Courier's Journal: Week One

Day 6: October 24th 2281

As I said I would, today I went out to free the Powder Ganger slaves from the Legion. I began by heading out to Nipton on the same path I did before, save for a brief diversion to the Ivanpah Race Track to shoot some more of those fucking ants. Once I got to the town, I picked up all the weapons and other supplies I left behind yesterday, including the grenade rifle, and tried to head out east, following the main road out through a canyon.

I was about to head through when my Pip-Boy started detecting hostiles either side of us. It does that a lot, and in my experience so far, it could've easily just been bighorners or something. But given how perfect the location was for an ambush, I didn't want to take any chances, so I doubled back with ED-E and went up into the hills to my right instead. Sure enough, there were raiders positioned on top of them, taking cover behind rocks. In fact, they were Vipers, another of the "big four" of the old California raider tribes.

I used a stealth boy to sneak up on the Vipers on my side of the canyon, and sent ED-E around to deal with the others. Once again, I came up behind and tried to knock them out with my baseball bat, and once again, they just died from the blows. I'm beginning to think that smashing people's heads in with a bat might not be the best way to preserve their lives.

Once ED-E had dealt with the raiders on the other side, I descended back into the canyon to loot a nearby truck, where I found some hydra and another star bottle cap. From there, we continued along the road, fighting even more Vipers further on, until I climbed a nearby hill to take a look around, and found Wolfhorn Ranch.

The place was deserted when we arrived, but it appears to have been abandoned recently. Fresh crops were still growing there, and there were signs of recent habitation. Still, whoever had lived there clearly wasn't around anymore, and hadn't taken any measures to mark or defend their property, so I figured it was fair game for scavenging. I picked up another book there called Tumblers Today. This one I actually have read before, back when I was still wandering NCR territory, but a new copy is still appreciated. I also took an old meat cleaver I found; it's a little rusty on the sides, but still sharp, and more importantly, I found it in an actual kitchen area. Meat cleavers are so useful for food preparation, but it's so hard to find one in the wasteland that's never been in a human skull.

Following the road east, I then discovered a raided farmstead, probably the reason why the ranch had been abandoned. All that was there was an old pre-war trailer missing a lot of its innards, but I went inside anyway to see what was left. I found a seventeenth star bottle cap and a box of ammo in there, and thought that was it, but then just as I was leaving, some Vipers appeared outside from over the hills and opened fire on us.

The situation got pretty hairy. They all had automatic weapons and the high ground, and on top of that, they were too far away for me to accurately shoot. Over long enough distances, even VATS can't compensate for my poor aim, and of course my aim was going to be poor when I was being suppressed by a hail of submachine gun fire. All I could think to do was to take all of the chems to hype myself for the fight, and to wait for them to get closer to me so that I could get a better shot. Luckily for me, it worked, and the morons never thought to throw a grenade at me or something. When they got within range, I popped out and got a few decent shots off. They wised up fast and started either running away or taking cover before I could actually kill any of them, so I then did something suicidally stupid, and charged out of cover to get them up close.

I'm now beginning to sympathise with that Powder Ganger from Goodsprings who tried to charge us all with a baseball bat, because I now realise in hindsight that I did exactly the same thing with those Vipers in my Psycho-induced rage. Get high enough, and I guess anything can seem like a good idea. But in my defence, at least it worked when I did it.

Once they were dead, and once I had calmed down, I went around looting all the bodies with ED-E. They had a lot of 9mm submachine guns on them. I also found a pretty nice pair of binoculars, which I was able to use to check the surrounding area from on top of the trailer. I was soon able to locate the Legion camp I was looking for to the north, and made my way there, fighting through some molerats along the way.

My Legion disguise proved useful for initially avoiding suspicion. I was able to stroll right into the middle of the camp without anyone immediately noticing that I didn't belong. Unfortunately, still kind of high at the time, I didn't really think through what I was doing, and just walked up to the Powder Ganger slaves and cut them free. I somehow thought that I could get them out before anyone noticed something was wrong. Obviously, this is not what happened. The Powder Gangers turned tail and ran without so much as a "thank you," and the legionaries noticed immediately and opened fire on both them and me. As the fighting started, ED-E came charging over the hill blasting music and laserfire at the legionaries nearest to me, while I quickly drew my grenade rifle and bombarded the nearby Legion tents with 40mm explosives, to keep the ones inside from joining the fight.

The camp was divided into an upper and lower section, and we were fighting on the upper part, but the legionaries in the lower part of the camp were soon making their way up, and I only had so many grenades, so here I switched out to the service rifle. The armour-piercing rounds that Ranger Jackson provided came in handy here. Legion troops don't go down easily, especially not the ones with helmets, so it was a very narrow win for us. ED-E took a beating from all those spears, and I also needed a stimpak or two after tasting those Legion machetes. I got some nasty new scars today.

We took what the Legion had on them and got back to the road. To our incredible fortune, we immediately ran into a caravan of travelling merchants, whom we saved from an attack by another group of legionaries, probably from the same camp. The merchants were willing to trade with us, and since me and ED-E had saved their lives, they even let us claim the dead legionaries' equipment and offered to pay us for it. They actually gave a pretty good price for all those spears, and also bought all the guns I got from the Vipers. I decided to stay with them for the rest of the way up to Novac, helping them against another Viper ambush along the way, but we parted ways early at Ranger Station Charlie, as I wanted to stop and check it out.

I'm currently still at the ranger station. The head ranger is away at the moment, but Comm Officer Stepinac graciously allowed me to stop here for a little while for food and rest. I've been taking the time to read the book I found at the ranch and write up this entry. It's still a few hours yet until sunset, and I think I can still make it to Novac before nightfall, so I'll get back on the road soon. I've still got a long journey ahead of me, but every step brings me that much closer to that man who shot me, and closer to answers. And after how much I've been jerked around already and how much I've been through in the past few days, I'd say I deserve them.

I'm coming for you, mystery man.

Hail to the Keeper.

Killed: Legionaries , Vipers, ants, and the occasional molerat.

Today's dinner: Caravan lunch.

Had sex with: Nobody yet. Not getting the vibe from Stepinac, but one of the female NCR Rangers is giving me a promising look.

Day 6: October 24th 2281 UPDATE

Ended my stay at the ranger station on a high note and moved on. We indeed made it to Novac before nightfall as I hoped, and I was able to rent a room at the Dino Dee-lite Motel, named for the nearby giant model dinosaur, some kind of pre-war tourist trap.

The first person I met upon arriving in town was a doctor called Straus, who was set up in a big tent with a few mercs guarding her. She answered a few basic questions for me, but was generally no help. I soon decided to avoid her. It didn't take long for me to glean that she wasn't a very good doctor, person, or conversation partner, and her bodyguards were uninterested in talking, too. I like to think that they were being professional, but in all likelihood they probably just didn't like me, so I proceeded on to the motel.

There I ran into a few familiar faces. The caravan traders I travelled with earlier had stopped there, of course, but more importantly, my old pal Victor was also there, the robot who saved my life back in Goodsprings. He says that he got a strange urge to head up to New Vegas. Curious indeed. I wonder if it has anything to do with him being hacked before the fight in Goodsprings? If so, that casts even further doubt on the Powder Gangers being behind it. Even if any of them were smart enough for that, I don't know why they would ever want him to head to Vegas instead of helping them around the Goodsprings area. Admittedly, there was that note I found about the gang gathering up north, but even that's a stretch. Vegas is north, true, but so are a lot of other places that aren't Vegas.

No. If Victor really isn't acting of his own free will anymore, then someone else is behind this. There's a third party at work here. Something I'm missing. It's making my skin itch. I don't like it.

That aside, Victor was as outwardly friendly as usual, and directed me to Jeannie May Crawford, the motel owner, who I rented the room from. She's friendly enough, I suppose. She offered to let me keep the room until "the busy season" (whenever that is), and gave me a more thorough rundown on the town and its residents. She also directed me to check out the gift shop inside the dinosaur, because yes, you can go inside it, though unfortunately Cliff Briscoe the proprietor had already closed up shop for the day by the time I got there. I'll have to wait until tomorrow to do my trading with him.

On the upside, I did get to meet one of the two ex-NCR snipers who protects the town, Craig Boone. He was up in the dinosaur's mouth. He's a suspicious man, but he said he trusts me more than anybody else in town, because I'm a stranger. Apparently his wife was abducted by Legion slavers, and he thinks that somebody here in town was responsible. Boone was never able to find out who on his own, so he's recruited me as an outside investigator. He wants me to somehow discern the identity of the culprit, lure them out in front of the motel at night where they'll be in his view, and wear his NCR beret as a signal that I've found the right person. Then he'll shoot them.

I've got to admit, I don't feel good about the prospect of leading someone to their death; that's almost as good as executing them myself as far as I'm concerned. But this isn't the NCR, and Novac doesn't exactly have a jail or courthouse. Hell, I don't think it even has a sheriff. So I guess it's wasteland justice or nothing in this case. I mean, if Boone's right, I can't exactly let a slaver go free unpunished, but I guess it all depends on what my investigation turns up tomorrow. Though, maybe it doesn't have to be that severe. After all, Boone isn't the only authority in town; I could always just report the culprit to Jeannie May and see if she has any other ideas.

I guess we'll see tomorrow night.

Killed: Nothing else since last entry.

Today's dinner: Squirrel on a stick.

Had sex with: Ranger Stella behind the back wall, just before leaving the ranger station. Liked to play rough, and insisted on being on top. Honestly kind of a bitch, but she had a grip like a vice, and I have a serious weakness for women who could probably beat the shit out of me.

Author's notes:

At this point we've caught up to where the original version of Courier's Journal left off, and this version of the Courier somehow managed to get there a day early. I didn't actually plan for this; it just sort of worked out that way. But it's a happy accident, I guess.

Part of this may be due to how things worked out with my test playthrough. I play New Vegas with a timescale mod, because I find the progression of time in the vanilla game to be just slightly too fast for my liking, so I initially slowed it way the fuck down to give me time to do everything I wanted to do in Goodsprings or Primm in the time I wanted to do it. But you do need to accelerate time in New Vegas to a degree, because distances in the game world are not accurate to the real life locations it portrays, and time also freezes whenever you enter dialogue, so a faster timescale is necessary to properly simulate the feeling of longer journeys and the days passing by.

I probably have the Courier do too much and cover too much ground in these first seven days. It took me a while to find a realistic balance for the distance and timescale. But hopefully it should match up a little better in the second week.