Bashman doesn't believe in luck, and luck doesn't believe in him. But he's strong and sturdy, so he can take it and dish it out. Or at least he
will be able to dish it out once he gets his hands on a Gatling Laser. Meanwhile he'll just have to resort to good old fashioned clobbering. Much like he did in the vault when someone noticed his habits of sneaking around and unlocking doors that were supposed to stay locked. Yeah, he doesn't believe that it was
bad luck that got him tossed out of the vault.
After cleverly letting himself get bitten by some rats so that he could practise some first aid, he heads east and stumbles upon Shady Sands where he finds a sledge hammer in a shack. He also manages to gather enough bottlecaps to recruit Ian, and with the help of this double-shooting mercenary, Bashman manages to clear the radscorpion caves without any problems. Everyone is mighty pleased, and Jarvis is soon on his legs, since this is the TeamX 1.3 patch. Bashman continues east in order to check out Vault 15, which is being guarded by another one of those radscorpions.
The vault is filled with rats, but they rarely see or hear Bashman before his jagged knife is swishing above their heads. And then they usually get shot by Ian, who seems to have no trouble aiming in the darkness. Nevertheless, it's down there that Bashman scores his first critical hit, though I neglected to take a screenshot. Naturally there's no waterchip to be found, but a hunting rifle turns out to be better than a knife, and a black leather jacket certainly
looks better than that silly vault suit. Back in Shady Sands they hear that Tandi has gone missing, and apparently the nearby raiders are responsible. Bashman and Ian are on the case, and Bashman casually walks inside the raiders' brick house and unlocks the cell they keep Tandi in. But as he tries to sneak out, Bashman is seen, and is stabbed by a raider's spear. Having already scouted the opposing forces, Bashman knows that it's time to run, but Ian and Tandi seem to think that it's time for a last stand. Bashman manages to drag them along out into the desert anyway, so they all live to tell their tales.
Before leaving Shady Sands, Bashman uses dynamite from Vault 15 to blow up the entrance to the radscorpion caves, and then he sneaks close to Razlo's bookcase to see what he's hiding there. He manages to pick up quite a collection of medical supplies and literature, without any complaints whatsoever. Lucky village, huh? :D
Junktown is next on the list of places to visit, and before reaching the settlement Bashman calls for a halt out in the desert, where he makes sure that Ian puts away his gun. Wouldn't do to have him shot dead by someone who may take offense, right?
Once inside the carwreck walls, Killian gets some help with an assassin, Dogmeat finds a new master, and Tycho finds himself an eager student of the arts of survival in the wasteland. Tycho then finds himself recruited to Bashman's posse, and they make short work of Gizmo after securing the evidence against him. Shortly before that, Bashman witnessed a certain bartender shooting a certain Skulz ganger, which netted Bashman a used and bloody leather armor. Better than the jacket, that's for sure. As Bashman is trying to get the inside scoop on the Skulz, he inadvertedly attracts one of them in a bad way, and as he's running away from the violent ganger, his newfound posse starts to shoot up the place. So that was the end of the Skulz. Dead, but not busted.
Bashman isn't really that tired, but he still decided to stay a night at the Crash House. In the morning he gets his usual breakfast - raider gone wild. He gets the idea to sneak inside and try to surprise the raider, but tries to do it by talking instead of hitting, which results in the raider saying he's going to kill his hostage. Bashman can't have that, so he quickly leaps into (A)ction before the raider is done speaking. Whereupon the raider pretends to fall down, unconscious. Only to pop right back up again! Forcing Bashman to shoot him unconscious a second time, which unfortunately kills the silly man. Much to the sellbaby's dismay. And Bashman who had such plans for the two of them. (Dang. First time I'd ever seen the option to sneak inside and knock the raider unconscious, and then I botched it by not using combat to do it. And this being ironman, I couldn't very well reload and do it the scripted way. Ironman sucks.
)
After taking some advantage of Killian's gratefulness, Bashman & Co continues south, and reach the Hub. There he takes on the daunting task of finding missing caravans, but when the only lead turns out to be a horrifying monster who would surely kill their little group, Bashman decides to explore other opportunities. Such as working for Loxley and his Thieves' Circle for instance. And borrowing 1,000 bottlecaps from Lorenzo. And visiting the hospital... only to be attacked by Jain! She dies in the fight that she started, but Dogmeat is shot up pretty bad before Bashman has managed to drag them all out with him.
At Mrs Stapleton's bookstore Bashman decides to spend a small fortune on five books about electronics. Because... uh... that really seems like a swell idea!
He also hears from Jake the Gun Merchant about some Gun Runners down in the Boneyard, who might have what Bashman is looking for. Sure, the Brotherhood of Steel are supposedly even better at guns, but didn't that singer up in Junktown say that they only let caravans inside? And Beth said something about human sacrifices. Clearly they're some kind of religious gun nuts, and not the kind of
businessmen that Bashman would want to deal with. Jake is also kind enough to hook Bashman up with a supplier of chemical aids, so Bashman decides to purchase four doses of Psycho. Never know when those might come in handy.
Well, actually, Bashman knew damn well that those Psycho syringes would come in handy when he agreed to work as a guard for the Crimson Caravan. Dogmeat hadn't had much time to heal up until it was time to depart, so when the raiders hit, Bashman injected his canine companion with a Stimpak, which amazingly almost restored the dog to full health. Seeing the lively glare in Dogmeat's eyes, Bashman decided that it would be fun to see the dog tear into the raiders. So he injected a dose of Psycho to keep the dog alive for that purpose.
Tycho wasn't so 'lucky' though. Most of the raiders ganged up on him, and he never had a chance to reach for his Stimpaks before he was nothing but meat in the sand.
And while the Psycho kept Dogmeat alive for a while, it wasn't nearly enough to save him as he too was surrounded by raiders, their fists swinging, their guns blazing, their spears stabbing. Oh well, it was just a mangy dog after all.
The raiders completely ignored Ian, which was a good thing, since Bashman, who had injected himself with a dose of Psycho, could stand up to the abuse he received. Stimpaks were expended, but in the end the raiders gave up all their loot, which proved to be worth more than the drugs that Bashman had spent on the battle. So, not a bad trip after all.
Arriving in Adytum, Bashman accepts the job to kill the leader of the Blades, and also promises to look for parts for the hydrophonic farms. But before he's doing anything too dangerous he visits the peaceniks at the library, where he's told a story of a Great Glow down south. (I thought Nicole would put The Glow on the map, but that wasn't the case.) At the library he also picks up a chick named Katja, who seems eager to kick ass. When he's done all the scouting he can, it's time to sneak across the deathclaw playground, which is done in a slow and careful fashion. Once on the other side, it's time to do business with the Gun Runners, who do indeed have precisely what Bashman needs. And after agreeing to rid them of the deathclaws he got enough of a discount to afford some extra Micro Fusion Cells.
Sure, he's still dreaming of a Gatling Laser, but as it turns out after he managed to find the parts for the hydrophonic farms, a Plasma Rifle was just the thing that Smitty could turn into a most excellent weapon. Armed with his new Turbo Plasma Rifle, Bashman decides to pay the Blades a visit. And what a surprise! Their leader Razor doesn't just have a different story to tell, she has proof too! Now, if only someone could get rid of those pesky deathclaws so that the Blades could arm themselves with weapons from the Gun Runners, well, then those Regulators could be taught the error of their ways. By golly!
So it's time to kill deathclaws. Bashman figures that he may have to move quickly and quietly, so he leaves Ian and Katja behind when he goes off to hunt his wascally wabbits. To be sure to survive against one of the massive beasts, he injects himself with a dose of Psycho, which turns out to not be a bad idea, but not as necessary as it seemed. Because the shooting goes quite well.
And once all the deathclaws above ground are dead, Bashman finds the male Mother Deathclaw in an underground lair. In order to get a head start he sneaks up and throws a lit flare on the huge beast, so that it is brightly illuminated as he begins to spit green bolts of plasma at it. That only lasts for a short time, and Bashman is soon forced to retreat from the onslaught - three shots fired, three steps back. And as it turns out, claws are no real match for state of the art firepower.
And after the Psycho has worn off, Bashman is ready to lay claim to his reward. Not trusting the unskilled Blades with such advanced weaponry, Bashman decides to keep it all for himself, or rather, trade it all in for 400 Micro Fusion Cells. Then he brings a certain holodisk over to Jon Zimmerman, but stealthily, so that the Regulators don't notice him. Well, some Regulators do notice him, but they never have time to sound the alarm, so Bashman and his two friends can work their way around the town relatively undisturbed. Caleb didn't even know what hit him.
Everyone dances the happy happy freedom dance as Adytum is rid of the Regulators, and Bashman is that many metal armors richer. (Might be a TeamX thing to have every NPC drop the armor they seem to be wearing - I don't remember.) Talking to a mutated former Vault 13 citizen down in the library basement, Bashman hears that Necropolis would be a great place to go to in order to look for a waterchip. Yeah, that water merchant in the Hub said something about that. "What was that again, a waterchip? Let me write that down." When Bashman promises to deal with those mutants in Necropolis, Thalius hands him a flamethrower, which is quickly traded away to the Gun Runners.
Trading in all those metal armors for a real Combat Armor, Bashman soon returns to the Hub, only encountering three mole rats on the way there. Once at the Hub he decides to first help out Irwin with his farm. Because doing altruistic things like that is really what Bashman is all about. Ian may have drooled a bit when he was handed his new pistol. Next up is that deathclaw that was supposed to eat whole caravans. Done and done. Bashman also purchases an old holodisk from Mrs Stapleton, and as it turns out, it finally puts The Glow on his PipBoy map. Not that Bashman really cares, because he's already got what he needs. After agreeing to kill a water merchant for Decker he promptly contacts the sheriff about the whole thing, and together they show Decker who's boss. Kane didn't do a single thing in the first two rounds, and that was all the time the Turbo Plasma Rifle gave him. Ian ended up in the same spot as Deputy Fry, which hurt Fry more than Ian.
After cleaning up the Hub, Bashman deigns going to Necropolis, where he steals some stuff from a decrepit hotel before going into the sewers to beat up some more rats. Rats don't deserve plasma. Plasma has to be
earned.
Pretty soon he comes upon a small group of
friendly ghouls, and he agrees to help them fix their pump so that they won't die thirsty after he's appropriated their waterchip.
Going topside Bashman finds himself in front of Set, the oafish leader of the ghouls. Feeling frisky, Bashman wouldn't settle for a simple "hello", and instead decided that he should either act clueless and ask what happened to Set's face, or insult ghouls in general by saying that Set is pretty smart. For a ghoul, that is. Set seemed to truly enjoy the choice Bashman made, and soon the whole church was partying hard. Ian almost bit it when he charged alone into several spear-carrying ghouls, but in the end everyone who mattered was still breathing.
In the sewers under the watershed the game crashed, and thus Bashman had to kill Decker again. Kane didn't move this time either. Unless it's a bug, one could assume that the poor guy has dumped his Perception, and thus he has so low Sequence that... no, it's only if he starts combat that someone else might get to act twice before he acts. I know that. Must be a bug, because it's always Decker
himself who starts with a dinky little throwing knife. Oh well, no surprises.
Déjà vu. It happens when they change something in the Matrix.
Taking full advantage of this extrasensory insight, Bashman decides to choose differently when dealing with Set, and ends up agreeing to kill the super mutants at the watershed. After scouting the area, he leaves Ian and Katja down in the sewers, since they'd otherwise risk running around and getting themselves killed. And as strong as Bashman is, he's not strong enough to lug their shit back to the Hub. Then he reads some books that the friendly ghoul gave him after he found the parts for the waterpump. He thought he'd read until it got dark, since darkness might help him hide from the mutants he was about to kill, but as it turned out, he read those books until it was morning. What a little egghead. Oh well, it proved to be exceedingly easy to snipe super mutants through windows. The only one who lasted long enough to move was Harry, and he didn't last long enough to move more than once.
The whole thing was done so stealthily that even
the game itself failed to recognise that the super mutants had all been killed, with the result that Set didn't realise it either. With the result that Bashman decided to search for his reward on his own, with the result of aggressive ghouls. Ian didn't try to commit suicide-by-spears this time, and most ghouls were shot down where they stood by the sneaky Bashman. Once that was done Bashman descended into the old vault and knocked some glowing ghouls around. With hilarous results.
Maybe those glowing ghouls should've been dealt with at a distance though, because shortly afterwards Bashman realised that he was a little bit radiated. Nothing serious though. After ripping the working waterchip out of the vault computer, and hearing the working waterpump take over, Bashman headed north. While travelling he decided that he'd really like to shoot plasma even faster than before, but his fingers wouldn't cooperate. What was up with that?
Does not the Sacred Manual clearly state that the perk Bonus Rate of Fire requires 7 Agility, 6 Intelligence, 4 Perception and Level 9? And did not Bashman qualify for all these requirements? Unless TeamX made a little alteration and never told anyone, Bashman will simply have to cry "bug", and I with him. It actually required a dose of Mentats to (later) qualify for Bonus Rate of Fire, which leads me to believe that the Perception requirement is 6-7 rather than a measly 4.
On his way to Shady Sands Bashman decided to pay a little visit to the merry Khans, who all ended up dying where they stood, or walked.
After Shady Sands has been taught the marvels of crop rotation, it's time to show Ian and Katja what a vault
really looks like. Ian thinks it looks too clean. Bashman amazes himself by successfully calming down a revolutionary faction that he himself actually sympathizes with, and then he ambushes a water thief. He wasn't sure if the thief would turn up after the water chip had been turned in, so he just had to let the vault suffer for another day or so. Justice must be served.
He definitely would, and ended up with lethal damage to vital organs. After being debriefed Bashman is once again sent out into the wastes, this time to destroy all mutants. And their leader too. That Overseer must think very highly of Bashman to think that a single man could take out an entire army. He didn't even give him a bunch of vault citizens to use as cannon fodder. Wouldn't it be worth sacrificing a few for the good of the many? No? Just sacrifice one at a time, eh? Oh well. Bashman remembers that Nicole said something about Nightkin mutants hanging out with the Children of the Cathedral, at the actual Cathedral down south of the Boneyard. So, south then.
Passing through Junktown, Bashman hears another tale of the glorious Glow. Almost made him want to go there, that one. Almost...
In the Hub Bashman purchases all the books Mrs Stapleton has left, except for the gun rags, since they are of no real use to him. (In the TeamX patch her books don't respawn all the time - there are only 5 of each.) Working as guards for a Far Go Traders caravan, the group encounters a swarm of mantis on their way to the Boneyard, but such tiny creatures are no match to extreme violence. In the Boneyard Bashman seeks out Nicole, and asks for her help in the destruction of the Cathedral. She tells him of a Follower of the Apocalypse spy at the Cathedral, and also promises to send a distraction.
The spy turns out to be this woman, who later responded to Bashman's taunting with ineffective violence. Hard to recall who exactly killed her, but the Followers of the Apocalypse who were sent to distract definitely got a few licks in.
While scaling the cathedral tower, a Nightkin Sentry spotted Bashman sneaking past his door, which initiated the fighting. Another Nightkin came marching up the corridor carrying a flamer, but those Nightkin are terribly difficult to see clearly, what with their StealthBoy camouflage and everything.
So by a complete accident, Bashman melted Ian.
Katja inherits the .223 pistol, and at the top of the tower Bashman finds some fancy Tesla Coil Armor, which comes in handy whenever he's up against energy weapons. Going downstairs a Nightkin kindly donates a Gatling Laser, which unfortunately turns out to be quite mediocre compared to the Turbo Plasma Rifle. Oh well. It's still fun to cut mutants and people in half. But for precision work, plasma it is.
The infested vault under the cathedral is no match to Bashman, Katja and the four Followers of the Apocalypse. After finding the location of a secret base to the northwest, Bashman accidently angers some psychics who prove to be quite resilient, thereby earning a few bolts of plasma. Then he nukes them all from below, because it's the only way to be sure. And there's no Mr Burke to disagree with him.
The Followers of the Apocalypse are quite relieved that 'the children have been driven from the cathedral', and Bashman heads northwest, killing a few raiders and radscorpions on his way. Getting closer to the secret base he and Katja go through the mountains in an attempt to not be spotted by patrols. Once they arrive they easily sneak inside, then lure the guards away with the radio from the dead super mutant in the deathclaw cave. All except the one guard right in front of the entrance. But with his back to the massive door, he doesn't notice Bashman unlocking it with his electronic lockpicks. All goes quite silent until Bashman is forced to kill two mutants in a corridor with prison cells, which is when the alarm goes off. More mutants get killed on the fourth level of the base, before Bashman finally arrives at his destination.
He definitely would.
Having read enough Big Books of Science, Bashman finally manages to get the hang of the computer, and eventually manages to set the whole place to self destruct. Due to the alarm he has to ambush mutants on his way out, but by now we all know that they die where they stand. Under the influence of a single dose of Mentats, these were his numbers at the end.
:D Katja survived, so together they can sally forth and repopulate the wasteland. No one wants to stay with that moldy old Overseer anyway.
Everyone but the raiders got their good endings, even the Brotherhood of Steel. The Hub didn't get an ending, which is as it should be, apparently.I'm not really proud over any ending, because pride just isn't my thing. I suppose Bashman might take a smidge of pride in the fact that the "Raiders are destroyed"?
