LAST EDITED ON Jan-31-14 AT 11:48 AM (EST)
>>Well, we know from Tyrants If They Could that she's been to Big
>>Mountain
>
>And hopefully moved her base of operations there, if she had any
>sense. (Oh, hey, speaking of Tyrants...)
I like to think that Azula crashed there, so that taking over the Big Mountain was the very first thing she had to do on Mojave. And that Dr. Möbius's dome in the Forbidden Zone is retractable, and after Azula took the place over, she had the roboscorpions move the Phoenix Queen in there and start repairing her, like the Ebon Hawk in the tutorial level of Knights of the Old Republic II.
That way, no one would stumble across this anomalous hyper-advanced (by local standards, anyway) starship out in the desert someplace (be a hell of a note to get back there after a hard day's adventuring and find the Brotherhood of Steel trying to strip her for parts). Also, when she finally managed to reboot the navigation beacon and get Starfleet out there, getting off the planet was a simple matter of scoring a new unobtanium triangle* off Scotty, plugging it into the hyperdrive, and returning all seats and snack trays to their fully upright and locked positions.
That said, she didn't use Big Mountain as her day-to-day headquarters during the bulk of the Mojave operation. It's too remote, and getting anybody else there was too logistically complicated (in the game it's impossible, full stop) to make it feasible for that purpose. She did use it as her fortress of solitude, where she stashed all the best toys and would withdraw to reflect and strategize when things became particularly dicey (as they did several times during the process), while the rest of the crew held things down back at wherever forward operations were based out of (which varied a few times).
>Or was that just me? Because when Mr. House offered me the use of the
>Lucky 38, my immediate reaction was "Thanks, but no thanks, because
>you just ooze crazy, you freak. I am not going to deposit all
>of my worldly goods in convenient receptacles in a giant fortress
>swarming with robots that you control and then fall asleep
>there. My hotel room in Novac is small and cramped but at least it's
>mine."
Well, by about the midpoint of her takeover of the planet, that wasn't an issue for Azula because she controlled the robots (in-game, because she'd killed Mr. House, and in-story, because she'd made him the offer he couldn't refuse). Before that point, though, she didn't base herself there, for very similar reasons. Rather than trudge all the way back to Novac, though, she was usually based out of the Atomic Wrangler. Or Vault 21, if she simply had to be on the Strip for some pressing reason.
After she controlled it, though, the Lucky 38 was an excellent headquarters - it's intimidating, it was already instinctively recognized by the Strip tribes as the fulcrum of power in the region, and everything worked - and ultimately became the capitol building of the United Wasteland Empire. It may well still be the seat of Mojave's government in the 25th century.
In selecting bases of operations, Azula had the advantage that she knew, right from the start, that her ultimate goal was to take over the Wasteland. She didn't just sort of stumble into it like the canonical Courier. Since she had a plan from eight o'clock on Day One, the logistics were easier to manage.
>Of course, I bailed from Novac the second I got myself to the Big MT.
>It's a bit... weird there, but it's also damn convenient.
Big Mountain is convenient to get to (as long as you don't mind going alone), but the only exit point drops you in that Agni-forsaken drive-in theater out past the ass-end of Nipton, with the bark scorpions and the garbage and the 200-year-old fucking newspapers blowing BACK and FORTH -
ahem -
with the bark scorpions, anyway. It's not really what I would call outstandingly convenient to get back from.
On the other hand, I strongly suspect Azula eventually figured out how to get one of those abandoned motorcycles working, because walking everywhere is for losers and fugitive Avatars. :)
--G.
* "It tastes like coconut. And metal!"
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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