Tenpenny

Lore & Background

Tenpenny Tower was originally a luxury resort before the nuclear devastation of 2077. Allistair Tenpenny, seeking fortune after arriving in the United States from Britain, purchased and revived the abandoned complex. He hired muscle to polish the facility and recruited Mister Burke as his capable assistant. The tower serves as a residence for 'the right type of tenants with the right type of assets,' maintaining a high-society lifestyle amidst the desert wasteland. The building features shops on the bottom floor, living quarters on upper levels, and private chambers for Tenpenny connected to a balcony where he shoots at wasteland creatures. Security Chief Gustavo enforces entry via an intercom system, famously rejecting ghoul leader Roy Phillips with anti-ghoul slurs. This segregation is rooted in the belief that 'unhealthy' individuals must not mix with 'healthier' ones, creating a fragile bubble of pre-War elitism.

In Their Own Story

The central conflict begins when Roy Phillips and his gang of ghouls demand entry to the tower, only to be rejected by Gustavo. The player character, the Lone Wanderer, can intervene in three ways: kill the ghouls for Gustavo, kill all human residents to let the ghouls in, or negotiate a peaceful integration. In the negotiated outcome, five bigoted residents are convinced to leave, and Tenpenny allows the ghouls to reside there. However, this peace is short-lived; returning days later reveals that Roy Phillips slaughtered nearly all the human residents, hiding their stripped corpses in the basement. Roy explains they had a 'disagreement' before deciding to 'take out the trash.' The only human survivor of this massacre is Mister Burke. Additionally, Tenpenny and Burke orchestrate a separate plot to detonate a nuclear warhead in the nearby settlement of Megaton because Tenpenny found it an eyesore, rewarding the player with a suite but massive karma loss.

Reader's Guide

Tenpenny Tower offers two primary questlines involving Allistair Tenpenny. First, the human-ghoul conflict: players can side with security Chief Gustavo to eliminate Roy Phillips and his gang for bottle caps, or assist Roy. Helping Roy involves either massacring the residents directly or unlocking a basement generator to let feral ghouls kill them, though the 'peaceful' negotiation path leads to the same tragic outcome where ghouls take over. Regardless of the method used to help Roy, he rewards the player with bottle caps and a ghoul mask that makes feral ghouls friendly. Second, the Megaton questline involves meeting Mister Burke at Moriarty's Saloon to rig a nuclear bomb. If the player detonates Megaton on behalf of Tenpenny and Burke, they receive a suite near Tenpenny's space but lose significant karma. If Roy has already taken over the tower, he and Burke are found discussing their shared goal of destroying Megaton before the player executes it.

Did You Know?

• Lead designer Emil Pagliarulo stated that Tenpenny Tower was directly inspired by the wealthy-only hotel 'Fiddler's Green' from the 2005 movie Land of the Dead.
• The developers intentionally designed the human-ghoul conflict to have no best ending, ensuring the player never achieves a truly peaceful resolution in this dystopian world.
• Allistair Tenpenny is explicitly described as a British refugee who immigrated to the United States after the Great War.
• Roy Phillips rewards the player with a ghoul mask that makes feral ghouls friendly to the wearer, regardless of how the tower was seized.
• The only human resident to survive Roy Phillips' massacre of the tower's population is Mister Burke.