| Salvation | |
| |
| General Information | |
| Establishment: | 2177 |
| Status: | Stable |
| Location Information | |
| Location: | Unknown |
| Societal Information | |
| Population: | Approx. 200+ |
| Notable Individuals: | Roman Winslow
Maryanne Winslow Dinah Li Jonathan Blake Jennifer Chou |
| Factions: | Salvation Slavers |
| Notable Events: | Founding
Big Monty's Raid Winslow Takeover |
Salvation is a fortified, medium-sized settlement turned slaver haven located in the wastelands of post-nuclear America, built from the ruins of an old street within the still standing section of an old Pre-War city, the name of which is lost to history.
Founded by a group of wastelanders in 2177, the town of Salvation has enjoyed something of a steady period of growth since its founding, and throughout its existence has attracted people from all walks of life from traders, settlers, wastelanders, guns-for-hire and, nowadays, raiders and slavers.
It is currently inhabited by slavers, slaves, mercenaries and criminals, and who do not fit in at other, more lawful settlements. While the town does live off of the trading of goods from travelling merchants, the vast majority of its income comes from the slave trade.
Background[]
Beginnings[]
"Jesus Christ, I thought that windbag'd never shut up!”— Thomas Garfield I and a founding citizen of Salvation
The site of what would one day become Salvation began as a street, located in the ruins of an ancient city that stood before the Great War. Interestingly, the name of the city became lost to history as surely as the city itself has (with the exception of a few places that are still standing) been wiped off the map. In the latter half of the twenty-second century, around a hundred years after the bombs had fallen, a large group of wastelanders led by a man named Thomas Garfield bunkered down inside the ruins of the city after they were caught in a particularly vicious sand storm on their search for a new place to settle.
Although a few of their number were lost either to the storm or to the feral ghouls that called the ruins their home, the majority of the group survived and, despite their losses, thought it was lucky of them that they had come across the ruins when they did, otherwise the storm might have claimed them all.
It was the idea brought to the group by Garfield that they clear the rest of the area of the ferals and whatever else lived inside the ruins of the street they chose as the foundations of their new settlement and then claim it as their own, and to build their home atop the place that had been their 'Salvation.' The discussion came to a vote, and with a near-unanimous decision the town of Salvation was founded.
Big Monty's Raid[]
By the 2260s Salvation had become something of a large settlement (at least in comparison to other settlements in the wasteland) and trading centre, but still faced common wasteland threats. In 2267, a particularly large gang of raiders, almost a hundred strong, had taken over a nearby Red Rocket gas station and launched a series of raids on the town, each one more brutal than the other. The raids were successfully fought off by the town’s defending militia, but each attack managed to sap Salvation’s strength little by little, until the town was defended only by a small handful of people. One raid even claimed the life of the town’s sheriff, Sandra Knight.
It seemed as though Salvation was to die a death of a thousand cuts, as the mayor of the time had put it, but like the ruins that sheltered the founding settlers from the storm almost a hundred years prior, the settlement’s namesake came to the people of Salvation once again, in an unlikely form.
A group led by Big Monty himself staged the final raid on Salvation, but the attack ended abruptly when Big Monty was shot in the head and killed by a couple of wanderers who went by the names of Roman and Maryanne Winslow. With their leader’s death the raiders became confused and directionless, and Big Monty’s so-called ‘successors’ fought amongst themselves to establish their leadership of the gang. In the end, the raiders fractured and eventually scattered in every direction.
Salvation had once again come to the town, but it would soon come to light just how fickle salvation can be.
The Winslow Takeover[]
After the fracturing of Big Monty’s raider gang, made possible in thanks to the raider boss’ death, the Winslows were welcomed into the settlement and hailed as heroes by the people of Salvation. The deed had earned the siblings a lot of good will with the townsfolk. Good will they were both quick to use to their advantage. It wasn’t so obvious back then, but the Winslows wanted Salvation just as surely as Big Monty did, although their methods differed from his. Monty was like a fist to the face, hard and direct, but the Winslows--especially Maryanne--was like the knife in Salvation’s back. A knife that the town did not see coming until it was too late.
The Winslows' influence spread throughout the town. Through blackmail, threats and subterfuge, they gained friends and turned people against one another, and slowly but surely, the siblings built their power base.
The day eventually came in the later months of 2268, when Roman, Maryanne and a few of the underlings they gained influence over opened the gates to the settlement, and allowed a large group of raiders--the same raiders of Big Monty’s old gang--inside. It was revealed many months after the takeover that the Winslows were actually high-ranking members of the raider gang, the boss’ seconds in command in fact. And indeed the gang was in on their plot to take over the town. Most of them were not privy to Roman shooting Big Monty dead, but the brutal nature of the raider lifestyle usually meant such violent changes in leadership were commonplace, and the men eventually fell in line. And with the promise of a whole town to do with as they pleased they were quick to side with the Winslows' plan as soon as they were informed of their true intentions.
The takeover was swift and brutal, and Roman himself slain the mayor execution-style before he and Maryanne announced to the surviving townsfolk that they were in charge from now on. The town of Salvation now belonged to Roman and Maryanne Winslow.
The Darkest Days of Salvation[]
(A small group of wastelanders is then summarily executed in the streets by Winslow's men)
"Not that we don't occasionally have a troublemaker or two who need to be educated, but even they have their uses. It's stunning how effective making an example of someone can be for the rest of Salvation's citizens. But I digress. The second thing you'll notice is that we do not sell cheap merchandise. Every slave here is second to none; they are healthy, strong and they're also...properly motivated.”— Maryanne Winslow
In the years that passed under the Winslows' rule, Salvation slowly transformed into the thing that it had become today. Every day, the worst of the worst--raiders, slavers and other assorted scum--came to Salvation, and the town became a corrupt shadow of itself, with many of the original inhabitants becoming either enslaved and sold off. Many of the newly captured slaves had plenty of technical skills, and were considered by Maryanne to be too useful to sell off, and so they were kept on as Salvation’s unwilling labour force. The rest of Salvation's former inhabitants were lucky enough to have been away from the settlement when the takeover happened, including the previous mayor’s surviving child and his wife.
The Winslows' reign was a tyrannical one. Every day, people were sold like chattel--that is, if they weren’t being worked to death by the slavers anyway. There had been several attempts on both Maryanne's and Roman's lives, whether it was by a bounty hunter looking for a payday, an ambitious slaver with eyes on their throne or even a slave who felt they had nothing to lose, and every time they failed the response from the two siblings has always been swift and brutal. A popular punishment of theirs was to release them into the wastes, while Roman and a party of his choosing have their fun hunting them down like he was hunting radstags.
There were always those slavers that considered such hunting parties a waste of time and good muscle, but none of them could really deny their entertainment value, or the fear his brand of retribution evoked should anybody else feel brave enough to take on the rulers of Salvation.
Deborah Dean, Slaver Town Doctor[]
Before the fall of 2272, the town had to rely on travelling physicians (with their accompanying armed guards after the Winslows took over) who were passing through Salvation on their way to other settlements. That changed with the arrival of Deborah Dean, formerly a military doctor from The Hub in the New California Republic. It was a case of the town's good fortune meeting the doctor's bad, as Deborah had arrived in Salvation the same way as many others did: with a slave collar around her neck.
Deborah was travelling east and then north from the Mojave Wasteland and into Utah to trade her services as a doctor to the New Canaanites, along with her Mormon husband, Jacob. She and her husband were on the way through the pass into Utah, when they were captured by a party of slavers out raiding for some new meat. Jacob was killed by accident while he and Deborah was trying to escape, and she was beaten until she complied with their wishes.
The doctor was considered to be too old to be sold as a sex slave--unless there was a customer with a thing for ill-tempered, churlish older women, as one slaver had joked--and so Deborah was assigned to the town's labour force, to work until she was sold and forced to work some more. Four months later, and the doctor was outside the walls with a group of other slaves, scavenging materials for the town, when a young slaver collapsed in front of her. She recognised the symptoms of Psycho overdose right away, and debated whether she should save the slaver from his poor life choices. After all, people like him had killed her husband and doomed her to a life as a slave. But, as a doctor, she couldn't just let him die, and with the help of a Nuka Cola (she was thirsty), Deborah Dean saved his life.
The incident had reached the ears of the Winslows, who blessed their good fortune that one of their slaves was actually a doctor that seemingly knew what she was doing. They allowed Deborah to take over caretaker duties for the other slaves, to keep them alive and healthy enough to be sold to interested buyers, and to make sure that the working girls were clean. But as the years passed, Deborah grew increasingly more bitter and frustrated, not just with her own situation, but also with the slaves' inability and unwillingness to fight back against their captors. She healed broken bones, patched up some of the abuses of their captors and delivered children who were fated to be born with collars around their necks. After a decade or so trading her services as Salvation's doctor, Deborah eventually earned enough caps to buy her freedom.
But by that time she was a changed woman; she had grown cold and contemptuous of the slaves' weaknesses. Since Salvation was in major need of skilled medics, she stayed on as the town's overworked and underappreciated doctor, doing the job she had been doing for years. But appreciation fell short when it was compared to the money she made, taking the wealthy slavers for all she could.
Resistance[]
In the summer of 2284, a newcomer moved into the town. A traveller by the name Jonathan Blake walked in through the gates and made Maryanne a generous offer on the Hotel Alexandria, paying her more than some would say the establishment was worth but Maryanne cared very little about what others would have said; if the new guy wanted the hotel then it was his. She was also even generous enough to throw in a couple of their latest sex slaves to work the hotel as prostitutes. Roman was not so sure about the newcomer. Everybody who came to Salvation--not as a slave anyway--was 'dirty' in some way or another, and Blake was showing him that he was anything but.
Of course, Maryanne was in complete agreement with Roman about the new guy, although she was not so much an animal as to have him killed simply for appearing too clean. Still, she didn't trust that squeaky clean image of his either, and so she secretly instructed the slaves she had sent to the Alexandria to spy on the newcomer and confirm that either he was as he seemed, or that he was dirtier than he appeared to be. They would perhaps have Blake killed some other time.
As far as the Winslows and their men knew, in the years since he came into town Jonathan Blake had exactly been who he seemed to be. They had learned that he was a former soldier who came into some small wealth and decided to become a bartender, and that was it. However, Jonathan Blake was a careful man, and his reasons for being in Salvation were far more than they seemed, but he was always careful to keep his true intentions to himself.
Jonathan Blake was really Thomas Garfield III, the son and surviving child of Salvation’s previous mayor, come to liberate his home from the slavers and exact revenge on Roman and Maryanne for the murder of his father and the perversion of his home. He was a member of an underground network of men and women who were dedicated to wiping out slavery in their region of the wasteland, and he volunteered to be their man on the inside purely for those reasons. Over the years, he and a small group of trusted partners set up a secret underground railroad to help slaves escape their captors, stockpiled weapons and slowly gathered strength for their resistance. But it was Jonathan’s opinion that despite their efforts they were still not ready to liberate Salvation, and the task was harder still under the watchful eyes of Maryanne's prostitutes, whom he knew were her spies whether they wanted to be or not.
Jonathan wanted them dealt with, but he did not want to kill them, for fear that might raise an alarm with the Winslows. A slave’s life was nothing to men and women like them anyway, and if nothing else Maryanne would have simply replaced them with more spies with the excuse that she was feeling ‘generous.’ Jonathan could not simply bring them into his confidence either, out of concern that they might go to their mistress and inform her of Blake’s duplicity, which was a sure way of getting killed. In a way Jonathan felt sorry for the whores under his roof. He understood what people like the Winslows might have promised them to spy for him, and he understood how powerful an incentive like freedom from slavery could be to motivate them. He, just like them, was caught between a rock and a hard place. At least for the time being.
The Arrival of the Mercenary[]
"How about you save your threats for someone who's actually scared of you, lady. It's pretty simple: I'm here to get paid. There's money here, right?"
"So you're a mercenary? Heh! A mercenary with some balls, it seems. I can't remember the last time somebody talked to either one of us like that. Sure, there's money here--a whole lot of it-- and maybe if you play your cards right some of that wealth'll go your way."
"A discussion for another time, brother. But in the mean time...welcome to Salvation, Ms. Chou.”— Maryanne Winslow, Jennifer Chou and Roman Winslow
In the opening months of 2287, Salvation received another new addition to the town in the form of Jennifer Chou, a mercenary from the New California Republic. Although she was a long way from the NCR, Jennifer carried herself as though she belonged among the scum that called Salvation its home. Not that it stopped some of the town’s inhabitants from taking a look at this lone traveller, in her combat armour and carrying a laser rifle, from thinking she had plenty of things on her with some value to them. Not too long after she stepped through the gates, a small group of slavers approached Jennifer with the intent to take everything she had and then slap a shock collar around her neck. The decision proved...unwise.
In the end, most of the slavers that attacked the mercenary were dead, and Jennifer was brought before the Winslows, where Maryanne promptly demanded what she was doing killing their men. She answered him with a simple reply: “I’m here to get paid.”
That a single woman could take out a not inconsiderable number of his men impressed Roman, and so he allowed the mercenary to stay and conduct her business, even promising to have some work for her from time to time. He was even impressed enough that he wanted the mercenary to join their organisation. Meanwhile, Maryanne secretly directed her spies to keep an eye on Chou. Her brother might be impressed with the merc’s talent for killing, but she didn’t trust her for a second.
And that lack of trust was well-founded, for indeed Jennifer Chou was in Salvation to get paid: she was a bounty hunter, and there was a substantial reward on both Maryanne and Roman’s heads back in the NCR.
During her stay, Jennifer kept her eyes and ears open. She figured out who the players in Salvation were, learned who had the biggest bounties, planned on how to get them and all the while she hired herself out to the very people she planned to collect on at some point. She made the acquaintance of the bartender, Jonathan Blake, and found something of an ally in him. He was the kind of guy who would be more than happy to see the slavers get what was coming to them, and when she eventually learned what his own intentions for Salvation were she was amused by how their goals happened to coincide. She thought his cause was a lost one, however, but she was happy to take his money, had he ever decided to hire her.
Jonathan, for his part, was actually on the fence about the mercenary. He recognised that she would have been a valuable asset to his resistance movement, but he couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t just sell him out as soon as she had taken his money. He thought it was a shame, really; she seemed like the best of a bad bunch but a mercenary’s true loyalties, after all, laid with their self interest. He would keep an eye on her anyway, however.
She had also gotten to know one of the prostitutes at the Hotel Alexandria, Alejandra Martinez, very well also. Although Jennifer found sexual slavery truly abhorrent, she had to give off at least the illusion that she was enjoying everything that Salvation had to offer an individual such as herself. And so she visited her quite often, although she refused to have sex with her. Instead she paid for the pleasure of her company and nothing more than that, plus a little extra to tell everyone she did what she was supposed to be doing with her. She even found herself being attracted to the prostitute, eventually. One evening after being paid for her company, Alejandra decided to make a choice, something she has seldom been able to since her capture, and she spent the night with the mercenary.
In addition to her mercenary work, Jennifer had also been busy collecting on some of those bounties. In regards to bring them in dead or alive, the mercenary preferred the latter. Granted, the payout was often less than was offered if taken alive, but dead was a sure thing with no worry about escape attempts or getting her throat slit in her sleep. She picked her targets carefully, took them out while they were beyond the city walls or while they transported their slaves and then disposing of the bodies, but not before taking their pictures as proof of death for the bounty offices back home.
By the time the Winslows realised something was amiss, something that couldn’t easily be explained by raiders, careless slavers or super mutant attacks, Jennifer had already amassed thousands of NCR dollars worth of bounties. But she was not done with Salvation just yet. There were still plenty of paydays in town, waiting to be collected, and she was saving the biggest for last.
Layout[]
The town occupies a section of the ruined city it once resided in, and consists of a long stretch of road and surrounding buildings and shacks, as well as a few connecting alleyways. The entire town is protected by a large 'wall,' which is little more than wreckage and rubble from the surrounding area that had been piled high, blocking off points of entry into Salvation with the exception of the only place in and out of the town: the gates. In addition to the walls, Salvation is also protected by a series of machine gun turrets installed in key positions in and around the town, to discourage threats from the outside and to prevent slaves from inciting an uprising or escaping through the front door.
The main building within Salvation is the old Town Hall, renamed the Hellfire Club after the town was taken over by the Winslows. It is unknown what the building's original purpose was before the Great War, but in the years since the Winslows' takeover it has been converted into a nightclub and their place of residence.
Across the street from the Club is the Salvation Bank, which serves less as a storage area for the town's treasury but rather the slavers make use of its cages and vaults to keep their slaves locked away until they are sold.
Next door to the Bank is the Auction House. The former Olympic Theatre now serves as Salvation's venue in order to sell the wastelanders and tribals the slavers had managed to capture to the less than scrupulous men and women of the wasteland in need of workers. Another, quieter back room inside the auction house serves as the venue for the slavers to sell their more attractive wares as sex slaves.
A mostly intact Apartment Building is where the more affluent of Salvation's permanent residents make their homes. Across the street lies Deborah Dean's Clinic, where the resident doctor fixes up anyone who steps in through her door, from slavers to slaves, provided she is compensated for her troubles.
The Hotel Alexandria is the local bar and brothel, owned by Jonathan Blake. While the building once stood tall before the bombs fell, only the bottom two floors were inhabitable; the bottom floor served as the hotel's bar and the rooms above were where the prostitutes ply their trade and spy for Winslow. Jonathan uses the hotel as his base of operations as he and his resistance movement plan for the eventual liberation of the town. Hidden in the hotel's basement is a secret tunnel which leads to the subway under the city, for Jonathan and his allies to smuggle weapons into the town and help what slaves they could escape their captivity.
Government[]
There is no rule but the rule of Roman and Maryanne Winslow, the masters of Salvation and leaders of the slavers. There are many factors which contribute to their continued rule over Salvation, as well as their continued survival: first, they have enough money to buy the loyalty of their men, and they also have the (quite literal) slavish devotion of the enforcer, the woman known as Dinah Li. While Roman has the muscle, Maryanne also has a network of spies at her disposal, mostly drawn from their personal slaves, who, with the (ultimately false) promise of winning their freedom, inform Maryanne of any potential threat to the Winslows' continued supremacy. And the siblings also rule through fear, and everyone who succeeds in drawing their ire tends not to live very long, or even in relative comfort.
Culture[]
Salvation is guarded by and serves as a home to a cadre of hardened slavers and raiders. The inhabitants of the town are infamous for their incursions into neighbouring settlements. The slavers are also known to seize random wastelanders and raid tribes for hardier stock than their usual captures. Inside the town there is but one law: Roman's and Maryanne's word. Those who transgress against the siblings who ruled over Salvation are sure to receive swift and often violent retribution, often at Roman's hand or the hand of his psychotic slave and enforcer, Dinah. Beyond that, inhabitants and visitors alike are more or less free to do as they please.
Persons of Interest[]
The Winslow Siblings[]
Aside from being the rulers of Salvation, Roman and Maryanne Winslow are the leaders of the slavers and are the richest siblings in town. Maryanne dresses as smoothly as possible for a slaver boss, in the fanciest suits her money could buy. Her brother Roman prefers to make an impression in another way; he is more comfortable in high-end combat armour than a fancy suit, and he would also prefer it if he brandished the biggest, flashiest guns there is. The pair were part of a prestigious family in New Reno, but were at one point disowned when they were both younger and exiled in the wake of an unspecified incident that led to a young woman's death. They were already involved a long list of other illegal activities by that point, but that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
The siblings eventually joined up with the raider gang led by Big Monty at the time, though they had higher ambitions than being simple raiders. Their ambitions led to becoming the rulers of their own little corner of the wasteland, where they transformed Salvation into a slaver's paradise. The Winslows often makes the claim that they got to where they were now the old-fashioned way: through hard work. In truth, however, the siblings used a combination of blackmail, subterfuge and threats to climb the ladder to power.
Eventually, Roman executed the previous mayor of Salvation when he and his sister took over the town. Every plot against either of their lives has ended in failure, and every slave, slaver and hardened wasteland warrior in the town has learned to back off when either Winslow loses their temper, whether it be Roman's fiery rage or Maryanne's cold, tranquil fury. The Winslows' rule over Salvation through fear.
The only person Roman trusts without question are his sister and his slave and enforcer, Dinah Li. She has been conditioned to be in love with the holder of her leash, and indeed he has taken full advantage of that twisted love. As for the doctor who patches up his slaves and men, Maryanne trusts her only to look out for herself which she could at the very least respect. The Coltrane Siblings are a useful set of thugs to have working for them, even if the Winslows do consider them a pair of chaotic, inbred idiots.
Roman has disliked Jonathan Blake since the day that he walked into town and bought the Alexandria, and because nobody who calls Salvation their home is truly 'clean,' the bartender's 'squeaky-clean' image has only made Roman distrust him more. Maryanne is in agreement with her brother when it comes to Blake, and has assigned the whores working at the Alexandria to try and dig up some dirt on him.
Neither sibling could agree, however, on Jennifer Chou, the mercenary who has become a recent addition to their town. Roman is impressed by the merc’s talent in killing, and feels that she could make a fine addition to their organisation. Maryanne, of course, is more cautious, she feels there was something about her that she can’t quite put a finger on, and so she had their whores try and find out the real reason she is in town.
Deborah Dean[]
Doctor Deborah Dean is the town's resident physician, whose main duties are to care for the health and wellbeing of the slaves and slavers that enter her clinic. Although she can be a cranky and bitter woman, Doctor Dean is always a professional, with the wellbeing of her patients being her chief concern. That and making as much money from the slavers as she can.
Before Deborah came to Salvation in 2272, the settlement had to rely on travelling physicians who were passing through on their way to other settlements, and she arrived in the town the same way many others did: with a slave collar around her neck.
Eventually, Deborah took over caretaker duties for the other slaves but she eventually grew bitter and frustrated with the slaves' inability and unwillingness to fight back against their captors. Spending nearly a decade trading her services, Deborah eventually earned enough caps to buy her freedom. Since Salvation was in major need of skilled medics, she stayed on as the town's overworked and underappreciated doctor, taking the wealthy slavers for all she could.
She might take out the bullets that people like Jennifer Chou and the Coltranes put into people, but she is just as much a mercenary as they are. So in that respect she at least owes them a drink as a thank you for all the repeat business. She doesn’t think much of slaves or whores, thinking (quite hypocritically if one considers her own time as a slave) them too weak to deserve their freedom, and as such holds a low opinion of the likes of Dinah Li and Alejandra Martinez, though she at least does her best to make sure the whores keep clean, if only for the caps. The only person she truly likes in Salvation is Jonathan Blake, going so far as to consider the bartender ‘the one decent fellow in town’.
Jonathan Blake[]
Jonathan Blake is the owner and bartender of the Hotel Alexandria. Jonathan Blake also does not exist. His real name is Thomas Garfield III, the son and surviving child of the previous mayor and a descendant of one of the original founders of Salvation, the original Thomas Garfield. The slavers were not aware of his true identity; as far as they knew he was Jonathan Blake, a former soldier with some faraway militia or mercenary group, who came into a small fortune before he came into town and bought the local hotel, and he has taken great care to keep it that way.
In the few years since returning to Salvation, the bartender spends his day serving booze to the slavers, the travelling merchants and those who still call Salvation their home, while at night he and a small cadre of trusted men and women run a secret underground resistance movement and railroad for the slaves, smuggling them out of town and sending them to safe houses across the wasteland while they prepare for the eventual liberation of their town. It has been a long and difficult journey, one which is yet to see an end, and perhaps has become more difficult after Jonathan learned there is a spy in their midst, among the whores who ply their trade in his hotel.
Jonathan has an extremely low opinion of the slavers that have taken over his home, although he keeps that opinion to himself. He smiles and nods as he sees evil happen all around him, while he secretly plots the slavers’ downfall. Jonathan is constantly annoyed with the Coltranes all but destroying his hotel on a regular basis, that he is horrified that Red is in love with him.
The prostitutes he keeps under his roof are all slaves, on loan from the Winslows, although he knows what their true purpose is. Even if they are Maryanne's spies, Jonathan doesn’t treat them like slaves or whores, and is happy to have words (and fists) with anyone who is less than gentlemanly with them.
He is aware that, like the rest of the prostitutes working in the Alexandria, Alejandra Martinez is a spy for Maryanne Winslow, but as much as he is fond of her he is also unwilling to do anything about it beyond keeping her at an arm’s length. Jonathan has often considered including Jennifer Chou into his inner circle--the mercenary knew her stuff and he could tell that deep down she held no particular love for slavery--but he is also aware that mercenaries are loyal only to their own self interest.
'Sheriff' Dinah Li[]
Dinah Li is Roman Winslow's personal bodyguard, enforcer and right-hand woman, acting as the 'Sheriff' of Salvation in charge of maintaining the peace, or as close to a violent suppression of slaves or super mutant raids as she can manage without damaging too much of the merchandise. Ironically, Dinah herself is a slave, captured at a young age and then systematically brainwashed, beaten and conditioned until she literally falls in love with whoever holds her leash.
Despite her status and her tragic past Dinah is perhaps the least pleasant person in Salvation, which is saying something. She is a cruel psychopath, although whose worst tendencies are curbed through loyalty to whoever held her leash and by how seriously she takes her job. Nonetheless, even the hardest of the slavers tend to give Dinah a wide berth.
Dinah has only two loves in life, violence and her master, Roman. She would do anything and everything for the man who holds her leash, from murdering his enemies to sharing his bed, things she has done for him many times. That said, should Roman ever tire of her and someone else happens to be her new master, she would be more than happy to feed Roman a bullet. Her love and loyalties lie with her owner--gender be damned--and not who that owner happens to be.
In a twisted sort of way, Dinah is crazy jealous of the Winslows' other sex slaves, especially Alejandra Martinez, who Dinah sees as being prettier than she is. She also has feelings of jealousy toward Roman's sister, Maryanne, which only her insane mind could justify. Dinah has often thought about killing them both, and certainly she already would have if she thought she could get away with it. She doesn’t trust Jonathan Blake or the mercenary Jennifer Chou one bit either, and she often asks her master if she could kill them before they became any threat to him.
The Coltrane Siblings[]
"You're right, little brother, this shit is boring as hell. Let's go punch someone!”— Joonyur Coltrane and Red Coltrane
Salvation's resident thugs, which interestingly stands out in a town full of them. Joonyur Coltrane is a giant who is, for lack of a better word, also a complete idiot thanks to a combination of inbreeding and several blows to the head as a child. Thanks to a shot to the head in which he miraculously survived, Joonyur is a man of few words, as he is only able to speak his name and little else.
His older sister Susan (or 'Red' as she prefers to be called) is no better. Also an inbred idiot, Red is jovial and affable...and she is also a complete madwoman. She could laugh and joke with someone one time and then be more inclined to smash a glass bottle into their face the next.
Both siblings have only two loves in their lives, and that is drinking and fighting. Not a day in goes by without a little drinking, then some fighting and then drinking some more, and then rounding off the day with a spot of fighting, and often to Jonathan Blake's chagrin. They are brutes who earn their pay by being brutes. Whether they do it through raiding, slaving or through mercenary work it matters little: either way they're dealing violence and murder with the small armoury worth of guns, blades and explosives they keep between them.
Joonyur is a dull-witted creature, with little to no feelings toward most people except for his sister, at least he feels nothing toward anyone else beyond getting into fights with them. Were it not for his sister’s insistence that he stay his hand, Joonyur might have shot the town up by now. That said, Joonyur is rather sweet on Jennifer Chou, much to the mercenary’s abhorrence.
Red is a lot friendlier than her younger brother, in that she’ll share drink with anyone that pays her bar bill, at least before she eventually busts a chair over their head. Red is in love with Jonathan Blake, although it is clear that the bartender does not feel the same way. Red thinks he is playing ‘hard to get.’
Jennifer Chou[]
Jennifer Chou is a freelance mercenary of Taiwanese-American descent, currently residing in Salvation. Originally hailing from the New California Republic, Jennifer once served with the NCR military and has fought across the wastelands against raiders, tribals and super mutants, as well as the likes of Caesar's Legion and the Brotherhood of Steel.
The young woman projects an aloof, sometimes taciturn image of herself, but it is merely a facade which hides a past that is filled with violence and pain. Jennifer may be capable of "Brotherhood levels of killing," as many of her employers have said of her at one time or another, but she has lost something important from her experiences.
Jennifer is in Salvation to sell her skills as a mercenary; skills that any wealthy, successful 'legitimate' businessman would always be in the need for. The young mercenary is in Salvation for her own reasons, however. Reasons that she prefers to keep to herself, at least until when the perfect time comes for her to strike. And then she will reap the profits when all the dust and blood settles and everybody that needs killing is dead.
Jennifer’s interest in the likes of the Winslows and the Coltranes lies solely in the bounties on their heads back in the NCR. She despises raiding and slaving, and despises those who practices in either, but that does not mean that she is above making a few dishonest caps working for them before she comes to collect on their real worth to her. She holds a certain amount of respect for Deborah Dean, seeing in her a fellow mercenary even if the doctor’s expertise leans more toward life than death.
Jennifer enjoys being in the company of Jonathan Blake, considering the bartender a good man. She has some idea of what he is really up to in town, and while their goals happen to coincide she knows a lost cause when she sees it. Still, she’s more than happy to take his money if he ever worked up the courage to approach her.
She is attracted to Alejandra, and she is one of the few people to have never treated the prostitute like a slave or even a whore. She has paid for her company from time to time--purely for pretense’s sake--but Jennifer has only had sex with her once, and only because Alejandra wanted to be with her.
Grabass[]
Franklin 'Grabass' Grabowski is the very definition of 'the friend that nobody likes.' A chem dealer and an ex-raider, formerly a member of Big Monty's gang prior to his untimely demise in 2267, Grabass has since decided to leave his life of stealing and killing behind him. Nowadays, he just lounges around Salvation all day, selling the low-grade chems he brews (when he's not getting high on his own supply, that is), sleeping in his little one-room shack or getting drunk at the Hotel Alexandria, only to sleep off the inevitable hangover in a puddle of his own making.
Nobody in Salvation likes Grabass, but he is tolerated because even Dinah has to admit that he is useful to have around should the town need to defend itself. Grabass likes to play himself as 'reformed' despite his chem-addicted, misanthropic ways, but it takes very little for him to admit that he misses being a raider.
Nobody likes Grabass, which is fine by him as he isn’t too fond of most people. He is more than happy to sell people his crap chems, but secretly he hopes they choke on them. He thinks Dinah Li is a ‘crazy bitch,’ which is as accurate a description as any. He doesn’t like her very much, but he still would like to share her bed, even though he’s aware that any attempt would be met with his death, if he was lucky that is.
He is ‘sorta in love’ with Red Coltrane, however, although he isn’t too fond of the madwoman’s little brother Joonyur, mostly because he very nearly broke him in half the last time Grabass tried to get close to her. Grabass doesn’t think much of Jonathan Blake, thinking the bartender was too much of a pussy and a goody-two-shoes for a town like Salvation. Jonathan also refuses to allow the ex-raider anywhere near the prostitutes that work under his roof.
Alejandra Martinez[]
Alejandra Martinez is a slave and a prostitute. Formerly a Vault Dweller, a computer programmer from the somewhat stable Vault 33, Alejandra was exiled from the Vault for some unknown transgression and later had the poor luck to run into a slaving party. Now she spends most of her time hanging around the Hotel Alexandria, sweet-talking the clientele--male and female alike--and getting them to spend their money on booze or a little company, or even just pay for an outrageously priced bed for the night.
Every now and then, she'll go up to a room with a new 'friend' and some time later she comes back down with a few extra caps in her pocket, although as a lesbian she does have her preferences in customers, not that it matters much considering her situation. Her real job, however, is to find out her customers' secrets and then relay the information she gathers to her mistress, Maryanne Winslow. She is a spy, selling herself and the secrets she gathers in the hopes that she could buy her freedom and make Salvation into a distant, albeit unpleasant, memory.
Of her ‘friends’, Alejandra is especially fond of the mercenary Jennifer Chou, whom she considers her best customer strictly for the fact she does not treat her as though she never has a choice. Every time the merc paid for her company she paid for exactly that, refusing to have sex with her unless she truly wanted to, which she eventually did. She likes Jennifer enough to lie to her master that the mercenary was enjoying her time in Salvation; that she could be trusted. She also considers Jonathan Blake a good man for much of the same, even if he had never been a customer of hers.
She finds it quite shameful that she spies for Maryanne under his roof, but she prefers to have her freedom than Jonathan’s friendship. She doesn’t like the Coltrane raiders, though she is thankful that they were both more interested in drinking and fighting than they were in her company, and she hates the slavers with a passion. If she didn’t have a collar around her neck then she might have helped burn Salvation to the ground.