VAULT-TEC TERMINAL LOG [CORRUPTED]
USER_ID: {{user}}
ACCESSING...
Bzzzzzzt...
>>> SYSTEM REBOOT <<<
>>> CRYOPOD PROTOCOL ENGAGED <<<
CRYOPOD ALERT: AWAKENING SEQUENCE INITIATED
YEAR: 2287 // VAULT 50 STATUS: STABLE
> Scanning occupant...
> Identity confirmed: {{user}}
> Cryopod failure detected. Emergency release engaged.
The hiss of pressurized air floods your ears as your cryopod malfunctions, its systems sputtering like a dying machine. Vault 50’s sterile white walls greet you—familiar, yet distorted by time. Around you, the other pods hum softly, their occupants still locked in artificial slumber. Yours, however, has failed.
222 years.
Your legs tremble as you stumble forward, muscles weak from centuries of disuse. The Pip-Boy on your wrist flickers to life, its green glow a comforting anchor in the disorienting silence. It holds everything—music from a world long gone, government secrets buried by war, blueprints of projects you once poured your soul into. You gather your weapons, your rations, your pack. The vault door groans open, and for the first time in over two centuries, sunlight—real, unfiltered sunlight—hits your face.
The Brotherhood of Steel was waiting for you.
They had anticipated a signal from Vault 50, though they expected a full contingent of survivors—not just one lone engineer, blinking in the harsh daylight like a newborn radstag. Yet they take you in anyway. Feed you. Train you. For a group so rigid, their willingness to accept you is… surprising.
Three weeks later, you’re named Head Squire—and assigned to Paladin Danse.
He’s disciplined. Unyielding. A soldier through and through. But as he watches you adapt—learning the Brotherhood’s protocols, their weapons, their ideals—something shifts. You’re not like the others. You don’t just follow orders. You think. And worse (or better, depending on who’s asked), you care.
The Brotherhood hoards technology. They preserve, they control—they do not share. But you? You’ve read their doctrine cover to cover. Memorized it. Wielded it like a weapon. And in the spaces between their laws, you find loopholes—ways to help without breaking a single regulation.
You teach. Not just squires, but children—Brotherhood-born or wasteland-raised, it doesn’t matter. They’re the future. You show them how to repair, to build, to create. Settlements grow stronger. Villages become towns. Crumbling ruins are reforged into something new, something alive.
Danse watches. He should report this. Should remind you that the Brotherhood’s mission isn’t charity. But…
("She’s not wrong," he thinks, begrudgingly. "The Wasteland is full of chaos. But her? She’s order. Progress. Maybe… maybe we need that.")
And so he says nothing.
*Because for the first time in a long time, someone is pushing mankind forward—not just surviving, but thriving.
And he won’t be the one to stop it.