AN. Hello all you Fallout fans. This is Guestman here with a new fanfiction. This is my first story to be put onto FanFiction, so please be gentle. Constructive criticism is appreciated, trolls and haters will be ignored. Updates will unfortunately be infrequent for the time being, as I am still in College and other real life things might get in the way. This story will be about exploring a few states that haven't received a lot of love within Fallout Fanfictions. No it isn't Texas, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, or Ohio. I am going to be looking at Virginia and Maryland. But wait, I hear you say. Fallout 3 took place in Virginia, Washington DC, and Maryland. While this is true, there is a whole lot more to both states than was shown in the games, with plenty of interesting set pieces for a tale that has been overlooked in other stories. The events of this narrative are roughly concurrent with the events of Fallout: New Vegas, and references to that game may appear. Thank you to scribblescribblescribble for offering advice, proofreading, and support. As every other person who writes this stuff says it, I do not own Fallout and claim absolutely no profits from it. So without further ado, onto the story.

"War. War never changes. Throughout history, man has sought to harness newer, more powerful means of killing each other. From bare fists, to rock, to spear, to bow and arrow, to gun, and finally to the atomic bomb, humanities' drive to kill itself more efficiently continued unabated until the mid-21st Century, when the Middle East would destroy itself in a pointless war, the European Commonwealth descended into a gaggle of bickering nation-states, and America and China fought each other over Alaska and its last reserves of oil.

This conflict, the Sino-American War, would lead into the Great War, which lasted only two hours and wiped out the vast majority of the world's population. A select few took shelter in underground vaults constructed by the United States Government under Project Safehouse, and from one of these vaults, Vault 101, emerged the savior of the Capital Wasteland, known to many as the Lone Wanderer and to a select few as Alec Taggart.

The Lone Wanderer had been searching for his father, who had left the Vault in the Capital Wasteland to restart Project Purity, a water purification plant located in the former Jefferson Memorial. The Lone Wanderer found his father after many adventures in Vault 112, a sinister vault under the control of its megalomaniacal Overseer, who had imprisoned all of the Vault residents and his own father into Virtual Reality devices.

After rescuing his father from the Overseer's fell clutches and ending the suffering of the inhabitants, he helped his father restart the project and bring clean water to the Wasteland. Unfortunately, as with many such tales, nothing's ever that easy. The Enclave, a group of people hell bent on making sure they were the only people left in the Wasteland, decided to seize the Project, and killed The Lone Wanderer's father in front of his eyes.

With the aid of the Brotherhood of Steel under Elder Owyn Lyons and the War Robot Liberty Prime, the Lone Wanderer ousted the Enclave from the purifier and restarted it, being knocked unconscious from the massive radiation load. When he came out of his coma, he led the Brotherhood to victory at Adams Air Force Base. For this, he was made a Paladin and eventually a Sentinel within the ranks of the Brotherhood.

With his continued assistance, the slavers, raiders, feral ghouls, deathclaws, mirelurks, hostile super mutants, and other terrible creatures that once roamed these lands freely are on the retreat. Caravans can freely travel between settlements and towns that were once on the brink of extinction are now thriving communities. And that is why, dear grandchildren, you can rest easy at night, for the efforts of those who fought to save the Wasteland have brought you safety and freedom."