Neils Warning¶

Fast-travel back to Sloan and follow I-15 to the north-east while keeping your eye to the south-east. Eventually you’ll pass an elevated concrete landing with a metal shack and a crane on it, and shortly beyond this, just in front of a blue and yellow truck bed, you’ll find a road leading south-east up into the mountains. Follow this road up into the hills and eventually you’ll be pestered by a Super Mutant named Neil, who will warn you of the dangers that lie ahead. Apparently a band of crazy and rather unintelligent Super Mutants and Nightkin dwell atop the mountain, led by one particularly batty Nightkin named Tabitha. They’re a menace to everybody nearby, and they give mutants a bad name, which makes Neil partial to their removal… something he’ll help you with if you succeed at a [Speech 50] check. Either way, this starts the quest Crazy, Crazy Crazy .

As Neil said, these Mutants infest the mountain, and their patrols will be a serious impediment to any non-mutants trying to reach the compound atop Black Mountain. If you were able to eradicate Deathclaws, however, you can handle Super Mutants, and these Super Mutants are a great source of loot and XP. They’re well worth exterminating, and after you clear Black Mountain the first time, feel free to come back every time you need Caps, XP, or when you just want to get into a good fight. It’s a great place for high-level characters to earn stupid amounts of Caps by selling the heavy weapons (Heavy Incinerators, Light Machine Guns, Miniguns and Super Sledges) they carry.

Ascending Black Mountain¶

First things first, however, you’ll need to climb the mountain, reach the capitol of the “State of Utobitha” and deal with its dictator with her totally really hair. If you convinced him to help, Neil will be waiting for you near a shanty town near the summit, but he was free to pass unmolested. You won’t have such a luxury. You can sneak up the mountain and avoid the road - and most of the Super Mutants - but there why pass up these lucrative fights?

Follow the winding road past Neil’s shack and make your way north, north-east to the first switchback. Pass some barricades where several Super Mutants lurk and loot a metal shack beyond the barricades, west of the road, wherein you can find an Ammo Box and Footlocker. Be wary of cloaked Nightkin, as they like to lurk behind cover and wait for prey to walk past; you can sniff them out with VATS, even if you can’t target them while they’re cloaked.

Take the first switchback behind the Super Mutant checkpoint you just cleared, passing between two flaming barrels along the way east. If you continue east you’ll find a pass off the road to the east which you can ascend to bypass a large strip of road. If you take this route you’ll have to disarm some Bear Traps and avoid falling rocks, both of which are quite a bit less valuable than the loot the Super Mutants along the road to the south will drop.

If you want to follow the road and gain wealth, continue south past another barricade, killing whatever Super Mutants are nearby. If you continue off the road to the south as it turns north you’ll find a fence which leads to the irradiated crater where you found the first Brotherhood patrol, occupied by Centaurs, including Moe. All of these critters should be long-since dead by now, so it’s really just a shortcut between Black Mountain and Hidden Valley.

Shanty Town¶

Continue past the next switchback to the north, then make your way beyond another barricade, following the road until you find some stacked barrels off to the west, behind which a Nightkin often lurks. Keep going north along the road making your way uphill where you’ll start catching some RADS. If you look to the north-east you’ll find a slope leading up to a radio tower, which is another shortcut to the shanty town above. Either go up the slope or continue around the next switchback to ready the shanty town where you may encounter as many as half a dozen Super Mutants.

Exterminate the Super Mutants and continue south through the shanty town, all of which is lightly irradiated. Avoid a crater (which is more heavily irradiated) and find a building along the road south of said crater. In this building - which uses a ruined satellite dish as a roof - you’ll find three trunks, two blue trunks (one of which is locked [Average] and a metal one, the first two of which contain a mess of Bottle Caps while the third contains a Minigun and some 5mm Rounds. In addition to this loot you can find a Transceiver on a desk near the metal trunk. If you activate it, you’ll get to talk to Tabitha. If you say “Aren’t you the super mutant from the radio? I’m a huge fan.” she’ll send all the nearby Super Mutants to your location. On the other hand if you succeed at a [Speech 75] check you can trick Tabitha into sending down her Nightkin to attack any Super Mutants nearby… or you can use this as a means to kill them yourself or at least lure them away from the Black Mountain compound at the summit.

Loot the structure and leave it to find Neil waiting to the east. If you talk to him, he’ll tell you his plan; he’s going to lure the Nightkin guards away, after which you can infiltrate Black Mountain and hopefully find a way to deal with Tabitha. This allows for a more peaceful resolution to this quest (ignoring the mutants you already wasted, of course), or it allows you to assassinate Tabitha without having to go through all her minions, first. If you lured the Nightkin away by tricking Tabitha with a [Speech 75] check you really don’t need to bother with this, but it’s yet another option. You can alternatively ignore Neil and continue onto Black Mountain yourself and just murder all the mutants inside. A less elegant solution, but a solution nonetheless.

Crazy, Crazy, Crazy¶

Head south to the fenced-off Black Mountain area. No matter what approach you’re taking, be sure to sneak, as not all the Nightkin will have left with Neil. In particular there will be a Nightkin Sniper on a platform built around a satellite tower. In this case, this “sniper” wields a unique Missile Launcher, Annabelle . If you didn’t get Neil to lure the Nightkin away there will also be three Nightkin lurking about, too. Two outside of the compound and one stalking around the buildings.

Speaking of the buildings, deal with or avoid the Nightkin (be sure to kill the Sniper and get their weapon either way) and enter the Prison Building. In her you can find Raul, Tabitha’s captive ghoul mechanic. You can reach him by hacking a terminal [Very Hard] to reach him, or you can access the other terminal, read “Entry 6” to learn the password to the [Very Hard] terminal and if you do, he’s all too eager to join your party. Doing this will, however, force a fight with Tabitha (and two Nightkin allies), so if you don’t want to do that, you should probably just leave Raul alone for now.

• If you want to take the peaceful option, head into the Storage Building. Once inside, take the note “Treasure Hunt” from a training dummy near the entrance to learn about some treasure Tabitha has hidden around:
• You can find a Missile hidden in a cinder block near a mannequin along the north-eastern wall.
• A Super Stimpak can be found under a metal pot on a metal shelf just south-west of the training dummy.
• A Nuka-Cola Victory is located on the bottom of a metal shelf along the south-eastern wall next to a Reloading Bench and on another shelf nearby is another Missile.
• In the southern corner of the room you’ll find a Missile Launcher.
• There are three pieces of C-4 Plastic Explosive, one under a desk in the north-eastern corner of the room and another near a table in the south-western corner (between a chair and a broken monitor) and the third is on top of the Nuka-Cola Vending Machine.
• There’s also a bit of ammo scattered in various containers on the metal shelves.
• There are three Trunks which are locked, requiring Tabitha’s Equipment Key to get at the guns and ammo inside. If you already lured her out, loot the Trunks. If not, remember to return later when you have the key for them.
  When you’re done searching for loot, head over to the table in the south-western corner of the room to find a Broken Mr. Handy. Repair the robot by succeeding at a [Science 60] check and activate it to bring Rhonda back to life. If Tabitha is still alive, tell it where she is, then head outside to see the happy reunion. After this, Tabitha will give you Tabitha’s Equipment Key, which unlocks all the locked Trunks in the Storage Building. If Tabitha is dead before you activate Rhonda, the robot will attack, seeking vengeance for its fallen master.

There’s only one last place to search on Black Mountain; the Broadcast Building. Head into the Broadcast Building, 1st Floor and hack a Terminal [Easy] to find some entries dealing the last few days of pre-war Black Mountain and the notes of the Super Mutant Marcus. Another terminal sits on a table to the south, which details Tabitha’s rise to power and descent into madness. The entry “Safe!” will also mention a hidden key stored outside…

If you killed Tabitha earlier, you should already have this key. If not, you’ll need to pick up the spare. Either way, head through a door to the south and search behind the staircase. Once it’s yours head upstairs and into the Broadcast Building, 2nd Floor, where you’ll find Tabitha if you haven’t already done one of the myriad of things to lure her out. If she’s here, she’s hostile. Waste her and loot the room to find two locked Trunks full of ammo (Tabitha’s Equipment Key unlocks this) the note “Repair Note #3” and a Sheet Music Book. Before you leave - if you’re working on the quest Eyesight to the Blind - activate the Radar Console and plant the bug to appease Elder McNamara.

However you manage it, once Tabitha is dead or reunited with Rhonda, the quest Crazy, Crazy, Crazy ends. You can now safely unlock and possibly recruit Raul (at least let him join up long enough to make progress towards the Achievement/Trophy “The Whole Gang’s Here”). Raul Alfonso Tejada (his initials are RAT? Bad luck…) is a gifted mechanic who lives in… well, Raul’s Shack, which you should have already discovered and looted. If you disband him, that’s where he’ll go, and like Major Knight at the Mojave Outpost, he’ll repair your gear… for a price. While he’s in your party you can enjoy the benefits of the Regular Maintenance perk, which will cause your weapons and armor to degrade slower. He’s not great in combat, though, so you’ll have to decide if his Cap-saving perk is worth dragging him along.

Leave Black Mountain, possibly stopping to talk to Neil along the way to learn that he’s going to be doing a whole lot of nothing. Well… good on him. If you’re working on the quest Eyesight for the Blind , now’s the time to return to Hidden Valley and tell Elder McNamara the good news. For your efforts he’ll let you in the Brotherhood with the rank of Paladin, give you some T-45d Power Armor and a T-45d Power Helmet and teach you how to use it.

You’re finally done dealing with the Brotherhood of Steel, a questline that has been awfully long in completing. Almost everything south and east of New Vegas is done, but there’s still a bit to do before it’s time to head into Freeside, and then New Vegas itself. Namely, Raul and Veronica have companion quests that can be done (Boone too, but his requires Caesar’s Legion Infamy, so it’ll be covered during the pro-NCR section of the guide). The Great Khans and the Powder Gangers are also two factions who still have quests for us.

The following sections will assume your reputation with the Great Khans and the Powder Gangers is passable (“Shunned” or higher). If you’ve been following this guide, this should be the case. If the Great Khans are hostile to you, you’ll have to skip Aba Daba Honeymoon. If the Powder Gangers want you dead, you won’t be able to complete Why Can’t We Be Friends. Skip around accordingly. First, however, let’s get Raul’s relatively simple companion quest out of the way…

Tales Old Ghouls Tell¶

First fast-travel to Nellis Air Force base and talk to Loyal, who will just ramble about his bomber. Afterwards Raul will talk to you and admire Loyal’s continued contribution to his people. When you get a chance to respond, either point out Loyal’s changing roles in society as he aged, or defy ageism by refusing to let go of past glories.

After this Raul will tell you some backstory. Neat. Next, make your way over to Novac and talk to Ranger Andy again and re-exhaust all his dialogue options. When you leave his bungalow Raul will talk to you again and ask what you think about people who have to come to terms with age and injury that impair their prowess… you know, because… uh… a friend wants to know. Give him an optimistic, can-do response about overcoming limitations or promote the value of experience… or make a snarky comment about shelving has-beens. Listen to the next bit of his story, then head off to talk to another old man still trying to remain useful.

The next target is Corporal Sterling, who was in Camp McCarran. If you completed Three-Card Draw, however, they’ll have been relocated to Camp Forlorn Hope, which is north-east of Novac. The easiest way to get there without going near Nelson or risking poor Raul’s fragile health by taking him near Cazadores is to fast-travel to Ranger Station Delta and head south and slightly west from there. Once you reach Camp Forlorn Hope, ignore everybody not named Corporal Sterling - now is not the time to be questing this place. Instead, head into the Camp Forlorn Hope Command Center tent to find your old ranger-turned-sniper buddy. Talk to him again and go through his dialogue options one more time and… well, you know how this goes.

Raul will pester you afterwards for your opinion, regarding his late-life crisis, and again you’ll have the option to be positive about old dogs who refuse to die, or suggest that they should, in fact, roll over… or be nicer about it and suggest they learn some new tricks in their old age. Once done he’ll finish his backstory and - depending on what you said about the old folk you talked to previously - come to a conclusion about whether he can still keep up his gun-slinging ways, or whether he should hang it up and focus on less active pursuits. If you don’t like his conclusion, you can sway his mind with a [Speech 66] check. If he decides to go guns blazing again he’ll get the “Old Vaquero” perk, which increases his rate of fire with his preferred weapons by 33% (he’ll still give you the “Regular Maintenance” perk, though). If he focuses on maintenance he’ll get the “Full Maintenance” perk, which decreases the degradation rate of equipment from 50% to 75%. Nifty.