The Den and the Bastion
A Post-Nuclear Short Story
Disclamer: Trust me, Interplay, if I were making money off of this, this would be on a shelf. No really.
From the works of Scribe Jared Simpson of the Reformed Brotherhood of Steel:
War. War never changes. The Romans waged war to gather slaves and wealth. The Spanish built an empire from its lust for gold and territory. Hitler shaped a battered Germany into an economic superpower, but war never changes. In the twenty-first century, war is still waged over the resources that can be acquired, but this time the spoils of war were also it's weapons: petroleum and uranium. For this reason China would invade Alaska, the US would annex Canada, and the European Union would dissolve into quarrelling, bickering, nation-states bent on controlling the last remaining resources on Earth. In the early morning hours of October 27, 2077, the storm of world war would come again. In two brief hours, the Earth would be nearly wiped clean of life, an atomic spark, struck by human hands raged out of control. Few were fortunate enough to reach the great underground bomb shelters, called Vaults. Inside the vaults, resources and technology were stockpiled, a final defense for the coming holocaust, as well as the wealthy and influential, those needed to build a post-nuclear utopia. With the past behind them and the present destroyed, they looked to the future. After the fallout had settled, these Vaults would open and the vault dwellers would begin their lives again.
A vault on America's West Coast held a group of military vault dwellers that emerged almost unscathed. They surveyed the wastes and squared their shoulders for the task ahead. These dedicated survivors scavenged the technology from the vaults, technology that was studied, replicated, and fiercely guarded, for they knew that while their power lay in numbers, their future lay in scientific knowledge. In time, they formed the Brotherhood of Steel. The Brotherhood used their knowledge to drive back the atrocities of the wasteland, proclaiming themselves the technological saviors of mankind. They scoured the wasteland in search of new technology, raiding Mutant camps, and bandit towns, the broken remains of the less fortunate Vaults. But even the Brotherhood couldn't keep up with the demands required by the Wasteland. The Brotherhood found themselves at odds with their need for new blood versus their code of technological secrecy. The debate was lengthy, but eventually, the elders ruled against sharing their technology with outsiders, reasoning that they would endure as they had before. Further discussion was discouraged. The Elders ordered the Minority on a mission across the wastes. Super-Mutants, foot soldiers of a conquered army, were sent into a retreat through the mountainous barrier to the east. The Brotherhood constructed airships to survey the extent of their forces. Disaster stuck while crossing the great mountains. A great storm hit the main airship and flung it far from it's course. The great airship was badly damaged, as smaller sections flew from the remaining craft, never to be seen again. Many of the expedition's leaders had been lost to the winds. The fraction of the crew that still survived struggled to keep the remaining craft aloft before crashing on the outskirts of a once thriving metropolis called "Chicago". Broken, scattered and scarred, they took stock of the situation and squared their shoulders for the task ahead. The Brotherhood had much to offer the surrounding villages. They exchanged advanced medicines in exchange for food and labor. They traded protection from bandits for new recruits. In time their ranks began to swell. Separated by distance and ideology from the main Brotherhood forces, the minority was free to construct a new Brotherhood of Steel, one that reflected the ideals they had strived for all along.
This Brotherhood carried on the work of the main Brotherhood, and in turn, tamed and educated the ignorant and savage wastes. They worked their way from the Midwest, eastward, until they reached the coasts. While the United States is not a country yet, raiders and savagery in Brotherhood territories had been drastically reduced, and even resembled the ideal post nuclear utopia, to an extent. However, their work isn't done, for in the Brotherhood, there is always another enemy.