Quote Originally Posted by Nilehus View Post
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Ex-Frumentaari that grew disillusioned with the Legion and decided to make a town called The Divide his new home. Unfortunately, the Legion and NCR both noticed The Divide, which was built on top of underground nuclear missile silos. The NCR hired the Courier to deliver a package to The Divide, which contained the launch codes for some of those silos. The Divide got destroyed, and Ulysses became obsessed with you. Then, in his campaign to impress upon The Courier the unforeseen consequences of their actions, he told Elijah where the Sierra Madre was, unwittingly giving him the means to murder dozens of people (Dead Money), he armed the White Legs and accidentally turned them into a powerful raiding party that leveled a city (Honest Hearts), and nearly caused a 1950's B-movie sci-fi apocalypse by shaking the Think Tank, some incredibly intelligent old-war scientists that could take over the world with their 'experimentation.' By accidentally shaking them out of their routine, of course. And at the end of Lonesome Road, he tries to nuke the Legion and NCR back to the Stone Age, because he's decided that they aren't worthy of carrying the symbols of the Old World or some crap.


So, long story short, he's an obnoxious hypocrite that causes a LOT of problems that you, personally, have to fix.
Right in the overview but I read the details differently.
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The Courier knew about the divide first, and it was a valuable secret. A quick and safe way between NCR and the Mojave? That's a powerful advantage and the Courier did well because it. "He" caught the attention of Ulysses, who couldn't tell if the Courier was legit or a Frumentaari like himself (many couriers were, apparently), and so he followed the Courier into the Divide and found he liked what he found there. Made a home there.

Then the Courier came back through on another trip and dropped off a broken eyebot as he passed through. Somebody fixed it and the first thing it did was try to connect to the computers in the area. Apparently the Divide was built over a massive missile silo that didn't get used in the war, and the eyebot's attempts to connect with the silo's computers set off a launch command, nuking the community from below. Ulysses was in an autodoc at the time, which is the only reason he survived more or less unharmed.

Ulysses was left homeless again, but his time in the Divide had changed him. The Divide inspired him to believe that there was a better way than the NCR or Legion, and he set off on a quest of discovery - both of himself and history. He originally took the House job, but dropped it immediately when he saw the Courier's name on the list - why isn't clear, but Nash thinks he knew enough about the job to think it'd get the Courier killed. He went to the Big MT and talked to the Think Tank, asking Dr. Klein questions that the scientist chose to forget rather than leave lingering in his mind, questions about what made the old world work, what a society needs, that sort of thing. In the end, he doesn't find an answer he likes and decides to wipe the slate clean and begin again. First, however, he needed to face the Courier again, make "him" see the results of careless actions, and decide the fate of three cultures in the room where the Courier accidentally destroyed the only peace Ulysses ever knew.

Ulysses is pretty much exactly like the Courier, you see. He had a life before, but it was only when that life ended that he found the fire. Two bullets to the temple turned a freelance postal worker into an unstoppable freight train that would reshape the world in "his" wake. A nuclear inferno turned a weary and disillusioned tribal-turned-spy into a driven zealot intent on finding a way restore a world long dead and - barring that - get revenge on the Courier that destroyed his last vestige of peace. Both of them came back from the brink of oblivion and used their loss to give them focus and drive that neither had before.

And, yeah. I can never kill the man when it comes down to it. Much as I might want to hate him, he's a no less a victim than the Courier. Benny? Now Benny I just want to teach a lesson: if you're going to shoot someone in the head, use a larger caliber.