Terminal

Fallout: The Long Haul (ALWAYS OPEN TO NEW PLAYERS)

TheLonePup said the power stations ONLY power the rails in an eastern direction? meaning that this quest could ONLY be done like this from the west coast starting in New Vegas? we couldn't start in say... Philly and propel the thing to Pittsburgh and then so on?Sorry just had to point that out... I kept tripping in that plothole and I think I twisted my ankle... had to bitch about it a little <.<

Sshhh.

House recovered some trollies and had them sent to New Vegas. He restored them, and so those are the ones we can use, from there.

Don't think about it too hard. >.>

The DC Supermutants are ENTIRELY unrelated to the Master. They are all products of Vault 87 - they have nothing at all to do with the Master's Army or the First Gen supermutants, the end.

Fallout: The Long Haul (ALWAYS OPEN TO NEW PLAYERS)

"Just one, great Grace." Poe said, a genuinely thoughtful expression visiting his lips. "You're contracting me to install a security network and hardware on-site at each of these powerstations, and those I can rig to be more inhospitable than the bottom of the ocean to trespassers. These lines though, they may be buried underground, but seeing as we'll likely be running into them anyway the Brotherhood of Steel at least - and a few others I can think of - will have both the capability and the desire to disrupt these lines not at the power stations, but along their lengths. I may be missing some nuance concerning your relationship with those boyscouts, but I've heard there's not much lost love between you."

Poe didn't bother to actually arranged his sentence in order to present a proper question, instead erecting a shoddy construct with a bunch of dangling bits on it with the expectation that House would attempt to catch all of them.

Fallout: The Long Haul (ALWAYS OPEN TO NEW PLAYERS)

TheUnknowable said
Technically, Terminal, he never triggered the welder, he just got it ready and tried to intimidate Poe with it. Not a major problem, though.

Duly noted.

Fallout: The Long Haul (ALWAYS OPEN TO NEW PLAYERS)

Mr. Zero said He touched his arc welder to the man's chest and turned down the power setting so that it would only cause convulsions.

Poe had been only had listening to whatever the Mr. Helper - or apparently 'Mr. Smarty' (the lead designer for the model had probably thought he was the funniest goddamn joker on the planet) as it started to speak again, in lieu of reviewing the information it had divulged. Manufactured in Atlanta, so he didn't have to deal with the messy process of familiarizing himself more fully with West-coast termlink arrangement. The laser cutter and arc welder tools were pleasant surprises - it meant he would have some help with constructing turrets, which were by far the most time-intensive security features to make. Poe wasn't terribly concerned by the revelation that the robot had apparently done a stint with the Enclave - he would probably have to see about tearing out its behavior core and replacing it with a blank one in order to make sure no Enclave contingency functions booted up in the middle of the journey, causing the robot to kill all of them in their sleep, but that wasn't an immediate concern. The most interesting piece of information was the fact that the Mr. Smarty (it felt stupid even thinking the term) was a prototype unit. Prewar experimental prototype ANYTHINGS were notorious for their bugs and glitches, but Poe supposed that years of Enclave maintenance had probably sorted most of those out by now and-

Poe stirred from his thoughts when his noticed Mr. Zero's extending arc welder. He tensed up with a startled expression, having been caught entirely offguard - he made to back away from the implement, but not quickly enough. The arc welder activated and sent a low charge through Poe's body, causing him to jump and his arms to stiffen at his sides as muscles throughout his body seized - though at the same moment, he reflexively jumped away from the arc welder, dancing far enough away that with the tool's reduced power, the electrical current couldn't arc through the air to hit him. For a moment, it looked like he would fall over as he stumbled backwards - but right before he reached the tipping point, he flung himself off to the left and thudded against the stairwell leading up to the elevator balcony. A shaking hand darted into his jacket and pulled out his plasma defender, leveling it directly at Mr. Zero - and if his hand was unsteady, the distance between them was small and the target itself was fat and slow.

Mr. Zero said "Tell me who you are, where you're from, and your medical history. When's the last time you were treated, and for what? How many times have you had an embarrassing disease, like a Venereal Disease? Come on, surely you're not going to force one person to give up confidential information without offering it up yourself? Or do you not consider me a person because I'm not human?"

Poe stared at Mr. Zero for a few moments, his hand slowly steadying apart from abrupt, faint jerks. Poe's expression was a mixture of disbelief, shock, and unfettered rage as he digested the robot's rebuttal to his hacking.

Nearly a full seven seconds passed before he burst out laughing, throwing his head back and laying an arm across the stone railing of the staircase to steady himself as the business end of his plasma defender sank a few degrees, no longer aimed explicitly at Zero.

"Ok little Mote, I suppose I can tell you all of that. I've got nothing to hide. My name is Poe, I was born in St. Louis in 2268. I was exposed to low dosages of octarine radiation prenatally and was born with a full set of baby teeth. I treated myself two years ago for shrapnel-related injuries from an IED, and when I was eleven I contracted Hepatitis B from an infected blood transfusion performed by a Follower doctor. It isn't that I don't consider you a person because you're not a human - I don't consider you a person because you're a Mr. Helper model. I'd consider a Robobrain a person, I'd consider a ZAX A.I. to be a person if you gave it some time, but you aren't a person because even when your pathetic excuse for a parallel co-neural process imitator has been given hundreds of years of heuristic development and rampancy you couldn't pass even the simplest turing test. You're not a person, you're a glorified tool. And by the way, you got your hardware diagnostic wrong."

Poe raised his plasma defender again, a wide and nasty smile gracing his face.

"Your left-hand optical sensor appears to have been rendered nonfunctional due to severe thermal ablation."

Poe was less than two meters away and, even recovering from the last vestiges of Mr. Zero's shock prod, was still a crack shot with most energy weapons. Only a miracle would cause him to miss.

Before he could pull the trigger, all of the Luck 38's penthouse windows polarized to 100% opacity and all the lights in the room shut off, leaving the room in total darkness. The plasma discharge from Poe's energy pistol whizzed scant centimeters past Mr. Zero's sensor, colliding with the wall behind it and dissipating harmlessly.

"Oh goddamnit, this is such an obvious setup." Poe groaned.

Fallout: The Long Haul (ALWAYS OPEN TO NEW PLAYERS)

Ok, I've got the perfect way to segue into the lights shutting off and stopping Poe from wrecking Mr. Zero.

Before I post: Unknowable, you describe Mr. Zero as reading Poe's lips for the purposes of understanding him, but from terminals in the games Autophonetic Recorders are usually specialized software packages - I.E., robots, even sapient ones, typically don't have the capacity to read lips.

It doesn't affect the outcome of my post either way, and I don't actually mind that he's attempting to prevent future hacking. You could just say he has an Autophonetic Recorder and that's that, but it might be more likely that he's simply extrapolating lip movement to a programmed lexicon in his memory banks, which means he might have trouble understanding what people are saying at first until he's obtained sufficient field analysis to have perfected his heuristically acquired lip-reading talent.

Either way works (and I suppose there are other ways he could have such a skill as well) - just thought I would bring up the possibility, either way.

Fallout: The Long Haul (ALWAYS OPEN TO NEW PLAYERS)

TheUnknowable said
Thought you were talking to me, as I said the group of Enclave soldiers I was with was called Phoenix Squadron.Do I need to explain why they call themselves that to anyone?

No, I mean literally the American city of Phoenix is controlled by Legion forces. I was addressing Imagination. :P

Fallout: The Long Haul (ALWAYS OPEN TO NEW PLAYERS)

Note: Phoenix is actually a Legion controlled city. I am unsure what Legion policy is on ghouls, but it does seem strange that they'd let them set up their own little sanctuary in the middle of their territory, yeah?

Fallout: The Long Haul (ALWAYS OPEN TO NEW PLAYERS)

!!!

Mr. Zero just revealed its alignment with the Enclave!

I predict at least one person (not counting Poe) is about to draw weapons on it.

Fallout: The Long Haul (ALWAYS OPEN TO NEW PLAYERS)

ArcanicNeon said
after reading terminal's post just then it is official. Dallas is technically useless. I actually wish i re-wrote his character slightly, and how he got here.

Hold on just a minute.

Dallas is an NCR Ranger.

You know, the Legendary Rangers of the West who can beat Deathclaws to pieces with a leather switch, have skin harden than iron, who can climb sheer cliff underhangs unaided, and draw and holster again before anybody even hears the bullet?

I mean all of those rumors are complete and utter lies but still, NCR Rangers - Other than the Brotherhood of Steel Paladins and the Legion Praetorian Guard - Are the only 'Elite Forces' in the wasteland.

Poe doesn't know Dallas is a ranger. He's never seen Ranger Armor before - him belittling Dallas is because Dallas has yet to show him any of his badass ranger skills yet, and Poe is biased to think poorly of him since Dallas has already admitted he only found the Pipboy off the the original owner.

To Poe, Dallas is just a Bulletcatcher. But NCR Rangers aren't bulletcatchers. NCR Rangers are so goddamned fearsome that bullets turn around and crawl back into the barrel if a Ranger stares them down.

Have him do something Rangery.

That isn't complete bullshit I mean. Trying any of the stuff above will get him killed. '-'

Fallout: The Long Haul (ALWAYS OPEN TO NEW PLAYERS)

Clarification: Poe is instructing Mr. Zero to identify its manufacturer and model specification, to identify what tools/implements it has on each arm, and then to run a self-diagnostic and return the results (while also specifying how long it has been since it has received maintenance). The final command is to not insert any idle or unnecessary chatter, commentary, or Artificially-Generated personality flavor into the responses.