Alternate Start: grow up in the wasteland

[ClayPidgeon162]

I'm not a modder, at all, so I don't know how possible this is or if anyone even wants to attempt the idea (I know it'll at least have some conflicts with the "Trouble on the Homefront" mission).

 

But, basically, it's an alternate start idea with more of an RPG element to it, giving you more options on building your character.

 

Instead of leaving the vault when you're a young adult, you leave when your still a little kid (10, 12, something in that range) and grow up in the wasteland.

 

Perhaps your father manages to convince the overseer not to seal the vault completely when you two join them and continue expeditions into the wasteland, your father's overall motivation obviously continuing research on Project Purtiy. But, sometime after your birthday, you're woken up by Amata, who tells you that the whole vault is under a lockdown and that outsiders have somehow breached the vault. What happened is that one of the expedition teams, which included your father, was ambushed by Raiders and they rushed the open vault door before it could be closed.

 

Here, you have a choice to simply wait with everyone else in 101 and follow the Vanilla start (your father eventually returns alive, obviously). Or, you can go try to find your father after learning that he's not in the vault. Maybe Amada gives you a Stealth Boy and a Dart Gun (it just seems unlikely the ten year-old daughter of the overseer would get her hands on a handgun). You crawl through the ventilation and sneak your way out the vault door, past a fire fight between 101 security and raiders, but once you get outside, you're captured and taken to Paradise Falls to be sold into slavery.

 

And this is where the choices start. Just a few ideas:

 

1) Grow up in Little Lamplight. There's one or more other kids from Little Lamplight stuck with you. You can choose to make an escape attempt with them, and if you're successful, they take you in and you grow up at Little Lamplight. And, rather than the default kids that are there, there's child versions of the people from Big Town, and depending on who you become friends will you'll add additional perks for your skills (for example, befriend Red and you get a medical bonus). And perhaps you can become one the names on Bittercup's list. The main game then starts sometime after you arrive at Big Town, in adult form. Being disillusioned with it like everyone else, you decide to leave to return to Vault 101 and discover the fate of your father.

 

2) Become a runaway. After breaking out with the other child slaves (or without them), you decide not to go to Little Lamplight with them and voyage out on your own, eventually finding your way to the Temple of the Union group. You grow up with them, constantly on the run from slavers, giving you a bonus in stealth, perception, and maybe intelligence (any perk suggestions I throw out aren't concrete thought-out ideas, just something I'm throwing out there). Maybe your starting mission is the Temple of the Union one, and once that's complete and you've finally found a safe-haven, the main quest begins. And, throughout the game, you have random encounters with slavers (like the Talon mercs).

 

3) Become a slaver by impressing them, which basically means being very vicious (like beating the crap out of the other children slaves, and maybe even making a couple of the adult slaves cry). Initially, you're just a sorce of amusement for them and they start a small fight club, throwing you against other slaves. But, then you grow on them and they start taking you out on raids, using you as bait to lure people who want to help a lost distressed child. And when you're old enough, you become one of them. I'm not sure where the main quest line would start. Maybe you hear Three Dog talking about your dad on the radio, or perhaps you have a crisis of conscience mission, which would be the mission involving freeing the Little Lamplight kids (I imagine with this character, only seeing child slaves in the position you were once in would be the only thing that would make you betray the other slavers). And, of course, if you go the betrayal route, you have the random slaver encounters.

 

4) Become Eulogy Jones personal slave. After talking with the other child slaves and learning of their plans to escape, squeal on them to the slavers. Eulogy then gets an idea of keeping you around rather than selling you off, using you as an inside man, listening in on the slaves and reporting any escape attempts or contraband to the slavers. Eventually, Eulogy makes you his personal slave and servant (and if you're a female character, the third addition to the Crimson and Clover duo, which would give you the Blackwidow perk). There's a number of ways this can set off the main quest: a) you simply get tired of how you're treated and escape, maybe set off when you snap and kill Eulogy or one of the other slavers; b) you see the Little Lamplight kids and use your trusted position to help them escape, fleeing with them; c) if you're a female, Crimson and Clover grow jealous of you (particularly since you're a third wheel to the whole Crimson & Clover motif) and turn Eulogy against, perhaps setting you up (make it look like you were plotting to kill him, escape, or help another slave escape), so Eulogy sends you off to The Pitt, but you manage to escape on the way there; or, finally, d) the Brotherhood of Steel or maybe even Reilly's Rangers attack Paradise Falls and you slip away in the confusion.

 

Get purchased. A number of prospective buyers come by, and depending on how you answer their questions, they decide whether or not to purchase you. These paths are:

 

5) Talon Company: a representative of Talon comes by, looking for any potential future mercs, and if you give him the answers he's looking for, he'll purchase you. You then spend the next few years going through intensive training, becoming part of a more elite group of Talon (as opposed to the ones you run into throughout the wasteland), maybe even becoming a lone assassin, doing a few assassinations before the main quest kicks in. For one reason or another, you go rogue and are targeted by Talon, such as: a) your team is sent on a suicide mission to fight super mutants and you come out the only survivor, or perhaps you're sent on a reconnaissance mission of Vault 87 and everything goes bad due to bad intel; b) you're given a contract from the Enclave to attack settlements of innocent civilians, posing as Raiders (or perhaps simply sabotaging their defenses and making them an easy target), the idea being that when the Enclave reveals itself, people will be much more open to accepting their authority for the promise of protection; c) while interrogating a prisoner, your CO threatens to shoot the prisoner's child in front of them, and you know he'll follow through on that threat, so you kill him first; d) after retrieving schematics from Vault tech HQ, you learn that someone has hired Talon to find a way to breach Vault 101 (using the schematics to find a weakness) to scavenge the technology within it and you'll be part of the assault team sent in to take out their security forces.

 

6) Merchant/Scavenger: get purchased by either a travelling merchant or scavenger to become their extra set of hands. The Merchant will use you to peddle their goods, claiming you're their starving child with some tragic tale on the loss of your mother/father, mostly giving you perks in charisma, speech, and barter (and maybe throw in a "There Will Be Blood" reference here). Scavenger will use you to crawl into places too small for them and even teach you to pick-pocket and sneak into peoples homes, the perks ranging in stealth, perception, luck, and that one perk (maybe it's called "Scavenger"?) where you have a better chance of finding some good gear in any crates or bodies you loot.

 

7) Raider: you don't get purchased by a raider, but rather this is an additional option if you're purchased by a merchant. While traveling to the next town, you spot a raiding party waiting in ambush in the distance. If you decide not to warn the merchant that purchased you, the raiders will kill them, loot their goods, and a female raider will find you "cute" and decide to keep you. You grow up as a raider, maybe the main quest starting after your party decides to attack the wrong group and gets slaughtered, you being the sole survivor. And, in addition to that, perhaps you were put down near Megaton, and when they discover you're barely alive, a lynching party decides to make an example of you. But the sheriff intervenes in this vigilante justice and Moriarty recognizes who you are, pulling strings to get you released so you can do his dirty work (more than just the Silver mission), holding information about your dad over your head to keep you in line.

 

8 ) Tenpenny Tower: You're purchased by Mr. Burke to be "the help" to all the wealthy elite in Tenpenny tower, your living quarters a shabby set up in the basement where you hear feral Ghouls scratching at the metro door all night, growing up listening to the tales of 'Daring' Dashwood. When you grow up, Burke starts using you for work outside of the tower, grooming you to be his successor, such as sending you to Megaton to investigate the Atomic bomb in its center and see if it has the potential to explode, questioning some of the locals, obviously leading to information about your father.

 

9) Ghoul Underworld: A ghoul scavenger arrives with a large shipment of weapons (since Pronto at Lock and Loaded can't get any good merchandise), but Eulogy won't pay the price he's asking. So, they haggle, and you get thrown in with his payment. Not knowing what to do with you, he simply passes you on to a friend or debt collector in the Underworld. You grow up as a servant to the Ghouls, some of them using you as a whipping boy/girl for the bigotry they receive from humans. Some of the perks could be better rad resistance, better damage against ghouls or mutants in general, and maybe getting that feral ghoul mask early on

 

10) The Pitt: finally, if you don't escape, squeal, impress, or get purchased, the slavers finally just send you to The Pitt, where you work for years until managing to escape for the Capital Wasteland, and the main quest begins.

 

 

I know, much easier said than done, particularly since you'll have to tweak the main game, including missions and how NPCs regard you. Then there's the hassel of having new lines with different voices. But, figured I might as well throw the idea out there anyway.