(From bio)

Aretha is a strange refugee from another dimension's Earth, a place where the future was bombed into oblivion and Vaults were set up as social experiments more than safety measures. Her Vault, 101, served her well until she left to make her own way. She became a courier, met Veronica, fell in love, and took over New Vegas.

And then Paxton and his bunch landed in her lap. Whee.

Truth be told, Aretha IS a bit bored with life in the desert. To see a world not ravaged by war, at least not HER war, is of great interest. As for why she's in Praetoria?

Well someone has to stop the idiocy there! Might as well be her, she's done it before, she'll probably do it again.

***

Aretha was born in a safe, secluded and reasonably normal Vault some time after a large nuclear war ravaged the United States. On learning that her father was a prominent scientist who had attempted to develop safe water and distribution techniques, she followed in his footsteps - to a degree. The scientists working on that project were resoundingly jealous and negative toward her existence: her father and mother had quit the project to return to Vault 101 and raise their child, taking much hope of finishing with them.

In the ruins of Washington DC, Aretha managed to lead attacks on the enemy factions which were attempting to wrest control over the processing plants and her father's research. Eventually, the area could be considered a bastion of hope - rad-free water could mean fewer mutations, fresh food, and commerce could begin anew.

Once her goals had been reached there, Aretha grew bored very quickly indeed. She'd struck up a friendship with a number of Ghouls, Supermutants and Vampires that dotted the area, and learned from a number of them about other places that could use her assistance. Down in the south, a Ghoul and his weird brain-in-a-jar enemy fought over their territories. Up in The Pit, difficult decisions about slavery and science had to be made. Even a weird alien ship that had crashed (and subsequently risen again) needed fixing. Aretha gained knowledge, skill, and a nifty chameleon armor outfit from a simulation of the old Anchorage invasion.

All of those things served both to sate her curiousity and urge her to find more interesting things across the broken land. As she traveled west, it became clear that she'd fallen into a complicated plot being played out in the New Vegas area. Not only were the NCR and other factions fighting over the Hoover Dam area, but a good number of other cultures were begining to clash. Aretha helped sort some of those out, ending the reign of terror that some had started, and smoothing relations among other groups.

It was during this venture that she first encountered Veronica, a Brotherhood of Steel initiate who just... wasn't going to be well suited to her duties in that organization. With her help, Aretha managed the defeat of Ceasar and ended the debate about who would run the Hoover Dam.

It would be her. Aretha's skills and sharp wit gave her all the edge she needed to outwit or outpower anyone who dared attempt to use her for their own purposes. Even the owner of the Lucky 38, Mister House, who had originally started all the mess in that area, eventually rotted away. The location became the central point of her administration.

Exploration in the deserts (the great Mojave) yeilded something far stranger than just the Big Mountain Research Facility... It propelled people from another version of that place to her. To anyone else, suddenly having a pack of psychic explorers and scientists show up out of the blue might be a bit of a jarring experience. But to Aretha, bored of the endless drone of slot machines and wanting to take a break from taking a break, this looked like a marvelous excuse to do some new good work.

Even if she knows she'll be returning to the Lucky 38 (oddly - via a strange "vortal portal" whatever that is) and Veronica is a step away, Aretha still feels a bit empty and lonely without her wife. In Praetoria there are "ghouls" but... they're not quite the same as she knows them in her world. There are, however, tyrants and madmen (and women) attempting to keep good people from their lives and freedom. And that just won't do.

It should be noted that among those weird scientific types that appeared in the desert one afternoon, Melissa has offered to "design" a child for Veronica and Aretha. Though it seems a little odd to both of them, it's something that they would not mind at all: given Aretha's penchant for 'trying out anyone' some of her choices for becoming a father to their eventual child just wouldn't work. (Ghouls just ... can't reproduce. And Supermutants, while a lot of fun in the sack, tend to produce untenable results.) Veronica's preferences for female partners, while not necessarily precluding her own interactions... is something that Aretha has asserted won't get in the way. It remains to be seen what will come of this.