Fauna, Flora, Factions, and Facilities of the Wasteland

The Free States:

In 2077, the world was wiped clean. Those lucky enough to be spared, did so in great underground shelters. But what if they weren’t all built by Vault-Tec? What if people had accurately predicted doomsday and prepared for it themselves?

This is the Free States, an armed militia of secessionists from before The Great War. Viewed as radical extremists to their neighbors, the Free States came together with the shared distrust of the American government and its ties to various shadowy entities. They knew something was brewing. But what? The answer would come when a sympathetic whistleblower from the senate confirmed their suspicions. West-Tek, Vault-Tec, Acme, General Atomics, RobCo, etc. All connected. The war going awry and the government at the forefront pushing the world deeper into despair. This was no simple black and white war against communism, it was a war over simple depleting resources, of which there will be no end unless THE end occurs. And so construction began, underground shelters connecting in one big network, hiding in plain sight where the Free States could retreat, not if the bombs fall, but when. Declaring themselves independent from the Union a month before the bombs, they were labeled domestic terrorists by the propaganda-fed media.

In the aftermath, though not as comfortable as a Vault-Tec vault, it did it’s job. While the fires died down above and the fallout passed through, the Free States vowed never to allow such needless corruption result in the glassing of civilization again. When they came out of their bunkers and saw the devastation, they knew what to do. A new world brings new opportunity for a better more unified and incorruptible future. America may have been annihilated, but the Free States would live on.

 

A description for The Mothmen can be found on the very first post.

 

Y’know what, I’ve decided to change the Scorched. After the discussion we had where we talked about how “ferals” in classic Fallouts were literally just crazy ghouls who could still speak and use weapons, I’ve come to realize that’s quite literally what the scorched is, and that’s why I like them so much in concept. They’re basically what Bethesda’s “ferals” should be, so going forward that’s what they’ll be for me.

I’m still keeping the name Scorched, because I feel like it’s important for the complete opposite side of the country to have colloquial terms for beings. So rather than “ghouls”, they will be called “Scorched”.

I have to admit I’m not the biggest fan of the East and West intersecting in Fallout. I get America used to be one big nation, but I feel like with barely any working cars for the masses and the dangers of the post war, transcontinental travel should be off the table. ESPECIALLY so early on into the post-war.

 

The reason I don’t replace all 3 (Supers, Ghouls, and Scorched) with Sappers is both for the sake of variety for enemy types in the game concept, and like I said the Sappers would be more of a heavy enemy akin to Super Mutants natural damage threshold. Scorched as they are in F76 are very low-tier enemies, like ghouls. They are everywhere but that’s because Bethesda needed a reason to have a raider-type enemy without having human NPCs. The Scorched replacing ghouls works for the same low-tier enemy for beginner levels as well as provides a new name for the mutated humans seen in FO1, FO2, and F:NV.

(I forgot to mention this before, but for my concept for Bethesda’s games, I still accept a majority of New Vegas as canon.
Basically I’m writing these concepts with the mindset that FO1, FO2, and F:NV are already released games before Bethesda’s acquisition so the West Coast can have a definitive original trilogy to work with. A trilogy that has a fitting end for the West at least for now, before we move onto the East Coast. That way there isn’t a sort of loose thread for West Coast Fallouts like we got when Van Buren was canned and we were just thrown onto the opposite end of the country in D.C. not knowing if we’d ever see the West again.
Being that F:NV respects the originals and is a good sequel to the classics, I don’t wanna scrap its existence. Basically F:NV is almost entirely canon to me when writing these except for the parts that directly reference Fallout 3 either in world building and story.)

 

Exactly this. Like I said before, I’m not a fan of the transcontinental travel between coasts in Fallout. Even by the time of New Vegas, the NCR which is the biggest post-war nation hasn’t a clue about what’s going on in DC, Boston, West Virginia, let alone any other state in between that they haven’t touched. That’s how I think it should be for a long, long time. Until the Wasteland is tamed across the entire country and bigger networks can be established, but by the time that occurs Fallout wouldn’t really be all that interesting imo. So I kinda get annoyed when in Bethesda Fallout games people can just walk across the country like it’s a stroll on the beach. It makes America feel like a neighborhood to me. I think there should be some kind of invisible wall between these coasts where one side is completely different, unaffected, and completely unaware of the other. Some things are shared obviously like robots, vaults, I guess ghouls, etc., but not in the sense where everything is so uniform across the board. That’s where Bethesda really messes up imo.

Brahmin, Bottle Caps as currency, the BOS, the NCR, the Legion, the Khans, Fiends, all of that should mean nothing to someone all the way in D.C.

 

I’ve been thinking about the Horned Kangaroo thing, now I’m curious as to where they came from as Kangaroos are certainly not native to America. I’m surprised they were never shown or expanded on.

 

The Fallout Sonora mod having an

Spoiler

invading Mexican army is so damn cool, love it.

However, sadly from what I’ve seen the only real use of it is just an outpost and not the full faction as a threat.

 

Maybe, must’ve went over my head.

 

Interesting, that’s definitely plausible. I’ll have to test this when I return from my vacation.

I find it kinda funny how someone who’s lived in a vault all their life would walk out and just start labeling bones after animals that weren’t even native in the old world Americas.

Bit of a side tangent, but there’s an interesting thought experiment. There’s a couple books (All Yesterdays/All Todays) that sort of deal with something similar to this. All Yesterdays proposes the question of what if our knowledge on how dinosaurs looked based off just their fossils are all wrong, and similarly, All Todays proposes the question of how would future paleontologists think todays animals looked based off just their skeletons.

Both books take existing dinosaur skeletons we’ve reconstructed as well as modern animal skeletons and provides artwork of completely different looking creatures than what we know these animals actually look like, in order to hammer in the idea that fossil records/skeletons don’t paint a complete picture.

 

Morgantown/The Foundation:

During the Great War, Morgantown wasn’t directly hit with an atomic bomb, however the close city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was. While not a direct target, the fallout and radiation swept through the city, killing many.
When it was all clear, settlers built a small settlement around the old University. Using it for housing, farming, clean water, and eventually down the road, trading.

Settlers who had escaped or survived the horrors in Pittsburg made their way into Appalachia, stopping at Morgantown. These second wave of settlers required expansion to the settlement as a whole, and so work began. Within a couple of years, what was just a resettled university became almost the entire city of Morgantown under construction.

The area around the university became known as The Foundation, where the bulk and hub of the city lie and where Morgantown was first reestablished. When trade between Char Town was formed years into the post-war, it was here in Foundation where a group of old car mechanics with the help of some remaining library books helped bring to life a swarm of vehicles sitting still like decorations on the road. With working vehicles in their possession, and a network of trade established all the way to Char Town and other settlements, they formed the Blue Ridge Trading Co., where supplies can be sent and delivered within a couple of days rather than weeks.

Morgantown is a very prosperous town as far as post-war shanty towns go, and The Foundation is it’s beating heart.

 

If you didn’t like Fallout 4 overall but also specifically because of the settlement building, then that kinda answers your question. Fallout 76 is pretty much all about settlement building. You can do quests and daily missions and stuff but it’s pretty much just about building your base. You also say you didn’t like Outer Worlds for many reasons, I’m not sure what exactly those reasons are, but I can guarantee you it’s a more reactive RPG than Fallout 76. There are missions and story expansions and stuff in Fallout 76, but once you’re done, nothing in the world changes. It’s the same shared online world. For example, the main story for Fallout 76 is to stop the scorched yet after doing every quest and killing the source of it, they’ll still be there because it’s an MMO. So whatever problems you have with Outer Worlds, compared to FO76, it’s a great RPG.

I have Fallout 76 because I played with all my friends when it came out. The only reason I would still play it today is to work on my write ups, but even then I mostly just use YouTube or the Fallout wiki for research about that game. If not that, I’m mainly going off what I remember. I haven’t touched the game since the Steel Dawn/Steel Reign DLC which I hated.

Can you elaborate on this?