The Ghoul (C.H)

Name: Cooper Howard Race: Human (formerly), Ghoul Gender: Male Alias(es): The Ghoul Nickname(s): Coop, America's Gunslinger, Pitchman for the end of the world Age: 40s (Great War), 259+ (Nowadays) Affiliation: Formerly: U.S. Marines, Hollywood (California Crest Studios), Vault-Tec Corporation Role: Marine (pre-War), Actor & Entertainer (pre-War), Bounty hunter (post-War) Conflicts: Anchorage Campaign Family: Barb Howard - ex-wife, Janey Howard - daughter, Roosevelt - dog (pre-War), Sugarfoot - horse (pre-War), "Dogmeat" - dog (Later on) Quick bio: The Ghoul, born Cooper Howard, was once a famous Hollywood actor in the pre-War era, after the bombs fell, he was transformed into a ghoul, spending centuries fighting and killing in the wasteland as a bounty hunter. By 2296, he is one of the most notorious killers around the greater Los Angeles area, respected and feared for his deadly marksmanship and unscrupulous beliefs. Background: Born sometime in the 21st century, at some point during his adulthood, Cooper served in the United States Marine Corps around the beginning of the Sino-American War, in 2067. Being deployed to the frontlines against the Chinese incursion into Alaska, he witnessed first-hand how close the American territory came to falling into enemy hands, an outcome staved off only by the deployment of West Tek's T-45 power armor. While he believes the power armor was instrumental in holding the line and buying the United States time, Cooper also experienced the first-generation armor's numerous design flaws, of which included a vulnerability in the chest plate welding that resulted in many of his comrades losing their lives to enemy weaponry that penetrated the weak spot. Following his honorable discharge from the military and return to his home state of California, Cooper entered into a career in acting at Hollywood in Los Angeles. Over the subsequent decade, he established himself as a high-profile actor with a penchant for Western movies such as A Man and His Dog (where he co-starred with the canine actor Roosevelt, whom he eventually adopted as his pet). and The Man from Deadhorse. At one point, while finishing principal photography on The Man from Deadhorse at California Crest Studios, Cooper expressed misgivings about his sheriff character's actions in the climax, in particular, having the sheriff execute the outlaw (played by Jorge) while he pleaded for his life rather than arresting him. When he tried to take the issue up with the supposed script writer Bob, he found out that the studio had fired Bob due to his alleged communist beliefs. The film director, Emil Dale, asked Howard to follow the revised script and make the movie as the studio wanted: a new western for a "new America." Against his concerns, Cooper ultimately shot the scene as requested, and the movie went on to perform spectacularly. Shortly after his initial conversation with Dale, Cooper made a far more fateful media appearance; at the insistence of his then-wife Barb Howard, herself a high-ranking executive of the Vault-Tec Corporation, he agreed to participate in a promotional campaign having him don the signature Vault jumpsuit. After striking a few poses, Howard made a suggestion to use a pose of him smiling with his thumb raised up, a gesture that would become heavily associated with his public image (for good and bad) over the years. Once the promotional campaign kicked off, Cooper's involvement in Vault-Tec marketing increased steadily, as he began making appearances in television advertisements promoting sales of residential spaces in the Vaults. While the company's pay was high, Cooper found himself losing out on parts in his old movie genre, as other actors found his work as the face of doomsday distasteful. His first experience with a boycott was when his fellow castmates refused to leave their trailers with him on set, which actress Bonnie Lewis attributed to "moral grounds," which coincided with him shooting an advertisement for Vault 4. In private, being displayed as a corporate mascot started to wear on Cooper himself, in particular feeling disdainful of rubbing elbows with socially disconnected Vault-Tec executives. One of these encounters occurred during the shoot of the Vault 4 commercial, when Cooper met Bud Askins and listened to him boasting about his role in overseeing the rollout of the T-45 power armor at West Tek; Bud particularly drew Cooper's ire over a comment about how the suits "looked great" despite the ridiculous flaws, causing the former Marine to respond that those same flaws killed many American soldiers whom he knew personally. At the advertisement wrap party organized by Barb at their home, Cooper again ran into Askins and other Vault-Tec movers and shakers, sarcastically describing the situation to his dog as "heading into enemy territory." As an escape, he commiserated with his fellow actor Sebastian Leslie about the situation, where Cooper learned that there was an underlying wave of "radicalism" sweeping Hollywood, which included fellow actor Charles Whiteknife, which shocked Cooper, as he and Whiteknife had served together in the military. Leslie expressed a more optimistic view of the shakeup, waxing fondly about having sold the rights to his vocal likeness to RobCo Industries for $186,000 to be incorporated into their Mister Handy domestic robot series. Despite his friend's reassurances, Cooper's doubts remained; Barb also tried to assuage his skepticism, noting how she was rising in the ranks in Vault-Tec, considering the corporation as almost a family business with her husband as their foremost spokesman. Cooper also floated the idea of starting their daughter Janey's academia off on Vault-Tec's payroll when she reached 15 years of age. However, against Barb's hopes, Cooper still grew disillusioned, looking for a way out of his bond to Vault-Tec and second-guessing his commitment to city life and the mega-corps. Fracturing family ties: These difficulties caused a rift to form between Cooper and Barb, as she shut down any discussion of leaving the company at her husband's request. During one exchange, she let slip that there were ingrained differences in the Vaults and that her high-level position at Vault-Tec guaranteed her family a spot at one of the "good" ones, something their wealth could not otherwise guarantee. Cooper later secretly reached out to Whiteknife to confide in his concerns over the corporate influence on his life. While still considering himself an anti-communist due to his experiences in the Sino-American War, the exchange with Charles, including his disdain over the government effectively outsourcing humanity's survival to a profit-driven corporation, was enough to make Cooper agree to come with his friend to attend a meeting of the social "radicals." Cooper's continued pushback against Barb's work strained his married life as he started openly criticizing Vault-Tec in front of her, in particular his view of increasingly draconian and restrictive rules, such as a ban on dogs and enforced conformity; Cooper eventually snapped at his wife, stating that he "didn't go to war defending that freedom so that [he] could live in a cellar under the boot heel of Chairman Bud Askins." But Barb refused to understand his reservations, instead pointing out that she was working to secure her family's fate in the face of a nuclear event that could wipe out 90% of life on Earth and revealing that she was working to get her, Cooper and Janey into a "special" Vault reserved for management. Distraught at his family's fracturing and mounting skepticism over Vault-Tec, Cooper went through with attending the meeting of Charles' group, going to the Hollywood Forever mausoleum where he was introduced to a woman named Miss Williams who arranged the meeting. Her rhetoric initially repulsed Cooper, especially when she pointed out that the average American had more in common with the average Chinese citizen rather than the people in power in the U.S. Cooper was frustrated at being dragged to what he saw as a meeting of secret communists, but when he tried to make a dramatic exit, Williams defused him quickly, ignoring Cooper's barb about bread lines and suggesting that his wife might not be the person he thought she was. Cooper ended up convinced to stay and listen, speaking with Williams more privately after the meeting. While he refused to be directly recruited into an attempt to recover the cold fusion research that Williams had been forced to hand over to Vault-Tec after they bought out her laboratory, he still held onto the secret listening device she gave him as a "souvenir." Learning the truth about Vault-Tec: The doubts fueled by Williams' words about his wife's possible duplicity continued to gnaw at Cooper, eventually driving him to test out the listening device on his wife's Pip-Boy, where he successfully synchronized it and eavesdropped on her delivering cocoa to Janey. Disgusted with himself, Cooper threw the device in the trash and tried to move on. However, haunted by misgivings over his role in advertising for Vault-Tec, he got up in the middle of the night and retrieved the device from the refuse. Sometime later, Cooper finally decided to investigate the veracity of Williams' claims as he drove his wife to a meeting at the regional Vault-Tec headquarters and tried to tune into the device implanted in her Pip-Boy but was unable to get a clear signal. Cooper decided to get in closer and entered the headquarters, where he was put up in a guest apartment and briefly interacted with a young Betty Pearson. Through the listening device, Cooper eavesdropped in on his wife while she was holding a conference, headed by Bud Askins, with other captains of American industry including RobCo's Robert House, West Tek's Leon Von Felden, REPCONN Aerospace's Julia Masters and Big MT's Frederick Sinclair. Howard listened with increasing dread as Askins pitched to the corporate moguls the idea of using the Vaults to run social experiments on the inhabitants in order to create the perfect post-apocalyptic society, in the spirit of capitalist competition. When House pointed out that Vault-Tec's plans were purely hypothetical if nuclear war never panned out, Cooper heard as Barb herself suggested that Vault-Tec should incite the apocalypse themselves, eradicating any and all government control and regulation and ushering in a perfect society molded by the corporate leaders and anyone who followed them. Left in a state of shock over the revelation of Vault-Tec's true intentions, Howard barely registered his subsequent meeting with Barb's personal assistant Henry "Hank" MacLean, the latest entrant produced by Askins' manager program and an example of Vault-Tec's perfect society. His discovery of Barb's involvement in the corporate conspiracy completely destroyed Cooper's faith in their marriage. Between the meeting and late 2077, Cooper ceased all advertisement work for Vault-Tec and he and Barb initiated a divorce, with them sharing custody of their daughter. Cooper's exit from Vault-Tec's bankroll forced the executives to replace him as their mascot with a blond-haired cartoonish figure named Vault Boy. After Cooper tried to spread what he had learned about the megacorps, he was blacklisted and labeled as a communist himself. Separated from his former social circles and financial status, Cooper was forced to take work as an entertainer at kids' parties, using his skills with horses and lasso-throwing to make a living. Although they shared custody of Janey, Cooper was ordered by the courts to make alimony payments to his ex-wife, and he was left reliant on his gig work to make money. Furthermore, since discovering the truth about Vault-Tec, Cooper would constantly refuse to do his iconic thumbs-up pose, outwardly citing the increasing global tension towards nuclear war with China. Janey helped her father with his entertainer work whenever she stayed with him, learning the ropes of the trade and forming an even deeper bond. On October 23, 2077, the day of the Great War, he was performing at eight-year-old Roy Spencer's birthday party in the Hollywood Hills near Los Angeles with his daughter when the city was struck by four nuclear warheads. Cooper tried to flee to safety with Janey by riding out together on the back of his horse Sugarfoot. After the Great War: At some point following the bombs destroying Los Angeles, Cooper somehow ended up being separated from Janey, with the fates of his daughter and ex-wife unknown; Cooper himself ended up undergoing the transformation into a ghoul, though it is unclear if it was from radiation exposure or another method. He also came to believe that his family survived the nuclear apocalypse and that finding someone related to Vault-Tec could potentially lead him to them, but this never fully materialized for over two centuries. Life in the post-War world greatly changed Cooper. Shunned for his appearance and derided as "the Ghoul," Cooper was forced to become a real outlaw in the vein of his old Westerns, a crack shot with a firearm and a deadly threat to his enemies. Over the years, "Cooper Howard" disappeared, and the Ghoul emerged as a feared and notorious mercenary, drifting aimlessly from one area of the wasteland to the next, primarily operating as a bounty hunter to keep himself afloat and his skills sharp. His ghoulish condition and the slide into feralhood led to him becoming addicted and dependent on the use of inhaler vials to stave off the mental degeneration. At one point, the Ghoul worked with Honcho's father for unknown reasons, impressing the younger man enough to be remembered years later. He also befriended several other ghouls who lived in the pre-War era and shared his struggle to fight off feralhood with the vials. Sometime in 2266, the Ghoul was captured by Dom Pedro, a powerful gang leader, and buried in a grave outside his stronghold for unknown reasons besides the man considering the bounty hunter as a personal enemy. Supposedly, Dom Pedro took to exhuming his captive annually, cutting pieces off of his body, and then burying him again, keeping the Ghoul alive with an IV drip of drugs. Personality: Prior to becoming a ghoul, Cooper was a loving husband to Barb and father to Janey. He considered himself a staunch believer in the American Dream and its value, having served in Alaska in the first years of the Sino-American War, and a staunch anti-communist as a result. He highly valued freedom and disliked Vault-Tec's rules, positing he should have the freedom to wear a green jumpsuit instead of a blue one. However, the changing culture and domination of megacorporation's put his principles to the test. Eventually, he grew disillusioned as he did Vault-Tec advertisements and suffered ostracism from his peers. When he learned that the very corporation his wife worked for conspired to use the nuclear war to implement its own designs for the world, he lost faith and tried to make a clean break and is suggested to have suffered a messy divorce and blacklisting from entertainment work for it. Though these events failed to break him, he was permanently, fundamentally altered by the Great War. Ghoulified by radiation, Cooper used his military training and skills as a cowboy to survive as a bounty hunter. His experience in show business led him to become the Ghoul, a larger-than-life gunslinger capable of incredible brutality, even resorting to cannibalism when needed (and saving ass jerky for later). Two hundred years of survival in the brutal wasteland changed him into a cynical, bitter, and ruthlessly pragmatic man who doesn't believe in goodness, but still has a certain "code of honor" in his drive to locate his family. Despite his disdain of humanity, he still harbors a soft spot for dogs, as seen with his dog Roosevelt, as well as CX404. Cooper saved her life, despite initially mortally wounding her while she was attacking him in Filly. He once commented his film A Man and His Dog as being his favorite and was greatly upset by Vault-Tec's rule that no dogs will be allowed in the Vaults. Despite his moral ruthlessness, he tends to remain civil when dealing with others, even to those whom he intends harm. To this point he agrees with Lucy that torture is wrong, citing a pre-War study, and the reasoning that he would be unwilling to help someone harming him, but he uses this to reveal to Lucy that he is actually using her as bait for a gulper. He also spares those he deems not a threat to him, such as Sorrel Booker, with whom he has history, instead just killing Booker's deputies who are preparing to take him out to be executed or waiting to let Tommy try to draw his gun on him in revenge for killing his brother but letting his father and sister live. Another example of his practicality is that he intentionally grazes Hank rather than killing him so that he and Lucy can track him down later. Notes: Cooper Howard drives a 1954 Kaiser Darrin pre-War. Fallout is set in 2296, 219 years after the Great War of 2077, which killed the vast majority of humanity in a nuclear holocaust. During the Great War, some citizens of pre-War America managed to survive the war in Vaults, massive fallout shelters constructed by the Vault-Tec Corporation across the United States, and Fallout focuses on their descendants. America is a place of haves and have-nots and how being wealthy and never having to struggle for basic amenities such as food can drastically alter someone's perspective and opinions. Cooper Howard After the War: The Ghoul's Journey. Once a decorated Marine and beloved Hollywood actor, Cooper Howard's life took a dramatic turn after the bombs fell. Transformed into a ghoul by the nuclear fallout, he became a hardened survivor of the wasteland, his humanity scarred but not entirely lost. Ghoulification: The nuclear devastation of the Great War mutated Cooper into a ghoul—a radiation-scarred, long-lived being. Unlike many ghouls who succumbed to madness, Cooper retained his intelligence and personality, though his worldview darkened. Longevity: By 2296, Cooper is over 259 years old, having lived through centuries of post-apocalyptic chaos. His long life is marked by violence, survival, and a growing cynicism toward humanity’s institutions. Reputation: Known across the greater Los Angeles wasteland as one of the most feared and respected bounty hunters, Cooper earned the nickname “America’s Gunslinger.” His deadly marksmanship and ruthless efficiency made him a legend. Morality: His beliefs became increasingly unscrupulous. While he still held onto some of his pre-war values, the harsh realities of the wasteland forced him to adopt a pragmatic, often brutal approach to justice. Disillusionment: Cooper’s post-war persona is shaped by deep disillusionment. His experiences with Vault-Tec’s manipulative marketing and the corporate exploitation of survival left him bitter and skeptical. Isolation: Despite his fame and notoriety, Cooper lived a largely solitary life. His relationships—especially with his ex-wife Barb and daughter Janey—were fractured long before the bombs fell, and the wasteland offered little chance for reconciliation. Dogmeat: In the wasteland, Cooper eventually found companionship in a dog named Dogmeat, echoing his pre-war bond with Roosevelt, the canine co-star from his film days. This connection to animals remained one of the few sources of warmth in his otherwise bleak existence. Cultural Icon: Cooper’s image—especially the Vault-Tec thumbs-up pose—became an ironic symbol of pre-war optimism. To many, he represented the false promises of corporate salvation. Survivor’s Grit: As “The Ghoul,” Cooper embodied the resilience of humanity. His story is a testament to the cost of survival and the enduring struggle between personal integrity and societal decay. Cooper Howard before the war: Before becoming the infamous ghoul bounty hunter, Cooper Howard lived a life that mirrored the American dream—military hero, Hollywood star, and corporate icon. But beneath the surface of fame and patriotism, his journey was marked by moral conflict, personal disillusionment, and a growing awareness of the rot beneath society’s glossy exterior. Marine Corps Veteran: Cooper served in the U.S. Marines during the early stages of the Sino-American War, particularly the brutal Anchorage campaign in 2067. Frontline Experience: He witnessed firsthand the near-collapse of American defenses in Alaska, saved only by the deployment of West Tek’s experimental T-45 power armor. Critique of Technology: Though the armor was pivotal, Cooper saw its flaws—especially a welding defect in the chest plate that led to the deaths of many comrades. This planted early seeds of skepticism toward military-industrial solutions. Western Icon: After his discharge, Cooper transitioned into acting, becoming a household name in Western films like A Man and His Dog and The Man from Deadhorse. His co-star Roosevelt, a dog, became his beloved pet. Creative Integrity vs. Propaganda: During filming, Cooper questioned the morality of a scene where his sheriff character executes a pleading outlaw. His concerns were dismissed by the studio, which had fired the original writer for alleged communist ties. The director insisted on a “new western for a new America,” and Cooper reluctantly complied. Corporate Mascot: Cooper’s wife, Barb Howard, was a rising executive at Vault-Tec. At her urging, Cooper starred in promotional campaigns for the company, donning the iconic Vault jumpsuit and striking the now-famous thumbs-up pose. Public Image vs. Private Doubts: Though the ads were successful, Cooper’s association with Vault-Tec began to tarnish his acting career. Fellow actors boycotted him, and he grew increasingly uncomfortable with the company’s elitism and manipulation. Conflict with Executives: Cooper clashed with Vault-Tec figures like Bud Askins, who bragged about the T-45 armor’s aesthetics despite its deadly flaws. Cooper, still mourning fallen comrades, found such comments repugnant. Hollywood Radicalism: At a party, Cooper learned of a growing wave of anti-corporate sentiment among actors, including his friend Charles Whiteknife. Though initially resistant, Cooper began to sympathize with their critiques of Vault-Tec and the government. Strained Marriage: Cooper’s growing disdain for Vault-Tec created friction with Barb, who saw the company as their family’s salvation. She revealed that her position guaranteed access to a “good” Vault—one of the few safe havens in case of nuclear war. Concern for Janey: Cooper worried about the future of their daughter, Janey, and questioned whether corporate loyalty was the right legacy to pass on. Meeting the Radicals: Cooper eventually attended a secret meeting of Hollywood radicals, organized by Miss Williams. Though initially hostile, he was struck by their argument that ordinary Americans had more in common with Chinese citizens than with their own elites. Ideological Shift: While still anti-communist, Cooper began to see Vault-Tec and government collusion as a betrayal of American values. His transformation from patriotic icon to skeptic was nearly complete.