NARRATIVE POETRY THAT FITS FALLOUT:NEW VEGAS

[baumgartner]

I’ve gotten in the habit of prefacing each chapter in my fan fics with a paraphrased bit of poetry which fits the stage and subject of the chapter. Lots of Rudyard Kipling, Bonnie Parker, Longfellow, and even some Shakespeare. During the process of reformatting some previous FNV work for a family album I found another great poet named Robert W. Service whose narrative poetry fits Fallout: New Vegas almost perfectly if you exchange ‘moiling’ for gold in the Yukon Gold rush to prowling the vaults and ruins of the post Armageddon Mojave Desert.

The telling of the stories is perfectly done – in fact the first: ‘The Shooting of Dangerous Dan McGrew‘ is done by Bill Kerr of Story Teller Media dressed as an old prospector narrating a story of a star crossed romance, betrayal, and a barroom gunfight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wtz1zu3Y24

The second is ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’ narrated by Davin Jeayes. Great stuff and here’s how I used it to introduce the ‘There Stands the Grass’ Vault 22 quest for the OSI, which took 2 chapters to tell in the album.
First the actual poem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sax1JekPQMg

Now here are the first few stanzas as paraphrased for FNV:

Album Chapter 13 (Here Stands the Grass Part 1)

Man Eaters
When the war was done in the desert sun
And the vaults were legends of old;
The desert trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The glow and the lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was Vault Twenty Two and the horrors that grew
Green killers that never should be*

Album Chapter 14 (Here Stands the Grass Part 2)

The Story of Old Keely and the Coyote
Now the Ghoul Keely, was from Tennessee, where the bombs and the war winds rose
Why she left her home, in the South to roam, ‘out West, God only knows
She was wrinkled and old, but the land of gold, seemed to hold her like a spell
Though she’d often say, in her homey way, that she’d “sooner live in hell”

And in the vault, she came to a halt, ‘neath the ground where the killer plants grow
And the Coyote led, and the plants overhead, left many a withered foe
He turned to her, and said for sure, “I’ll cash in on this trip, I guess.”
“But you can’t leave”, she had an ace up her sleeve, to force him to do her request.

Now Keely’s need, might be a thing to heed, if in cash it would not fail
But her manner was cold, and he wouldn’t fold, tho’ the vault had become their jail
He wouldn’t be bound, and a loop hole he found, a weakness she couldn’t see
The Coyote left, with an artful theft, and the vault held only Keely.

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So if you are partial to great narrative poetry you will enjoy Robert W. Services tales of the Yukon Gold Rush (I found yet another one by him although it’s not so colorfully told but otherwise just as good – ‘The Ballad of One Eyed Jack’.

Game On!

[Ladez]

That first video is hard on the left ear with headphones.

Good stuff though. Maybe I should listen to some more poetry.

[OutsidR]

Outstanding to say the least. Good work my friend.

[Brodangler]

kudos to you :) I like it

[baumgartner]

Thanks Ladez, OutsidR and Brodangler. I'm not a poet but sometimes the cadence of a poet's words help to set the scene for the chapter I'm trying to write. Anyway every time I start to write a chapter I scan the poetry sites and almost always can find a poet's words that fit what I'm attempting to describe..


Another rich area was the Lonesome Road DLC where Rudyard Kipling and Bonnie Parker. set many a scene to complement the work by the Obsidian team. But that's another story.

[OutsidR]

MORE!