Fiend's Ransom

**Fiend's Ransom** is a side quest in *The Inheritance*

## Description

A child's life is at stake by the hands of the Fiends, and they want something of yours for his life.

## Detailed walkthrough

Couple days after completing The Inheritance with taking the gold, a Courier will visit you and hand you a message from Westside, saying there is an urgent matter that requires your help.

### The problem

Travel to Westside and look for a man named Heinz, he'll be somewhere around Miguel's Pawn Shop. Heinz explains that due to you taking down the Syndicate, the Fiends have run low on chems as the supply line they provided is gone, they're in desperate need to get some caps to refuel their chem addiction. Several days prior they ambushed the Burke family and murdered everyone except the son; Chris, whom they have now held hostage. The Fiends want 50,000 caps for the child's life, otherwise they will kill him. Having heard of your retrieval of the Enclave gold from the Syndicate, they want you specifically to make the exchange, knowing how wealthy you are.

The Westside Militia are unable to handle this situation due to the lack of resources and experience. And due to the lack of chems, the Fiends have become extraordinarily paranoid and have taken every precaution to ensure that the deal will go the way they want it. They will kill the boy if they sense any infinitesimal rebellion, so fighting or stealth is unfortunately not an option.

The ransoming Fiends are lead by a cannibalistic lunatic named Chester, who has made it very clear that if you turn up with 49,999 caps or less, the boy will die. Heinz warns you that this is a no-win situation, aside from you giving up so much money, there will be dire consequences with the Fiends being in possession of such a large quantity of caps, they will buy every chem under the sun, will get re-armed, and could potentially terrorise Westside. Overall the child's life is a top priority. Heinz suggests that you should try to come to a compromise of getting the boy out for free.

Due to this being an extremely large amount of money that will be drained from you, Heinz considerately got donations from the citizens to lessen out the loss you'll be facing. He got up to 5,000 caps and is willing to give it to you due to them asking a lot for that child's life. You can accept the money, or refuse it and let him put it toward helping Westside, which will earn his gratitude and will reward you with 100 karma. Otherwise you can overall refuse to carry out the exchange, which will reward you with -100 karma, Heinz calling you a "worthless cunt" for being so selfish, and the quest failing.

### Solving the ransom

Travel north west of the Monte Carlo Suites to the abandoned house, head inside and Chester will greet you, wanting the caps immediately, there are several ways to get out of this:

* Accept the ransom and pay Chester 50,000 caps, he and his group leave gleefully. Go into the other room and untie Chris Burke. Head back to Westside and inform Heinz that you paid the ransom, he thanks you for giving up that amount of money in order to save Chris, in return he gives you a unique Sawned-Off Shotgun called Lupara.
* If you have less than 50,000 caps on you, refuse to pay the ransom, or tell him that you're going to make him bleed, Chester will set off the bomb and Chris will die, turning all of them hostile, leaving you with no choice but to kill them. The quest will fail.
* With a Barter skill of 90 and at least 25,000 caps on your posession, you can intimidate him that once word gets out that he has 50,000 caps, all the other Fiends will eat at him to get a share of it, seeing the wisdom in this he decides to ask for half the caps instead, you'll automatically hand it over to him and he'll leave, free Chris and return to Westside where Heinz will reward you with the shotgun Lupara.
	+ If you have less than 90 Barter, you can attempt to work out a payment plan, but he'll refuse this idea and warned you that he didn't want you to fuck with the exchange.
* With a Charisma skill of 8, you can warn him that harming children is bound to get the NCR's attention, and because of this, bounty hunters will be after his finger, this causes him to panic and he attempts to deny that claim. Next, you will need to have completed Three-Card Bounty and *Bounty Killer* and a Speech skill of 90, which allows you to intimidate him, warning him that you're not going to give him the caps and if he chooses to kill a boy, it will be guaranteed that the next bounty will be on his head being that the leaders are already dead. Realising the logic and having been unaware that the leaders were killed specifically by a bounty hunter, he changes his mind after deciding that it is not worth it, he leaves allowing you to untie Chris, go back to Westside and inform Heinz, he'll congratulate you for doing the impossible and rewards you with Lupara.
	+ If you have less than 8 Charisma, you can attempt to insult him that holding children hostage makes the Fiends look desperate, but he'll just deny that the Fiends are stronger than ever, and again demands that you hand over the caps.

In the event that the deal goes swell or you told Heinz that you weren't going to do it and failed the quest, you can find Chester alongside a female Fiend Chieftan at the Hofmann Mine in the Chieftan Shack, the same place where you killed Shulgin in The Inheritance. If you gave him the money, you can loot 2,000 caps off his corpse, and a note titled Chester is the Man! can be found in the mine, which all just go to show how much he blew the money on.

## Notes

* If you did the Charisma and Speech check to free Chris, when you go to Heinz to inform him that you freed him, your response will claim that you paid the money to free the child, but Heinz's response will correspond to the outcome of you convincing the Fiends into letting the boy go.
* There is supposed to be an option where you can fail the Speech check if you have less than 90 in the skill, but the peripherals set the option to disabled. The dialogue would consist of you simply telling Chester that the Fiends are practically finished since the leaders are dead, but he would dismiss your claim by saying that it was all due to some one time do-gooder and the leaders were weak, convinced that he'll do better with all the money he's forcing you to give up.