Dear Diary,

Given that I spent a good year or so parading across Skyrim with an orc, I shouldn't have been so taken aback at the sight of the super mutants. But I was.

The super mutants, for one, are huge, easily my height and a half, and people that aren't at least wary of creatures that large usually don't live very long. Their skin is coloured, some pale blue, most are green, with a bulbous nose and large, deep set eyes. They are muscular and bulky, and mostly dressed in leather armour. Their teeth are large, squared, set and bared very often, but otherwise they're rather similar to orcs.

Ah, yes, and the biggest thing about them is that they are mostly mental to some degree, and can turn invisible on a whim. I have no idea why this is so, but it really, really unnerves me. What it's like to sit here as I write this, with guards patrolling outside and mumbling their inane mutterings as they pass by, and you know that when you open the door, you won't be able to see anything... it's not something you can quite imagine. Well, maybe you can, since empty hallways are easy enough, but, ah... you get the point.

When I reached the foot of Black Mountain, I met Neil. He was sitting outside a run-down shack, which was no more than a few sheets of rusted metal held up by some sticks to form a shade. He greeted me as I walked up. I'll admit, I was rather stunned - again, large, tall creature, skin green like an orc's, body bulging with muscles, and shirtless. Actually, now that I think of it, he reminds me a bit of the Dragonborn. Huh.

Anyhow, he greeted me, and asked, "Where are you headed, traveller?"

"Why do you want to know?" I asked warily.

"Because if you're headed up the mountain, I have some important advice for you," he replied.

"Ah," I said, "then yes, that's where I'm headed."

"Good. Don't be," he said.

I asked him to make sense.

"Black Mountain has been taken over by a super mutant called Tabitha," he explained. "And Tabitha, in a word, is insane. She's ordered her guards to shoot any human on sight. My job is to warn people about it."

I looked up the mountain path. He noticed and shook his head.

"Miss, you seem really, really new to the wasteland. Let me ask you: do you know what a super mutant is?"

"No," I replied truthfully.

He rolled his eyes. "Then you'd better head back. You obviously don't know what you're getting yourself into. See, super mutants are like myself, except the ones up there are mad. You can't reason with them. You can't fight them up close, because a swing of their clubs is all they need to grind you to dust. You can't fight them with guns, because you can't see them, because the guarding nightkin, they've got Stealth Boys on all the time. Surely you know about Stealth Boys, right? No?"

He sighed when he saw my expression. It's something I'm rather proud of, actually. I've managed to hone a look to display whenever someone tells me about something that I probably should know about but don't. I even practiced it for a bit in Sloan. You pull your lips a bit horizontally, and you widen your eyes without raising your eyebrows, and then you frown and bite your lip.

"Stealth Boys make the user invisible. You can see how that would be a problem."

"Ah," I said. At least invisibility was not a new concept to me. "But I need a place to stay for the night."

"You're going up Black Mountain to look for somewhere to sleep?" asked Neil, in a tone that suggested that I was crazy.

"Yeah," I said.

"Why don't you just sleep under the open sky, like every other wanderer does?"

"It's not safe," I said.

"And you think going up Black Mountain is safe? You're crazy," he snorted. "Can't you feel it? Black Mountain is one of the most irradiated places in the Mojave Wasteland. Such a frail body as your own would have picked up on it by now. Unless..." He peered at me. "No, there doesn't seem to be anything special about you. You should have felt it."

"Wait, wait, hold on. Black Mountain is irradiated?" I asked, not having felt anything.

"Miss, you need to do your research," he said with a dry laugh. "Radiation's not too bad at the foot of the mountain, but it only gets worse as you go up. A nuclear warhead hit gobsmack in the middle of the crater you see before you, you see. If you kept up a steady eating of Rad-X, maybe you'd make it, but otherwise, you'd end up a crawling heap of tumours if you spent more than a day up there."

I can't begin to describe my apprehension then. So not only was Black Mountain not a town, it was uninhabitable. A couple more hours, and the sun would have set; I needed to find shelter quickly. Perhaps, if I did an all-nighter, I would reach REPCONN HQ, but the name was even more ambiguous than Black Mountain. If I reached there only to find out that there was no lodging, well, I'd be in a tight spot.

It was while I fumed silently that Neil saw Morgodore for the first time.

"Miss," he said slowly, "is that baby deathclaw yours?"

"Baby deathclaw?" He pointed to Morgodore. "Is that what it is? Yeah, I guess." I lifted him up in my arms and hastily put him back down when he struggled. "I found him two days ago, and he seems to like me."

"It's... yours?" A strange look was on his face, like he couldn't believe his eyes. "Does it have... a name?"

I couldn't see where this was going at the time, but it wasn't as if being nasty to Neil would get me a bed any quicker. "Yeah. It's called Morgodore."

He began to fidget on his feet until he finally caved in. "More like Morgodor-able, am I right?" he grinned, revealing fully his two rows of yellowed teeth, and picked him up like a child would pick up a kitten. Morgodore hissed and struggled, but its talons fell short of those bunched arms of his, and Neil swung it around a couple of times, making cooing noises. "It's so cute! Look at it!"

I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. Perhaps closing my slacked jaw might have been a good start.

"And it's yours, you say?" he asked.

"Yep. He's mine," I said, fairly sure that that was the right answer.

Neil put him down and went into his shack. "Well, that changes things. I can't bear to think of the little guy out in the cold on his own. I've been meaning to use this myself, but it doesn't fit me, as you can see." He re-appeared, holding this bright red jumper, with some sort of clear dome attached to it like a helmet. "I found this at REPCONN a few weeks ago. It's a space suit, and very good for resisting radiation." He handed it to me. "I'll let you borrow it. It'll keep out quite a bit of the stuff, though not all of it, so make sure to keep an eye on your health parameters. Your Pip-Boy does that for you."

I gave him the look again, and he took my arm and pressed a couple of buttons. He pointed out on the display numbers and words, and explained to me how this heavy bracelet knew more about my body's condition than I did. I was enlightened that very moment. The power of these Earth machines is truly formidable.

"But," I had to ask before leaving, "why didn't you offer it to me in the beginning?"

"Because honestly? I don't trust humans that much," he shrugged, "but to keep such a beautiful creature as a pet... you're probably all right." He sat back down and titled his head at me meaningfully. "Don't prove me wrong. I still want the suit back, mind."

Sure, the experience was queer, but I like to think of it as a preparation for what happened next. Compared to Tabitha and the inhabitants of Black Mountain, Neil is as solidly reasonable as a totem.

Turns out that the VATS aiming thing is capable of detecting enemies that I can't. I mean, yes, I did try the diplomatic approach, greeting them with a raised arm, but they starting shooting at me and then I had to scramble. I didn't shoot to kill, I will have you know; just their arms so that they couldn't fire, and their legs so that they couldn't chase after me. The VATS made it really easy to pick out the weak bits, I reckon, because every hit that I landed maimed its target. They fell, screaming and grunting, but definitely still alive. Which they should be plenty grateful for, if you ask me.

When we got to the summit, there was a monster in the distance, watching us. It looked like a grown-up version of Morgodore. A lot more grown-up. I'm glad watching us was all it did, as I got the feeling that my bullets wouldn't be able to penetrate that thick hide of its.

So there I was, dressed in some bright red suit and a fishbowl that fogged up as I breathed, having eaten a couple of Rad-X, in front of the door, when it burst open from the inside, and the most horrendous creature came out. It had a shock of blond curls on its head - that's what it looked like, a shock of curls on its head - some sort of heart-shaped frames on its nose. I didn't notice the rest of it, because I was too busy being aghast as it stared into my eyes.

"Who are you?" it asked, in a voice not quite a woman's, but not so much a man's.

"Uh," I replied. Not the smartest thing to say, I'll admit.

"Who are you? The supreme overlord demands an answer!" it shouted.

So this was the feared Tabitha. Well, Neil was right when he said that she was crazy, I'll give him that.

"I'm, er, a friend," I replied.

"You are? Are you? Which friend?"

I blurted the first name that came to my mind. "Lily. Yep, I'm Lily. Lily... Bowen."

Tabitha stared at me with furious eyes. "You're a lot shorter than I remember you."

I breathed a little faster in the hopes that the fog would hide my face. "I haven't been eating well," I replied.

"I see, I see. I see! Yes, yes, you are my friend! Welcome!" bellowed Tabitha, expression changing into glee as swift as a diving hawk. "Yes, Tabitha will welcome you and you will have tea! And we will talk about the Master and remember his gloriousness!"

Bluffing my way with someone evidently several slices short of a leg-of-lamb? Sure, why not?

Needless to say, me writing this is proof that I did a good job of it. I feigned amnesia, spinning a yarn about how, after leaving the Master, whoever he is, I wandered the wilderness until I lost my memory, and the only thing I remembered was that I was Tabitha's friend. The suit, I explained, was magic which kept me alive. The moment I took off the helmet, I would die. And she actually sympathized, saying how she would feel the same way if she took off her wig. During tea time, I took up the teacup, raised it to my helmet and spilled it all over myself, and told her that was how I drank things normally. She swallowed everything without a doubt. I even convinced her to let me take my fill from the pantry as a private offering to the Flowerpot God that gave me the suit. And no, there is no Flowerpot God, though I'm a little inclined to say a word of thanks just in case.

Tabitha believes, for some reason, that her glasses give her the special ability to see enemies the other super mutants cannot see. She also really, really likes her machine servant, Rhonda, in a creepy, insane sort of way. It didn't say much. All it did was scoot around and refill our drinks. Probably should try and describe it, even though I'm horrible at it: think a dwemer machine, except that it floats, has three yellow eyes, a round head, a slim body and legs like a praying mantis'. And one of those legs has a razor attached to it. Get the picture? No? Ah, well, at least I tried. Not that I need to remember what it looks like, anyway, since after today both it and Tabitha will be far behind me.

And that's a good thing, because Tabitha is, in short, evidently insane. At least she's on my side. It really does make you re-consider what the definition of "safe" is.

Now that I've been here for a while, I get what Neil was saying about the radiation. I'm feeling slightly nauseous, though that could be because I've been wearing this claustrophobic helmet all day. The room I was given is surprisingly clean, although there's something coldly unpleasant about it. The walls are all metal, there's a mattress, a table and a chair, and a basin with dirty water. It's lit by some miniature sun in the ceiling that goes on and off at the flick of a switch. I faintly remember there being something like it in Doc Mitchell's house, but I never used it before.

Anyhow, it's twilight now. Didn't sleep much, feeling too sick to, at least got a few hours. Someone's knocking at the door. Might as well go see what they want.

Love,

Lydia