Raul Tejada
Hidalgo Ranch
Born in 2047, Raul Tejada has a long and storied history. Before the war, he lived at Hidalgo Ranch owned by his family outside Mexico City where he developed skill in using both firearms and mechanic tools, both of which occasionally got him in trouble with the law, although Raul's close family ties mostly kept him in line. When not practicing with his guns or helping fix up machines, he consumed tabloid magazines like El Periódico de las Aburridas reporting on events like a scandalous story about a starlet who dated American businessman Robert House.
When the Great War erupted in 2077 and Mexico City was bombarded, the ranch survived largely intact due to its distance from the city. However, in the days following, the stream of refugees from more heavily affected areas proved difficult to deal with. The Tejada family was as accommodating as they could be, but they soon began running out of food and lodgings and ultimately had to start turning people away. Many did not take kindly to this, forcing Raul and his father to arm themselves and force the hostiles off the ranch.
That same night, after the Tejadas had gone to sleep, around two dozen people arrived, barred the doors, and set the house ablaze. Raul and his younger sister Rafaela were the only ones who managed to escape, climbing out a window while their parents, grandmother, two other brothers, and two other sisters were unable to escape. They had no time to mourn, however, as they were pursued by the group that attacked their home. Raul turned his guns on them, killing many but not all. The survivors he left be, not wanting to risk Rafaela's safety over raw revenge.
Mexico City
After the fire and loss of his family, Raul knew that they could not stay at their ranch anymore, forced to flee by the refugees who wanted him dead for killing their family members, they even put a bounty out on him. Despite his sister's fears, he convinced Rafaela to come with him to Mexico City by promising to take her to see the vaqueros (Spanish for "cowboys"). Being so young and unaware of the world, neither knew anything about nuclear bombs and especially not radiation. Though it wasn't hit as hard as other places in America, by the time the Tejadas reached Mexico City, according to an older Raul, it was little better than a "radioactive ruin." The survivors that made their way inside the city got by through looting, a foundation for the future tribes of raiders infesting the area. The Tejadas themselves were living like scavengers, constantly searching for both food and medicine for radiation burns Raul sustained in the process, what he believes marked the beginning of his ghoulification.
One day, Raul found a novelty costume shop and went looking for something to slice up and bandage his burns with. Then he found an old vaquero outfit, still untouched on the rack, and took it to wear. When he returned to their camp, Rafaela immediately loved it; she was smiling and laughing for the first time since the bombs and the loss of their family. However, Raul was fully aware of how dangerous it was to be dressed in something so noticeable. Soon after, between wearing such a distinctive outfit and his stellar gunslinging skills, Raul gained equal fame and notoriety as the "Ghost of Mexico City," a reputation that drove off trouble most of the time, but it also began attracting more problems in the form of would-be gunslingers hoping for glory by killing him. Despite the constant hassles of these challenges, Raul kept wearing the outfit due to the joy he saw it bring to his sister, and so the Ghost's legend continued to grow. With a renewed optimism for their futures, Raul started to play with the thought of carving out a permanent niche in Mexico City, but things would not work out.
Eventually, the debilitating effects of his radiation poisoning caught up to Raul and he found himself too ill to go out scavenging with his sister (symptomatic of the early stages of ghoulification); Rafaela was left on her own to gather more supplies. One fateful day, after she failed to return from a market she was scavenging for food, Raul forced himself out of his sickbed and went in search of her. To his horror, he found her brutally murdered by a group of raiders that came through the area. They left the corpse so badly mutilated Raul could only identify his sister by a tiny childhood scar on her knee. Completely consumed by anger and thoughts of revenge, Raul tracked down the raiders responsible at the market and killed them to the last man. Afterward, he furiously shunned wearing the vaquero outfit that had brought him the fame that he felt got his sister killed, though at the same time, held onto it for sentimental reasons.
Two-Sun
Leaving every aspect of his former life behind (including, as Raul often jokes, "his face"), he wandered for a long time, getting as far as the Gulf Coast where he came to inhabit an unclaimed Petró-Chico refinery. He spent another long period of time there, thinking about his life. At one point, he found a Petró-Chico jumpsuit and swapped his old clothes for it, even taking the name "Miguel" from the suit's sewn-in nametag as an alias for fun. His travels afterward eventually led to the city of Tucson, Arizona, now called Two-Sun (a strong pet peeve of Raul's from then on). He settled there, putting his old repertoire of mechanic skills to use as a general handyman while keeping his guns stashed away where they could do no further harm. After a long 75 years of relative peace, one day, Raul saw from afar Claudia - a prostitute working in a local brothel who bore a striking resemblance to the late Rafaela. Spurred by this reminder of what he lost, he took the time to look out for her – though, for obvious reasons, he never visited her.
The peace Raul coveted did not last forever. The former state of Arizona had become overrun with raiders and tribals between the Great War and the rise of Caesar's Legion to tame the area. Eventually, a group led by Dirty Dave and his six brothers rolled into town looking for supplies of bullets. Raul offered to sell them ammunition in the hope they would take it and leave; instead, the raiders decided they wanted the brothel. Once inside the brothel, Dave and his brothers mercilessly killed four girls and took Claudia for their own use before leaving. Raul gave chase, and after a three-day pursuit across the wasteland, unaffected by fatigue like his human targets, Raul caught up with them. However, by the time he found Claudia, the raiders had cruelly executed her. Fueled by the same rage the day he lost his sister, Raul charged in and in the ensuing gunfight, killed all of them. Youth, however, was not on his side anymore and the raiders managed to inflict severe wounds on him in return before dying; he claims he only stayed alive purely to spite them.[ Riddled with bullets, Raul was forced to recuperate at the camp until he got the strength to get up and walk back to Two-Sun where he could fully recover.
Black Mountain
Dragged back into a depressed state like before, Raul left Two-Sun and wandered west, where he eventually arrived in the Mojave Wasteland. He built himself a small shack in a relatively quiet corner of the desert east of New Vegas, and settled down there, spending his days listening to the Black Mountain Radio. Some time prior to, or during 2281, Raul discovered the radio's signal had stopped transmitting and decided to wander up to Black Mountain to investigate. There, he was apprehended by the State of Utobitha but managed to negotiate a deal where he offered his services to Tabitha, the nightkin leader of the super mutants living at Black Mountain, and fix the transmitter, but to his dismay, Tabitha decided instead to imprison him for his efforts, and threatened him into working for her, mostly with repairing broken toasters for the super mutants as well as performing repairs to her broken Mr. Handy, Rhonda.
