Ship of Fools: A Taylor Varga Omake (Complete)

Thank you for the latest chapter. I look forward to the end of this Omake, not because I'm not enjoying it (I do), but because my reading list has grown a bit unwieldy.
 
Thank you for the latest chapter. I look forward to the end of this Omake, not because I'm not enjoying it (I do), but because my reading list has grown a bit unwieldy.

Well, I can skip a few bits, like the part where the Family play tag inside a ship infested with actual xenomorphs. That will get it done quicker.
 
Skip nothing. You understand me?

Nothing.

Or Saurial will look sadly at you while Kaiju eats your socks. All of them :)

That would be an extremely short look, as Kaiju could quite easily eat most of my entire residence in one bite. I'm wondering if you somehow think I have as many socks as Imelda Marcos of the Philippines had shoes back in the day. I actually kind of like that idea, so if I ever go mad and take over the world, I will do so as the shoeless tyrant, clad only in one of my thousands of pairs of designer socks.

Edit: ...and clothes. I just meant that I would not wear shoes over my socks, not that I would wear ONLY socks. That would likely shorten the length of my reign, apart from being a bit chilly.
 
Last edited:
Well, according to Fallout 76 Super mutants in the Appalachian mountains were created before the apocalypse when West Tech dosed an entire town with the mutagen.
FEV was developed by West Tek from PVP in 2075, as established in Fallout by talking to ZAX 1.2. Once the military took over the project they shipped samples of various FEV strains out to facilities all over the place, in Fallout 3 we learn that one of those facilities was Vault 87 near Washington DC. Given that Super Mutants from Vault 87 were escaping regularly as early as 2078 and that West Tek and the US Military were experimenting with FEV in multiple locations across the country for over a year before the Great War hit, Super Mutants do actually make sense in Appalachia by 2102.

The thing with the Brotherhood of Steel is more of a retcon than the Super Mutants, and that turned out to not actually be a retcon at all, just poorly explained.
 
Last edited:
It will be a micro-Kaiju, who will arrive in your sock drawer in the middle of the night, sing sea shanties at you in an implausibly deep voice for someone six inches tall, then eat your socks.

Possibly the ones you're wearing at the time. Presuming you wear socks to bed, of course.

It's possible that I need sleep...
 
FEV was developed by West Tek from PVP in 2075, as established in Fallout 2 by talking to ZAX 1.2. Once the military took over the project they shipped samples of various FEV strains out to facilities all over the place, in Fallout 3 we learn that one of those facilities was Vault 87 near Washington DC. Given that Super Mutants from Vault 87 were escaping regularly as early as 2078 and that West Tek and the US Military were experimenting with FEV in multiple locations across the country for over a year before the Great War hit, Super Mutants do actually make sense in Appalachia by 2102.

The thing with the Brotherhood of Steel is more of a retcon than the Super Mutants, and that turned out to not actually be a retcon at all, just poorly explained.

I truly wonder if FO76 will evolve into one of the respected stations of canon for the franchise, or if it will be treated as Fallout: Tactics, where they keep the cool bits (BoS airships and dune buggy raiders) and drop the nonsense (hairy deathclaws?). I also would love to see the setting for the game with actual NPC's instead of other players, as I'm one of those odd folks who doesn't find running into P****Banger69 while exploring the ruins of civilization all that amusing or immersive.
 
I truly wonder if FO76 will evolve into one of the respected stations of canon for the franchise, or if it will be treated as Fallout: Tactics, where they keep the cool bits (BoS airships and dune buggy raiders) and drop the nonsense (hairy deathclaws?). I also would love to see the setting for the game with actual NPC's instead of other players, as I'm one of those odd folks who doesn't find running into P****Banger69 while exploring the ruins of civilization all that amusing or immersive.

Given how much of a disappointing clusterfuck FO76 has been, there's genuine questioning about whether it will be the death of the franchise entirely. Which is sad, because story\lore-wise FO76 is fine, it's just crippled by terrible gameplay design choices.

On the one hand, yay! Bethesda did a multiplayer! On the other hand, they did it wrong.
 
Heh. Liking this so far. Did notice a bit of a timeline discrepancy though;
"We managed to stop him from doing that," explained Saurial. "Dinah's a Ward now in our world."

"With Shadow Stalker?" said Taylor, wondering what happened to her nemesis.

Saurial shook her head. "No, Shadow Stalker had all of her extracurricular activities exposed. Dad actually rigged me with a camera, and got evidence of it all. She was under house arrest, but she escaped during the take-down of Coil and is on the run. I guarantee you that she will get a very unpleasant welcome if she chooses to come back, especially if she threatens any of our friends and family." Saurial was showing teeth again, and not in a friendly way.
As of the point in her story where you pulled skitter!Taylor out (ie mid leviathan fight), Taylor does not even know that Sophia is Shadow stalker.

Thus, Taylor thinking of, and having a conversation on the subject requires your character to have out of context information.
 
FEV was developed by West Tek from PVP in 2075, as established in Fallout by talking to ZAX 1.2. Once the military took over the project they shipped samples of various FEV strains out to facilities all over the place, in Fallout 3 we learn that one of those facilities was Vault 87 near Washington DC. Given that Super Mutants from Vault 87 were escaping regularly as early as 2078 and that West Tek and the US Military were experimenting with FEV in multiple locations across the country for over a year before the Great War hit, Super Mutants do actually make sense in Appalachia by 2102.

The thing with the Brotherhood of Steel is more of a retcon than the Super Mutants, and that turned out to not actually be a retcon at all, just poorly explained.

Fallout 76 is suppose to be set 25 or so years after the apocolypse, which is suppose to have occurred in 2076. Since the experiment, according to computers you can read, took place before the war this would mean Supermutants are a pre-apocolypse monster :)

Funny thing, according to the lore in FO76 Appalacia wasn't a target for any nukes... until after the vault opened and the residents began repeatedly nuking the area for whatever reason.
 
"a creepy monkey cymbal toy with glowing eyes that had Xander moving away "

If that monkey is anything like the ones in Fallout 4, I don't blame him.

Almost always shot the things, their damn creepy, especially in low light areas and using real darkness mods.
I'm a big fan of Fallout 4, so yes, you can assume that they are exactly like them, except that they don't summon post-apocalyptic monsters unless Saurial is feeling particularly cranky with somebody (like Coil).

I actually took it from what FO76 pulled it from, Stephen King's "Monkey Shines"
 
Funny thing, according to the lore in FO76 Appalacia wasn't a target for any nukes... until after the vault opened and the residents began repeatedly nuking the area for whatever reason.
Headcanon: Vault 76 wasn't actually a control vault, it was secretly an experiment in creating clone soldiers. There are no people in Vault 76 and there never have been, the entire vault is automated and run by a ZAX AI masquerading as the Overseer. The Residents are all experimental clones (hence the diversity) and the majority of their memories and histories are implanted fakes, unfortunately the experimental nature of the cloning process and the fact that it was intended to create soldiers, not civilians, meant that the majority of Residents were amoral sociopaths at best, if not unstable psychopaths. The ZAX is still following it's programming and is trying to refine the cloning process however, so it really doesn't care about the Residents beyond what data can be derived from them. The whole 'story' (such that it is) is a fabrication by the ZAX to make the clones go out and 'test' their performance in real-world scenarios. The vault opened 5 years late because the ZAX spent those 5 years seeding and analyzing the area with its robots, allowing it to set up an appropriate 'testing environment.'

Neatly explains everything inexplicable about FO76, even the typical behavior of most players: the Residents nuked the everloving fuck out of everything because they're the insane malfunctioning products of a 'create perfect soldier' program.
 
Heh. Liking this so far. Did notice a bit of a timeline discrepancy though;

As of the point in her story where you pulled skitter!Taylor out (ie mid leviathan fight), Taylor does not even know that Sophia is Shadow stalker.

Thus, Taylor thinking of, and having a conversation on the subject requires your character to have out of context information.

So, in canon, Taylor finds out Sophia's identity after the Leviathan battle. However, the Leviathan fight in my story is completely not canon. For one thing, Miss Militia has access to Bakuda's ordinance for the fight. For another, Taylor wasn't paired with Kid Win in canon, and actually didn't even learn what she was supposed to be doing, because Strider had to evacuate the capes in the face of Leviathan's wave.

All of these things suggest things can't have gone exactly according to canon even before the Leviathan fight. I'm taking some liberties with that. Shadow Stalker was an arch enemy of Grue, and Tattletale almost certainly could have put together the relationship between Taylor's bullies and Grue's nemesis. She could have let something slip, or Taylor could have pieced it together from other clues based on things that happened in this version's story that were different from canon.

So, Taylor's life is the same as canon in broad brush-strokes, but not in every detail. That includes her finding out that Sophia is Shadow Stalker earlier than in canon, maybe only by a few days.
 
Honestly, makes as much sense as anything else in FO76. Although the main storyline (scorched beasts creating scorched, leading to all the survivors dying) is likely true. Too much evidence of survivors until recently. The vault as shown is clearly no where near large enough to sustain a very large population. Actually, none of the vaults you encounter in any of the games are large enough to sustain a stable and self contained population. FO3 lampshades this fact when it's revealed that people have been joining the vault from outside.
 
So, in canon, Taylor finds out Sophia's identity after the Leviathan battle. However, the Leviathan fight in my story is completely not canon. For one thing, Miss Militia has access to Bakuda's ordinance for the fight. For another, Taylor wasn't paired with Kid Win in canon, and actually didn't even learn what she was supposed to be doing, because Strider had to evacuate the capes in the face of Leviathan's wave.

All of these things suggest things can't have gone exactly according to canon even before the Leviathan fight. I'm taking some liberties with that. Shadow Stalker was an arch enemy of Grue, and Tattletale almost certainly could have put together the relationship between Taylor's bullies and Grue's nemesis. She could have let something slip, or Taylor could have pieced it together from other clues based on things that happened in this version's story that were different from canon.

So, Taylor's life is the same as canon in broad brush-strokes, but not in every detail. That includes her finding out that Sophia is Shadow Stalker earlier than in canon, maybe only by a few days.

At no time in this section of the fic was Shadowstalker's real name mentioned. It could be that Taylor was thinking of here as JUST Shadowstalker being her nemesis due to activities as a villain and not Sophia her nemesis from Winslow...
 
At no time in this section of the fic was Shadowstalker's real name mentioned. It could be that Taylor was thinking of here as JUST Shadowstalker being her nemesis due to activities as a villain and not Sophia her nemesis from Winslow...

Technically true, but there aren't enough interactions with Shadowstalker and Skitter directly in canon to get a nemesis vibe without the whole identity reveal. Without that, Taylor is actually more likely to view Armsmaster as her enemy than one of the Wards. Grue probably feels differently.

I'm going to stick with the idea that canon for this version of Taylor is only vaguely being followed. Frankly, some of the things in Worm are just plain stupid. Why, for example, would you set your gathering point for an Endbringer fight near the ocean when you're going to fight Leviathan? It's not like Legend and the others have never done this before. The reveal of Sophia's identity after is just as stupid. Putting somebody in handcuffs while the truce is still in effect? Letting somebody stumble across an unmasked Ward? I'm not saying you can't rationalize it, but diverting from canon in this instance doesn't give me any real concerns.
 
The only consistency required for a good fic is really internal consistency, after all. It doesn't really matter if you don't use elements from the donor source material(s) exactly, as long as in your story it all follows through sensibly. Yes, changing things completely gratuitously can often cause issues, unless done well, but minor changes to clear up plot holes in the original material is entirely sensible. And Worm has a lot of plot holes...

Fanfics are, pretty much by definition, AU at the best of times, so expecting slavish devotion to canon isn't sensible in my view :) This one, for example, has a few things wrong vs Taylor Varga but it's still a damn good read so I don't care :)
 
So this is how The Family learn (and have reason) to travel to alternate realities. I guess a lot of the omakes in Taylor Varga stem from this point then? The MCU, DCEU, and HP ones, for example?
 
Fanfics are, pretty much by definition, AU at the best of times, so expecting slavish devotion to canon isn't sensible in my view :) This one, for example, has a few things wrong vs Taylor Varga but it's still a damn good read so I don't care :)

It's interesting. I'm having some issues with the whole Varga/Raptaur dichotomy in the fic. Being so open with alt-Taylor makes sense. Being so open with Harry Dresden in the room...is a bit of a stretch which I rationalized by saying, "hey, these guys are from an alternate universe," but it is the one nagging issue I have yet to address properly.

Of course, T/V has some questions about the whole unwritten rules thing. Uber and Leet, for example, don't have secret identities as far as the PRT, Protectorate and Guild are concerned. They've been arrested before, if I remember canon correctly. Now that they've gone legit and are part of the DWU, which is now the pre-eminent 800 lbs. gorilla in Brockton Bay, are they just keeping up their secret identities out of habit? They're theoretically safer than New Wave in terms of having open identities, now. It's also pretty obvious that anybody with half-a-brain at the DWU already knows that Uber, Leet and Vectura are on-campus along with the Undersiders. They won't talk to outsiders as a rule, but a secret known to a hundred people isn't a secret.

I am curious if there are other things that aren't true to T/V, though? I've literally read through the entirety of the T/V fic at least 3 times, so I would be interested in the author's perspective on it.
 
I'm a big fan of Fallout 4, so yes, you can assume that they are exactly like them, except that they don't summon post-apocalyptic monsters unless Saurial is feeling particularly cranky with somebody (like Coil).

And here I that "toy" was from a .... was it a book or a movie? Can't remember. It was called Monkey Shines if I remember correctly ... I just have a vague memory of every time the cymbals chimed someone died...
 
Last edited:
So, in canon, Taylor finds out Sophia's identity after the Leviathan battle. However, the Leviathan fight in my story is completely not canon. For one thing, Miss Militia has access to Bakuda's ordinance for the fight. For another, Taylor wasn't paired with Kid Win in canon, and actually didn't even learn what she was supposed to be doing, because Strider had to evacuate the capes in the face of Leviathan's wave.

All of these things suggest things can't have gone exactly according to canon even before the Leviathan fight. I'm taking some liberties with that. Shadow Stalker was an arch enemy of Grue, and Tattletale almost certainly could have put together the relationship between Taylor's bullies and Grue's nemesis. She could have let something slip, or Taylor could have pieced it together from other clues based on things that happened in this version's story that were different from canon.

So, Taylor's life is the same as canon in broad brush-strokes, but not in every detail. That includes her finding out that Sophia is Shadow Stalker earlier than in canon, maybe only by a few days.
Yeah, I have no problem with any of this; I know and happily relish AU elements. However, that wasn't what I was trying to point out. Basically, it caught me off guard when Taylor just casually mentions what in my mind is a fairly significant plot point offhand... Without divergence backstory.

The cannon plot point of 'how Taylor learned Sophia == Shadow Stalker' has metaphorical weight because it affected her enough to basically go 'fuck the PRT, I'm gonna conquer the friggin city.' Other contributing factors, yes, but it's a big one. To not touch on whatever circumstance led to her finding out (as well as the ramifications) even as something internal that causes a need for her to refocus on the conversation strikes me as unusual.
 
Back
Top