Heinrich | |
General Information | |
Date of Birth: | 2217 |
Age: | 70 |
Location Information | |
Status Information | |
Status: | alive |
Occupation: | New Order footsoldier, DJ |
Physical Information | |
Gender: | Male |
Height: | 5'10” |
Weight: | 160 lb |
Blood Type: | AB |
A rather demented presence on radio in the Pacific Northwest, Heinrich is the host of "The Mouth of Mount Saint Helens" radio station and quite possibly the last surviving member of the New Order. The leading anti-Semite in the post-War era, Heinrich has spouted bigoted and convoluted messages from his radio station for close to forty years with surprising consistency, showing no signs of stopping soon.
Biography[]
Childhood and Teenage Years[]
In the hot summer of 2217, a female New Order footsoldier named Maxine went into labor. Maxine was a rare exception to the New Order's often rigid gender roles, which placed men as fighters and women as caregivers. The situation only became more difficult when the New Order fled Martha's Gulch. Maxine served as a motorized boat pilot and was quite good at her job. Her skill did not stop the sexual and verbal abuse that came from her fellow footsoldiers, which led to Maxine becoming rather traumatized. Isolated and scared, Maxine latched onto whatever positive attention she got and fell in love with a man who she thought would marry her. Maxine was mistaken though. She was subsequently left pregnant and even more alone than before.
When her baby was finally born, Maxine named him Heinrich, after her paternal grandfather who sacrificed himself to take out a nosy Pantheon Radio reporter. Heinrich's birth heralded a series of difficulties for Maxine. She had to leave her position as a footsoldier to take care of her baby, living off of limited funds. Maxine and Heinrich were automatically ostracized for Maxine's single motherhood.
Heinrich's situation was a rare one among the New Order, and Maxine feared for how the other children would treat him when he began compulsory footsoldier training. Despite the difficulties of her life, Maxine tried to make Heinrich as happy as possible. She tried to educate the little boy, teaching him both English and German, introducing him to the New Order's ideology, and taking him on as many "trips" to the outside as possible. Heinrich was a quick learner but did not really like reading books about ideology that much. The two often went around different parts of Seattle to marvel at pre-War civilization. This gave young Heinrich a very positive impression of the area outside of West Seattle and a great respect for his mother. Maxine's love however only set Heinrich up for failure in the future.
Beginning his training at the age of ten, Heinrich was taken away from his mother to be trained with other prospective footsoldiers his age in 2226. A naive boy, Heinrich seemed to have no problem being taken away from his mother and was eager to go on "a new adventure". Heinrich did not understand his mother's weeping for him as he left despite him trying to comfort her. Maxine gave Heinrich a small figurine she scavenged to remember her, a pre-War Vault-Tec bobblehead.
Heinrich's sheltered upbringing caused him to have a rude awakening when he was taken in for training. In his early days in his training, Heinrich often talked about what a wonderful mother Maxine was to him and how special she told him he was. His other young recruits predictably responded negatively with Heinrich being thoroughly battered and verbally abused. A month or of this treatment all but broke Heinrich. He wanted to get out of the New Order's "regime". He attempted to escape West Seattle. A couple years before, Heinrich might have been executed but in that time, recruits were becoming harder to come by. So, Heinrich, an eleven-year-old boy, was instead publicly whipped in front of the other recruits.
After his public whipping and further beating, Heinrich had finally been broken. For the rest of his training, Heinrich tried to toe the line with the rest of the recruits. This still did not spare Heinrich from the physical abuse of his fellow recruits, particularly from an older recruit named Franz. This constant bullying gave Heinrich some major insecurities, not being able to defend himself and constantly failing to meet his trainer's expectations. So, to try to make himself feel better Heinrich immersed himself in the New Order's militant white supremacist ideology. The belief that he was a member of a race destined for greatness and that he by extension was also destined for greatness granted Heinrich a large degree of comfort. However, it, along with his constant bullying, gave Heinrich a rather severe persecution complex that he would carry for the rest of his life. He remained friendless, skittish, and socially inept.
Puberty was a hard time for Heinrich, like many other New Order recruits. Recruits were not allowed to be near any females during their training and the few female recruits of their age were trained separately from the males. Many recruits, including Heinrich, had trouble keeping their hormones in check while some others resorted to less than savory means to "relieve themselves". Heinrich's teenage libido was limited his possession of a single Grognak the Barbarian comic containing a particularly curvy damsel in distress. He kept this comic a treasured secret alongside the Vault-Tec bobblehead his mother gave him.
In 2233, the recruits were six years into their training and hardened. As all sixteen-year-old recruits were supposed to do, Heinrich's age group went through a traditional teenage rite of passage of the New Order. This rite of passage involved staying two days and two nights within the burnt ruins of the Pens. Stories of the Pens and what happened in there terrified Heinrich, and he was visibly scared in the days preceding the rite of passage. This caused more torment for Heinrich as other recruits mistreated him for his "weakness". However, he still went through with the rite of passage.
Heinrich and the rest of the recruits sneaked their way through Seattle to get to the ruins of the Pens. They settled down in the Pens and readied themselves for the night. Heinrich explored the empty halls of the Pens while his fellow recruits set up mats, looking at the burned, collapsed walls and the broken, abandoned items littered everywhere. This frightened Heinrich, and he had difficulty sleeping that night on his mat.
In the early hours of the morning, Heinrich was awakened to pained cries coming from nearby. He got up with his knife and found some of the other recruits wrestling with one of their number, who was screaming his head off. On the ground was the bloodied corpse of Heinrich's primary tormentor, Franz.
Heinrich joined the struggle and after a minute or so, the mad recruit ran off deeper into the Pens. Some of the New Order recruits gave chase while Heinrich and some others stayed behind in their sleeping area. Heinrich tried to figure out why Franz had been slain, but no one seemed certain of the reason. There were rumors though nothing seemed confirmed. Heinrich had his own conspiracy about chems and sodomy, but he kept that to himself.
As the recruits returned saying they had killed the insane one, the group debated whether to continue with their rite of passage or go home. Heinrich was thoroughly spooked and wanted to go back to West Seattle. However, the rest of the group decided to carry on with their rite of passage. Too afraid (and ashamed) to return on his own, Heinrich was forced to stay. That night, Heinrich began to hear rustling noises and a sort of soft moaning outside of the sleeping area, setting him more on edge.
The day after the murder was primarily spent getting the bodies away from the sleeping area and further exploring the remains of the Pens. The building was as creepy as ever but had lost much of its prior fearful mystery to Heinrich. The coming night, however, remained an object of fear for Heinrich, and he was initially unable to sleep after lying down. Heinrich eventually dozed off though.
A little after midnight, Heinrich was shaken awake. He was greeted by another recruit, Thule, who gestured for Heinrich to get his knife and follow him. After getting up, Heinrich almost instantly became aware of a distant crunching sound, low but consistent.
A short walk later, Heinrich and Thule came to a doorway into a room where the floor had collapsed. The crunching noise had grown louder and seemed to be coming from that room. Thule encouraged Heinrich to look in. Frightened but determined not to show it, Heinrich looked into the room.
The room was where the recruits had dumped the bodies of the two dead boys, into the pit where the floor had been. It was dark but a hole in the roof provided a sliver of light. That sliver of moonlight revealed a deformed, monstrous creature that was hunched over the bodies, digging in. This disgusted Heinrich, but he did not overreact, only asked why Thule had not stopped the creature from eating the bodies. Thule was disappointed and said that he had expected Heinrich to shit his pants. He made fun of Heinrich regardless.
This talking attracted the attention of the feral ghoul, and it turned its attention to the two recruits. While Thule was laughing at Heinrich, the feral ghoul leaped from the pit to attack without warning. It latched onto Thule and began to tear his throat out. At the same time, the feral ghoul knocked Heinrich to the ground, and he watched frozen as it tore into Thule.
The feral ghoul spent about a minute tearing into Thule before it turned its attention to Heinrich, transfixed on the ground watching it feed. The feral looked at Heinrich with hunger in its eyes, and Heinrich knew exactly what it wanted. The feral ghoul leaped at Heinrich and pinned him to the ground, trying to tear his throat out. Struggling to hold off the feral, Heinrich managed to unsheathe his combat knife and plunged it into the mutant several times.
Heinrich managed to kill the mutant after a couple of stabbings and got up. Bruised and battered, he hauled himself back to the recruits' sleeping area and awakened everyone, telling them what had happened. Many of the recruits at first disregarded what Heinrich said, annoyed that he had awakened them the middle of the night, but upon finding the bodies further into the ruins of the Pens, they believed him. It even earned Heinrich the begrudging respect of some of the recruits. Thule was thrown into the pit with the other two dead recruits while the feral ghoul was thrown outside the ruins of the Pens.
The next day, the recruits came back to West Seattle from their rite of passage with the three bodies in toe and a lot of stories to tell. Heinrich personally stayed to himself and remained reluctant to repeat his story. This lessened the newly-earned respect many of his fellow recruits held for him and soon enough, things were to what they were before with Heinrich often being put upon by other recruits.
However, things were not quite the same as before. Heinrich's primary tormentor, Franz, was now gone, allowing him to get away from some of his more crippling anxieties and focus on his training. Heinrich continued to excel with his ideological training, actually writing a poem on the lying, unscrupulous nature of Jews in 2233 called "The Seed of Jacob". This poem was well-received by Heinrich's trainers and one trainer in particular, Henry Barstow, told Heinrich that he had the potential to become a trainer himself. This gave Heinrich great hope and after that, he attempted to achieve the status of a trainer within the New Order.
However, an incident happened in late 2233 involving a knife that caused Heinrich to sustain a major beating, wounding his confidence. Word of his mother's untimely death in 2234 also hurt Heinrich's resolve. He eventually gave up on becoming a trainer and just focused on becoming a footsoldier again. Heinrich eventually did become a footsoldier in 2235 after nearly nine years of training. There was an inglorious graduation ceremony, and Heinrich was unceremoniously shoved onto the frontlines to fight the New Order's enemies like hundreds before him.
Service to the New Order[]
Heinrich began his service as a New Order footsoldier in 2235, fighting against the New Order's enemies from Chinatown. He was put on the northernmost barricade to protect West Seattle, the New Order's home, from incursions. These attacks often came out of a need for revenge against the New Order for past wrongs due to the New Order's "kill on sight" policy.
In the first year of being a footsoldier, Heinrich mostly fought Chinatown militia, feral ghouls, and raiders. That year would be rough for Heinrich. He managed to survive against all odds though despite the difficulties he faced such as dangerous patrols and long nights on watch. Survival would only grow harder with time.
At the same time, Heinrich had trouble making friends while serving as a footsoldier. His constant paranoia and perceived weakness caused many of his fellow footsoldiers to avoid fraternizing with him. The only person that Heinrich could really call a friend was Moore, a footsoldier with an albino mutation that also set him apart. Moore and Heinrich would often hang out with each other on their downtime, taking pot-shots at feral ghouls and discussing their ideas about the world. Desperate for friendship, Moore fed Heinrich's obsession with "conspiracies" (not considered conspiracy theories by the New Order) by constantly agreeing with him. Most of Heinrich's early conspiracy theories related to the Jew's involvement in the Great War and the decline of the West.
Over the next couple of years, Heinrich continued fighting with the grunts in the trenches while men like Paul Turner and Scutari rose to prominence. His existence was nothing short of hellish, being a constant cycle of battle and torment from his fellow footsoldiers. The food was dismal, the other footsoldiers were constantly hostile, and the fight did not seem fulfilling at all to Heinrich. The New Order's "kill on sight" policy pertaining to enemies and non-white races wore on Heinrich, with him having to shoot at anyone who approached his barricade. Heinrich preferred not to linger long enough on their bodies to see if they were children or adults. The only things that kept Heinrich going were his faith in the New Order's ideals and his yes-man friend Moore.
All the while, Heinrich was told that the New Order's situation was, in fact, improving, with victories on almost every front. This gave no comfort to Heinrich and furthermore he also took no mind of the internal politics within the New Order between Paul Turner, Otto Wernher, and Henry Barstow. He was more concerned over the overall success of the New Order and his own survival. This viewpoint became more pointed after Paul Turner became commander, as Heinrich saw Turner as soft towards all inferior races. However, Heinrich was temporarily appeased by word of Commander Turner's sustained campaign against Chinatown. Soon afterwards though, Heinrich learned that meant the war on his front was about the heat up. In 2241, Heinrich participated in an offensive towards Chinatown that technically "succeeded" but yielded high casualties. Moore was injured in this battle and was sent back to West Seattle permanently, depriving Heinrich of some much-needed encouragement.
It was during Paul Turner's early days as commander that Heinrich's life descended into a deeper place than it ever had been or ever would be. The Chinatown militias came wave after wave, week after week, seemingly without end for years. As time wore on, Heinrich developed a new conspiracy theory: the battle between the New Order and Chinatown was fundamentally a Clash of Civilizations and a continuation of the Sino-American War. Years of battle against the Chinatown cemented this in his mind. It also stuck in Heinrich due to reoccurring nightmares involving the bloody battle outside Chinatown. Heinrich's fear of the "Yellow Peril" amused his squad-mates and gave them yet another thing to make fun of him for.
Heinrich and the rest of his squad also had to fight enemies such as super mutants, mirelurks, raiders, and robots on a semi-daily basis. This wore Heinrich and his squad-mates' morale down to a nub. Word of negotiations being carried out and peace fell on deaf ears. Time passed and the footsoldiers around Heinrich became even more jaded. Heinrich just became more neurotic from taking abuse while still clinging to his ideology and conspiracy theories.
So, it came as little surprise to Heinrich's squad when word came on November 6, 2247, that a grand coalition had been formed by many groups and settlements in Seattle specifically to eliminate the New Order. Word came first that Paul Turner had been taken captive, then said in panicked tones that Heinrich's squad should makes its way back to West Seattle and to abandon their barricade. This gave the footsoldiers, Heinrich included, some relief that they were finally leaving "that faggot" behind. However, Heinrich felt a little sentimental about the barricade as well, remembering his twelve years protecting it as time well spent.
Heinrich's squad made their way back to West Seattle and prepared for the worst. Heinrich and his squad were specifically sent to help fortify Camp Long, the New Order's first line of defense against the coming storm. The defense of Camp Long was led by Henry Barstow, the "Man from the Before Times". Heinrich was excited to be fighting side by side with such a man and before the battle went to talk to Barstow. Barstow did not initially recognize Heinrich as the bright young recruit he had inspired years before but with some memory jogging, he remembered. He said he was happy to see Heinrich still alive after all this time and that it would be an honor to fight beside him. Heinrich sensed an insincere tone in Barstow's voice and instantly felt dejected, feeling that the man was just humoring him since Heinrich had ended up a footsoldier, not a trainer. That saddened Heinrich, but he still thanked Barstow for his comments and returned to his post protecting Camp Long.
The anti-New Order coalition came down first on Camp Long, and they came down hard. Camp Long had been a park before the bombs fell and was not very defensible from a tactical standpoint. However, Henry Barstow and his force were still determined to defend Camp Long with their lives. The footsoldiers utilized Camp Long's forest for cover while thoroughly booby-trapping all the buildings in the area. Henry Barstow wanted to kill as many enemies as possible even in the event of the New Order's defeat.
The battle was indeed a bloodbath, and Heinrich was caught up in the middle of it. He was stationed up in a scavenged pre-War deer stand to shoot any approaching enemies from a distance along with one other footsoldier he did not know. The only other thing in the deer stand was a radio that would tell the footsoldiers of enemy troop movements. It was cold winter day, and he could hardly see anything through the trees. That is why he heard them first. Chinatown militiamen yelling in their exotic language, ghouls screeching inhuman sounds, super mutants belching intelligible grunts. When Heinrich saw the first ghoul, he opened fire and seemingly did not stop for a half an hour except to reload and to briefly listen to the radio for news.
At the half-hour mark, both Heinrich and the other footsoldier were still alive but the other footsoldiers around them had seemingly died. No more enemies were coming their way anymore. Looking around, Heinrich came to the conclusion that they had now behind enemy lines. Somehow, the anti-New Order coalition must have not caught Heinrich and his fellow footsoldier because they were above the treeline. This was confirmed by a radio transmission that told the pair that the New Order in Camp Long was falling back to Henry Barstow's position to try to hold off coalition forces until reinforcements arrived.
Heinrich and the other footsoldiers debated for about ten minutes before deciding to at least scout out the fallback area to see if there was anything left of the New Order there. They arrived at the fallback area to see hundreds of soldiers from the coalition encircling the area, with a clump of determined New Order holdouts trapped in the middle.
The footsoldier accompanying Heinrich whose name he finally learned, Robert, was determined to join that clump of holdouts to try to hold Camp Long. Even though Heinrich felt loyalty to the New Order's cause, he was still scared of death and knew that Robert's bloodlust would get them both killed for no reason. So, Heinrich convinced Robert to wait to reinforce the holdouts until the New Order's reinforcements arrived. Robert sullenly agreed, and the two watched the coalition forces from a distance, waiting.
The reinforcements never arrived. Heinrich and Robert had to watch as the last remaining New Order footsoldiers defending Camp Long were slowly overrun after two hours of fighting. Upon seeing the battle go against the New Order, Heinrich begged Robert to return with him to the New Order headquarters. Robert, after some thinking and seeing the coalition head their way, decided that Heinrich was right. They made their way back to New Order headquarters with the anti-New Order coalition on their heels.
Things at headquarters were panicked. While word poured in that various safehouses and outposts in West Seattle were being overrun, New Order footsoldiers scrambled to set up defenses against the advancing forces coming down upon their heads. Heinrich assisted them as best as he could, quickly losing track of his companion Robert. Doom and gloom dominated as many footsoldiers saw their impending deaths approach. Heinrich, however, was not feel downtrodden but instead tried to convince himself that everything would work out as he worked to fortify headquarters, pushing the deaths of Paul Turner and Henry Barstow to the back of his mind. After all, the New Order's best fighter Scutari was in charge of the defenses.
The attack came fast and hard that afternoon. The anti-New Order coalition had the collective firepower and manpower of several different groups that apart were unable to defeat but in sum outmatched the New Order. Heinrich was in the windows of headquarters picking off Chinatown militia and Geigers but retreated when rockets started being shot at the windows. Soon, the coalition had breached headquarters out defenses, forcing most of the New Order (excluding people like Scutari) to fall back, and the battle became a bloody room-to-room affair. Heinrich was shoved into the kitchen holding off a group of attacking vault dwellers by himself. The vault dwellers had plasma rifles and intended to take no prisoners. Nevertheless, Heinrich managed to kill two of them with his trusty brush gun before running out of ammunition. Instead of charging the remaining vault dweller, Heinrich fled deeper into headquarters with his pursuer hot on his heels. Luckily, another footsoldier killed the vault dweller and told Heinrich to "Come with me if you want to live!"
This footsoldier, a square-jawed Aryan fellow named Alois, roughly steered Heinrich out of harm's way and into a "secret way" out of headquarters (a fire ladder). On the way, they encountered two other footsoldiers, Morgan and Erich, who they took along with them. The whole experience was a blur for Heinrich with his fear and fight for survival overwhelming him. The next thing Heinrich knew, he was outside headquarters running away, following Alois into the inky blackness of the night.
On the Run[]
Heinrich and his little group of New Order remnants took two days to get out of the ruins of Seattle until they were away from the predatory anti-New Order coalition. This was a terrifying time, and the little group put great emphasis on remaining on the move. They finally stopped near Tacoma and assessed the situation. The place they stopped at was a pre-War dog park, and Heinrich sat by himself on a rock to see what he had left.
All that Heinrich had with him was the clothes on his back, his weapons, and the contents of a satchel he had filled before leaving New Order headquarters. To be more specific, Heinrich's clothing consisted only of his New Order modified riot gear. The weapons Heinrich still possessed at that time included his brush gun, a 10mm pistol, and a combat knife. Heinrich's satchel contained a Vault-Tec bobblehead, the comic Grognak the Barbarian #4 In the Bosom of the Corsair Queen, and a broken Pip-Boy 2000. These were all the worldly possessions he had left.
After taking stock of his remaining possessions, Heinrich returned to the group. The others in his group, Alois, Morgan, and Erich, were readying themselves to leave. Before they left though, Heinrich tried to talk to Morgan about his theories about why the anti-New Order coalition attacked them. This varied from suspecting Jews to Chinese imperialists. Morgan was very unenthusiastic about listening to Heinrich, telling him to shut up and get moving. Alois nodded his agreement to Morgan's statement but also told Morgan to be more respectful towards Heinrich. Soon enough, the little group was on the move again.
However, the New Order remnants were quickly waylaid before they left Tacoma by some bounty hunters in the hire of the anti-New Order coalition. Alois, Heinrich, Morgan, and Erich were forced to take shelter in a ruined pre-War billiard hall. The small group was holed up in that hall for the next three days, surrounded on all sides. This standoff forced the four New Order footsoldiers to interact to survive the bounty hunters' onslaught and to stave off boredom. They did this by actually talking to each other about their situation, playing card games such as Bullshit or Blackjack, and occasionally shooting pool. This was all while at least one footsoldier acted as a lookout, diligently watching the bounty hunters that had surrounded them and looking for a potential path of escape.
Heinrich proved himself rather adept at pool in those three days. That won him some approval from Alois, but that was about it. Heinrich's natural inability to socially interact with others put a damper on things. Morgan especially was annoyed by Heinrich constantly spouting off conspiracies about the New Order's destruction and trying to make awkward conversation. It took all of Morgan's willpower not to come to blows with Heinrich. Alois and Erich noticed this and subtly separated the two over the next few days. The group learned of Morgan’s lost family at this time in unfortunate circumstances. Heinrich's resentment for Alois also began in that billiard hall as Heinrich was forced to examine Alois's confident expression and strong Aryan features, both things he lacked. Heinrich wisely kept this resentment to himself.
On the third day of their confinement in the bar, the New Order remnants were surprised to find the people besieging them gone. The bounty hunters seemed to have lost interest in the group. The New Order remnants did not know and did not care why this had happened but were glad nonetheless (the reason was because the anti-New Order coalition refused to pay the bounty hunters for finding the New Order remnants). Before leaving the ruined billiard hall though, Heinrich snatched an 8-ball to remember the place by to the rest of the group's confusion.
The group made their way out of Tacoma quickly with little fanfare. However, as soon as they left the ruins the New Order remnants were set upon by opportunistic raiders. They were soon forced to refuge behind some rubble, but this time the enemy did not have any patience for waiting. The raiders were shitfaced due to Psycho and were out for blood. The New Order remnants were much better equipped than the raiders but could not beat their raw numbers. So, Alois decided that the group should break away from the raiders and head further south. Erich took the initiative and provided cover fire while the rest of the New Order remnants ran out of the rubble. All of the group miraculously managed to survive the encounter and kept on moving.
The New Order remnants stopped the next day at Cascadia's treeline. There, the group once again settled down for the night to finally get some sleep. Sleep did not come easily to Heinrich though, who was scared that the group would get ambushed in the night even though a sentry had been set up.
He slept soundly that night and at sunrise, the New Order remnants got up again to head further south. That day as the group walked, Morgan brought up the question of where they were actually going at this point. They were already out of reach of the anti-New Order coalition, and Morgan did not see the point of going on any further.
Upon hearing this, Heinrich tried to get back at Morgan by calling him cowardly, agreeing with Alois that they should keep going. Morgan looked with absolute venom at Heinrich at that moment and told him to stop talking immediately. When Heinrich did not stop, Morgan took a step towards him. That was what finally made Alois step in between the two to try to mediate the situation. This stopped all the fighting, and Alois voiced his decision that they would be continuing south down Interstate 5.
As the little group made its way down the interstate, it came into conflict more and more often, mostly with mirelurks, raiders, and Oregon tribals. The New Order remnants managed to fight off their attackers quite easily, but at the same time, Morgan began gaslighting Heinrich due to his annoyance with the wingnut. It started with “misplacing” items in Heinrich’s pack but eventually escalated to outright stealing ammunition. At the same time, Heinrich tried to talk with the more quiet footsoldier Erich. Erich listened to Heinrich’s ramblings for a while. That was until Morgan’s gaslighting caused Heinrich to go fully paranoid. Heinrich refused to talk to the other New Order remnants since he suspected all of them, even Alois and Erich. Alois noticed that Heinrich had stopped talking to the others and investigated. He soon found out what happened and talked to Morgan, who reluctantly accepted Alois’s request to stop gaslighting Heinrich.
Around that same time, the New Order remnants captured a tribal woman on the interstate. Alois and Morgan took turns with the woman before executing her to the others’ horror. Heinrich and Erich refrained from doing anything, just watching the event. Later, they were attacked in force by a raider tribe. They were forced off the interstate into the forests of Cascadia. This turned out to be a horrible mistake on the part of the footsoldiers.
The New Order remnants were soon being watched intently from the brush by numerous Oregon tribals from a tribe native to the area. This made all the footsoldiers uneasy, but they knew it was a bad idea to attack the watchers. Heinrich, in particular, told the rest of the group to not shoot the tribals as they were outnumbered and surrounded. This went on for four days as the group made its way through the dense forest. Nothing happened. That was until Alois finally lost his patience and decided to take potshots at some of the tribals watching the group without the rest of the footsoldiers knowing. He did not hit any of them, but that did not matter. The very next night, Alois disappeared from his cot to the absolute terror of all the footsoldiers. Erich, Heinrich, and Morgan desperately looked for Alois only to find him the next morning strung upside-down in a tree with his throat cut like an animal. This further terrified the footsoldiers, and they decided to try to get back on the interstate, away from the tribals. Before leaving though, the footsoldiers buried Alois and divvied up his equipment. Heinrich got his boots and his unique marksman carbine, which Heinrich later named Last Laugh.
However, the Oregon tribals of the area did not want this to happen. The tribals deliberately blocked the group’s path, forcing the group to go east. Without Alois’s inspiring leadership, the group of New Order remnants began falling apart. Morgan and Heinrich began arguing at night once again while Erich simply watched helplessly. Morgan brought up his dead family frequently when he bickered with Heinrich, questioning what a social outcast like Heinrich knew of loss. Heinrich did little to help the situation by spouting conspiracy theories and talking about Morgan’s “moral degeneracy”. In the first week after Alois’s death, the group seemed at a breaking point. It did not come to that, however.
In early 2248, the New Order remnants walked into a marsh that they saw was called Silverlake. Erich voiced his concern about the marshy terrain, but Morgan and Heinrich ignored Erich to continue arguing while they walked mysterious narrow paths. They also saw signs indicating they were about fifty miles from the city of Portland which perked the group’s morale. On the second day in Silverlake, the entire group of New Order remnants finally met their respective fates.
It was late in the day as the sun began to set. Morgan and Heinrich were fighting once again while Erich lagged behind, not wanting to listen to the petty squabbling. The two footsoldiers were arguing about the status of Asians in post-War America. That was until they heard Erich emit a pained scream from behind them. Morgan and Heinrich fell back to find Erich being set upon by a mirelurk. It was trying to eat his leg. Morgan and Heinrich shot the mirelurk and got Erich to his feet, supported by both of the footsoldiers. Soon enough, the group heard the chilling chattering of more mirelurks behind them. Morgan and Heinrich supported Erich between them as they hobbled in the darkness through the marsh as the mirelurks came closer and closer. After ten straight minutes of running, Morgan finally let go of Erich, told Heinrich to go as well, and darted off into the night. Heinrich was shocked by Morgan’s decision but suddenly realized that he could not support Erich on his own and survive. The mirelurks came closer, and their noise became louder. Heinrich dropped Erich to the ground, turning his marksman carbine on his fellow footsoldier. He apologized to Erich for what he was about to do and shot him at point-blank range. Erich just stared at Heinrich silently, like he almost always did. His silence was what Heinrich remembers.
Heinrich ran off into the night after Morgan, though he had his misgivings about following his rival. The horde of mirelurks at Heinrich’s back negated his misgivings, so he ran into the darkness after Morgan. He never found Morgan.
Instead, Heinrich struggled to stay just ahead of the horde of mirelurks behind him while occasionally put a few of them down with his marksman carbine. He roamed in the dark trying to evade the mirelurks while also regrouping with Morgan. Heinrich must have killed half a hundred mirelurks that night.
The mirelurk horde had stopped pursuing Heinrich by daybreak the next morning. He was still in the marsh, however, keeping a low profile so as not to call any attention to himself. Heinrich navigated his way out of Silverlake further east by the end of the day. He decided to make camp on the side of a pre-War nature trail and rest there for the night. This rest regained Heinrich's energy after being chased by mirelurks for so long. After that, he began to think about what happened the day before and realized, really for the first time, that he was utterly alone. Not being with Morgan did not bother Heinrich so much but leaving behind Erich made him sad. After a bit of moping, Heinrich considered what to do next. He had no idea where he was going or where he was really. So, Heinrich decided he would either have to get his bearings on a high place or ask for help from someone nearby. Heinrich saw a snow-capped mountain in the distance and decided to go in that direction.
The lone footsoldier did not get far before making camp again beside the trail he was traveling on. He started a fire and set up a tent. That was when Heinrich finally met someone walking down the trail in the opposite direction. That person was a frail young white girl named Alex.
Heinrich nearly drew his gun when Alex entered his camp but warmed up significantly as Alex voiced that "she had no ill intentions". Cautiously trusting the girl’s words, Heinrich sized Alex up. The girl was dressed in a shabby fashion but had an almost boyish look due to being so young. Heinrich correctly guessed that Alex was probably a runaway but from where and why he did not know. When he asked why Alex was on the trail, the girl responded by saying "she was wandering the wasteland, looking for purpose". That did not convince Heinrich for one minute. Still, the lonely footsoldier saw an opportunity presenting itself (his mind and former white supremacist rhetoric blinded by one thing) and so invited Alex to rest in his camp for the night. Alex graciously accepted Heinrich’s offer, and they both sat around the fire.
The two of them sat around Heinrich's fire and had awkward small talk. Heinrich learned that he was correct in assuming that Alex was a runaway. Alex was originally from a homestead near Nez Perce and had run away recently for reasons the girl did not specify. Heinrich decided to tell Alex his own story and did not sugarcoat things. Alex was visibly disturbed by Heinrich's various bigoted statements about his past and the violent end of the New Order. However, the footsoldier's story also captivated Alex in a morbid sort of way as Heinrich clearly showed off his limited sense of humor.
After the end of Heinrich's story, Alex saw Heinrich's weapons laid out behind him and asked about them. Heinrich was happy to show the pretty girl his weapons. Alex was most enamored with Heinrich's marksman carbine, something Alex had never seen before. Heinrich showed off the weapon, touching it lovingly and showing its every detail to Alex. He even joked that the weapon always gave him ‘the last laugh’ as he stroked it. This caressing soon enough transferred to Alex, and one thing led to another.
Heinrich awakened the next morning before the sunrise crested above the mountains. Wriggling his way out of Alex’s embrace, Heinrich crouched on a mossy rock and contemplated things as he waited for daybreak. He had just lost his virginity to a stranger. That went against everything he had been taught in the New Order, who had always emphasized a strong family unit (at least after the Pens had been destroyed). That thought made him think back on his mother’s life of abject suffering and his distance from women in his own life. What did it matter then? Perhaps he could at least try to salvage some of his honor by offering Alex a place by his side. Yes, they could travel further into the wilderness to find a place of their own, a fertile valley maybe. There, they could set up a nice homestead and raise a family like he was supposed to do. Yes, that was the answer, Heinrich thought to himself. That was also coincidentally the moment, as the sun began to shed its first light, that Heinrich noticed that Alex had a penis.
At that, Heinrich quickly picked up his marksman carbine and repeatedly shot Alex in the abdomen. Heinrich continued to shoot Alex's body even after it was already riddled with bullets. After carrying out the act, Heinrich took a seat on the ground and had a good cry. The death of Alex only made Heinrich feel worse, but he knew it was necessary to right the wrongs he had done.
Soon after removing the corpse from his sight, Heinrich broke camp and continued on his way south towards the snow-capped mountain he had been making his way towards before. It took him two more days of trekking to get close, and when he came near the slopes of the mountain, Heinrich was greeted with signs declaring he had arrived at the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. Soon after his arrival at the foot of Mount Saint Helens, Heinrich encountered hostile tribals and handily dispatched them with his marksman carbine. Heinrich looted their bodies and admired his handiwork. His new weapon had done well. Vaguely remembering something he had heard in the past, Heinrich decided then and there that he was going to name his marksman carbine Last Laugh.
Further investigation of the mountain's slopes followed after the small battle with the tribals. Heinrich had an idealized view of a quiet life in a well-stocked, pristine condition pre-War cabin with an obedient wife. The cabin would come first, the wife would come eventually (in Heinrich's mind at the moment). He also felt motivated by his fear that tribals would soon come and try to kill him again. Luckily, the superstitious tribals did not pursue Heinrich up the mountain, yet at least.
Heinrich wandered around the slopes of Mount Saint Helens for a day before he found what he was looking for, at least in a sense. It was a shabby looking building with a bunch of towers and dishes built into it. Heinrich recognized this as a radio station and investigated closer. He was surprised to find a building was stocked with pre-War emergency supplies and containing two skeletons that seemed locked in a deadly mortal embrace. This interested Heinrich but did not stop him from throwing them out of the radio station into a growing trash pile. He then set about making the radio station into his new home, seemingly putting the New Order behind him and ushering in the next phase in his life.
Early Days on the Radio[]
Heinrich quickly made himself at home in the radio station after his arrival in the summer of 2248. After a few days, Heinrich was happy to find that Mount Saint Helens was more hospitable than he had expected. He finally began removing more than a century of grime from the radio station. That was hard though while Heinrich was still looking over his shoulder.
Setting about cleaning up the radio station and the immediate area outside it, Heinrich caught sight of several tribals watching him from a distance. This put Heinrich on high alert, and he was on watch for days afterwards. On the second day, Heinrich shot a tribal dead. That caused the rest of them to scramble back down the slopes of the mountain which they feared so greatly. The tribals decided to hold off attacking Heinrich due to their fear of him, which Heinrich noticed after a couple of days. That made Heinrich more comfortable and let him settle into his new home at the radio station. As he set up his home, Heinrich began to piece together the story of the radio station’s last occupants through terminal entries and the environment. He found evidence that after the war, a member of the United States Forest Service named Greg Childers had holed up in the radio station and had monitored the Mount Saint Helens area for survivors. Childers faced numerous hardships until he finally met another person in 2085 who then presumably betrayed him. Reading that story only reinforced Heinrich’s preexisting paranoia. Heinrich also found a small library within the radio station full of mostly Old World authors. He then went on to put his own stuff into the radio station, creating a weapons cabinet for his guns out of a non-functioning bathroom and a bedroom out of a storage closet.
The next couple of months was spent establishing the new norm for Heinrich. This was spent exploring the Mount Saint Helens area, scavenging for supplies, and reading from the radio station's small library. Books such as The Death Ship and The Old Man and the Sea did not interest Heinrich, the only one that really appealed to him was On the Genealogy of Morality by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's German origins and criticism of the "slave mentality" (at least in the First Treatise) appealed to Heinrich's sensibilities directly. He enjoyed the book and tried to implement Nietzsche's philosophy into his own life.
It was around this time that Heinrich finally began to examine the radio station's equipment more explicitly. He decided to play around with it to see what it was capable of, as Heinrich had seen and used radios before when he was in the New Order. He was happily surprised to find the radio station and transmitter completely operational, powered by a generator still containing a couple of fusion cores. So, after some further tinkering with the radio station and holding off another attack by tribals, Heinrich decided to test out the radio station by broadcasting to the wasteland. This began with Heinrich asking if anyone wanted to talk, speaking innocently enough. The first response to Heinrich’s broadcast was a survivalist named Franklin, who responded to Heinrich.
This began Heinrich’s pattern of back and forth on the radio. Franklin greeted Heinrich on the radio and welcomed him to the area. Heinrich, happy to hear someone respond, asked some more about Mount Saint Helens. Franklin talked a little further about sources of fresh water and lumber until he came to the most important point: Franklin gave Heinrich the name of the Fire Mountain Tribe. After that, Franklin’s signal broke down, and he never contacted Heinrich again, even after he tried to contact the man again. However, Heinrich still saw this as a success due to obtaining a whole lot of new information.
It was soon after making contact with Franklin that the Fire Mountain Tribe renewed their attacks on Heinrich in 2249. The attack continued for about a week with Heinrich using the radio to broadcast what was essentially a 'play by play' on the various skirmishes between him and the tribals. This was the foundation of the Mouth of Mount Saint Helens radio station as Heinrich broadcasted on a nearly daily basis after that.
After repelling the tribal attack in 2249, Heinrich spent much of the rest of the year on the radio narrating his current fight for survival, his readings of various books in the radio station's small library, and telling exaggerated stories about his own past. This format was finally changed in early 2250 when the second person ever radioed Heinrich on his broadcast: Marcos.
Marcos became Heinrich’s most frequent caller in those early years, discussing his own difficulties due to his old age and “the goddamn tribals”. Heinrich and Marcos agreed on a lot of topics excluding ethno-nationalism (Marcos opposed government in general), chems (Heinrich abhorred the stuff while Marcos was constantly hopped up), and radiation (Marcos always believed it was all a communist spook, no matter how much Heinrich tried to explain the concept to him). Eventually, Marcos was on the Mouth of Mount Saint Helens so much that Heinrich allotted an hour for him every day to talk. This was the origin of Weirdo Hour. Over the rest of the 2250s, Heinrich mostly talked to Marcos on the radio, although he sometimes argued with the occasional passing caravaner or traveler with a radio.
As Marcos and Heinrich both reminisced about their youths with each other, the former footsoldier struggled to scratch out a living in the shadow of Mount Saint Helens. The Fire Mountain Tribe continued harassing him but luckily for Heinrich, he was unharmed from these encounters. However, what they did yield was something else entirely: companionship. In 2250, Heinrich saw a tribal woman he fancied who tried to kill him. So after killing her friends, Heinrich knocked the tribal out and stole her away to his isolated mountain home. There, Heinrich locked her in a room and began the grueling half-year process of grooming himself a wife. An obedient one that would fulfill his dreams of having a normal, happy family. This proved more difficult than Heinrich might have guessed.
Heinrich's attempts at taming the tribal woman barely took off initially. The woman bit him numerous times and tried to escape repeatedly. Heinrich, to his chagrin, had to beat her with the butt of Last Laugh a couple of times. That got her to be more cooperative. At the same time, Heinrich narrated his ongoing domestic problems on the radio and sometimes even discussed it with Marcos, who felt the younger man’s attempt at civilizing a ‘tribal cannibal’ would never work. It was early 2251 before Heinrich’s efforts finally yielded tangible results. The tribal woman became more docile and spoke English without having to be beaten. With this small victory, Heinrich decided to take the next logical step. He 'married' the female tribal, named her Eva, and broadcasted the marriage live in mid-2251. Heinrich raped Eva twice after their marriage but neither time was that enjoyable for either of them.
Heinrich’s survival efforts, radio broadcasts, and 'care' for his wife took a toll on him. He became sloppy, tired. That was when Eva managed to escape Heinrich's mountain home despite the former footsoldier’s fearsome pursuit that lasted five days. After angrily ending the pursuit, Heinrich went on a frightening two day-long tirade on women heard by many across the region. While Marcos comforted Heinrich (in his own coarse way), several women and more progressive thinking men responded to Heinrich for the first time. Much vitriol came from this. These disagreements ultimately resulted in Heinrich going off the air for quite a lot of 2251, only coming back in early 2252.
When the radio came back on, it seemed as if the program (and Heinrich himself) had gone through some rather noticeable changes. Heinrich had organized his radio show better since his comeback and became even more vindictive than before, though he was usually nice enough with Marcos. A schedule vastly improved the quality of the Mouth of Mount Saint Helens, at least relatively. This went on for about three years without incident. Most of this time was spent ranting about Seattle, various conspiracies, and tribals.
That was until Grey arrived at Heinrich’s doorstep in 2255. A longtime listener, Grey made his way up Mount Saint Helens to meet Heinrich. He avoided Heinrich’s booby traps, mines, and Heinrich himself to make his way to the radio station. This surprised Heinrich greatly, and he nearly killed the teenage boy. However, Grey managed to talk Heinrich down and convince the man of his sympathies to the radio.
This gave Heinrich that assurance he needed that Grey was not an enemy and he lowered Last Laugh. That night, Heinrich and Grey discussed a great deal many of things including both their pasts, their views on race, and their thoughts on the future. The two agreed on almost everything. This pleased Heinrich greatly as he saw this as vindication of his message. After some more conversation, Grey tentatively asked if he could work with Heinrich. Heinrich refused Grey offer to serve but did not tell the boy whether he would refuse tomorrow.
Grey returned to the station three or four more times in the next couple weeks and wore down Heinrich's resistance. Human interaction was not something Heinrich was used to, and he was outplayed. Grey managed to ingratiate himself to Heinrich over a week or two of interactions and soon enough, Heinrich agreed to take on Grey as an apprentice of sorts. This started with Heinrich training Grey how to use the radio equipment. Grey caught on quickly and was soon enough asking if he could get on the air. After a couple weeks, Heinrich finally gave in to Grey's pestering. On May 8, 2255, Heinrich first allowed Grey to take over the Mouth of Mount Saint Helens broadcast.
Heinrich did not listen to any of Grey’s broadcasts, instead wanting to, in his words, take a vacation. So, leaving the radio station in the care of Grey, Heinrich headed down the slopes of Mount Saint Helens in the summer of 2255. This was the first time he had left the mountain in nearly seven years. Quite predictably, Heinrich was quickly attacked by members of the Fire Mountain Tribe, still out for revenge for the various indignities he had heaped upon them in the past. Heinrich managed to fight them off, as he had always done, and headed south. Heinrich reached Silverlake the next day and cautiously poked around, looked for any evidence of his old comrades (even Morgan). All Heinrich found was the corpse of Erich, identifiable by his distinctive New Order modified riot gear.
After discovering Erich's body, Heinrich gave him a proper burial as he had respected the man when he was still alive. Heinrich spoke a couple of words at Erich's burial and even set up a headstone. After the burial, Heinrich decided to make his way south towards Portland to continue his little "vacation". Heinrich arrived in Portland a couple days after leaving Silverlake, stopping along several settlements on I-5 with varying results. Heinrich was slightly discouraged at discovering Portland to be a heterogeneous society divided among various factions and settlements. Luckily, Heinrich's New Order modified riot gear was not seen as the armor of monsters, so it granted him a sort of anonymity while wandering around Portland. Heinrich had a couple of adventures in Portland in the next month or so but nothing that really amounted to anything. His complete refusal to reach out to any non-whites and general lack of social skills handicapped him severely despite his weapons training and experience.
Heinrich recalled from his "vacation" after about a month when he actually listened to the Mouth of Mount Saint Helens for the first time since leaving. He was horrified to see his "protege" Grey spouting off theories about Hollow Earth, various crisis actors throughout the wasteland, and the role of "Zetans" in the Great War. Hearing this angered Heinrich greatly, as he saw Grey as hijacking his program for his own agenda. That sent Heinrich rushing back to Mount Saint Helens to confront his wayward replacement.
It took Heinrich about a week, but he made it back to the radio station in one piece. Entering the radio station, he was greeted by Grey who he immediately shot with his pistol. That felled the boy but did not kill him, forcing Heinrich to finish Grey off with another shot to head. Heinrich proceeded to dump Grey's body outside of the radio station and get on the air, announcing his return. That was met with no reply. Heinrich soon learned that this meant Marcos had died while he was on his little vacation. That sent Heinrich on another break from the radio until early 2257.
Making a Name for Himself[]
Heinrich fully returned as the host of the Mouth of Mount Saint Helens on February 4, 2257. The next couple of years were rather peaceful for the most part, though Heinrich still got a lot of hate sent his way during Weirdo Hour by various listeners dissatisfied with his racist diatribes on the radio. Nonetheless, Heinrich plodded on rambling about Jews and mutants.
A “seminal moment in history” (or so Heinrich thinks) came in 2260 when Heinrich received his first fan mail and the first (and second) attempt on his life in the same month. The story goes that Heinrich received the “mail” from a courier who had braved Mount Saint Helens’s various hazards and miraculously not been shot on sight by Heinrich. Heinrich read the mail on air and found that it was from a young man from Seattle who had taken Heinrich’s words to heart and established his own raider gang based on his ideals, the New New Order. Flattered by the letter, Heinrich lavishly thanked the author and encouraged any other fans to send fan mail as well.
That went fine for about a week or two. In that time, Heinrich was even gifted with the print of the historical lithograph Peoples of Europe, Guard Your Most Sacred Possessions that still hangs in his radio station today. Everything seemed to be going swell until Heinrich was mailed a makeshift bomb that just barely avoided killing him. Infuriated and frightened, Heinrich ranted for hours on end about how the “Jew city-states” in Seattle were conspiring to kill him with a coordinated campaign of mail bombs. After that, Heinrich told his fans not to send letters anymore but to simply call in his radio show.
The 2260s heralded a virtual golden age for Heinrich as he sat atop his mountain weaving grand tales to rationalize what was going on below. Heinrich termed Sons of Liberty that sometimes came near the mountain to be “phoney spooks” who stole the New Order’s ideas. He theorized that the lack of Oregon tribals in the Mount Saint Helens area by the early 2260s was purely because of their fear of him. A favorite target of Heinrich was the NCR, a faraway nation that still felt very close to many people as the Oregon Brushfire Wars began. Heinrich suspected the NCR to be a nation of “mulattos” and mutants masquerading as the saviors of the old world to put down the guard of any white Americans left so they could be more easily stamped out. When he was told race was not really an issue in NCR, he called the man who told him a liar but still took that information to heart, soon changing his theory to NCR just being a nation of mutants. That amused many of his radio listeners. Heinrich also continued to rant about Jew control of just about every organization he knew of in the wasteland, though he could never solidly prove any of his theories during Weirdo Hour.
Things changed for Heinrich yet again in 2263 when he discovered a family of homesteaders had settled near Mount Saint Helens. He instantly called for their immediate removal on the radio as he regarded all the land around the mountain to be his, at least in theory. When that did not work, Heinrich began going out and spying on the homesteaders starting in 2264. It was then that Heinrich made an interesting if infuriating discovery.
Heinrich was scouting for the homesteaders past the foot of his mountain in the summer of 2264 when he saw something through his binoculars. Looking closer, Heinrich saw something he had only ever seen twice before: a real-life nude woman. She was bathing in one of the rivers below his mountain. That really caught Heinrich’s attention, and he looked closer only to be crestfallen upon discovering the woman was Asian. Nevertheless, Heinrich figured a woman was a woman and continued to watch her bathe from his binoculars. That went on for the rest of the summer as Heinrich postponed his search for the homesteaders to “watch” this woman, unaware that the two things were related. Heinrich made sure not to make note of this habit on the radio, but his increased absence from the radio was noticeable. Heinrich considered going down the river himself a couple of times but decided against it. He hadn’t the stomach for rape anymore.
The woman stopped coming to the river at the end of the summer of 2264, and Heinrich resumed his regularly scheduled activities. That led to Heinrich meeting a frequent opponent on Weirdo Hour: Mark Goldsmith. A caravaner from Seattle, Heinrich’s diatribes on the radio aroused Mark’s temper and he began calling in during Weirdo Hour beginning in 2264. The exchanges between Heinrich and Mark often devolved into name-calling but were usually entertaining to Heinrich’s audience. That went on for five years until Mark gave up and stopped calling in. At the same time, Heinrich continued to churn out conspiracy theories, though now ones related to more current events such as Stern’s Raiders, the slow but steady advance of the NCR, and the Enclave remnants he heard were still lurking in the mountains.
Heinrich gained an interest in finding the homesteaders living below his mountain again in 2265 and set out once again to find them, only this time while covering the entire process with his radio program. That way Heinrich hoped to provoke a reaction from the homesteaders, perhaps bringing them to him. That did not work, so Heinrich was forced to go out and search for them again like the year before. In 2265, Heinrich did find the homestead he was looking for finally tucked away in a valley south of Mount Saint Helens. He also found that the homesteaders, the Wu Family, were Chinese-Americans, a fact that disgusted him. Heinrich had gotten so far away from Seattle just to get away from people like this, and now, they practically were at his doorstep. Wanting to get a closer look, Heinrich took a stealthy approach and managed to get inside the Wu’s homestead while they were not home. There, he planned to kill them when they returned, publically announcing this on the radio beforehand. However, Heinrich found a picture while he was in the homestead that changed his mind, a family portrait that included the woman he had spied on last summer. That threw Heinrich into a panic, and overwhelmed by emotion, the man left the homestead and returned back to Mount Saint Helens. He did not discuss on the radio what had happened with the homesteaders which made his listeners suspicious, and so the fate of the homesteaders became a frequent topic of Weirdo Hour when Heinrich was not arguing with Mark Goldsmith.
Heinrich’s rather peaceful time on his mountain ended in 2266 when he crossed paths with a group whose fame far surpassed his own: Stern's Raiders. At that time, the Raiders were fleeing a pack of Badlanders sent by NCR to kill them which led them Mount Saint Helens. A couple of the Raiders were aware of Heinrich’s existence but none were prepared for the paranoid hermit’s defenses. The approach to the mountain was booby trapped to the teeth, but the Raiders carefully continued anyways since they were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Luckily for the Raiders, their Badlander pursuers were less observant and bulled right through Heinrich’s booby traps. Alerted to the presence of trespassers, Heinrich armed himself with Last Laugh and began firing off at anything that moved from the window of his radio station while yelling at the top of his lungs to his radio audience about the situation at hand. When Heinrich realized the intruders were Stern’s Raiders, he became even more agitated. Luckily for the Raiders and the Badlanders, Heinrich missed just about all of his shots with most of the intruders escaping his grasp. His booby traps, however, did kill a couple of Badlanders and mangled Brice Lowanskie‘s leg. That incident with Stern’s Raiders led Heinrich’s infamy to skyrocket with people talking about his fight with the freedom fighters for weeks. A new dangerous chapter in his life had begun.
Mountain Confrontations[]
After Heinrich’s encounter with Stern’s Raiders, he gained quite a lot of new listeners to his radio station who were interested in what this oddball has to say. Many of them were disgusted by what they heard, and a few decided it was about time to shut down Heinrich for good to end his unrelenting bigotry. This string of assassination attempts went on for four years starting in 2266.
The first attack on Heinrich’s radio station came in late 2266 from a familiar face: a (former) member of the Fire Mountain Tribe. The tribal, now named Walt, had been civilized in the years since his tribes disintegration but had never forgotten what Heinrich had done to his people. Living in Portland, Walt heard Heinrich’s filth on the radio after the incident with Stern’s Raiders and remembered all the ills that man had committed against his tribe. It was then that Walt decided it was time for that man to take a dirt nap. Walt took what weapons he had with him and journeyed to amount Saint Helens to kill Heinrich. He only made it halfway up the mountain before Heinrich noticed the intruder and killed him from a distance with Last Laugh. That attempt on his life, though unsuccessful, brought a whole new bought of paranoia upon Heinrich, and he channeled that through his radio broadcasts, daring anyone else foolish enough to even try to kill him.
That invitation had the opposite effect Heinrich intended, and two more attacks followed soon after the first in early 2267. The second attack was from a group of inexperienced wannabe wasteland adventurers from Seattle who Heinrich managed to dispatch rather easily while the third was an experienced bounty hunter from NCR hired by a wealthy homesteader to kill Heinrich. The bounty hunter posed a difficult challenge to Heinrich, but the recluse eventually outsmarted the mercenary, killing him with one of the mountain’s many booby traps. After the incident with the bounty hunter, Heinrich became more panicked on the radio and even decided to end Weirdo Hour for a while. The beginning of the War of the Northwestern Alliance did not help Heinrich’s mental state as he theorized which side was controlled by who. He was constantly on watch for danger approaching Mount Saint Helens and shot at anyone who came too close.
That was what happened in the spring of 2267 when Heinrich shot a wandering Disciple missionary who had been hiking in the Mount Saint Helens area. Heinrich though he had killed the missionary outright but awakened a day later to find the man still alive if unable to heal himself. Considering whether he should shoot the missionary or not, Heinrich decided against his better judgment to save the injured man. He might make good conversation. Heinrich descended from his mountain, rescued the injured missionary, and nurses him back to health. As soon as the missionary, named Eli, was healthy, Heinrich put him in front of a microphone and started debating on various issues ranging from religion to race to topical politics in Cascadia. That week of debates helped Heinrich blow off some steam while it terrified Eli, who was still not fully aware of what was going on but put up a couple of good arguments. The debates were briefly interrupted by a fourth attack on Heinrich by more wasteland adventurers who he promptly killed and showed to a shocked Eli. After a week of debating Eli, Heinrich grew bored of the Disciple’s company and set him free to roam the wasteland again. After Eli’s departure, Heinrich brought back Weirdo Hour. Eli would remain Heinrich’s only “in-studio guest” on his radio for more almost twenty years.
2268 and 2269 were mostly spent fighting off further attacks which at that time mostly came from the differing sides of the War of the Northwestern Alliance, whether it be Oregon partisans, Oregon tribals, or Badlanders. An interesting development Heinrich followed around that time was the rise of the Free Northwestern Army, which he documented with surprising accuracy. The FNA’s growth alarmed Heinrich greatly, and he worried that NCR was funding a cabal of warlords to overtake Oregon to rule as feudal puppets of the Bear. Heinrich also followed the Purification War with great interest because of the FNA’s involvement as well as the “final justice” for the Purifiers, who he hated vehemently.
The last and most significant attack on Heinrich would come in 2270 and involve the Wu Family, who had mercifully remained under Heinrich’s radar for many years at that point. However, the Wu Family had obtained a radio since Heinrich had first encountered them and knew of the crazy man ranting from his mountain. The Wu parents forbade their children from listening to Heinrich, but one boy, curious about the mystery man, did listen. The boy, named Dan, heard a great deal many things that he did not understand, and that further piqued his interest. Dan, bored with the homestead and ready for an adventure, decided to seek out the old man in the mountain to learn his wisdom. So, Dan ran away from home headed for Mount Saint Helens.
In the summer of 2270, Heinrich was still fresh off a recent attempt on his life by a band of bloodthirsty Badlanders, and the man’s blood was still up from escaping death for what seemed the hundredth time. Paranoid and angry, Heinrich confined himself to his radio station broadcasting further conspiracy theories on the War of the Northwestern Alliance as it winded down while intently watching the area below for more attackers. It was one downcast evening when Heinrich saw a small figure moving below him, making its way up the mountain. As was his habit at that point, Heinrich took aim with Last Laugh and shot at the figure below. The shot appeared to have only clipped the person, but they went down nonetheless. Heinrich did not think of the incident for a while afterwards.
Around the same time, Carl Wu was making way through the wasteland searching for his son Dan who had run off towards Mount Saint Helens. Dan had a seven-hour head-start, so Carl was forced to cover a lot of ground very fast to try to quickly reach his son. He arrived almost too late. Dan had only been grazed by Heinrich’s bullet, but the wound bled profusely. The pain and the sight of his own blood paralyzed the poor boy until his father arrived to save him. Carl Wu, knowledgeable of Heinrich's habit of shooting all that approached his mountain, carefully carried his son back to their homestead after tying up the wound, back to his mother’s loving arms. Even though Carl’s thoughts mostly dwelled on his child’s survival at that time, other thoughts were in his head too: thoughts of revenge upon the man that nearly killed his son out his own cowardly fear.
Carl Wu’s plan for killing Heinrich was no better planned than most of the others who tried, the only reason it was so successful was through Carl’s sheer determination. Equipping himself with leather armor and all but one of his family’s weapons, Carl set off towards Mount Saint Helens to free the area of Heinrich’s malignant influence once and for all. It was short journey to the mountain’s foot, but scaling it to the radio station above was another matter entirely. Not only was the approach to the radio station fully exposed to Heinrich's withering fire except for some trees but the path up was littered with booby traps, mines, and the corpses of past adventurers who had tangled with the ex-footsoldier. That did not perturb Carl though as he made his way up Mount Saint Helens, running from tree to tree trying to hide from Heinrich's line of sight. Heinrich did not notice Carl coming up the mountain for about half an hour before he heard one his explosive booby traps going off. Going to the radio station's window, Heinrich saw Carl darting between the trees and opened fire with Last Laugh, trying to blow away the cover. What followed was possibly the hardest fight of Heinrich's life. After the end of Heinrich's first volley, Carl returned fire with his hunting rifle and scored a lucky shot through the radio station window. Carl caught Heinrich in the arm sending the man reeling back into the building to get a stimpak. Taking advantage of the lull, Carl continued to scale the mountain while avoiding hazards on the way.
At the same time, Heinrich was patching up his wound, suiting up for battle, and yelling like a lunatic to his radio audience, many of who had listened to fight from its beginning. Heinrich equipped his modified riot gear, said goodbye to his listeners while turning off the radio, and went out to face Carl Wu in a head to head battle. Heading outside the radio station, Heinrich shouldered his marksmen carbine and took aim at Carl. That kept Carl down for the rest of the day as darkness fell, and it started raining.
After the rain began, Heinrich headed back to the radio station as he and Carl traded shots. Heinrich locked himself in his radio station and quickly lost track of Carl Wu as he hid away from the building's windows. Night dragged on Heinrich fired at anything that moved within the radio station, growing increasingly fearful even as darkness gave way to the dawn. He did not have a wink of sleep that night. Scattered sunlight shined through shards of wet broken glass, making spots of sunlight that at first Heinrich mistook for intruders and shot at. His paranoia served to save him however after Carl managed to get inside the radio station stealthily through his lockpicking skills. Hearing a rustling noise to his left, Heinrich fired a barrage of bullets that way which caused Carl to break his stealth. In that morning in the summer of 2270, the two men traded shots for hours without seriously injuring each other until Carl ran out of bullets around noon. Heinrich saw an opportunity and moved in for the kill, only to be knocked over by Carl who took a lucky risk. Dropping Last Laugh, Heinrich drew his Chinese pistol only to have it be knocked out of his hands too. The two then got in a brutal melee battle, Carl with his combat knife and Heinrich with his hatchet.
That was the first time the two men really met face to face with Carl looking like a wild man and Heinrich lacking a helmet while being covered in his own blood. Carl was the one that introduced himself while the two were circling each other, saying he already knew who Heinrich was. Heinrich then immediately retorted back asking if Carl was a "Jew spy" and lunged with a hatchet. The battle that followed was especially brutal, with Carl losing two fingers and taking a hatchet to the gut while Heinrich lost the sight in his left eye. The melee in the radio station ended with Heinrich being disarmed (again) and tackling Carl through a window as a last resort, sending them both outside into a bed of broken glass.
Being launched out of a window, it took a bit of time for both Carl and Heinrich to recover. However, the two still tried to compete with each other to get up, knowing the first to get up would have a clear advantage. Propping himself up using his combat knife, Carl stared at Heinrich's only vaguely stirring form with absolute rancor. Crawling his way towards Heinrich, Carl throatily voiced what he thought of Heinrich: that he was a hateful cowardly radio jockey fueled by fear and anger who had tried to kill a child for little reason other than to "keep safe". Carl mused that all men had some evil in them but said Heinrich was beyond saving. Carl's talking, unfortunately, alerted Heinrich to his nearing presence and motivated him to get up. Getting up through sheer willpower, Heinrich, although unarmed, loomed triumphant over the still crawling Carl, now finally scared for his life. Heinrich taunted Carl for his Chinese heritage and considered that perhaps he was ending another chapter of the Great War right there. Heinrich then slowly made his way back to the radio station to get one of his weapons to the finish off the troublesome father. That should have been the end of it. He could not help laying a kick into Carl's gut wound though, allowing Carl to bury his combat knife into Heinrich's shin. Heinrich let out a howl of pain at that and nearly fell, but he stayed on his feet, knowing a fall meant certain death. While Carl was still on the ground, Heinrich limped his way back to the radio station now simply hoping to get some medical supplies. He made his way through the station's door, closed it behind him, and just collapsed.
Heinrich awakened with a start and quickly surveyed his surroundings. There was a lot of damage to just about everything in the radio station, but Carl Wu was nowhere to be found. Carl's combat knife was also still buried in Heinrich's shin. Easing the combat knife out of his flesh, Heinrich then hobbled over to his medicine cabinet to get treat his wounds, especially his leg wound. Injecting Med-X to dull his pain, Heinrich went to work fixing himself while keeping an eye for Carl returning. He did not return, and Heinrich patched himself up before assessing the damage done to his radio station. Much of the building was now riddled with bullet holes and knocked over (or shattered in the case of the windows). Some of the radio equipment was also damaged, meaning no more broadcasts for a while. Luckily for Heinrich, he assessed that the damage to his radio equipment was repairable and the generator that powered his radio station was not damaged at all. So, Heinrich went to work.
He began by boarding up the broken windows of his radio station and patching up all the damage in the radio station besides the radio equipment. After cleaning up the initial damage, Heinrich set out from Mount Saint Helens to scavenge new radio equipment and to look for more fusion cores to continue to power his radio station. This went on for much of the summer of 2270 and led to many more misadventures involving Heinrich. It was also when Heinrich learned of Carl Wu's fate after his confrontation: he had been rescued by his wife who had found him near death two days after the battle at Mount Saint Helens. Heinrich remembered his spying on Carl's wife and chuckled a little bit to himself. He then considered pursuing Carl to finish him off for good, but he decided against it to keep on repairing his radio station. He also booby-trapped and mined up the mountain again.
The radio station was repaired after a couple of months with Heinrich finally getting back on air on July 8, 2270. Heinrich announced that he was still alive, and regular programming was returning. He also went on to explain what had been going on since his departure from the radio waves, not including the part where he shot a child and that only one person attacked him. His radio career back in swing, Heinrich was also happy to find no one was coming to kill anymore it seemed. For months, people thought he was dead and killing him was not a wasteland adventure anymore. Heinrich could only hope this trend would stick, and more importantly, Carl Wu would not return for another round.
The Twilight Years[]
After the confrontation in 2270, Heinrich recovered his footing and began regularly broadcasting the Mouth of Mount Saint Helens, Weirdo Hour and all. Immediately after his return, Heinrich mostly tried to talk about the now concluding War of the Northwestern Alliance and the emerging threat of the Free Northwestern Army. Heinrich had several theories on the FNA's "true" purpose but could not pin down a concrete explanation for their existence besides being a puppet for NCR. For once, most of his listeners agreed with him.
Heinrich's radio escapades continued into the 2270s as he first began to really feel the ravages of age. That again made Heinrich afraid, but he stuffed that fear deep down inside of himself, not wanting to confront it. As more people seemed to come into Cascadia, more people listened to Heinrich's show and were either outraged, amused, or spellbound. One character Heinrich was happy to meet was Crazy Ivan, a Russian arms dealer living in Seattle who seemed to enjoy Heinrich's content somewhat. Crazy Ivan made frequent appearances in Weirdo Hour starting in 2276 and over time became something of a second Marcos to Heinrich, a friend of sorts. The two had little in common in regards to opinions but still shared a lot of same conspiracies with each other. Crazy Ivan was reluctant to share his own theories on Heinrich's radio though, and he mostly just tried to advertise his weapons. Eventually, Heinrich became such good friends of Crazy Ivan that he gave him "Honorary Aryan" status in 2281, though he assured the hot-blooded Russian that it did not negate his proud Slavic heritage. The two continue to talk often to this day.
Another more antagonistic character that has appeared on Weirdo Hour more recently is Patagonia Flats, the voice of the Crystal Truth Movement. A New Califronian and a former host of Cat Chat, Flats likes to mildly heckle and annoy Heinrich on the radio. This mostly consists of either debating about existentialism or falsely confirming Heinrich's fears about various issues. Heinrich continues to talk to Flats as he sees the heckler as something of a sparring partner, even though Flats frustrates him to no end.
In 2278, Heinrich saw someone new camping below his mountain. He looked through his binoculars and got a devilish idea. That night, Heinrich made his way down from Mount Saint Helens to abduct this passing traveler to interview for the radio show for the second time. It turned out that this traveler was a wasteland bum by the name of Todd who had no interesting things to say besides asking for food and water. After twenty minutes of begging, Heinrich got up and shot Todd with his Chinese pistol on air. Tossing Todd's body down the mountain, Heinrich announced that this would not happen again.
As the 2270s drew to a close, Heinrich's ramblings began to yield more and more hecklers again among the more social justice-minded individuals in Seattle including some Geigers and members of caravans. The most prominent of these individuals is Nemesis Lake, the head of Lake Caravans, who has sent numerous bounty hunters over the years to kill Heinrich. None have yet succeeded and Heinrich frequently cackles about this on the radio and mocks Lake for being a "fat kike dyke". That has only increased Lake's hatred of Heinrich. Another less distant threat to Heinrich is the Wu Family, who still live near Mount Saint Helens and harbor a certain hatred for the man in the mountain. Dan hopes to one day kill "the old man" himself when he becomes an adventurer, something his parents actively discourage regardless of their feelings on Heinrich.
Heinrich is currently still sitting in his radio station continuing his broadcast like he has for nearly forty years. Although paranoid, he is still comfortable in his current condition while having to occasionally fight off intruders due his surprisingly good aim, cultivated over years of practice. Heinrich can still pull the vitriol and hate even in his old age, railing against all things opposing the values he holds so dear. Nowadays, that mostly means Jews, NCR, Badlanders, and occasionally women. His body has not been so lucky, and Heinrich is now well aware that he is old, no doubt about it. Heinrich has come to accept that though, one of the few things in life he has changed his mind about. After all, where would he be if he did something like that every day?
Personality[]
The emotion fear has dominated Heinrich’s life. A damaged individual, Heinrich formed his rather unique personality due to years of misfortune, abuse, and danger. Heinrich, simply put, is paranoid about pretty much everything ranging from his drinking water to the weather. This is mainly due to his conspiracy theory-filled education and his constant fear of danger that developed during his years fighting for the New Order. He rationalizes his delusions through complex epileptic trees and conspiracy theories that he almost never tries to confirm for himself, preferring to instead broadcast them to world over the radio. His paranoia often translates into procrastination, which leads to Heinrich being rather disorganized and sloppy in his personal life in regards to things such as cleaning the radio station and hygiene. Heinrich has on occasion blamed infiltrators for the refuse in his home, but he knows he's really just lazy.
Heinrich is also very reclusive, as he prefers isolation and is distrustful of strangers. This isolation from living breathing people has further bred his paranoia although Heinrich himself is utterly unaware of this. Because of this, he takes himself very seriously, being completely confident in his own beliefs. This confidence rarely transmitted to social interactions, unfortunately. Heinrich is also surprisingly optimistic for someone with such a seemingly cynical view of the world, another result of his total confidence in his beliefs. These beliefs have not translated into solid actions though, and Heinrich chooses to remain on his mountain rather than try to actively "exterminate the lower races".
Heinrich’s rather strong beliefs are heavily influenced by his upbringing in the New Order, though with a few personal twists. True to his upbringing, Heinrich holds a deep-seated hatred for all “non-Aryan whites” and mutants. He believes in “The Supremacy of the White Man”. This makes him unpopular with many people in Cascadia, but Heinrich could care less about them. One thing Heinrich has learned over the years is to not put too much stock in what people think of you.
However, Heinrich has strayed from his New Order upbringing in some respects. He has bent the rules so as not to shoot "non-Aryan whites", and his conspiracy theories have gone far beyond the scope the New Order taught him. Also, Heinrich has a view of women that runs opposite to the New Order’s view of them as either loving Madonnas or sensual whores. He instead believes they are all whores and should be treated as such. Fortunately for women, Heinrich has not had a woman in his grasps since he developed this belief.
Appearance[]
Heinrich has always had a depressingly average appearance. Ever since he was a child, Heinrich has been small. This is not related with his height with it being rather average but instead with his weight. This made it easy for people to bully him as a child. His hair used to be a dark brown but has since turned white.
As he has grown older, Heinrich has acutely felt the ravages of age. Most of his hair has fallen out, and some of his teeth have fallen out as well. His skin has become very wrinkled. He also now needs glasses to really see anything.
Equipment[]
Heinrich's New Order modified riot gear is still in his possession, but he rarely wears it. Clothing that Heinrich wears more often include a black suit, a trench coat, and suspenders and slacks. Heinrich also has a bathrobe for comfort.
Heinrich has a large weapons stash collected from both his time in the New Order and on his mountaintop radio station. His primary weapon is his unique marksman carbine, Last Laugh. It has been quite effective in holding off Heinrich's enemies, though the ammunition is kind of hard to come by. Heinrich's secondary weapon is his good old brush gun, which is more reliable but less effective than Last Laugh. The less used weapons in Heinrich's arsenal includes a riot shotgun, a Shanxi Type 17 Chinese pistol, a silenced 10mm pistol, and a combat knife.
His hatchet is utilized more as a tool than a weapon by Heinrich to cut firewood and clear underbrush. Another tool Heinrich possesses is duct tape.
Heinrich has a number of treasured possessions that he has picked up over time from various people and places. His oldest treasures are a Vault-Tec bobblehead and the comic Grognak the Barbarian #4 In the Bosom of the Corsair Queen. Some of Heinrich's other treasured possessions acquired later include his unique marksman carbine Last Laugh, an 8-ball taken from a pool hall in Tacoma, a print of the historical lithograph Peoples of Europe, Guard Your Most Sacred Possessions, and a copy of the book On the Genealogy of Morality.
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