Today in the CBO
The View from the BMU
by Nat Wright-Kowalski
10 May 2298 – Corvega Assembly Plant
On certain Tuesdays for the 2297 and 2298 seasons, we will feature one of the settlements where teams in the Boston Minor Union play.
In our ninth trip around the BMU, we will go to the Lexington area to take a look at the place where vehicles are made again, Corvega Assembly Plant.
2287 - A Base of Raiders
According to a terminal entry pre-Nate: "The Corvega assembly plant is a location in the city of Lexington in the Commonwealth in 2287. The pre-War facility is home to a group of raiders.
"Jared, the raider leader, is in a small, well-guarded area near the top of the factory. . . . As a child, he spent time with Mama Murphy who correctly predicted Jared's later abduction by raiders and that he was 'gonna be a monster.'
The Plant under the moonlight
"After taking over the Corvega assembly plant, he spent much of his time attempting to duplicate Murphy's ability, to no avail. He even began recruiting new members by enticing them with free chems, in order to experiment on them. When Gristle informed him of an elderly woman traveling with a caravan, Jared sent his lieutenant after them, certain that she was the fortune teller. This woman was indeed Mama Murphy, who was traveling with Preston Garvey and the other survivors of the Quincy Massacre, searching for a spot to start rebuilding their lives.
"Gristle's raiders successfully trapped the caravan in Concord's Museum of Freedom, however, Garvey managed to call out to a passing traveler, the Sole Survivor of Vault 111, aka Nate Howard, asking them for help. Nate intervened, killing Gristle's raiders and rescuing the Quincy survivors. Nate later attacked the Corvega plant at the request of the residents at one of the settlements, Tenpines Bluff, that the gang was menacing. Jared was among those killed in the attack."
The Corvega Assembly Plant wide view
2298 - A Base of Technicians and Mechanics
After Nate cleared the factory, it stayed dormant for a time. However, Nate was sure to get some Minutemen troops and later Brotherhood troops to patrol the area. According to Nate, the future of the Commonwealth could be linked to the intact but inoperable factory.
Later, after peace among the four factions came to be, Nate recruited the services of a not-very-stable genius, Tinker Tom, to get the plant back to pre-war operation.
A pre-War display of a Corvega
Among the tasks for Tinker Tom was to stabilize the nuclear energy of the Chryslus Motors Corporation line of vehicles. Though they were stable pre-war, something Nate discovered was that a single gunshot to a post-war vehicle caused a small nuclear detonation.
"We can't use vehicles if they're going to blow up in the smallest of fender benders," Nate said. "We need stability, durability, and raw power."
The assembly line
Tinker Tom and his team started tinkering with the vehicles while also putting into place the moving parts necessary to reproduce a full line of vehicles. The plant does not work with the same efficiency it once did, but according to Tinker Tom, the factory can steadily produce on average from 2-5 vehicles per week. Soon, they hope to move that closer to a car a day produced.
Lexington, Baseball, and Corvega
Something that has been asked of Nate in regards to being the commissioner of the CBO, and thus also the BMU, is why the Corvega team is not somehow associated with the Lexington Synths instead of the Sunshine Tidings Chemists.
A line of completed cars used as models. Here Preston Garvey checks out a Corvega in beautiful lime green.
Nate has declared that he wants diversity in fan bases in the teams. He has also mentioned that the teams in the BMU may become more regionally diverse now that the Corvega line of cars are available to help teams move across the Commonwealth in a more timely manner.
According to Nate, "Right now, teams have two factors: one, we want the populations of the smaller communities to support their local BMU teams, which we hope translates to also supporting their correlating CBO teams.
"Two, we want to eventually move away from regional leagues being directly associated with nearby teams. Right now, the Dark Hollow Pond League, for example, is only representative of Brotherhood League teams. Once we can move around more easily, I would like the Dark Hollow Pond to perhaps expand its borders away from the Dark Hollow Pond and Malden areas to more of all of Charlestown. Also, we would like those expanded leagues to have at least one representative of each of the four CBO leagues."
In the meantime, the Corvega Assembly Plant is helping to divide the Lexington area in its allegiances to the CBO between the Synths and the Chemists. Since Lexington is the most-heavily populated settlement north of the Charles River, Nate sees the plant acting as a good dividing line for fandom diversity.
"We're seeing more and more people sporting Flamers gear this year than we did last year," Nate said. "It helps that Super Duper Mart is pushing that team's gear, too. It helps the overall bottom line."