CHAPTER 1
"That building on the ridge over there, the Sierra Madre Casino, you are going to help me break inside. This is…a heist."
"And if I refuse?"
"You and the people you must cooperate with are all fitted with security collars. Should you decide to try and leave, get greedy and take whatever fortune lies inside, or kill one another, the collar goes off, and I find someone else to do this job. I should also mention all the collars are linked. One of you dies, you all die."
"Looks like I don't have a choice."
"Oh but you did, I didn't force you to come here, that was of your own accord."
Instantly, the Courier regretted his decision to investigate the mysterious broadcast for the grand opening of the Sierra Madre.
In the year 2077, a war began. Not a war fought with men, but with fire, the fire of the atomic bomb. It was not a war of years, months, or even days, but mere hours. Man had destroyed hundreds of thousands of years of progress in less than a day. However, the human element was not destroyed. No, humanity remained, rebuilt, and in some places, even prospered.
200 years later, a man known only as the Courier, would become part of something much larger than he could imagine. All of it began with a broadcast.
"Has your life taken a turn? Do troubles beset you? Has fortune left you behind? If so, the Sierra Madre Casino, in all its glory, is inviting you to begin again."
The Courier was intrigued by the broadcast, as such a place had never been mentioned in all his life. He followed the source of the broadcast to an abandoned bunker. He had no reservations about opening the rusted hatch and climbing in, unknowing of what awaited.
The inside of the bunker would have been described by the people of our time as savage and gruesome, but the sight was nothing new to the Courier. In the ruins of a nation, its survivors have no intent of following its long dead laws, because their only instinct is to do just that. Survive. As the Courier moved past the vandalized and bloodied walls of the bunker, he came to a long hallway with a bright room at the end. On a small table sat a radio reciting the broadcast the Courier had heard earlier that morning. As he entered the room, he was disappointed to find that the radio and table were all that was to be found. After starting on his way out, the large iron door slammed shut in front of him and locked. Gas started pouring out from vents in the ceiling. His vision blurred, he could hardly breathe, for the second time, the Courier was experiencing death.
As the Courier awoke, all he saw were the dirty, destroyed buildings of a once-beautiful villa. He was standing next to a fountain. This wouldn't have been a peculiar sight in the wasteland, as destroyed buildings littered the entire nation. The oddity about this fountain was that it contained the old world technology of a hologram. The holographic woman stood atop the fountain, spoke, and motioned toward the huge grandiose building on the top of a cliff off to the north. The Courier recognized the woman's voice as the speaker in the broadcast.
A tile rose from the corner of the fountain and began to project the face of an old man. He had cold eyes and a sense of assertive urgency.
"Are you listening? Good, when I talk, listen."
"What's this around my-"
"I said listen!"
After explaining to the Courier about the collars, and the heist, the Courier (having accepted his fate) had but one question.
"Who are you?"
"An unimportant question, but I am Father Elijah, former elder of the Brotherhood of Steel. Now go, find the others, and then report back here and I will give you further instructions."