Milton once wrote, "Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light" in his work, ‘Paradise Lost’.
The scribes say there was no way he could have envisioned the truth in his prophecies.
We chose to head east, to the vast military-industrial complexes and political centers around what we now know to be the capital wasteland; to comb through the wreckage and help sanitize the wastes, furthering the influence of the Brotherhood. We took comfort in the technological disparity we held over the tribals and colonists of the wastes, but we were not prepared for what trials lay ahead. The umbrage of the ravaged land held no pity for those of who relied upon technology, as the environment man had created relapsed into empty promises of solace and safety. The pity we'd shown for those weak and simple was not to be bestowed upon us by the cracked and warped landscape of the American Midwest.<table align="right" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
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By the time we had descended the mountains the winter had receded and our men were malnourished and the desolate tundra ahead of us was battered and broken. We'd find neither sustenance nor solace in the recession of winter’s nomadic ice.
Our provisions dwindled when we came upon the charred wreckage that was Ft. Leavenworth. The former military prison was occupied by scavengers and hobos, vagrants and merchants, moderated by the remnants of the Base’s bloodlines and Colonists who could go no further west to escape the hell of the East. The base was parceled and divided into districts with the surrounding suburban brick, baked in the atomic sun. It was here that we began our descent into desperation.
Our scribes held vast stores of knowledge, and we knew of the existence of both industrial machinery, and the locations of several vaults, both Poltico-military and civilian. It was our presumption that with blueprints, materials and knowledge, we could rebuild our arsenal once we'd bridged the gap with the east. We delineated the issue, both sides made their cases, but in the end, the choice was simple: part with our technology, or starve in the bitter plains.
We'd burned most of our fusion cells in the generators coming through the mountains, and the weapons would do us little good. We traded arms and equipment for provisions of dried fish and meat, mutated crops of vegetables, unrecognizable to those of the distant past. It had been six months, and the hard mountains had been slower travel than even our most pessimistic planners could conjure.
The traces of the mutant horde were evident. Stragglers or those who deserted the master’s army settled amongst the humans. There was co-existence out of necessity. Bitter relations amongst tedious alliances. We could hold no sway over the internal politics and were in no position to influence through force. We cast our eyes east once more in the sow tide; spring as it was known, and pressed on.
We arrived at the Mississippi River at the turn of the season, and with the sun at it’s peak intensity, the wasteland before us was ablaze with wildfire. We stopped on the outskirts of the remains of St. Louis, and as the wind carried the fire eastward, the city burned; all but the brick husks of industrial buildings and project housing. The sound of gunfire persisted throughout the suburbs at night, as most of the inhabitants had taken to a nocturnal life to avoid the radioactive gaze set upon them by the sun.
While the city may have burned, the inhabitants were predominately subterranean, and during the night, thieves set upon us. They repelled easily, but made off with a crate of equipment.
The toll for safe passage across the Mississippi River was steep, costing us most of our remaining technology. Our armor was stifling in the oppressive heat, and the cooling coils overworked had almost all long since ceased functioning. The servos bound frequently as blowing sand whipped across the hard-pan desert. Without the means to properly maintain it, our armor became shoddy and sluggish. The dilapidation of our equipment was more than we had anticipated, and our arrogance had turned our lone asset into a cumbersome impediment.
<table align="left" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table> We reached the mountains to the West of the Capital Wasteland and passage was deceptively easy, as the Reap tide set upon us. The settlers we came across were impoverished but civil. There was no hospitality, but we made ourselves useful contracting out our tacticians to train and help forge warriors for the local militias in their defense against the slaver and mutant attacks. Our scribes parted with secrets of the brotherhood of both agriculture and science, and in this way, we paid our debts to the villagers who once again supplied us with provisions. We heard tell rumors of the east, and our hopes, dim and dreary were all but lost.
We had descended into the foothills and below, the ravaged land struck us with a sense of horror. The Master’s Army had beaten us east, and held in domination the human settlers of the coastal regions. Human slavers aligned themselves with the mutants in hideous tandem, enslaving the settlers into servitude in the factories building munitions and tending the hydroponic agricultural centers. The insubordinate were crucified in manners of which no one wishes to revisit along the outskirts of the controlled territory. Hung from the blackened hulls of burnt out trees and telephone poles, and mutilated until their features were unrecognizable as human or beast.
We came into conflict here, and our force was cut sizably. Of the original force of 68 knights, scribes and paladins, our losses from the journey had taken 36 of our brethren, including our first in command. The mutants pursued us, but were repelled by humans in power armor, and we watched, in awe having been stripped of most of our equipment and with our gear left in a state of neglect. A human force existed, and from the South of the Capital wasteland, we learned that a vault unlike any we’d previously heard of existed. The vault was the lineage of the military and political leaders who hid away in the great underground complex of Mount Weather. Rumors of its stature reached us quickly, as the fighting subsided and we began to seek recruits, escapees from the servitude of the humans to the south, or the mutants to the west, conscripts from the farming settlements, ranchers and cowboys who knew their way with a gun.
They told us in hushed urgency of the expanding force to the south; the complex had underground railway, closed circuit television, water recycling and enough provisions to last 1000 years. They’d re-emerged as the dominate power in the east, using the GECK to rebuild a society in the image of the past. Their leadership constantly struggling to expand their sphere of influence; to unite the tribes and colonists under one new banner. To deliver the impure wastelands from the devices of sin and evil. The new Capital of the Restored Republic of America (RRA) held the capital wastelands in a stranglehold; governing by iron handed totalitarian principles with impunity.
We could do nothing to stop them, but in the fullness of time, we found infrastructure with which to rebuild and equip our forces, but in our arrogance, we’d not considered we would be an unwelcome faction between the war-ravaged East. We struggled to find our equilibrium and create the society built upon technology and advancement until he came. From Vault 101, the old man had escaped for reasons unknown, but with knowledge that would turn the tide in the battle for the Capital Wasteland…
Journal, Paladin Owyn Lyons
by Aaron Moyer
<center>[ BoS competition winner: Tucker ] - [ BoS competition runner up: Kirby Go ] - [ BoS competition runner up: Aaron Moyer ]</center>
The scribes say there was no way he could have envisioned the truth in his prophecies.
We chose to head east, to the vast military-industrial complexes and political centers around what we now know to be the capital wasteland; to comb through the wreckage and help sanitize the wastes, furthering the influence of the Brotherhood. We took comfort in the technological disparity we held over the tribals and colonists of the wastes, but we were not prepared for what trials lay ahead. The umbrage of the ravaged land held no pity for those of who relied upon technology, as the environment man had created relapsed into empty promises of solace and safety. The pity we'd shown for those weak and simple was not to be bestowed upon us by the cracked and warped landscape of the American Midwest.<table align="right" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>By the time we had descended the mountains the winter had receded and our men were malnourished and the desolate tundra ahead of us was battered and broken. We'd find neither sustenance nor solace in the recession of winter’s nomadic ice.
Our provisions dwindled when we came upon the charred wreckage that was Ft. Leavenworth. The former military prison was occupied by scavengers and hobos, vagrants and merchants, moderated by the remnants of the Base’s bloodlines and Colonists who could go no further west to escape the hell of the East. The base was parceled and divided into districts with the surrounding suburban brick, baked in the atomic sun. It was here that we began our descent into desperation.
Our scribes held vast stores of knowledge, and we knew of the existence of both industrial machinery, and the locations of several vaults, both Poltico-military and civilian. It was our presumption that with blueprints, materials and knowledge, we could rebuild our arsenal once we'd bridged the gap with the east. We delineated the issue, both sides made their cases, but in the end, the choice was simple: part with our technology, or starve in the bitter plains.
We'd burned most of our fusion cells in the generators coming through the mountains, and the weapons would do us little good. We traded arms and equipment for provisions of dried fish and meat, mutated crops of vegetables, unrecognizable to those of the distant past. It had been six months, and the hard mountains had been slower travel than even our most pessimistic planners could conjure.
The traces of the mutant horde were evident. Stragglers or those who deserted the master’s army settled amongst the humans. There was co-existence out of necessity. Bitter relations amongst tedious alliances. We could hold no sway over the internal politics and were in no position to influence through force. We cast our eyes east once more in the sow tide; spring as it was known, and pressed on.
We arrived at the Mississippi River at the turn of the season, and with the sun at it’s peak intensity, the wasteland before us was ablaze with wildfire. We stopped on the outskirts of the remains of St. Louis, and as the wind carried the fire eastward, the city burned; all but the brick husks of industrial buildings and project housing. The sound of gunfire persisted throughout the suburbs at night, as most of the inhabitants had taken to a nocturnal life to avoid the radioactive gaze set upon them by the sun.
While the city may have burned, the inhabitants were predominately subterranean, and during the night, thieves set upon us. They repelled easily, but made off with a crate of equipment.
The toll for safe passage across the Mississippi River was steep, costing us most of our remaining technology. Our armor was stifling in the oppressive heat, and the cooling coils overworked had almost all long since ceased functioning. The servos bound frequently as blowing sand whipped across the hard-pan desert. Without the means to properly maintain it, our armor became shoddy and sluggish. The dilapidation of our equipment was more than we had anticipated, and our arrogance had turned our lone asset into a cumbersome impediment.
<table align="left" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table> We reached the mountains to the West of the Capital Wasteland and passage was deceptively easy, as the Reap tide set upon us. The settlers we came across were impoverished but civil. There was no hospitality, but we made ourselves useful contracting out our tacticians to train and help forge warriors for the local militias in their defense against the slaver and mutant attacks. Our scribes parted with secrets of the brotherhood of both agriculture and science, and in this way, we paid our debts to the villagers who once again supplied us with provisions. We heard tell rumors of the east, and our hopes, dim and dreary were all but lost.We had descended into the foothills and below, the ravaged land struck us with a sense of horror. The Master’s Army had beaten us east, and held in domination the human settlers of the coastal regions. Human slavers aligned themselves with the mutants in hideous tandem, enslaving the settlers into servitude in the factories building munitions and tending the hydroponic agricultural centers. The insubordinate were crucified in manners of which no one wishes to revisit along the outskirts of the controlled territory. Hung from the blackened hulls of burnt out trees and telephone poles, and mutilated until their features were unrecognizable as human or beast.
We came into conflict here, and our force was cut sizably. Of the original force of 68 knights, scribes and paladins, our losses from the journey had taken 36 of our brethren, including our first in command. The mutants pursued us, but were repelled by humans in power armor, and we watched, in awe having been stripped of most of our equipment and with our gear left in a state of neglect. A human force existed, and from the South of the Capital wasteland, we learned that a vault unlike any we’d previously heard of existed. The vault was the lineage of the military and political leaders who hid away in the great underground complex of Mount Weather. Rumors of its stature reached us quickly, as the fighting subsided and we began to seek recruits, escapees from the servitude of the humans to the south, or the mutants to the west, conscripts from the farming settlements, ranchers and cowboys who knew their way with a gun.
They told us in hushed urgency of the expanding force to the south; the complex had underground railway, closed circuit television, water recycling and enough provisions to last 1000 years. They’d re-emerged as the dominate power in the east, using the GECK to rebuild a society in the image of the past. Their leadership constantly struggling to expand their sphere of influence; to unite the tribes and colonists under one new banner. To deliver the impure wastelands from the devices of sin and evil. The new Capital of the Restored Republic of America (RRA) held the capital wastelands in a stranglehold; governing by iron handed totalitarian principles with impunity.
We could do nothing to stop them, but in the fullness of time, we found infrastructure with which to rebuild and equip our forces, but in our arrogance, we’d not considered we would be an unwelcome faction between the war-ravaged East. We struggled to find our equilibrium and create the society built upon technology and advancement until he came. From Vault 101, the old man had escaped for reasons unknown, but with knowledge that would turn the tide in the battle for the Capital Wasteland…
Journal, Paladin Owyn Lyons
by Aaron Moyer
<center>[ BoS competition winner: Tucker ] - [ BoS competition runner up: Kirby Go ] - [ BoS competition runner up: Aaron Moyer ]</center>