Inaugural post- welcome aboard!

[pfsb_cam]

First, there was NOTHING.

Then, it EXPLODED.

And then, there was a PARTY.


... essentially, the Big Bang has just come to pass, and there is already a place with a dance floor and music and a number of roving robotic waiters, and complicated mazes of pipes and bars overhead for flying and arboreal daemons to perch on, and an area with a swimming pool lit by multicolored pulsating lights for those with aquatic daemons, and... well, you get the idea. Welcome to the beginning of everything. Everyone and his/her/its daemon is welcome so long as they behave themselves. Enjoy!

Comments

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"'Procreation is your civic duty'," Ellen and Saoshyant chorus at once. Then Ellen nods. "Pretty much," she says. "Since the Vault really was closed up until a few years before I was born, that was a hundred and seventy-something years of not being able to get anybody from outside to add to the population. Replacement rate was... mm, probably about 2.39 children per adult woman over the course of a lifetime, the point three nine being accounting for accidents, poisonings, and other non-aging-related deaths."

[toblameforit]

"Oof," says Tony.

They finally arrive at the end of the hall leading to the swimming pool.

"Wait, poisonings? Did those happen a lot or something?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Well-" Ellen hesitates. "I guess 'overdoses' is probably a better word. The Vault physician before my father wasn't always careful about locking up the Med-X supply, or some of the other painkillers, and since there weren't a lot of psychotropic chems in Vault 101's inventory, people who had things like Vault Depressive Syndrome sometimes... tried to self medicate. And didn't always ge`t it right."

[toblameforit]

"Damn," he says sympathetically. Harpax rustles her wings.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It's getting better these days," Ellen says. "The Vault's open now- I had to escape, but the people who lived there... the old Overseer resigned and his daughter took over, and she's trading with the surface now and letting people out, when they're ready. So it's easier on them now."

"'Ready' being relative," notes Saoshyant. "A lot of them aren't really prepared for things like the giant ants. Or the mole rats."

[toblameforit]

"...How giant are these giant ants?" wonders Tony.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"The workers are about the size of an eight year old child," says Ellen. "The soldiers are about the size of my father. The queens are... about the size of a pre-War bus, but I've only ever seen two and one of them was in the mutated colony that breathed fire so she might not have been representative."

[toblameforit]

"That... is a lot of ant," Tony says, his eyebrows lifting. "I think the square-cube law just cried."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"And then there's the bloatflies," Ellen says. "And the radroaches. The radroaches are the size of a newborn baby, and the bloatfiles are about as big, but they're able to fly- the roaches can't do more than jump. I have no clue how they manage the lift."

[toblameforit]

"Magic?" he suggests, in all seriousness.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen thinks about that for a bit. Eventually she shakes her head. "I don't think so," she says doubtfully. "If there were magic around, somebody would've figured out how to use it in the past two hundred years, wouldn't they? Even that poor man Harold who's turning into a tree is only doing it because of Forced Evolutionary Virus- he doesn't have powers. It's probably something to do with radiation mutating their wing muscles to be ridiculously strong, or something."

[toblameforit]

"Well, I got here by magic," he says. "But it's been this big secret for ages where I'm from, most people don't even know it exists, so maybe it's the same thing for you."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I guess that's possible," Ellen says. "And it's not like I've seen very much of the world- mostly just the Capital Wasteland, and that one trip to the Pitt, and the Point Lookout area in Maryland. So it might be out there."

[toblameforit]

"I wish I knew more about it or I could give you something to try when you get home. But the spell that got me here was cast by... uh, a friend."

A friend who is his house.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen nods. "If something comes up maybe you can tell me about it another time, assuming I ever see this place again," she says. "The Brotherhood keeps me pretty busy, though."

Saoshyant does not look upset at all that the swimming pool appears to have been forgotten. His species is not a particularly swimmy species.

[toblameforit]

"Sure thing," he says. "When I go back I'll look something up that I can pass on if we all come here again. Or I'll send Sherry and he can talk your ear off. He doesn't do magic but he kind of knows basically everything."