Earle Williams

Earle Williams is a unique wendigo colossus located inside Appalachia's Monongah Mine.

Background
Earle Williams worked at a local mine just outside Monongah before the war. He was a single father to Maggie after his wife left early on. Hornwright Industrial bought the rights to the mine in April 2075, replacing the workers with Auto-Miners. At first, this seemed like a blessing to the town which was plagued by financial hardship. The Auto-Miners quickly and efficiently extracted all coal from the mine, fully exhausting every vein in January 2076.

As Hornwright Industrial prepared to leave the mine that January, Earle Williams and some other townsfolk drunkenly decided to steal some supplies from the mine before everything was taken away. Shortly thereafter, supervisor Deke Sykes blew up the entrance with everyone still inside. Though his daughter tried to dig him out with her bare hands, she was pulled away by others from Monongah and lied to that he and the others had simply skipped town. She didn't believe them and reasoned they were either paid off by the Hornwrights or were unwilling to pay for a rescue mission.

Meanwhile, in the mine Earle Williams and the others were facing a difficult decision: there was no food in the mine, but one of the miners, James, died from injuries sustained from the entrance collapsing. Several survivors agreed to cannibalize his corpse, including Williams, though others refused and stated they would rather die and be eaten than eat another person.

At first, Williams questioned whether he should eat a corpse, saying it "didn't seem right to him." After some time, as he and the others continued to eat those who died of starvation he felt his sanity slip away, in part due to the lack of a day and night cycle. Eventually, his hunger got the best of him and he found himself wanting to eat those not yet dead. When encountered in 2103, Earle Williams has mutated into a wendigo colossus.

Quests

 * Something Sentimental: Maggie Williams wants to know the fate of her father, and decides that the only way to know is for the mine's entrance to be cracked open with a nuke. Once A Colossal Problem is completed, Earle's pocket watch can be given to her and she can be either lied to or told the truth about her father.
 * A Colossal Problem: After the mine is cracked open via nuclear missile, the mine can be entered and Earle Williams can finally be put to rest.

Appearances
Earle Williams appears only in Fallout 76, introduced in The Legendary Run update.

Behind the scenes
In writing the backstory for Earle Williams and his associated event, main quest designer Victoria McCreary stated that she was inspired by the existing story of Monongah, where Hornwright Industrial exploited the town and its mine for resources.