Priblos’ Curios Cryptid: Blue Garden Gnome

It’s nice that Fallout 76 put some quests into their game, but personally, I found the Wild Appalachia shit to be “just okay,” or tedious. Seems very unlikely that a person who just popped out of the Vault into a brave and totally screwed new world would care enough about some pre-war drama that they’d spend more time searching for half-rotted paper notes and partially-corrupted holotape data than looting any freestanding structure for supplies and viable shelter.

Anyway, one of these quests takes you to a tumbledown farmhouse where Janelle and Raymond Priblo once peddled monstrous curiosities. Your job is to find out what happened to the Priblos, because it seems that some time circa Armageddon, they mysteriously disappeared. There’s a very good chance that both these chumps were instantly vaporized in a series of atomic blasts, but you’re invited to waste your precious bullets on an alternate hypothesis.

Here we see the outside of Priblos’ Curios decorated with innocent forest creatures that did not deserve this humiliation. All except one. We all know the true cryptid that lurks in Wild Appalachia ain’t Mothman, or Buckula, or any of that lame and unscary shit. It’s the common garden Gnome! I saw this decoration on the side of the farmhouse and I thought, “Yes, deserved.” But then I panned my peepers to the left oh so very slightly, and the lightness of my heart turned to nuclear sludge because look at the freak presiding over this parade of depravity. Just a country bumpkin gnome, relaxing on his porch rocking chair! There is no limit to his cruelty, his insanity. Oh god, I just had a terrifying thought: That gnome on the wall is probably fine and just waiting for some fool to rescue him. This is suddenly giving me strong vapors of Fallout 3’s Chryslus Building Shitter.

Kiddie Corner Cabins shitter!

Nyeehehe! Yes, yes! Do come in!

Here we see the Common Garden Gnome in his natural habitat: An acid-bath of humanity’s collective sorrow and regrets. Yes, do come closer! Partake in the hospitality of his beautiful home, this pastoral lakeside getaway! Where only scientifically-unknown bacteria, and Ghouls, can survive.

Kiddie Corner Cabins are a series of small wooden buildings that have seen some shit. The potty stall is still standing, but so is a crisp husk of a dead chump, right in the doorway, so that’s a no-go. There’s a dinner tray in there, and some TP, as if they’d ever see use again.

Despite the carnage, or perhaps especially because of it, this shitter is a role model and a champ. Everything else around it has given in to the pressure, and crumbled to crap, but this shitter is still upright and proud, because it has nothing to be ashamed of.

Toxic Valley Public Pool shitter!

I climbed over splintered wood and rusty, exposed rebar to investigate this shithole. From the outside, any reasonable person would already know there is most likely a serial killer hiding in this poolside public shower. The building had a lot of nice fixtures originally, but it probably would have been a hideout for a killer even before the bombs. And you can bet from the picture of the innertube that there’s something terrible in the stall on the left. Even so, my blood ran cold when I opened it up to reveal this maniac, just laying in wait! Gnomes are all reverse-stalkers. They wait a long time for you to show up, just to scare the shit out of you.

Watoga High School Rooftop shitter!

“One for sorrow, two for joy! Three for a girl, four for a boy! Five for silver, six for gold! Seven for a secret, never to be told!

Answer me riddle, and the paper is yours! Otherwise, your fate is the same as Bubblegum Bear’s! Yeeehehehehee!”

Hunter’s Ridge shitter urinal!

Not a true shitter, unless you are a savage freak, but it deserves a mention for the following reasons: The extraneous floral arrangement, the gnome Honor Guard, and the splashmat of mutated fungus make this a rest stop of note. Something else to make note of is that while all the residents of Hunter’s Ridge are corpses, this gnome remains on site, with his unnerving, emotionless grin. Shocking, I know.

Evil Gnomes to the left, Cuddly Teddybears to the right, please!

This chart demonstrates the essential differences between vile, scheming gnomes and wonderful, morally-perfect teddybears. Behind every corpse is a gnome, and the teddies just want to make barbeque, benefit the world with ethical Science, and give each other spa treatments. Now, before you say anything, the particular model of Teddy in the first photo is called Teddy Fear, who obviously fell in with the wrong crowd. He’s just a little confused, and needs guidance, and love. Anyway, now you know the differences, so be safe out there, wastelanders.

Mothership Zeta shitter!

There are no functioning shitters aboard Mothership Zeta (only that Toilet Museum in photo 2). However, when you complete all the quests and touch back down planetside you’ll be right next to this nice washroom (with scenic overlook). Good job, hero. Hope your victory shit is glorious.

PS Mothership Zeta is run by a shadowgovernment (gnomes!). Their reign of terror over Earth was not enough. They want to be in Space.

Whitespring Golf Resort shitters!

The Child of Frankenstein that you see before you now is what happens when my camera view is cramped into a tiny-ass corner of a shower trying to get a shot of the entire bathroom and Bethesda will not let me be great. Anyway, I clipped it together and you get the idea. The Enclave’s secret relaxation retreat, Whitespring Golf Club, boasts powder rooms with plenty of sparkly loots and fixtures that are not even broken. This is going to make the common people seethe from injustice and start singing Galavant’s Today We Rise.

So where do the proles shit? You can see that in the second photo! This is the “guest shitter” at Whitespring Resort, for use of plebes, with their adorable concept of Home Sweet Home in their narrow, tiny, myopic little skulls. The common, vulgar wastelander has never even dipped their toes into the excess and luxury of what the Enclave and Big Brother could offer them, but it’s better that they keep their teacups, and imagine themselves lucky to have even set foot on the grounds of Whitespring Resort!

You should probably read that paragraph in Senator Armstrong’s voice (from Metal Gear Solid).

Lastly, if you thought the robots were the governing body of Whitespring Resort, take a look at what lurks among the reeds at the kiddie pool, you utter bumbling fool.

Miner’s Rest at Herzog Mine, Point Lookout shitters!

Kenny has sweet digs in the abandoned Herzog Mine and his guest bunk has its own shitter! Tons of toys and games will keep you from thinking about that skeleton of Old Man Herzog hanging from a noose in the hallway below. Yes, Kenny is absolutely playing checkers with a Garden Gnome. Kenny IS the Pint-Sized Slasher and I’m pretty sure that Gnome is living vicariously through Kenny.

At the bottom of the adjoining zone called Blackdamp Shaft, you can find the unique plushie named Kenny-bear. Do NOT return him to Kenny unless you FIRST remove the psycho Gnome! How do you think Kenny-bear got down there to begin with? Just take Kenny-bear with you, and leave the Pint-Sized Slasher and the Gnome to their games. Kenny-bear should see the wide frontier of the Capitol Wasteland from the zipper-hole of your backpack, not be left the doom of dissolving in a puddle of nuclear goo dripping from a cracked pipe in the ceiling.

Marguerite’s Shack shitters!

Now here’s a real chin-scratcher. There are plenty of objects here that look the part, but which is the legitimate shitter? I’m pretty sure one is a planter. The structural outhouse has a great deal of overgrowth and other indications of disuse (such as the ‘innocent’ gnome laying nearby who we all know is a vicious killer).

No, I am putting my money on the only shitter here Marguerite is gonna be sharing private moments with as being the lovely powder room the third photo. I’m sure that sink whiskey is mostly for mouthwash. So, is this where Marguerite nurses herself back to life every morning she has a hangover?

What say you, Marguerite?

She doesn’t seem to really be up for talking just now. Anyway, ‘round back as you’re heading out, there’s a bathtub full of empty whiskey bottles. I’m sure this moonshiner would say they’re being saved for ‘art projects.’

Enclave shitters!

You might think, on first glance, that being in the Enclave is a pretty sweet hookup. I mean, check out those bathrooms. Nice industrial design theme going on here. But then, you look closer and get the fright of your life from some Damaged Garden Gnomes.

The first stall door opens to reveal a Gnome wielding a deathclaw hand and pressing a damn flashlight to his face. Next, some dude left a nasty log in one bowl, and another guy prefers to use a bathroom for an office.

Last two pics you see a Teddy who is going to lose his fucking life if he doesn’t play the right moves. Rollover that to see Snidely Gnomelash that got blasted in the face by me before I ran away with his captives. Look at those picket signs! Those are from the Chryslus building!

Chryslus Building shitter!

Tiptoe into this busted throneroom to take a piss while the Supermutants are preoccupied, and you’ll see a true mindfuck. That caution cone on the left of the room really needs to be in front of these two tricksters hiding in the stalls, holding signs that beg you to take them home. Do not pick up and cuddle a Shitter Gnome from Murdertown! Tell me this, Gnomes, if you’re so helpless on your own, how did you make those signs? I checked, but there really are no land mines or rigged shotguns or anything here. Since all Garden Gnomes carry a switchblade, don’t tell them where you live!!

Four gnomes are standing in line facing the same direction. They are all wearing hats, but know not the color of their own. The first gnome is blind and does not see the colors of the other hats. The second gnome is able to see the hats of the two gnomes in front of him. The third only sees the hat of the fourth, and the fourth does not see any hat at all.

The gnomes would like to know the colors of the hats they are all wearing without checking their own. So instead of figuring out this logic puzzle, they went to the Red Rocket Megastop and asked the Gnome Wizard, who said something like, “We gnomes are evil, riddle-telling gremlins that forebode tragedy! Beware! Go forth now and spread true fear! Yeeehehehehehhe!”

Fort Defiance was an “insane asylum” (terminology not used for many a moon now) which was repurposed into a HQ for the defunct Brotherhood of Steel. At Fort Defiance, there’s nary a trace of doctors, nor soldiers, so who rules over this mound of concrete rubble now? A GNOME!! By far the most terrifying spectre in this ghost town.

High aloft the unnervingly tall oak tree of Treetops are numerous individual rooms decorated with a homey aesthetic. It wasn’t long however before I found this gnome, and began to sweat in terror for my very life.

I also located a curious chem lab, replete with crushed acetone containers, rat poison, and gasoline. Meth kitchen, or leatherworking workshop?

At long last, I rounded the very top and saw this freak smirking at me from the edge of a precipice. I yeeted him off the brink without hesitation, and to my surprise, received 110 exp. Ypa!

The People’s Bank of Point Lookout shitter!

This is a miniscule gnome, within a safe deposit box, performing maintenance on a little-ass shitter with an itty bitty-ass plunger. “Have yourself a seat,” he gestures in his squeaky voice, at the mostly broken bowl. You politely wave your hand to indicate No, and he pulls out a switchblade. “I said. Have a seat.”