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| “ | You got lives in you, hard to kill. Storm, bullets, sand and wind, yet still you walk. For now. | „ |
| ~ Ulysses |
Ulysses is the main antagonist of the Fallout: New Vegas DLC Lonesome Road, and the overarching antagonist of all DLCs for Fallout: New Vegas.
Ulysses is a former Legion frumentarius that later deserted to start a new life in a prosperous community called 'The Divide', believing that it could be his new home. The Divide was a frontier town sat between the California and Nevada border, and served as an important supply route into the Mojave Wasteland. The community was built out of the remains of a series of old nuclear missile silos, but the warheads never actually took flight on the day of the Great War, and remain buried in their silos as of 2281.
When the Courier travelled to the Divide, unwittingly delivering a package containing a dangerous device, his dreams of settling down and planting his flag in a new home were ruined. The device, actually a detonator, began to 'speak' once connected to the Divide's computer systems, and activated the dormant nuclear missiles beneath the Divide, causing the still-active warheads to explode. The resulting detonations split apart the Earth and resulted in the utter destruction of the fledgling community, turning it into a ravaged. decaying and radioactive hellscape of storm-beaten canyons and lifeless wreckage. Maddened by the Courier's apparent carelessness and traumatised by the loss of the Divide, Ulysses became obsessed with the Courier, and decided to reshape the world just like the Courier reshaped The Divide.
He was voiced by Roger Cross.
Personality[]
Ulysses is a sophisticated and educated villain who has radical and extreme notions of reshaping the post-apocalyptic world. His manner of speech is peculiar and often vague, with frequent parallels drawn between the present and the past, and frequently involves discussions of symbols, flags, their meaning, and their relation to the history that inspired them. His obsession with the Courier stems from the 'lesson' he believes they taught him - that one person, no matter how seemingly insignificant, can radically alter the course of history with a single act, even one accidentally and carelessly made. During the course of Lonesome Road, Ulysses frequently forces the Courier to either defend or question their chosen faction from the base game, serving as a foil to the Courier; Whilst the Courier can reshape the wasteland gradually and potentially change it for the better, Ulysses wants to swiftly and brutally reshape the wasteland by any means necessary, even if that means burning away the existing flags in nuclear fire to allow room for a new nation to take their place.
Ulysses is evidently disillusioned about the state of affairs in the Mojave and the war for Hoover Dam. He has rather dim opinions of the NCR, the Legion, and Mr. House, believing that none of them currently hold the answer to the question of who deserves the win the war and inherit the remains of the old world. To Ulysses, each of these factions are all guilty of appropriating the symbols and ideologies of the pre-War United States without fully understanding their meaning or their history, and therefore are doomed to repeat history's mistakes. He is highly observant of each major faction's flaws; if the Courier is aligned with the NCR, he denigrates the Republic as 'sick', mentioning how they continue to grow relentlessly but lacking structure or direction, never quite managing to stick to their ideals of what's right. If the Courier sides with the Legion, he opines on how it represents an archaic culture singularly bred for war, and without a foe to challenge, it will inevitably collapse once it reaches the sea. Mr. House does not escape criticism either - Ulysses clearly has no love for Mr. House's vision of Vegas, stating that he offers no future aside from ending up as a "smiling face on a robot, in the middle of a dead casino". However, if the Courier is aligned with an independent Vegas and has no major faction allegiance, Ulysses will still condemn them for not having the conviction to believe in a nation, or follow a flag.
Similarly to Father Elijah, Ulysses' solution to these problems to 'wipe the slate clean' through mass genocide, in the hopes that once the NCR, Vegas, and the Legion are removed, a new nation, not beholden to old world ideas and free from their corrupting influence, will have the opportunity to rise and take their place as a truly worthy inheritor of the post-apocalyptic wasteland. The community at the Divide showed him that this is possible, that a nation without the 'sickness' of the NCR or the Legion can exist and prosper in this world, only that chance was snatched away before it could be realised.
Ulysses believes the Divide can be recreated, but only in the crucible of nuclear fire, reducing civilisation to ashes once more so that something better may rise from it. Reasoning with Ulysses involves telling him why his plan is flawed, exposing his hypocrisy, or demonstrating that you genuinely believe in your chosen faction and their potential to make the Wasteland a better place. Alternatively, one can choose to battle Ulysses and kill him before he can realise his plans.
Biography[]
Ulysses was once a member of a powerful tribe in Arizona called Twisted Hairs. At some point, Caesar's Legion brokered an alliance with the Twisted Hairs, and the tribe served as the Legion's scouts in Arizona to aid them in their conquest of the region's other tribes. However, after the campaign in Arizona had ended and the Legion had secured their position in the territory, Caesar promptly betrayed the Twisted Hairs, enslaving them and erasing their identity. Ulysses was a witness to the "pacification" of their main camp in Dry Wells, engineered by the sociopathic frumentarius Vulpes Inculta. Those who resisted were crucified along the roadside of Interstate 40. After he lost his tribe and was forcibly assimilated into the Legion, Ulysses became one of the most capable frumentarii in Caesar's army, but unlike the majority of the enslaved tribal conscripts, he kept his memory of his former tribe intact, wilfully defying Caesar by making a concentrated effort to remember his own history, even when the Legion's monolithic culture of assimilation would seek to annihilate it. Ulysses would travel the wastes as a courier, spying for Caesar, for a number of years. He was among the first in the Legion to discover the New California Republic and Hoover Dam - something he has come to regret, as he laments having ever spoke of it in light of how integral it has become in the war for the Mojave. It was this initial sighting that compelled Caesar to challenge the NCR at the First Battle for Hoover Dam.
After the Legion lost the battle and retreated back over the Colorado, Ulysses continued to walk the wastes, still scouting for the Legion. During his travels, he discovered the prosperous community of the Divide, a 'nation taking its first breath' in his words. Though adorned with the symbols and messages of the Old World, Ulysses believed the community at the Divide represented something new and distinct from the flags of the Bear and the Bull. Ulysses took an interest in the Divide, and watched as a particularly noteworthy Courier walked the road to and from the city, delivering packages and inadvertently strengthening the community. He soon started to believe the Divide could be his new homeland, different from the rigid inflexibility of the Legion, the NCR's corruption and his own sorrowful past as a tribal - a second chance for Ulysses to plant his flag over a nation he believed in.
The peace was not to last; the Divide was annexed by the NCR due to straddling an important supply route into the Mojave, and then it subsequently became a target for Caesar's Legion, who sent a small army to destroy the new supply line. Ulysses made plans to save the community, but unbeknownst to him, the Courier, hired by the NCR, had brought a mysterious package to the Divide during the struggle between the NCR and the Legion. This package was activated and began to detonate the Old World nuclear warheads that were still lying dormant under the city.
The city was then destroyed, and most of the NCR and Legion soldiers were killed, with the few remaining survivors ghoulified and flayed by the winds. Ulysses was the only survivor of the Divide disaster, saved by defective eye-bots that saw the American flag on his back and confused him with an American soldier. Traumatised, stricken with grief, and infuriated by the actions of the Courier, Ulysses returned to Caesar to once again walk the wastes, but this time with a new purpose. He travelled to the Great Salt Lake and met with the White Legs, teaching them the ways of war and leading the sack of New Canaan. He also found the Big Empty whilst tracking the weather patterns of the Divide in the desert, and confronted the Think Tank there with a fateful question - about what makes nations, and what breaks them, simultaneously granting the Think Tank dangerous knowledge that reminded them of a world that existed beyond their Dome. He received an answer from them, telling him that he'd already found the answer to his question in the Divide. The remaining nuclear missiles, still sleeping in their silos, dormant, waiting for something or someone to wake them up. And so, Ulysses deserted Caesar's Legion, returned to the Divide, and set about his plan to reshape the post-apocalyptic world into a nation he could believe in. All that was left was one last meeting with the Courier that started it all, beneath the Old World flag, at the edge of the world.
Trivia[]
- Ironically, despite claiming to be against explosive weapons deeming them "cowardly", Ulysses has Explosives set as one of his tags, has that very skill maxed out to 100, and plans to use nuclear warheads to destroy the NCR and Caesar's Legion. This is only one example of Ulysses' hypocritical personality:
- Ulysses turned down the job to deliver the platinum chip and called for the Courier to come to The Divide in hopes it would kill them, but later claims he doesn't want them dead.
- Ulysses requires ED-E in order to enact his entire plan, but repeatedly tells the Courier that they can leave at any time. He also criticizes them for becoming attached to other people and especially ED-E, and yet repeatedly talks about his own connections and love of The Divide.
- Despite committing several heinous acts such as teaching the White Legs to kill in the name of Caesar, telling Father Elijah about the technologies in the Sierra Madre, and releasing the Think Tank from their recursive loops, he chastises the Courier for everything they do, even if they've been a pacifist up until meeting him.
- Ulysses views killing with a sniper rifle as cowardly and yet he uses an anti-material rifle as his main weapon of choice.
- Worst of all, Ulysses criticizes the NCR, Caesar's Legion, and Mr. House for holding onto old world values and trying to rebuild civilization and yet he claims to fight for the old world (even wearing an old world symbol on his jacket) and sets out to repeat one of the biggest mistakes the old world has ever made by nuking the entire Mojave wasteland, making himself worse than all three of them combined.
- Ulysses is one of four NPCs in the entire Fallout franchise to have perfect SPECIAL stats, with all seven set to ten, the others being Colonel Royez, Centurion Gaius Magnus, and Frank Horrigan. However, whereas Ulysses and Gaius have one extra point in Charisma and Royez has one extra point in Strength, Frank Horrigan does not have any equipment that buffs his SPECIAL stats.
External Links[]
- Ulysses on the Fallout Wiki
[]
 Villains
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