When I finally awoke I immediately started up my Pipboy. I knew already that it wasn't the god level item it was in the games but I did know that it gave unparalleled knowledge of the users body and help a vast amount of knowledge for survival. There was no bullet time VATS or sub dimensional storage. But this stuff could be slightly mimicked via the Pipboys chem injector. The pipboy could help with organizing yourself and what you have while keeping track of anything you want.
However all of its abilities were irrelevant compared to its health monitoring. My Pipboy 3000 MK 3 was unparalleled in its health care systems. I hadn't looked into the medical field much but I understood that this was one of that fields pinnacles. It could track anything about your body and do scans on others. It could even help with doing surgery.
If I wanted a long and healthy life I needed something that could do all of this and the pipboy I was now wearing was just that. As the pipboy started up my fingers flew around the device, manipulating the screen to show what the pipboy had on my health. The most glaring problems stood out in red on a small vault boy image. A small box in the corner gave solutions for the problems with the problem it was referring to flashing. My liver was what it suggested I look into fixing first. An addictol sprayed into the Pipboys chem injector almost immediately turned the liver image from red to yellow. The small box changed to saying I'd need to wait for the liver to be fully cleaned by the addictol and that I should prepare for the side effects of using the chem.
The side effects as I already knew hit me a few minutes later as I was reading the next solution. Dizziness and nausea halted my reading for a bit before I got back to problem solving. The next problem was something I'd seen coming. Cancer, it was an ever present problem in this world and I knew I'd get it some day. This was obviously not solvable currently. While the skin cancer was most easily removed, the lung cancer was not. If I wanted to have a solution to that I'd need a cybernetic lung. I'd need the BOS technology for that.
I ignored the cancer problem and went to last glaring problem. Asthma. It was a deadly problem in the wasteland as lack of oxygen or other breathing problems could easily cause your death in multiple ways. The most obvious fix was that of the lung cancer. Replace the lungs with cybernetic versions. It was also very obvious as to what was giving me the asthma. Lung cancer and internal injuries not healing correctly. I'd gotten multiple chest injuries over the years and stimpacks weren't miracle cures for all injuries. For now I'd have to live with the asthma as it wasn't currently correctable and wasn't a massive problem.
After the major problems came a slew of other issues. Most were minor incurable problems but some were solved with medications. The magical little device on my arm was proving is sheer usefulness in its capabilities for healing. Eventually I started getting up and moving around after fixing what I could of my body. While putting on clothes and armor I remembered the gas mask I'd been provided and hung it around my neck after sizing it to myself.
The could easily guess that the fog here was bad to breathe and was likely the cause for the strange freckles and scarring the people of the town had. Why they didn't move away I had no idea, but this place was definitely causing them mutations. I ate a high calorie meal while dressing and left my room after going over all my stuff. My eyebot was setting on the floor to watch for intruders or thieves. The stuff I'd gotten from my car and the people here all stuffed into a large duffle. My ripper sat on my hip alongside multiple sidearms. Two rifles sat beside my bed with ammo boxes stacked around them.
On the shelf was some miscellaneous items and food. My purified water collector, taken from my car, sat on my bed almost completely disassembled to be remade as a smaller device. Hidden in my pillow was the fusion core from the storage building as I didn't what it found. It probably wasn't the best place to hide it but any thief that got by my eyebot would grab what was easiest before booking it away due to the noise taking out the eyebot would create.
Finally as I left my room I grabbed the issued long rifle given by the tribe. I'd start learning about the Ecus and how to utilize them today and the rifle was apparently part of the process.
When I got to the Ecus grounds, I found Gina and a, relatively tall, man speaking with a group of the boys of the tribe. They were all wearing red and brown, and were a generally rowdy bunch. Gina went around them as the man corralled them. "They are the legion initiates. They will be trained to be heavy infantry and cavalry troops and some will be picked up by superior officers for higher training."
I nodded at her greeting explanation. It made perfect sense. The weapons, gear, mount, and training would make them true elites. They seemed to me like conscripted samurai as they were elite ranged cavalry. It was also rather clear to me that the earlier forces of this tribe had likely disappeared into the legion or were wiped out in a battle. I would have heard of elites such as them if they had any kind of prominence. As the man led the initiates in learning, Gina tutored me alongside the boys.
It wasn't much different from what I knew of horse riding but was much rougher and held even more danger as most of the Ecus would attack without hesitation. Gina eventually separated me from the younger group to start actual training. We spent the next five hours together in a stable with a very tame Ecus. By tame I meant that I didn't have to constantly avoid the hind legs of the teeth of the massive beast.
At some point in her teaching me how to put a saddle on it, the Ecus finally managed to do something violent. It wasn't horrible however. I'd pulled a hair and immediately corrected the mistake but by the time I did that it had latched onto my shoulder. It's more omnivorous teeth bit into my shoulder plates but no damage was done. This Ecus had been raised by senex Longinus and was Gina's Ecus.
The bite left me sore from the force of the bite but it had only been a warning to not make the mistake again. Gina had treated the literal monster horse like a particularly big dog and babied it after that. The horse seemed to even pick up on the stink eye she had jokingly given me and had even swatted me with its tail. The pair eventually dropped my minor screw up after multiple joking jabs at me and we went back to learning. Before lunch Gina finally had me get on the beast.
I hauled myself onto its saddle and sat there to listen to every word Gina practically beat into me. The most fun she had however was when I showed visible discomfort at the Ecus' eyes. The three shining black orbs watched me at every moment of its head. The worst part was when the too intelligent third eye stared into my eyes as the beast looked up.
It was incredibly painful to look at as the stare sunk into me. After a long look I finally looked away from its eyes to Gina. The Ecus gave a possibly amused snort and tilted its head to Gina as if waiting for her words like I was. Finally she spoke. "Not many can hold the gaze of an Ecus for long. While you certainly didn't hold her gaze for long it was still longer than many of our trained riders. The triplex gaze has always been a fearsome sight on the battlefield and made our tribes riders infamous. Even the Caesar himself referred to them as being too conscius. Too aware. Those that can hold the stare for more than thirty seconds are given the Visus Onus." She tilted her head to the side, pulling her clothes some to reveal three ovals tattooed on her collarbone.
"The mark signifies a person who can bare the burden of the Ecus gaze. Very few throughout the tribe have this mark and even less outsiders."
I nodded at her explanation and she continued my teaching. It was well into the night by the time I got back to my room and passed out from the harassment that the horse had given me. Nothing had happened that hurt me but it had steadily worn out my trained body. I remembered when I'd been on a football team in my past life and the steady wear that was beaten into me every day by endless drills and exercise.
I passed out after a good meal and started the next day like I had previously. Soon my days of learning started blurring together as I eventually started riding an old and tame Ecus. Before I knew it a few weeks had passed and I was beginning the taming of my own Ecus. It was a nasty and violent beast but days of fighting it got me onto its back. The larger than average female Ecus had been noted as way meaner than others but I had always liked taking things slow.
In my third week with this tribe I dragged the beast to its knees in exhaustion and finally put a saddle on it. When I finally took her down I was prompted by Gina to name my Ecus. I had been horribly tempted to call her magnabitch to accurately describe her in Latin but the senex had somehow found out about that and scolded me on naming her properly.
Eventually I settled on Elizabeth due to her being queen like in many ways. Longinus had approved of the name as most who heard it were simply confused as to why that name. Most of them had given their Ecus name in Latin but Elizabeth was not Latin. They didn't have the knowledge to understand that it was the name of an old world queen.
The old man had explained to me that he had some books on Roman's given to him by the legion and he recognized the name form somewhere in them. He was a strange person but I understood that he only truly cared for his people and not the legion. Additionally I didn't believe the part about him getting books on the Romans from the legion. Stuff like that would only harm Caesars efforts at control by informing him people that they shouldn't actually be following him as he clearly wasn't remaking the Roman Empire.
In my fourth week I was able to mount Elizabeth and begin actually taming her. Her violent and brutal actions against me were mostly thwarted by outside assistance but I could eventually tire her out by literally tying myself to her. Gina and others had laughed at my plan but it had kept me on my Ecus as she did her best to throw me off and trample me.
My small holy grail also proved invaluable again as it allowed for targeted healing of any damage I took while taming. The first time she had thrown me I'd landed on my shoulder and some bones broke. A stimpack in my Pipboys injector had taken care of the injury in two days and I'd gotten right back to taming. The long rifle had become part of my arsenal as my second month started. When its magnetic field was activated it could deliver mild shocks to humans and slightly deterrent shocks to the Ecus.
It was a great guide tool when trying to ride Elizabeth and would prevent other Ecus from getting close to us. The untamed Ecus of the Ecus grounds were hostile if anyone was riding in their enclosure but they all knew the long rifles and stayed away. It helped that most tamed Ecus seemed to hold themselves as higher beings compared to their untamed counterparts.
A person taming an Ecus always rode alongside a rider with a tamed Ecus to show the taming Ecus that they were 'superior' to the others. This helped reinforce the rider's position in the Ecus' view and eased taming. As my seventh week began I started horseback warfare. It was a teaching that was constantly ongoing in the tribe. Elizabeth and I had been deemed able to join and had begun riding with others outside of the Ecus grounds near the eighth week.
In my ninth week I was given Ecus rider armor. My gifted gas mask was replaced with an old world gas mask like that of the Lonesome Road DLC. The main difference was that the gas mask came with a combat helmet and goggles. The gear made for a beautiful and intimidating helmet and also gave the tribe the ability to introduce their main weapon on the battlefield.
They had gas grenades. Hand thrown or 40mm rounds. They didn't use explosives. To much chance to hurt their own horses. They used pilon technology to compress the fog of Yellowstone into a radioactive gas. It allowed for mass area denial, forced enemy formation movement, and obstructed their movement in the gas. I'd taken scans of multiple people of the tribe and found they had a weird mutation that combined their immune systems with their liver and skin. It was a weird connection that made their cells into something like natural radaway.
The cells gathered radiation from the body and moved it very slowly to the liver or skin. The liver somehow pushed the radioactive cells to become part of people's excrement, and the skin made the radioactive cells into the freckles that dotted their skin. The scars everyone had were from larger freckles being removed in some way. I took multiple blood samples and used some makeshift cryogenics to freeze the samples for later study.
I hooked the cryogenic system to my eyebot after remaking his fusion battery chamber to take his original battery and the fusion core. I replaced its laser with a much stronger one and even mounted the mini fog pilon to it. The little guy had even started developing a personality after I removed his inbuilt holotape and replaced it with the brick sized version from the storage building.
The little guy had even woken me with the eerie radio of this place which turned out to be old world radios lost in the fog. The tribes expeditions into the area had eliminated most of them but a few still reached this area from the far unexplored parts of Yellowstone.
After my science stuff I started looking into armoring Elizabeth. Some of the Ecus, mainly older ones owned by older riders, had armor. Senex Longinus had revealed that the tribe had some hidden military production machinery and that the gas mask helmet and goggles were made by them. The polymer material the tribe could make wasn't what the machines were meant to use but they could still make some things without much worry of losing materials or damaging the machines.
One of their machines made the lamellar like plates and other made some kind of ballistic fiber. These to products were combined to make the armor of an Ecus, resulting in high protection, with low weight and easy maintenance.
In my tenth week I was brought to the side by Longinus to speak with him. He asked when I'd be going as he was concerned about my mission from Caesar. When I told him I'd was ready to leave he informed me that the scouting team Gina led was going out the next day to check for movement from other tribes in the clear lands.
The clear lands were the areas to the east that had no fog. At that I thanked him for all his efforts and hospitality then left to make my final preparations.