Fallout Denver Session Notes 1: Wherein our heroes do something heroic for the first time in their lives.

War, war never changes. In the fires that consumed the old world, the American authorities sought refuge in Vaultec's master control vault in Cheyenne Mt. Their flight from what is now the Capitol Wasteland led a trail of destruction from the east coast straight into the heart of Colorado. Their escape was pinned down in Denver, and the full fury of the atomic war machine unleashed its devastating power. Control-group vaults in the area were prompted to play a pre-recorded message, urging inhabitants to wait for representatives of Vaultec to let them know that the fallout had passed. Yours was one such vault. Sealed against time, and damaged by an atomic force beyond all projections, your forebears waited. Thirty years ago, a group at the door was welcomed with eager expectation, and a vicious gang known as the Angels was admitted to Vault 4. The vault has become a crime empire, built on the backs of slaves: built on your backs. The vault dwellers toil on, making  the gang's drugs and weapons, and continue their long dream of daylight. 

This marked the beginning of our painfully non-canon game in the ruins of old Denver. I'm running this game in the GURPS system, and the first session spent a lot of time in character creation, as they tend to do. Character creation gave us three characters for adventures in the wastes:

Chance: A vault dweller entrusted as an Angels enforcer. He is a strong melee fighter with a careless attitude.

Gadget: A vault dweller assigned to work the weapons repair and reloading benches. She has a natural aptitude for machines and technology that surpasses many of her peers. 

Remington: A vault dweller with little known about him. He tends to keep his head down and seems able to slip away unseen as he likes. 

These three had only just acclimatized to the world when the rebellion broke out. Remington used a stealth-boy like mutation to fade against the walls and see what was happening. Gadget immediately took a gun from near the repair station and palmed it until she could get a feel for the situation. Chance, on the other hand, was front and center when the drug lab exploded in a cloud of flaming gas. Drug mixers in masks stormed out of the lab with makeshift shields crafted from surgical trays and began raining chemically enhanced molotov cocktails down from the railing onto the common areas below. 

Above, on the approach to the overseer's office, the Angel's members had beat a hasty retreat and barricaded themselves into the area. Chance fought his way to the top of the staircase with the drug mixers in tow and began to engulf the room in flames, while fighting through those same flames. All the while he was shouting, "We have to do this, for glory!"

The fighting pushed back down the stairs, now slick with flaming oil, and, in the scuffle, Gadget and Remington made it up to join in the fighting. The local representative of the Angels barricaded himself in the overseer's office, and, after goading him out to the railing to try to calm the vault dwellers, the party watched as the vault dwellers grabbed him and flung him from the railing. In the aftermath of all of this, Chance made it to the overseer's office and tore open a locker. "What's that?" someone asked. 

"This," he replied, lighting up the shish-kebab (flaming sword) in his hand, "is Glory."

As the vault settled back down, and recriminations died in the exultation of freedom, troubling facts were brought to light. The lower levels of the vault had been becoming increasingly more irradiated over the years, due to damage sustained in the blast. The vault dwellers would need new homes, and soon. It was decided that these three should take the Angels' radiation suits that had been left in the vault and set out in search of a new home for the people of Vault 4. They assembled in the front room and watched as the vault door opened, to allow them to step outside for the first time. 

. . .and that is where the first session ended. I've tried to remember events accurately, but if any of my players are reading this, I won't claim any better than "did my best". We'll pick up at session two next time I decide to write one of these. Happy gaming, all.