The Master (Fallout)

"The Unity will bring about the master race. Master! Master! One able to survive, or even thrive, in the wasteland. As long as there are differences, we will tear ourselves apart fighting each other. We need one race. Race! Race! One goal. Goal! Goal! One people... to move forward to our destiny. Destiny."
~ The Master
The Master is a pivotal character in the Fallout series, a post-apocalyptic role-playing game franchise developed by Interplay Entertainment and later by Bethesda Game Studios. He serves as the main antagonist in the original Fallout game released in 1997. 
He is a mass of mutated flesh infused with a computer who serves as the founder and leader of The Unity, a cult and army of super mutants whose goal is to replace the remaining "pure" humans that hadn't suffered mutation with his new race of mutants, believing that, unlike humans, they will never fight amongst each other due to a lack of differences.
== Character Overview ==
The Master's appearance consists of culmination of mutated flesh from many of the people he has absorbed. The flesh culminate around a heart monitor that is inside the Overseer's chair. He doesn't appear to have any legs. Instead, he has tentacle-like flesh attached to the bottom of him. His "arms" branch out of him in unnatural positions, are really skinny, and has no hands attached to them. His right hand is replaced by an exterior, mutated eye.
The Master's primary goal is to establish a new world order through The Unity. He believes that human evolution can only be achieved by forcibly merging all humans into a single, homogeneous collective consciousness. His plan involves the widespread use of the Forced Evolutionary Virus (FEV), a mutagenic substance that he uses to transform humans into Super Mutants—superhuman, yet monstrous beings that serve as his soldiers and enforcers.
In Fallout (1997)
In Fallout, the Master is the leader of the Super Mutants and resides in a heavily fortified underground base known as the Cathedral, located near the post-apocalyptic city of Necropolis. The player's character, known as the Vault Dweller, is tasked with finding and retrieving a water chip to save their home, Vault 13, from dehydration. The quest ultimately leads the Vault Dweller to confront the Master, who is revealed to be the source of the Super Mutant threat.
The Master is portrayed as both a tragic and malevolent figure. His once-noble intentions have become twisted by his new form and isolation. The player's encounter with the Master serves as a climactic and morally challenging moment, with various ways to resolve the conflict, including negotiation, combat, or the use of the game's dialogue options.
A notable feature of The Master is that his "voice" is pieced-together from the different voices of people that he's absorbed through the years.
== Background ==
=== Origins ===
On 2092, Richard Moreau was exiled from Vault City, a city founded by inhabitants of Vault 8, due to allegations of a murder. The circumstances surrounding the murder is unknown and its legitimacy is in dispute. He changed his last name to Gray and traveled to the Hub. He became a brilliant doctor and philosopher in that town. On May 22, 2102, Gray was hired by Harold, a caravan boss, to help scout out an unknown group of raiders who had been raiding Harold's caravans.
On June 23, 2102, Gray's expedition finds the Mariposa Military Base. His team is attacked by mutants from the base and there are further casualties as the team breaks into the base. The team manages to kill most of the mutants and make it into the center of the base However, Gray is knocked into one of the Vats of Force Evolution Virus (F.E.V.) by a robotic arm and Harold is knocked unconscious and wakes up as a ghoul in the wasteland.
=== Mutation ===
Floating in the vats for almost a month, the F.E.V. transformed Grey into the amorphous, blob-like being that would eventually become known as The Master. Over time he expanded by absorbing creatures and people that went to the base and those who were consumed became part of his personality. He also began to capture humans to experiment with the F.E.V. They were very flawed and the master consumed them.
=== Rise to Power ===
As the Master grew stronger he began to make plans to unify the Wasteland using the F.E.V. to create the perfect race. In January of 2103, the Master perfected his method of infecting or "dipping" humans, and began creating the super mutants, which would follow him and obey his orders. Unfortunately for him, as he began to dip others in the vats, he found the resulting creatures were not like himself, and most often, they mutated into brutish soldiers, losing much of their brain function. It became apparent that only those with a low radiation count would not suffer this fate.
In 2130, the Great Winter occurred, causing a scarcity of human subjects for dipping, making it difficult to expand his army further. From 2131 to 2135, the Master started to abduct caravans for human subjects. Most of the caravan disappearances were blamed on desert monsters, steering away suspicion. Starting in 2137, the Master began to mass produce super mutants with 1 in 6 being successful super mutants, and only this sixth making it into the Unity.
In 2152, The Master's influence began to spread and he came in contact with a doomsday cult led by a man named Morpheus. Realizing the benefits of retaining unaltered humans in his service to act as spies throughout the region, the Master recruited Morpheus's cult into his service, thereby expanding his power.
In 2155, the Master discovered the location of an unnumbered experimental Vault-Tec vault prototype located just south of the ruins of Los Angeles, California, now called the Boneyard. Seeing great opportunity there, the Master relocated to the vault with his human cult followers and a portion of his ever-growing super mutant army, and oversaw the building of a large cathedral on the surface above the vault the following year. The cult became known as the Children of the Cathedral and continued to be led by Morpheus who reported directly to the Master. The cathedral was guarded by the Nightkin, super mutant elite troops equipped with Stealth Boy technology.
While the Children of the Cathedral just looked like a fervent and religious order, and actually most of the low rank members probably were unaware of the true intentions of their own cult, it was a front that the Master used to put his plans to practice.
=== Downfall and Death ===
On December 5, 2161, a Vault Dweller emerges out of Vault 13 and is tasked by Overseer Jacoren to find a replacement for the vault's water purification chip. While out of the vault, the Vault Dweller finds out about the Master and his group of Super Mutants who are slowly taking over the west coast and eventually the world. After the Vault Dweller brings the water chip back to the vault and reports on what he saw in the outside world, Jacoren gets worried over mutants mentioned in the report and tasks the Vault Dweller with stopping the Master and destroying the F.E.V. Vats.
On March 3, 2162, the Vault Dweller infiltrates a vault located underneath the Boneyard Cathedral and finds the Master. In-game, the player can self-destruct the vault (killing the Master) in one of three ways. With a high armor class and a high weapon skill, the Vault Dweller can kill the Master directly, in which he will combust and explode, and the vault will self-destruct. With high stealth skills, the Vault Dweller can directly self-destruct the vault without the Master noticing. With a high intelligence, a high speech skill, and a tape from Vree (lead scribe of the Brotherhood of Steel), the Vault Dweller can convince the Master that his plan of "Unity" will fail because the super mutants are sterile. Realizing with horror that instead of uniting the wasteland, he had only brought suffering upon it, the Master decides to detonate the Los Angeles Vault, but not before giving the Vault Dweller enough time to leave.
Following the death of the Master, on April 20, 2162, the Vault Dweller destroys the Vats at Mariposa Military Base, therefore destroying any chance of a "Unity" of Super Mutants taking over the world. The Vault Dweller became famous among the inhabitants of the wasteland for saving the human race. Most first-generation Super Mutants moved on after the Master's death and the collapse of the Unity, with some settling into new lives into NCR cities, and some moving eastward out of wariness of groups like the Enclave and Brotherhood of Steel. Some took his death hard, especially the Nightkin, many of whom were psychically linked to him.
=== Legacy ===
Due to the sheer horror of the Master's appearance and power, the Vault Dweller made sure to never specify exactly what the Master was in their memoirs, not even how he was bested, only of his role in the Super Mutant army. Years later, after the Enclave used enslaved miners from Redding to excavate Mariposa and put it back to work, the FEV that survived the base's destruction mutated the miners into a second generation of Super Mutants. While the second generation were as big or sometimes even bigger than the first generation, without the Master to guide them through their mutations they were all (with the exception of Frank Horrigan) far less intelligent, with the first generation even insulting the second generation for it. Even more than a century after his death, the Master is still remembered by what remains of the New California Super Mutants. Though rational mutants like Marcus acknowledge the Master's plan would never have worked, many Jacobstown residents remember serving the Master fondly. When Father Elijah tried to break into the Sierra Madre casino, he was able to employ the services of a Nightkin named Dog, who, after the Master died, was desperate for someone to serve and latched onto the rogue elder.
== Trivia ==
* The Master is mentioned in Fallout 2, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout: Tactics, and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel.
* In the Project V13 web-page introduction, the phrase "The Master Lives" is scratched into the desk.
* The Master is heavily regarded as one of the creepiest and terrifying Fallout characters yet, mainly due to his grotesque appearance and his disoriented voice.
== Gallery ==
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Category:Mutants
Category:Villains
Category:Collective Intelligence
Category:Video Game Characters