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, 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 Maggie tried to dig her father 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.

In the mine, Williams and the others slowly began to lose their sanity due to starvation and the lack of a day and night cycle. One of the miners, James, died from injuries sustained from the entrance collapsing, and in desperation, Earle and the other survivors considered eating the corpse. Many refused, stating they would rather die than eat another person. At first, Williams questioned whether he should do so, saying it "didn't seem right to him," but facing death, gave in. As he and the others continued to eat others who died, he escalated, commenting to himself that he wanted to eat those who were not yet dead.

During this time in the mine, Williams recorded a holotape for Maggie, titled "A father's goodbye." When the Vault Dwellers encounter him, he has mutated into a wendigo colossus.

Characteristics

 * Creature· Cryptid· Wendigo colossus· Boss· Combat music type 4b

Resistances:
 * Earle Williams has passive perk which reduces all incoming damage by 80%.

Attacks
 * Earle will switch between ranged and melee combat styles once every 25–35 seconds.
 * Earle will summon wendigo spawns as he switches into melee combat style (30 second cooldown).
 * Although Earle will be more aggressive in his melee combat style, he is quite passive during his ranged attack patterns.

Body part multipliers:

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.

Drops

 * Legendary item
 * Stimpaks
 * Caps
 * Wendigo colossus vocal sac

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.