A/N: A GATE story based on Fallout 4 now? Why yes. Different factions, different locations, different protagonists (or how I interpret them anyway) mean different battles, different unfolding on the invasion, and so and so. It will have a lot of the same beats, I admit. The Empire character roster will be exactly the same between each story, although their fates may differ. But it's still a different story I hope people will enjoy.
Some might worry updates will be slow. I admit the New Vegas story's update schedule has been poor. I accept full responsibility for that. But I've put a system in place. I add 500 words to one story one day, 500 to the other the next, and so on. Assuming the average chapter length is 5000 words, I can definitely update each story once a month, maybe twice.
Humanity in the Commonwealth-Boston and all the surrounding towns and cities-had survived. It had survived the bombs, it had survived the radiation and drastically changed ecosystem, and it had survived raiders and other human conflict. It outlasted all of those for over 200 years to form communities, farms, and small governments. Some came and went, and some like Diamond City rooted themselves hard enough to be unmovable. And now it had survived several wars and come out stronger than ever.
The insidious Institute had plundered the Commonwealth's resources and citizens for over a century with its synth army, it had sabotaged and infiltrated any attempts for it to grow beyond small settlements, and it had unleashed hordes and hordes of violent failed experiments in the form of super mutants that made survival a hellish experience. No one had been able to fight it. The Institute had kept itself well hidden, and used its aforementioned synths to ensure humanity in the Commonwealth never organized to be strong enough to give it any grief.
Then the Brotherhood of Steel arrived with its blimp and well armed military force, loudly declaring to the region that they were here to preserve technology, destroy immoral technology, and kill those that abused technology for their own gain. They were here to destroy the Institute, and they warned the Commonwealth's citizens to stay out of their way. And true to their word, they waged war. Not just against the Institute, but against its failed experiments littering the Commonwealth. They hunted down feral ghouls, reasoning that as results of man's most destructive technology-nukes-they deserved extermination. They even went out of their way to hunt down raider groups using pre-war energy weapons or military robots.
The people of the Commonwealth were a naturally suspicious bunch and more focused on survival, so most of them steered clear of the soldiers. A few liked what they saw-fancy gear and food-and decided they were worth a shot. But there was one, only one, who joined and seriously contributed. One soldier, practically a one man army, who'd helped the Brotherhood achieve the majority of its goals and rapidly risen in its ranks all the way up to Sentinel.
The Brotherhood had arrived on November 3rd of that year. And on December 23rd, 2287, when Diamond City was prepping for Christmas and the Commonwealth's other citizens were just surviving another day, the Brotherhood had gone on the warpath. They stormed Cambridge in massive numbers, breaching the Institute's secret underground base guns blazing. A few escaped, but most were slaughtered. The Institute and its synths, as well as the only means to create them or super mutants, went up in fire when the Brotherhood set its nuclear reactor to explode. The boogiemen of the Commonwealth were gone, as were a good amount of super mutants and other abominations that had once roamed it. Starting in 2288, life was suddenly a lot easier.
Concurrent to the Brotherhood-Institute War and even after it was the Minutemen Wars. The Minutemen had been the personification of people's will to survive-a loose militia of farmers and settlers who joined together when necessary to battle threats like raiders or wildlife that made survival difficult. Over the years, it had grown fairly large and formidable. They even claimed Fort Independence-a fort dating back before even the American War of Independence-as a main base and communication center, dubbing it 'The Castle'. The Minutemen had even almost helped set up a provisional government for the Commonwealth, foiled at the last minute by the Institute although the details weren't clear all these decades later.
Unfortunately, the Commonwealth has its ways of tearing down even the strongest wills. The Minutemen had gone into a sharp decline decades ago after The Castle was overrun by mirelurks. The groups that were left began to fight over resources, survival being their primary goal still. There was infighting, and many retired after becoming disillusioned with the organization. No one leader could rise above the numerous groups and create unity, causing things to fall apart even faster. The many scourges of the Commonwealth multiplied with no organized resistance coming to stomp them out. By 2287, there'd been only one company of Minutemen left in the Commonwealth, and they were decimated a few months before the Brotherhood arrived.
But when you have nothing, you have everything to gain.
A new General assumed the monumental task of rebuilding the Minutemen, having literally no one to oppose him. And the organization did begin to rebuild. At first it was just the General and one other, going from settlement to settlement to help them with their problems. In doing so, they gained support and even recruits. They created connections between the different farms and settlements, and even helped set up new ones.
Those connections led to more dialogue, and in time those settlements and farms set up their own companies with a democratically elected leader. If one came under attack, the rest would send people to help. In time, more than half a dozen companies, totaling over 300 Minutemen, would form. The largest would be a group 78 big from Vault 88, a Vault that opened its doors in mid November for settlement. It was a unique company, in that it handled both vault security and guarded the several entrances it had to above ground.
The new General would help the Minutemen establish permanent bases and a professional contingent, places from which they could organize and cooperate with the volunteer companies all over the region. And organize they did. The Minutemen went from responding to threats, to actively wiping them out.
Raiders were the main target. In some instances, they even helped new settlers take residence at the old raider camps. But they took on anything that could threaten their settlements or trade caravans-roving packs of wild mongrels, super mutants, ghouls, mirelurks, and even deathclaws. In numbers and dedication, they found the strength to overcome these otherwise major threats.
They were quite similar to the Brotherhood in some regards, targeting the same threats. There'd even been several instances over several months that one group would find the other already engaged at a hotspot they had come to clean out.
The two groups had no official contact. The Brotherhood was isolationist by choice, the Minutemen were made of those naturally suspicious Commonwealth citizens. But they passed by each other out in the wastes often enough, and they had found themselves fighting the same enemy at the same time, just not coordinated. In the last few days before the Institute had been destroyed, they had launched an attack on the Minutemen headquarters. It was a vicious assault meant to take out what they perceived as a threat. But the Minutemen dug in hard and fought back, determined not to go the way of their old iteration.
From their nearby base at the old Boston Airport, the Brotherhood had come swarming in with vertibirds and other high power weaponry, dropping right into the middle of the battle and shoring up the Minutemen's desperate defense. Even if they described it as a response to synth aggression rather than agreement with the Minutemen's principles, the fact remained they had aided them. They were sure to take most of the Institute laser weaponry and synth bodies back with them, but they purposely left some behind so the Minutemen could scavenge.
In general, the Brotherhood turned a blind eye to the Minutemen as they became more organized and gathered more strength. Even though the group employed laser weaponry and power armor, things the Brotherhood had massacred entire raider groups over, they never raised an issue over it. The lower ranks in each organization were certain that their respective leaderships had been in talk with the other.
And between the Minutemen and the Brotherhood, the Commonwealth got safer and safer every day, especially after the Institute was destroyed and the Brotherhood shifted all its focus on exterminating super mutants and ghouls. One by one, day by day, every camp, dwelling, or base full of the Commonwealth's undesirables was purged. The only place raiders were safe were the far reaches and wilds of the region, or deep in the dark center of Boston among the collapsed skyscrapers. Even there, they dared not venture close to any settlement protected by the Minutemen. Feral ghouls were virtually extinct in the region now. The same held true for super mutants, bar one, even as numerous groups tried migrating back into the Commonwealth. The hideous giants were still spread in other parts of the former American Northeast, but the Brotherhood had plans for them.
Even the Gunners, the most well-armed and disciplined of the Commonwealth's undeniable scourges, were scarce now. The Minutemen returning and the equally if not better armed Brotherhood establishing itself had led to an uptick in violent confrontations that wasted their resources and made their mercenary operations more difficult. But that hadn't done them in; the group had maintained a heavy presence in the region's South all throughout the Brotherhood-Institute War and the subsequent peace. All it meant was they had to resort to pillaging more than taking contracts, but they still survived in their bases, intending to ride things out. The war ended, and they started making plans to re-establish themselves. That all changed when February rolled around.
Quincy had used to be a thriving settlement, easily on par with the likes of Diamond City. The Gunners had ransacked it late in the previous year, massacring the residents and the last company of Minutemen still operating in the Commonwealth; people were certain the 'Quincy Massacre' had destroyed the organization before it resurfaced only a few months later. Once the residents were dead or leaving, the Gunners had fortified the town with even more walls and posts on the raised highway running parallel to it, making it into one of their comfiest bases for pillaging and operating in Southern Boston that had managed to get through the Institute-Brotherhood War unscathed.
Then in February, Quincy started suffering attacks from hordes of combat robots. Scrappy looking eyebots and other franken-machines attacking guards on the walls and roofs. The Gunners held their ground, but not without taking some casualties. They blamed it on the 'Mechanist', some enigmatic figure who'd been causing trouble further North for months now. Confident with their superior firepower, they didn't worry too much.
None of the Gunners were aware the Mechanist had actually ceased operation last December.
They weathered the attacks for a week with only annoyance for the ammo they were wasting. Then the attacks got worse. Assaultrons, ones that looked factory made instead of thrown together, started joining the attacks, their dangerous lasers killing almost a dozen sentries and allowing the eyebots to fly over the wall and into the city itself. The Gunner command started to consider sending an expedition up North to try and find the Mechanist.
They never got a chance. A few days later, a single sentry bot joined the attack and fired missiles at the wall, blowing it apart and allowing the assaultrons to get into the city and engage in violent melee with the Gunners on the streets. A third of their whole garrison died then, but they still managed to destroy the robots. The real surprise came when they examined them.
Painted across the chest of each assaultron was a logo of a rifle crossed with a lightning bolt and surrounded by three stars; the logo of the Commonwealth Minutemen. As far as the Gunners knew-and all their outposts kept in constant contact-the Minutemen didn't use robots. They'd also never had a habit of attacking the Gunners outright, only mounting rescue operations or defending themselves from raids. The renegade mercenaries had never had a high opinion of the ragtag militia, even though they'd taken more than a few black eyes from them. But this was different. This was a declaration of war, and the Gunners intended to treat it like one.
They called in members from posts all over the Commonwealth and gathered their own handfuls of Mister Gutsies and Assaultrons. Over 90 men and robots, a quarter of all the resources they had in the Commonwealth. The Minutemen, presumably reeling from the loss of their assaultrons, did not bother the Gunners while they gathered strength. A plan was quickly formed and briefed to capture and destroy the Castle. It might even make a nice new outpost for the Gunners as they expanded back North.
South Boston had been home to various Super Mutant and raider camps the last time the Gunners had gone that far North. But when they got there, they found a surprising number of homes-families living in old apartments, gardens and cattle pens in the empty lots and alleyways. It wasn't an issue though; all of the new settlers fled when scouts started poking around, right towards the Castle, leaving easy pickings for looting.
The Castle was an old pre-war star fort. The Gunners had known about it ever since they set up shop in the Commonwealth, and they knew it had been just one giant Mirelurk nest for a long time. But now the Minutemen had reclaimed it, and it was obvious there was construction going on, but the wall on the West side was still collapsed. The Gunners thought it would be an easy sacking.
Then the main force arrived, and it all went to shit. The Gunners had the good sense to split their force in two instead of travelling all together. One half had been coming along the flooded coastline, marching through streets submerged in ankle deep water. Then the scouts heard a boom and watched a puff of smoke waft over the Castle. Moments later, an explosion erupted in South Boston, just yards away from the advancing Gunners, killing over a dozen of them. The Gunners had the Minutemen beat as far as individual equipment and radio communications went, but the Minutemen did have something they didn't: Artillery.
When they'd recaptured the Castle, they'd recovered plans to build artillery the old Minutemen had used to defend it. By the time the Gunners had decided to snuff them out, they'd succeeded in building three on the walls. The scouts had not recognized them only because the walls were covered with tarps and stacks of other building supplies.
That one strike was the only one they got off with. The self-righteous fucks, as the Gunners referred to them, weren't going to bombard people's homes. So as long as they stayed in the homes and farms people had built, they were at no risk. The Gunners correctly assessed that once they got close enough, the artillery would be irrelevant. Even down a lot of men, they decided to lay siege for a couple of days.
Further recon told them that there were two conventional entrances: A large metal sliding gate on the North side, and a wooden door on the South side but only accessible by a long narrow strip of land from South Boston. Snipers tried to spot and pick off anyone inside through the collapsed wall, but their enemies were smart enough to avoid that. One day, they spotted an old boat sailing up to the East side of the Castle, presumably bringing men or supplies.
That solidified the Gunner Captain's decision to launch a direct assault; they knew they weren't going to be able to starve these people out. Artillery withstanding, the Minutemen never had the quality and quantity of weapons and armor the Gunners had. Even if they had thrown together some robots, the Gunners had the equipment to destroy them. There would be losses, but the Gunners were confident they could win.
They struck in the night, moving against both main entrances. But the Minutemen were ready with night vision scopes and skilled snipers of their own. They hid themselves cleverly among the building supplies and structures on the wall, denying the Gunner snipers any chance to hit them. Both attack waves were gunned down before they could even make it to the wall.
A Gunner lieutenant in a set of T-45 power armor got close to the North entrance, before the Minutemen revealed a duo of power armor equipped soldiers as well, leaping down from the wall to stop them. Once that lieutenant was killed, the Gunner offensive collapsed entirely. Without having even set foot inside the Castle, they retreated back to Quincy.
But the Minutemen were waiting for them. Several companies had been called up to patrol the area between South Boston and Quincy. The Gunners blasted their way through each skirmish group, but not without a cost. Less than 10 men and none of their robots made it back. The Minutemen had proven they had the strength, the skill, and the willpower on their own to take down the worst of the Commonwealth.
And they proved it again by striking while the iron was hot. The General of the Minutemen made a call for volunteers, to form an army and force the Gunners out of the Commonwealth for good. And over a hundred Minutemen-and several dozen other Commonwealth citizens- answered, all intent on driving these thugs out of their homes.
The Gunners still had their walls, and they had the highway next to the town; they had the defensive and the height advantage. They still thought they were invincible, but the Minutemen surprised them again. Using missile launchers and their sentry bot, the Minutemen attacked the aging supports still holding the highway up. The highways, already prone to collapse just from natural decay, started to immediately fall apart. Whole slabs of roadway-and many rusted vehicles and Gunners on them-fell to the ground and some on the town. It caused a lot of damage, but it also killed the Gunner commanders and forced them to abandon that elevated position.
Then they fired missiles at the walls, the Gunners were forced to defend yet another robotic assault. They held their ground, even destroying the sentry bot when it entered the Quincy streets. But their numbers and ammo were limited. The Minutemen finally entered the town and fierce house to house fighting ensued. Their enemy was too tenacious for the outnumbered Gunners, fighting on even as their soldiers fell. The Gunners were all killed, and Quincy was free again.
That left the organization with only two outposts: Gunners Plaza-a old Galaxy News station that served as their headquarters and communications center-and Vault 95. And now they were actually worried. How had the Minutemen gotten so powerful? The commander of the Commonwealth contingent, Captain Wes, made the snap decision to order raids on several settlements around the southern end of the Commonwealth. It would stop the Minutemen's momentum and hopefully force them to post their soldiers on defense, freeing up less for an attack.
But they were too slow. The Minutemen, able to travel fast with minimum equipment, arrived and attacked the Plaza not too long after the raiding parties left. Captain Wes obviously called them back, but then even more Minutemen rose out of the swamps to attack the raiding parties. Rather then hurry back to defend the Plaza, the raiding parties were forced into fighting retreats, moving slowly and losing their men as they tried to get back to base. By the time the first raiding party got back without being completely wiped, the Minutemen had already cleared the inside of the building and taken up positions on the roof.
Caught between two points, the Gunners were screwed and the attacks broke down entirely. Several members scattered into the swamps, abandoning the mercenary group entirely. Others made for Vault 95, and very few of them made it. Vault 95 was all that was left, and no sooner did those Gunner stragglers arrive that the first Minutemen skirmishers did too.
The Lieutenant in charge, the highest ranking Gunner left in the whole Commonwealth by then, was smart. Vault 95 only had one entrance and exit, and that they would starve if the Minutemen managed to pin them in there. They deployed all around the entrance and in the woods nearby, and for a while they pushed the skirmishers back. But more and more Minutemen started to arrive, the fighting kept getting fiercer.
Then the Minutemen pulled back, and a single protectron made a slow trot up to the entrance to the vault with a white sheet strapped to its head and a binder in its hand claw. It was an ultimatum: The Gunners could either leave all their weapons and gear in the vault and agree to leave the Commonwealth on their own volition. Or they could continue to fight, and the Minutemen would launch another assault and kill all of them. If any Gunners tried to surrender, they would be executed for their crimes against the people of the Commonwealth. The note gave the Lieutenant 20 minutes to decide.
In the end, the Gunners relented. Not out of a sense of pure defeat, but rather the business-minded reasoning that the Commonwealth had become unprofitable to operate in. They had other operations throughout the former American Northeast, so it wasn't going to be the end of them. But they did leave bitter. And they left a lot of gear behind, which had inevitably found itself in the Minutemens' hands. Vault 95, despite its proximity to the dangerous Glowing Sea, became yet another settlement under the Minutemen's network.
The Commonwealth wasn't entirely safe, but it was free of all major threats. And now it had a force to defend it.
The Brotherhood may have been the ones to destroy the Institute. And while they had their posts all over the Commonwealth now, the truth on the ground by that May was undeniable: The Minutemen were the larger force and they were taking the reins in the Commonwealth. The old model of the Minutemen-the farmers and settlers who would band together to battle threats or cull wildlife-was still around, but the organization had expanded into so much more than that.
Whereas the old Minutemen had only had a small 'professional' force to garrison the Castle, the new Minutemen had expanded far bigger, full of optimistic and altruist Commonwealth citizens male and female, old and young. Up to nearly a hundred people. They were more akin to professional soldiers than a militia too, outfitted with combat armor and heavier weapons. They'd even standardized their uniforms to those of the pre-war US Army, although electing to dye theirs a more historic blue to avoid appearing associated with the Gunners. They'd stayed garrisoned in the Castle, sustained by family members who'd come with them and turned the Castle into a small farming and trading center or, more often, donations from settlements around the Commonwealth. This was the force, although smaller at the time, that had spearheaded the fight against the Gunners. They still existed months later, only leaving their bases to battle particularly difficult threats or, most likely, perform 'public works'.
That had not been something the old Minutemen did, but it was something the new did. They helped build up settlements, clean up rubble and scavenge around the Commonwealth, and even looked into repairing infrastructure still left from the old world. Purely altruistic actions that didn't help any one Minuteman immensely, but greatly improved the lives of Commonwealth locals and even the entire region, to a degree. There were things many individuals had done to survive for years. But with dozens of people working together, the effects were larger than ever and could be shared by more people. Boston, particularly South Boston, was looking cleaner and cleaner every day. There were dozens of new farms and settlements in the region, supplying more food and goods than ever. And a large amount of security infrastructure-watchtowers and posts along the Eastern bank of the Charles River and other areas-used in conjunction with the more casual Minutemen forces were one of the big reasons there hadn't been a resurgence in raiders, supermutants, or rampant wildlife in Boston.
The new Minutemen even had its own research and development department, supposedly. They could clear a mirelurk infestation from a water treatment plant or raiders from an ironworks, but they couldn't work there. But people could be taught and paid to work there. Some people were smart enough to know how to rig up salvage into usable stuff, but others were not. The Minutemen pulled in or bought whatever salvage they could, and from that they were somehow able to provide generators, water purifiers, radios, and other advanced goods normally thought luxuries outside of Diamond City. This noticeably picked up after the Institute had been destroyed, and rumors soon spread that the Minutemen had either taken hostage or offered safety for Institute scientists who'd avoided being slaughtered by the Brotherhood in exchange for their labor. Neither organization had outright addressed this, and it remained civilian talk only, but most people believed it.
The last new facet of the organization raised the most eyebrows-robotics. Synths had always been the primary phobia in the Commonwealth, and it wasn't surprising a paralyzing fear of a machine that could imitate a human might make people fearful of machines in general. Then there was the Mechanist, the Rust Devils, and the aforementioned Gunners all using robots to cause grievous harm. But the Minutemen bucked that trend, using robots as messengers, cargo carriers, and as expendable weapons to fight raiders and wildlife without risking human casualties. People were starting to regard robots more positively now, although remaining reasonably cautious and still perplexed as to where the Minutemen found the person or people that could make so many robots, not to mention the material.
All of this, and all the good it created, would not have existed were it not for the new General of the Minutemen: A man who had brought the organization back from the brink by doing all the heavy lifting at first, a man who had inspired its new generation of members to altruism by performing those same deeds on his lonesome without asking for payment only because he insisted it was the right thing to do, the man who'd financed it all himself, the man who had personally led it to retake the Castle and every difficult battle after, and the man who had helped it acquire more resources than it had ever possessed.
Who was this man? It was none other than the Sentinel of the Brotherhood. The same man who had spearheaded the Brotherhood's efforts in the Commonwealth had also restored the Minutemen and, by extension, the Commonwealth. In fact, the man had taken his mantle of General before the Brotherhood of Steel ever arrived in the area.
Who was he? To the Minutemen and many normal Commonwealth citizens, he was referred to as General Howard. In the Brotherhood, Sentinel Howard. But to his friends, and the people he often interacted with outside of those two organizations? He preferred Nate.
Nate Howard was undoubtedly one of the most interesting men inhabiting the Commonwealth now, on top of being one of the most dangerous, wealthy, and influential. He'd been steeped in a lot of legend, a lot of speculation, and a lot of exaggeration. Due to an in-depth interview and biography that had been written by a reporter in Diamond City and widely circulated in May, most of the Commonwealth knew more about him now.
He'd been born in 2049, more than two centuries ago, and was the last non-ghoul citizen of the United States of America, as far as anyone knew. He only walked the Commonwealth with them now because of the Vault-Tec corporation. Not many people knew it until the biography went out, but Vault Tec was more than some ancient company people scavenged from. It had been performing numerous, sometimes horrific experiments on people before the Great War. Nate Howard was more than a US Citizen, he'd been a US soldier too, and that had earned him and his family a 'slot' in the program that was supposed to protect Americans from nuclear devastation. Instead, he'd been cryogenically frozen for over 200 years, only let out last October.
As for the how and why he became such a powerful figure, the biography answered that too. Though different in so many other ways, he'd shared a struggle most other's had: He'd been a victim of the Institute. Nate had emerged from the Vault alone. His family-a wife and son-had been killed and kidnapped respectively by the Institute, years before he could even leave the vault. It was tragic, but it was inspiring. This man had literally lost more than anyone ever could, been victimized by an indiscriminate and thought unbeatable force, and had been dumped bleary-eyed into a world fraught with danger he hardly knew. And in spite of all of that,
He survived.
He emerged from that vault. He set out looking for his lost son. He braved dangers unfamiliar and terrifying. He joined the Brotherhood of Steel when it came to the Commonwealth to destroy the Institute and became its most efficient and deadly soldier just to get back what had been taken from him. Even with the Brotherhood behind him, he had essentially launched a one-man war against a power house and won. And in the end, he got his son back. That was the story behind the Brotherhood's most publicly known member.
The story of Nate Howard, the General of the New Minutemen, carried a different tone to it. The man had revealed it had been a chance meeting with a former member that sent him down that path, but retailing some old beats by revealing his initial motivation had been because he thought the Minutemen could make a better world for his son to live in when he found him. The man talked about 'America' a lot, something not a whole lot of people were familiar with despite the Commonwealth being a cultural center of the now dead republic. He made it sound like a utopia, with people united together, the streets clean and vibrant, and there was widespread prosperity, freedom, respect, and pride for the community. .
A lot of people thought he was lying through his teeth. Others, regardless of the praise, could never consider the same people who'd helped ruin the entire world for them any good. A few had been inspired, easily adapting to those ideas since some were already common wasteland 'etiquette'. Howard did say later in the interview that America wasn't perfect, especially at the end. But he said the ideas were pure, and worth keeping. Those ideas, he insisted, were the reason he did the things he did: help people build, lead the Minuteman, clean up trash and rubble all over Boston and the surrounding areas all on his own at first. People started to join him in those endeavors and others reaped the benefits with genuine gratitude. Others thought the man's fascination with the dead country was just a little creepy.
It didn't help that the end chapters of that biography focused on asking him what he intended to do in the future, something a lot of people were interested in just so they could plan. He did say he hoped to help/convince the Brotherhood to establish a permanent outpost in Boston, something he insisted would make the Commonwealth safer in the long run. And, what set off a flurry of interest, was one quote in particular.
"'I heard about the Commonwealth Provisional Government. I want to talk to people and see if we can't get something like that to happen again. We need to give the Commonwealth something that will always keep it stable. I know people have a lot of faith in the Minutemen, and I promise it won't be going anywhere like the last one, but the Commonwealth deserves better than a military government. That was never something that should happen in America.'"
The interviewing reporter had asked him if he had any interest in being part of that government, and he flat out denied it. Admitting that the Minutemen had done services under his command a government would theoretically do, he still insisted that it was there to protect the people, but not rule them. It was, General Howard insisted, a very important distinction.
That had been in May, when the interview was published. So far, no one had actually heard anything else about it. The Commonwealth of today was much different than the Commonwealth back when they tried to form the first government. For one, there'd been more people and more major settlements. Decades of paranoia had driven many to emigrate, and synth attacks and an ever growing number of super mutants dwindled the population down even more. The fact was, despite how much things had improved, there were only three population centers in the Commonwealth: Diamond City, Bunker Hill, and Vault 88. Vault 81 could've counted, but they weren't all that intent on being counted like that. The rest of the region was small settlements and farms, although a settlement named 'Starlight', built up at an old movie theater North of Boston, was growing fast enough it might soon be a fourth. The total human and sentient ghoul population of Boston and the surrounding areas was under 4,000. How could they make a government out of that? No one was completely sure. But they would be interested to watch someone try.
And they were interested to watch Nate Howard guide them there, even if they weren't sure they would follow.
Life in the Commonwealth got a little better every day, and people were surprisingly shaking off a century of paranoia rather quickly. They kept wondering how much better it could get.
Or worried what could go wrong and make it worse.