Full Ghoul Lore Part 1: Interplay Period

foreign welcome all followers of the undying glow to this week's sermon by your favorite irradiated dude where we are looking at special souls in Adam's sight the ghouls ghouls have featured in every single Fallout game to date they seem to be as much a part of fallout's DNA as anything else because from their very first appearance in the first Fallout their lore has been expanded to a truly impressive level this is the first half of a full treatment of ghouls within the Fallout series with a specific emphasis on looking at how each game portrays changes expands or retcon's previous cool lore going chronologically this will examine what I call the interplay period that is everything up to Fallout 3 and the Bethesda era will be done in a second video it is one thing to know the lore of Any Given thing within the Fallout series and another thing to know how the lore has evolved and what the creators were trying to tell us and show us about schools as a group as individuals and how they survive in their corner of the Wasteland so crank up the RADS and Slough off some skin as we explore the complete lore of ghouls in the Fallout series Fallout the game that started it all what a great game much of what came to define the Fallout series and set it apart from other post-apocalyptic worlds got its start here and well that makes sense it is the first game after all most players long before they ever see or speak to what we have come to know and love as ghouls they will most likely hear some juicy tidbits from other NPCs the settlement of junktown has two people that will warn the player of both Ghouls and the place that they call home Taiko one of the great Companions of the first Fallout tells the player that ghouls live in a place called an acropolis and explains that these ghouls seem human but are far different necropolis which in Greek means City of the Dead was further explained by Tycho when he said the city of death is well named it is now home to Ghouls and worse Killian Dark Water is the mayor of junktown and confirms that it is a city of death because he has lost two patrols that he sent in that direction none of this bodes well and definitely builds up necropolis and its cool inhabitants as being an especially dangerous and mysterious place an acropolis cannot be avoided even if you really did want to heed tychos and Killian's warnings because a critical Quest item can only be found there the water chip which is needed to fix the vault 13 water filtration system can only be found at necropolis and so willingly or not everyone has to set foot inside the City of the Dead to finish the main quest a few things are immediately apparent when the Vault dweller first enters necropolis the background picture of the local map is looking pretty rough but hey it's the apocalypse what do you expect and there are hordes of slouched green humanoid creatures in tattered clothing shambling about aimlessly they don't seem to say anything either grunting growling and making all manner of other guttural or animalistic sounds inspecting some of these ghouls reveals that they seem to have been human once or at least descended from humans the Vault dweller guesses that the deterioration of the body could be the result of acid or radiation getting close to try and speak with the shambling ghouls causes them to become hostile when you get close although they are not much of a threat they walk slowly and don't cover too much distance and only attack with their fists doing very little damage these ghouls seem to only be a concern when fighting a bunch at once and they have such low perception that they are quite easy to run past without engaging in combat if this description starts to make you think of zombies well that seems to be intended a random encounter around Acropolis has the Vault dweller encounter a few Ghouls and they are described as skinny hostile humanoids who Shuffle up to the player to attack with their hands but observing them in game will lead to the game describing them as zombie guards another random encounter will show the result of a battle or Raid on a merchant Caravan with multiple dead bodies some dead merchants and a dead ghoul Caravan guard once again the game labels the dead ghoul guard as a zombie guard the one up close and personal view of a ghoul that we get is a ghoul leader named set who gets a talking head we see that goals are missing Skin showing bones and ligaments underneath missing features like noses or ears and even have empty space in their chest cavities there appears to be some sort of strange scarification like what can be seen over his right eye and his left eye is dark red much of the skin is also colorless or green looking like it is either dead or gangrenous appearing deeply necrotic there are two other in-game observations regarding ghouls that reinforce these zombie similarities one is as follows the body of the humanoid looks to be highly irradiated but still functioning while it was once human it seems to have reverted to a more animalistic lifestyle and another much of the muscle and brain matter seems to have deteriorated however genetic indicators lead you to believe that it descended like you from those that entered the vaults set the leader I just mentioned will also not talk to the player unless it's evening or nighttime seeming to have a strong preference towards operating at night not too unlike popular portrayals of zombies it seems clear that many physical and some behavioral aspects of ghouls were inspired by zombies even if that term itself is used sparingly but even with the obvious parallels ghouls are much cooler than your run-of-the-mill zombie at first it seems like necropolis is just several groups of hostile slow unintelligible creatures that look like they have just been doused in acid or radiation exploration reveals that the only way to get to other parts of the city is through the underground tunnels where another group of ghouls are found but these ones are different upon first encounter a ghoul leader asks the Vault dweller not to shoot them and engages in dialogue although these ghouls have the same appearance as those above they not only speak and emote but they reveal that there are some complex politics play with the ghouls that live within the city they are split into two main factions one on the service of necropolis that is led by a violent and vindictive leader named set and this group down in the sewers and tunnels that are far more peaceful and disagree with set and how he governs a current crisis revolves around water the settlement's water pump has broken and they are only able to get clean purified water or what they call the flow an almost religious reverence from what they call the deep deep below the surface of the city is Vault 12 and it is the source of the ghoul's life-giving water and we're the only water chip in this part of the Wasteland can be found things are even more complicated though since these surface schools under set have been forced into an uneasy truce with occupying super mutants because their leader the master ordered the super mutants to establish a base the base of sets ghouls on the surface is called both the temple people by some service schools or the Hall of the Dead by set and some of those close to him it is unknown whether all these names like Hall of the dead and necropolis come from Human Outsiders giving these names due to fear and discrimination or if the ghouls themselves came up with these names it is also possible that Outsiders gave Ghouls and the settlement of necropolis their names and the ghouls just embraced them as a way to remove the negative meanings behind them dialogue with a peculiar character named Harold who we will get to more a little later makes it clear that the ghouls seem insistent on using the term ghoul when asked about them Harold corrects the Vault dweller he used the word ghoul by saying mutants doesn't matter what they call themselves that sentence alone makes it seem like ghouls named it themselves rather than Outsiders the ghouls have names that they use for humans in return though set will refer to the Vault dweller as Normie bloodbag and Walker the second one seems to imply that ghouls don't have blood in the same way humans do and the last one Walker seems to imply that ghouls can't walk like humans can set will also say himself that ghouls are the future if they can survive anywhere and therefore are much better adapted than humans for the new irradiated World super mutants seem to agree that they think ghouls are tougher or somehow more capable than humans as well the ghoul superiority complex all these nicknames and the way that ghouls treat the Vault dweller reflect the tense relationship between Ghouls and humans although they do have some limited interaction we know of some Merchants that will travel to necropolis to trade and there there's even another former vault 13 dweller who had ventured to necropolis before the player character not all ghouls will talk to the Vault dweller and many of those that do will only speak to them for a short time or tell them to leave them and necropolis alone most those on the surface that will engage in dialogue all speak quite strangely either using symbolic language and metaphors like with set or speaking a language akin to creel like in the case of the hotel manager these dialects may have developed as a result of their insular Community similar to how some real world groups went on to develop their own languages like Yiddish it should be pointed out however that there are entire groups of ghouls who do not demonstrate any ability to communicate the groups of ghouls that roam the surface will only grunt there are a couple of what are called glowing ones at the entrance of the underground Vault 12 who are deemed mad by the rest of the ghouls because they violently lash out at everyone and the end game descriptions mention some ghouls seem to have reverted to a more animalistic lifestyle this seems to describe a wild or feral kind of state one where necrotic degeneration has reached its most extreme but it is never referred to as such in the game it is worth noting however that the groups that appear to be feral on the surface of necropolis can apparently still follow orders when the Vault dweller agrees to help set get rid of the super mutants that are occupying the water pump house he says that he will not send word to all his ghouls to leave the player alone just in case word would make it to the super mutants and tip them off to the plan this would imply that the shamblers around Acropolis can receive and listen to orders so would that make them truly feral there are two NPCs in the Southern California Wasteland that make the story of ghouls even more peculiar Herald is an old soul having weathered the Great War involved and later becoming a merchant and Explorer in the post-war years he and Richard Gray explored a mysterious pre-war facility called the Mariposa military base where Richard fell into a vat of forced evolutionary virus or fev and would go on to become the main antagonist of Fallout called the master Harold would be knocked out by the same robotic arm only coming two days later outside the base when he was already starting to change and mutate his in-game Sprite is the same as a ghoul and a close-up look when engaging in dialogue makes him look just like a ghoul as well similar to set his skin is green he's missing body parts like his nose or ears you can see straight to his bone or even through his rib cage and perhaps coincidentally his right eye is gone and grown over with scar tissue just like set he is by all appearances of ghoul that has been alive for much longer than the normal human lifespan when he is asked why he mutated and if it could have been due to radiation he says he doesn't know and says it must have been something from the military base which we know has one of the greatest concentrations of fev anywhere on the west coast another man named talius came from vault 13 to solve the vault's water issues before the main character set out on the adventure that kick-starts the story and talius went to necropolis after hearing about their ability to pump purified water the super mutants were relative newcomers to necropolis themselves at the time and the ghouls and super mutants were actively fighting each other talius helped the ghouls in their fight against the super mutants but ended up being captured by the super mutes and was exposed to fev which began a mutation process he didn't turn into a Super Mutant like they were hoping rather he mutated in a unique way that looks just like a ghoul unfortunately we don't get to see a close-up of talius like we do with Harold but an in-game observation when the ball dweller first meets him says you see a hideous ghoul but talius will never refer to himself as a ghoul rather some sort of mutant so we are left with two interesting cases one of talius who is exposed to fev and mutated into either a ghoul or something that looks just like it and the other case Harold has him also mutating from an unknown source into something that looks exactly like a ghoul with greatly prolonged life it is most likely that Harold owes his mutations to fev since the military base was just drowning in it but we just don't know this leads us to consider whether fev plays a role in the process of becoming a ghoul or if it is just a coincidental form of mutation so we have what I will call the normal goals that are most commonly seen a potential fev ghoul in Herald and talius as well as glowing ones who are glowing due to an extreme amount of radiation like with almost all fallout locations necropolis gets a number of possible endings depending on the player's actions but we know which of these endings are Canon due to the actions of the Vault dweller killing the super mutants in Acropolis in order to get access to the pump house a new group of super mutants were sent to necropolis to raise the settlement to the ground and in doing so they killed many Ghouls and Scattered almost everyone else to the Wasteland so things look very bad for the one single settlement and concentration of ghouls in this part of the Wasteland even with all this information about one of fallout's most important locations and memorable groups we are left with so many questions and assumptions we are never told where the ghouls actually come from and why they are only found in Acropolis and nowhere else in the Wasteland their proximity use and partial occupation of all 12 in the absence of anyone else means that they could come from the Vault but information is hard to come by because the ghouls are so isolated and contrasting of Outsiders all the ghouls seem concentrated in Acropolis so is it really the only place for hundreds of miles where ghouls can be found does that mean ghouls only came from necropolis or did ghouls from elsewhere migrate to necropolis to escape persecution if all or most of the ghouls came from necropolis itself what was so special about that area to produce ghouls our Herald and Talia schools and if so does that mean fev is needed to create a ghoul along with radiation did ghouls give themselves that name and embrace the whole death Motif or was that foisted on them by others as just a quick aside some Fallout concept art shows what seems to be an early version of a ghoul but is called a blood man I like this design and just wanted to mention it Fallout 2 is the next game and sorts of information for ghouls in the Fallout series taking place almost 100 years after the events of Fallout and covering some of the same Geographic areas as well once again we see Ghouls and luckily Fallout 2 does a good job in expanding their lore similar to how ghouls were only seen in one settlement in the previous game ghouls are primarily found in two settlements in Fallout 2 the town of Gecko and the mining town of broken Hills whereas the ghouls and Acropolis were borderline or just outright hostile to the player the ghouls in Fallout 2 are more often than not willing to talk to the chosen one and are friendly there are also a lot more named ghoul characters where Fallout only had two Fallout 2 now has 17. Fallout 2 also shows a lot more diversity of thought amongst the ghouls who they are why they are the way they are and what if anything can be done about it Gekko is a unique town because it has sprung up around a pre-war nuclear reactor that survived the Great War and successfully shut itself down to avert disaster the game manuals and guides are not specific about when ghoul started to gather in and around the nuclear plant but enough ghoul settled in this place that they were able to get the nuclear reactor back online this presented the opportunity to generate power but also caused drama with the nearby settlement of Vault City since the nuclear reactor was not running very efficiently and was irradiating groundwater that Vault City relied on for survival the situation is not helped At All by Vault City's incredible bigotry towards all mutants of which ghouls are a kind of mutant and Gekko gets all of Vault cities Justified and unjustified ire a new but quite understandable development among schools is a strange new cult whose immediate goal at least is to find a way to reverse glucification and have ghouls be reborn as humans this group is based in Gekko is called the renewal cult and has suckered in a number of ghouls the ones that most resent or Tire of being a ghoul wishing instead to once again be a normie as Seth would say and not subjected to the incredible discrimination that ghouls face at the hands of nearly everyone else what makes this cult strange though is that it is not led by a ghoul or a scientist or anyone like that it is led by a hyper-intelligent mole rat who is mutated with fev and is using the ghouls to his own ends he thinks using the power generated at Gecko and the technology that Vault City possesses would give him a good foundation for his plans for world domination he gets the ghouls to do his bidding by promising them to use Vault City's technology and medical facilities to develop a cure that would allow them to be renewed into humans once again and he abuses this distant hope that the the ghouls have for his own ends ghouls wishing to be humans again is not the only interesting belief among the ghouls in gecko a smooth talking ghoul with a rare full head of hair named Gordon who was part of the renewal cult things that without medical intervention all ghouls will die within the next 20 years there is no evidence to support this claim and I can't think of a reason why many of these ghouls who have lived almost 200 years after the Great War would all start dying on mass within the next 20. lastly a special ghoul named Lenny who was a doctor before the Great War that turned him into a ghoul although he was an old man when he gullified the condition has brought him much longer life and he has continued to practice as a doctor to the poor souls of Gekko he believes that if he had access to the medical technology at Vault City that he would be able to remove all the radiation from within Ghouls and he believes this would allow ghouls to heal what exactly this mean means we can't know for sure but maybe he believes that ghouls could change back into humans as well it is interesting to note that the number of ghouls that Express a desire to find a cure or revert back to their human form is rather High has the time between Fallout and Fallout 2 increase the sentiment are ghouls just more open to Outsiders now and willing to admit such things ghouls also no longer readily state that they think they are inherently Superior to humans so this seems to be a pretty large ideological shift among ghouls Lenny the doctor we spoke of before provides some insight that may explain some of this he was there in Acropolis when the Vault dweller came and killed the super mutants and fixed up their pump he speaks of how good it felt for a human to care enough about necropolis and its ghouls to save their lives and it made them feel like people again perhaps The Vault dweller selfless Act made such an impression that it led many to reconsider their prior beliefs it is even more impressed that Lenny has such a high opinion of the ball dweller because while yeah he did save necropolis it was also their actions that led to super mutants attacking necropolis and killing many of them the friction between Ghouls and humans were palpable in the first Fallout most of the ghouls don't care to speak to you and entire groups are instantly hostile as a player we never really witnessed any of the Discrimination between Ghouls and humans although we were the recipient of it when exploring necropolis Fallout 2 actually does show us the bigotry and unfair treatment in no uncertain terms I mentioned it a bit before but Vault City who is filled with an inordinate amount of Pricks has an issue against mutants and anyone who is not a citizen of the city ghouls are strictly not allowed inside the city they have a shoot on site order for them and they will not even trade with ghouls so ghoul dominated communities need to have human middlemen to help with trade interactions and many in Vault City primarily the first citizen Joanne Lynette are seeking a solution to what can be called their ghoul problem they already had paid someone to try and take care of the ghoul problem but they can and will ask the chosen one to go to gecko stop the reactor which solves the water pollution problem but that's not enough for them they don't want ghouls living so close to them and that requires taking the ghouls out even though Vault City would actually benefit greatly from the power provided by the improved nuclear reactor there was a man that used to live in Vault city named lumpy who was found to have a mutation that made him resistant to radiation even that was too much for Vault City and they banished him leaving him with few options and he ended up in gecko surrounded by ghouls with a similar immunity to radiation broken Hills is the only other community that is populated by a significant number of ghouls although it has a number of super mutants and even some humans to make up the most diverse of all locations in Fallout 2. broken Hills is a mining town Mining and refining uranium to be sold to the likes of Gekko who can then use it in their nuclear power plant the fact that all these kinds of people can co-exist and make a functional Community should be an exemplary achievement an example to the rest of the Wasteland of what is possible if everyone lays Prejudice aside unfortunately broken Hills has a big problem simmering beneath the surface there is an anti-mutant conspiracy involving a number of humans who wish to rid the community of the Super Mutant mayor and all other mutants and thereby control the town and the profitable uranium deposits they had previously attempted to assassinate Marcus the town's leader but they were thwarted by the beefy mutant and they will try again and ask the chosen one for help they really hate mutants while the player can help them successfully carry out their plot or report them to mark this and have them wiped out if the player does neither of these things and just ignores the situation the conspirators will eventually successfully wipe out all mutants this Dooms the settlement because wouldn't you know it having minors and workers that are immune to radiation and have incredibly long life spans make for great uranium mine and Refinery workers Lenny the Dr ghoul and Gekko can join the player as a companion but doing so will showcase some of the bigotry throughout the Wasteland they are of course not welcome in Vault City but even other places like the mining town of Redding will show active discrimination where people will say awful things and you will be refused service although the first game went pretty far to make ghouls similar in many ways to zombies Fallout 2 lessens it a little bit the label zombie however seems to be a fairly common insult for ghouls since if the player calls the gecko bartender Woos a zombie he will reply zombies you we're ghouls zombies are a type of Undead with no free will although we share certain physical characteristics most notably the Rotting Flesh and characteristic morbidity we are creatures of free will we get a good amount of information related to ghouls in general because the son of set a ghoul named Typhon lives in broken Hills Typhon was a young child when he ghoulified but he grew up and developed into an adult just you know as a ghoul and so he doesn't know any other life unlike most other ghouls who distinctly remember and miss their previous unmutated lives remember this bit for later Typhon refers to him and all the ghouls around him as the first and last generation of ghouls giving the impression that ghouls were all created in one single event the Great War this statement doesn't seem to be substantiated by anything else except for the fact that of all the ghouls that we'll talk about their past all of them lived in the pre-war and were ghoulified around the time of the Great War typhen will tell the chosen one that he amassed a treasure of bottle caps from his days of running and winning races this fairly mundane detail is memorable only because it is contradictory to everything we know about how ghouls can get around they are only seen shuffling around they derisively called humans Walkers and Lenny from broken Hills literally says that when he saw the Vault dweller years ago in Acropolis he knew he wasn't a ghoul because he was running and according to Lenny us ghouls can't run much anymore but as an additional twist Lenny totally can run when recruited as a companion so either typhen is just telling stories it's an inconsistency or ghouls can actually run one last interesting comment from typhen is related to the prevalent mental issues that seem to plague ghouls he believes that radiation has had deleterious effects on ghoul's brains but he seems to imply that this is more psychological than physiological in his mind he is much better adjusted and suffers fewer issues than other ghouls since he has never known any other life Fallout 2 also introduced a new model in addition to the green skin and glowing ghoul Sprites these new ones appear to be in a shredded Vault suit and are white and pink giving the impression that they are pale with exposed muscle the in-game description actually says that these ghouls have skin that is badly burned so ghouls can also be burned or charred decades after they ghoulified Woos the bartender will also give a pretty graphic description of how ghouls are formed which is actually the first in-depth description that we get other than simply saying radiation and they say that like it's a bad thing Woos confirms that a ghoul is made with severe radiation like after the bombs went off along with the light and heat that burned the flash off does the lack of skin on ghouls indicate that their skin was burned off by nuclear blasts or are only the ghouls that are said in game to have burned skin the ones lucky enough to be burned by atomic fire but survive due to their new coolarific condition back to ghoul's brains being affected by their condition there is a kind of ghoul that will only be encountered outside of settlements only referred to as a crazy they are always hostile no matter what and found in Encounters in the Wasteland these crazed ghouls are often shown as glowing ones and have very limited dialogue literally the only four things they will say are send more adventurers moan make the pain stop and lastly brains apparently the developers weren't quite done comparing ghouls to zombies particularly these crazed ones although these crazy ghouls can still fight with weapons how these ghouls ended up in this state is not known is it radiation time the social isolation and discrimination ghouls are subject to severe hardships which is best shown in two specific examples so maybe it's not so surprising that some of them completely lose their minds Woody is a ghoul that has a propensity to fall asleep randomly and for long periods of time and his friend Percy A ghoul and Gekko asked the chosen one to try and find him to make sure he's okay the chosen one will eventually find him he is being passed off as an Egyptian mummy by a con man named The Great ananius where he appears to be a dead and desiccated corpse he has been in this state for days or maybe even weeks before he is woken up by the chosen one and runs off and even more stream example and what would quite literally be a nightmare is the story of coffin Willy a particularly smelly ghoul he had made his way to new Reno to drink and Gamble and do standard new Reno things when he was abducted by people and taken to a graveyard called Golgotha he was buried alive and somehow months after having been buried he can be dug up by the chosen one and he is no worse for the wear how was he able to survive being buried in a coffin for months without food water or even air it is never explained but ghouls seem capable of living through environments that no human possibly could it is also worth pointing out that one new development in Fallout 2 from the first game is that the game goes to Great Lengths to let us know how bad ghouls stink it makes sense that a mostly necrotic body would smell awful but apparently the stench is awful enough that some ghouls will admit that they are even glad that their nose is rotted away otherwise they would choke on their own stench the last interesting point that Fallout 2 makes in reference to ghouls has to do with our good old friend Harold Harold's mutated condition in the first Fallout was ambiguous is he a ghoul as the in-game observation alludes to or something else once again Fallout 2 will describe Harold when observing him in game as a leathery and spry looking ghoul he will refer to the player as a smooth skin which is fallout's two new nickname that ghouls use for humans however Harold has something that no other ghoul does he has started to sprout a plant out of his head he seems pretty okay with it though having giving it a name and implying that Bob as he calls the sapling thinks or has feelings itself regardless Harold looks much like how he did in in the first Fallout this time with a green eye his skin is a Deeper Shade of Green and of course a tree is growing out of his head however Harold isn't the only one whose body is merging with nature in weird ways a ghoul in broken Hills named Eric is very sweaty which is kind of impressive because sweat glands reside in the skin and ghouls are all afflicted by necrosis and are losing their skin anyway his sweat is somehow The Perfect Blend of nutrients and attractants to cause flies to swarm him and look up that beautiful salty ghoul sweat delicious the player can help Eric with his problem by getting his dwelling more power for his air conditioning but it is interesting to note the number of ways that Ghouls and their bodies are interacting with other organisms Harold apparently has the right kind of nutrients for a tree to grow out of his head and Eric has the right kind of nutrients to attract and feed flies and with that Fallout 2 has given us unique lore or expanded on on things previously only alluded to the player was the subject of extreme discrimination by the ghouls because they themselves were recipients of it but now in Fallout 2 we see that on full display and it is awful ghouls collectively no longer seem proud or consider themselves Superior since there is an entire cult and many individuals who seek to reverse glulification entirely the connection to zombies is still present and Harold's representation as a ghoul is still as strong as ever ghouls are able to withstand circumstances that would kill a human like extreme radiation weeks or months without oxygen food or water but they do seem to be psychologically prone to outright hostile Madness ghouls are also incredibly stinky they can have conventional necrosis they can glow they can be dried out and withered like Woody is described to be or they can still be burned so many years after the Great War Fallout tactics was the next game to release and we get to see ghouls in a totally different geographical location these ghouls are not connected to the first two fallouts so it is a good opportunity to see how much they have in common in the Midwest United States ghouls can be found mainly in three areas where they tend to group together one large settlement named Quincy has a shanty town that is sometimes called the ghoul quarter where all the ghouls are found and there are tensions between the ghouls and humans again a product of intense discrimination the goal leader Elliot is surprised and happy to learn that the warrior treats ghouls with respect because not many do as is evidenced by all the anti-goole and anti-mutant graffiti sprayed everywhere a bonus mission in the game has the player character the warrior go to the City of Springfield because anti-goole sentiment has reached riotus levels the prior mayor of Springfield disappeared under suspicious circumstance and a new one mayor Avalon was put in place but started to publicly acknowledge sympathies towards the ghoul population a group of people who opposed the new mayor's attempts to guarantee ghouls the same rights as humans formed a plot where they would overthrow the government to Springfield but do so disguised as Raiders in order to try and protect the group the Brotherhood of Steel got word of this plot and decided to intervene but by the time the warrior arrives at Springfield the coup is in full swing the plotters would be wiped out by the Brotherhood of Steel and the mayor would be reinstated or he would ratify what is called the bill of monster rights some of the rights that would be preserved as part of this bill were no violence against ghouls except in self-defense enforced payment to ghouls at a minimum of half of that of a human and my personal favorite which is the outlying of certain popular sayings these phrases all refer to pooping and include pinching the ghoul making cool babies and dropping the ghoul off at the pool the funny thing is as Progressive as mayor Avalon and some of Springfield's populous is he is still only willing to say that mutants are almost people and he seems to mostly prize the ghoul's ability to do dirty jobs that can cause unafflicted humans to get sick the last interesting location is within Kansas City once again ghouls occupy a part of the city that isolates them from everybody else and the ghoul only place is called gravestone gravestone was founded not long after the Great War and the ghouls that founded it were survivors that had been working in the Kansas City Nuclear silos once again the ghouls occupy a part of the city that isolates them from everybody else and the ghoul only place is called gravestone gravestone was founded not long after the Great War and the ghouls that founded it were survivors that had been working in the Kansas City Nuclear silos after the Great War the occupants of the silos survived but were subjected to an intense amount of radiation and many died due to radiation sickness but those that survived turned into ghouls at some point in the 150 years since the Great War the ghouls developed a religion that was based on the worship of an atomic bomb that they found in the launch facilities that sounds awfully familiar the bomb called plutonius is seen as a symbol of the Supreme nuclear power and their first Bishop was a ghoul named T-minus his son who is called Defcon currently leads the ghouls at gravestone who have come under siege by the Super Mutant Army the super mutants are assaulting the ghouls in an attempt to recover the nuclear bomb that they worship wanting it for their own military purposes the Brotherhood responds to the plight of the ghouls sending the warrior and their team to Kansas City to defeat the super mutants and save the ghouls who are fighting to protect themselves and their sacred Idol what is interesting is that when the Brotherhood does beat back the super mutants one of their demands is to be able to use plutonius the bomb in their own military efforts in defeating the calculator as they have no other way of cracking open vault zero the ghouls agree and due to the actions of the Brotherhood of Steel and saving them at gravestone as well as helping them in other places like Quincy ghouls express interest in joining the ranks of the Brotherhood of Steel which the Brotherhood eventually allows this ain't your grandpa's Brotherhood even though the midwestern Brotherhood of Steel seems to be more accepting a mutants within their ranks there are still many within the Brotherhood that are very bigoted as can be seen by some of their comments and possibly the worst offender is commander barnicky who gives the player their missions in the early game in tactics it is very common for ghouls to lose body parts just going through their daily routine multiple Ghouls and especially one named patches are constantly talking about and joking about losing fingers toes ears Etc while Fallout and Fallout 2 would mention such things happening it was never at this level and it seems like ghouls in the midwest are all just literally falling to pieces Defcon the leader of the ghoul religion has a tree that is growing out of his head just like Harold in Fallout 2. so there's at least one other goal with this exact condition a ghoul prisoner that can be freed from Fault zero is known as Elaine and she is quite interesting because she is described as looking almost human-like while her in-game portrait certainly isn't as grotesque as many other cool characters she is still very obviously a ghoul and has all the characteristics of ghoul except maybe the rampant necrosis that causes them to shed skin and hair a recruitable ghoul by the name of Harold is one ugly dude with a tree grown out of his head but this character is not the original Herald from the earlier games rather he's just an homage to the character tactics leans hard into the Discrimination that ghouls face in the midwest which is very similar to what we saw in Fallout 2. the interesting new element introduced though is the establishment of a large nuclear power worshiping religion which yeah who would do that but it is refresh to see ghouls developing unique cultural aspects like religion since it humanizes them in a way ghouls are not hostile to the player in the three locations that they can be found but ghouls can be found in Random Encounters where they are always hostile it isn't clear why but perhaps these could be compared to the crazed goals that we can encounter in Fallout 2 from limited conversation with the ghouls that can speak to the player all the ghouls seem to be from the Great War period indicating like with Fallout 2 that all or at least the overwhelming majority of ghouls were created around the time of the Great War interestingly there are no glowing ones found in the game tactics also takes the necrosis thing very seriously since it is a running gag across multiple characters they are all losing body parts all over the place and ghouls appear to be very fertile ground for agriculture the concept art for ghouls look awesome a lot of them seem drippy almost like the ghouls are partially melting others their skin or clothing look finely shredded and hanging off in tatters again some in the concepts have right eyeballs missing like set in Harold and some of the in-game pictures of some ghouls do so as well the in-game Sprites can vary a bit and ghouls can be an array of colors from a peach-like skin tone to light or dark green we have been going through the games and their lore chronologically but between Fallout tactics and Fallout 3 we have canceled games Fallout Brotherhood of Steel and the Fallout Bible to take a peek at the Fallout Bible despite the authoritative name is not the Arbiter of Fallout Canon it was an ongoing project by one of the Fallout developers Chris Avalon to combine facts from the games with his behind the scenes experience and access to other Fallout developers to try and flesh out the lore therefore it is very important to understand that any claim in the Bible if it is not substantiated by Fallout 1 2 or tactics that it could very well not be Cannon said simply tread carefully and always check sources the ghoul lore that is added by the Bible comes in a few categories one is establishing dates for when certain things happened like when necropolis was formed the role of radiation and fev in causing mutations is covered with different thoughts presented by two different developers Harold and his condition is talked about and lastly lore related to an area called Dayglow is spoken of which was first mentioned in a hollow tape from Fallout 2 but not in any great detail Bible issue 0 consists of the first three Bible versions put together and gives us some dates for important ghoul related events Vault 12 found underneath Acropolis had its vault door purposefully not to close all the way allowing radiation to leak into the Vault and affect the Vault dwellers necropolis is founded 61 years later in 2138 by the vaults gulified survivors they were led by the original Vault overseer until 2084 when set arrested control of necropolis from him and he has never heard of again in 2157 the master learns of the location of all 12 and sends super mutants there to try and recover the Vault dwellers or prime normals as he calls them not weird in order to expose them to fev and create more super mutants but they are disappointed to find that all the residents of all 12 have turned into ghouls in 2162 the Vault dweller recovers the chip from necropolis and fixes their water pump but we aren't given a date for the sacking of the city this information is interesting because the ghouls being from Vault 12 is not explicitly stated by them or anyone else in the first Fallout really is just inferred the fact that the Vault was designed to not seal properly as part of an experiment and this is what led to them becoming ghouls is also not hinted at at all in either Fallout or fallout 2. Fallout 2 was when the idea that vaults had an ulterior motive with experiments came into being some Fallout 2 events get a date now like broken Hills being established in 2185 by a group of humans Ghouls and super mutants and in 2235 Gekko which had a small community of ghouls already gets a sudden influx of ghoul migrants and they get the nuclear plant working shortly after in 2238 Harold makes his way to Gekko and becomes the leader of the community in another part of Fallout Bible issue zero Chris Avalon says that all those that were to become ghouls were infected with fev when the West Tech facility that housed a substantial amount of fev was hit in the Great War and sent the virus airborne this mixed with radiation exposure is what caused the ghouls to become what they are and Bible number five another developer Chris Taylor agrees with Avalon stating that ghouls are the result of a little bit of fev and a lot of radiation whereas super mutants are the result of a lot of fev and no or a tiny bit of radiation damage Tim Kaine the producer of the first Fallout disagrees with both Avalon and Taylor and in the same Bible entry says that fev and radiation just don't mix meaning that ghouls would have to be the result of radiation alone while this specific disagreement doesn't come up in later fallouts we can fur from the world which side Bethesda ends up siding with Harold is discussed by Avalon Taylor and Kane in issue number five as well because fans are not quite sure whether to consider him a ghoul or not Avalon believes that Harold is not a ghoul but some other type of mutant despite looking like one and being called a gooling game Taylor says that Harold is both a ghoul and also a little special but doesn't really elaborate further Kane says that he had always treated Harold as a ghoul just not a necropolis one he also said that since fev and radiation don't mix The Herald has to be one or the other and that Kane thinks that he is a ghoul Bible number five then goes on to give more details surrounding day glow which is a state within the NCR it is located north and west of the glow and ghouls moved there after necropolis was destroyed they started to make a fairly good living going in and Scavenging technology from the West Tech facility their immunity to radiation granting them ease easy access to tradable Tech that most others would have a hard time getting a hold of let's remember these details from the Bible which was written and published in 2002 well before Bethesda had acquired The Fallout license Van Buren was the project name for interplay's Planned Fallout 3 that was never released there is a lot that I can go into with the lore editions this game would have had but since this is already going to be a big video I will save in-depth discussion of ambureon details and instead just go over the Salient points although this game never came to be it is worth looking at because you'll never know when you will see these ideas or concepts pop up again in the future a ghoul only Community known as the reservation would have been a big location for the player and led by a leader who believed in ghoul Supremacy yeah that's back he is preparing to strike out against nearby groups of humans since ghouls suffer intense discrimination from them and they believe a pre-emptive strike is the best way to not get wiped out first the ghouls are heavily involved in research and the most important work is the attempt to create what are called Born ghouls the ghouls of the reservation believe that the only thing holding them back is their inability to reproduce naturally after a lot of experimentation they have had four successful attempts and these reborn ghouls are quite a bit different from all others their Sprite shows them as a blue color they are usually lean but very strong they have all the attributes of a ghoul meaning radiation resistance and prolonged life but their lesions patches of hair and exposed bone form patterns on the skin almost like there is a purpose behind them Van Buren would have also featured a type of ghoul called an endless Walker they were ghouls that were banished from the reservation and were transformed by radiation the Relentless sun and other types of degradation their skin hardens like leather armor their fingers become claw-like and they completely lose their humanity and ability to think and reason they would have always been hostile since they only act on instinct sharing similarities with the crazed ghouls of Fallout 2. these are the details known from Van Buren design documents that have relevance to our examination and discussion of Google lore Fallout Brotherhood of Steel yes the Pinnacle of the Fallout series had its own take on ghouls just to clarify this game has been specifically said to not be Canon so please keep that in mind Brotherhood of Steel is the first and only game to allow the player character to be a ghoul and this ghoul named Kane originally came from necropolis cane is resistant to radiation damage but not immune which is very different from earlier games and he will take damage from radiation his two greatest Powers however are his handsomeness and his amazing Naruto run ghouls are found in a city called Los who are split between a group of friendly ghouls Who gullified as a result of the Great War and a group of hostile ghouls that were formed much later when the secret vault that lies below loss exploded and ghoulified a number of former residents the Hostile ghouls established an anti-technology religion and Society making them the opposite of the Brotherhood of Steel and they are called The Church of the Lost ghouls are able to run and fight with weapons they all seem to have their mental faculties demonstrating this by following orders or direct communication there are glowing ones that hang out in the most irradiated areas that can cause radiation poisoning on contact the actual ghoul models are hard to make out but the concept shows that ghouls are not just decaying they seem to also have mutated it's like a hunchback Venom with horse Hooves I don't know what to make of that really the only other interesting ghoul related thing about the Brotherhood of Steel is that good old Herald is back he sounds like an old hillbilly and there is an optional quest to help him find all the body parts that have fallen off and are just laying somewhere Brotherhood of Steel seems to think he is a ghoul since he came to Los to live amongst the ghouls and when the player approaches him the game classifies him as a ghoul Wanderer let's look at what we know about some canceled Fallout projects Fallout extreme was a proposed game that never made it all that far before it was abandoned there is no concept art to give us an idea of what ghouls might have looked like but the game would have included a ghoulish refugees but we don't know much more than that since part of this game was to take place in China because some of these ghouls have been in or from China project v13 was the name name is shared by two proposed Fallout online games that also never made it we get some concept art of what ghouls would have looked like and honestly these are some of the nicest looking ghouls in the whole series the female is standing up straight full head of hair and Nary a pus-filled and necrotic spot on the skin these would have been a pretty big visual deviation from Ghouls as we know them a planned pen and paper RPG called Fallout D20 was being developed but because Bethesda acquired the rights during the development process the game had to Pivot toward its own post-apocalyptic RPG we have an image for the ghouls that were intended and the image is probably the most zombie-like that we have seen so far also let me point out that once again the concept art shows the ghoul missing the right eye with some Scar Tissue stretched across the orbital cavity how many games have done this now Herald in the first Fallout set in the first fallout Fallout tactics concept and in-game art Fallout Brotherhood of Steel concept art and now follow D20 seriously what is up with ghouls and their right eye and so we have made it through the interplay period all the games unreleased games and incomplete projects and how they each choose to portray Ghouls and add to or change ghoul lore we are halfway there because the next four games add a lot to ghoul lore and I just want to give you a little primer for the next video Until fully researching Google lore I didn't realize how much Fallout 3 talked about ghouls it is possibly the game that is most interested in exploring Ghouls and the ghoul condition compared to any other game even the first fallout look forward to that and I want to say thank you for spending some time here with me today and a big thank you to my awesome patrons their contributions help a lot and you can't buy your way into Adam's presence but that won't stop these guys from trying if you want to join my patreon check out the video description and get some rewards like playing Fallout 76 with us Adam Bless You all take care of yourselves and I will see you soon foreign

Channel: RadKing

Views: 246,002

Keywords: fallout lore, ghouls, fallout ghoul, fallout harold

Id: BHPJU-W2ELE

Length: 53min 35sec (3215 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 03 2023