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[first_of_steel]

That Mindy girl's alien burgers had turned out pretty good last night, and Roger will remember them in future, but right now his mind was on something else she told him about. She'd mentioned the Sensoriums could simulate just about any environment he could think of, and since he'd found a map to their location on his omnicomm this morning, he figured he'd put that to the test. He'd seen virtual reality training pods before, although as an MP he never really rated using one, so he wasn't sure what to expect.

... the desert north of the Lost Hills bunker where they'd been taking the younger Initiates for training, apparently. An absolutely perfect replica thereof, even down to the scorpions the size of Corvegas.

Huh.

Well, no sense wasting a perfectly good blighted hellscape. They'd pulled him here to fight a war, hadn't they? Might as well start practicing for it.

He pulls his helmet over his head, flips the neck latches shut, and reaches over his shoulder for the supersledge he carries. He'll break out the laserguns later. Right now, for all that he's taken his situation pretty well so far, he really, really wants to hit something.

Comments

[first_of_steel]

Kais, for the record, the noise Roger just made is an indescribably rude one. Followed by a badly suppressed snicker. "Oh, hell," he says as he recovers. "No. No, I can- no. I haven't worshipped anything or anyone since before the bombs fell. And there sure as hell wasn't any man alive who could call himself an Emperor when I last saw Earth, that's for certain."

[greatergone]

"The Space Marine you said you met will probably force you to listen about their Emperor." If he could make rude noises, that would be one. But expressing emotions too much wasn't exactly a Tau thing.

"Is this what 'Earth' is like? This scenery? It looks similar to parts of my own world."

[first_of_steel]

"Thanks for the warning," Roger says. "I'll keep it in mind- I've dealt with evangelical types before."

He has no idea exactly how fervent a Space Marine can get, mind. He'll have to find out the hard way.

"This is the part of Earth I was living in before the ship picked me up," he says. "This was a desert even before the atomic war my world had twenty years ago. It's the southwestern part of the country I used to live in. The Brotherhood of Steel takes our initiates out here for basic training missions before we move them on to the hard stuff. It used to be different in other places, though." He glances over the Tau armor. "That'd be desert gear you've got on, I'm guessing?"

[greatergone]

"Not desert gear, no." Though that history was interesting. Tau had the luck to be united before they got to the atomic stage.

"This color signifies I am from the planet T'au. If I were from, for example, the planet Sa'cea, my armor would be blue."

[first_of_steel]

"Ah. Got it," says Roger. "We used to use patches to indicate that kind of thing- point of origin, unit membership, that kind of thing. Uniform color was mostly based on where you were going to be fighting. Your way looks easier to pick out at first glance, though."

[greatergone]

"Camouflage, yes? That is left to our Pathfinders and Stealthsuits." Cloaking technology was more important in that area than armor coloring though.

[first_of_steel]

"We had camo fabrics and paint patterns, yeah," says Roger. "Towards the end, we were using devices called Stealth Boys. They generate a stealth field that makes the wearer pretty much invisible. Never really hurt to wear camo under it in case your power cut out, though." He glances down. "And then you had power armor, which... you can't really hide that with anything but a Stealth Boy."