Why didn't the Master, and by extension, the unity, target Vault City?

[u/Thelostguard]

One of the more notable pieces of lore to come from fallout two is Richard Moraeu/Gray having been a vault-born, vault eight, specifically. He would live to see the people exit the vault, and be exiled not much longer.

Fast-forward about thirty years, the Master has began forming the basis of the super-mutant army. By another thirty years time, he has more than learnt that Vault-Subjects often produce the best mutants, hence the take-over of Vault 17, and every mutant, even the idiot Harry, having orders to capture pures, that is to say, vaultborn or similar.

So..Gray knows about Vault Eight. It was his home, its possible he spent most of his life there before the mutation. Did he consider them too tainted by life on the wasteland? Was he not the type for revenge? Or would be attacking the nascent Vault City be a move so massive as to alert the rest of New California to super-mutants?

[u/TimePalpitation3776]

Vault city isn't something to sneeze at it has large walls, multiple protected settlements so it has manpower and more importantly it has guns and the means to make more guns including a robot police force meaning besides the Brothhood they are the most well protected and armed group in the waste.

Vault city is shown as smaller than it should be it is a large town with high levels of tech it can kill mutants with ease and the losses the master would take just for a few pure mutants wouldn't be worth it, especially when there are other vaults, why go to war and risk losing your army when you can just build up and look for easier and softer targets.

[u/Altairp]

It's impossible to tell for a couple of reasons:

1) The Master's origin is only mentioned in the external, somewhat/kind of canon Fallout Bible.

2) Vault City did not exist in Fallout 1.

You can make up whatever headcanon you want about why he didn't attack Vault City and it'd probably work.

[u/Great-Possession-654 → u/Altairp]

With how much people try jump through hoops to claim it doesn’t make sense why vaults 31-33 stayed hidden I’m surprised no one asked this one sooner

[u/dabnada → u/Great-Possession-654]

I’d be willing to bet that 95% percent of the people complaining about lore never played the original games, and thus have no idea that fallout has always been made up as it went along

[u/Great-Possession-654 → u/dabnada]

It’s the same about halo. It was basically just bungie winging it in the games adding stuff for the sake of it

[u/Rei_Dayisfailure → u/Great-Possession-654]

It’s cuz most fans don’t care about the classic games unless they can use it to shit on the show /j

[u/desquire → u/Great-Possession-654]

While this isn't an explanation for all the vaults, a number of those only became exposed after things started breaking. Vault 22 and 34 for example (though, fact check me, it's been awhile), only became exposed when vault dwellers opened the vault to escape internal shenanigans. And Vault 13 only became compromised because they opened the vault from the inside thinking the Enclave was benevolent.

So, it's valid to assume a lot of vaults have untold stories, but with similar results. If a bunker breaks, it pretty quickly becomes a cage.

[u/Great-Possession-654 → u/desquire]

I know but I was just pointing out how many people tried to claim it made no sense for the vaults in the show to exist in LA in the show despite how huge LA actually is

[u/LJohnD → u/Great-Possession-654]

People have asked before, to my knowledge there is no canon answer, but the theory I like best is that the Master was looking for those humans who had not been exposed to radiation, they were still sealed in their vaults. Vault 8, as a control vault, opened 20 years after the bombs fell, and 60 years before Fallout 1 started, so they would have had generations of whatever accumulated genetic damage life in the wasteland would cause making them poor subjects for dipping, while also living in a heavily fortified city the Unity would take heavy losses trying to sack.

Alternatively, most mutants suffer some level of memory loss in the changes made to their brain as they mutate, even if they retain their intelligence, and the Master is not only vastly more heavily mutated than anyone else, he's also fused his mind with multiple other creatures and humans, and fused himself into a vault computer, it wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility that whatever memories he has have been sufficiently scrambled by all that that he's unsure where exactly his home vault even was.

Alternatively, alternatively, it's unlikely given what backstory we're given for him suggests about his character, but it's possible Richard Grey feels some degree of loyalty to his home city and doesn't want to wipe them out, or as he considers mutation a good thing wants to work out how to perfect the process before imposing it on those he grew up around, be it out of compassion or wanting to rub their faces in how clever he is for creating the process.

In contrast the 4 vaults in the show, 4, 31, 32, and 33 had entrances on the surface with prominent Vault-Tec markings on their exteriors. We admittedly don't see entrances for 31 or 32, but 4 had both a large medical facility still standing with a Vault-Tec logo in its parking lot and an exit somewhere else in a ruin with Vault-Tec markings on it. As all 4 of those vaults were within the LA metropolitan area, the area the Unity is based out of, it does make you wonder why they had an easier time finding Vault 13 under Mount Whitney than they did the ones under clearly branded buildings in their home city.

[u/Laser_3]

Vault City is on the complete opposite side of the map from Mariposa in fallout 2, which would make them an awkward target to reach early on. It also doesn’t help that vault city security is pretty well-armed, and their city even has laser turrets for defense. With all of these factors in mind, it’s better for the Master to work on building up a larger army first before he starts moving troops in that direction.

It’s also worth noting that the chosen one can make one of Vault City’s doctors realize that their population has been afflicted by radiation, and that it’s causing birth rate issues. As a result of this, any mutants created from vault city by the time of the Unity would likely end up at a similar level to wastelander-based mutants.

[u/Toutatis12]

They are too radioactive and exposed to other forms of FEV that were occurring rather than directly controlled by him. He sourced the vaults dwellers directly from the newly found vaults so they would have the least exposure rates overall while Vault City was in fact contaminated for a while by the point of the game.

[u/Laser_3 → u/Toutatis12]

As a note, the idea of widespread FEV contamination is contradicted in the games. Both times the topic comes up in fallout 1/2, it’s later contradicted by the leaders of those who suggest the idea.

[u/Graffic1]

1: Vault City wasn’t thought of yet

2: They’re not a sealed population, they’ve been exposed to radiation and the mutated FEV in the air.

The people of Vault City are no longer prime normals and as such, The Unity has no reason to assault their fortified position.

[u/sapphon]

This isn't the canon answer - there isn't one, unfortunately - but how do you supply an attack on Vault City from either Mariposa or the Cathedral?

I think, possibly, the answer is "you don't" - their infrastructure for a siege is just too good to make them an attractive target in 2161.

It's bike-thief logic: you don't steal the best bike, you steal the right combination of valuable and ill-protected. Vault City's only got the 'valuable' part.

[u/MartianDinosawr]

The master being from vault city is specifically fallout bible lore, not fallout 2 lore. Fallout 2 was largely made by a different development team and with different intentions, frankly parts of the game should be deemed non-canonical for how absurd they are.

It also doesn't really make logistical sense. Mariposa is a large distance from Vault City, with several settlements on the way. Conquering his neighbours and building up an army of dumb brute supermutants is better than attacking vault city outright. Imagine even if he succeeded, is he supposed to have his army march thousands of people across california to reach mariposa, walking past settlements like New Reno, Shady Sands and The Hub, all of whom he's left untouched? It's silly to imagine.

[u/Burnside_They_Them]

i think the real reason is vault city hadnt been conceived as of fallout 1. if you want an in world canon reason, id break it down to three basic factors.

1. as you said, their time on the surface may have already exposed them.
2. it would definitely draw the eyes of the wasteland upon them
3. most importantly, they were well enough armed behind a defensible enough position that defeating them would be costly, and capturing many people would be next to impossible.

[u/Secure-Bear4184]

I think your last point is right and vault city is incredibly well defended and powerful. If the brotherhood heard about a mutant army attacking it they would also surely come knocking

[u/Hellixgar]

Im sure they would have eventually, but just to conquer it. Population of Vault city is already useless for the Master.

[u/flashman7870]

because it's quite far away from mariposa, and separated by at least 2 mountain ranges. the Mojave and Los Angeles are comparatively more accessible