Into The Glowing Sea

Into The Glowing Sea is the fifth main story quest $$

Quest Objectives

 * Intercept Brother Lucius and retrieve Mother Isolde’s message.
 * Say farewell to the settlements and prepare for the Glowing Sea’s extreme radiation.
 * Travel across the Glowing Sea and locate the Crater of Atom.

Detailed Walkthrough
Not long after the Gigapede's attacks, and unbeknownst to the player characters, the Last Son's excavating beneath Whately Research Facility has borne fruit, and he has activated a strange and ancient device discovered beneath the facility, causing creatures and inhabitants of the Glowing Sea to fall subject to vivid hallucinations, making them act even stranger or even more violent than usual.

Scene One: An Unlikely Ally
As the player characters leave a nearby settlement, they will hear the sound of gunshots followed by seeing Brother Lucius running toward them, fleeing from the gunfire of 6 Minutemen. Despite being armed, he is not fighting back, and observant player characters will notice he is tired and scared. The Minutemen explain that after recent events, they're not letting any Child of Atom that they come across live. Without the player characters' intervention, the Minutemen will attack and kill Lucius. Should the player characters convince the Minutemen to leave Lucius alone, they will curse them for their mistaken trust before leaving back to their camp, and should combat between the player characters and the Minutemen break out, the Minutemen will focus their fire on Lucius, and the player characters' settlement reputation with any Minutemen-friendly settlement will decrease by 1 rank, in addition, when there are only two Minutemen remaining they will attempt a retreat, and will go on to spread rumors that the player characters are allied with the Last Son of Atom.

After the encounter finishes, Lucius will thank the player characters for their help, and he will go on to tell them that he has been sent by Mother Isolde, the leader of his sect of the Children of Atom, to bring the player characters to their home in the Glowing Sea so that they may talk with her.

He will then hand the player characters a holotape and a Pip-Boy (or, if the Minutemen succeeded in killing him, they will be left behind as they carry his body away) containing a message from Mother Isolde. She will explain that she and her sect do not ally themselves with the Last Son of Atom or his beliefs which cause suffering to her flock and others, and ask the player characters to meet with her so that she may tell them where the Last Son's hidden base lies, and help put an end to his madness. Upon finishing the holotape, Lucius requests that they deal with any remaining business, before travelling to the Glowing Sea to meet with Mother Isolde. Should the player characters wish to head to the Crater of Atom without delay, they may accompany Lucius on his journey back. Player characters succeptible to radiation will need to acquire sufficiently strong radiation protection to journey into the Glowing Sea, should they wish to survive. The Glowing Sea functions as a point of no return for Winter of Atom, and the story's endgame begins once entered.

Scene Two: The Glowing Sea
As the player characters approach the Glowing Sea, amidst the radioactive snow-covered ruins and scorched earth, the soft green glow of the Crater of Atom is visible in the far-off distance. Brother Lucius, if he is alive, is able to deftly navigate the snowy wastes back to the Crater, and provides local knowledge of any passing creature or structure. Travelling to the Crater of Atom is a 24 hour trip.

Scene Three: Beloved Sister
Once the player characters make camp, or after a period of time, an observant player character that is keeping watch will notice something big is coming towards them from over the horizon. Shortly afterwards, they catch sight of the beast, a 30ft tall Glowing One, who beats her fists against her chest and charges towards them with a roar. Should the player characters not have stopped in a camp, The Glowing One (Formerly known as Sister Dawn) attacks them in the dangerous open of the Glowing Sea, adding its wintery conditions to the list of hazards they will need to tackle. Sister Dawn is intended as Winter of Atom's strongest enemy, although not its most intelligent, and attacks on instinct without much thought. Once the second round of combat begins, 4 Children of Atom soldiers from Mother Isolde's sect arrive to aid the player characters, led by a young woman Brother Lucius recognises as called Sister Gertrude.

Thanks to her arrival, the player characters can easily flee from the encounter and leave the Children of Atom to fight her if they wish to, however doing so will lead to Sister Dawn massacring Sister Gertrude and her Soldiers, causing the player characters to potentially re-encounter Sister Dawn at a later time. Should the player characters stay to fight, the Children of Atom will survive, and Sister Gertrude will introduce herself to the player characters, explaining that Mother Isolde tasked her with assuring they made it through the Glowing Sea to the Crater of Atom in one piece. She explains that the Last Son of Atom was almost certainly behind Sister Dawn's transformation, and requests that they be given time to pray and mourn their fallen sister before continuing onto the Crater of Atom, which the player characters can either wait for, or depart without their company. The remainder of the journey is without incident, and after a short trek the player characters reach the Crater of Atom, a massivley irradiated bomb crater in the heart of the Glowing Sea, it's radioactive glow tinting the sky a yellow-green.

The Fallout
The quest completes upon arriving at the Crater of Atom, with Mother Isolde praying that the player characters are the answer to the Commonwealth's problems. Should the player characters have a reputation rank of 0 with the Crater of Atom, they will be denied entry until or unless they prove that they are allies by slaying Sister Dawn. If Brother Lucius survives, he will speak well of the player characters, granting them 1 rank of settlement reputation. In addition, if Sister Dawn was slain, another rank of settlement reputation will be granted, with a boost in denizen outlook alongside it should Sister Gertrude have also survived. However, if the player characters killed Brother Lucius, the Minutemen will have preached the tale far and wide with news having reached Crater already, as such their settlement reptuation will be decreased by one rank and the denizen outlook will descend a level.

Enemies

 * Brother Lucius
 * Minuteman Rifleman
 * Sister Dawn
 * Children of Atom Soldier
 * Glowing One