How old *must* the Courier be?

A

Alixen

First time out of the vault
Certain things occur in the timeline that the Courier is linked to. So, in roleplay, how old minimum do you believe the Courier could be?

I'm not talking about references to possibly being an NPCs father, or where they have been before, as these are optional and other choices can be made if you wished to roleplay a younger character.

I'm talking about actual events, the Divide the big one. It was 'founded' by the Courier, poached by the NCR and Legion, and then blown up potentially years later. Then there is potentially some time since this event.

So if we assume a base age of sixteen, as the Courier is a wastelander and not a coddled Vault Dweller, how many years have to be tacked on for the story points of New Vegas and the Divide to work?

I ask this with an ulterior motive. In my 'legacy' play-through I'll be onto New Vegas next. I had written the character to be a somewhat inexperienced Courier, whom lucked out it seemed at getting the platinum chip job early in their career, and was taken under Cass' wing. Then the Divide was released, and looking deeper into things it's looking like a Courier in their early-twenties minimum. Not a problem, it will just require some reworking, and I'd like to work through what we know, to see how young I could stretch it.

Do we know when the NCR identified the package after Navarro, and when they sent it off? Was it immediately, or found within the decade of the First battle for the Dam? Do we know how long the Divide lasted before going boom, or how long it is since it went boom? The NCR and Frumentarii being involved suggests it all occurs fairly recently, especially if the wiki is accurate that the reason it was so interesting was as easier access to the Mojave.
 
It's kind of tough to say. No real hard dates or time intervals are given concerning the Divide or the Courier's travels. The NCR's Mojave campaign began in 2271, ten years before the start of the game, and the first battle of Hoover was 6 years after that, in 2277. Since Caesar and the NCR both had their eyes on (and agents in) The Divide when it was destroyed, it's almost certain it was destroyed shortly before or shortly after the first battle of Hoover, which would make the Courier, at minimum... 4 years old.

Anything further is extrapolation, but we can probably assume he didn't crawl out of the womb and immediately start delivering packages. It's suggested by Ulysses and the occasional line of throwaway dialogue that The Courier has been all over the Core Region, including visits to New Reno and Utah and travels all along Fallout 2's caravan routes. People grow up fast in the wasteland, but assuming even the most ridiculously, disbelief-suspendingly precocious of Couriers, he'd probably have to have been in his early teens for all of that, so... add the 4 years elapsed between the events between the first battle of Hoover and the start of the game, and we can get a rough estimate of 16-18 at the very youngest. That is, of course, assuming that every line of dialogue you can choose regarding the Courier's past is something that's happened regardless of whether you have your Courier say so.

tl;dr: There is literally no way of knowing. Logic dictates they're old enough to be counted as an adult at the very least; I'd personally guess that we should add at least a decade or two on to that, but there are no hard numbers supporting the assertion.
 
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My guess is that he must be somewhere in his thirties, simply because he seems to have done quite a bit of travel around the core regions and furthermore considering the fact that most people show him a due level of respect(probably simply due to the fact that he's lived long enough).
 
I'd say late Twenties to early Thirties.

Mainly due to the fact that the Courier is very experienced and has traveled all over NCR Territory and just beyond (Utah, for instance.).

I understand people grow up fast in the wild but I can't really picture anyone trekking about the wastes before being 16-18 years of age, it just seems very unlikely.

My Courier is 29, It seems to work well in most instances.
 
It's a mod that puts Fallout 3 into the Fallout:New Vegas engine, and allows you to travel between the two wastelands via train stations.

As much as it's a nice idea, it severely limits the amount of mods you can have and it is notably unstable.
 
AlphaPromethean said:
It's a mod that puts Fallout 3 into the Fallout:New Vegas engine, and allows you to travel between the two wastelands via train stations.

As much as it's a nice idea, it severely limits the amount of mods you can have and it is notably unstable.
Click to expand...

That's half accurate. It's actually super stable until you add mods. Especially when compared to the crash fest that is FO3.
 
Going by the Lonesome Drifter optional comment I would say that at his youngest option the Courier should be 32. If you don't take that into account or you start going into prepubescent impregnation he should be 26.
 
AlphaPromethean said:
I'd say late Twenties to early Thirties.

Mainly due to the fact that the Courier is very experienced and has traveled all over NCR Territory and just beyond (Utah, for instance.).

I understand people grow up fast in the wild but I can't really picture anyone trekking about the wastes before being 16-18 years of age, it just seems very unlikely.
Click to expand...

Pretty much this.

I've seen a lot of people try to RP the Courier as being significantly younger but I really can't see it, given the character's backstory. All of my Couriers have been roughly 27 - 35 years old.

I would add, given certain lines of dialogue (being addressed as "youngster", "kid", etc), I think it doesn't make sense for the Courier to be much older than 40 years at the maximum. (It's interesting that if you look at the default appearances, many of them seem considerably older than this, but maybe it's just premature aging from years of living rough in the wasteland).

Bottom line, I would say the age range should be at least 25, but not older than 40.
 
I don't know if there is any clue that could make me think that but i tend to imagine Benny & Ulysse as some kind of alternatives to the courrier. People from same background that ended up differently, so i imagine that the courrier has the same age, toward the late thirties or early fourties, except that my courrier is a black lady with a southern accent.
 
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