Borderlands Plot

The story starts when four adventurers (Roland, Brick, Lilith, and Mordecai) arrive on the fictional planet of Pandora—a mining planet abandoned by the Dahl corporation.  The adventurers are described as “vault hunters,” and they receive a subliminal message in their minds from a mysterious woman named Angel.  After exiting the bus that brought them to their first outpost, the vault hunters meet a robot guide by the name of Claptrap.  This guide introduces them to Dr. Zed, a local pioneer who starts them on a quest. 

Along the way, the vault hunters discover a rare alien artifact and must seek out the archaeologist Tannis, who was originally sanctioned to search for information about the vault by the Dahl corporation.  Tannis informs the vault hunters that their artifact is actually a piece of the vault key, so they promptly set-out to find the missing pieces so that they can open the vault.

Once all of the key’s pieces are found, however, Commandant Steele from the Crimson Lance demands the key fragments and synthesizes them into a complete key.  She then opens the vault and is killed when a monster named the “Destroyer” comes out—leaving the vault hunters to defeat the monster in her stead. 

Once the monster is defeated, the vault is resealed for another 200 years, and the game ends (Gearbox Software, 2009).