Augusta Safehouse in Butcher's Bill quest

[SiNNeR]

ok so the Railroad send me to check if Augusta Safehouse ( is still safe, the implication being that it will be very much an unsafehouse (or rather, unsafehospital-that-doesn't-look-anything-like-a-hospital-except-one-tiny-room-with-some-x-rays-stuck-on-a-board)

rather than being crawling with Institute Synths though, it's full of generic raiders. ok, so the poor agents were incompetent enough to be bested by a rag tag group of murderers who aren't even good enough to be in a named gang

no, wait, there's a dead synth or two lying around. they appear to be early models and Deacon already told me that while there's some debate on whether they should try to free the old gen models as well, they currently only help the third generation human-looking synths. so these ones must have been Institute...

only why would the Institute send raiders with their synths? they're likely not above deligating some jobs to mercenaries but it seems unlikely they'd send those as well as synths

in fact, you'd expect them to send a Courser even. or to just infiltrate the Railroad with loyal synths pretending to be going rogue since while the Railroad are naturally suspicious and distrustful of everyone, that doesn't appear to extend to any synth able to form the words "help" and "me"

[Moraelin]

I don't think the Institute sent raiders together with the synths. Well, I don't actually KNOW what happened there, but basically here's one POSSIBLE scenario or two:

 

1. the Institute completely exterminates the place, maybe recovers any Gen 3's and just leaves. There is nothing worth their time there. Unlike the Switchboard, this place doesn't even have some computers or stuff, nor much of a value to the Railroad to be worth retaking once they know it's compromised. So they just shoot up the place, kill every human, and leave. A few Gen 1's get shot by the railroad in the process, but the courser, if one was present, probably survived and returned home. Ditto for any surviving Gen 1 and 2. So all that's left is a bunch of dead Railroad guys and a couple of destroyed Gen 1 synths in an empty building. Some gang of raiders finds the place and just moves in.

 

2. the Institute shoots the place up like above, and leaves a couple of "chrome-dome" Gen 1 synths behind to guard the place, in case some Railroad guy comes by, just like they did with the Switchboard. Except they don't have the time to lay a whole mine-field before a gang of raiders shows up. They shoot the couple of Gen 1 guards to pieces and take over the place. The Institute probably decides that, meh, it's not worth retaking, and any RR heavy that drops by being shot by raiders is good enough anyway.

 

Just a hypothesis, really.

[SiNNeR]

I admit, I did dismiss those ideas based on their using the Switchboard as a trap but you do have a good point that since it's a much less valuable location they might not expect the Railroad to send anyone worth the effort to warrant waiting in ambush

[Moraelin]

Yeah, I'm under the impression that safe houses seem to be just worth it as a secret location for the "packages" in transit. When they're no longer secret, they're more of a liability.

[SiNNeR]

well it turns out that Doc Moody has a followup quest later that explains it anyway. two coursers went in, killed people, buggered off. raiders moved in, killed people (probably invited them in for a tea party) and got killed by some do-gooder and her synth pal

[Moraelin]

Ah, thanks for the info. Well, there we go then.