Vault-Tec University

Vault-Tec University, often abbreviated as VTU, is a location in the Forest region of Appalachia in 2102.

Background
Vault-Tec Corporation purchased Morgantown's local college in 2031 and renamed it to Vault-Tec University. With Vault-Tec's support and the increase in public interest in the company with the advent of the vault program, the university helped to revitalize Morgantown's economy.

Vault-Tec used VTU to train vault staff and overseers. Graduate students seeking to be certified as overseers were obligated to develop thesis papers and then test them as mock-overseers in VTU's simulation vault, a complete model vault built beneath the university; certification required completing a four-week stay within the vault and producing viable results from the experiment. VTU students voluntarily served as test-subject "vault dwellers."

Approximately one week before the Great War in 2077, a potential overseer and a group of students were sealed in the vault to test Project Lembas, a new food paste formulation designed to be much more nutritious and filling so that less would need to be produced to feed a vault's population. When the bombs fell, the vault's inhabitants experienced some tremors and equipment malfunctions, but assumed it was part of the test. Not long after, however, a student suffered a fatal heart attack, which the overseer confirmed to be the result of rapid arterial plaque build-up caused by the food paste. Unbeknown to the overseer and the vault dwellers, Harland Elliot, the Dean of Overseer Training, had an arterial plaquing agent added to the food paste in order to "test the general willpower of individuals and how they react to deaths caused by the food supply." The revelation came too late: since the students could no longer eat the food paste, that meant they had to survive on normal rations until the vault's time-locked door unsealed, but unknown to the overseer, the food paste had been unpopular from the start and the students had already consumed most of the rations in secret.

Though it meant giving up on certification, the overseer decided to contact his advisors outside the vault and have them open it up early to end the experiment. Unfortunately, no one responded. The desperate students came to believe that the overseer was lying to them and violently revolted. The overseer's last terminal entry notes that he had barricaded himself in his bedroom but was unsure that the door would hold until the vault door unlocked in two weeks. A number of vault dweller skeletons can be found in the overseer's office in front of the exit from the vault and the overseer's bedroom door, apparently all starved to death while trying to escape. Judging by the skeletons outside of the overseer's bedroom, the vault dwellers never got into the room. The overseer's skeleton can be found on the bed in their bedroom with a container of rat poison just under the bed within reach, pointing to suicide as the apparent cause of death.

Sometime after their relocation to Fort Defiance the Brotherhood of Steel made use of the facilities automated research terminal to analyze Scorched DNA samples. Knowing that there was a possibility they could be wiped out they left behind instructions that allow the player to continue the research.

Layout
The interior of the main (east) building of Vault-Tec University has become significantly dilapidated. Ceilings and walls have collapsed or been knocked open, and the ground floor rooms are infested by some feral ghouls.

Deeper inside lies the entrance to the VTU simulation vault, which links the interiors of all three buildings together. The entrance room is the office used by the simulation vault's mock-overseer, which contains several skeletons, a desk terminal holding records of the vault's last, failed experiment, and a wall terminal that unlocks the door into the vault proper. Docile Mister Handies, used to clean and maintain the facility, can be found in the rooms and passages.

The southern building contains only a small office occupied by feral ghouls and an entrance to the simulation vault.

The northern building is contains two floors with multiple rooms and an entrance to the simulation vault that leads to the "overseer's" room before heading down further to the facility.

Notable loot
Please note that these items do not always appear in the listed locations.
 * The Battle of Morgantown - In the green portable toilets next to a skeleton to the northeast of the university.
 * Automated research program 001: Scorchbeast - Holotape, found during Heart of the Enemy
 * Postcard from Elizabeth - Note, found in an apartment building just north of the Vault-Tec University.
 * First day of school
 * Last day of school
 * Vault-Tec bobbleheads:
 * In Room 202: Office of the Dean of Admissions, on a filing cabinet behind a cardboard box.
 * In the simulated vault, above the refrigerator.
 * Magazine:
 * On a table in the lounge.
 * On the teacher's desk in the classroom of the simulated vault.
 * Overseer's journal, entry 4 - Located on the second floor of the lobby in front of the door to the monorail station.
 * Plan: Chemistry workbench - Located in room 102: medical emergency care on a shelf at the foot of the bed.
 * Recipes:
 * In room B2: storage in a chem chest on a file cabinet in the middle of the room.
 * In room B3: food preparation lab.
 * In room B3: food preparation lab.
 * Next to the refrigerator in the kitchen of the simulated vault.
 * Next to the refrigerator in the kitchen of the simulated vault.

Staff

 * Harland Elliot, Dean of Overseer Training
 * Michael Blake, language professor
 * Dr. Angela White, VTU Business Administration Department
 * N. Volkmer, Dean of Physics

Students/Alumni

 * Drew Collingsworth, food replacement experiment
 * Liam Hornwright, relative of the Hornwrights of Hornwright Industrial
 * Shelby O'Rourke, researcher
 * Amy Kerry, researcher
 * Judith Blackwell, daughter of Senator Sam Blackwell
 * Vault 76 overseer, graduated
 * Penelope Hornwright, graduated class of 2070
 * Ella Ames, graduated with a PhD in medical science
 * Dassa Ben-Ami, student for PhD in anthropology
 * Tyrone Hayes, maintenance engineer

Appearances
Vault-Tec University appears only in Fallout 76.

Behind the scenes

 * Vault-Tec University's appearance and location is based on West Virginia University, an institution of higher learning within the state of West Virginia. The main building of Vault-Tec University shares many similarities with the real-world Woodburn Hall. However, the "VT" logo of the university more closely resembles that of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.


 * Project Lembas could be a reference to the lembas bread from The Lord of the Rings trilogy, food that would provide proper sustenance over long periods of time, much like what the food paste was supposed to do in the simulation vault.

Gallery
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