That would be awesome actually, I can picture it in my head, travelling down the river on the FO1/2-like world map and getting into random encounters where maybe raiders jump on your boat somehow or you get into some kinda post-apocalyptic naval battle with small boats or ferries up and down the Mississippi River.
I agree, it's a really cool thing that fits the local character but also feels Fallout-y.
Though a stray thought occurs to me - given the dustbowl that the Great Plains has turned into, I wonder how much that has reduced the water volume of the Mississippi. Probably not enough to make it unnavigable for the pertinent stretches, but food for thought.
That I've always imagine is just like how post-war architecture in California is mostly adobe huts or towns made of scrap (before the return of industry), the midwest and East would probably be sent back to the age of towns like Jamestown, those early colonial settler towns.
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Agreed. Colonial frontier American makes sense as the primary style here, stockade and log-cabin.
Awesome read up, I agree the Enclave should be no more than a company if need be. And it would be very interesting to see a sect of remnants still duty-bound forced to make compromises like taking wastelander wives after growing up on Enclave brainwashing of purity and how they're the last hope for mankind against the mutants of the new world. I can imagine there would be some sort of genetic purity test for newborns, causing friction if the CO or Enclavers enforced a euthanasia system for mutant children.
Originally I thought about giving some discussion to this, but I wasn't sure if it was worth taking the time write out, so I kind of waffled and kept vague the degree to which these are hardline purists vs. the more lax (if not libertine) Autumn Enclave. Obviously I'm reluctant to totally grant an Autumn Enclave, but then again obviously this concepts buys into the Fallout 3 Enclave more or less, and it does make a certain degree of sense - this is after all decades after the Oil Rig, views may change, etc. etc.
Originally I thought that the wives would be subjected to some kind of genetic screening to make sure they were within some kind of threshold. Then I thought maybe it would be a wink and a nod kind of thing, where the standard is just that the women are not
obviously mutants. I think overall, to the degree that the Enclavers believe themselves to be a pure bastion of humanity, they're basically convinced that they're the end of the line, pure humanity got blowed up for the final time in the Capital Wasteland. Now they're just trying to get on with their lives, maybe preserve some spark in their offspring, but mainly just try to get on with it.
Still, that doesn't rule out some kind of stricter process to try and perpetuate a purer strain of humanity. Probably not outright euthanasia of children, I'd imagine that they'd prefer to do screening in the womb and abort if need be. But maybe you're right, maybe that wouldn't be practical, and basically it's just a matter of waiting for the child to be born and hoping they look normal. Maybe only recently has an obviously mutant child been born (something minor like an extra finger), and now there's a division in the community on what to do, both with the child and the wife who has now been proven not to "breed true".
I also like the idea of an exodus of Enclave remnants leaving to take work in the wastes, it's like a reverse situation of the Tactics BOS.
It was kind of based off of Atomic Postman's concept of what Sgt. Granite and his squad get up to in whatever locale they crash land in, but I can see the resemblance to tactics.
The basic idea is that a single highly trained soldier in their advanced power armor is at an insane advantage in any fight. Not quite a one-man army, but not far off, easily enough to be decisive in most Wasteland conflicts. I conceive of these figures as being essentially like Arthurian knights or, to continue
@Resardiv's apt Russia comparison, Bogatyrs, legendary figures attributed nigh-magical feats, except in this case they're mostly real.
As for the mercenaries who drifted apart from each other, would they eventually come to a crossroads where they end up killing their former allies at the whim of their employers?
I tried to simplify and keep things short by boiling it down to just one 'sinful' failure, but yes realistically they've probably come to blows in the past.
This sort of brings me to what I envision as the main narrative thrust/irony of the two Enclave 'factions', which I didn't really touch on in my post for the sake of brevity. The 'purist' faction despite their beliefs of their own supremacy ends up being timid, inward looking, and ultimately just uninterested in the outside world. The 'revisionist' faction, while breaking to some degree with Enclave ideas of purity and lock-step unity, actually end up being far more monstrous. While the ideology they stepped away from was more monstrous, it compelled them to live together in a community with other human beings. Now they're unbound from any kind of mooring, pursuing only their self interest. I see many of them as chem addicts and harem-holders. This also sort of corresponds to the view of the Circle of Steel I expounded to Atomic Postman that he largely ended up implementing in his Van Buren setting.
And I'd imagine their employers wouldn't be the of generous sort if they send out Enclave geared mercs to do their dirty work, so as the player character, would they be an antagonistic-oriented faction?
I think most of the mercs have ended up drifting away even out of the playable area, carving paths of glory across the former US. But yes, for those that are still alive (it's a dangerous line of work even with power armor) and remain in the game world, mostly they'd be in antagonistic roles to the protagonists, big-bad boss fights.
Also as for the mercenaries who visit their old comrades from time to time, surely they would have the wasteland experience to tell them about life outside the village and how the CO and Enclave were wrong.
Well I think while the mercs don't really buy into the Enclave ideology, I don't think they have a really strongly formed
counter-ideology. Indeed, in some ways their line of work puts them in a position to have the general Enclave view more affirmed - they work for the worst people in the Wasteland, they see some of the worst violence and depravity of the Wasteland, and they spend all their time cutting down hordes upon hordes of resources while being at the top of society, thereby reenforcing some view of at least themselves, personally, as supermen contrasted with Wasteland subhumans.
For those that still visit the village, the village in its quaint isolation represents a reprieve. If ever they did return they wouldn't want some kind of impermeable cordon sanitaire between the Wasteland and Revere, they've gone too native for them to see that as viable, but they do want to take advantage of the sociality created by a wavering but still there belief in the idea of the Enclave. Whether the carefully balanced, pragmatic sociality of the village could survive the death of the CO and it's justification is questionable, especially with the 'resource curse' of the supply depots being opened to exploitation.
Are the villagers waiting for the CO to die out of respect or because there's still a loyal group of Enclave supporters in the village that would stop them?
Opinions vary, but I think the driving force is respect for the CO personally, and just taking him as a living embodiment to their old lives, their friends and family, and an unwillingness to give up on that entirely. There would be some consternation within the community about how exactly to go about reform in the case of his death, but it would probably not be irreconcilable.
