Tenpenny Tower was a dark shadow against the moonlit sky of the Capital Wasteland. The stalwart structure, which had managed to withstand the devastation of the Great War, had been lovingly restored to its former condition and was now the deluxe home of Allistair Tenpenny – an elderly Englishman who used his wealth for personal gain, generally at the expense of others. Steven Maine, Sheriff of the Wasteland – also known by Three Dog as "The Lone Wanderer", "101" and "The Messiah" – stood atop a cliff about a kilometer away, carefully surveying the building. He meticulously noted every possible escape method – he could not allow his targets to get away.
When he was satisfied, Steven checked his arsenal of weaponry; everything was reasonably clean and in top condition. As much as he would have liked to simply blast his foes into oblivion with his Fat Man, a powerful mini-nuke launcher, the weapon and its ammunition were simply too cumbersome to lug across the desolate badlands between Megaton and Tenpenny Tower. However, he was armed to the teeth with pretty much everything else: a shotgun taken from a raider merchant in Evergreen Mills; the Xuanlong, a Chinese assault rifle pried from the cold, dead fingers of Prime, a computer hacker at the Jury Street diner; a suppressed 10mm pistol, in case stealth would be required; and finally, enough fragmentation mines and plasma grenades to blow the whole thing to hell. He was sheathed in light, semi-bulletproof combat armor gifted to him by a fine mercenary named Reilly, as a thank-you for rescuing her team from a horde of super mutants. Steven felt invincible, fueled with adrenaline. The chase was over. This siege was going to be deliciously satisfying.
Mister Burke was a smooth-talking, deceptively well-dressed man who once spent his time lurking in Moriarty's Saloon in Megaton. In Steve's eyes, the man was worse than scum – the lowest of all the wretched filth in the Capital Wasteland. Not only that, he was a coward. Two years ago, when Steve was fresh out of the Vault, Sheriff Lucas Simms had helped him gain a foothold in life – filled him in on the dangers of the wastes, provided basic survival tips and the like, given him some spare clothes, that sort of thing. Burke had attempted to coerce Steve into detonating Megaton's live atomic bomb with promises of comfort and large sums of money. Rejecting his offer, Steve alerted Simms about Burke's twisted plans, which led to a heated confrontation between the two. When Simms arrested him, Burke shot Megaton's righteous sheriff in the back, fatally wounding him. Mister Burke fled the settlement; at the time, Steve had been powerless to stop him, with very little training in combat – shooting, hand-to-hand, anything – but he had made it his mission to hunt down the silver-tongued demon and give him a taste of lead. Or plasma. Or whatever else felt appropriate. He felt he owed it to Simms. After all, was it not partially his fault that Megaton's charismatic leader was dead?