Intelligence report

**Intelligence report** is a two-part book in *Wasteland 2*, detailing the Desert Rangers' investigation of the Las Vegas Sewers' robot and cyborg presence.

## Background

A few paperclipped pages in an oaktag folder. The tab of the folder is labeled "Robot Report".

## Locations

* Ranger Citadel: On a shelf next to Thrasher (part 1).
* Ranger Citadel: On the bookcase in the Museum (part 2).

## Transcript

### Part 1

*Investigation into the Occurrence of Robots in the Las Vegas Sewers by Ranger Ann Elk*

Brief: this investigation was ordered by General Vargas on February 12th 2099, to determine the source of the robots discovered in the sewers under Las Vegas and to calculate the likelihood of such a threat rising there again.

Background: In 2087, General Vargas (then Ranger Vargas) and his fellow rangers entered the sewers under Las Vegas, gaining access by following Faran Brygo's instructions to go through the Temple of the Servants of the Mushroom Clouds, using a sonic key to open the door to the sewers.

Considering how difficult it was to get into the Sewers, it was reasonable to expect to find the place abandoned. Instead, the Rangers encountered heavy resistance from several forms of robots. The place was "crawling with them from wall to wall,” as the General put it.

But perhaps more striking than the sheer amount of synthetics was their unique, often puzzling nature. Semi-intelligent *cyborgs* wielding firearms were the most normal, but others were much stranger.

From scouring the Sewers for remains, and interviewing the surviving rangers and eyewitnesses, we've discerned numerous distinct types (names generally as used by the Rangers themselves):

- *Clawman* or Clawer: *close combat cyborgs attacking with their bare "hands."*
- *Centron:* centaurs made of a meld of metal and flesh that were capable of galloping at high speeds.

- *Cyclon:* cybernetic wolves, recognizable by their wolflike howls that when sustained decayed into static hissing.

- *Tronnosaurus:* gigantic metallic reptile.

- *Boa Tronstrictor:* a cybernetic giant snake. Note: as no remains of this creature could be found and the Rangers only encountered them in the darkness, their exact nature could not be ascertained.

- *Tronodile:* mechanical crocodiles. Query: what purpose could mechanical aquatic life forms have in the desert?

- *Tazel:* "a nightmare of metal", vaguely scorpion-like but really not like any creature we know. Capable of shooting metal spines from its tail.

- *Cybertrike:* cybernetic melds of manlike forms and motorcycles. Known for the "roar" of their engine.

- *Hexborg:* squat, six-armed cyborgs. Could use multiple weapons at the same time. Surprisingly intelligent and adaptative. Query: if recovered and restored, could turn out to be quite... handy?

### Part 2

*Investigation into the Occurrence of Robots in the Las Vegas Sewers by Ranger Ann Elk, cont.*

Another mystery of the Vegas Sewers why these cyborgs all seemed to be unique to that location. They clearly, unmistakably, originated in Base Cochise, but most differed from the more heavy-duty cyborgs that were found other places, such as the Slicerdicer, the Scorpitron, the Threshing Crawler, Steel Reaver or Silver Strangler. In general, the characteristics of the Sewer Cyborgs were thus:

- They were less capable in combat and/or less functional overall.

- They utilized organic materials in their construction.

- They emulated extant lifeforms such as humans, crocodiles and boa constrictors, even though many of those lifeforms are not native to the desert region and have not been seen since the War.

For this investigation we interviewed numerous Vegas citizens, including some vagrants who had moved into the now-abandoned sewers – which were more easily accessible than previously assumed. An open manhole cover in an abandoned part of Vegas led directly to the Sewers.

General Vargas's instructions were to "include any theory, no matter how wild," so from combining our personal findings and observations in the sewers and eye-witness reports from bystanders and rangers, we can offer the following possibilities.

- *Invasion Force:* The most logical theory is that these robots were an invasion force prepping to take over Vegas. But if so, the Sewers make an odd staging area, and they had taken no aggressive actions towards Vegas before the Rangers' arrival - other than dismantling Max.

- *Martian Invasion Force:* As told to our researchers by "Johnny Flatboots," one of the Sewer's more colorful inhabitants, the cyborgs were a preliminary invasion force, and were not really cyborgs. Instead, they were actually Martian "serpioids" disguised as cyborgs. Researching the remains of cyborgs casts doubts on this theory.

- *Dumping Grounds:* The strange and largely inferior nature of the Sewers cyborgs could point to them being early prototypes developed by the Base Cochise AI, with the Sewers being used as a dumping ground for unsatisfactory experiments.

- *A Buffer Force:* It is entirely feasible based on the robot force's location they were meant as an emergency buffer against threats from the East, such as the Desert Rangers or perhaps the mutants being spawned by Irwin Finster.

- *Programming Error (I):* A partial decryption of the robot's programming revealed a command to "Clean out all the shit in Vegas." The ambiguous wording of this command was possibly misinterpreted.

- *Programming Error (II):*  All the robots entered through a single open manhole, but none exited through it. It is therefore possible that all the robots in the Sewer can be traced back to faulty pathfinding and one missing manhole cover.

Because of the limited sources of information available to us we cannot discount any of these theories as a possibility (except perhaps the Martian Invasion one). Our conclusions therefore are that sees Invasion Force, Dumping Grounds and Buffer Force theories all have a roughly equal likelihood of being accurate, but we cannot discount the possibility of programming errors in the relatively primitive cyborgs leading to theories five and six. This leaves the final conclusion of this investigation regrettably *inconclusive*.