Sorry to bring back a dead thread guys, but I wrote up a new bio for my upcoming hardcore mode playthrough of New Vegas:
Fallout: New Vegas
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Courier Biography:
Name: Damen Shepard (last name changed from Grzelachowski)
Age: 22; Born July 24th, 2255
The Courier grew up in North Las Vegas. His mother was a wasteland doctor (and at times, when needed - scientist), and his father was a prospector/scavenger, who formerly used to be in a raider's gang, leaving the gang when his son was born (the raiders he once called family tried to track him down and kill him for "disloyalty". He stood against, fought, and killed his entire raider gang of seven men. He ended up suffering a major back injury during the fight however when one of the raiders hit him in the back from behind with a sledge hammer. Back pain would haunt him for the rest of his life). Because of his father's immense skill with firearms, he eventually joined, and would later lead, the North Vegas militia.
The Courier grew up in a rather, some-what safe enviornment in North Vegas with the financial stability and protection of his parents. Eventually, when the Courier was only ten years old, his mother left North Vegas while he and his father were asleep. When they woke up, all they found was a note that read "I'm leaving North Vegas - Don't follow me..." With his mother gone, his father felt the need for a change in pace and, at the age of 11 moved himself and his son, the Courier, out of North Vegas and into Nipton. Living in Nipton, his father returned to being a prospector/scavenger in order to support themselves in the new town. When the Courier was sixteen however, his faher was killed by a Sentry Bot while scavenging through an old building. The Courier's father died at 52 years old. Orphaned, the Courier gathered what things left that had worth any value and sold them, everything except for his father's weathered 10mm pistol and scavenged Vault 13 suit from his days as a raider in California - over 20 years ago (father was born in Montana, actually. The Courier has a brother, but does not know his name or whereabouts). He then left the Mojave under a new last name.
After leaving the Mojave, the Courier traveled west into the NCR. There he stayed until 18, wandering the NCR from town to town, staying in each for perhaps a couple months top while he worked odd jobs to support himself. He worked as a caravan guard, a bodyguard, a prospector, and finally a traveling merchant. A few months after he turned 18 he picked up once more and left the NCR. After leaving the Mojave, the Courier this time traveled East into Arizona (moving around the Mojave, through Nevada, Utah, and then into Arizona). There, he found Arizona a much, much less civilized place than anything he had ever seen before, a place where everyday was a constant fight for survival - which it was. Arizona was filled with scavengers living amongst old city ruins, raiders, warlords, tribes, and cannibals. The Courier lived in and scavenged among the ruins of Pheonix for a little over a year. Throughout most that time, he never had a single companion, not one that didn't try to rob him anyways. He remained in slight isolation, only coming into human contact when he either had to fight off raiders, tribals, cannibals, barter with a merchant, or occasionally passing by another scavenger trying to survive day-to-day, just like him. There were no towns in Pheonix, or anywhere in central Arizona for that matter, the most organized communities were raider gangs and tribes, or small groups of scavengers sticking together for survival.
One particular memory the Courier held during his time in Pheonix, was his long fight against an Pheonix raider group named the Crows. After two months of arriving in Pheonix, the courier was one day ambushed by a group of four raiders. There, he fought them off and killed all four. Unbeknowest to the Courier, one of those raiders was the son of the leader of that Raider gang itself. During the fight, the Courier sustained a bullet wound injury to his stomach. Slowly crawling amongst the ruins for the next few days, patching it up as best he could, he eventually fell unconscious, casualty from the slow loss of blood from the wound. When he awoke, he was being tended to by a woman - Naomi. Naomi was a only a few years older than the Courier himself, a woman who had lost her husband in a raider attack. As his wounds healed, he grew closer to (though not enough to evolve into full-fledged romance - he did however develop feelings for her) her. This was short lived however, as when he returned from scavenging one day he came to find Naomi had been taken as a slave by the Crows from a note with orders left on the body of a dead Crow's gang member (Naomi had stabbed and killed him in the ensuing scuffle that led to her kidnap and subsequent slavery). In anger, the Courier began a full-fledged war against the Crow's... by himself. He constantly utilized guerilla tactics, hit-and-run and flanking manuevers to be able to put up some kind of fight against the Crows and have a chance at survival. For nearly five months, the Courier began the cold-blooded and systematic killing of any Crow he could find.
One day, as he had just finished using his sniper rifle to take out a Crows raiding party from the distance, a scout that he didn't notice survived the battle, and followed him back to his camp. After finding where he lived, he returned with the information to the leader of the Crows. Their leader, long wanting venegance for the death of his son, personally led a large raiding party of eleven men (including himself). There, the Courier was sleeping in a large apartment building he had cleared out and been using for himself. At around 3:00 A.M., when the Courier went to sleep, just forty minutes later he was awoken by the sound of one of his traps going off a few floors below him. As he grabbed his weapon and made his way to a vantage point where he could see the trap without being noticed, he found a dead body lying across a broken tripwire, along with a shotgun wound to his head. Next to him was a modified 10mm sub-machine gun decorated with Crow feathers and tribal engravings; the signature weapon of the Crows. There, throughout the large apartment bullding, he stalked and killed four of the Crows, with another two tribals setting off traps. As he went to another position and started to take aim on a lone Crow, he was suddenly taken by suprise and stabbed in the back beneath his left shoulder blade by another Crow who had snuck up on him. The lone Crow he was about to kill was being used as bait and, unbeknowest to the Courier, the Crow he was about to fire on was already dead, instead just propped up in a chair with his back to the Courier in a position as if he were alive. The Courier, wounded, managed to grab his pistol and kill the Crow who'd stabbed him, along with the second tribal he was with. Unable to take the knife out of his back, he dropped his rifle (he couldn't hold it, the weight was too much with an injured arm), unholstered his father's 10mm pistol, and continued to move slowly throughout the building, hunting the other three.
And Courier moved to leave the hallway and try to escape the building unnoticed. Upon making his way to the back exit, he opened the exit door and immediately noticed the leader of the Crows (a man he recognizes from his months of spying/eavesdropping on various different Crows in an attempt to find the whereabouts of Naomi) along with the other two members of his raiding party, each standing on the other side of their leader. In an flash before they could all react to the door opening, he immediately shot down two of them, both of the men standing beside their leader. As he went to take aim on the last one standing, the Crows leader quickly drew his holstered .44 and shot the Courier in the same wounded arm. This wound caused him to fall back unto the floor (and his weapon to slide out of reach). The Crows leader then slowly walked up to him and formally introduced himself as Gerald. There, he claimed that since he had taken so many of his brothers (as in members of his gang) lives, amongst them his own beloved son and heir, he wanted to repay the favor; not by killing him but by taking away something he loved equally as much as he loved his son. He said this was a "fair exchange, an eye for an eye" (a phrase the Courier would never forget.
~Flashback~
When he found out where the Courier was, he had scouts spy on the building for weeks, and when it was reported he was living with a woman, Gerald ordered his scouts to wait for the next time he left to go in and kidnap Naomi. Gerald then explained to the Courier that instead of killing her, he sold her into slavery to "some of the cruelest men he'd ever met". He then told the Courier that he wanted him to live with this knowledge forever on his conscious and the pain of loss forever within his soul - knowing that it's the Courier's fault Naomi received the fate she did, just as Gerald must forever live with the death of his son because it was his fault for thinking he was ready to lead his own scavenging party. Gerald reveald the truth that the Crows weren't actually a Raider gang. They were a tribe, if one could call it that, more like a group of survivors and scavengers living amongst the ruins of Pheonix. Gerald revealed that it was the Courier who shot first that day. When they saw the Courier that day, they tried to signal him that they meant no harm. The Courier, conditioned to what "survival" meant and took amongst the ruins of Pheonix, possibly through impulse, saw they hadn't yet dropped their weapons and immediately fired upon them - killing them. This was the real truth of what happened that day. When news of his sons death reached Gerald, an intense sorrow filtered with rage filled his being to the brim. Thus, he organized the Crows to find the Courier - at any cost. Over the many months of looking he had time to ponder and think upon his sons death. When he news reached him of the woman the Courier had been living with; he decided it was no longer the Courier's death he wished for - but instead a fair, justified payment for his sons death.
Gerald's last words were "a fair trade, I think" before leaving a Doctor's bag containing medical supplies and a stimpak at the Courier's feet. He then left; as did whatever remaining Crows. Where they went is unknown, however they left Pheonix which the Courier presumed would be forever. The Courier had known Naomi for a total of six months and was, as of this day, the only woman he felt he had ever loved. After the Courier patched himself up and recuperated for the next two weeks; he again picked up his belongings and left his "home" as he had done twice before. At the age of 19 (and a half. The Courier spent sixteen months in Pheonix), the Courier headed further East, hitting New Mexico. When the Courier entered New Mexico, the first thing he stumbled upon was a tribe; the "Wild Dogs". By his journey's end he was out of food and water, and was exhausted. The Wild Dogs allowed him recuperate at their village, feeding him and giving him water along with a tent to rest. Over time, the Courier befriended and eventually started living with the Wild Dogs, and was named an honorary member. The Wild Dogs were currently at war with another tribe, the Whiteskulls. There, the Courier helped the Wild Dogs wage war on the Whiteskulls. Upon teaching them all of what he learned about weapons and battle tactics from his Arizona/guerilla warfare days, he helped them fight the Whiteskulls until they finally retreated into northern Colorado.
Afterwards, the Courier picked up and wandered around New Mexico again, until he was well into his 20th year of life. By this time, Caesar's Legion had come out of Arizona (where he himself had just come from), conquered and assimilated nearly every tribe and town in eastern New Mexico - including the Wild Dogs. After deciding that the Legion was going to keep pushing towards him, he left New Mexico all together, this time traveling around Legion territory through southern Colorado, and into southern Utah. During his travel through these places, toward the end of his 20th year of life, the Courier finally decided it was time to return home. The Courier went back to the Mojave, and found work - as a Courier. When he returned to the Mojave (and New Vegas), nothing was like what he remembered from his childhood. The NCR was now in the Mojave, New Vegas weren't just ruins devided into different communities anymore, and most of all, The Strip was now alive and bustling, however they required you have a large amount of caps to gain entry, and amount he didn't have (and thus, he could not see the new, rebuilt Strip). North Vegas and Westside were in slightly better shape than before, but all-in-all, were still the same old communities. Meansonofabitch was still in West Side, the Scorpions were still running around, and the Fiends had grown much larger and now dominated South Vegas.
By the time the Courier was 21, he was still moving about the ruins of New Vegas, never venturing further out into the Mojave. The Courier worked as a Courier for the NCR. His last job as an NCR courier was to deliver a package to The Divide, a town called Hopeville. Afterwards; the NCR noted that they no longer had need for him, and just like that he was no longer working as a Courier for the NCR. Instead, the Courier journeyed down to Primm, and got a job with the Mojave Express. His first job? Carry a Platinum Chip to the Strip.
