Mr. House

**Robert Edwin House** is the self-styled president, CEO, and sole proprietor of the New Vegas Strip in the Mojave Wasteland in the year 2281. Prior to the Great War, House was an ever-alluring, reclusive enigma to the world and a veritable celebrity with various tabloids and news articles covering his every move in business and private life. His founding of RobCo Industries propelled him to the top through business savvy using mathematical prediction algorithms; gaining the envy of other roboticists and corporations through sheer success. As such, RobCo technology became ubiquitous across the former United States both in the civilian and military sectors, and shaping the technological progression of it.

As the Great War was drawing closer, Robert House modified himself using the latest life-preservation technology money could afford, integrating himself with the various control and defense systems of the Lucky 38, his personal casino. Utilizing the Lucky 38's defense systems, House would save Las Vegas from complete destruction. Though his efforts saved the city, he was put into a coma from the excessive strain on the software supporting his brain and support systems. This coma lasted for 61 years until his systems restarted. He would bide his time until the arrival of the New California Republic when he would reform several tribes in the New Vegas area into the Three Families to turn the then anarchic New Vegas into a civilized city again under the oversight of his Securitron army.

Starting with the Las Vegas Strip, Mr. House would rebuild several of the casinos for each of the Three Families to bring the former glory of pre-War Las Vegas back to the Mojave. With the New Vegas Strip acting as an autonomous body, he would enter a tenuous partnership with the NCR as they marched into the Mojave to seize the Hoover Dam and confront Caesar's Legion.

With the turning of New Vegas into the Free Economic Zone of New Vegas city-state, he would become one of the three major powers in the Mojave Wasteland vying for total control New Vegas and the Hoover Dam. His position to make any maneuvers strategically were handicapped as Mr. House has been running on an outdated version of his OS with the only upgrade for his systems being the platinum chip lost during the Great War. However, the platinum chip had recently been found and he contracted a Courier with the Mojave Express to deliver it to him personally.

## Backgroundedit | edit source

### Biography

Born on June 25, 2020, (making him 261 years old) to a wealthy Nevada tool magnate, Robert Edwin House was orphaned at an early age when his parents died in a freak accident involving an autogyro and a lightning strike. Cheated out of his inheritance by his half-brother, Anthony, he nevertheless attended the Commonwealth Institute of Technology and later went on to found RobCo Industries in his hometown of Las Vegas at the age of 22. It would soon become one of the most profitable corporations in the world, owing mostly to House's considerable technical genius and business acumen. He used the wealth and power to gain controlling interests in a myriad of other businesses. These included REPCONN Aerospace, the Lucky 38 Hotel & Casino on Las Vegas Boulevard, and perhaps, most personally, the H&H Tools Company, the family business usurped by his half-brother (although, the factory on the outskirts of Vegas was still under his brother's control in 2077). But along with his fame came a look into his peculiar personality. A scandal emerged when House was dating a starlet, but only wanted to scan her brain and make her dress in different outfits, a story that captured the interest of foreign tabloids like El Periódico de las Aburridas.

A staunch pragmatist by nature, Mr. House would regularly design and run mathematical paradigms based on global political and socioeconomic conditions in an effort to predict future events. By 2065, these projections led him to the inexorable conclusion that the world would be engulfed in a nuclear war within fifteen years. Armed with his projections, House went to work making preparations to ensure the city would survive the apocalypse and that he would live to see the world after the war. He programmed multiple mainframes with satellite links meant to disable the vast majority of the missiles while in flight, then designed an array of high-powered laser cannons, which he had installed on the roof of the Lucky 38 and Hoover Dam, to deal with any missile his program had missed. To preserve himself, he took equally drastic steps: his body was permanently connected to an extremely sophisticated life support device named a "hibernation chamber" to take care of his physiological needs, while his brain was wired directly into his vast information network via an enormous supercomputer.

An integral element of his plan was the platinum chip, which in reality was a combination access card and high capacity data storage device, containing a vital OS upgrade for his Securitrons and the laser defense network. The chip was to be delivered in the afternoon of October 23, 2077. However, about 20 hours before it could be delivered, the Great War happened. The chip was lost and not rediscovered until over 200 years later by some of the multiple scavengers hired by House. Forced to work with an inferior version of the OS, he suffered numerous system crashes but this OS version only allowed him to save Las Vegas from 68 out of the 77 warheads, 59 disarmed and 9 destroyed, aimed at the city. But due to using an inferior software, numerous system crashes occurred and the Lucky 38's main reactor had to be shut down. For five years, House fought power outages and more system crashes until he rebooted his system in an old version of his operating system, but was put in a decades-long coma.

### Post-War statusedit | edit source

**“***Mr. House is the mysterious overlord of the Strip. He controls his small empire from the confines of the Lucky 38 casino, where no other living person has set foot for over two hundred years.***”**— Loading screen

House regained consciousness in 2138. Biding his time, he entered the world stage once again in 2274, when Securitrons under his command emerged from the Lucky 38. This action was prompted by the arrival of New California Republic scouts at Hoover Dam. In order to establish his rule, he enlisted the help of tribes living in New Vegas (later known as the Three Families) and rebuilt the city just in time to welcome the arrival of the New California Republic Army's advance forces. In exchange for help with Hoover Dam and permission to use the McCarran Airport as its headquarters, House signed the New Vegas Treaty, ensuring cooperation from NCR and, for a time, protecting the Strip from annexation.

House resides in the Lucky 38 and is in charge of the Securitrons that roam New Vegas. At some point after emerging from stasis, House won the leadership of Vault 21 in a bet, stripped it of all useful technology, and then planned to permanently seal the Vault away by filling it with cement. At the pleadings of Sarah Weintraub he left the top section of Vault 21 as it used to be, and she converted it into a hotel (all the casino equipment was already there from the vault experiment).

Mr. Houses' top priority was to re-acquire the platinum chip, lost to him on the eve of the Great War. For years during his awake period, House would spend cumulative millions of caps on scavenger teams and prospectors to find the platinum chip. The expenditure ultimately paid off in 2281 when the platinum chip was found after 204 years. Mr. House contracted the delivery of it to the Mojave Express, and to cover up the importance of the package, Mr. House tried obfuscating it through various dummy packages of miscellaneous novelty junk items. Mercenary teams were also dispatched to screen the routes for potential dangers.

Carried by the Courier to New Vegas, the Courier and chip were intercepted by Benny around Goodsprings after attaining the exact route through Yes Man eavesdropping on House's datastream. Benny intended to use it to gain control of the New Vegas Strip and make it an independent power in the wasteland, free of his employer's machinations. Mr. House was not unaware of Benny's involvement, a securitron, Victor, he had planted in Goodsprings had reported back to him on Benny's betrayal and theft of the platinum chip. Mr. House felt betrayed, as he considered Benny as a protégé that could be his right-hand man able to achieve tasks he alone could not, but misjudged his drive for supremacy. Mr. House would closely watch the Courier, having had Victor dig them out their grave, further observe them as they left Goodsprings, and wander into the New Vegas Strip. Once there, Mr. House would have Victor direct them to the Lucky 38 in hopes of using their want for revenge on Benny to take the platinum chip back.

Mr. House is extremely physically decrepit and can only live inside a self-contained life support unit. The Courier can circumvent House's security and see his true form, inside a life support chamber. On several parts of his body, connections to the support system can be seen. Opening his isolation chamber dooms House to death within a year due to contamination.

### Personalityedit | edit source

**“***I have no interest in abusing others, just as I have no interest in legislating or otherwise dictating what people do in their private time. Nor have I any interest in being worshipped as some kind of machine god messiah. I am impervious to such corrupting ambitions. But autocracy? Firm control in the hands of a technological and economic visionary? Yes, that Vegas shall have.***”**

Mr. House is a very reclusive individual, although this is largely due to his own health, which forces him to remain sealed in the Lucky 38 control room. His inability to allow all his life's work to be ruined by what he sees as the wrath and folly of a jingoistic and increasingly unstable world has cemented, in his mind, the fate of democracy and human civilization itself. His contempt for most post-apocalyptic institutions from bottle caps to the various factions is a result of what he sees as humanity's inability to learn from its past mistakes.

Mr. House seeks to return New Vegas to its former pre-War glory as a crown jewel of technological innovation and the bright neon paradise of business and fortune. Having experienced pre-War Vegas, he was taken in by what he saw as the unstoppable technological progress and an economic boom unimpeded by the problems and unrest that plagued much of pre-War America. His vision of autocracy and disillusionment with democratic society stems from his resentment towards the attitudes and actions of the increasingly desperate and jingoistic pre-War United States, whose decline was precipitated by the failure to adequately research and invest in alternative technologies.

His own strategies and decisions are largely based on mathematical calculations, and he is confident in his own ability to succeed. He sees himself as an autocrat, viewing New Vegas as his rightful property and is dismissive of other factions vying for control, comparing them to "two snarling dogs fighting over a curve of bone." He further disparages both groups as nothing more than "regurgitations of the past" drawing parallels between the two as attempts to revive past civilizations rather than offer a palpable future. He derides the NCR as a "society of customers" lead by scheming leaders who wish to take Vegas out from under him, while showing disgust at the Legion's practice of slavery, technophobia and general brutality.

Focused only on achieving his goals, he has little interest in monitoring or controlling the lives of others. He allows the casinos autonomy, and is largely reliant on the few information networks at his disposal and his Securitron patrols to maintain order. He takes great pride in his technical achievements, seeing himself as a visionary and seeing his own life as the embodiment of great leadership. He takes great interest in the Courier, although they share largely a business relationship, he nevertheless sees them as a valuable asset to be utilized for overcoming obstacles too challenging for Securitrons. The Courier's success equates to his own success in judging them capable, inviting them to continue aiding him in his increasingly ambitious goals.