The Old World had destroyed itself in atomic fire, leaving behind a desolate wasteland and a broken species.
Only around a hundred thousand people managed to escape the initial atomic fire in great Vaults, massive bunkers built by the Vault-Tec Corporation for Project Safehouse. As the Vaults began to open, those people spread across the Wasteland, some of them doing great things.
In the early twenty-third century, one of those people, now known as the Vault Dweller, left his vault to obtain a water chip, but ended up defeating the Super Mutant Army led by the Master. He killed the Master and indirectly helped found the New California Republic.
His grandson, the Chosen One of Arroyo, saved that very Republic, and the entire Wasteland, from the Enclave, the descendants of the very people who started the Great War two hundred years ago.
On the East Coast, out of one of those Vaults, came a man who set in motion a plan that will slowly return true civilization to the Capital Wasteland. This Lone Wanderer assisted in finishing off the remaining members of the Enclave.
In the Mojave, a lowly Courier was unknowingly put into the plans of three conflicting factions, deciding the gates of all three. Thrown into a war between the Bear of the NCR and the Boar of Caesar's Legion, she created the independent state of New Vegas, a close ally of the NCR, headed by Mr. House, a prewar tycoon who wasn't ready to die.
But there is another special person to talk about, one who didn't emerge from the Vaults, but inspires hope in the hearts of those people inhabiting what used to be the Great Plains, one who was born to the lowest of low positions, a young girl who has been to one end of the Wasteland and back, but always riding in to protect the people of the Flatlands.
Her name is Echo. Echo Kindel. She was born into Caesar's Legion as a slave in New Mexico, and treated as a subhuman by her captors. Upon the eve of her fifth birthday, she decided she didn't want to stay in this life. When her slave driver was asleep, she snuck out of her pen and strangled him, before snatching up as many supplies as she could, including a poorly maintained magnum revolver, and set off southeast, not knowing what would happen to her.
It isn't known how exactly she managed to survive, but she did, making her way to Elpa, a settlement of a land called Texas, a thriving land that wasn't like the NCR or the Washington Commonwealth. In Texas, some things from the Old World were still prevalent.
Before the War, when the Vault-Tec Corporation attempted to build Vaults in Texas, the government of that region refused to allow construction unless special conditions were met. Unbeknownst to the rest of the country, Texas' Vaults were built to include massive pastures where the Texans could raise livestock.
That's right, in Texas, there are no Brahmin or Molerats. They still have horses and cows. With these, especially the horses, the Texans managed to hold off or destroy any who attempted to invade, including advance parties from Caesar. They had coalesced very early on after their Vaults opened, forming the Texas Republic, with it's capital in a city named Dallas. Their primary fighting force are the Texas Rangers, a quasi-military force that boasts some of the greatest sharpshooters in the American Wasteland, and the only mounted troops left in America.
It was this organization that took the young Echo in, after a Ranger by the name of Louis had found the girl, now almost six years old, hiding in an abandoned building in Elpa, keeping the magnum between her and the Ranger, even though she had run out of ammo for it months ago. Upon seeing him, she had shouted "Don't come any closer, o-or I'll shoot!", to which he chuckled, saying "If you'd really pull that trigger, I think I've found a home for you"
Of course, keeping up her act of having bullets, when Louis tried to pick her up, she did pull the trigger, trying to get him to flinch so she could run away. But he didn't flinch, knowing the gun wasn't loaded the entire time. As he carried her back to the Ranger Base in Elpa, he calmed her down, asking things about her to get her to start actually talking with him.
By the time they reached the base, the two were on their way to building a close friendship, one that would eventually lead to both being ready to give their lives to save the other.
Echo spent the next four years training under Louis to be a Texas Ranger, proving that she had a natural talent for riding and sharpshooting, outdoing Rangers that had had decades more experience than her. By the age of ten, she was fully initiated into the Texas Rangers, and given a foal by the name of Benjamin. What the Rangers that gave her the foal didn't understand at the time, was that Benjamin wasn't a normal horse, that the settlement that had donated him specifically bred Clydesdales.
Within two years, Benjamin was already larger than Echo, who had an extremely close bond with him, a joke among the other Rangers was that Echo would probably end up marrying her massive horse. Though she often punched anyone who said that around her, she had to admit that with the exception of Louis, she had never felt affection towards any living being other than Benjamin.
And now, with her twelfth birthday approaching, she has no idea that the greatest adventure of her life is about to begin.