This story theme song: "Foreign Land" by Desert Star, a youtuber I follow chose this song as her intro and I thought it fit the Sole Survivor's journey through the wastes.

Also I'm having second thoughts about a story made up of first-person perspectives from two different people that don't happen in order, and in some chapters include both present and past tense and quotes within quotes. It flows for me since I always know who's talking, but will it flow for you readers? Brand new #writerproblems to wrestle with!

I also fear my limited knowledge of the game is going to trip me up; I played to level 60 (over 4 years!) but abandoned the main quest when I realized it was impossible to do what Em did in the story and get all the factions sat down around a table working out a solution that didn't involve killing loads of innocent-ish people. And I'm starting a new playthrough for the novelization chapters, but please have mercy on my inevitable slipups!

Begin Recording

Sanctuary

Recording by Emily Mason

The elders really want to hear the whole story of building everything? Half practical, half oral history project? I guess I am a unique case. All right, I'll try to get the first month or two of setup onto one holotape. It'll be a long one though! We were staggering back from Concord...

It was dark when we got to Sanctuary, and Cogsworth met us at the bridge. "Mistress Emily, who are your guests?"

"These are my new friends. Preston Garvey, Sturges, Jun and Marci, and Mama Murphy. They're going to be moving into the neighborhood."

"My goodness! Welcome to Sanctuary Hills! I'm afraid we're far from ready for guests, the floors haven't been swept, I did try but..."

Marci interrupted, "How do you shut it up?" and walked past the dithering Cogsworth to check out the first house on the street.

At least Sanctuary was still clear of giant bugs and after the fight we were too tired to do more than bed down wherever we could.

I slept late; by the time I woke up Sturges and Preston had already gone back to Concord to retrieve the power armor and strip the bodies of the raiders. Mama Murphy was already browbeating the Longs into gathering useful items from the empty houses. Marci greeted me with a glare and some muttering about lazy vaulties.

I immediately derailed the whole day by telling them that the vault has clean hot water. Useful tasks were abandoned in a stampede towards hot showers.

While we waited for our turns I showed Preston the vault and we talked about my trip to Diamond City.

I was a lawyer; my working hours were spent mostly sitting on my rear. I did work out, a self defense class for ladies every weekend and the gym when I could fit it in, to keep my figure, but all that went on hold when I got pregnant. So for a lawyer who just had a baby I was in good shape, but to walk miles of monster-infested wasteland… I wouldn't have lasted a day. So Preston recommended I wait and travel with a caravan instead of going alone.

In the meantime there was a lot to do. The settles had big plans. I think Sturges spent the whole walk up from Quincey planning what he'd do with a neighborhood like this.

We needed shelter of course, so we needed to pick up crowbars—or put on power armor—and take apart the collapsed houses to salvage boards for patching up the buildings that were still standing. Everything else I knew we'd need for firewood if we wanted to cook anything, and not die when winter came. Preston also recommended taking down all the dead trees to better see anyone coming towards the settlement. Also dead trees blow down unpredictably and we didn't want them to wreck anything.

We also needed defense for the whole settlement. "It's not a question of if those raiders find us, it's a question of when. We need to be ready."

Before the war, when everyone was worried about the Chinese invading, the neighborhood association of Sanctuary Hills decided to make a plan for defending the neighborhood. They asked my husband Nate to make the plan since he'd just recently come back from the military. Nate thought the whole thing was silly—what good would it do to defend a neighborhood if all the towns around it were taken? But since it would make our neighbors feel better to have a plan he promised he'd take it seriously and do a good job. So he and I walked around the neighborhood and Nate pointed out the weakest points: the bridge and the shallow part of the river at the other end of the island. He made a map with notes about where to place 'defenses.' None of it was ever built of course; Nate presented it to the neighbors and they all felt better and never did anything about it and Nate put the map away. It was still there in a filing cabinet, the paper brittle but readable, and Preston thought it was great.

So we cobbled together some sandbag walls and guard posts out of scrap by the bridge and over there where the river widens and gets shallow enough to wade across easily. We've dredged it now, making that end of the island better protected. Sturges knew how to build turrets—and he did once we found enough circuit boards. That's what mostly protects Sanctuary now. They're wired into cameras all connected to a gen-1 synth brain that can recognize all of us, and the Minutemen flag. It's smart enough to recognize weapons and won't open up on raiders until they actually attack us. And that's why we don't have to worry about friendly fire!

But we didn't have the turrets at the beginning. We had six exhausted people with pipe pistols and a Mr. Handy trying to watch both approaches while we also really needed to be picking caterpillars off the melon leaves to avoid starving to death.

The next thing Sturges insisted on was some civilized beds. That was easy enough: we hauled mattresses from the vault and gathered every piece of fabric we could find for blankets.

We did all sleep in the same house until we put solid walls on all the houses, then set up separate households later. The Longs settled into the Russels' house until they moved to the caravan camp. Sturges had raptures over Mrs. Rosa's tools and claimed that house where he still lives with the apprentices-slash-family he's accumulated since then. Preston moved in next to me, Mama Murphy and Jimmy and Kayna live with him now. And I moved back into my old house. Which is strange now that I think about it, but it never occurred to me to live anywhere else.

Water we could haul from the vault, though Sturges had blueprints for a big industrial purifier that could clean river water. He did eventually build it, after hauling water gave all of us backaches for months and did a lot for my upper body strength.

Food was the next pressing need, and the one that took the most time. I'd gone through the houses, but now the six of us gave Sanctuary a very thorough search. We came up with a sizable pile of cans and other prewar food, but for long term we were going to have to farm.

This would have been almost impossible except that my neighbors all had victory gardens. So there might be vegetables out there buried in the dead trees and weeds. We just had to find them.

"Cogsworth, is my garden still… there?"

"Oh my yes, Mistress Emily. I tended it as well as I could, knowing how much you enjoyed growing vegetables for young Shaun."

The memory hit me. Nate had surprised me with a new Robco food processor so I could start canning my own baby food. I'd been big as a whale, on forced maternity leave and bored out of my mind. I filled a cabinet with jars, but they're now all over the floor broken from the bomb blast. "Let's see the garden."

It was so overgrown the edges had dissolved. The potted mint had escaped its pot and grown down to the stream. The carrots were still there, I recognized their tops. And in the middle of everything a small tree with misshapen purple fruit had grown up. I stopped, not sure I should even touch the strange tree, but nobody else shared my hesitation.

"Mutfruit!" Preston exclaimed.

"Mut… fruit?"

"Mutant fruit."

Sturges explained, "Packed with nutrients, grows like crazy. Best thing we could've found here. Try one!"

I picked one and took a cautious bite. Crisp like an unripe pear, not too sweet. "We can grow more of these?"

"That's the plan!" Sturges said happily, "Save the pit. What else is down here?"

"I planted carrots and tomatoes, I tried to have melons but they never took off. Mrs. Rosa had corn."

The three of us explored the yards while Mama Murphy and the Longs searched inside the houses. We found the remains of several other victory gardens, including some melons and very sickly corn. And gourds, rock hard and probably planted to be carved for Halloween but I was unhappily sure we'd find some way to cook and eat them. I'd never had pumpkin soup but I'd heard of it.

While hunting through the yards we found the greatest thing. The bomb shelter. I'd had no idea Mr. Jahani had a storm cellar much less built it into a bomb shelter. There was a mattress down there, and shelves and shelves of food and water. I don't know what happened to Mr. Jahani, he wasn't in the vault but it didn't seem like he'd used his shelter either because all the food was still there. He had ammunition too, and shovels and tools, and a radio. There were three gold bars too, and more money than I'd ever seen at the same time.

That was when I learned that bottle caps are money now. I only believed it when Marci told me; I could believe Preston was playing a joke, but not Marci. We used the paper money for kindling and the gold got melted down to make circuits or something, Sturges had some use for it and nobody would trade for them since the bars were so heavy. The real treasure down there wasn't the gold but the food, and the survivalist books Jahani had that told us how to distill wood alcohol and use the hydrogen engine in a car to make electricity. I remember the first day we got electricity, a car engine modified into a generator. It was so heavy I had to wear the power armor when I carried it into every house and hooked up every washing machine and refrigerator. Not a single one worked and we haven't been able to repair them. The vault is cold enough to keep meat in so we don't really need a fridge, but every Christmas I hope Sturges will make me a working washer.

While we spent our days from sunrise to sunset farming and building and shooting molerats for dinner Preston insisted the Longs and I should also go through the training for Minuteman recruits. I knew how to shoot skeet and at a target, but I didn't know how to clean and repair guns, or butcher meat, or build a fire without matches, or recognize useful wasteland plants. I also wasn't in the kind of shape I needed to be. So Preston put us through our paces and Marci hated every second of it and Jun went along with things with his eyes empty and I tried to learn all I could and work to exhaustion because I was distracting myself from my recent loss too.

I lost track of time. Every day was the same and we really were working ourselves to the bone. We needed more hands, and once we had crops growing well Sturges stuck a radio tower on a rooftop and had me record a message and we bet our lives that a couple of friendlies would hear it before the raiders did.

And they did. Tom turned up first, he could cook and he could shoot. Then our real prize, Doc Jenna on the run from Gunners who'd learned that she actually knew her stuff as a doctor and wanted her patching them up forever with chains on her ankles. Brenda and Moira, couple of defecting raiders, then Jimmy and his mother, then Bella. The rules were simple: work, learn, be ready to defend the settlement, and you can live with regular meals and clean water and know that the only violence will be coming from outside. And school. Mama Murphy can't do much work but she can read, so she reads to the farmers while they pull weeds and teaches anyone who wants to learn their letters. Everyone else teaches what they know, Sturges has apprentices and Doc Jenna has her nurses. If settlers show up unable to read Mama Murphy helps them learn their letters. She'll read to anyone whose hands are busy, so we all know some history and literature, whatever books we've been able to find. Soon the seven of us had become ten, then twenty, enough people to stand guard in shifts and still get the weeds pulled. Jonah caught the brahmin calf and got its mother in too, and then we had milk and cheese and fertilizer to keep the gardens growing.

And eventually we dug a long trench, up on the hill near the vault, and finally gave my neighbors a decent burial. I would have liked separate graves and markers, but a trench and a fencepost with all the names written on it was the best we could do. It was almost more than we could do. Cogsworth did some digging, and Preston helped, but I had to do most of it. I didn't blame them. Digging anything that wasn't a garden really was a waste of time and strength, but it was something I had to do.

It was only a few days after that that our first trader came in, a scavenger who called herself Trashcan Carla and came with a brahmin packed with scrap. She knew the way to Diamond City and didn't have any guards at the time, so she hired me on for the trip.

I remember waking up the morning we left, at first light I got dressed with a pistol on my belt, a knife in one boot, and a rifle slung over my back. I was bringing a pack and a dog. I washed my face, remembered teasing Nate about hogging the sink on the morning before the world ended. Same sink, same mirror, only now I was dipping water from a bucket I'd hauled down from the vault. And my face had changed. I'd lost all the softness from my face to hard work and scant food, my skin was tanned and my hair rough from using homemade soap. I didn't look like a mother anymore, I looked like a soldier. But I had a home to come back to, where I could be a mother again someday, so I could go forward as a soldier.