Vault City

Vault City was built with the help of a Garden of Eden Creation Kit by the vault dwellers who emerged from Vault 8. The city is built around the vault and run by the First Citizen. First Citizen Lynette runs Vault City with cold hands and an iron grip. The main style of the city is bureaucratic, sleek and antiseptic, with a lot of technology, rules, regulations and guards.

The city is automatically antipathic to all outsiders, and are pro-Slavers in policy, although they prefer the term "Servants". They claim that it's legitimate because they give the servants shelter, food and protection, but people like Thomas Moore object to this heavily, and calls it hypocrisy since they frown at those who openly call it slaves and do slaving (The Den, for instance). They won't share their technology with the outside world, either, because they view at everyone else as "thieves and baggarts" of the wasteland.

Generally, the only normal way to become a Citizen of Vault City is to be born into it. Personal intervention by the Senior Councilor (currently McClure) or the First Citizen (currently Lynette) can grant a non-citizen citizenship (though this is never done lightly). In addition, non-citizens can take a citizenship test (administered by the Proconsul, currently Gregory), which is intentionally designed to be so difficult as to be virtually impossible (for someone of extraordinary intelligence, perception, and luck, it might be done, but the overwhelming majority of Vault City Citizens would fail it if they were required to take it).

Full Citizens have access to all of Vault City, including the original Vault 8 itself, although few people still use it much, except for its medical bay, and it is mostly used for storage (including a huge number of Water Chips, which were accidentally shipped to Vault 8 instead of Vault 13, while Vault 8's second GECK was shipped to Vault 13 instead of Vault 8).

While Citizens of Vault City have a high material standard of living compared to most other places in the Wastes, they pay a price for it in the form of a crushing sense of conformity and regulation in their lives. Many -- perhaps most -- Vault City Citizens never see Vault City's external courtyard (more on that below), let alone another city. Possibly because of chromosomal damage, they are unable to conceive children naturally and must use artificial insemination techniques in cycles which produce uniformly aged generations of children. They are forbidden the use of drugs such as buffout, jet, psycho, mentats, and natural alcohol, though artificial alcohol is still used in bars.

Day passes are issued to non-citizens able to provide a bona fide reason for entering Vault City, such as being slave, uranium, gold, or gecko pelt traders (though generally they are charged a hefty fee), diplomats, or some other, exceptional reason, such as being a non-citizen agent of Vault City. Day passes allow a non-citizen access to Vault City proper during daylight hours, but not the original Vault 8 itself. While the customs office is nominally strict in its rules regarding the issuance of day passes, there are some corrupt elements willing to sell false citizenship papers.

Except slaves, non-citizens without a day pass are not permitted access to Vault City proper, but they are permitted access to the courtyard, a fenced-off area outside of the "real" Vault City. The courtyard is kept peaceful and protected from the raiders of the wastes by Vault City, but its denizens are subjected to harsh rules and regulations and taxed heavily. Denizens of the courtyard feel squeezed between the desolate horror of the wastes outside and the suffocating repression of Vault City: they hold both new arrivals from the wasteland and the Citizens of Vault City in contempt.

Holodisks by Vault City

 * Vault City Travel Log

Kryptopolis