Hello everyone. Today, we follow Damian, Dogmeat Star Paladin Cross, Scribe Hood and Knight Berry as they enter the Little Lamplight caves.

Please enjoy.


The Lamplight Caves were just a few minutes away and were set next to an old road and a parking lot. Going down a hill, the entrance of the caves was overhung by a giant statue of, the attraction's mascot, a purple mole with a yellow miner's helmet, clawed legs and large moustaches.

Above, on the hill, an old water tower and a billboard, again depicting the mole with its playful look and yellow helmet, coming out of a hole in the ground, indicated the entrance to the site.

The old shop and museum entrance were slowly falling into ruin. Small garlands of lights and pennants ran over their heads from the entrance of the cave to the electric and telephone poles in the parking lot. Several watchtowers made of rotten wood tried to give the site a fortified appearance and a series of old, damaged wind turbines were slowly turning with the wind.

"Do you think we're going to find a civilization of intelligent Molerats or Dwarves like in the old pre-war movies?" asked Berry as he watched the mascot.

"I hope not," shuddered Hood.

"Get serious. Both of you," sighed Cross.

Damian could see the remains of human bones buried underground. The bones seemed to have been there for a very long time. He walked past the others and entered the cave.

The inside of the cave was lit by lanterns and garlands of different colored light bulbs. Damian and the others advanced through the narrow tunnel. The slippery, smooth slope forced them to hold on to an old, damp rope attached to the walls, or to the posts where the lanterns were attached.

They ended up in a large rock cavity, lit by garlands of light bulbs. They stood in front of a stop sign, and a little further on, a barricade of sheet metal and wood was blocking access to the rest of the cave. The place was fortified, and to Damian's relief, there was nothing to suggest the presence of Super Mutants or Raiders.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Easy there!"

An authoritative but very young voice echoed against the stalactites and cave walls. Damian looked for the person who had just spoken when he heard Berry choke with surprise.

"Holy shit! I was right! Dwarves!"

"Who are you calling a Dwarf, mungo?"

The voice that answered the Knight came from the barricade. Damian lit his Pip-Boy's lamp and pointed the beam in the direction of the voice. A small figure stood there on the barricade. At first Damian thought Berry was right, but then he realized that their mystery interlocutor was a child. A young boy with a round face and plump cheeks. The boy was rather small and couldn't have been more than 12 years old. He was wearing an olive-green military jacket, several sizes too big for him, and matching fatigues with knee pads. His jacket was held in place by a black leather harness and belt and elastic bands at the wrists. He also wore a white scarf as a hood under a large military helmet with goggles.

This sight might have been laughable if the young boy did not have an assault rifle in his hands, which he seemed to be able to handle with great ease.

"Hood," Cross whispered. "You're the best at talking and getting people to trust you. See what you can do."

The young scribe nodded shyly. She cleared her throat and stepped forward.

"Hold it right there, lady!" barked the young boy. "Not another step or I'll blow your fuckin' head off!"

Hood froze and slowly raised her arms. She nervously glanced at Cross and Berry and cleared her throat again and looked at the young boy again, putting a broad, forced smile on her face.

"Uh... Hi," she said insecurely, before pulling herself together. "You don't have to be afraid, we're friends."

"Yeah, sure. I don't have many friends and none of them are tall like you miss," replied the boy. "You'd better get the hell out."

"Can... Can you tell me about this place?" Hood asked.

The boy remained silent for a moment, squinting and looking at the young scribe.

"It's Little Lamplight. We live here and we don't want mungos like you snooping around, so get out!"

Hood took a brief glance at Cross, who encouraged him to continue.

"You... Can you tell me your name? My name is Alice, and this are my..."

"I'm MacCready," cut the boy down. "I run Little Lamplight because I was elected mayor. And I don't like strangers, let alone mungos like you."

"My friends and I would like to get into a Vault, not far from here, and we'd like to know if we can get there from these caves," said Hood.

"Yeah, but since you have to go through Little Lamplight and it's not allowed to the mungos, you won't go!"

"So, we can access the Vault from the caves?" Damian asked.

MacCready turned to him and gave him a murderous look. His face was getting redder with anger.

"Are you deaf or what? I said no mungos in Little Lamplight, so back off!"

"Listen, kid," Berry said in a bossy tone. "I am Knight Berry of the Brotherhood of Steel, and by order of Elder Lyons, it is vital that we pass for..."

"You don't frighten me, mungo!" MacCready cut him off. "Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person! I blow my nose at you and your so-called Elder Lyons and his stupid knights!"

Berry stammered a few words before resuming.

"I, uh..."

"I don't want to talk to you anymore, you empty headed animal food trough wiper! Your mother was a Molerat and your father smelt of mutated fruit!"

Berry opened his mouth and immediately closed it again. He turned to Damian and the others. They were all stunned by the boy's grotesque and insulting remarks.

"Is there anyone else we can talk to? Hood asked shyly.

"No, now go away, or I'll do it again!"

Damian looked at the others, still reeling from the torrent of insults they'd just endured. He turned to MacCready.

"What could possibly make you trust us?"

"Trust?" the boy repeated. "There's no reason to trust mungos. They're only getting us into trouble, and I don't want what happened to Sammy and Squirrel to happen to anyone else."

"What happened to them?" Damian asked immediately.

MacCready remained silent for a moment. He seemed to curse himself inwardly for bringing up the subject. Damian had seen an opportunity to make the boy bend, and although he dreaded the answer to his question, he no longer intended to take gloves with this insolent youngster.

"They got caught with Penny," MacCready finally said with a serious tone. "By mungos like you. Slave traders from Paradise Falls."

Damian looked at the others. Cross and Berry displayed an expression of contempt when they heard the word "slavers", and Hood looked horrified.

"If we get these children back, will you trust us?" Cross asked.

MacCready looked surprised. He should not have expected to be offered help with this problem.

"If you bring them back, perhaps I'll let you in," he said. "Now beat it!"

The young boy watched them slip away and disappear into the cave tunnels. Once outside, Cross went to the small souvenir hut next to the cave entrance.

"Although we should not stray from our goal and time is probably playing against us, we cannot leave these children in the hands of the slavers. That would be contrary to the precepts of Elder Lyons," she said.

"Besides, we can't enter the caves and find access to Vault 87 until we help that filthy little brat," Berry added.

"Any idea how we're going to do that?" asked the young scribe.

"No, but we'll figure it out when the time comes," said Damian.

Paradise Falls was located northeast of the Lamplight Caves. The place had kept its pre-war name and a large billboard had the name in blue letters on a red background. On his way there, Damian had learned from Hood that Paradise Falls was a giant old shopping mall with many shops and attractions. It was still possible to find here and there in the Wastes flyers inviting to come and visit the different shops. The fact that the place had become the hub of the slave market in the Capital Wasteland was quite humorous.

The whole area was turned into a fortress, surrounded by an enclosure made of wood and metal or car wrecks piled on top of each other. What attracted the most attention was the multitude of crows circling in the sky above the center and nesting in a gigantic statue, representing a young boy wrapped in a large lock of hair and holding an ice cone in his hand, which Damian recognized as the strange statue he had seen when he had been at the Georgetown police station to rescue Red and Shorty.

"How do you want to proceed? asked Berry, who was observing the area through the scope of his laser rifle.

Cross was sweeping the Paradise Falls compound with her binoculars. She mumbled, coming up with several ideas and immediately rejecting them.

"We could go in the front and pretend to be buyers," Damian suggested.

"Not with my power armor," Cross replied. "Usually, the slavers and the Brotherhood avoid each other, but who knows how they might react when they see me. If we're going to choose this idea, it will be without me."

"We could handle it," Damian insisted. "Between the three of us, pardon me, four (he looked at Dogmeat who had just barked as if to show his disapproval) we could go in without too much trouble."

Cross thought for a few moments.

"It's risky," she finally said. "But we don't have much choice. And even if you manage to get back, how do you plan to free the children? I doubt you have enough caps to buy their freedom."

"We'll see when the time comes," Damian said. "Staying here isn't going to do us much good, and the more time we waste thinking, the more these poor kids are at risk and the more the Enclave is likely to find out that it needs a G.E.C.K. and where to get one."

A tiny smile appeared on Cross's lips.

"Your father would be extremely proud," she said to herself as she watched Damian and the others rummage through their things and collect all their caps.

About ten minutes later they were ready. Damian had taken off his armor and his Pip-Boy and was wearing only a t-shirt and his fatigues. Arriving in front of the slavers wearing the colors of the Reilly's Rangers had not seemed like a good idea. He had left his bag and tied a piece of grey cloth around his head as a bandana. Their plan was quite simple. Berry and Hood would pose as a couple of merchants looking to acquire a child slave and Damian would play the role of their bodyguard. Cross would stay behind with Dogmeat and cover them with Berry's rifle if the situation were to escalate.

The entrance to Paradise Falls was at the end of a small road framed by barricades and buildings too damaged to be used. Two African American men stood guard and were to act as a checkpoint for buyers, sellers and caravans passing through the area.

When Damian and the others arrived, the two guards stopped their discussion and pulled the breeches of their guns, looking threatening. Damian glanced at Hood, but the young scribe did not let her nervousness show.

One of the guards, with a shaved head, wearing a grey jacket and jeans, motioned for them to stop.

"You only enter Paradise Falls if you're here for business. And I decide whether your business is worth or not."

"We're here to buy," said Berry.

"And sell?" asked the second guard with a smile.

He put his hands on the breastplate of his battle armor and glanced briefly at Damian before dwelling on Hood.

"How much you want for the girl?"

"You'd better watch your mouth when you're next to her," Damian spat. "Now either you let us pass, or you continue wasting our time. We came here to do business, not to argue with the gatekeepers."

The armored guard stared at him. Damian was beginning to fear that his mercenary impersonation wouldn't fool the guards for long.

"Please excuse my bodyguard," smiled Berry. "He takes his job a little too much to heart at times. As he tried to explain, we are here to do business, and no, my wife is not for sale."

Berry gave a bad guy look at the guards and knocked together the caps they had gathered in a small purse. The first guard with the shaved head stared at Damian for a few more seconds before turning to the Knight. He seemed to think for a few moments.

"All right, you can enter, but make sure that little shit holds his tongue in front of Eulogy," he said, giving Damian a scornful glance.

He and his companion stepped aside and let them pass. Berry grabbed Hood by the waist and pulled her gently with him towards the entrance. After a few yards, he looked over his shoulder and made sure the two slavers couldn't hear them.

"Thanks," smiled Hood shyly at Damian.

"Hope I did not attract too much attention on us," said Damian.

"I don't think," answered Berry. "If these two guys would report or shoot every person talking back to them, they'd have a lot less clients."

Damian looked behind his shoulder and saw that the guards had resumed their conversation and did not pay any attention to them.

"Okay, once inside, we'll go see this guy, Eulogy, while I negotiate a price with him, you'll go and see where the children are," Berry said.

"Understood," replied Hood and Damian.

The entrance to Paradise Falls was marked by a large concrete arch painted red with a blue sign on metal bars reading "Paradise Falls Shopping Centre". A wall of car wreckage was used as an enclosure and access was via the wreckage of a bus. A macabre decoration greeted Damian and the members of the Brotherhood. Impaled in the arch on steel rods protruding from the concrete or attached by chains or barbed wire to the sign, human skeletons seemed to observe them and envy their living status.

"Fucking savages," Berry growled in a breath.

Looking around him, Damian saw that the slavers had set up cages, suspended from lampposts or trees. Most of them were empty, but some contained bones that had spilled on the ground and were slowly beginning to be covered with dust.

Two other guards were at the entrance. They looked curiously at Damian and his companions before resuming their discussion. Suddenly, shouts came from the other side of the arch and the wall of cars. A man dressed in rags and a young boy in an old scout's outfit ran out of the wrecked bus. The two guards tried to intervene, but the man pushed the first one and sent a blow to the throat of the second one, who fell to his knees. He must have had a sharp object in his hands, for Damian noticed a thin stream of blood coming out of the victim's throat and spilling over the dusty ground.

The first guard got up almost immediately and grabbed the boy by the wrist and put him down on the ground. The man trying to escape turned around briefly before continuing to run. He saw Damian and the others and ran towards them. He grabbed Hood's arms and began to scream, his voice distorted by fear.

"Help me! Please!"

Damian noticed that he was wearing a metal necklace around his neck that seemed very uncomfortable. The young scribe stammered something when a third slaver appeared. Dressed in khaki battle armor, an assault rifle, and with all his head shaved off except a small blond crest, he looked down at the young boy, who was struggling in vain, and at the guard who was holding his throat and trying to stem the flow of blood. He turned to the fugitive and called out to him, aiming his rifle to him.

The fugitive uttered a squeak of terror and let go of the young scribe, who almost fell to the ground. The fugitive ran towards the Wastes. Damian heard a rapid series of "beeps". The next moment, the fugitive's head disappeared into a red mist. The headless body tilted forward and slipped before coming to rest.

Hood hiccupped in fright and covered her face with her hands. Damian could hardly understand what he had just seen. Without hearing a gunshot, the fugitive's head had exploded. Out of the corner of his eye, Damian saw the two guards from the checkpoint running up to him.

"Forty, what the hell happened?"

The slave trader with the blonde crest, answering to the name of Forty, approached the corpse.

"The fucker tried to run off with one of the kids but his collar blew his brains out."

The two guards turned towards the child, still being held down by the slaver.

"Grouse, go back to your post, barked the man at the ridge. And you Richter, clean up this mess."

He returned to the entrance after a brief look at Damian and the others.

"Dirty little brat," the man said. "I should put you in the Box with your boyfriends."

He grabbed the boy by the wrist and lifted him up.

"You take care of him," he said, addressing the last remaining slaver and pointing to the guard who had finished bleeding to death.

He pushed the boy into the wreckage of the bus and rushed in after him.

"I think we found what we were looking for," Berry whispered.

"God... What a horrible place..."

Hood could not take her eyes off the headless body next to them. The Knight gently pressed her arm to bring her back to reality. Damian didn't know if the Brotherhood scribes had to go through the same training as the Knights, Paladins or him, but even years of obstacles courses and shooting at cardboard targets can't prepare someone for the horrific sight of a head being sprayed in a cloud of blood.

"Looks like we have another problem," Damian said. "If we get the kids out without removing their collars..."

He didn't need to finish his sentence. Berry was already thinking of a solution and Hood was trying not to imagine that vision.

"Hey, you, with the bandana! Stop jerking around and come help me!"

Damian and the Brotherhood members turned around. The guard was leaning over his companion and was obviously waiting for Damian to help him carry the body.

"You heard him," said Berry, who was resuming his role as a slave trader. "Go help him and join us inside when you're done."

He walked to the wreckage of the bus with the young scribe. Damian approached the slaver. The man with the throat wound was dead. A puddle of dark red liquid continued to grow beside him.

"Grab his legs," ordered the slaver.

"Where are you taking him?" Damian asked.

"Inside."

Damian tilted his rifle over his shoulder and grabbed the corpse by the ankles and lifted him up. He passed the wreckage and went inside Paradise Falls.

A sign with a revolver drawn on it surrounded by a crossed circle, and a message that all visitors should keep their weapons in their holsters was just on the other side. The sign was also decorated in the same manner as the arch. Human skulls were planted on metal spikes. As he passed by, he had the impression that the skulls were following him with their empty sockets.

The inside of Paradise Falls looked more like a dump than a base or a town. Piles of trash littered the ground, car wrecks cluttered parts of the site, and the facades of the buildings were in dire need of maintenance or they would soon collapse.

The slavers had put up signs in front of each shop to indicate their new use. Near the entrance, Damian saw a shop converted into a shack and a clinic.

He helped the slaver transport the corpse. They placed the body near the door and the slaver banged his fist on the door glass.

"Cutter! Cutter! Open up!"

The door opened on the fly. A woman in her forties, her face starting to wrinkle, her white hair cut short and wearing a dirty white t-shirt and brown fatigues, appeared.

"What?" she grunted.

She looked at Damian from head to toe before she saw the corpse.

"What the hell is this shit?"

"One of the new slaves wanted to escape and he killed Lewis," replied the slaver with Damian.

The woman sighed. She waved for the slaver to come in and disappeared into her clinic. Damian entered with the corpse. Just after the entrance, a series of opaque plastic screens separated the rest of the room from the rest of the room, in a state of dilapidation and filth that would have made a Mister Handy break down.

"Put it down there, I'll take care of it," grunted Cutter.

Damian laid the body on a surgery table. The slaver turned to him and gave him a pat on the shoulder.

"Thanks, man. You should get back to your buddies. Be a shame if they'd confuse you with the livestock."

He uttered a sneer, to which Damian replied with a forced smile. The slaver left the clinic and returned to his post, apparently undisturbed by the death of his companion. Damian looked around him.

On the lampposts or on metal poles, the slavers had set up other cages or hung other skeletons. In front of Damian, a metal footbridge surrounded a concrete pylon topped by a metal ball with a plaster coating where spikes were jutting out in a disorderly fashion. The old sign was now used as a small watchtower to watch the entrance and the rest of the place and a heavy machinegun that Damian had only seen in photos from the Second World War was installed there. The guard on duty seemed to be nonchalantly observing a small square a little further away.

At the foot of an old cinema, a small crowd was gathered. Damian found Berry and Hood away from the crowd. The spectacle before their eyes was sad and distressing and Damian was nauseous just by looking at it.

Standing on a pool table, three men and a woman, all wearing metal collars around their necks, were being inspected by a small crowd. Damian's heart skipped a beat. The woman on the pool table had long brown hair, a dull complexion and was wearing a vault suit. He shook his head and blinked several times to make sure he wasn't dreaming. He even pinched his arm, but no, the woman was right there on that pool table, exposed like a piece of meat.

Damian caught Berry's eye. The Knight implored him not to intervene and Hood looked away and bit her lip. Damian couldn't take his eyes off the woman. He began to imagine a whole bunch of hypotheses. What if the Radroaches who had infiltrated the Vault on the day of his escape had caused a series of malfunctions leading to its destruction? What if the residents were forced to open the Vault and move to the Wasteland? Or had Amata been overwhelmed by her father's totalitarianism and decided to leave to find Damian?

Theories were racing through Damian's head and he could feel his heartbeat racing. He tried to calm down, to convince himself that this woman was from another Vault in the region. After all, there were four other Vault in the area around D.C. and it was quite possible that they were still inhabited. Even so, Damian could not get the image of Amata, displayed in front of a crowd bidding to take it over, out of his mind.

The small crowd of about ten people asked questions in an anarchic way to a woman with a shaved head, except for two small locks of hair that looked like demon horns, wearing a leather outfit and a big pink sweater. The questions revolved mainly around the woman's age. The woman in the pink sweater ordered her to raise his head. She hit the billiard table with a metal pipe, which startled the woman. She lifted her head up.

Damian almost breathed a sigh of relief. The woman was a stranger to him. It was then that he noticed that she wasn't wearing a Pip-Boy and that what he had mistaken for a vault suit was actually a utility suit. The woman looked terrified and was shaken with sobs and her tears made a furrow in the dirt on her face. Damian cursed himself internally for feeling relieved that this woman was not Amata.

He could feel the rage rising inside him. A hatred as intense as the hatred he felt for the members of the Enclave was growing inside him. Damian turned his eyes away from the heartbreaking vision and tried to suppress the growing desire to take his assault rifle and empty the magazine into the crowd of slavers and merchants in front of him.

He saw the man in combat armor and the little crest in great discussion with a man in a leather outfit and another in a red suit. The man in the leather outfit seemed unhappy, and despite the hubbub, Damian managed to capture bits and pieces of their conversation.

The man in the leather outfit seemed very unhappy and pointed an authoritative finger at the man on the crest while the man in the red suit was trying to reassure him about a payback story. The man in the leather suit retrieved a satchel, probably full of caps, and, with great gestures of his arms, headed for the exit.

The sale lasted a few more minutes. Damian feared that they were too late and that the children had already been sold. The crowd dispersed, taking with them the poor men and women who had been sold.

The man in the red, African American suit, with a shaved head and a well-shaven goatee, walked towards Damian and his companions. He was flanked by two women, a Caucasian one with white hair and a shaved head on one side and an African American, with hair imitating devil's horns. Both were wearing a pink strappy dress and a slave necklace.

"If you're looking for a good deal, you've come to the right place," he said with a grin. "Paradise Falls is there to fulfill your desires."

"You must be Eulogy, I presume," said Berry, who played his part to perfection. "My companion and I are looking for something... Special."

Berry knocked the caps together in his purse. Eulogy smiled broadly. He raised his arm and pointed to a small space protected by old bus shelters. The place had been converted into a bar and restaurant. A few merchants had stopped there to buy some food before resuming their journey and some slavers had sat down and chatted happily over a drink.

Eulogy, still escorted by the two women who followed him like his shadow, invited Berry and Hood to sit down. He glanced briefly at Damian before turning to the Knight.

"If I may say so, having a slave as a bodyguard can sometimes be... A dangerous thing."

"He's not a slave, he's more like my handyman. A slave bodyguard might be tempted not to guard the body that feeds and protects him," replied Berry.

"That's right," smiled Eulogy. "That's why I made sure that Clover and Crimson (he referred to the Caucasian and African-American women in turn) had an unfailing affection for me."

Damian was beginning to think that Berry had missed his calling by joining the Brotherhood. Eulogy smiled. He clapped his hands and the barman, a man in his thirties, brown hair with a small beard, immediately ran up with a bottle of wine and three glasses. He uncorked it and poured the red liquid into the glasses before returning to the counter as quickly as he had come.

"So, you come to Paradise Falls with a very definite idea," said Eulogy as he spun the wine in the glass. "That something "special" as you say, what is it?"

"Well, we..."

A sound of broken glass caught everyone's attention. In front of the counter, a mountain of muscle enclosed in spiked metal armor had just passed by on the other side of the bar and was staring at the bartender.

The man in armor, with a shaved head and a thick beard, was screaming, his face a few inches away from the bartender.

Out of the corner of his eye, Damian saw the slavers watching the scene with some satisfaction and started taking bets. The bartender stammered an apology and tried to back out. The man grabbed him by the hair and smashed his face against the counter. Hood looked away. Damian feared that she couldn't play her part for much longer. What idea had crossed Rothchild's mind when he decided to send this young woman with them? Fortunately, all eyes were on the man in armor and the bartender, and no one noticed the young scribe's reaction.

The bartender stood up from behind the counter. His jaw was broken, and all his teeth had shattered on impact. Some laughter escaped from some of the slave traders present. The man in spiked armor grabbed a baseball bat and with a quick, sharp blow, brought it down on the bartender's skull, which collapsed several centimeters.

Damian shivered when he heard the skull bones crack. The bartender collapsed behind the counter. The man in metal armor spat and grabbed a bottle of vodka from one of the shelves and returned to his seat.

"Please forgive my employees, they can sometimes be... Impulsive," Eulogy said as he turned to Berry. "So, you were telling me you were here to buy something out of the ordinary, is that right?"

"Yes," replied Berry. "We're looking to buy a child."

Eulogy displayed a grin.

"You're lucky, I've just got a new arrival. But why doesn't Madam go and see them. I'm sure you'll find them to your liking."

"I was thinking of sending my bodyguard instead. He has a... A certain gift for this sort of thing."

Damian masked his surprise with a grunt of approval. Eulogy stared at him for a few moments before he threw his hand in the air.

"Here at Paradise Falls, we make no judgments. Do as you please."

Damian walked away to the pens. A little further away, he noticed a large grey cylindrical capsule. He had seen similar ones in the Wastes before.

As far as he knew, they were pods that would provide shelter for one or even two people in case of a nuclear explosion or heavy radioactive fallout. All those he had seen were usually occupied by the remains of a man or a woman who had taken refuge there when the bombs fell and who had then perished, either from radiation too strong, hunger or thirst, or by suicide. The one at Paradise Falls seemed to have been converted back into a cell by the slavers, judging by the sign reading "The Box" next to the small fallout shelter, and Damian could hear someone inside banging against the metal walls.

In an enclosure, three children were comforting each other. Damian approached the fence. A guard watched him for a moment and stepped aside to let him pass.

Damian walked towards the fence and called out to the children. He looked over his shoulder. The guard had just lit a cigarette and yawned loudly. Chances were, he was spying on the conversation, either to pass the time or because he was ordered to.

Of the three children, two were boys, one wearing a Boy Scout uniform and the other a baseball jacket that was too big for him. The girl, Black, wore grey overalls and a t-shirt.

The boy in the Boy Scout's uniform, whom Damian recognized as the one he had passed on his way in, approached.

"What do you want mungo?" he spat.

"My name is MacCready. I'm here for you and your friends. I know a cave where you'll be very happy to live."

Damian hoped the boy would get the message. His face lit up and he came a little closer to the fence.

"Are you here to get us out?" whispered the boy.

"Yes, I have friends who are trying to negotiate your freedom, but if it goes wrong, we'll have to find something else."

"Can't you just kill all the mungos in here?"

"Have you seen how many there are? All of them against three of us? Besides, we need to disable those collars first."

The boy massaged his neck as he pondered the fate of the runaway.

"Squirrel may have found a way, but..."

He fell silent and took a few steps back. Damian looked over his shoulder. Berry, Hood and Eulogy, still flanked by his two guard dogs in pink robes, approached him.

"So?" Berry asked.

"I think all three will be a good choice, Sir" Damian replied.

"Yes, excellent. They're a bit dissipated, but I'm sure you'll be able to instill the necessary discipline in them," smiled Eulogy.

He turned to Berry and Hood.

"For the one with the Boy Scout uniform and the girl, I'll let you have them for 500 caps each. The third one, what's his name again... Squirrel, yes. He's a very smart kid for his age. 500 would be a crime. 1,000 caps."

Damian swore on the inside. The three of them didn't even have half the money. Berry tried to negotiate but Eulogy frowned slightly. Any attempt to bargain was automatically doomed to failure.

"Well, I'm afraid this transaction will be for the next time. If you can come back with the money, then they will be yours."

Eulogy invited Damian and the others to leave. As he was escorted to the exit, Damian gave one last look at the children.


Arriving in Little Lamplight always made me think about the French tauting scene of Monty Python's Holy Grail. That's why I made MacCready say it.

As for Paradise Falls, I always felt that the place was empty. I guess it was meant that way in case you wnat to burn the place to the ground for good karma, but the fact that there was no "cinematic"/scripted event other than the the guy escaping and getting his head blown off, made the place like any other Fallout bad guys fortress for me.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed and until next time.