Aries

Aries, formerly known as Calvin van Lowe, is an employee of the Blue Ridge Caravan Company at Big Bend Tunnel. Before changing his identity to Aries and finding Blue Ridge, Calvin was a cryptid hunter, inventor, and engineer working for the Bysshe Company prior to the Great War.

Life as Calvin van Lowe
Calvin van Lowe grew up in Lewisburg, West Virginia, and his parents owned Van Lowe Taxidermy in town. After his parents' death, Calvin's older sister, Shelley, inherited the family business, though Calvin still maintained a residence and office in the building. An eccentric young man, Calvin was described by Shelley as always being "the odd sort," but highly intelligent. A psychological evaluation described van Lowe as having extremely high mental acuity and cognitive skills. However, he was also described as having a dissociative view of the social world and an inability to associate context with stimuli.

Alongside his high school friends Scott "Scoot" Conroy and Ray Gary, Calvin was a member of the Truth Seekers, a group devoted to hunting cryptids spotted in West Virginia. However, the group was disbanded after Calvin began attending Vault-Tec University in August 2072.

Despite the Truth Seekers splitting up, Calvin never shook his obsession with hunting cryptids, namely the Sheepsquatch. Following his graduation from Vault-Tec University, Calvin was hired by the Bysshe Company, an out-of-state energy corporation that aimed to exploit his obsession for their own gain and gave him the code name "Blacksheep." Bysshe organized for Calvin to move back home to Lewisburg so that he could develop products for the company through various unique "projects." Living with his sister Shelley in the family home was intended to be a temporary arrangement, but Bysshe invested in building Calvin a secret basement lab while they were meant to be finding a property of his own. Although Shelley technically owned the business, Calvin (as the "signing owner") sold Van Lowe Taxidermy to the Bysshe Company under Shelley's nose.

The Bysshe Company also provided Calvin with two Assaultron units to undertake his work. One of Calvin's projects saw him faking sightings of the Sheepsquatch and stirring up public attention using these Assaultron units, dubbed the Imposter Sheepsquatch. However, his first few attempts failed, leading the company to threaten Calvin with ominous warnings. Although he pleaded with his handler, Bo-Peep, asking corporate to have patience, he continued to fail, which angered the company even further.

Just before the Great War, Calvin attempted to reprogram one Assaultron unit with "Sheepsquatch Mating Rituals," a less than elegant attempt at possibly finding a real sheepsquatch (and even he was embarrassed by), but the reprogramming went awry when the unit misinterpreted the word "overwrite" for "override." The Assaultron unit escaped the lab, maiming him in the process. Calvin was declared missing, though fixer Big Bad Wolf (who had been assigned to Calvin) presumed that he had been killed by the Assaultron. The Imposter Sheepsquatch later killed Bo-Peep and Big Bad Wolf, the latter of who tried, but failed, to capture it using a pylon ambush site.

Shelley, who had no knowledge of the secret underground lab, contacted the police to investigate Calvin's disappearance. However, as the War discontinued all search efforts for Calvin, Shelley resorted to posting posters around Appalachia, hoping that someone would be able to bring her some closure with regards to what happened to her brother. Before long, though, she gave up the search for Calvin and went to work for family friends (the Timmermans) in Kentucky.

Life as Aries
Calvin managed to survive the Imposter Sheepsquatch attack, albeit with his face horribly disfigured. He erased his past and assumed the identity of "Aries." He also began using a mask to cover his face, as it keeps his jaw attached and he cannot breathe without it. He keeps his cards close to his chest, with his history being a mystery to virtually everyone in post-War Appalachia, even his current employers, the Blue Ridge Caravan Company, for who he works as a caravan guard. However, Aries does mention being a local, and occasionally slips an obscure reference to his past life; killer robots possibly being nearby is a particular trigger of sorts for Aries. Bartender Herschel Klein knows that Aries has an encyclopedic knowledge of "everything strange," including cryptids, aliens and the aforementioned killer robots.

Due to his prior employment with the Bysshe Company, Aries recommended usage of the Harpers Ferry tunnel to the Blue Ridge Caravan Company. Although he did not work at the tunnel himself, he was aware of Bysshe's work on an underground pipeline there. As the tunnel is secure and discrete, it made for a good spot for caravans. However, he is unaware that a Sheepsquatch Imposterling, created from a corruption of his own Sheepsquatch Mating Ritual program, is loose in the tunnel, though far away from the caravans' resting spot.

In 2104, a group of around fifteen caravanners went missing in the tunnel, perturbing both Aries and Joanna Mayfield. Although Paladin Leila Rahmani of the Brotherhood First Expeditionary Force initially suspects Blue Ridge and Aries of being directly involved with the disappearances, the events of the quest Out of the Blue eventually establish Aries' and his employers' innocence, and that the Hellcat Company committed the kidnappings, using Blue Ridge as a source of human test subjects for Dr. Edgar Blackburn.

Aries expresses a dark and eccentric personality, often getting on the nerves of people like Rudy Fernandez and Paladin Rahmani with his cryptic references to violence and overall odd behavior. He acknowledges the Blue Ridge Caravan Company for playing an essential role in rebuilding Appalachia.

Quests

 * Out of the Blue: Aries plays a major role during this quest, as he is dispatched to accompany the Vault Dweller and Paladin Leila Rahmani to the Harpers Ferry tunnel in their investigation of a missing 15-person Blue Ridge caravan.
 * Event: Riding Shotgun: Aries is a possible guard for the caravan leading brahmin through Big Bend Tunnel during this event. His companion will be merchant Rudy Fernandez.

Appearances
Aries appears only in Fallout 76. Calvin van Lowe was first mentioned in the Wild Appalachia update, while Aries was introduced in the Wastelanders update. The Steel Reign update expanded upon Aries' character and revealed that he was Calvin van Lowe.

Behind the scenes

 * Carl McKevitt made significant contributions to the design and writing of Aries and Calvin van Lowe as well as the Blue Ridge Caravan overall. He had planned for Calvin to make a reappearance since the Lying Lowe questline was first introduced. He also confirmed that Aries is still human, and not a ghoul.
 * Aries intentionally says "viola" instead of "voila" during Out of the Blue. Despite the insistence of autocorrect, Carl McKevitt and another dialogue editor agreed that it would be funny and in-character for Aries to say the wrong word. Carl stated that he received many community reports from players who assumed it was a typo that made its way into the voice line.
 * Aries' face underneath the mask can be seen if a bug occurs in which NPCs load in without their clothes. Carl stated that this is not Aries/Calvin's "true" appearance, and he does not have a canonical in-game face. It is actually what Kieran Kennedy looked like in initial designs, before he was aged up to match the voice actor. As Kieran was the first guard implemented, his actor template was duplicated to Aries, who kept the old face model, just obscured by the mask.
 * Colin was going to be Calvin's original name during an early point in his development, however, Carl McKevitt decided on Calvin as it was the name of his hamster as a kid, as well as the name of his Fallout 3 player character.
 * Aries in zodiac astrology is the ram. More specifically, a ram is a male bighorn sheep, a reference to Calvin's obsession with the Sheepsquatch.


 * There is a cut NPC intended to be Calvin's corpse in the game files (Editor ID zzz_P01B_Lying_CalvinVanLoweCorpse and Form ID ) named "Colin Van Lowe." There is also a cut key named Colin van Lowe's password.