No-Bark Noonan of Fallout: New Vegas

You may remember old No-Bark as that bloody loon of a man that threatened to stab you with “Ol’ Sticky” in Novac. Was there a time when he wasn’t so...ah...contentious? Did he once have it all, or at least as much as a person living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland could want?

Our friend No-Bark, looking out for machine-gun wielding chupacabras.

Not really, no. “No-Bark” Noonan was born William Percival Noonan in 2221, the son of a drifter father and a mother who was a traveling merchant before settling down in Novac to bear little Billy. He had a fairly unorthodox childhood; friends who grew up with him remember him as being “not entirely there” and “a real nutcase”.

Dusty McBride, the definition of jovial.

“Why, he’d chase molerats around and pretend they were Chinamen!” says Dusty McBride, a local rancher who knew Noonan in those days. “He even would try and hunt Radscorpions with his butter knife if we didn’t stop him! Downright insane from the get-go.”

On his twenty-second birthday, Noonan wandered off into the wasteland to “hunt for those pinko hippie Lenin-ites that were poisoning my Sugar Bombs!” he asserts. Though he obviously did not find his intended prey, he did manage to stumble upon a pack of baby Radscorpions. He crawled back into Novac late that night, sure that those damnable commies were hot on his tail.

“He got stung a couple times, yeah, but they were just babies,” recalls Dr. Ada Straus, a local “doctor” who has assumed the role of Noonan’s psychiatrist. “Still, we told him that the stings had messed with his head. You know, so he feels better about being...well...ah shit. About being a fucking idiot.”

I asked. And yes, that is indeed blood. Doctor indeed...

Few know that Noonan once saved Novac from certain destruction. In 2275, a roving band of Jet-crazed gypsies wielding rebar clubs and bags of grenades entered the town from the north, demanding the blood of every inhabitant of Novac. Noonan, however, was having none of it.

“No-Bark just started yelling at the top of his lungs and pulled out a sword and charged at their leader like a loon!” remembers Cliff Briscoe, a local shop owner who witnessed the encounter. “I don’t think she took him seriously, cause she just stared at him. And then he cut her head off.”

Suddenly leaderless, the gypsies fled in disarray, taking fire all the while from Noonan, who happened to have a sniper rifle on him at the time. He had saved the town.

“We gave him a medal, but he claimed that it was a listening device planted by the KGB to spy on his thoughts,” says Briscoe. “So we just don’t mention it anymore. I think he’s forgotten it by now.”

To be fair to No-Bark, the medal looked like this...

So what’s in store for No-Bark Noonan in the future? What will he make of his life?

“I’m plannin’ on trainin’ an army of brahmin to take on those Reds that keep sneakin’ around my shack and callin’ me names!” No-Bark says, eagerly. “That or run for Emperor. Either one’s fine by me.”

Emperor of what? Who knows. Who knows...