Day 75

Level 35 (2 perk points floating)

S-3 Armorer 2,

P-(+)11 Awareness 2, Locksmith 3, Rifleman 4

E-2

C-6 Lady Killer 1, Local Leader 2

I-9 Chemist 1, Gun Nut 1, Hacker 3, Science 2

A-(+)7 Action Boy 2, Gunslinger 4

L-3

(Astoundingly Awesome 3, 4, 7, 8, and 14, Barbarian 6, Covert Operations 2, Gift of Gab, Guns and Bullets, Junktown Vendor 2, Live & Love 1, Massachusetts Surgery, Tesla Science 2, Tumblers Today 2, United We Stand, Wasteland Survival 7 and 9)

The morning starts with Cait sitting across from me having a drink. I take a stimpak and drink a Nuka Cola to remedy the hp loss from last night’s battle, then we wander back out into the street.

I reach the public library soon enough, just on the other side of the square. No sooner do I approach the building, then a Brotherhood of Steel helicopter appears over the horizon. I’m shocked when all of the sudden it starts spinning out of control and crashes into the library right next to me, exploding and sending shrapnel everywhere. I wonder if this is a scripted event for first approach to the library. I also make a note to track down the Brotherhood at some point and ask them why their pilots are so bad.

A Brotherhood Knight survived the crash (barely judging by her HP) and begins running around in her power armor shooting ghouls before charging off in the other direction. Nearby, I find a Brotherhood Lancer-Initiate who wasn’t so lucky, laying on the ground with both of her legs missing from the crash.

I feel kind of bad taking her jacket and uniform and leaving her corpse half-naked, but it’s actually decent equipment I might be able to use at some point. Besides, she has no use for it. I take her holotag so I can return it to the Brotherhood and they can memorialize her however they wish when I finally make contact with their leadership.

This side of the building appears to be tunnels to a train station, so I decide to head back around the other side. In the middle of the square, visible now in daylight, I can see a half-destroyed statue.

I cross around to the other side of the building, taking steps down to a lower level where I see an entrance next to a dead super-mutant (possibly killed by my Brotherhood of Steel friend?). A voice comes out of the Intercom welcoming me and saying the library is closed. Well, my bobby pins say otherwise.

I enter and immediately spot a tripwire, disarming it. As I try to figure out how to grab the grenades dangling above my head, an electronic woman’s voice pipes up with an alert about an intruder. This isn’t at all what I expected, and I can see plenty of dead super mutants and here gunfire from a raging battle. It seems I’m not just dealing with mutants here.

By the end of the fight, I’ve killed three protectrons, a couple of turrets, and who knows how many super mutants. Good use of cover means I don’t have to use more than a couple of stimpaks to be back at full health again.

I return my overdue books and check the machine out. This one has an actual prize worth getting: a Massachusetts Surgical Journal. Unfortunately, I’m 5 tokens away from being able to afford it. Guess I need to find more overdue books somewhere out there.

We step into one of the main rooms, which no longer looks like much of a library. “Which section has the dirty magazines?” Cait asks. The sound of battle between super mutants and the places defenses continues somewhere nearby. There’s not much to loot in here, but I also get the sense I’m not quite in the main area. At the back of the room, I find a dead man named Dalen (I guess he has a name tag). Dalen has Gunner armor, which explains some of the fortifications here. Seems Dalen also had a cozy little nook in this part of the library.

There’s a library storage key (not that I really need keys with my lock picking skill) and Curator Given’s Terminal. Apparently, I misjudged the situation, as Dalen was apparently part of (or hired muscle for) some group here to recover old knowledge. The author of this log wants to protect the knowledge at all costs. Apparently holding the library while trying to scan and process all the books was costly, and many of their group died, including a Shelby. Given was trying to repair bots and repel constant super mutant attacks. The last log is a plea for whoever reads this to protect the information in the data room. I would have done so regardless.

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After taking out two more super mutants who wander in looking for me, I open the nearby door. There, I find Curator Givens, dead. Would have liked to have met him. I’m quite thankful for his 3 overdue books, though. Sitting on some nearby computer equipment is a nice surprise: an Intelligence Bobblehead! This takes me to 10.

The nearby storage room has plenty of ammo, a stealth boy, and some nice guns. I give Cait a pretty decent shotgun. Time to move on and take out the rest of these mutants. Rather than rush down the hallway, I’m going to move quietly through some storage rooms on the far side where paths have opened in the crumbling walls.

The room the passage leads to is another one of those floor-caved in rooms I find problematic for navigation, since I like to go level by level. I’ll return here later. Outside the door, the hall is choked thick with super mutant corpses. One legendary had a pretty fantastic energy rifle.

I exchange gunfire with super mutants a couple of more times, but they flee before I can kill more than one. I’ll get around to them eventually, but my systematic sweep trumps chasing off after them. I duck into a room heavily obscured by cabinets and begin cautiously looting. “Why do you bother with that? You opening a museum or something?” Cait says at one point. Maybe I am, Cait, ever think about that? Please don’t be more annoying than Preston.

The room has some random junk loot and a chemistry station. At the station I craft some more drugs for a rainy day, some stuff that will remove my addictions should I get any, and then I notice I can, for some reason, craft camping equipment here (likely from a mod I downloaded and forgot about). So I get to work on making sure I always have a bed to sleep in on the road. When I’m finished, Cait remarks, “I see the way you’re looking at me. Not saying I don’t like it… Just thought I’d clear the air.” I suppose she’s attractive, but she has yet to win me over, so she must be confusing my love of chemistry with attraction at the moment.

As I cross the hall into another room the last super mutant finally shows himself again. I put him down before he realizes I’m there. The voice on the intercom says “Security breach neutralized. Visitors are now free to come and go as they please. All employees, please return to work.” I suppose I can loot in peace now. “Well, this is certainly a friendly way to welcome people to a library,” Cait remarks. Keep up the sarcasm, Cait, and I just might grow to like you.

Sadly for Cait, the magazine room is completely destroyed. There’s another overdue book in the next room though, and I’m really hoping I can find at least one more. I find the last one I need to get to 50 in the hands of a skeleton on the toilet in the women’s restroom.

Further down, the grand entry hall is covered in corpses from the earlier battle I was hearing. All mine to loot now. Plenty of ammo boxes up here. This was the front for the mutant attacks mentioned in the logs.  Cait opens a door and coughs. “Ugh, this place is filthy!”

I find another overdue book machine up here, but this one doesn’t have anything I want as badly as the other one. I’m curious about an undamaged camera vs the others I find lying around though. I turn and spot a nearby terminal, likely just for controlling the bots and turrets that are currently shattered across the ground, but I hack it anyway. I’m unfortunately correct.

The next large room has a corpse in a wheelchair eerily positioned in the center of it, slightly turned away from the entrance. I hug the edges of the room and loot. “Feeling nostalgic or something? Probably get some caps out of that, I suppose,” Cait remarks. Well, that’s the spirit!

It seems the corpse died admiring a vase on display. I suppose there’s something beautiful about that. Now, behind him, a fire burns in the library courtyard. I’ll investigate there once I’ve cleared this level. This appears to be a museum of some sort, and there are plenty of devices useful for parts in the display cases, such as microscopes and typewriters. The exit from this room leads, as is typical in Bethesda level design, back to one of the earlier rooms (a door that was chained on the other side and not openable until you run through the whole level).

I take the opportunity to run buy my Massachusetts Surgical Journal from the overdue book machine back at the beginning. This one allows me to inflict +2% limb damage from now on! But I haven’t found the data center yet, I don’t think, and there’s the entire downstairs, so I head back.

The eerie courtyard is empty, and its only exit leads to the caved-in floor I passed by earlier. There’s absolutely nothing of note in this part of the lower floor.

I head back to the barricaded library entrance. There’s no way to get through to the outside, so these super mutants must have entered through the train tunnels. There are blown up super mutants everywhere here, including a legendary. I turn off my lights and prepare to enter Copley Station to take care of any stragglers.

Sure enough, the subway is swarming with super mutants, though it was originally so quiet I got caught off guard and killed by a mutant suicide bomber. It’s been so long since I’ve played that I forgot about those. The second time I came in and tossed a few grenades down the stairs at intervals as they swarmed, taking care of the problem.

There are few video game lairs more grisly than a Fallout super mutant lair. The rest of the subway is relatively empty, apart from a hideout for some recently killed traders. Poor things. They have some decent meds and chems on them, though.

There’s only one super mutant left, up near the subway exit. I head out to confirm where I am and indeed this seems to be the subway entrance I noted outside the building.

Cait pipes up and says she appreciates me watching her back and asks if I’d like to know more about her. Apparently she had abusive parents who beat her. On her 18th birthday, they put a shock collar around her and sold her to slavers. She said it would be easy to blame her personality on her parents, but “they didn’t make me this way, I did.” She continues, “I was with those slavers for five years. Roughest five of my goddamn life. The things they made me do, the way they used me for their amusement. It sickens me to me stomach even thinking about it. But I bided me time and learned to use their own methods against them.” I express my sympathy, but she says, “You think that’s low, just wait. The story’s not over yet. It gets worse. It took every last ounce of patience I had, but after 5 years I had finally pocketed enough to buy me own way out of there. But instead of heading off to try to repair the shambles of me life, I gave into me rage and I headed home. You can imagine the look on me parents faces when I kicked open their door. What you can’t imagine is what they looked like after… after I emptied me gun into them.” I’m not exactly sympathetic to the parents so I remark that it sounds like justice to me. “Was it justice, or was it murder? When I close me eyes, all I can see is their faces twisted with fear. And then my mind starts wanderin and I start judgin’ meself. And it’s ripping me the fuck apart. You think I inject myself with all that shite and drink myself drunk because I’m a tough Irish girl? I do it so I can forget, and move on with my miserable life. So there you are. The entire package known as Cait, stripped bare for your perusal.”  I reassure Cait that I’m not disappointed in her and that I’ll not judge her and be there for her. I do feel some responsibility for her after all, shutting down her livelihood, and her sarcasm is starting to grow on me at least.

In terms of plotting, however, this emotional dialogue dump feels a bit early to me. I’ve only been traveling with Cait for 3 in-game days. And not boring days where there would be lots of time for conversation. Not that it’s entirely unrealistic to tell someone all about yourself after almost dying together multiple times, but the dialogue coming this soon doesn’t really give the player time to start forming an attachment to Cait spread across their own lives. A player with more time than I might have experiences this all in one evening’s play. This lessens the impact compared to games like Dragon Age, where you come to know the characters slowly over a week of your life at quicker paces, and likely months.

It’s almost dawn, so we retreat back into the subway and I set up a tent to sleep for a couple of hours.