#if part 2 isn't up by this weekend start rattling in my vents

[sawyingthroughthewasteland]

Sawyer Lockwood’s Backstory pt. 1

Hi! It’s me again, once again trying to explain this bitch’s entire story. There’s a lot, and normally I either have it all organized in a long bullet list or pinned in DMs to my co-author but alas- I feel like everyone should know his story at this point given I’ll probably never finish every single fic I want to write sadly. Ah well, I’ll at least try to make his story somewhat understandable. If this shit is too long for you and you want to speedrun my story, his master post for reference is here. 

Pre-Fallout (Note: NOT pre-war)

Yeah so maybe a year or two before I fell in love with fallout, I had a beloved dnd character that I played as in a campaign where I worked heavily with the DM and helped sometimes with worldbuilding. His name was Sawyer Belmont and was an oath of devotion paladin. His backstory is a bit complicated as with all my OCs that I’m able to hyperfixate on for more than a few months but long story short- in his past was a high ranking demonic warlock. Something happened and a year before the campaign started he woke up in a small town, heavily scarred with absolutely no memory of who he was with a small voice in his head. His voice was a demon named Zariel (no, not that one. I literally googled ‘demon names’ and chose one, literally months later WotC released Baldur’s Gate so fuck me ig). Said demon was essentially the only thing that kept him alive but he quickly strived to stay humane despite his circumstances and prevent Zariel from ever taking over again. 

How does this relate to Sawyer Lockwood?  Well the campaign was ended abruptly and so I was never able to finish his story which,,, was a big blow to me as a person who had written a ton for him. To cope, I used his name when it came to video games in his memory and almost as a way to try to finish his story? I guess? Used him for Elder Scrolls, Skyrim, Dragon Age throughout the pandemic and when I started Fallout, I walked in expecting to play as him. Yeah I’d have to fuck with his backstory to make him fit but I plugged in his name, tried my best to make him look like old Sawyer did and off I went with a high CHA and STR build. 

And fucking hated melee. 

I love sniping, always have since borderlands so um,,, I eventually had him have some character changes then,,, then the fo4 story made him change more then,,, I min-maxed his SPECIAL and completely redid how he looked and,,, then I joined a server with others who had OCs and,,, 

welp. Here he is! Absolutely nothing like the OG Sawyer but we love him anyways. I suppose in the end in a way the old paladin Sawyer got to live on (I mean Lockwood does eventually become a,,, paladin,,, hm)?

Sawyer’s Parents

I won’t go too into detail because honestly it doesn’t effect him all too much/ he doesn’t remember a lot of it- but here we go. 

So Sawyer’s dad was a guy name Jared Lockwood (what? no. I’m not reusing characters what are you talking about -shoves RDO OC under rug-) who was a pretty successful horse breeder and jockey! His beloved horse was a thoroughbred named Brisket and retired from his racing days not long after he had met his wife and they were expecting a child. It wasn’t a lot of money that he made, but enough to buy them a small secluded ranch on top of a mountain in the middle of West Virginia where they raised sheep and chickens. The little bar room in the basement of said ranch house is actually dedicated to previous racehorses and are where he displayed his trophies from past races and such. 

However, when Sawyer was maybe 5ish, as I write with the 1950s timeline version of fallout because I like writing stuff from that era don’t @ me, WW2 began. His father left for the navy, promising to return to his wife and kid after a few years and- yeah he went MIA somewhere in the ocean. Sawyer’s family never found out what really happened, but a good guess has to do with U-boats. Sawyer was fucking heartbroken, he loved his father and had been really close to him during the five years he had with him and was certainly quieter from then on.   

His mother, meanwhile, was Shay Lockwood. She’s straight from Ireland and a often was the anchor for her aloof husband. She was a very down to earth lady, loved farming and tending to their animals- but often was maybe a bit... harsh on Sawyer. Certainly didn’t help that she came from a catholic background and well... yeah

Sawyer’s Childhood 

Sawyer was an only child, and for the most part between daily chores- loved to study. He was a huge fucking nerd. His bedroom was constantly covered in sketches of his designs for machines, tools, and buildings. Additionally, growing up he stayed very close with his father’s horse, Brisket- often riding him to school and reading to him when he was younger. 

Growing up, due to his home’s secluded nature he never really had any close friends? Aside from a girl named Nora, who he was quite close with. In high school they’d actually dated once but while discovering their differing sexualities- things didn’t shake out but they still remained close. 

For the most part, he studied his heart out for all of high school and strived to place himself in a good engineering school to continue his studies. Unfortunately though around the time of getting ready for college- his mother developed cancer. This was rough for him for multiple reasons- she was the only family he was really aware of and not only that, they were in a rough standing with each other when things began to pick up and she got sicker and sicker. As Sawyer was slowly discovering himself in their small town, it was quickly becoming evident that he was most definitely queer- something that his mother disapproved of heavily. When she passed- it was without ever their relation ever being mended and Sawyer still kicks himself about it even a good 200 years later. 

He delayed college for two years or so afterwards, taking care of his farm and struggling to figure out what to do. He was the only one left, who knows what would happen to his childhood home if he ever left for too long. 

College Years 

With a heavy heart, eventually he decided to take a leap of faith and have a go at college again. Due to the gap years, he struggled getting financial support and was only able to make it through two years of civil engineering before his funds dried up. He was getting desperate at this point and in a hail Mary- joined the Navy for the G.I. Joe money when the Big War came around. 

Congrats on making it this far! Now onto the fun shit :)

Bootcamp arc (ft. Baron)

Long story short- Sawyer fucking hated being in the military lol, and for a while they hated him too. He was often subjected to beat ups and rude comments just because.. well he... he twink. It was during one of these beatings that someone swooped in and promptly handed his bully’s asses to them- a man named Baron Teague. 

He’s my friend’s OC and honestly most of the stuff I write these days is between these two (affectionately called ‘Bawyer’). I have no idea if she’ll ever make her own tumblr and write about him on here but I’ll try to give a long story short for him. He’s from a military family down in North Carolina, joined the air force fresh out of high school and when he met Sawyer, was well on his way to officer school. (why were they at the same base? story reasons that’s why) 

The two quickly hit it off, Baron often lending the man a hand and Sawyer questioning the tiny sliver of heterosexuality he had left in him every time the buff guy ran by in silkies. Eventually it uh,,, turned into a romance between the two when they had the chance between drills, then Sawyer took him home one break and Baron started inviting him to holidays with his family back in NC and well, you get the picture. They gay. I’ll link the fics when I get the chance, but most described above has been written lol. 

Lancer Program 

Okay so this is where I kinda went crazy with homebrewing but whatever its my writing world I do what I want with my toys you know

So. In my uuuh universe? I guess? There was a program pre-Liberty Prime. This program was bleeding edge technology, taking the grand scale of Liberty Prime and the intelligence of the brightest AI at the time and combined it with the maneuverability and skills of a human pilot much like the power armor. It was a super secret thing and was a very small department and in order to get in required vigorous tests of intelligence and creativity rather than the usual strength. 

Pacific Rim- like with a splash of Titanfall and Neon Genesis, these mechs would have a neural link with their pilots and with the pilot and AI combined were able to carry out complex and highly effective maneuvers. This was of course, assuming that the two got along well and the pilot was quick enough to be able to fix any coding issues on the fly with merely their voice commands. Super vigorous, super high tech, yada yada yada..

With a whooping STR of 2 and an INT of 10, Sawyer gladly applied and made it into the program. He was Lancer Unit 02 and excelled in his training. 

The AI later becomes their own character but that will have to come in a different post, which will be linked here when I get to it ;)

It wasn’t until it was almost time for deployment that Baron finally found out about the Lancer Program and Sawyer’s involvement in it.

Quickie Won’t Hurt ;)

Almost forgot lol, so not long after serving some time Sawyer definitely suspected he’s gay. He wasn’t entirely sure though and so in a series of poor decisions while drunk with his close friend Nora,,,, they uh,,,, yep. 

He didn’t find out about Shaun until looong after he’d come home from the war. Lol whoops haha god Nora I am so fucking sorry 

On the Field    

Around the same time that Stg. Baron was deployed to Alaska was the same time that Sawyer’s program was finally being deployed onto the field in [redacted]. The two had a heartfelt goodbye, swapped dogtags affectionately (this will be important in Baron’s story), before going their own separate ways.

The Lancer Program, with how small that it was and how far they were being sent, all loaded into a giant aircraft carrier and sailed off into the sea. 

They didn’t make it far. 

Somewhere in the Pacific, the ship was hit and sank so quickly there wasn’t enough time to usher everyone to lifeboats and almost all lives were lost on that ship along with most Lancer technology (hence why most prewar and ‘modern’ tech isn’t nearly as advance as the Lancer Program’s yet some ideas would be carried over to the making of Liberty Prime and PA suits). 

So uh, Sawyer. As a person who had just left his really... only friend, had been bored out his mind during the trip and did what most do when bored- and had taken a nice nap in his mech that he was neutrally linked to.

Woke up to alarms blazing, the AI panicking, and the entire ship hundreds of feet underwater and his entire squad around him dead and floating in the water around him. 

He doesn’t have much memory about how he even managed to get out of that situation because it thoroughly fucked him up. 

Baron meanwhile dropped everything when a truck rolled up with a compressed and crushed Lancer Unit 3 on it, being ordered to destroy it to preserve government secrets. 

Parsons State Insane Asylum    

For the following year after that, Sawyer spent his entire time in Parsons as a broken man. He’d been moved to Boston after his record had listed only Nora and Baron at the closest he had to family. With Baron deployed in Alaska, he was sent to be near Nora has he recovered while she was dealing with her own problems. 

The last time Baron saw Sawyer before the nukes fell was the asylum, hardly able to speak a word and shaken to his core from what he saw down there (fic about it to be linked here). It certainly didn’t help that this was also the time that Nora couldn’t hide her pregnancy anymore and her family started asking Questions. 

The follow year was a blur for him, stumbling through treatment and slowly becoming somewhat functional again. During that time he could vaguely recall marrying Nora and them settling on a house in a place called Sanctuary but he wasn’t super lucid until close the time that the nukes fell. Link about the nukes actually falling linked here. 

Because this post is hella fucking long, the second part will be linked here! Hope y’all enjoy it so far and as always, feel free to send asks about him or me :)   

#long post #SttW #character backstory #character background #fallout OC #I'll add links as I finally post some of my writing hhhh #if part 2 isn't up by this weekend start rattling in my vents #everything in this lore dump series will be under SttW btw