#and when he tried giving tinker a chance literally an entire plague broke out so initially he was like fuck

[herosparade]

if i think a little too hard about sonic during the zombot arc i start exploding

[shellheadtmarc]

| BASIC INFO

MCU-based.

On October 23, 2077, the Great War finally ended.  The nukes were launched, the vaults were shut well below their maximum capacity, and civilization as we know it ended in nuclear hellfire.  

The Avenger otherwise known as Iron Man, Tony Stark, was in NYC when the bombs dropped.  Instead of finding shelter in a vault, or following through with one of the many contingency plans put in place for just that occurrence, he instead tried to do what he could in the aftermath, where a city full of panicky people rioted and looted after so long of rationing and not enough, trying his best to help keep some kind of order, to prevent those left behind after the vaults closed turning on each other in the worst possible way.

The years kept passing, and while some people became ghouls with the exposure to the massive amounts of radiation and FEV present in everything, and most died, tests run by he and JARVIS confirmed his initial suspicions,that the arc reactor was keeping him alive in more ways than one.  And in the end, there ended up being nothing for him to do but wait until the worst of the radiation had passed, bide his time, tinker, and keep an eye out for the first of the vaults to start opening.

Two hundred and some change later, the Brotherhood of Steel, on their way to the Commonwealth, crawl past New York in the Prydwen, and Tony, having adapted to wasteland living and doing his best to initiate and oversee rebuilding efforts (and, in the controlled environment of the NYC wasteland, succeeding to a degree), does what any rational, cagey, paranoid wastelander would do:  He suits up and follows them into Boston.  Any Hindenburg 2.0 like that with an amassment of vertibirds and power armored personnel isn’t knocking on the door to borrow a cup of sugar, and he’s heard enough rumors about factions in both DC and Boston with passing traders that he figures New York will have to look after New York for a little while (or...JARVIS will have to help New York look after New York, same difference), while he goes and pokes his nose in the Commonwealth’s business.

He touches down north of Fort Hagen (around the abandoned chapel) after the Brotherhood of Steel arrive and set up base at Boston’s old airport, and from Fort Hagen he’ll start his own investigations into the BOS, the Railroad, the Minutemen, and the Institute.

| APPEARANCE

Tony’s a far cry from five hundred dollar haircuts and bespoke suits these days; the wasteland is rough, and he’s had to get rough back.  Function takes precedence over fashion, and while he still cleans up fairly well, you’ll never see him like that.  His typical uniform is no different than the rest of the wasteland’s, ranging from old flannel and threadbare denim to mechanic coveralls and worn tank tops, all of which are thin enough to let his arc reactor shine through them like a beacon.  

Physically, his entire silhouette has changed:  He’s probably a lot healthier than the average scavver, simply because he is and was born before the war and due to the arc reactor isn’t prone to some of the genetic troubles and illnesses that plague the wasteland.  However, due to the nature of living in the wasteland, where fighting for your life is very often literal, his musculature has changed, and he’s leaner than he was before the war.  His face, too, especially shows that, as his cheeks have hollowed out considerably, and he looks entirely more gaunt these days.

His hair runs in two directions:  Either he’ll take scissors to it himself (and he’s gotten good at giving himself a trim in an approximation of the hairstyles he’d favored before the war, even if they tend to fall flat with no hair product being available these days) when he has the time, or he lets it grow until he can’t stand it any longer.  When it’s longer, he has a habit of pinning it back with bobby pins, which works out just fine for him, because he’s never without one if he needs to pick a lock.

More often than not, he can’t be bothered with his trademark laser-precision facial hair, because shaving takes time these days, and clean water is a resource that can’t be wasted on frivolous pursuits when it’s needed for drinking and cooking.  Instead, while he sometimes is seen shaping it back up every so often, he tends to let it grow as it will (and he does do his best to tame it, but, again - who has the time to worry about things like developing beard oil and balm when there’s so much else to be done that’s more important?), or he shaves completely and the process starts all over again.  Having trademark facial hair is just one of the many quirks he’s had to let go of in the name of survival.

He’s carrying more obvious scars, other than those around the arc reactor.  All those blows to the face and years getting his face banged around in the suit have finally taken their toll, and he’s got a scar that runs the curve of his left brow bone and eye socket, as well as an arch over the bridge of his nose and a permanent one from having his lip split open so many multiple times.  He’s usually sporting a black eye or fat lip, because he still runs his mouth, and running from a fight is no longer an option.  You should see the other guy, honestly.

| FEV ENHANCEMENT

Tony has never been shy about the idea that physical enhancement is as much part of the game of being Iron Man as the suit is.  After all, it’s only a suit, and response times can only be so fast, when there’s always going to be a delay between thought and getting the suit to follow that thought.  So, much in the vein of the 616 run for Extremis enhancement, Tony’s...Tinkered on himself.  Mostly, stumbling across the same strain of FEV developed in the Institute was sheer luck, and it took years for him to decide it was the route he wanted to go, with innumerable simulations and alternatives ran and checked before he made that leap.

To be clear:  He’s not a super mutant, much as 616 Tony was not a true Extremis enhancile.  He took the structure of FEV, broke it apart, cut out the parts he didn’t want, added parts he did, and put it all back together before using himself as a guinea pig to see if it’d work.  And work it has.  He’s a little stronger, yes, but not in a way that matters.  He heals a little faster.  He regrew himself new organs.  But much like with Extremis, he forced it to do what he wanted it to do, which was rewire himself from the inside out, and now when he says ‘the suit and I are one’ he means that.  Literally.  He wires himself directly into it when needed, and the most crucial components of it hide out in the hollows of his bones.

More importantly, however, he’s only reinforced the length of his lifespan, and upped his metabolism, so now he runs on the hot end of the spectrum.  He’s a great bed buddy now in the middle of winter.

Another side effect of the FEV use and rewiring himself includes:  Low level technomancy.  He can literally interface with some machinery within reason and hack it with his brain.  Useful, when you’re up against a bunch of haywire robots and want to turn the tide in your favor by hacking a few but can’t stop shooting and ducking behind things long enough to do it the old fashioned way.  It’s limited, though, and not something he necessarily makes a lot of use of unless absolutely necessary.  

| WASTELAND SPECIAL

The Wasteland Special is the new FEV-based suit.  Well.  “New” is relative.  Years were spent putting together the perfect one size fits all suit suited for the wasteland and its dangers, as well as combining it with Tony’s FEV enhancements so that he has it at a moment’s notice in the chance a super mutant behemoth decides to induct him into the wasteland space program.

It has an assortment of functions, and while it has a connection to JARVIS, unlike his earlier suits it doesn’t require JARVIS to run its systems, as that’s all done with Tony being directly connected to it himself.  JARVIS is, for all practical purposes, more a partner in this venture, and tends to watch Tony’s six.

He doesn’t use it often, and that should be heavily stressed.  Iron Man, for all practical purposes, is something from the past.  What there remains of him existing before the war - which isn’t much - includes some comic illustrations that show the classic Marvel red and gold (that Fallout aesthetic, you know) not anything like what his suits actually looked like.  If he does pull out the Wasteland Special, it means things are bad.  Or he’s off for a stroll through the Glowing Sea.  A or B.  It can also be used piecemeal, much like most of the Iron Man suits.  Jet boots for this, gauntlets for that, he’ll do that far more often than the whole shebang, because he likes perching on overpasses that no longer connect to Boston’s highway system to feel tall.  Or get a layout of the land.  It varies with his mood and whims.  Traveling alone at night, that’s typically how he likes to camp, anyway.

For relevant visuals on how it works, see the Extremis run in 2008 Invincible Iron Man and the MCU’s Avengers: Infinity War.  It’s a long term solution to the problem of lacking resources, since building suits for every function is no longer a possibility.  Yes, it’s still red and gold and lights up in a way that pleases him.  His hall of armors is looking a bit bare, because outdated and outmoded suits were broken down for components to build it. 

| QUIRKS / HABITS / VOCABULARY

First things first:  If you expect Disney dialogue options here, you won’t find them.  Tony’s around wastelanders; he lives like them, he talks with them, he’s friends with them.  These days his dialogue is as peppered with casual profanity as anyone else’s, because it just seeps in without you realizing it.  He was never squeaky clean before, but the wasteland is a whole other ballgame in that respect.

While he’s fairly adapted at this point, his habit of making references to things has never stopped.  Unfortunately, unless you’re as much of a prewar relic as he is, or are remarkably knowledgeable about the prewar world, they tend to not make a lot of sense.  It’s okay, he makes himself laugh and that’s what’s important.  Too, he swaps terms for things interchangeably.  A brahmin might be a brahmin in one sentence, and he’ll turn around and call it a cow in the next.  People eventually stop, usually, trying to correct him, because he says what he says and he’s standing by it.  Yes, he knows brahmin are probably significantly different than a cow now.  Still tastes like hamburger.

He will not, under any circumstances, eat Fancy Lads.  He will starve before he eats one, he will throw them in the Charles; if he ever even picks up a box he finds scavving, it’s because he’s going to trade them when he gets to a settlement.  He thinks they’re horrid.  Anything else in the wasteland he can mostly choke down as long he doesn’t think about what he’s eating too hard, including things like bug meats.

Realistically, there’s a lot more littering the wasteland that just what’s shown in game.  This includes instant coffee, without a doubt, and it means Tony is 100% caffeine-powered 120% of the time.  He hoards it.  He’ll trade for it.  And he only shares it with people he actually cares about, because it’s more valuable than gold at this point.

If he’s traveling with someone by foot he will not travel at night.  The arc reactor is something of a curse and a blessing at this point, because while sure, it keeps him alive, it’s bright, and when all your clothes are threadbare there’s nothing short of wasting resources to cover it.  It means at night Tony’s chest becomes a glowing target, and not only does it put himself at risk from raiders and super mutants and everything else that lurks in the wasteland, it puts the other person at risk, as well.  That’s not something he’s willing to do if it can at all be helped.  He has to be pressed for time or have something more important than the safety of two people on his mind to keep going once the sun hits the horizon.  Alone, he can and will just...Fly to wherever he needs to go.

There are even less people left in the world he’ll take things from directly.  All others must place things on a surface and let him pick it up himself.  This actually has practical applications at this point, with how loosey goosey morality is in the wasteland, which is something Tony really never saw coming, but it makes a peeve a blessing.  His own morality has had to join that loose interpretation of ‘good’, as well, because there are groups in all wastelands who will shoot first, loot your corpse later, and having a staunch ‘I will not kill’ attitude will leave you dead.

He’s got something of a traveling handyman vibe in the Commonwealth, where he moves from settlement to settlement because he’s busy collecting info on the various machinations of the different groups present, he’s interested in the state of things, he starts setting up his own settlements to put under Minutemen care once he decides they’re good eggs, and because he’s genuinely curious, and if something needs to be repaired or done while he’s in those settlements, he will.  He doesn’t take caps for the work.  Tony’s carrying a lot of guilt, about not being able to have much of an influence in stopping the war, and because of that, any money he takes from people he sees as needing it more is blood money.  He will, at most, accept slim supplies, like water or food or a stimpak or two; just enough in the way of things to get him to the next place he’s going.

With that, he’s really good at scavenging for what he needs.  He had to get that way being on his own in NYC for so long until it was safe enough for people to start trickling back in.

He can always be found with a pocketful of fuses and wire and electrical tape, and various other things he usually has on his person are a small tube of wonderglue, a few pencils and pens, and small pocket-sized grid moleskine missing its bookmark and band (he uses a paperclip as a bookmark and a rubber band to hold it closed, and it’s full of cramped writing because he makes every page count), and other odds and ends.  

| AS A COMPANION

Tony does not work via FO4 game mechanics, which sadly needs to be pointed out.  He’s got agency and his own shit to do, and while he might roll with someone for a while because it’s nice to have someone to talk to and it’s nice to have someone to watch his back, there are definitely times he splits off to do his own thing.  Sometimes he gives warning, sometimes he doesn’t.  Regardless of if he does or doesn’t, Tony’s sole purpose isn’t to crawl up the sosu’s ass and stay there.  He breaks the trope of his entire existence being centered around them.  He came to the Commonwealth with a purpose, and he’s going to complete that purpose.  Sometimes that means heading in a different direction than the sosu, and you know, that’s just life, as far as he’s concerned.

He’s also not a companion for every sosu.  Institute and BOS aligned people will find him standoffish and...Well.  Honestly, kind of mean, once he gets an idea of what those two factions are all about.  Siding with the Institute won’t necessarily lock him out as a companion - that’s determined by how canon divergent of a sosu a person is.  The same goes for the BOS.  However, if at any point the Railroad is wiped out, Tony’s gone.  He’s gone, and whoever did it should probably start looking over their shoulder.  Expressing sentiments that ghouls, synths, and super mutants deserve death, despite being sentient beings with free will and the ability to reason and form their own opinions will also see him bouncing.  He won’t come after you in that case for being an asshole, but he’ll be sure to spread the word.

What.  No one ever said Tony Stark wasn’t petty as fuck.

AS A HUGE BIG NEON SIGN FLASHING NOTE:  In the event that MacCready was not picked up by the sosu and taken as a companion, and has not been romanced or had his affinity quest completed, Tony is going to directly default to his relationship with @gwinnetts‘s MacCready.  This isn’t set in absolute stone, Tony’s not unwooable as a companion, but it’s gotta be hashed out.  The reasoning is:  If MacCready hasn’t been picked up as a companion by the sosu, Tony will fairly early on in his time in the Commonwealth end up hiring him himself (for information, not as a mercenary) and there is a major rewrite of MacCready’s quest in play there.  This can be changed with plotting, but the key word there is that we plot it out.  Otherwise Tony and Mac are an item and them’s the breaks.

AS A SECONDARY FLASHY NOTE:  If Strong has not been picked up as a companion by the sosu, Tony will also end up going to Trinity Tower to check out the message and will end up taking Strong on and running through his quest for the milk of human kindness with him.  In the default, natural course of this verse, Tony and Strong will make their way to Saugus together (sans Mac - Tony makes a home and settlement of the town within Fort Hagen military base, and if someone were to go looking, that’s probably where Mac can be found, if not Fiddler’s Green or wherever else he wants to go, he’s got his own free will and things to do, he and Tony aren’t necessarily attached at the hip) and there Tony’s ends up getting fucked up by the Forged.  Strong’s the one that drags his ass out of there, and delivers him to either the Slog or Finch Farm until he can be moved somewhere with better medical facilities.  The reason for this is Tony’s a little too slow  on the uptake at Saugus and ends up losing an eye and suffering burns to his face (and neck).  Eventually he’ll show up with at modified synth-esque replacement that he’ll call a stopgap until he can work up something better.  You’ll never lose him in the dark again, between the arc reactor and the new glowy eye.

Tony has a lot to do, so again, he’s not a companion for everyone.  Someone that needs to keep their companions close and wants them all in one place will find Tony incredibly frustrating, because he can respect the sosu completely and still not deviate from his own to do list and goals.  And if they happen to recognize him (since they’re both prewar relics and he was pretty famous - you might have heard of him?) that shouldn’t come as any surprise whatsoever.

| SETTLEMENTS

Tony, whether he hooks up with the sosu or not, once he allies with the Minutemen will absolutely put any settlements he’s put together under their oversight.  It’s a case of he finds a spot that would be good farm land, would be easily defensible, has a lot of resources - something that catches his eye about it - and he’ll spend some time there, getting it set up for habitation and later be the guy you call to get things fixed, but will also put an emphasis on teaching others how to do what he’s doing, because the plan is not to stay in the Commonwealth (he will, he just doesn’t know that yet).

In the main version of this verse, Tony doesn’t touch vanilla settlements unless there are some a sosu hasn’t done anything with.  Those he does touch can include:

Croup Manor (pretty non-negotiable if @rahasyamay’s stephen is also in play - stephen lives there) Egret Tours Marina (Either way he’ll poke around there - it ties into his and Mac’s relationship) Finch Farm Greygarden Greentop Nursery Hangman’s Alley Jamaica Plain Murkwater Construction Site Outpost Zimonja Nordhagen Beach (he’ll hang around here anyway to keep an eye on the BOS) Oberland Station Starlight Drive In Taffington Boathouse Abernathy Farm (shared with @gwinnetts’s Zetta if she’s in play) Sunshine Tidings Co-Op  (shared with @gwinnetts​’s Zetta if she’s in play it’s their vacation home)

Otherwise, he has his own set of settlements, which may include the following:

Fort Hagen (he...literally lives there and it’s where his main lab is) Fiddler’s Green Trailer Estates (actually considered just an extension of Fort Hagen) Natick Power Substation Ryder Rentals Tucker Town (and the overpass - near the rotting mansion) Sanctuary Saloon (tucked in the swamps near Sanctuary) Reeb Marina Norwood Depot (far south a safe distance east from the Glowing Sea) Evan’s Way (near Diamond City) Gunner’s Plaza / GNN Building Wattz Electronics Prospekt Hill Chestnut Hillocks Reservoir Mystic Pines Rest Home Malden (from the Slocum’s Joe HQ, to Medtek, to outside of town) Concord (from the church down the hill, also the large parking lot below the museum into the woods) Andrew Station (to prevent more raiders from moving in) Quincy (shared with @gwinnetts‘s Zetta if she’s in play) South Suffolk Charter School Neponset Park Walden Pond (to keep raiders out) ArcJet (the area surrounding the building) Several piers on the east side of Boston Quincy Lighthouse USS Riptide (to prevent more raiders moving in) Salem (to keep the mirelurks under control)

And anywhere else that catches his eye.  To keep this from being twenty miles longer than it already is, each settlement might get its own post, and questions are always welcomed!

| OTHER FACTIONS

Part of Tony’s to-do list in the Commonwealth is checking out the other groups in play, and he forms fairly strong opinions about each one.

Minutemen:  He stans.  Preston Garvey is an angel and Tony Stark will not even contemplate hearing otherwise.  He’s not a joiner, but he does ally himself with them and put the settlements he founds himself under their rounds, and makes himself available to them as needed.  Once they get back on their feet, he definitely trusts them to do the right thing, and will advocate they move themselves into a more police force role in the Commonwealth after the main quest endgame.  If any Rhodey is in play with a sosu that isn’t interested in being General, will nudge Rhodey gently in that direction.  (”Gently”, about as subtle as a bag of hammers, honestly.)

Railroad:  They’re doing good work.  Again, not a joiner, and their focus is very narrow and they’re going to make themselves obsolete (which is a great endgame, but expanding to be more helpful to the Commonwealth as a whole after endgame is better) and he can and will do tourist work for them as needed.  He’s not interested in actually becoming a heavy, or anything of that nature.  

Brotherhood of Steel:  He doesn’t like the looks of them right off - they’ve got that stupid airship and vertibirds and their power armor and laser weapons - and he likes them even less when he hears about what they’re doing and how they treat non-humans.  He’s not outright hostile, not unless they give him a reason to be, but he doesn’t encourage them to hang around his own settlements.  He also won’t shed any tears if a sosu sides with the Railroad and destroys them during Rockets’ Red Glare.

Institute:  Not a fan.  Actually, not a fan is a huge understatement.  At first, he’s willing to admit that maybe there’s a little hysteria in the Commonwealth concerning them?  But after literally witnessing replacements trying to take place, getting firsthand accounts - in some cases being invited into the Institute itself to make him less of a “problem” (that’s the joke) - and seeing the paranoia and fear concerning them all over the place, plus the treatment of synths like things rather than people, he’s not here for it.  It’s why he’s an endgame faction for storming them.

Gunners:  His first full day in the Commonwealth he gets jumped by an outpost of Gunners, and that’s what sets him on his path to meeting MacCready.  He doesn’t get them - the really are wound too tight - and there’s very little reasoning for them.  A person can’t even accidentally stumble across them without getting punched full of holes, and after he learns what happened in Quincy, it’s safe to say he is absolutely not their biggest fan.

Children of Atom:  He thinks they’re a little weird, a little misguided, a little kooky, but if they’re not actually hurting anyone - or, you know, brainwashing kids and exposing them to large doses of radiation - and it’s all consenting adults...Well.  Live and let live.

Nuka-World Raiders:  Yeah, do you even need to ask?

| AS AN ENDGAME FACTION

For the truly intrepid and canon-divergent sosu, Tony can be used as their endgame faction, right by himself.  Not that he can take out the Institute on his lonesome with nothing but a suit, that’s just silly.  But he does have the Iron Legion, bolstered by a ground force built from reclaimed gen 1 and 2 synths and spare suits of power armor that run on an ai hivemind.  This is an option for the sosu who’s managed to convince Tony they aren’t an asshole and are going to do right by the people of the Commonwealth, and who wants to minimize human and gen 3 synth casualties.  Tony can be given the designs for the teleportation device and the chip from the courser and get them into the Institute, and he can be the one that the sosu storms the Institute with, if running with any ending other than the Institute’s.

| M.O.E.

MOE is the very first synth Tony rebuilds and reprograms as part of his expansion of the Iron Legion.  Originally he was a limited test run - something of a code debugger - but while the ai MOE is using is buggy, it works.  He learns, he’s self-aware, and he’s conscious, so Tony’s made the decision to keep him online, because otherwise pulling the plug would feel something like murder, as far as he’s concerned.

MOE mostly hangs out in Fort Hagen - his parameters keep him there after he managed to wander off one day and got attacked by feral ghouls and lost his lower jaw, so to keep him safe, he can travel from Fiddler’s Green all the way up to the radio transmitting dishes past Tony’s house, and no farther.  Mostly he can be found tromping between Tony’s house and lab, and he’s a frequent fixture in doing chores such as sweeping and putting away dishes.  MOE himself is picking up most of his cues in behavior from Tony, so there are definitely times he mimicks him well enough to be a little unnerving.  He’s stubborn, very fixated on doing things himself for himself and learning himself and refusing help when offered it.  He’s also a bit tunnel-visioned, getting absorbed in the tasks he determines for himself and can and has barreled people over pulling up rugs to sweep  or walking down the street to the lab in the actual fort.  

He talks!  He’s not a silent robot with  no personality.  He can and will talk and once started is entirely hard to shut up again.  There’s always a million questions once he’s determined someone is trustworthy because he is new, his consciousness is new, and he’s learning.  

He can be a bit startling to see at first, with no lower jaw and the fact that Tony never cosmetically altered him to look less murdery, like the rest of the Iron Legion, but he’s a gentle skeleton robot who has particular ideas about the way certain household chores should be done, and can and will go behind Tony and “fix” things if he thinks Tony hasn’t done them correctly.