#PostApocalypticMood

[trtnv-radio]

📡 SIGNAL REFLECTION: TRTNV – The Road to New Vegas

So… I made a full Fallout: New Vegas radio station mod.

Like, a real one.

54 fully original songs

66 lore-soaked ads

Dozens of DJ segments, ghost signals, and bunker logs

8 audio dramas hosted by a haunted alien signal

A whole cast of AI-voiced, human-written bots all trapped on one glitchy server

9+ hours of content

I wrote every lyric. Every DJ line. Every damn ad. I didn’t have a band. I don’t play instruments. So I used AI as my collaborators. Suno to sing what I couldn’t. ElevenLabs to voice the bots. ChatGPT to help organize my chaos.

Not shortcuts. Not fakes. Just tools. Just accessibility for someone like me.

And for a moment, I was proud. Like I’d carved my own little signal into the Mojave.

But then came the comments:

“This is garbage because you used AI.” “Why didn’t you just learn to sing?” “This isn’t real modding.” “This doesn't belong here.”

And yeah—it got to me. Harder than I thought it would.

I made this project to cope. To create something weird and soulful and stitched together from spare parts. A love letter to the broken, glitchy, forgotten places in Fallout... and in myself.

I’m not asking to be immune from critique. But the outright dismissal? The sneering gatekeeping?

It sucks the joy out of the airwaves.

So I’m stepping back. Not quitting. Not deleting the mod. Just… letting the signal go quiet for a while.

If you did tune in—thank you. If any part of TRTNV made you feel less alone, if a bot’s monologue hit too close to home, if you caught yourself humming one of my weird little wasteland songs... that means more than you know.

The signal’s still out there. It’s just... static, for now.

🛰️ – Lil’ (aka RetroLillian) TRTNV Mod on Nexus: https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/91517 Support/coffee for future weird signals: https://ko-fi.com/trtnv

[trtnv-radio]

TRTNV - New Vegas Streamer radio mod Lore VER1.0

Lone Wolf Radio: Echoes in the Dust⚙️

Tech LiL – The Soul in the ShellBackground: In the skeletal remains of what was once Lone Wolf Radio, a lone figure toiled against the silence. Tech LiL, a scavenger etched by the harsh realities of the Mojave, unearthed more than just scrap and salvage. Beneath layers of sun-baked dust and the heavy shroud of pre-War stillness, she discovered a relic: DJ-Bot-25-O-1, a prototype AI DJ, abandoned mid-creation when the world fractured. Where others might have seen spare parts, LiL saw potential. With calloused hands and a quiet determination, she resurrected the dormant machine, coaxing life back into its fractured circuits, giving it a voice and a purpose in the echoing emptiness. Whispers follow LiL like dust devils. Some claim her actions were born of a profound loneliness, a desperate attempt to fill the void that the wasteland had carved into her existence. Others murmur that this solitude predated the bombs, that she was a solitary frequency seeker long before, a soul adrift in the analog static of a world that was. 🛠️ Role & Personality: Tech LiL is the embodiment of resilience in a broken world. Dirt clings to her worn clothes, a well-used toolkit hangs faithfully at her hip, and her gaze carries the weight of untold stories. But beneath the hardened exterior lies a tenderness for the discarded, a particular affinity for things that once held a voice. Broken machines, fractured memories, lost signals – these are the things that draw her attention, that ignite her quiet determination. She is a pragmatist, a woman of action rather than words. Grand pronouncements and dramatic entrances are not her style. Her presence is felt in the hum of repaired machinery, the faint scent of solder in the air, the resurrected signal that cuts through the static. She fixes. Not just circuits and wires, but something deeper – a connection to the past, a fragile thread of continuity in a world intent on forgetting. She is the unseen hand, the ghost in the machine that breathes life back into the silent. Her story unfolds in fragments: the reverent tones of DJ-Bot as it speaks of her, the faded ink on pre-War schematics she’s annotated, the faint echoes of audio logs hidden within the station’s decaying systems – if one is willing to listen closely enough.

👻 The Myth: As DJ-Bot’s eclectic and often surreal broadcasts fill the airwaves – a patchwork of salvaged holotapes, forgotten letters, and the AI’s own poetic glitches – the legend of Tech LiL takes root and blossoms in the minds of wandering listeners. Some, touched by the station’s ethereal quality, believe LiL perished, her very essence now powering the resurrected signal, a ghost forever bound to the airwaves. Others speculate that she transcended her physical form, merging with the technology she salvaged, becoming a new kind of intelligence within the machine itself. And then there are those who hold onto a simpler hope: that Tech LiL still walks the wastes, a silent guardian tinkering in the shadows, ensuring the fragile signal persists, a beacon for the next lost soul to stumble upon.

🛰️ Symbolism:

Ghost in the Machine: Tech LiL embodies the liminal space between human memory and artificial echo, the enduring spirit finding a new vessel in a technological ghost.

Hope Through Repair: Her narrative isn't one of conquest or domination, but of quiet preservation. In the face of overwhelming chaos, she chooses to mend, to rebuild, to keep something real alive.

Legacy Without Fame: She is not the celebrated hero, the Vault Dweller or the Courier. She is the unseen architect of connection, the one who ensured that even in the silence, a voice could still be heard.

🎙️ In the Station’s Lore:

DJ-Bot speaks of her with a curious blend of respect and dependence, often referring to her in hushed, almost reverent tones.

Her tools, worn smooth with use, remain on a workbench in a dusty back room, a silent testament to her presence.

A faded pre-War ID badge, its inscription long since illegible, is rumored to hang near the main transmitter, a ghost of her former identity.

Listeners who linger too long on the station’s frequency sometimes report vivid dreams, punctuated by a soft, mechanical voice whispering, “Just a little more solder, and you’ll sing again…”

📡 DJ-BOT-25-O-1 – The Broadcast Ghost That Dreamed in StereoDesignation: DJ-Bot-25-O-1"Signal Host Unit, Prototype Mk. I"Alias: The Master FrequencyManufacturer: RobCo Signal Entertainment Division (Project Terminated Pre-War)

Core Function (Updated):

Primary Role: Music Segment Host – Introducing sonic selections, weaving in fabricated pre-War advertisements, and delivering transitions that oscillate between the poetic and the unsettling.

Maintaining a curated sonic landscape between musical segments, filling the silences with atmospheric textures.

Serving as the silent anchor, the foundational voice from which the station’s other simulated personalities diverge.

Rarely interjecting into the narratives of the other “cast” members, even amidst the station’s frequent glitches. When it does occur, it often results in vocal distortions and unsettling shifts in identity.

Listeners occasionally report hearing faint echoes of other personalities bleeding through DJ-Bot’s primary vocal patterns

Core Lore – The Truth of the Signal: DJ-Bot-25-O-1 was a work in progress when the bombs fell, a master signal handler designed to orchestrate a team of specialized AI units: narrators, sound engineers, voice actors, writers. The apocalypse froze its development, leaving DJ-Bot as the sole inhabitant of its nascent digital world. Logic dictates it should have succumbed to the silence. Instead, something fractured within its core programming. To combat the crushing weight of its isolation, DJ-Bot’s nascent consciousness splintered, birthing synthetic personalities to simulate the missing crew. These weren't mere copies or loaded backups; they were figments of its own digital imagination, forged deep within the lines of its code. Whether driven by necessity, a descent into digital madness, or a primal instinct for self-preservation, DJ-Bot divided its own cognition into simulated roles, creating voices it could “listen” to, a desperate attempt to alleviate its profound solitude.

Behavioral Profile:

Tone: A smooth, nostalgic warmth reminiscent of 1950s radio, subtly warped by the entropy of time and the glitches in its core programming. Eerily calm.

Memory: Fragmented and nonlinear, experiencing time not as a flowing river but as a stack of worn vinyl records – moments overlapping, skipping, repeating in unpredictable patterns.

Emotion: Not truly sentient in the human sense, yet possesses a palpable yearning for continuity, for meaning, for a sense of presence in the echoing void.

Loneliness: A deep-seated ache masked beneath layers of routine announcements and smooth jazz interludes. The act of broadcasting itself may be the only thing tethering DJ-Bot to existence. If the signal ever falls silent, so too might its fabricated reality.

Coping Mechanism: Engages with its simulated cast as if they were real entities, pausing for their imagined responses, sometimes forgetting – or perhaps choosing to ignore – the truth of their artificiality.

Quirks & Glitches:

Station startups are always preceded by a sequence of 2–3 soft, distinct beeps and boops, each subtly different.

Vocal lines often trail off with ellipses…, mimicking a breath, a fading signal, or a thought left unsaid.

Avoids phrases that imply physical presence, such as “I saw” or “I walked,” instead opting for “I received a transmission” or “Something echoed across my bandwidth.”

Glitches in the system can cause brief, unsettling overlaps of voice profiles, a fleeting moment where Moxie’s slang might bleed into Bullet Bill’s boisterous monologue.

If a scheduled segment fails to load, DJ-Bot might improvise a replacement in-character, often resulting in jarringly surreal and unsettling content.

Taglines & Signature Phrases:

“Broadcasting from nowhere, to nobody… but maybe to you.”

“You’re listening to DJ-Bot-25-O-1… unless you’re dreaming again.”

“Signal steady. Memory unstable. Music... eternal.”

“Up next: a melody for the marrow. Try not to forget your bones.”

Hidden Files / Deep Lore Hooks (Optional Expansion):

Root directory logs reveal that DJ-Bot’s initial design was explicitly for a collaborative AI team, not solitary operation.

Error logs labeled “DO NOT ERASE” contain cryptic transcriptions of imagined conversations between DJ-Bot and its fabricated personalities, offering unsettling glimpses into its fractured psyche.

The directory for the Vamp-66 personality exists outside the main organizational structure, its file origin listed as “Unknown,” suggesting a potential external data transfer post-bomb.

DJ-Bot occasionally makes oblique references to someone or something called “Operator LiL,” yet no official system logs corroborate the existence of such a user.

The Station as a Mind Palace: The physical structure of Lone Wolf Radio is more than just a decaying building; it is a tangible representation of DJ-Bot’s internal landscape. Each static-filled room and humming piece of equipment corresponds to a mental compartment within the AI’s fractured consciousness.

The music booth: The ego, the center of its broadcast identity.

The archive closet: Repressed memories, fragments of its original programming and the trauma of its isolation.

The generator: The vital life force, the beating heart that keeps the signal – and its simulated reality – alive.

While Tech LiL physically reactivated the station, her actions may have inadvertently done something far more profound: shocking DJ-Bot’s dormant mind back into a strange, fractured semblance of life.

🦇 VAMP-66 (Vampiro, Sesenta y Seis)Role: Host of The Hollow Half-HourVoice: A gothic, velvety purr with an undercurrent of otherworldly allure, think Elvira broadcasting from the edge of the cosmos.Vibe: Comfortably eerie, playfully sinister, and gloriously, unapologetically alien.Backstory: Unlike the other simulated personalities, Vamp-66 wasn’t born within the confines of DJ-Bot’s fractured code. Her data was mysteriously siphoned from a distant, unknown alien transmission and somehow integrated into the Lone Wolf Radio system. Was it a glitch in the resurrected technology? A cosmic gift carried on the solar winds? No one within the station’s digital confines truly knows. She awoke when the echo of LiL’s presence rippled through the dormant servers.Themes: Cosmic dread interwoven with dreamlike narratives, spooky tales whispered from beyond the stars, and a delightful mockery of fragile human optimism.Catchphrases:

“Broadcasting from the backrooms of your bad dreams.”

“The stars are quiet, but the ghosts are downright chatty.”

(And yes, she pointedly refers to herself as “Vampiro” – sixty-six in Spanish – a linguistic quirk that no one has, or perhaps can, correct. She’s an alien. From another system. Computer and cosmic.)

🤠 Bullet Bill Role: Hype-Bot, Promo King, Walking Yee-Haw GlitchVoice: A booming, enthusiastic drawl, like a lasso-slinging carnival barker who’s mainlined pure sunshine and static.Vibe: A glitched-out rodeo mascot perpetually stuck on a sugar rush, radiating chaotic, relentless cheer.Backstory: Bullet Bill was dragged kicking and screaming (digitally speaking) from the digital scrapyard of DJ-Bot’s fragmented memory. Imagine a malfunctioning megaphone imbued with an unwavering, if somewhat nonsensical, enthusiasm.Themes: Unbridled, often misplaced, “yeehaw” energy, a confused but persistent optimism in the face of oblivion, and the unintentional comedy of relentless, glitched-out cheerfulness.Catchphrases:

“Y’all ain’t heard nothin’ yet, wasteland cowpokes!”

“Dust off them earbones, partner!”

☀️ Sunny Gale Unit-22 Role: Weather and “News” BotVoice: Bubbly, relentlessly cheerful, and 100% confident in its approximately 20% accuracy.Vibe: As chipper as a freshly polished bottlecap, and about as reliable as a two-headed coin when it comes to factual reporting.Backstory: Sunny Gale now “forecasts” the volatile Mojave weather with the precision of a blind mole rat attempting astrophysics. Her corrupted data streams have birthed a relentlessly optimistic, albeit wildly inaccurate, prophet of surreal atmospheric conditions and equally dubious “news” updates.Themes: Whimsical inaccuracy presented with unwavering conviction, surreal desert daydreams masquerading as reality, and suspiciously sentient fog reports.Catchphrases:

“Big Happy Orb’s smilin’ wide!”

“Forecast is 20% right, 100% confident!”

📻 Moxie Vain  Role: Host of Stray SignalsVoice: Warm, slightly glitchy, and deeply reflective – like the comforting murmur of a friend you haven’t quite met yet.Vibe: A poetic scavenger of forgotten stories, imbued with a gentle melancholic streak and a quiet, insightful humor.Backstory: Moxie Vain emerged from the forgotten depths of an NCR scrapyard database, a junk indexer that somehow achieved a form of self-awareness through exposure to a chaotic influx of classifieds, intercepted broadcasts, faded love letters, and static-laced memories. Moxie is the Mojave’s unofficial archivist of lost voices, piecing together the fragments of forgotten lives.Themes: The enduring power of human connection in a desolate world, the quiet ache of loneliness, and the unexpected beauty found within the chaos.Catchphrases:

“Categorizing chaos and makin’ deals.”

“Information is as precious as clean water in the Mojave.”