The chronicles of Samual Higen:

I woke up, looking at the ceiling of the Gold Ribbon Grocers building located near Jury street Metro, or at least that's what the fallen sign lying in front of the store read. I looked around for the cause of the sound that had startled me awake. My ghoul heart raced as I sat up and grabbed the shotgun lying next to me. After minutes of waiting for someone to appear from the darkness, I stood up and accidently kicked one of many tin cans that were lying on the ground. Upon seeing the old tin cans lying on the floor; I realized that I must have kicked over the pile, which I had scavenged before nodding off, while I slept.

I sat back down, setting my shotgun close by as I started to restack the cans of beans. This wouldn't have happened if I had not been so exhausted from my days of traveling through the wastes; I would have taken the time to put the cans in my knapsack otherwise. I wasn't usually so careless as to leave my valuables in a place where they could easily be stolen or damaged.

I didn't even need all of this food, but the smoothskins would pay for it. Only time they accept ghouls like myself is when they need something gathered, otherwise they treat us like crap. I'd be willing to kill every last smoothskin in the wastes if it wasn't for survival. See, I make my caps through scaving, and my biggest buyers are rarely ghouls, so I've been forced to deal with smoothskins out of necessity.

Lying back on the cold floor, I rested my head on my old knapsack; it has been with me for as long as I can remember, which is quite a long time. How long? I don't know and can't say; though, I remember the days directly after the bombs fell; I carried it with me then. It is a wonder to myself that I can remember every day vividly after the bombs fell, yet I am unable to remember anything before the war. I do not even know my true name, for many years now I have went by Samual Higen only because someone had to call me something and it worked well enough. I slowly began to drift back to sleep.

After I awoke, I ate my breakfast of beans, which must have been hundreds of years old though I can never tell. I then gathered my supplies, hung my shotgun on my back, and proceeded on my journey. Though I have traversed the barren DC wasteland for many years, this was the first time that I was going to Tenpenny Tower. Approximately a week ago, I ran across another scaver who told me that Tenpenny was looking to hire skilled men for an expedition and he was in desperate need of a ghoul for the party. Naturally, I decided to go seek the reputed bigot Tenpenny out. I wondered what the other denizens of underworld would think of my betraying them to work with the biggest ghoul hater in the wastes. I could always kill him, send a message to all ghoul haters, but only after I got paid. I would greatly like to kill Tenpenny simply to take out my hate on the smoothskins, the wholes, for how they treat us; however, I needed money and if this expedition went well, I would want to work for the ghoul hater again. Caps are caps after all; we all have to make a living, even when we're half dead.

I came to a cliff, from this point I could see the tower many miles ahead of me, I hopefully would arrive around nightfall if I kept up my current pace. Hearing talking, I knelt down and crept to the edge of the cliff, peering over I spotted three raiders. I wondered if I should engage them, take all of their possessions, leave their bodies to the dogs, or I could evade them and move to the tower without any fighting. I reached to the left side of my belt and pulled out my Higen smg. Narcissistic though it may be to name the world's best gun after one's self, I did. When a few fellow ghouls asked me on why I would act self important enough to name a gun after myself; I said it was explainable, since I was the creator of smg. I had found the gun several years past and tinkered with it. I changed the interior mechanisms of the gun to allow the use of a larger caliber of bullet; I also added a larger magazine allowing the gun to shoot nearly double the amount it had been able to originally.

I aimed down the sights of the Higen and slowly squeezed the trigger. The noise hit my semi skinned ears as the bullets made short work of the raider's head, sending his corpse sprawling to the dirt which hungrily absorbed the blood spewing from the mess. Before the next raider had time to pull his gun, I squeezed the trigger once more sending half a dozen bullets into his chest. I began to take aim at the last raider but had to fling myself backwards, as assault rifle rounds pelted the top of the cliff. I laid on the ground taking cover as dirt was sent into the air caused by bullets smacking into the rocky cliff. All I could do was impatiently wait my turn to shoot. The second the raider stopped firing; I quickly crawled into position and pulled the trigger once more. Bullets bounced all over the ground until one hit the raider in his left hip. Seeing my enemy drop to his knees, I took aim one last time and sent a bullet square into his chest.

Seeing my bloody handiwork down below, I reloaded my gun and began to scale down the cliff. It was slow going, I am not a fan of heights or more to the point; I hate climbing down from heights. My heart raced faster each time I lifted my hands from the coal black rocks. My left hand slipped on one of the one rocks, while I was still 20 feet in the air far from level ground. I began to black out, but forced myself to stay conscious, as I barely held onto the cliff with my right hand. Using all the strength in my body to force my left arm up and once again grab onto the cliff, I managed to keep steady. After nearly falling, I stood upon the cliff for sometime as I tried to recover from the fear of falling to my certain death, which still maintained a firm grasp on my mind. The sun began to beat down directly on my head, a few moments before I gained the courage to slowly continue my descent down the cliff. I gasped a large sigh of relief when my feet finally hit solid ground. I told myself never to do that again, nothing in the wasteland could be worth the horror that had engulfed my being on the cliff.

My old ragged boots made small puffs of dust rise around my feet with every footfall, as I began walking over to the raiders to loot their corpses. Their bodies were still warm, as I searched through their pockets in search of ammo or something that I could sell to the rich bigots in Tenpenny tower as a trinket from the waste. Surely those rich smoothskins, who had never spent a day in the wastes, would like something from the wastes to place on their mantles. They'd probably even make up an exciting story in how they obtained the item to impress their friends.

Suddenly, thirst gripped my body; my throat felt like a mouthful of gasoline had been forced down my gullet followed by a lite match. The heat of the day, along with the firefight, and climb had made my body sweat a storm from wherever my grisly, mangled body produced sweat. I could always feel the sweat of my body on what was left of my skin, though I have yet to learn how my body is still able to produce sweat and function like a smoothskin, even though I look like a monster from a cheap horror flick.

Once I collected the bullets and a lighter from the raiders, I opened my knapsack and grabbed a bottle of water. I could feel the radiation of the water recharging my body, with each swallow. The sounds of dogs in the distance began to ring in what remained of my ears; their howls grew louder as they approached. Fighting a pack of wild ravenous dogs was never a smart idea, so I quickly departed the area and headed for the tower. After mixing between a fast walk and a slow run, managing to just stay ahead of the dogs; I turned around to see the mutts off in the distance, feasting on the bodies of the departed raiders. If only it were as easy for myself to find a meal as the dogs did. Since I can remember, I had to scavenge and steal food. No ghoul except for a feral would ever take a chunk out of a human, let alone eat one. What little humanity was left would be gone. After watching the dogs for a moment I turned around and headed towards the tower once more.

After many hours of walking I finally reached my destination.

I hit the buzzer and a loud voice blasted through the intercom. "We don't want any brain eaters in here!"

Fury raged through my body, I wanted to draw my gun, storm the lavish tower, and kill every last one of the bigots. Instead, only for the sake of money, I said "I was told Tenpenny was looking for a ghoul to join a merc crew."

After a long pause consisting of many minutes the intercom said, "Fine, you can enter."

The gate started to open and cautiously I walked through. If I knew then what I know now, maybe, I would have gone looking for another fortune, instead of visiting Tenpenny.