Dunwich Building



The Dunwich Building is the southwesternmost point on your map, a dark, mazy set of interior ruins populated by all types of ghouls. A number of audiologs and computer terminals provide visitors with background on the building, while in caves underneath the building, the author of the logs and a handful of Feral Ghouls are seemingly worshipping an alien, skull-studded obelisk.

The building is broken up into three parts, the Dunwich Building Entrance, Dunwich Building Ruins, and the Virulent Underchambers. The deeper you go into the Dunwich Building, the darker it becomes, eventually requiring the use of the Pip-boy light. Persistent explorers will be rewarded with the Melee Bobblehead.

There is a one-way exit from the Virulent Underchambers to an area quite near the entrance. The bobblehead can be found on the ground just before the exit. There is also one of several Blue Pass cards to be obtained from a ghoul in the building proper.

There are several 'supernatural' moments within the building itself: doors opening all on their own, objects suddenly being thrown across the room, and a 'flashback' moment when the player enters one particular room, showing the building as it was, as well as a figure standing some distance away.

In the Virulent Underchambers, the player can discover the creator of the increasingly demented audiologs, now mutated into a frenzied Ghoul, along with a handful of Feral Ghouls, worshipping the obelisk. Killing Jaime, who is armed with a Chinese Assault Rifle, also counts as a positive Karma act. The obelisk in the center is irradiated about half way up, to a max of 15 rads/s. Also once the player crosses the threshold of the doorway into the cave where both the obelisk, Jamie and a few ghouls are located, the player can hear an eerie voice if the volume is up high enough along with the Effects part of the sound setting.

Background
In happier times, the building was owned by Dunwich Borers, LLC. A locked computer terminal midway through the building contains audio transcripts of a company executive, first praising the release of a new drill, and later capturing the sound as the bombs dropped.

Near the entrance, you find a set of five audiologs left by an unfortunate visitor, Jaime, to the building. As you proceed further inside, you find four more audiologs documenting his transformation into one of the building's deranged inhabitants. The final audiolog found within the building, though mostly rambling by an insane, mutated Ghoul, mentions the name "Alhazred" several times.

Holotape Story
Jaime, a traveler, set out searching for his father who left him alone in a hospital and "went crazy" after getting a mysterious book. Jaime followed his father south from an unknown location across vast distances. He fell in with another group of travelers who, as it turns out, were violent Raiders (why they did not immediately attack Jaime himself is unclear) who killed another group of travelers for a "sack of rotten vegetables." Jaime secretly resolved to get away from this dangerous group as soon as he was able--the opportunity presented itself when the raiders prepared to attack a group of traders. Jaime turned on the Raiders, earning the gratitude of the traders, who were able to show him the direction his father had gone. Jaime followed his father's trail, finding snares his father had set for food, to the Dunwich Building. He noted that he had heard the raiders tell "spook stories" about "zombies" inside, which were apparently true. (Jaime had somehow never encountered a Ghoul before now). He eventually found and/or killed his father, who had also mutated into a ghoul. He picked up the strange book his father had been keeping and decided to rest for a bit, sleeping against the strange obelisk in the bottom of the building. When he awoke, he too was a mutated, insane ghoul. The book's eventual whereabouts are unknown.

Lovecraft Connection
Much of the Dunwich Building refers to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.
 * The area, especially the company Dunwich Borers, is a reference to H.P. Lovecraft's masterpiece "The Dunwich Horror", although many of the other references are from other Lovecraft works.
 * The Alhazred mentioned in the final audiotape is the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, author of the imaginary book Kitab al-Azif (the Necronomicon)
 * Fallout's ghouls are not much different from Lovecraft's ghouls (for example, as they appear in Pickman's Model).
 * The obelisk underneath the building is not taken directly from Lovecraft, but would not be out-of-place in one of his short stories.
 * The mysterious book that drives its holder/reader mad has been used as a plot device; both as the fictional "Necronomicon" as well as in stories contemporary to Lovecraft, particularly "The King in Yellow"
 * Lovecraft used a type of radiation as the villain in one of his most famous stories, "The Colour Out of Space", foreshadowing the radiation induced transformations of the Ghouls in the Dunwich Building.

Appearances
appears only in Fallout 3.