Fallout Aberrations

“Welcome to my alternate universe, Fallout Aberrations. It plays with and makes some small, key changes to the characters, factions and lore in Fallout IV. Enjoy this short read, and see if you can detect the aberrations.”

Character Origins

Liam Wilder, Born 2257. His mother was a Vault-Tec test subject, and he inherited her immunity to radiation. He possesses limited teleportation abilities which drain his strength and energy, although he’s more powerful when severely radiated. Living as an aloof drifter most of his life, Liam has seen a lot of the American wasteland, finding work and people to protect where he can. After failing to keep his ghoul mentor Jim from turning feral, he tried to find a home in Quincy. It didn’t end well. There he met Jules and they’ve been partners ever since.


Julianne “Jules” Ramone, Born 2261. She was raised in an earlier, harsher Goodneighbor when the settlement was run by gambling bosses. Her parents were killed over debt and she fled to Diamond City as a teenager, where she found a family and work. She grew close to her younger, naive foster brother, Jerry. However when he went missing and the town did nothing to help, Jules rejected her new home and left to search for him. As the months passed with no success, her path grew darker and darker, until she found and partnered up with Liam in Quincy.

Fallout Aberrations

• Gen 3 Synths are a distinctly recent thing. Their existence was first made known 10 years ago, when about a hundred of them showed up out of nowhere and settled University Point.
  
  
• The Institute is totally under the radar. No one knows where synths came from, but there are crazy rumors. The most common one is that they were made by the old Massachusetts government for unknown purposes.
  
  
• Piper Wright does not have any vendetta against the Institute, and is not "rabble rousing" DC about it. She does however relentlessly criticize the city's many failures to its citizens.
  
  
• Danse is a secret agent synth. Dr. Amari created him originally for the Institute, but later defected to the Railroad and gave them everything she had on Danse. They managed to convert him to their side when he arrived in the Commonwealth.
  
  
• X6-88 is renamed Xavier. He’s director of the Synth Recovery Bureau, created to find and bring back all the rebel, escaped synths from Glory’s revolt. However he is using his role to enforce a supremacist view on the Commonwealth, instructing Coursers to take any and all measures to find their targets, and occasionally annihilating settlements with Gen 1 & 2 synth attacks.
  
  
• John Hancock has a different appearance that’s accurate to his original concept art.
  
  
• Mary Smith, “Mother” is the synthesized Director of the Institute. Glory founded and leads the Railroad. Dr. Amari is an Institute defect. Desdemona is not a character. Kellogg is not a character. Shaun's dad, Roger Smith, is still frozen in Vault 111.
  
  
• The Underground Railroad is not widely rumored or speculated. No average citizen would know about them. No one would talk openly of "joining" them.
  
  
• Synth recall codes are not a thing. Synth production takes longer and resembles the stages of birth more than machine assembly.
  
  
• Super Mutants are more complicated, smarter and of fewer words.
  

INSTITUTE: Mary Smith, Xavier, Dr. Li
The synthesized reign supreme. Middle-class staff (education, mercantile, human resources) and high-class researchers (variety of sciences and engineering projects) only employ the Institute's limited but privileged synth population. The significantly larger human population is regulated and assigned low-class, low-paying manual labor and menial tasks; janitorial, hardware production, maintenance, storage inventory, building construction, etc. Large-scale manual labor is handled by robots and mining machinery.

Mother remains isolated in her wing and hasn’t been seen in public for the last ten years. She’s secretly working on synthesizing children.

Other than select scavenging teams from the Human Resource division, the only Institute-related activity in the Wealth is handled by the Synth Recovery Bureau. Coursers search the wasteland 24/7  for all the synths who escaped in Glory's revolt. They also cut down anyone safe-harboring them or fighting for them.

Ever since Glory's revolt, no one has been allowed to leave and the whole facility is under a strict curfew. Security officer synths keep guard and handle "disorder" in the population.

RAILROAD: Glory, Deacon, Dr. Carrington, Tinker Tom, Dr. Amari
Glory and her rebels introduced themselves to the Commonwealth at a few hundred strong. But no one welcomed them and they were met with suspicion and in many cases direct hostility. Glory took those she trusted and went into hiding, but about a hundred other synths decided to make their own community at University Point, where they started to gain a more trusted reputation, and even attract other people to live and trade with them.

Unfortunately it didn't last. After Diamond City ran a piece on University Point and its fascinating origin story, the location was raided and utterly decimated by Coursers. Anyone who didn't run was captured and put through rigorous tests to determine if they were synthetic. Those who didn't pass were executed on the spot.

After University Point, Glory founded the Underground Railroad, a network of safe-houses designed to harbor all those who need to hide and recover. It’s completely covert, recruiting only friends of friends, using signs and dead drops to communicate. One day, Glory hopes to have the numbers or allies to strike back at the Institute and stop the Coursers once and for all.

BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL: Danse, Rhys, Haylen
The recon team has only recently arrived and back-up is not coming. They are investigating the unique radio frequency, (later to be established as the Institute's relay signal). What no one knows is that Danse is actually a synth working for the Railroad.

After the first BOS recon team led by Bradis failed, their remains were found by SRB agents. Xavier immediately had concern that the Brotherhood of Steel could return in force and seriously threaten his plans for the Commonwealth. He captured a Brotherhood paladin, Danse, and synthesized him with Dr. Amari’s help. They tortured and extricated all useful information and resources out of their captive, before wiping the synth’s memory and sending him back out into the field with a built-in tracker, should they ever need him again. But when Dr. Amari faked her death and defected to the Railroad, she also took everything the Institute had on Danse, mostly out of guilt that she was responsible for his fate.

In this way, the Railroad easily found Danse and his team when they arrived in the Commonwealth. They confronted Danse in secret, gave him back his memories and convinced him to join their cause. He now works undercover for them. He sees his role and double-life as grave and absolutely serious, understanding both sides of the equation.

COMMONWEALTH:
The people of the Wealth do not know about the Institute, or the Railroad (at least publically). Piper has no agenda against the Institute and Nick doesn't know where he came from. The truth is he was an embarrassing failure on Mary's part before she became Director. But most Diamond City residents believe he's just another messed up Vault-Tec experiment.

There is still a prolific fear of synths in the Commonwealth thanks to University Point, and Xavier’s continued efforts to frighten and cull the population. But their appearances are so sparse and quick, no one knows when to expect them. No one has ever negotiated with them and no settlement has ever survived a synth attack.

People have lived in terror of this invisible threat for the past 10 years, but in the last three years, the attacks and appearances have seen a dramatic decrease. Some areas of the Commonwealth have completely recovered and feel the threat is gone, but no one is sure, and everyone keeps a sharp eye out.

The Timeline

2077
- Mary and Roger Smith are frozen in Vault 111
2227
- The Synthetic Human Project is launched
- The Smiths and Vault 111 residents are rescued
- Shaun dies at age 4
2237
- Mary Smith makes headway on SHP
- FEV Research is shut down and Dr. Virgil disappears
2247
- Gen 3 synth production goes into effect
- Mary Smith takes over as Director
2257
- The Church of Atom discovers and opens Vault 85
2267
- Institute Board of Directors established
- Synthesizing becomes a mandatory process for all Class 1 and 2 citizens
- Dr. Li is recruited from the Brotherhood of Steel and synthesized
2277
- Middle-class synth Glory stirs trouble and it escalates into a revolt/breakout
- Synth Recovery Bureau established and Coursers deployed
- University Point Massacre happens
- Glory founds the Underground Railroad and starts the safe-house network
- First BOS Recon team arrives and fails its mission
- Xavier has Danse replaced with a synth to keep an eye on the BOS
- Dr. Amari defects from the Institute to join the Railroad, giving them everything on Danse
2287
- Danse leads new BOS Recon Team to the Commonwealth
- Danse is converted to the Railroad’s cause and goes undercover for them