Fallout: Fallen Knight

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these and I’ve gotten a lot of new followers and several new OCs in that time. Enough now that I should probably put them under a read more. OCs are divided up by main setting that they fall under - even though all my Fallout content takes place in its own ‘verse (distinct from the canon Fallout verse in that there are horses, among other differences), the various coasts tend to be pretty separate. Without further ado:

big fan of this mtg illustration

that unfocused squint and that chimpanzee aggro grin and that glow from beneath

they claim to be the pre-War government. the pre-War government had death camps for chinese-americans, and filled work camps with union organizers in bomb collars.

the enclave literally play dixie on their propaganda radio without comment. they dogwhistle to Old World Racists on the surface. read the room

vault experiments are an iconic cornerstone of this setting. for all intents and purposes the enclave is vault tec. they spent millions on a concrete bunker just to lock a guy in it with a tiger when the world ended. yeah i wonder if the tiger ate the innocent man or if elsewise occurred. this is just one of their many literal monuments to sadism, abuse, and dishonesty.

sometimes their bunkers were literally led by immortal Large Language Models

oh theyre doing it to ascend mankind to the stars? oh wow thats so noble and isnt what a cult would say to justify slaughtering villages and torturing people.

"but... theyre the most patriotic faction, and i'm... i'm a patriotic fallout fan! plus... they have the legal authority!" damn boss your sympathy and loyalty are that easy to command? like a glassy-eyed kid, touching your sternum and reciting a mantra of cosmic devotion to a cloth rectangle?

at goodsprings last year i saw a guy with deus vult written on his legion chestplate and i shamed him into taking his cosplay off for the rest of the festival. took me eight words. i guess his fellow legion cosplayers were just gonna let that shit happen

fallout is about the rot, the collapse, and the mutilated remains of the imperial core. your shallow enclave/legion obsession is not clean or cute or separate from straight-up nazi nerds. if you deeply involve yourself with pretend nazi nerd shit, actual nazi nerds will start sitting with you

"i wanna be in a faction that helps americans!" make a Responders, Followers of the Apocalypse, or Minutemen character. that is the entire premise of all of those factions.

"but i also want to worship the eagle and the flag and the war god george washington while exterminating the mentally-criminal greenskins with my slave brain robots, and i don't want the video game to imply that's inherently bad!" ok stupid there are 9999 fallout fans who expressed this before you and the ip has never entertained them

because the various artists who have shaped this concept always intentionally designed the faction as basically just nazis who do not wear swastikas

if you are obsessed with rehabilitating the concept of the enclave, it is because you are so indoctrinated that you cannot accept the basic premise of a dystopian scifi setting where the american government is not a benevolent god destined to uplift humankind through torture, dominance, and genocide

For Auld Lang Syne is as far as we ever need to explore the premise of 'a good enclave' and it is ultimately one of the goofiest, ugliest, most unsuccessful premises in that game

this science fiction is about how americans are This fucking deranged. the point is proven in shallow fans who insist that the Secret Patriotic Eugenics Death Cult can still be a positive symbol.

The description of President Richardson when you "look" at him: "You see the head of the free world, the President of the United States." Most Enclave characters will also refer to the faction of which they're affiliated to as the United States...

President Richardson: "I am the President of the United States. The Vice-President is in the office outside. If you belonged here you'd know that. Who are you and what are you doing here?"

Vice-President Bird: "Of course you do, of course. Any loyal citizen of these great United States would do the same."

Doctor Curling: "I'm Lt. Col. Dr. Charles Curling, United States Chemical Corps. And just who the holy hell are you?"

Enclave Comms Officer: "Yeah, you know how unhappy he gets when people complain. He takes it personal, like it's a loyalty thing. Maybe that just goes with being the President of the United States. Or what's left of 'em."

Colonel Autumn: "When you see the Enclave, you see the United States government. We are authorized to restore order and civility, by any means necessary." Colonel Autumn: "You're in a heap of trouble, kid. You're a traitor to the United States government. You know what happens to traitors, don't you?" Colonel Autumn: "By the authority of the President, this facility is now under United States government control."

It comes off like they're insisting that the faction is the Enclave, and the term United States largely just refers to the physical location. In Fallout 76, they fully cement the difference.

It kinda removes accountability from both the government and the system. No, it didn't fail because imperialism (and yes, in the Fallout timeline the US has gone a step further in its imperialism by directly invading and annexing Canada and parts of México) is the highest and most destructive stage of capitalism, it failed because a group of evil conspirators with Sunday morning cartoon villain ambitions ruined it all for everyone. Imperialism and fascism cause the decay of the cohesion and solidarity of the working-class, it's the beast turning against itself in one last act of collective violence.

Imperialist rivalry can only end in brutal destruction, as we saw in World War 1, now add nukes to the mix. In the Fallout 1 intro we're told that:

In the 21st century, war was still waged over the resources that could be acquired. Only this time, the spoils of war were also its weapons: petroleum and uranium. For these resources, China would invade Alaska, the US would annex Canada, and the European Commonwealth would dissolve into quarreling, bickering nation-states, bent on controlling the last remaining resources on Earth. In 2077, the storm of world war had come again. In two brief hours, most of the planet was reduced to cinders.

And in the Fallout 2 intro:

The end of the world occurred pretty much as we had predicted. Too many humans, not enough space or resources to go around. The details are trivial and pointless, the reasons, as always, purely human ones.

one, two, three, four, fires in your eyes

- gaint bats that yes are reskinned Skyrim dragons that hypnotize living creatures into a hive mind.

- mothman but there’s 2 or 3 different Mothmen and they’re aliens that hypnotize people into cannibal cults through their dreams and hallucinations. They’re also fighting a mothman faction war against each other?

- giant poison crystal snake named Butch living in an abandoned underground Enclave lab (honestly a cool boss battle but doesn’t feel like a fallout boss battle)

- gaint crystal mole rat that lives under a nuka world carnival that mole miners worship (mole men are miners in WV that mutated into like…mole rat people kind of?)