» Tue Jan 18, 2011 8:24 am
I'm playing one last character before NV retires FO3: an escaped slave.
FWE has it on the alternative start list, and I like my character so much I believe I'm going to take her to the desert for the next stage of her life.
She woke up in a sheet metal shack like an oven, out in the waste. She didn't have nothing but the dirty clothes she had on and a couple cans of beans and a rusty tire iron. It was all she'd had time to steal, but it would be enough.
The collar was fixed. She couldn't get it off, but she didn't care. She was free.
Anne had been a slave since she was a little kid, so she was used to a hard life. Her muscles were wiry from working, and she knew she was pretty tough. If she played it smart, she thought she had a pretty good chance. Some of the raiders she'd seen come in out of the dust were as dumb as rocks, couldn't even read. And she had her PipBoy. She'd always had it, as long as she could remember, always kept it hid so no one else knew. They'd have took it if they found it, but she took real good care of it, and fixed it so it worked real good. No one else had one that she ever saw.
And if she died, well, it couldn't be worse than what happened to lots of girls when they got older. They died, too. Of diseases, of beatings, of starvation and despair.
And those bastards were going to sell her to a filthy gang from someplace called the Pit. A tasty little toy one of them said, 'til she ain't so tasty any more, and they all laughed real nasty.
So she ran. Fiddled the collar and didn't die. Grabbed the food and the tire iron and crawled under the fence and hid in this shack when it got light. Time to go now before they came looking. Get far away. Find some food, some water, someplace safe.
Maybe come back some day, with guns. And friends, if she can find 'em, trust 'em. Scour that place and all them out of the waste like a dirty pot you use sand to make all shiny.
...
Anne does alright now. She's tough and smart, and learns quick. She's got plenty of caps, so she doesn't go hungry. She doesn't need a lot, and doesn't like to carry stuff that slows her down too much. She's good with bullet guns and dart guns, and she is a devil with her fists. She's seen too many wasted raiders so she doesn't drink or take the drugs she finds. Besides, they're light to carry and worth a lot to sell.
She treats most folks with respect, but slavers and raiders don't get to live. Anne pulls their armor off and leaves 'em in their skivvies in the dirt for the crows. She throws their clothes and their stuff she doesn't want on the ground a little ways away from their bodies. Someone could use their junk, and Anne doesn't see why they should have to pick over a bad smelling corpse for it.
For a while she tried to get the collar off, but even the best fixers couldn't figure it out. Now she kind of likes it. Likes seeing people's faces when they get a look at it, seeing what they do.