Fort Northreach shitter!

Open-world RPGs where you invent your own backstory always either start out in a prison or at the site of a shipwreck. And Avowed doubles that down into the ground by making you do both. When you first crack open a cold Avowed run you’ll find yourself at Fort Northreach, a shitty, crumbling, dusty-ass kennel where undisciplined soldiers go crazy from the spore plague. The first quest (basically, Escape the Fuck Away from Fort Northreach) introduces you to Ilora, a character who was notably resistant to Mold Madness but is otherwise of very little consequence. You might think she’s going to be important later, but she’s not. She just peaces out after you get to the next landing spot and you kind of run into her later on where she vouches for you to her boss (a human trafficker!).

This is her dormitory at Fort Northreach, which she is locked into. Also in her cell is a former employee of Fort Northreach, who Ilora trundled off to the afterlife in an act of self-defense during the Mushroom Prison Riot. It’s worth a side-eye that the crumbled wall is not an egress and the only door is bolted shut, but this ain’t Skyrim so we’re expected to look past that. Also in Ilora’s jail cell is this Wilson, basking in the glow of the evening sun and the inner peace of knowing they had nothing to do with this utter shambles.

Emerald Stair Gatehouse shitter!

At the edge of a cliff, overlooking a scenic view of the Godless Altar, there’s a fancy privy just for the guards at the Emerald Stair Gatehouse. This is one of the best shitters I’ve found so far in Avowed, which is saying something, since I haven’t found very many. We would like more shitters, please!

This sturdy, well-crafted dual shitter has all the trimmings: A sailcloth awning to keep out the rain and sun, a privacy screen that almost excuses the lack of a door; a shovel or hoe intended to keep the ground neat where possible; a lantern outside to help the guards find it in the dark. There’s even a primitive handwashing station set on a nearby bench. By frontier standards, this shitter passes inspection, but receives an OSHA compliance rating of Acceptable. A small deduction was made due to unprotected cliffside exposure posing a foreseeable assassin hazard.

Stable Relationship shitter!

When you make landfall (read: Get shipwrecked) on the island of The Living Lands, you’ll find a town called Claviger’s Landing (awkward, since the eponymous claviger croaks the day you get there). Within this town is a fairytale romance between a straw damsel and her groom, specifically the guy who works here at this horse barn. Nothing is too good for his princess. This a pastoral bungalow has all the luxury anyone could hope for in Claviger’s Landing. And it has its own shitter!

Backwater Station shitters!

The Bucket Brigade has asked me to play the Starcraft 2 campaign, promising shitters. The reward was forthcoming nearly immediately. These are just a few of the potties found in the first chapter of the Wings of Liberty campaign, where you learn that even in the deep recesses of space, the human race is a posse of greasy, grave-robbing boozehounds.

Peekaboo! In the top photo, a billboard adjacent to the shitters instructs you to watch your neighbors closely. In the bottom image, we see the industrious, cost-effective Terran municipal planning in action, employing pedestrian maintenance methods that rival Coachella (tempered by the painful historical learnings of Lollapalooza).

Lakeside Desperation shitter!

The shitter is the main character in this scene, but let’s just take a moment to take in our surroundings. Not much of a roof on this bitch, it’s more like a perch. There are two half walls, and it’s within spitting distance of a mirelurk superhighway. We have an interesting view in the distance of the quay leading to Nordhagen beach and Fort Strong. Of course, the Prydwen lurks overhead. Within this shelter, if you can call it that, are the vapors of desperation: A bare mattress with some dumpster art and defunct Vault-Tec calendar overhead; an empty Culligan dispenser; a utility sink; most importantly, a shitter. There’s no cover, so this isn’t a lookout for the perimeter of the Boston Airport Ruins. Gonna go the safe route and say this guy was kicked out of a settlement. For what crimes, it is unclear, but possibly he never cleaned up after himself. Not a huge ask that you pick the shredded rebar and concrete bits off the damn floor, but what do I know. Maybe these were intended to become handy, manually-launched projectiles for when the radroaches come out at night.

Rescue from Apt 1237 shitter!

Sandra Dorsett is a corpo who talks a good one but is, on a fundamental level, kind of a dipshit. She claims her job is highly consequential, but dresses like a concierge at the White Lotus: Miami. She’s on a constant elevated cocktail of antianxiety/antidepressants and probiotics, because when your sense of self is garbage, at least your gut biome can be thriving. Sandra gets snatched by scavs who want her cyberware, because she is also anti-self-preservation. Your first mission is actually to save her life, and this is the apartment where you eventually find her. She’s clinging to life, though the dude bobbing in the bathtub here wasn’t so lucky. To soften the moment, Jackie Welles attempts to lighten the mood with his best Waluigi impression. Sandra does pull through, but if you bring her the zip drive or whatever that she left behind here, she’s irritated that you’re even talking to her. Sandra’s best quote is: “Not gonna apologize for that, sorry.” Love the confidence, even if the grip is weak. Live your best life, Sandra.

USS Constitution shitter!

Oh no, it’s fully submerged in filthy, radioactive water and can never be restored! Unless somehow this swampy water can be drained?? This is the shitter at the site of the USS Constitution, a heavy frigate-turned-museum-turned-robot charging station-turned-rocketship. The entire area is being stalked by a scavenger gang led by Mandy Stiles, a rough sort who has a perpetual bitch face and shitty attitude. No judgment, I’d look like that too if the scrap I could actually use to rebuild human civilization was being guarded by a fucker named Captain Ironsides, a sentry bot roleplaying as a 18th-century naval captain. I always side with the scavs on this one. Robots took over the USS Constitution but they were created to serve the people and NOT to hoard resources while the PEOPLE scrounge for bits of wire like common, ferret-faced crackheads. Anyway, the robots are all talk. You could disable them with a fork in a heavy downpour.

In this view, the shitter has been fully redacted and the rest of the fixtures no longer have functioning levers of power. Unfortunate. I guess this is what happens when you take something precious for granted, something that everyone who came before you worked hard for and even died to protect. You could rebuild a new shitter out of the rubble, and it might work, but it won’t really ever be the same.

Lizzie’s Bar shitters!

Holaaaaaaaaaaaa Brigade! These shitters caught my eye on my way to visit Judy Álvarez, my number one input/output who has a workshop at Lizzie’s Bar. This establishment’s proprietress, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Borden, was a pimp who ran afoul of the Tyger Claws. Predictably, this caused her “Alive” passive trait to become deprecated. Not preem. Getting ended by the Tyger Claws is close to dying from athlete’s foot so that’s embarrassing. You can actually get a pink handgun named after Lizzie that, unlike Lizzie herself, seems to be BIS for tech pistols. It’s whatever. She was a melee boss but yeah okay a tech pistol named Lizzie. Anyway right as I was documenting this landmark, I got this text from Jackie Welles. I have a feeling if I ever got a text from that cráneo hueco I’d probably just swipe the preview off my screen and remember it again right before falling asleep. I’m not huge on chroming Jackie Welles. I don’t have bad feelings toward him necessarily, but let’s just say, when he died, I didn’t care. Plus his girlfiend is so weird, her mop helmet is hidge, and that Gibson on which she bases her entire personality conveniently dipped before Jackie fell from a hotel window while being shot.

Cyberpunk cosplay by Shark Flower

We’re in space for crying out loud