Silath's Journal: Day 15 - November 2, 2281

Noticed a communications tower not far from the miners shack where I had spent the night. Decided to head towards it and check it out; turned out to be Ranger station Foxtrot, according to the ranger greeting me as I approached. She told me they kept an eye on the Great Khans nearby.

Afterwards, on my way through the forest, I was nearly stung to death by a half-dozen cazadores. A few more of them randomly would fly out of nowhere and try to sting me, I probably killed another 6 just getting back to the road.
Words cannot express the pure levels of hatred I hold for those fucked up insects.

Sigh... anyway, I followed the road up another few miles and finally found the ski lodge. I also found... snow! It's bizzare, like cold, wet sand. And some of it's different. Some of it's mushy, some of it's crusty, some of it just crumbles into little tiny grains. I ate some of it, I've never had anything so cold! It felt good.
I got that strange feeling I had gotten last time it rained, though, like I was longing for something. I've got a feeling this isn't the first time I've seen snow, or been in a forest like this. But there's no real memories, just a vague sense of loss.

In any case, I was greeted at the entrance by a mutant named Marcus. When he didn't immediatly try to attack me on sight, and in fact waved in a friendly manner, I figured it was safe to get closer.
Marcus proved to be surprisingly intelligent. I had always heard of mutants being (Keep in mind these are the first one's I've met, as far as my memory goes) brutes, little better than an enraged brahmin. Marcus, though, was very well spoken.
He told me that if I was NCR, to keep it to myself. Seems the mutants and NCR have a bit of a bad history, something about a war between them and a 'Master' who had wanted to unify everybody. If everyone was the same, what would there be to war about? Made me think of Ceasers legion.
Marcus and I spoke about the Legion, too. I agreed with him when he said Ceaser wanted to do the impossible; change human nature. He said that most of the Legion was just following Ceaser, not his ideals... as soon as Ceaser died the legion would start to disintigrate. Human greed and ambition would agree too it.

Now, I just want to say here, before I forget: to myself, if this amnesia somehow happens again, or to anyone finding my dead body and this pipboy who may be listening. It might seem that I'm against war and conflict. It's true that I've tried to do my best to make the Mojave safer, killing tons of bandits, trying to pave the way for the NCR to defeat Ceasers Legion and secure the Mojave, or at least New Vegas.
That said, I think conflict is neccesary. There are people in this world that want things to go back to the way they were before the Great War. They want life to be like the way things are in the old magazines. People like House, or, from what I've heard of them, the Enclave.
I think if we do that we'll just end up right back where we were, eventually to another Great War. Hell, maybe thats inevitable... and maybe people like House and Ceaser are right. That the only way to keep it from happening is to crush everyone down with overwhelming force.
I think conflict is a good thing in the end though. It sure as hell brings out the worst in people, but it also lets good people rise up and make a difference. Without conflict, the human race will stagnate. We'll become insects, just going through the daily motions without thought or emotion.
Without conflict there is no drive to become better, stronger, smarter. It's a neccesary evil. Without conflict we can't fail, and without failure we can never learn from our mistakes. The progress of humanity would grind to a halt.
The Great War, as terrible as it was, gave us a chance to do that. To take the good things from the past and leave the old. But like Marcus says, you can't change human nature. It's all over my head anyway, all I know is that as long as people like Ceaser try to crush the human spirit in the name of peace, I'll keep bringing them war.

Anyway, enough of the philisophical shit. After me and Marcus had chatted for a while I went off to look around. Found some sort of energy-field-emitter in one of the abandoned buildings, it seemed designed to help ward off energy attacks, so I put it to use.
Also found an old winter-camo combat helmet and R-91 rifle, with two magazines of ammo. Put the helmet on my head and used the R91 to repair that cut-down legion R91 I had found on the assasins the previous day.

Inside the lodge I located the only other human here, a Doctor Henry. He said he was researching a cure for the nightkins madness, apparently their continued use of stealthboys led to schizophrenia. He mentioned studying the nightstalker population in a nearby cave, and I offered to go check it out for him. (Nightstalkers being some sort of crazy mutation of coyotes and diamondback snakes. Thats the post-apocolyptic world for you, folks.)
There was a ghoul by the name of Calamity working as Dr. Henry's assistant, and I traded some of the explosives I had found in the mine and some cazadore poison glands for a bunch of stimpacks and repairs on my leather armor and the combat helmet I had found.

While I was heading out of town Marcus grabbed me and asked for some assistance; seems some mercs were harassing the town, shooting brahmin, generally being a pain in the ass. He suspected they'd been hired by the NCR, so I agreed to go talk to them (Seeing as I was the only human besides Dr. Henry...)
Marcus didn't want me to kill them, though, since it would just give the NCR an excuse to attack. Asked the mercs what it would take for them to leave, they wanted 2500 caps, which I couriered from Marcus to the Mercs. I'm willing to help folks out, but paying 2500 caps out of my own pocket was not something I was willing to do.

Afterwards I headed up to the nightstalker cave, decided to try out the cut down R91 on them. Had to use the handy combat module Doc Mitchell had given me, very usefull for tracking things you can't see.
Deeper down in the caves I found a chewed up stealthboy. Looked like Dr. Henry was right, and the mutation wasn't a natural one. Off to the side I noticed a lock door, and of course picked it open; some old fallout shelter, had a few useful supplies like stimpacks and ammo but nothing really interesting. Just a single large room.

The R91 worked pretty well, but it lacks the sheer one-hit punch of the Mossberg. Maybe if I loaded it up with some hollow point ammo... I'll see once I get back down to the strip. Might replace the shotgun with it.

Doctor Henry had to throw out his theories on using the nightstalkers as research material for the effects of stealthboys, unfortunately, once he learned what I had found. So he asked me to go find Lily and ask her to volunteer as a live test subject. Can nobody ever do things themselves?
Lily was surprisingly sweet, kind of like a mentally unstable old grandmother. She though I was her grandchild named Billy, at first. She was eager to help Dr. Henry in any way she could, however, and ran off to see him before I could say anything else.

As soon as Dr. Henry and Calamity had completed the test of their Mark 2 stealthboy, Keene barged into the room with two nightkin in tow. Marcus had told me about Keene; he was the de-facto leader of the nightkins in Jacobstown.
Keene demanded I give the stealthboy over (Which was odd, since it was Dr. Henry's) so that he and the nightkins could use it to upgrade any normal stealthboys they found as they scoured the Mojave.
Well, the idea of schizophrenic nightkin wandering the wasteland was not an idea I was keen on. Not to mention without the Mk 2 SB, Dr. Henry's research on a nightkin cure would grind to a halt.
So, I politely told Keene that wasn't going to happen. At which point he and his two nightkin attached me. I had to swing into VATS and put some buckshot into their heads, not even mutants can survive that. Thank god for VATS.

Doctor Henry seemed unpertrubed by the violence, and asked me to find Lily and see if she would be willing to wear the Mk 2 SB for an extended period of time. Then a brilliant idea popped into my head; by using neuro-peptides to stimulate the nightstalkers brains, he could get similar results without putting Lily in any danger. Dr. Henry was impressed and agreed that might work.

Afterwards I went to inform Marcus of Keene's actions and... my reaction. Marcus was saddened, but understanding of my decision and desire to not be pulverized by Keene. I asked him if it was alright for me to spend the night at the lodge (I really love it up here!) and he said that after all I'd done to help Dr. Henry, I would always be welcome at Jacobstown.
He did, however, suggest that I not sleep anywhere near the nightkin. The lodge was a big place, though, and I found a room on the far end, away from where the nightkin had made home.
It's really a shame though, the building itself is in pretty fair condition, but there's broken down junk everywhere. If the mutants took the time to do some cleanup and repairs, the lodge would be a really nice place. I'd sure as hell pick it over any New Vegas hotel, even the Lucky 38.