A Prince with New Purpose

A PRINCE WITH A NEW PURPOSE:

After Teekhup the Beastmaster had recruited the Distant Prince into the vulture’s inner circle he began to feel a renewed purpose for his existence in the wasteland. The Beastmaster had crafted a mask for the Distant Prince to cover his mutant beak and given him a death claw gauntlet so they could begin visiting the various vulture strongholds together in search of supplies for their raider gang.
With his best friend Eldritch in the clutches of an enclave scientist, and his lover The Siren Prince gone turncoat to the Fallout 5-0 he now had only the Vulture raiders to rely on, and found trading and bartering for supplies with his new friend Teekhup better than surviving off the corpses of mole miners and the occasional blood eagle assassin. His early days with the raiders were challenging due to his cannibal nature and his time in isolation within the confines of his bone pit in the far reaches of the Ash Heap.
Many of the Vulture raiders were unsettled by his various mutations – most notably his beak covered by the mask Teekhup had crafted – but after one look from The Beastmaster they quickly readjusted. Occasionally though some of the more independent factions within the Vultures would sneer and mock the Prince while the Beastmaster was inside bartering. Although Teekhup was able to level with many of the Vulture Raiders on behalf of the Prince either through diplomacy or force, some had heard of the horror and carnage he wrought on the Ring Master of the freak show and his Blood Eagle followers, and saw his brute strength as a challenge to their positions. But the Prince was smart enough to know when to pick a fight, and when it was time to “hide a body”. On more than one occasion The Prince left Vulture strongholds and camps with a full belly after a lone raider would make a passing comment. The way he saw it, people went missing in the wasteland all the time, and if they could never find a body, then they could not prove a thing.
One night while visiting the Vulture’s stronghold of Bandit Town Teekhup and the Prince were sharing a drink at the fire pits while planning a raid on a nearby medical facility to score some chems. The underboss Condor requested an audience with Teekhup, and left the raid planning to the Prince, who was starting to become quite competent at scouting out the most valuable locations to tap for resources. Then, a woman with a skull mask in a red dressed named Epiphany rolled into camp with some hired thugs. Epiphany and her goons surrounded the Prince, accusing him publicly of murdering not only a valued customer of her brothel, but also Epiphany’s beloved pet opossum; Spanky. Several eyewitnesses described watching in horror as the Prince devoured every bit of his victims, and then stuffed the bones into his crafting kit. Epiphany demanded the justice and challenged the Prince to fight her goons in the knife pits – a long standing Vulture tradition of settling internal disputes.
After hearing the commotion down below, Condor and Teekhup broke up the squabbling among the vulture fledglings with a few rapid-fire blasts from their guns carefully aimed at the feet of the raiders. The Underboss demanded answers from the Prince who confessed to eating not just one, but several unsuspecting victims of the brothel. He removed the preserved head of Spanky from his pack who he was hoping to sell for a fair amount of camps at their next trading stop. Teekhup was ashamed of the Prince’s behavior towards her fellow Vultures but pleaded for Condor to spare his life advocating that the Prince could indeed be tamed and turned into a valuable weapon for the Vultures. Wanting to be a just ruler in the absence of the Warlord, the underboss agreed to the terms of Epiphany’s challenge, but allowed Teekhup one month’s time to prove she could mold the Prince into a reliable raider capable of showing restraint regardless of his cannibal status.

The next morning Condor, with an escort of her own Vulture loyalists dismissed Teekhup, the Prince, Epiphany, and her crew warning that if they did not return to the knife pit in one month’s time she’d put a bullet between their eyes herself. Epiphany and her crew went north back to their brothel, and the Prince and Teekhup journeyed south on towards the Arktos Pharma company’s old building. Teekhup had heard that the scientists there were working on a serum to pacify mutated animals and hoped that perhaps a serum could be used to help her cannibal friend. On their journey Teekhup scolded the Prince for his lack of restraint and reminded him that if he wanted the Vultures help in freeing his captive friend from the Enclave scientists he would need to prove himself as a reliable member of the gang capable of keeping himself in check with the other gang members.
The Prince was saddened by the disappointment he had caused Teekhup and felt foolish for jeopardizing his own mission of freeing Eldritch for a tasty snack. He knew he was incapable of taming his cannibalistic instincts when thrown into a rage and was even more determined to find a cure for his bloodlust now that he had upset the Underboss as well. He promised Teekhup to never victimize another vulture unless it was truly necessary. Together they explored the abandoned lab and began tracking down the technical information they needed to recreate the serum the scientists had been working on. This was no easy task due to the time-consuming process of making the serum, along with the hordes of feral ghouls who continued to interrupt their research. Lucky for the Prince he had spent much of his youth running the Vault 76 library and was used to collecting, interpreting, and apply technical data to the real world. While he spent hours pouring over old medical books, Teekhup spent much of her time doing target practice on the skulls of incoming ghouls, until finally the serum had been perfected.
Although the serum seemed to weaken his strength, the Prince felt more alert than ever. With his new heightened senses, he felt he could see and hear things happening miles away and found that his thoughts and cravings of flesh seemed to dissipate ever so slightly. His head was much clearer which allowed him time to really absorb the medical journals at the facility and expand his knowledge of practical medicine. With only a week remaining before his redemption battle Teekhup and the Prince began to train vigorously. Teekhup trained him on how to use a bow practicing on the many ghouls flooding the facility. He began to think more creatively about devouring his prey after reading several logs on anatomy at the lab and seeing the many ways Teekhup herself had prepared food on their journeys. He began draining the ghouls of their blood and collecting them in jars to drink for later, he learned how to remove kidneys and pâté them into a preserve which he could eat at any time. He also began carving the skin of his victims to dry the flesh and save as a jerky to curb his desire for flesh whenever it arrived. He learned how to harvest precious organs from bodies and keep them fresh on ice within a cooler which he formed into a makeshift backpack. He felt prepared to face the vultures again, this time more in control of himself, and with more knowledge to offer up to secure his place among the raiders.
On the day of the redemption battle the Prince and Teekhup arrived at bandit town to see a large swath of Vulture Raiders waiting to see the blood sport. Apparently, Condor had sent word across the wasteland about the battle and had thought it a good idea to charge admission for the gang’s entertainment. The Prince did not mind this – he was used to being displayed in a cage, and this time he would have the ability to prove his worth to his audience. Epiphany had contracted a much larger much stronger raider to fight on her behalf – being the owner of the Vulture’s most popular and lucrative brothel she could not risk her own life when she had a business to run. The Prince did not mind though – he was up for a challenge. When the match began the raider charged at the Prince full force, but with his new heightened sense the Prince was able to outmanoeuvre the raider and sideswiped his rib cage with his deathclaw gauntlet. With the raider staggered, the Prince leapt up onto the balconies of the pit and fired one arrow through the head of his opponent. The arrow took his head clean off, and the body fell to the dusty floor with a thud. The prince leapt off the rafters and lunged a scalpel into the chest of the body and began harvesting the organs into his cooler.
Epiphany began crying out in rage as her friend’s organs were ripped from his own corpse as she stood and watched. The crowd began to chant angrily, and Condor leapt from her throne shooting her gun into the air demanding order. She demanded the Prince explain his brutalization of the corpse before a crowd of her followers. The Prince then explained the usefulness of collecting and harvesting organs from their victims for future treatments. He asked how many of their raiders had died simply from things which could have been cured from a blood transfusion, an organ transplant, a simple wound suturing. All these things he could cure given the time, the data, and of course the “resources”. Although the Prince’s methods could be quite harsh, and even downright immoral, the Condor began to see the usefulness of having a doctor as knowledgeable as the Prince. She agreed to pardon his transgressions because of his victory in the knife pit. So long as he never consumed another Vulture raider, as long as he could keep himself in check, and as long as he continued to provide medical services to the vultures the Underboss was happy to have his services. At then end of the day, she didn’t really care what happened to the organs of the vulture’s victims, and if the blood of their enemies could be made into stimpaks; why not put this cannibal to work? Perhaps she’d even let the Prince supply some of the kitchen with his own “mystery meat”…..