When one is a wasteland courier, there are a number of rules they should live by. The two most important ones are rules 17 and 35. Rule number seventeen: Always make sure they're dead. Rule number thirty-five: That which does not kill you has made a tactical error. In the wasteland, when you kill something, you better make damn sure that you put a few extra bullets into a vital organ, or ascertain that an important limb, namely the head, is no longer attached to the rest of your target. Only then can it be considered dead. And even then, I'd put another round in the brain bucket, just to be sure.

One man failed both rules. As a courier for the Mojave Express, I'd been hired to deliver a package containing a special platinum poker chip to the Lucky 38 casino in New Vegas. Just outside of the town of Goodsprings in what used to be the California/Nevada border region, a man in a checkered suit along with two Great Khans thugs ambushed me, stole the parcel, and then the snake in that suit shot me in the head and buried me in a shallow grave. He wasn't smart enough to wait until I'd stopped twitching, or personally ensure it himself.

Shortly thereafter, a Securitron droid going by the name of Victor, with the personality of an old west cowboy, dug me out of the grave and brought me to the house of Doc Mitchell, an aging surgeon who formerly lived in Vault 21, but currently resided in Goodsprings. He did a damn fine job of bringing me back to life and getting those bullets out of my head, and got me started on the path of tracking down the rat bastard that shot me. In gratitude, I stuck around and helped the town with some minor gecko problems, and then helped them get organized to kick out a roving band of escaped convicts from the nearby New California Republic correctional facility calling themselves the 'Powder Gangers' that were trying to cause trouble in the town. After that, I was off like a bloodhound on the scent of my would-be killer.

That bastard in the checkered suit didn't do too great a job of killing me, and that was a tactical error. Now I'm out for his blood, and I intend to fully adhere to Rule 17 when I catch up to him.

Primm was my next stop, a little nothing town that was probably what Goodsprings would've ended up looking like had I not done my part in organizing the locals to apply boot to convict ass. The Powder Gangers owned Primm, having killed the sheriff and taken the deputy hostage. The residents that were still alive had taken up residence in the Vikki and Vance casino, armed to the teeth and ready for the bitter siege from the Gangers, who seemed content to let them have the casino. I talked to Johnathan Nash in there, a crusty old guy who ran the Mojave Express branch in Primm. He told me they headed on down to Nipton.

Once more, I did a little something for these folks out of gratitude for their help. There were maybe twenty convicts in the Bison Steve casino across the street, nothing that a little stealth ninja action and a steady aim couldn't fix. Freed that good-for-nothing deputy, who then wanted me to turn around and find a new sheriff for Primm. Considering that he would have been sheriff otherwise, I determined it a worthwhile expenditure of my time. Fortunately, that didn't take long to handle; all I had to do was reprogram the Protectron droid in the casino to act as the town sheriff; he already had the western programming going for him.

With that complete, it was on down the road again, south to Nipton. Imagine my surprise to get there and find it ransacked by those red-armored slaver morons known as Caesar's Legion. The morons fancy themselves to be a new-age reboot of the two thousand year-dead Roman Empire, but they're really a grabasstic assortment of power-hungry vermin intent on enslaving the entire West Coast. About the only thing they have going for them is they at least know their Latin. Or at least, I assume they do. I don't speak it, but the crap they spout sounds good enough for me. Frankly I spend more time shooting them than listening to them prattle on.

Some Legion blowhard name of Vulpes Incanto or some crap like that had caught Nipton in a trap. Now, mind you, Nipton was a wretched hive of scum and villainy anyway, catering to the NCR, Legion, and the convicts, and full of whores and the like, and the mayor was as corrupt as the day was long. So all in all, nobody's going to shed a tear over Nipton's burning, but the Legion were some bastards about it.

So this Vulpes fellow sent the mayor a discreet message about setting a trap for the NCR and the convicts. The trap was set, and then a Legion hit-squad rolled in and wiped out the lot of them. They held a cruel lottery. First place winner got to go free. Second place winner lived, but they crippled the bastard. First place losers, plural, were decapitated. Quick and easy deaths. Second place losers were enslaved. The rest were strung up on crosses and left to die. They burned the mayor alive on a tire burn.

So I came strolling into Nipton nearly dead from a bad run-in with a large gang of Viper gunslingers west of town. That Vulpes bastard, seeing how obvious it was that I was in no position to pick a fight, got all up on his high horse, smug and cocky, and started gloating about what they did, then said that they would 'spare' me so I could spread the word about what they'd done. Spare me, nothing. Sure, I'd have been dead, but I damn sure would've taken that smug snake with me, and at least half of his goons as well.

They took off after that, and I limped my way on down the road, crossing into Nevada and making my way on up north. It was pretty rough going, as beat up as I was, but I managed not to die, creeping along and taking out anything threatening at extreme range with the varmint rifle I'd gotten in Goodsprings. A 'doctor' in the town of Novac name of Ada Straus patched me up good, and I was back in business. Curious how a 'doctor' would need two heavily-armed mercenary escorts. But she did the fixing job well enough so I could really care less about her traditional, or her almost-certainly-shady background.

A fellow named Manny Vargas said he knew who shot me and could point me in his direction, but only if I would help out Novac by clearing out a ghoul problem in the nearby REPCONN rocket testing site. With little other choice, I agreed, and set out. Found out the place was occupied by a bunch of ghouls who'd lost their marbles, and not in the feral direction. They were convinced that they were a 'chosen people' destined to go on a 'Great Journey' deemed by their gods. Right there, I almost started shooting.

You see, me, I'm what you would call a connoisseur of Pre-War audio-visual entertainment, known in layman's terms as video games. One of my favorite game series was called 'Halo,' and it was about a war between humans and a group of aliens known as the Covenant, whose primary goal was to go on a 'Great Journey' that was really nothing more than genocide on a galactic scale. So naturally, when that demented ghoul uttered the exact words 'Great Journey' at me, I very nearly punched him in the eye then and there. But I refrained, and cooperated.

This initiated a series of fetch quests that involved me going down to the basement to clear out an 'invisible demon' problem. The radiation clearly was melting their brains at a prodigious rate, as I got down there and quickly realized their 'demons' were Nightkin. Simple to dispatch. Shotguns in close-quarters are wonderful things, particularly with 20-gauge slug involved.

So I kill a few of them, talk to their leader, who didn't suspect a thing, come to find out they chased the ghouls upstairs to find an order of a gross of stealth boys that apparently had been shipped here before the War. He then tells me that there's somebody in a room down the hall who's absurdly efficient at killing Nightkin, thus sending me on another fetch quest. So I go to see the ghoul in question, who will agree to stop killing the Nightkin and leave if I go check on a 'friend' of his who was stuck down there with him. Cue the facepalm. So I went and fetched again, came back and told him his broad was dead, then explored the room and its terminals only to find that the stealth boys the Nightkin had come after had been sent back, also before the War. I'd really had enough of the bullshit at that point. The next Nightkin to come around a corner at me got its face exploded, loudly and messily.

When I went back to inform their leader, apparently he heard me making meat paste of his kin, and came after me with a big fucking sword made from a car bumper. I proceeded to teach him something I learned from those old Halo games: shotgun beats sword. I looted the sword and went on my way.

Telling the ghouls that the coast was clear, they booked it down to the sub-basement, where the launch pad for the test rockets was at. Now they wanted me to help them launch this 'Great Journey.' I interpreted that as exactly what it was: more fucking fetch quests. Go find stabilizer control parts or some shit. Go find highly-radioactive isotope fuels. By the time I found all that shit and brought it back, I was in the mood for some serious violence. Lucky for them they were already all sequestered away down on the launch pad.

Heading up to a launch viewing area, I found a terminal where I could adjust the rockets' course on takeoff. I noticed that I could program the rockets to crash into each other after lifting off. You can see where I'm going with this.

It felt very gratifying. Enjoy your 'Great Journey,' alien basterds.

With all that shit done, and my desire for violence abated, I went back to Novac to report my success. He told me the bastard in the suit was named Benny, and that he and the Khans were headed for Boulder City. In the process, he decided to bitch and whine about his sniper shift partner, a fella name of Craig Boone, and the fact that his absent wife was apparently a deadbeat, and that Boone was better off without her, and that the guy was all depressed and shit now.

Well of course he'd be depressed, you ignorant fuck, as I informed him. The man's wife was gone, or dead, or whatever. He wasn't clear on that. Hell, I'd been there. I knew what it was like. Not with a wife, as she bailed on me before I could ask her to get married, but straight down to brass tacks, it works out better for me that I hadn't married her. Two-timing bitch.

I digress.

So on a whim, I went to talk to Boone about it. Besides, he was a sniper, and I liked sniping. I always liked to compare notes with fellow snipers. Upon realizing I was a stranger, he decided to ask me for help. He told me his wife, Carla, had been kidnapped by Legion while he was on shift. What was unusual was that they'd known how to approach the town so as not to get their heads introduced to .308 Winchester, and they'd only taken her. It smacked of an inside job to him, and he wanted me to investigate because he figured that I, being an outsider, would have no reason to fuck him over.

And hey, I had no love for the Legion either, so I decided to help a brother out. After a few lines of interrogation and some snooping around, I come to find that the hotel owner, Jeannie May Crawford, had brokered a deal with the Legion to sell Carla into slavery. What made it worse, and sealed the bitch's fate, was that the deal had been made with all parties knowing that Carla had been pregnant and with a special bonus for the unborn child.

Good fucking God, having read that I gained a new respect for Boone. The guy's wife and unborn kid were gone, and he was still here doing his duty. Had it been me, I'd have been tearing ass across the countryside on a roaring rampage of revenge. There wouldn't have been a Legion left. Family is the key most important thing with me. Rule number three of wasteland courier life: He who fucks with your family has forfeited his life.

So I told the bitch that there was something out there in front of the dinosaur for her to look at, and she believed me like a naïve child and followed me out into Boone's line of sight, where I put on that signaling beret with a smile and watched half of her head explode with one well-placed shot. I went back to Boone and gave him back his beret and the sales paperwork that I'd found, and told him in no uncertain words that I had a lot of respect for his restraint in not going off to kill everything he saw in the name of revenge for his family. He seemed at a loss for not only words but direction as well, so I offered him to tag along with me. He recognized in me a fellow hater of the Legion, and agreed, knowing that he'd find ample opportunity to perform exploratory cranial ventilation surgery on hapless Legion bastards by following me around. Heh. 'Cranial ventilation surgery.' I like that one. Boone came up with that. He's got a knack for awesome euphemisms. Like 'hiking with an extreme prejudice.' That one's good. We do it a lot.

That notwithstanding, Boone and I headed off north toward Boulder City. We get there to find that there's a hostage situation going between the NCR and the very Khans that left me for dead. I cruise straight in, scare the everloving shit out of the Khans with my very presence, and they happily hand over the knowledge that Benny runs the Tops casino in New Vegas and retreated back there after he stiffed them their payment for the heist. Apparently they decided taking NCR troopers hostage was a good backup plan.

Playing off the holy shit quotient they were overloaded on with me still being alive, and seeming more scared of Boone than even me, it was easy to talk them into letting the hostages go in exchange for an NCR escort back to their home territory. The NCR officer was initially glad of the situation defusal, but apparently got orders while I was in there to take out the Khans anyway. I reminded him that he was not only an officer, but a gentleman as well, and he took my words to heart and upheld the honor of the bargain I struck.

With that taken care of, Boone and I continued on toward New Vegas, skirting the edge of Lake Mead and passing through Camp Golf, belonging to the NCR, on the way. We get to the outskirts of old Las Vegas, and enter into the outer city, known as Freeside. I figured that one could not simply waltz into New Vegas, so I started asking around in the various casinos and shops for any odd jobs that mine earn me some cash and street cred. Did some debt collecting for the Atomic Wrangler casino, some prostitute recruiting, and a promise to kill a guy named McCafferty inside New Vegas once I got there. Admittedly, the only reason I went into the Wrangler to begin with was because it was supposed to have hookers and I was feeling a bit anxious, but I surely couldn't find any hookers in there.

Down the street from the Wrangler was the Silver Rush. It wasn't a casino anymore, now it was an energy weapon store owned by the Van Graff family. Me and Boone got started off on a low-key job for them, being a door guard. Wasn't so bad, really. Reminded me a bit of my four-year stint as a grunt trooper in the NCR. Door guard was practically all I did back in the day. Next after that, they had me deliver a weapon shipment to some fidgety guy out in the wastes. Nothing big there. Next, the big brother of the Van Graff family wanted me to go track down some caravaner named Cassidy and bring them back to him. He was evasive when questioned, but neither Boone nor I were anyone's fools; we knew this guy was going to give that Cassidy fellow a permanent dirt nap.

But hey, that was a problem for that Cassidy kid, not us. We were directed to go talk to Alice McLafferty from the Crimson Caravan for some additional information. That yielded a request from McLafferty to offer Cassidy a contract to buy out the Cassidy Caravan. These guys really had it out for this kid; the Crimson Caravan wanted him to sell his lifeblood and the Van Graffs wanted him dead. What the hell did he do to them?

Either way, we were told that he was hanging out in the Mojave Outpost, way down at the southwest corner of the Mojave. That was a hell of a walk back all the way across the desert, but we made it, with no complaints, just putting one foot in front of the other. Before a week was out, we got back out to the outpost, where a Ranger wanted us to go check out what happened to Nipton. We informed her that the Legion razed it, then decided we may as well find out what else we could do for our troubles while we were there. A head Ranger name of Jackson slipped us an old-school wooden-stock M16 for our efforts in clearing the roads for caravan travel as well as some caps and weapon repair kits. The M16 beat out the varmint rifle I'd been using, even though it was only semiautomatic, so I pawned off the varmint rifle to one of the caravaners in the outpost and got directions to find Cassidy inside the bar in the barracks.

Boone's told me that something in me changed the second I pushed open that door. I'm inclined to agree with him. Before we went into that bar, all I gave a shit about was settling my own score with Benny and helping out Boone with his roaring rampage of revenge because he was a cool guy, damned good with that hunting sniper, and had saved my ass a few times on the way to New Vegas and back. But that day in the bar changed me, made me go from a walking automaton ex-courier to the Mark Kain I'd once been and had lost somewhere along the way, a man with a sense of justice, honor, and compassion.

That's where our story begins, ladies and gentlemen.