In the Cabot House in Fallout 4, players can undertake a questline revolving around the Cabot family and their strange situation. This requires the player to do a series of tasks for Jack Cabot, who gradually reveals more details about his family as the player progresses. The conclusion to the questline is an interesting one, ripe with moral choices and consequences, but the Cabot family’s story is far more than what little is revealed in their quests.
Should the player do some snooping around the Cabot House, they can find Lorenzo Cabot’s journal as well as terminals belonging to other family members. These text entries paint a more complete picture of the Cabot family — one that extends further than even the map of Fallout 4.
Lorenzo Cabot’s Quest to Discover Ancient Civilizations
Long before the Great War, Lorenzo Cabot was an archeologist who searched for ancient civilizations. His journal contains the oldest text entries among the family, dated 1894. The accounts detail Lorenzo’s journey from pre-war Boston to the Empty Quarter or the Rub’ al Khali, a desert in the Arabian Peninsula.
The very first entry details Lorenzo’s departure from the United States via boat. As he leaves, his wife and daughter — Wilhemina and Emogene — see him off, with Emogene begging him to stay. His son, Jack, however, is not present, and Lorenzo notes that it’s because the young Jack doesn’t see the point of such expeditions. The following journal entries follow Lorenzo as he and his team travel across the Atlantic to Oman, and finally the Arabian desert.
When they arrive at the Empty Quarter, Lorenzo has his colleague and fellow archeologist, Metternich, make use of an item known as the “electrical sensing apparatus” to look for ancient structures beneath the desert sands. The machine gets a faint reading, and the diggers begin their work. After a few days, they uncover the stone edge of a large, circular structure. Lorenzo is pleased, but his hired tour guide is wary, telling tales of old curses and ancient secrets.
A few more days of work and Lorenzo’s team has uncovered what seems to be a grand plaza. Lorenzo writes that he is convinced that he has “found Ubar,” but before he can learn more, a sandstorm undoes the diggers’ progress. This prompts the guide to keep prattling on about curses, unsettling people in Lorenzo’s team, including Metternich. And by the time the sandstorm is over, the guide is gone. Still, Lorenzo has the diggers continue their work.
The Origins of Lorenzo’s Strange Artifact
Soon, the team unearths the foundations of a large temple. A blocked tunnel lay within, which the diggers were able to clear with careful excavation as Lorenzo refused to make use of explosives. Once inside, Lorenzo finds what seemed to be a burial crypt, with a sarcophagus at the far end of the chamber. He opens the sarcophagus and is met with a shocking sight, so shocking that the diggers flee, and Metternich grows deathly pale.
Lorenzo then orders that the tunnel be sealed again, writing in his journal that he’d put together a full report of what they found in the chamber, but this is never found in Fallout 4. Thus, it’s unclear what Lorenzo saw in the buried chamber. Still, before closing it off, Lorenzo takes an item he refers to as “the crown,” and starts wearing it. His last few journal entries seem to suggest that the crown was teaching him things, like how the buried city was not Ubar, as he originally thought.
With his newfound knowledge, Lorenzo orders the diggers to bury all they’d uncovered, much to Metternich’s disapproval. He wanted the ancient city to be hidden away from anyone who might find it, so that he could return when he was ready. And should he return, he intended to do so with the rest of his family.
The Cabot Family Before the Events of Fallout 4
Unfortunately, Lorenzo would never get the chance to return to the city beneath the Empty Quarter, as in 1898, he was involuntarily admitted to Parsons State Insane Asylum and kept there until the player finds him. This is likely due to how the crown seemingly cannot be removed from Lorenzo’s head and the fact that it is affecting his psyche and physiology. The strange phenomenon spurs Jack Cabot to try and find a way to remove the crown and cure his father. He documents his progress in a terminal within the Cabot House.
Through a number of experiments, Jack discovers that the crown is reversing Lorenzo’s aging and granting him increased physical power as well as telekinetic abilities. However, it also makes Lorenzo exhibit extreme paranoia as well as violent tendencies, thus the need to confine him. Though one of Jack’s most notable breakthroughs is the creation of a serum that prolongs a person’s life — a primary ingredient of which is Lorenzo’s own blood. This is what allowed Jack and the rest of his family to live for so long.
To throw off any suspicion, the Cabot family routinely creates stories to explain the “generational shift.” The most recent story takes place before the Great War, in the 1990s. Wilhemina and Emogene leave to take a tour around Europe, while Jack stages a freak accident that supposedly claims their lives. Finally, they change their names and appearances, only revealing their true nature to trusted bodyguards — Edward Deegan being the most recent one, who worked for the family long before he became a ghoul.
Unfortunately, Jack is still unable to find a way of curing his father and removing the crown, even as the bombs fall. As such, his research continues long after the Great War, during which he starts to appreciate his father’s work. In his latest terminal entry, dated 2115, Jack writes that he thinks Lorenzo is a brilliant man. He also posits that the crown is not of human origin and that it may be worth traversing the post-apocalyptic world to find the buried city that Lorenzo found all those years ago. Though, depending on the player’s decision in the Secret of the Cabot House quest, this may no longer be possible.
The Cabot family’s strange tale is one that spans nearly four centuries. It starts long before the Great War and far into the post-apocalypse. The player gets to experience only a fraction of the story, but their decisions pose major consequences for the Cabot family and their future. Even then, plenty of mysteries remain — What were the true origins of the buried city? What is the nature of Lorenzo’s strange artifact? And did Jack have any chance of “curing” him? It’s unlikely that the community will get a definitive answer.
Fallout 4 is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
