Well now, lemme spin ya a yarn ‘bout a day that damn near cracked my brain in two — I call it Mindfuck, Part One. Pull up a stump, son, and mind the fire.
We rode out that mornin’ on a mission, huntin’ down a nest o’ mean sons o’ bitches — big ol’ freaks, stronger than oxen and twice as ugly. Supermutants, they call ‘em. Don’t rightly know where they come from, but they sure as hell weren’t born of no woman.
Anyhow, we was movin’ through the woods, boots kickin’ up dirt, lead flyin’ thick through the trees. Runnin’ and gunnin’, dodgin’ death like it was a square dance partner. Poor Clay caught a mess o’ bullets and went down hard. But I weren’t about to let him die. Slid in on my knees right through the gunfire like I was doin’ the limbo at the Devil’s hoe-down, slapped a med patch on his chest just as the last of his life was leakin’ out.
I’ll be honest, I don’t remember every bit — took a few slugs myself, went down like a sack o’ potatoes. But thanks to them fancy nannites buzzin’ around in my blood, I was back on my feet before you could say “whiskey.” Obediah? That crazy bastard was a goddamn whirlwind, both pistols barkin’, teeth bared, eyes wild. Like he was born to die but hadn’t got around to it yet.
It was dicey, I won’t lie. They had us pinned like bugs to a board. Then the worst happened — Ashman got dropped. Not the kind of drop you can walk off neither. I’m talkin’ real death. Cold. Permanent.
And then somethin’… somethin’ I still ain’t sure I rightly understand. That entity, Aura — some kinda spirit or god or who-the-hell-knows — lit up the staff she calls home. Light poured outta it, so bright it near burned the back o’ my eyes. It wrapped around Ashman, lifted him up like the hand o’ God itself. Time stopped. Not quiet, like a still mornin’ — silent, with a Capital S. The kind o’ silence that makes your bones ache. It made my heart ache too to be able to call Aura Family cos that’s what we is in a way.
Then — bam — time snapped back like a whip crack, bullets flyin’ again like nothin’ had happened. ‘Cept Ashman was standin’ tall like he’d never been dead at all.
Aura was also very quiet … Too quiet like shed given her all to save him and had nothing left.
Well sir, we figured we’d had our fill of dyin’ and miracle-workin’ for one day, so we pulled back. Truth be told, I don’t even remember why we went in there in the first place. Some orders from the bunkers, they said it was important. Pays decent, I reckon. But hell… after seein’ a man die and come back like that?
That ain’t the kind of thing you forget. Not ever.
After proceeding through lands infested with the Supermutant clans, and following the loss of my dear cousin Elwood, our fire team arrived at the bunker of Dr Edvard Richtofen. External bunker security involved drone coverage and armed assault by many subjects infected with the Hive Apollo Virus.
Enhanced Medical Scans (File: CJ15-03-01-1) confirmed a 93% probability that the strain of Hive Apollo Virus was not contagious, with a further 61% probability that infection was deliberate through rewriting several baselines of code. Subjects were infected with the Hive Apollo Virus between 2-5 years previously.
Served by a secured elevator, our engineering team successfully bypassed the security features, enabling access to the lower levels of the bunker.
Dr Richtofen’s laboratory was aseptic with continual and ongoing atmospheric scrubbing. Items of note were a body and a large metallic device. The body also contained the Hive Apollo Virus, with a 98.9% similarity to the subjects encountered immediately outside of the facility. Scans supported findings from outside, in that there was a 97% probability that the strain of Hive Apollo Virus was not contagious, with a further 81% probability that infection was deliberate through rewriting several baselines of code. Enhanced scans confirmed the subject was infected with the Hive Apollo Virus 2 to 2.5 years ago (File: CJ15-03-13).
Medical scan of the device confirmed a 98% probability apparatus was a highly advanced life support system designed to manage the medical requirements of a specific individual. The system had capacity to sustain all aspects of life, including cardiopulmonary, cardiovascular and digestive system functions. At the time of investigation, the system was on minimal power with the occupant in a form of suspended animation.
An enhanced, detailed scan confirmed the interred subject had experienced catastrophic damage from an explosion approximately 25 years previously (File: CJ15-03-18-1).
External examination scans revealed the extent of the damage:
Head: cranial structure remained largely intact, although significant superficial lacerations, thermal damage and contusions were evident.
Neck and Spinal Cord: cervical vertebrae (C1-C7) were intact and without stress fracture. Soft tissue of the vertebral column had experienced extensive damage, with severe muscular and dermal burns. The spinal cord was intact, but with signs of potential direct neural trauma due to concussive forces.
Internal examination scans revealed the following:
Both lungs were intact with the presence barotrauma in the lower lobes, indicative of a high-pressure shock wave; evidence of historic haemorrhaging.
Cardiac morphology remained intact but with secondary trauma indicative of a high-pressure shock wave, including myocardial contusions and subendocardial haemorrhage.
The ribcage was largely absent, with only partial remains of the first and second ribs. Osteography demonstrated signs of high-velocity displacement and thermal damage.
The remainder of the musculoskeletal system had experienced extensive disintegration, with only minor remnants of the shoulder girdle and absence of limbs and major musculature below the cervical line.
Additional medical observations:
Evidence of extensive third-degree burns across dermal and subdermal tissue, but with significant subsequent natural dermal regeneration.
Significant degree of cellular regeneration, with 97% probability that the subject was aged 634 years old. The rate of cellular regeneration detected suggests the subject was functionally immortal barring any direct trauma.
The Life support device was linked to an external power source supplied by Cllr Jacob Brenner and brought back online, awakening the subject. The subject confirmed their identity as Dr Edvard.
Details from the initial discussion with Dr Richtofen indicate that Dr Langstrom was his former student and may be responsible for the genetic splicing of the local supermutant threat; he attempted to murder Dr Richtofen following a disagreement. The doctor was unaware of Dr Alverson, allegedly responsible for the creation of Ash-man in Bunker Fortitude through manipulation of Hive Vulcan Virus (File: PC158640-1).
The subjects defending the facility and infected with Hive Apollo Virus were volunteers at the end of their natural lives, allegedly giving their bodies to the doctor’s protection.
Although Dr Richtofen appears to be able to manipulate Hive Apollo Virus for his own purposes, he was unable or unwilling to provide a cure. Dr Richtofen stated he was unaware of Hive Virus variant Pandora. A local soldier external to either Ascendancy Bunkers highlighted that the personal mementos in the doctor’s laboratory were suggestive of extreme military and political views. This may be an important note for any ongoing dealings with Dr Richtofen.
It was with a slightly melancholy heart I walked with Katia, Dylan and Indy over to Fortitude to meet up with Sarge and the rest of the FEF to take part in investigating the Children of Edens’ lands and making sure they were safe for Fortitude to set up a base. I missed Shannon’s continuous complaints and grumpiness. Happily Tabor decided to join us at the last minute so I had him to complain at me for the whole journey. Eventually he will learn to love the surface!
Met up with Sarge and the crew and got the briefing. Clear and sweep through the Children of Eden lands. Sarge took charge as usual and we were marching out in quick order. Met a Brenner I hadn’t met before, Travis. A mouthy engineer from Fortitude who married a Brenner who moved over to help with Fortitude systems after Frost.
We met a Fortitude patrol who said a number of their people had gone missing and the mission quickly turned into a search and rescue.
We headed into a zone that cancelled all radio communications with Fortitude. We didn’t know if it was a natural occurrence or a jammer but we prepared for a fight.
Unfortunately the scouts found several bodies in quick succession when we got deep into CoE territory.
The medic told us that the bodies had been partially eaten and I immediately jumped to the Mutant conclusion. I had known there had to be a way they could get through at the back of Fortitude lands because the Black Hill Boys had used it to come ask for help, but it was good to have it confirmed.
The bodies were the missing Fortitude people. We headed further into CoE territory to find out who had done it, following tracks one of the soldiers identified.
We came across a very odd looking body and tree in an area of Alpha Radiation.
I’m not sure I understand all the medical implications of the discovery but this was the body of Lab Assistant Kirsten Lane, reported missing (presumed dead) in the Hive Invasion of Level 17.
Katia says that the sap of the tree had what appears to be a “dead” hive virus, 97.6% likelihood that it was Hive Vulcan.
The tree has native antiviral components to its sap and this combined with the more intense Beta Radiation present in the body of the tree may have resulted in the neutralisation of the virus.
The sap also contains a neurotoxin designed to induce muscle paralysis on contact.
Katia took samples and said that she believed that the tree removed the Vulcan Virus from Ms Lane when she was paralysed from the sap. There also was some kind of device that had similarities to a standard bunker NDU, its main body is designed to hold and insulate a liquid compound, which is then injected into a target, rather than sprayed as per usual procedure. It was totally empty.
Zack (one of the new FEF medic recruits) suggested this could be a method for the jab that creates Super Mutants. We couldn’t transport the device though as it was too dangerous and irradiated.
The forward group came under heavy and sustained attack from Mutants and those of us that had stayed to examine Ms Lane swiftly moved up to support the fighting and it was a hard fight. There must have been hundreds of them. Waves upon waves of the vicious buggers. We used a partially destroyed village as our medical post and worked out from it. Some of the Mutants used primitive guns and some used melee weapons. Some you couldn’t dispatch with normal blades which made things tough. Thank gods for Sarge’s railgun, the skill of the medics and the professionalism of the Fortitude team. Unfortunately during this attack we did lose 2 of Alpha team who we just couldn’t get to in time to save after they went down in the middle of the waves of Mutants. We will remember them.
We pushed up into a CoE village and again met heavy resistance. The engineers said it was also the centre of the radio dead zone and said they believed there was a jammer in the village. Once we had cleared the village we found a statue to Cromwell in worship of the hybrid.
Underneath there was another empty and destroyed device that contained Mutant virus. It was discussed that this probably was the centre of the event that had converted the remaining Children of Eden into Mutants.
The engineers also found two devices that were blocking the radio signals, one of which had a huge explosive device attached to it. Tabor and Ben took one device with several people to defend them in the event of an attack. Travis Brenner took the other device with Katia, Zack, myself and Indy defending him. Indy’s shield proved vital as, as soon as the engineers started their work, we came under sustained attack from waves of Mutants again. They were everywhere! Fortunately, the combined might of the defenders saw them off at all points and the engineers were able to deal with the comms blocker and the explosives.
I’m happy to report that map ref N40 is ready again for a settlement and it has a well of C7 ready to be tapped.
We mourn the fallen. And look towards moving forwards with dealing with the Mutants on our next surface mission.
Side note
Katia has given me a medical scan of the Mutants she examined in the hope that it will prove useful if she can’t make the mission.
I should start with the call from Alverson telling us that Welkerson had been infected with a tailor made virus keyed to his DNA, they had found a Sergeant had infected Welkerson and we started by searching his locked quarters, Scar got it open. whilst in there we were attacked by fortitude specialists
We then found some tablets that we hacked, they held messages which seemed to indicate Dr Matthews head medic at fortitude it also gave us a location of what was meant to be a lab where the virus was m,eant to be made however it looked like a set up
We then had a look at second tablet that gave us a location on the surface in the Children of eden lands, we started to move toward this but ot all seemed too well hidden, we tried some duplicity with drones shot plenty of Children of Eden then discovered two locked buildings, the first one contained a blender with Virus samples in it did explode but we were able to obtain the code to save Welkerson from one of the samples in it
The other building contained this
This is a Vulcam Golem, Sally screamed when she saw this, it had started the transformation into another form of Vulcan drone a shaper or a node but the blue cage around it was stopping this process from going forward
There was also code on a terminal to infiltrate and control Vulcan core code, I could not save the code but have enough notes to actually create it.
We then destroyed the Vulcan body and as we left Alverson outted himself as Network, we then lost all long range comms and drone and Damage stopped working, it was only a temporary thing though as Damage was soon up and running again, last but not least we had a psyker move from Fortitude to Ascendancy.
Well an interesting event on Friday I was contacted by Dahl and he advised myself and fellow members of squad Spud, Anthony Brenner, Sick note Brenner Engineers Ned and Scar. We were tasked with obtaining cuttings from a 200 year old Radiation eating tree to plant in an Alpha radiation zone and hopefully these will grow, it did involve using radioactive “spuds” Anthony that is the last time I am using that word. They looked a bit like this.
However this being proper science we had to dip them in radioactive goo, wearing gloves masks etc stick the cuttings in the potatoes then plant them out in the alpha radiation zone.
Things went smoothly except Scar must now make a talking time watch for one of the Hell eye clan who showed us where the tree was and generously let us take cuttings. Once the dipping was done the cuttings and potatoes were transported to a planting site and planted with the aid of a shovel all in all a good scientific endeavour.
I then pulled a guard duty at fort Leon with most of the other medics galivanting off into the wild unknown, when this happened we were attacked by Fortitude specialists, I was shot down but was stabilised by the crat Darya, in fact she stabilised most of us and in fact saved the day in my opinion. She deserves to be recognised. I did manage to get several very close up scans of the fortitude specialists. (note to self why do fortitude soldiers grin when they expire, must find out why)
So after being shot I decided to retire, gun shots do wear you out a little only to be woken by a loud radio call from Councillor fields that they had a medical emergency coming in that was not responding to nanites and I was the only medic I could find. A quick assessment showed the patient had multiple pieces of shrapnel in their chest slowly moving toward their heart, open chest surgery is tiring work, you cannot get anything wrong it must be perfect or the patient may die due to blood loss. It was tiring, I have never fought so hard with a patient but I did get all of the Fortitude landmine bits out of the patient’s chest, then a quick dose of nanites and the wound sealed itself and the patient could talk to us, I am afraid I was too exhausted to understand so left Sally to deal with it.
Would you believe it just as I am about to drift off Sally again could I help hack this chip that had been found, but being honest I was so tired I could not see straight and fell asleep in the attempt.
The next morning there was a long walk to what is now known as Fort Ned, just as I was settling in my bunk yes you guessed it Sally again, there no medics can you go out on this diplomatic mission to the pact, we want to negotiate with them to source some C7, C7 is insidious stuff burns the body chemically why the followers of the choir choose to drink it is beyond me, So I fell asleep under a tree, diplomacy is not my thing. I did manage to get detailed scans of the pact though. (Apparently eating cake is very important)
Whilst negotiating we were rudely interrupted several times by super mutants, I again scanned all of these, Ill put just a few in this report.
I then pulled bunker guard duty again, it was quiet until a little surprise visit from Bunker Victoria apparently the nephew of the fellow Simmerson we met the first time. They advised as we were occupying their lands, they would be expecting rent from us, the sum of £10.000. Well with help from the Crat Darya again we advised we would have to put this to our council and give then a response in a few weeks’ time, we have been given a month to pay, most people agree with me that Victoria will not be getting anything from us. I am confused though as the ambassador at the pact this morning was much more pleasant to deal with, maybe a genetic flaw in the males? They left us in peace after delivering this ultimatum, I have advised my fellow councillors.
So I decided to do a couple of hours research with my scans concentrating on Super mutants and The Pact, seeing if I could find any correlation between the two and generally losing myself in the research, I am hoping to do this with Dahl’s help but the network is very patchy here.
However just as I was settling down to study the code, an emergency came up, no not Sally this time but we were attacked by super mutants, we acquitted ourselves well, but I must admit not sure my nose has gone back right after getting punched in the face by a super mutant. Fort Ned was defended superbly by not nearly the major in his power armour but I was surprised by the engineer Triss Brenner and Scar helping to hold the buildings thanks to them no more mutants made it into the building. Full marks to our newest medic stripes for grabbing a box and picking up people where needed.
After this calmed down something else unusual happened the Major and Jacob burst in and grabbed Nero accusing him of planting some sore of bug on the major, they restrained him and were marching him to a cell I was about to follow to carry out some basic procedure scans when I was approached by “Wall” who said not to scan Nero as I would not like the answer but it would be alright in the morning. This naturally made me want to scan Nero even more and both of this scans showed no anomalies, they are here for you to see.
Nero was searched and a device and some nanite patches were discovered, when I scanned these patches they turned out to be tailor made viruses for individuals, namely the fortitude leadership.
I then buried myself in research again the pact and super mutant genomes whilst fascinating, I would like to find a way to slow them down or at least drop them so I don’t get punched in the face again.
This leads me up to the afternoon of Sun day when yes you guessed I was asked to hack a device along with several other hackers which we successfully did, when I learned the device was the one found on Nero I forensically tested the device and could find no trace of Nero on it at all.
A lot of research to do one of my medics has been tasked with finding a viable alternate to C7 Ill give him all the support on that, Rav and Indiana have been charged by Raze to lead an entire new tribe and investigate who took part in the recent ceremony I agreed to help with this. Lastly I want to look at possibly creating the first new AI after the fall, Fort Ned sounds like it would be the perfect place to do this, must start researching this.
During the surface expedition of June 2523, Councillor Raze, leader of 11 Striken surface tribes, invited those of the Bunker (s) and the FEF to a variety of games that had been constructed to display strength, skill and bravery.
A number of FEF members including myself stepped up for the Trial of Bravery/ Courage and we were led to a grove of tree’s deep within the woodland where a sacred area was used for the trial.
The test itself involved bravely placing your hand into a hollow tree stump and rummaging around amongst venomous plants for items deposited in the area.
A whole report could and im sure will be made (by another) for this whole fascinating ritual and the sites uses by the tribes however my report will i stead focus on something else.
That the vegetation itself was sentient.
From numerous MED and PSI scans of various plants in the area i could see that there was a Psionic blending of the vegetation, they acted in concert using natural defensive methods and seemed to share a Psionic footprint.
Further scans showed that the plants were connected by a mycelium, a fungal root system that seemed to be centred on the hollow stump.
Initial hypotheses would suggest that the fungal matter resembled a neural network sufficiently that the Psionic matter/ ability was able to take hold in this area.
I have not detected fungal matter before during my psionic research so initially i will theorise that the fungal matter was a carrier for the Psionic.
This posses an interesting question, does the Psionic power flow towards the area of least resistance such as this mycelium network and the neurological pathways of the human brain?
Perhaps i could create my own psionic/ fungal .. thing??
Here are the links to the database of my scans from the area, I’m sure a botanist would find them fascinating!
I am so disappointed that I didn’t think to take my sample containers and medical equipment into the trial of bravery as the only slime I collected was that which Anthony kindly wiped on my jacket. Perhaps I can revisit the area at another date.
April 2523, myself, Vlad, Vasili, Bobby and Nero were tasked to capture and scan a Hive Vulcan but interestingly on the way we bumped into a Hive Patrol with captives.
A joint research into the cybernetic organisms encountered on 7th and 8th September 2519 was conducted by Professor Ivan Kirov, Felicity “Canary” Binx, William Napier, William “Prince” Smith, Penelope ‘Kensington’ Devereux-Quille and Decker Castellan. By also compiling reports from FEF members, we have added them into this report to ensure that any personal that encounter the cybernetic creatures have the knowledge to combat and survive against them.
Since the last FEF field operation i had been working hard with Ivan and Dr Simon and we had managed to produce 3x prototype Psionic Defence patches. I must thank Julian for the supplies. So i was quite keen to see how the patches worked in the field. I had also spent some time with Ivan and Dr Simon working on our Hive research and recently Dr Simon had successfully tested a Hive Stun patch that we had created so the mood in the Medical Bay was quite positive.
Well my second time out in the wilderness, if I ever meet my supervisor again I will show them the indignities I have gone through. So we were meant to be talking to some significant people from the bunker fortitude resistance group, it all went a bit wrong as we were getting ready as they appeared saying they were in trouble.
