{Entranceway} Application

[geiger]

Name: Hannah
DW username: viridianwings
E-Mail: howlinmad88 @ gmail.com
Discord: viridianwings#7619
Plurk: viridianwings

Other Characters: N/A

Character Name: Sole Survivor (player given name: Nora Endicott)
Series: Fallout 4
Timeline: Heading into the Glowing Sea to find Virgil
Canon Resource Link: Wiki link!

Character History:
Nora was born in the mid-twenty-first century of an alternate United States whose history diverged from the real world just after World War II (the key differences in the timeline are laid out here). Details aren't given about her early life, though she has a law degree and practised as a lawyer while her husband, Nate, served in the Army during the Sino-American War. After Nate returns to civilian life, he and Nora have a home in a suburban community called Sanctuary Hills, just outside of Concord, Massachusetts, where they live with their baby son Shaun and their Mr Handy robot butler, Codsworth. Nora and Nate live in domestic bliss, with Nora a full time housewife and mother, though she plans to shake the dust off her law degree and resume practice once Shaun is older.

On October 23, 2077, Nora and Nate get ready for the day ahead, with Nate planning to attend a veterans meeting later on. Nora sees to Shaun and then receives a visit from a representative of the Vault-Tec Corporation, asking her to fill out her family's paperwork for their reservation in Vault 111, the local fallout shelter built in case the worst happens. As it turns out, the worst is about to happen - no sooner has the representative left than Nora, Nate, and Codsworth see a bulletin on the news that nuclear bombs have fallen on New York and Philadelphia. Nate grabs Shaun, running with Nora over to Vault 111, where they arrive just in time to enter the vault as a mushroom cloud from an atomic blast fills the horizon.

The Overseer welcomes the family to the Vault and instructs them to go through standard arrival procedures before beginning their new life underground. Nora puts on a Vault-Tec jumpsuit and is then guided into what she's told is a decontamination pod, but in actuality is a cryogenic freeze chamber. The next thing she knows, she's waking from stasis to see two figures approach the pod opposite, which holds Nate and Shaun. Nate comes round to find the newcomers demanding he hand Shaun over, and when he refuses, he is shot dead by one of the intruders, who then proceeds to take Shaun and comments that at least they still have Nora as 'back up'. Before Nora is able to process what's going on, she's re-frozen.

Nora wakes for a second time to find herself quite alone. The rest of the pods containing their neighbours and fellow Vault volunteers have long since stopped working and all inside are dead, and the Vault-Tec personnel have been dead for long enough that they've become nothing more than skeletons. Stopping to take Nate's wedding ring from his body, Nora makes her way through Vault 111 and comes to the entrance, taking a Pip-Boy data device from the skeletal arm of a Vault-Tec employee to open the door to the outside. Re-emerging to the surface, Nora is shocked to find that the world she knew is long gone, replaced by a hollowed out shell with dead trees, mutated livestock and plants, the rusted out bodies of cars and dilapidated, abandoned houses. She heads back to Sanctuary Hills to try to make sense of what's going on and finds Codsworth waiting diligently at her home, who tells her that 210 years have passed since she entered the vault. Nora tells Codsworth about Shaun's kidnapping, and the robot suggests that she try looking in nearby Concord, where there are still people living.

On her way into Concord, Nora finds a German Shepherd waiting at the nearby gas station, who accompanies her into town. When she reaches Concord, she finds the same boarded up houses and wrecked streets as in Sanctuary Hills, though on reaching the Museum of Freedom she finds the building crawling with raiders, with Preston Garvey and his group trapped on the top floor. Nora fights her way through the hostile raiders and equips a suit of power armour to dispatch the rest, along with a deathclaw, her first life-or-death experience with the mutated, dangerous creatures that populate the wasteland. Nora leads Garvey and his group back to Sanctuary Hills - now just called Sanctuary - to make a home for themselves there. Garvey explains that they are the last surviving Minutemen, a volunteer militia designed to protect the Commonwealth and its citizens, and asks Nora if she will help rebuild their forces, naming her General. Nora is ambivalent about taking on such a responsibility but ultimately agrees, knowing that she'll have to live in this new world from here on out so she might as well do what she can to make it a safer place to live.

Having cleared out Sanctuary, beginning to make something of a home there, Nora's attention returns toward finding Shaun. One of Garvey's group, the chem-addicted fortune teller Mama Murphy, tells Nora that she's seen in a vision that her future lies in Diamond City, so Nora makes her way there, helping settlements and defeating raiders as she goes. When she reaches Diamond City, Nora meets Piper, a reporter, who helps her gain entry to the settlement. Piper is angry to hear that not even Nora's son is safe in the Commonwealth, and warns her that a mysterious organization known as the Institute could be behind his disappearance. Nora is horrified to learn that the Institute kidnaps people and replaces them with identical looking synthetic humans, or 'synths' - robots under the Institute's control. The idea that synths could have infiltrated human society has the population of Diamond City paranoid, with family accusing each other of being replaced and Piper not helping matters by accusing the mayor of being an Institute synth.

Piper advises Nora that the best place to get help finding Shaun is Nick Valentine, a local detective. However when Nora arrives at Nick's office she learns that he's been missing for a while, and she and Piper set out to find him. Making their way through a subway station, the two of them come upon an underground vault similar to the one Nora had been kept in, Vault 114, which is now controlled by a group of gangsters called the Triggermen, whose mafioso leader has Nick Valentine captive. Nora and Piper sneak their way through to rescue Nick, but ultimately it comes to a shootout between them and the gangsters to get out. Nora is surprised to find that Nick is himself a synth, albeit a far older model than the current generation of synths that have everyone so worried. Despite this, she quickly finds herself trusting him, and once they're back safely in Diamond City she tells Nick everything she can about the people who took Shaun. The description Nora gives of the main kidnapper, the man who killed her husband, and Nick immediately recognises him to be Kellogg, a dangerous mercenary, who came through Diamond City recently with a ten year old boy in tow. Although she doesn't understand how he's ten and not still a baby, Nora is certain that the boy with Kellogg is Shaun. Nick and Nora head over to the house Kellogg had occupied, persuading the mayor to give them the key, and from there they use Dogmeat to track Kellogg's trail, which finally leads them to Fort Hagen.

On arriving at Fort Hagen, Nora and Nick discover that the place is overrun by synths. Fighting their way through the fort, they finally come face to face with Kellogg, who taunts Nora before informing her that Shaun is with the Institute, and that there's no way she'll ever be able to reach him there. Consumed by her rage and despair, Nora kills Kellogg, finding a cybernetic enhancer in his brain. She and Nick leave Fort Hagen just in time to watch a huge airship fly right over them: the Brotherhood of Steel have arrived in the Commonwealth.

Knowing the Brotherhood will be a force to be reckoned with, Nora decides to investigate, and gets a way in through Paladin Danse, who she's helped out in the past. However, she soon finds out that the Brotherhood is exactly what she wants to avoid the Commonwealth becoming, with their intolerance of synths and ghouls, their confiscation of farmers' meager resources to feed their troops, and their inherent distrust of anyone outside of their organisation. Instead of joining them, Nora decides to keep an eye on the Brotherhood and be prepared if they try anything that would hurt the very people she wants to protect.

To that end, Nora doubles down on her work with the Minutemen, becoming proud of her role as a leader of the free people of the Commonwealth and retaking The Castle, their former headquarters, which boosts morale greatly and expands the number of settlements that the Minutemen can help all across the wasteland. Moreover, she follows a tip-off about a mysterious organisation called the Railroad, who are said to help synths, and she follows the Freedom Trail to the Old North Church where she joins the Railroad and helps smuggle synths out of the Commonwealth, quickly becoming a respected leader there too.

Meanwhile, Nick and Nora head to Goodneighbor, a settlement for the down-and-outs of the Commonwealth, to uncover more information about the cybernetic enhancer they pulled out of Kellogg's brain. Nora feels more at home in Goodneighbor than she has anywhere else in the Commonwealth, liking its more laid back, tolerant attitude, and begins a relationship with the town's mayor, a ghoul named Hancock. At the Goodneighbor Memory Den, Nick and Nora are able to load the chip into Nick while Nora is virtually projected into Kellogg's memories. As well as finding out that the man who kidnapped her son is a lot more complicated than she thought, Nora learns that the way into the elusive Institute is through teleportation, and that a former Institute scientist called Virgil is hiding out in the highly radioactive Glowing Sea. Her next step will be to track him down, as well as figuring out a way to teleport inside the Institute and rescue her son.

CRAU: N/A

Abilities/Special Powers:
Nora doesn't have any special powers. During her time in the Wasteland she's become proficient with several different types of guns, as well as learning to pick locks. She's developed a little tolerance to radiation from all the time she's spent out in the wasteland. She can be quite persuasive, something which served her well as a lawyer. She also has leadership skills after becoming the leader of both the Minutemen and the Railroad.

Third-Person Sample:

It was disturbing to wander through the halls and find the mansion so similar, as though it had been frozen in time, and yet at the same time so different. There was no helping it, of course - even if the place itself hadn't changed, she had. Long months in the Commonwealth had hardened her physically and mentally, and suddenly finding herself back in a place that offered quiet, manicured gardens instead of the scorched wasteland, soft beds and an abundance of food took some getting used to.

She tries to distract herself from the guilt she feels at being stuck here when she'd finally gotten a step closer to Shaun, relearning the layout of the house and grounds, training every day, and researching anything that might help her crack the secret of teleportation and find her way into the Institute. In the end, though, she knows it's fruitless, that this place will chew her up and spit her back out when it's had enough of her and she'll return to the wasteland none the wiser. It makes her feel impotent, and little by little the impetus to do anything productive begins to dwindle, knowing that it won't make a difference in the grand scheme of finding Shaun anyway.

Her son is so much at the forefront of her mind, it takes a while for the memory of the friends she'd made here to find their way back through. At least, that's what Nora tells herself. The truth is that she's trying to block them out, afraid of any attachments that might tie her to this place rather than doing everything she can to leave. But as much as she's changed, the mansion is still the same, and she can almost see the memories of her time here play out as she walks past the ballroom where she danced with Sam for the first time, the bar where she'd gone drinking with Dan, or a shady spot in the garden where she'd played with Greg. For one quiet moment, long ago, she'd been almost willing to forget about reuniting with her son and simply settle with the new family she'd found here. And she can't forgive herself for that.


First-Person Sample:

[ It takes a moment for the image to come into focus, as Nora tries to remind herself just how far away to hold the camera on the device to record this type of message, which the technology in her own world didn't allow for. ]

Not gonna lie, I never expected to see this place again.

[ There's a fondness in her tone - her time at the mansion had been one of the better parts of her life since thawing out - but her irritation is clear too. She doesn't have any more time to waste here now that she has a concrete lead to finding her son. ]

I'm guessing most of the people I knew here have moved on back home, so introductions are in order. Nora Endicott, General of the Minutemen. I'm not sure how long I've been away, but I'd be grateful for any information you can give me on the current state of affairs. There's no such thing as being too prepared, after all.

[ She's about to turn the feed off, but instead she hesitates, her expression softening as she allows herself to show a little of the emotion, not to mention the fleeting hope, that she has at being back here. ]

...Sam? Are you still here?

[ She shakes her head, sighing in irritation at herself. ]

Since when did I become such a sentimental idiot?


Eway return: Nora was previously in Eway between January 2017 and May 2018 and I would like her to keep her memories of her time in the game.

Lost memory: Nora will lose the memory of Kellogg, the man she's spent so long tracking down. This will particularly hurt her as she's just come to see him as something other than the monster who stole her son and learned his whole life story, but while she'll remember the events she learned there will be a blank in her memory about the man they're attached to.