What a day.  What a day.
I've decided I want to relocate.  Summersville is okay.  The bridge has been a decent enough position to hold so far.  The turrets have done their jobs:  scorched, super mutants, mongrels, mole rats; they've dealt with it all.
But I don't want to deal with any of them, to be honest.  I want to get away from these monstrosities.  I want to build... higher.  I've been thinking about the monorail track a lot since I hit Garrahan Mining Headquarters.  Being up that high... boy, would it limit my exposure.  It would also completely eliminate any ability to escape but I think I'm okay with that.
I walked down to Garrahan today and decided to just walk to the track east to see if there was a decent enough position to build a camp at.  
I wasn't prepared for what I was about to encounter at Spruce Knob.
I've heard the scorched beasts before.  Hell, I've helped kill them before.  But I've never gone mano y mano with one before.  When I made it to spruce knob and asended the gantry there were TWO scorched beasts and I just laid low.  They did eventually lose interest but I noticed that there were some resources on the ground level and dumped some extractors on them.
That brought at least one of the scorched beasts back...
12 missiles, 400+ energy cells, and nearly every cartridge of .308 Winchester later and I brought that son of bitch down.  I owe it all to my T-45d power armor.  Without it I would have been toast almost immediately.
But this victory brings me a little hope for Appalachia.  Maybe Taggerdy wasn't nuts.  Maybe some good ol' American know-how and, more importantly, some American tech can rid Applachia of these fuckers.  I stood toe to toe with one today and came out victorious.  Maybe we can win.  Maybe the Brotherhood of Steel wasn't fucking nuts, even if their organization was fucking nuts.
Unlike Taggerdy I fully intend to uphold my Oath of Allegiance and I won't let some random ass officer from across the country tell me what to do.  In the Army we mad eup General Order #4 but it holds more true today than ever:
I will guard my post from flank to flank and won't take no shit from any rank.
Fuck this Maxson cocksucker and fuck Taggerdy for following his lead.  The Brotherhood of Steel?  Sounds like some sad-sack LARPers to me.  And they're all fucking dead too.

I've made a lot of progress over the past few days and have been way too busy and exhausted to get an entry in but after a day of some recuperation I have some great news:  I've finally pieced together an entire set of T-45d and, boy; it feels great.
The timing was excellent as well as mere minutes after completing my repairs nearby Whitesprings was nuked again and I was determined to finally get in there and collect some of the freshly irradiated materials.
And if that wasn't enough I finally got enough materials together to make that damn excavator power armor down in the Garrahan R&D lab.  Two sets of power armor in a single day?  Damn.
Just a short one today.  Vexillarian Odin and Carian Snow are off to Watoga to scavenge some more Brotherhood of Steel tech.  Turrets are going off, better take a looksee.

Started the day on a route reconnaissance with Vexillarian Odin.  We hoofed it northeast past Top of the World to the ATLAS Observatory.  It was heavily defended by robots.

Most notable was a fully loaded sentry bot that nearly took us out.  Those missiles!  I've experienced the sentry bots in Whitesprings every time I head out there but being on the other end for the first time... was just glad Odin was there with a set of powered armor and his super sledge.
We made our way inside the observatory and it was clearly a military installation loaded with active protectrons and Mr. Gutsies.  It took quite awhile to clear the place out and, though we accessed many computer terminals, we were unable to repair the place and do anything with it which was unfortunate.
From there we made our way north to the Sons of Dane compound where I scored a powered armor chassis and some T-60 and T-45d pieces which was a major haul for me.  I have a good supply of completely charged fusion cores that I got from the reactor at the power plant.
When I got back to my shop I took inventory of what I had and I'm one left arm short of a complete T-45d armor set!  Very stoked for that.
On top of all that I found some great weaponry in the observatory as well.  Pretty much replaced my entire existing kit, a bolt-action rifle, combat rifle, SMG, and a kabar with a heavy duty lever-action rifle, a deathclaw gauntlet, and, best of all, an AER-9 laser rifle!
And if that wasn't enough, I finally completed the Order of the Tadpole and graduated to Possum rank.  At least according to that cooky-ass "scout leader" bot up at the Pioneer Scout Camp.  It did give me a better backpack and the instructions on how to make more.  See attached photo.
If the scavenging keeps paying off this handsomely we'll be ruling the wasteland in no time!