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Fallout Lore: F.E.V Part Two

  • Mr.
    Member
    May 6, 2016

                       From then to today

    References: Fallout dialogue/gameplay/events;FEV research holodisk; FEV experiment holodisk; Captain Maxson's diary holodisk; Fallout 3 dialogue/plot

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     Following the experiments, combined with the data collected in years of research, the F.E.V was enhanced, in an attempt to create a transmittable genetic-engineering virus. Simply put infectious evolution.


     By 2077, the F.E.V already neared completion. Tests made on lab animals neared the 100% success rate. Their size and muscle density increased approximately 60% while their potential intelligence increased by astonishing 200%. Effects on human subjects remained unknown, although in theory, they were very promising.

     The U.S. military, with an ever growing interest on the Project and wishing to make further tests, built a large facility at the Mariposa military installation in central California, where they would start to test the F.E.V on volunteer subjects from the military while the West Tek Research Facility would also continue its research. However, Major Barnett ordered the transferring of all F.E.V research to Mariposa. West Tek’s scientists were against the idea, and didn’t recommend experimentations on human subjects.

     The volunteer program attracted many soldiers and young recruits who had heard about the possible outcome of the Project. After all, if the U.S military was already making super armors, the next logical step would be to have super soldiers.

     Later on, Captain Roger Maxson, the second in command of the security team stationed at the Mariposa Military Base, found out that the research being conducted there with the military volunteers was actually made with military prisoners. As of this moment, with the information available to us, it is unclear if the volunteers were actually prisoners since the beginning, but it’s a logical assumption that at the start of the program there actually were volunteers, but when they started to learn and see what F.E.V did to their comrades, Major Barnett and the army’s scientists started using unwilling subjects.

     When Maxson and subsequently his team found out the true nature of the experiments in Mariposa, all hell broke loose. His superior, Colonel Robert Spindel is said to have locked himself in his office and according to Maxson was experiencing “some sort of breakdown”. The security team’s members were filled with disgust, fear and hate for what was being done in the installation, and in desperation all turned to Captain Maxson for leadership, who concluded that something had to be done; otherwise the base would fall to anarchism.

     While the tension was brewing in the Mariposa, the same was true to the war out there, which was, according to his diary, going in a very bad direction. The Captain tried to maintain control over himself and his team, with the facility on the verge of mutiny.

     With things getting worse out there, Maxson and his men found out that their superior, Colonel Spindel, had committed suicide. The Captain was now the official leader of the team, and after he had already killed the chief scientist, Robert Anderson, in an interrogation during which he claimed the orders to all the atrocities made in Mariposa involving the F.E.V came from the government, he sent a radio transmission to the outside world declaring themselves seceded from the union. There was no reply.

     When the bombs fell in October 23 2077, Mariposa’s security team had already executed every scientist in the base, and had also lost contact with the rest of the world, including the West Tek Research Facility, which was directly hit by a nuclear warhead, shattering the F.E.V containment tanks, releasing the virus to the atmosphere, now an irradiated biological agent as a result of the warhead.

                                          The Glow, as the West Tek Research Facility was known after the Great War, thanks to it being highly irradiated

     Mariposa remained untouched by nuclear warheads, thus assuring the security team’s survival, who then left to a government bunker at Lost Hills. They sealed the installation behind them.

     However, the Mariposa Military Base suffered the inevitable aggression of time, and as a result, animals who were likely already exposed to radiation ended up  entering the installation and exposing themselves to the Forced Evolutionary Virus, mutating and infesting the surrounding area.

     The situation remained the same in Mariposa until the year 2096, when Harold, a successful merchant in The Hub, frustrated at the constants attacks his caravans were suffering when passing through the northeast roads, from mutated animals, organized an expedition accompanied by Doctor Richard Grey to find out the source of these attacks and if possible, stop it. They assumed they were prepared for anything thanks to Harold’s supplies and money.

     When they discovered the source of the attacks by tracking down the mutated animals, the expedition decided to enter it:  it was the Mariposa Military Base, Harold finally found out the source of his business’ torment.

     They soon learned that entering the old base was not a good idea, since most of the expedition was killed by mutated creatures and robots who had survived the war, and while they did manage to get far into the installation, it was only to their disgrace. In the end, only Harold ended up getting out of the base “unharmed”, but actually developed an unique kind of F.E.V mutation, where curiously a tree grew inside him.

                     

      

      The Master's Unity

     

     Destiny reserved Dr. Richard Grey a much worse fate than having a tree grow inside you, for during the expedition he was pushed into a vat filled with Forced Evolutionary Virus, where he almost drowned but managed to get out of it alive, clearly affected by the exposure to the virus: his skin festered and peeled, while in some parts of his body there was bubbling, expelling a green mucus-like substance (Likely the virus itself, perhaps the result of one last attempt of Grey's immune system trying to repel the infectious agent).

     In a matter of weeks, Grey would find out that the pain he felt in the first days, just after he left the vat, was temporary, for he started to feel different, somehow stronger. He began feeding himself with mutated creatures, as he also discovered he was getting smarter, as if he could understand the most complex philosophical questions simply and directly.

     The doctor’s curiosity led him to start experimenting with animals around the base by dipping them into the vats containing the virus, noting that they became smarter and more aware of their surroundings. At one point he even managed to fuse a dog and a rat, who were then no longer two creatures, but something more, something unique and closer to, perhaps perfection itself¹. He developed a theory that the unity between creatures was the next logical step in evolution, that it was the future.

     “I have become the instrument through which Unity will be achieved. I am so much more than a human being now. It is time to bring others into the glory that is the Unity.” – Richard Grey

     It was only a matter of time until the doctor started to target more evolved living beings, following the apparent success achieved with the experiments involving animals. He decided it was better to wait for someone to wander into the base, for it would be too dangerous to go out by himself.  When one poor bastard finally did so, the Doctor “consumed” him, a mistake he swore he would never commit again.

     As he waited for the next wanderer to come to him, Grey started to inject small doses of the virus into his body, having discovered that the substance was made by men a long time ago. He acquired this information through his newly grown neurolink with the base computer, certainly possible as a result from his intense mutation.

     

     When other humans appeared at Mariposa , they were a disappointment to Grey, since they became nothing more than big and dumb mutants.

     Over the years, as the Doctor exposed more and more wanderers to the F.E.V, he noticed that some subjects finally "evolved", closer to what he had experienced: They became not only stronger and immune to radiation and common diseases, but were also smarter than the first human subjects Grey tested. The first Super Mutants were created.²

     Now closer to the Unity Grey envisioned, the doctor, who now called himself “The Master” started to create super mutants with the task of finding human conglomerations and bringing them to the Unity, no matter their consent.

     However, to the frustration of the Master, the creation of Super Mutants was a rare thing, with most of his subjects ending up being nothing more than big dumb brutes. So the Master, alongside the super mutant Lieutenant, concluded that the ideal subject to F.E.V exposure were those never touched by the Wasteland’s atmosphere:  Vault-dwellers, habitants of Vaults constructed to support life if a nuclear holocaust hit the United States.  Among the Vaults they targeted was Vault 17, from where the Nightkin Lily Bowen is from.³

                                                            The Master

     During one of the incursions to a Vault, around 2155, which the Master joined so he could find a suitable place for him to settle his ever increasing corporal mass and also due to the limitations provided by a mobile body, they found the Los Angeles Vault – which had no number since it was intended as a demonstration vault -, located in the Boneyard, once known as the City of Angels. After subduing the locals, the Master integrated himself with the Vault’s main computer, declaring it his base of operations.

     In an effort to hide the abomination that he had become, which could scare potential integrands to the Unity, the Master ordered a church to be erected above the Vault, where he had plans to establish a religious branch to his operations, tasked with attracting willing subjects to his army and spreading the Master’s philosophy: that the selfish desires of the human race, which led to the Great War – later known as the Holy Flame – had to be corrected, eradicated.

      With that idea, the Children of the Cathedral was formed, a cult which followed the Master’s teachings, and although the higher escalated members of the Children did likely know about the true nature and task of the cult, those unlucky enough to be converted didn’t know of it until it was too late.
    The Master’s reign of terror lasted until as far as 2162, when the Vault Dweller, dragged into the Wasteland’s problems during his search for a water chip, finally destroys the Mariposa Military Base, the Cathedral and the Master. However, the surviving Super Mutants, now lost without leadership, are left wandering the wastes, an ever present threat to the unadvised traveller.


    ¹ It would seem that, according to the Master, the less radiation the subject has been exposed, the more successful the F.E.V mutation is. That would explain the Capital Wasteland’s Vault 87 less intelligent Super Mutants, since they use subjects who were already living in the Wasteland, besides the fact that the F.E.V used in Vault 87 was also an inferior version.
    However, Lieutenant, one of the Master’s successful creations developed a theory of his own: That the radioactive virus released when the bombs hit the West Tek Research Facility had, instead of infecting those it came into contact with, made them immune to the standard F.E.V, also sustaining the less successful super mutants endeavors in the Capital Wasteland, since the virus could have traveled there. If that is the case, it would seem that in the end, West Tek succeeded in creating an immunity boosting virus/drug.


    ²The Nightkins are also the result the F.E.V developed in Mariposa, aligned with the excessive and constant use of Nightboys.

     

                                                                        F.E.V Variants


    One of the F.E.V variants that had the most impact outside of the West Coast was the Vault 87 variant. As it is well known to us, while some Vaults were legitimately made to somehow preserve humanity, the great majority of them were actually either social or scientific experiments.
    In 2078, the Vault 87’s inhabitants were taken into chambers where they were exposed to a concentrated amount of a gas variant of F.E.V. It is unclear if the Overseer and his staff knew what he was doing, since he was merely following orders from Vault-Tec, which he was contractually obligated to.
    Suffice to say, aware or not, the Overseer followed his orders to the bottom, and the Super Mutants originated from the exposure to the virus ended up either killing or enforcing the other Vault-dwellers into F.E.V, eventually breaking out of Vault 87 when there were no more subjects to feed of or to induce into the mutated status.


    However, as it was previously mentioned in the third part of this article, thanks to either the radiation or the radioactive F.E.V, the new subjects the Super Mutants found in the Capital Wasteland turned out to be just like their captors, that is, big and dumb brutes.
    But it is remarkable that even as dumb as they were, the mutants from Vault 87 had a great interest in preserving their species, just like any other animal would naturally do. We could take that as a conclusion that, unlike their West Coast counterparts, the Super Mutants from Vault 87 were closer to evolved animals than the “meta-humans” the F.E.V was designed to create.


    During Fallout 3 we also come across a modified FEV, developed by the A.I John Henry Eden, this sub-strain was designed to target and exterminate everything that was exposed to the mutation of the wastes or its atmosphere, and that included Super Mutants, ghouls and even humans. Its success was solely dependent in a way to massively disperse the virus to unaware subjects. The modified FEV is said to turn the patients’ immune system against themselves, resulting in certain death.

  • Member
    May 7, 2016

    Awesome series Mr. Edd! 

  • November 21, 2017

    Again like before this is pretty good, man.