Salvagers

The salvagers are about 20 New California Republic former prisoners on a special work release program in Denver, salvaging stuff for NCR in exchange for their eventual freedom.

The scavengers in Denver are like a tribe of blue-collar workers, working 40, 50, 60 hours a week for little or no reward, desperately trying to crank out a life for themselves and their families back West. It’s like a blue-collar colony, and everything in the camp is designed to reinforce this, including the bus that takes them to and from their claims.

They may have only 2-3 really good Mechanics, and the rest are just good builders, scavengers, demolishers, and laborers. And there may not be a good electrician among them (except for Wagner, and he’s not very good). They're not really skilled, most of them are just laborers, so it's not like they can go anywhere else and make a good living for themselves. Plus, they've been here for 2 years or more and have a financial investment in what they've been doing. To leave now means throwing away 2 years of their lives and two years of work.

Salvagers get their power from various confiscated generators. They get water from underground tanks, and from the river through Denver, run through several filters, and even boiled with various purification tablets. Even though they are sick of dog, the dogs in Denver are a ready source of food. The scavengers in Denver have to make do with dog meat (of which there is plenty, but cook it well) and canned food, if they can find it (which is rarer than they thought). As for trading, the salvagers used to trade with no one until Galenski and his truck made his way south and struck a deal with them.

The Denver salvagers haven’t seen a woman in a very long time, so any females that show up are going to have some trouble. Porter may even assign a guard to watch over the female, maybe Jimmy, since no one in their right mind would fight him, and he might as well not have a dick.

Some salvager sites have a stash of ammo and supplies in case they get trapped there – and one salvager gives up the location of some of them in exchange for info.

The Denver scavengers talk about what the best buildings to scavenge are – hotels are not worth a lot, but hospitals and some office buildings with high computer connections are great. The following areas are gold mines: post office, construction building, manufacturing building, police station, gun stores, sporting good stores.

It’s impolite to talk about past crimes or inquire too deeply into a character’s history in Denver. And you really can’t do without a high Speech skill. (Same as in Black Canyon itself.)

Salvagers do not like to be called scavengers – that’s what ghouls are, they’re parasites; we’re doing good work here. Calling someone a "scav" is fighting words in the camp. "Digger" as an acceptable term.

"Building Crawling." As a joke, might want the scavengers to say that "we’re doing a basement crawl, a subway crawl, a skyscraper crawl," basically scav talk for a "dungeon crawl."

Slang: When solidifying a deal, they may say, "Will you guarantee it?" (Which reinforces the idea of "claims" in Denver) They often call Denver "Dog Town"

What happened at the old campsite? "Well, one moment, we'd just gotten off our shifts, when suddenly, there were dogs all over the 25 tier of the campsite. They were fucking insane - we must have shot dozens of them, but they didn't stop to tear up their own dead, like they usually do. So we had to ditch the crane and the generator. We lost one of our crew getting out (Dogbody), figure he's dog food, and a bunch of us took some nasty wounds - Jimmy patched us up. Thing is, even after we fled, they kept coming, and coming, some of them even jumped off the freeway to get after us, and they ain't never been that rabid. We lit the tires on fire, threw grenades, and nothing fucking scared them off. Now, we're just holed up here."

What do you know about Boulder? "We didn't even know there was anyone at Boulder until a couple of months back, when Jimmy T came rolling and was dumped off by Galenski. No idea what he done up there. Galenski told us that we wouldn't be welcome in Boulder. Boulder claims it's a genetic free zone, and the people there are really antsy about anyone who's been spending time in Denver... says we’re all diseased. They've agreed to trade with us, but they've threatened to shoot any scavenger who shows up within the borders... so for now, we just let things lie. As long as the shipments keep coming, no worries. What do you know about Galenski? He somehow got a huge truck working, so we're able to send him supplies of material north in exchange for some new food, medical supplies, and other shit we need to survive."