It's an odd thing. You find yourself walking the Mojave and suddenly you find a mysterious new village north of Goodsprings appearing on your PipBoy map. You decide to investigate and suddenly you find a huge facility that was seriously not there before. Men with disfigured faces covered in Enclave Power Armor, apparently called Tantrum, as well as several soldiers in T-51b Power Armor, lie dead. You find one of the soldiers alive and he tells you to go back and leave.
Being who you are, you don't have any intention of doing that.
You step into the huge facility, preparing yourself for what may come.
Thus begins ''The Rockwell Descent''
, the first part of B. Dylan Hollis' Rockwell Series. A quest mod for Fallout: New Vegas, it offers a (mostly) lore friendly and a dramatic story filled with horror, awesome fights and endless conspiracy as you try to uncover the origins of the mysterious men and save the people of Rockwell.
The mod later received a sequel called ''The Rockwell Pursuit''. One year after the original, you find one of the people you saved and he tells you about the new home of the facilities' former inhabitants. Meeting with their Overseer, he asks for your help in preparing and protecting the Rockwell people for their Great Pilgrimage back to the original facility in Vermont and cleansing it of the Tantrum. Much more ambitious and bigger in scope, it covers your preparations for the long pilgrimage across America as well as the journey itself across the Mojave and four completely new maps.
For those looking to extend their FNV experience, The Rockwell Series should not be missed.
The mod contains examples of:
- Big Good: Overseer Goldwater leads the Rockwell Pilgrimage. Until he dies at least. The position is passed to General Gunther, but then it finally falls to you after he acknowledges that you're more suited.
- Body Horror: Normal ghouls look ugly, but the Tantrum's faces are disfigured horribly. And then there was the original Tantrum Annihilator...
- But Thou Must!: It's really weird when the Courier is all nice and patient and perfectly willing to be ordered around... Until he meets Vernon's son, in which case you have no choice but to be an asshole to him, no matter how counterintuitive or out of character it is.
- Cool Ship: The Sentinel, a submarine crewed by former NCR soldiers who figured out that the NCR leaders weren't exactly the best employers.
- Defector from Decadence: The members of the Sentinel were former NCR soldiers who fled the Republic when their leader figured out their employers didn't care about the crew or what they used the ship for.
- Driven to Suicide:
- The Rockwell Descent ends with you failing to save the scientists that started the whole mess as they all drink cyanide together to atone for the hell they've caused.
- One of the Winright manor victims couldn't take it anymore and repeatedly smashed his head against a nearby sink till he died.
- EVERYONE in Missouri (Where Winright was) couldn't take it anymore and committed mass suicide.
- Eldritch Location: Winright Manor and the town it resides in is freaky as all hell. It all started with hallucogenic gasses being pumped through the manor, staying there since the apocalypse. May explain the sudden headache and coma you receive right after you escape. Then again, considering how SCREWED UP the place is, is this really the truth?
- Field Promotion: Goldwater tells the Courier that should he die, (he does), Gunther calls the shots. Gunther then hands gives you the reins after he feels you are better suited to the role.
- Facial Horror: The Snow Ghouls of Paradox have had their corpses preserved since the great war. Their faces are still half rotted, and their brains are exposed. They look horribly like traditional zombies.
- For Science!: Terminals in Descent all imply that Hoffman focused way too much on being the scientist, uncaring of what would happen to the subjects. Subverted. Hoffman was one of the last survivors of the original Tantrum outbreak, and in fact its creator. He and his five friends were given 20 years to come up with a cure, but they came up short in the end, leading to the attack on the facility and their suicide.
- Game-Breaking Bug: The key to Vernon's room in Descent cannot be found. You might feel fine with using Console Commands to unlock the door... Unless you're looking for Steam Achievements. Kiss them goodbye.
- Hate Plague: The Tantrum Virus, more formally known as Vanderphine 2, led people to start either killing or infecting each other.
- Hidden Elf Village: The Goodsprings Rockwell facility WAS hidden by a hologram projector. Justified, it was a futile attempt to hide from the Tantrum.
- Hub Level: The main hall of the Vermont Superstructure acts like this, with you receiving instructions from Paddington about cleansing the Tantrum as he unlocks the doors to the various facilities.
- Irony: The Tantrum Virus was actually a medicine made to cure ghoulification and FEV mutations... and instead created MUCH WORSE mutations.
- It's Up to You: The Rockwell Pursuit is just FILLED with quests like this. Despite (or more likely BECAUSE OF) the fact that the Rockwell people acknowledge you as their savior, you're doing the dirty work, which is a little ridiculous when they ask you to do stuff even after three day comas. Mighty fine if it were dangerous work, but it gets even MORE ridiculous when you're stuck doing menial tasks that are little more than simple errands ANYONE CAN DO. This continues even after you become the Overseer.
- Jump Scare:
- A
Mother Deathclaw suddenly jumps out when you activate the generators in one of the bunkers. A swarm appears just as you're about to leave. Also, the entire bunker is blacked out, so unless you have some night vision, you'll be getting the crap scared and kicked out of you with startling regularity. - The Winright Manor has some pretty surprising ones. The entire manor has nothing but screwed up imagery and darkness everywhere, so the scares REALLY scare.
- A
- Made of Explodium: As a defensive measure, the Tantrum rigged their Powered Armor to explode when you kill them. Melee characters better watch out...
- Mad Scientist: Hoffman really screwed up the experiments down in his labs... Subverted, he's as FAR from this as anyone could be. He spent the last twenty years under a time limit, that he would have a cure for the Tantrum victims. With the clock ticking, he worked like mad in the Rockwell Facility, leading to very poor judgments on his part. He tried to atone with suicide, and even in Pursuit, as you explore his computer files in the last room, his last recording says that if you have any evil intentions with Rockwell you should LEAVE.
- Mushroom Samba: It's either this or Eldritch Location for the Winright Manor. One has to wonder the limits of what hallucogenic gasses can do... That CANNOT explain creepy laughing and walking skeletons... Can it?
- Patient Zero: The Tantrum Annhilator, the original experiment of the Tantrum that infected all the rest. Doubles as the Final Boss.
- Posthumous Character: The six scientists at the end of Descent play a big part in Pursuit.
- Powered Armor: Nearly every infantry man of the Rockwell Army is wearing T-51b Power Armor. They later get "upgraded" with the US Military T-45d Power Armor. Applies to the Tantrum as well.
- Road Trip Plot: The Rockwell Pursuit revolves around a pilgrimage from Nevada all the way to Vermont.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Yup, the original Rockwell Superstructure in Vermont is indeed the last dungeon.
- Wacky Wayside Tribe: Brotherhood Outcasts make their home in Paradox Colorado. However, due to how nice they are and the fact that they have absolutely no interest in your technology, they don't bear much resemblance to canon iterations of the Outcasts and could easily be replaced with literally anybody else.
