Vargas was one of the original Brotherhood on the crashed zeppelin to the midwest. He and his best friend Paladin Lantham were stranded together but Lantham betrayed Vargas by choking him out and running away. Vargas was dragged away by several raiders, looted and ditched in a radioactive pit. There he absorbed enough radiation to become a ghoul and woke up in a body he couldn’t recognize. He wandered around until he found the other Paladins from the crash. The Paladins instead of casting him out took him back as one of their members. Over time he met Thor, Harris, Richter, Cornelius, and Jamison.