sounded like the android
we’re chasing didn’t just do battle with the Luddites, it slaughtered them. But why?
The android has killed before, I’ve seen the aftermath with my own eyes, but in the
past it’s only killed to escape- to secure its own freedom. We know the android had a
Luddite disguise, why not use it to pass through King Ludd’s territory undetected? Why the
massacre?
I’ll tell you why. Because that android you’re talking about has the brain of the
Vault Dweller inside it! If the Chosen One has taught me anything it’s that some “heroes”
just like killin’.
You said it yourself Ranger. The Vault Dweller was a powerful individual, and if history
has taught us anything, it’s that powerful individuals sometimes leave a trail of corpses
in their wake.
And what about King Ludd? All that poetry. Half of it sounded like it came out of pre-war
books, half just sounded crazy. "Dwarfing the sunset".
He was talking about the defeat of the Enclave. A powerful force that’s still leaving a
trail of bodies today. The oil rig that the Enclave used had once been owned by Poseidon
Oil, back before the war. In those days, they pumped so much oil out of the ground that
they needed huge boats the size of a city to transport it. One such tanker – Poseidon
Marine Vessel Valdez it was called - had sat in San Francisco's harbor, rusting since the
war.
The Chosen One had to run all over the wasteland locating gizmos and repair parts to make it
run. Even had to infiltrate the Enclave base at Navarro to pilfer a few things. Got themselves
a suit of power armor and marched around like a soldier - and no one bat an eye.
-The Chosen One explored the Enclave oil rig, and eventually located the holding cells.
Trapped within were the people of The Chosen One's village, Arroyo, and their distant relations,
the dwellers of Vault 13.
The Enclave was using the villagers to test a modified form of the Forced Evolutionary
Virus. The same goo that turned King Ludd into a green giant. This version had been
altered by The Enclave's Chemical Corps so that it killed anyone who came in contact
with it.
The people from Vault 13 were a control group of sorts - a gene pool that hadn't been contaminated
by the impurities of the wasteland. This control group had... similar results.
While looking for a way to free these test subjects, The Chosen One discovered the true
face of The Enclave.
The inbred descendants of six generations of politicians, billionaires, corporate execs.
The alleged President and Vice President of the United States and marketing directors.
The President was helpful
enough to explain that the Enclave intended to release their modified Forced Evolutionary
Virus into the atmosphere.
The only way for true humans, and democracy, to be safe is to cleanse the mutants from
the globe. We humans will take back that which is rightfully ours.
The Enclave considered everyone outside their own little gene pool to be subhuman mutants.
Their virus would have killed every human, ghoul, super mutant; everyone in the world,
except for the Enclave members who had been inoculated by their experiment antidote.
Experimental?
Apparently they were still working out the kinks, right up to the last minute. The Vice
President himself volunteered as a test subject for the early trials of the antidote. Turned
him into what some people called a drooling idiot.
The Vice President didn't make it off the oil rig. Which was probably best for everyone.
Did the other bad people survive?
No, very few people made out alive. The Villagers and people from Vault 13 escaped, but when
The Chosen One tried to return to the ship-
-somebody was there to greet them.
You've gotten a lot farther than you should have, but then you haven't met Frank Horrigan
either. Your ride's over, mutie.
Time to die!