-and The Chosen One woke up to find the girl's father standing over the bed, waving a shotgun.
They were married that very day at the Modoc church.
A sexy farmer's daughter and a shotgun wedding? Are you sure you didn't get this story from
that "erotic holovid" out of New Reno?
There is a kernel of truth even in-
Something is approaching from the East.
Oh. It is the robot.
*expository beep*
She says she didn't encounter any patrols West of St. Louis.
That's convenient for us.
Think the Luddites know we're coming? Got some kind of passenger pigeon network that
told 'em about us?
They're either over-confident, or luring us into a trap.
King Ludd rules a thousand mile stretch of the country. He's not stupid...
Neither is the android. We might be able to use this in our favor. Any sign of an ambush
and we head to the closest city with a bridge across the Mississippi, then set up our own
ambush there. Let’s move out.
Still got a ways to St. Louis... Last night, you were gonna tell us about what The Chosen
One found at Vault 13, all them years ago.
The Chosen One expected to find it full of their kinsfolk- descendants of the people
who chose to remain behind when The Vault Dweller was banished eighty years earlier.
Unbeknownst to The Chosen One, the Enclave had cleared the place out - and left behind
a new group of vault dwellers. Of a sort…
Deathclaws.
Too bad they didn't put an end to The Chosen One right there...
It might have turned out that way if these were any other pack of deathclaws. Lots of
people in the wasteland think the Deathclaws sprang straight out of Hell in the years after
the war. But they're the result of pre-war genetic engineering. Modern zoologists say
that deathclaws have many traits in common with a pre-war lizard called the Jackson chameleon.
They were tiny back then. People even kept them as pets. But the men of science and their
devil-may-care pursuit of the exceptional decided to make the chameleons a hundred times
bigger, teach them to sprint on two legs, and give them claws the size of bayonets.
And thus was born the huggable monstrosities we see roaming the wasteland.
And why didn't they just eat The Chosen One?
These were a special breed. The Enclave had a file cabinet full of schemes to make life
generally worse for humanity, and among them was an experiment to make deathclaws smarter.
What could possibly go wrong?
Your Republic put a brain cloned from the most dangerous person on Earth into a robot
body...
Hey, The Vault Dweller was a hero, not a giant monster that could take a person's head off
in one bite.
The thing about making a creature more self-aware is that it might not be content with its lot
in life. The Enclave intended for this new breed of deathclaws to be just smart enough
to understand orders, but not question them. Most of them did do as they were told, but
several of them ended up as philosophical types capable of asking "Why".
The Enclave dumped a pack of them at Vault 13 after they left, to ensure that anyone
who stumbled across the place didn't live long enough to ask where the original dwellers
went. But the alpha male of the pack, a beast named Gruthar, decided that the vault's resources
could help him establish a new society.
They couldn't do that in any other cave in the wasteland?
The Vault-tec machinery provided food and water for the pack, so they didn't have to
hunt and kill like animals. You see, at some point after The Vault Dweller left, the remaining
inhabitants rebelled against Overseer Jacoren-
-and they replaced him with a mainframe computer that automated most of the Vault's functions.
The deathclaws could use speech recognition software to run most of the Vault's systems,
and they were diplomatic enough that they convinced a human doctor to stay at the vault
and look after them. A few other humans joined them, and they had the potential to become
a prosperous community. Trouble was, one of the humans who stumbled upon Vault 13 thought
that the deathclaws were a threat to humanity. He sabotaged the mainframe, and tried to blow
up their eggs.
Got eaten for that, I take it.
Actually, Gruthar was civilized enough that the perpetrator was imprisoned instead of
executed. Most of the people who lived there seemed to consider the Deathclaws as protectors
instead of threats. Gruthar and The Chosen One managed to negotiate for Vault 13's
Creation Kit - The Chosen One repaired the computer, and in turn Gruthar handed over
the shiny metal case.
Funny how I keep hearing fairy tales about talking animals, but I never actually met
one of these things, even when I went by Vault 13.
Just about all of the talking deathclaws were killed when the Enclave returned to Vault
13 a couple of weeks after The Chosen One was there.
The vault security system captured footage of the whole affair. My armor's data storage
has a copy of it-
You said "Most of" the talking deathclaws were killed.
The Enclave had another experimental test subject at a nearby facility, The Chosen One
visited that place shortly after Vault 13, so that deathclaw might have escaped and multiplied.
The Chosen One also made a new friend at Vault 13. An individual named Goris who decided
to join them on their travels in the wasteland.
Goris was... something of an anthropologist. He wanted to see the cultures of the wasteland
and learn how humans had managed rebuild society. He was a - keeper of many mysteries. And had
more than a few surprises the first time he fought at The Chosen One's side.
I met him once, decades ago and he recounted some of The Chosen One's adventures, including
their long trek back up North once they had the precious GECK.
The Chosen One didn't know about what happened, right? In Arroyo?
No. The Enclave came and went without a trace, using their Vertibirds.
Shame about that. Those villagers didn't have it coming, even if they were The Chosen One's
kin. St. Louis city limits up ahead.
Story time is over, kids. Eyes up. ED-NA, Daisy, what do you read?
*concerned beep*
Something is burning... Many things are burning.
Haven't seen a massacre like this since-
Ain't never seen anything like this. Luddites having a civil war? Legion spreading East?
The android. Stayed ahead of us since Denver, somehow.
One person did all this?
I've heard tell of such. Lunatics that launch mininukes into the middle of towns. Killers
who sneak through a community at night murdering everyone in their sleep. Deranged marksmen
that snipe whole populations just for target practice.
Is the person who did this very, very bad?
Yes he is Daisy. And karma's a bitch.