The Story of the Master and the Unity
What is the FEV, and why are Fallout fans making such a big deal about it? In the latest episode of the Fallout TV show, Norm Maclean discovered an awful truth: whatever Bud’s ultimate plans were for his trio of Vaults, they involved this man-made virus. In a nutshell, it turns normal humans into big, green, hulking brutes immune to disease and radiation, but with the risk of robbing them of their intelligence. There are examples of them that are friendly and get along well with other humans, but those that don’t can be a menace to the Wasteland. Sadly, if Bud’s plan involves turning his super-managers into Super Mutants, then it loses points for lack of originality. Someone tried that in the first game, and failed. For the sake of covering bases, though, lets discuss this first attempt, brought to us by the Unity and the Master.
Dr. Richard Grey
The story of the Unity begins before the Great War with a man named Richard Moreau. As a boy, he was one of the first generation of Vault Dwellers, allowing him to survive nuclear armageddon in relative peace. When that vault opened to the sands of Nevada in 2096, though, he was exiled after being accused of murder. He went south into Southern California where he changed his last name to Grey and found work as a doctor. He proved to be a good one, and was well-liked by the locals, and he could’ve lived a good life, had fate not intervened.
Grey’s new home was already dealing with raiders and scavengers, but around the turn of the century, strange, mutated beings started appearing. They slaughtered the caravans needed to keep the place alive, and by 2102, the people had enough. Together with a merchant friend of his and a few others, Grey set out on a quest to find the source of the mutants and destroy it. Their quest would lead them to the ruins of the Mariposa Army Base, the source of the FEV virus that the Brotherhood of Steel had tried to seal away. The mutants and machines still guarding the place slaughtered most of the party, and when Grey and his friend found the vats of FEV, a crane sent Grey falling into it. His friend was the only one who made it out, thinking that everyone else was dead.
They weren’t.
Grey is Gone…there is only The Master
No one knew it, but Dr. Grey had survived the fall into the vats of FEV. For an entire week, he floated in the virus, trapped and put through unimaginable pain as it began to mutate his body far beyond what its creators intended. Even after he pulled himself free, his body continued to mutate into something else entirely. The physical changes, though, were nothing compared to what it did to his mind. Already possessing a keen intellect, his mind became sharper than ever, his charisma grew off the charts, and most surprisingly, he developed psychic powers. By injecting himself with even more FEV, he found himself able to control and manipulate the minds of others, or even assimilate them into his body. The more he did this, the more he believed that the FEV was the salvation for humanity. And with that, came the idea of…Unity.
Having seen how humanity had almost destroyed itself, Grey sought to unify what was left of it under a rule. With his powers and the FEV, he would turn all of humanity into Super Mutants. They would be faster, stronger, and above all, perfectly adapted for his radioactive world, and he would be its Master. Thus, the Unity, an army of Super Mutants was born with himself as its dark god and master.
Through his testing with the FEV, the Master discovered that radiation exposure affected how smart a Super Mutant would be once transformed. With that knowledge, he spent decades building the Unity in secret. His Mutants would abduct people from caravans and settlements so he could use them to increase their ranks even further. At the same time, though, he was becoming progressively less human and more an amalgamation of flesh and computers. This made him the perfect object of worship for a group of human cultists who would serve as his spies. By 2161, he had an army powerful enough to conquer all of California, with the rest of the world to follow. But that is when a monkey wrench was thrown into his plans.
The Vault Dweller Stops the Master
Remember the Vault Dweller that saved Shady Sands so they could found the NCR? He went on a quest to find the source of the Super Mutant army threatening his Vault, and that put him on the trail of the Master. With the help of his companions and the Brotherhood of Steel, the Vault Dweller didn’t stop until he made it all the way to the Master’s lair in the ruins of Los Angeles. Depending on how you play the game, you can fight and kill the Master, but there’s an easier way to beat him: exposing the flaw in his plan.
During his travels, the Vault Dweller had discovered notes about the FEV, and he learned something important from them: it rendered anyone turned into Super Mutants sterile. And there was no known way to fix that. The Master was gambling mankinds future on a race that, while potentially immortal, would die in a generation. And when he showed the proof to the Master, it completely broke him. Finally able to see just how insane he had truly become, the Master realized that what he offered the world had no hope. Overcome with despair, the Master set off his lair’s self-destruct system, giving the Vault Dweller enough time to escape while chose to end it all himself.
