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Paulson is a rancher from the "Wild West" period of American history. He was abducted by aliens during one of their previous visits to Earth, and has been kept in suspended animation for hundreds of years. He's quiet, soft-spoken, and appears generally unfazed by his current situation. He offers little background information about himself, but it's clear that he has a deep hatred of the aliens for removing him from his family and his life. As he puts it, all he now wants is to "seek a lamentable but satisfying revenge on every last one of those bastards."[1]
Among the Stars: You have the option of bringing Paulson with you as a companion to the Hangar to help out.
This Galaxy Ain't Big Enough...: If Paulson survived his section in Among the Stars, he will help in the last battle by keeping aliens off you while you fight the other mothership.
Following the events of Mothership Zeta, Paulson leaves the ship to wander the wastes. He will not become an active non-player character in the Capital Wasteland and does not appear again without the use of console commands.
The player can ask him to accompany them in destroying the generator in the hangar area of the spaceship, and to any of the optional areas connected to the engineering core.
The player can pass a speech check or use the Black Widow perk to find out why he hates the aliens so much.
Paulson's outfit can be reverse pick-pocketed, but his revolver can only be obtained if he is killed, mainly due to the fact that he uses a different version of it, than the one obtained off his dead body; this way, it is impossible to get his version of the gun, other than by utilizing console commands.
Killing Paulson will not result any gain or loss of Karma and attacking him will not provoke other non-player characters, instead they will come to the Lone Wanderer's aid or simply stand around doing nothing.
If the player takes Paulson into the hangar bay with them, when they come upon three Nuka-Cola trucks on a shelf, he says "Nuka-what?", referring to his life on the earth being long before current time.
In front of an advertisement for Giddyup Buttercup Paulson may comment on finding the phrase "giddyup buttercup!" to be "catchy".
If Paulson sees the room with the life-size Giddyup Buttercup with the dead wastelanders lying around it, he remarks that his horse had never done something like that.
Sally tells Paulson that he can be "Jangles the Moon Monkey" on the bridge, which is a characted seen on the "The Adventures of Captain Cosmos" pre-war adverts.
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