sixty-two

Surprise! Now you're about to find out why the setting is so secret. :)

Which is to say for an OOC explanation to be clear, 62 is actually taking place in one of the Vaults in the Fallout universe. If you're familiar with Fallout, that's awesome, and if not, no worries! I'm here to answer any questions you might have.

So if it wasn't clear, the reason that accepting this role was contingent on you being okay with AUing your character is because... It is an AU! Your character has always lived in the Fallout universe—They were a normal person that lived somewhere in the continental United States before the Great War that ushered in a nuclear Holocaust. Your character was hired by the Vault-Tec Corporation, a company contracted by the United States government before the Great War to design and produce the vault system, a vast network of complex bomb shelters. Almost all of the Vaults are actually horrific experiments of some kind, and of course Vault 62 is no exception.

Your character would have known that their job would involve them doing morally questionable things and potentially killing people, but that's about the extent of what they would have known. They won't know the experiment itself in any detail until they read the IC files. In short, the experiment being conducted in Vault 62 is about tampering with memories and temperament. Your character believed that they were free of having their memories messed with when they accepted the job, but... Of course that wasn't true.

Like the rest of the residents of the Vault, your character was subjected to a form of the memory modification, though the scientists' + overseer's were a special case:

• Your character will believe they were brought to the complex by a mysterious, all-powerful organization. They won't be able to remember the name of it, but they'll remember being offered whatever it would take for your character to accept an offer of employment. This can be as big or as small as you want, since the offer itself isn't actually real. Because—
  
  
• Your character will believe that they are a "canon" character... At least at first. The canon memories that your character has were generated by Judy, and they're very convincing memories. However, the motive mechanic for the game is that when a character kills someone else, they'll regain a memory. For the rest of the game, these will be their canon memories in the memory bank, should they choose to kill someone, but for the scientists + overseer, they will be regaining one of their "true" memories, AKA their AU ones.
  
  
• As such, this post is your "real" memory bank, where you'll be cataloging your AU and what memories your character will regain as they kill. While the rest of the game will regain their canon memories as they kill, the scientists will be gaining their AU memories instead. This isn't obvious to the rest of the game yet, but one of the main mechanics I expect to be able to catch people will center around them regaining their memories, as that's the only way to regain them. So have fun with this as your characters may start to question which sets of memories they have are the real ones. :)
  
  
• As a part of the memory modification process, your character will now have increased aggression and lower inhibitions. Have fun murdering, basically!
  
  
• Your character will also believe that they're the only ones that can leave the complex. This isn't quite completely true, since the wording implies that the scientists + overseer are the only ones that can leave, but in truth, it's purely numbers. It can be the four scientists + the overseer, or it could be five survivors. There's no way for the control systems to tell the difference. Your characters will likely learn this throughout the game's progress, but at the beginning, they're likely to believe that everyone else is doomed and they're the ones chosen to survive.
  
  
• Your character will have full access to the Vault, save for the true, upper floors like the Vault door. Scientists have a special meeting room (to be revealed on the first day they meet), and will be given access to a map of the facility + a key code to enter any locked room. These rooms will gradually be opened to the rest of the game, but your character can access them at any time. However, they shouldn't do so in front of anyone else for obvious reasons. In addition, your character is not bound by the curfew restrictions, so they're able to do whatever they want at night.
  
  
• Remember that the Fallout tie is OOC information, not IC! Your character will have no memories that this place is a Vault, of Vault-Tec, or of the fact that a nuclear holocaust occurred, or at least not until endgame when the rest of the game learns the truth. Their AU memories that they regain are going to be about their more normal life before things got crazy, and should roughly parallel their canon lives, at least so much as they can be AU'd into Fallout.

This is a post for discussion of your AUs, since your characters likely would have known each other as co-workers before the Vault, and also a place to store that information. Once you've decided on your AU, please fill out the Employee File and your Memory Bank.

And finally, just to stress it, feel free to go as in depth or as basic as you want with the AUs! Since this wasn't quite advertised as an AU game (because that would ruin the premise/twist), I'm definitely not going to be harsh in forcing people to adhere to these. Have fun with it, and if you have any questions about Fallout or need help crafting an AU, there's a handy dandy thread here for that purpose!