The House Always Wins V

The House Always Wins V is a main quest in Fallout: New Vegas.

Quick walkthrough
Wipe out the Brotherhood of Steel by destroying its underground bunker. There is no alternative means of completing this quest without a mod. House vehemently despises the Brotherhood and will settle for nothing less.

The player must travel to Hidden Valley and enter the Brotherhood of Steel bunker. If the player has not interacted with the Brotherhood of Steel, they must complete an orientation by convincing a Ranger in an adjacent bunker to leave (if Veronica is a companion, the player can enter without the orientation). For details on this portion of the quest, please see Still in the Dark.

Once the player has access to the bunker, they may complete the mission by activating the self-destruct sequence, or by killing all Brotherhood personnel. Note that upon activating the self-destruct, the entire base will lockdown. The doors can only be opened with a Lockpick skill of 100 or by taking a key from either the guards protecting the Elder. The Brotherhood will also become hostile to you.

Option: Initiate bunker self-destruct sequence
In order to initiate the self-destruct sequence, the player must obtain the three keycards to arm it, or have a Science of 100. Assuming the former, the keycards are held by the Elder, the Head Paladin, and the Head Scribe. The Elder may either be McNamara or Hardin, depending on how you completed Still in the Dark. If you did not oust McNamara as Elder, then Hardin will be the Head Paladin; if you did, Ramos will now be Head Paladin. The Head Scribe will always be Taggart. The keycards must either be pickpocketed or taken off the corpses of the relevant individuals, though the latter may be difficult to achieve without turning the entire base hostile.

McNamara, Hardin, and Taggart are located on Level 2 of the bunker. McNamara and Hardin will either be in the meeting room or the adjacent quarters. Taggart is usually right by the self-destruct. Ramos can be found at the security station on Level 1 near the entrance if Hardin is Elder.

After the keycards have been obtained, the password for the self-destruct can be generated from the Override Code Generator terminal (green) next to the actual self-destruct terminal (blue). Once activated, the player becomes vilified by the Brotherhood. You can kill everyone in your path or sneak. Upon exiting, the bunker will explode. There is a chance that there will be 5 paladins waiting to kill the player outside. However sometimes if you Fast Travel quick enough the paladins will not have time to spawn.
 * If Veronica has already chosen to leave the Brotherhood, she will not go inside the bunker, but remain outside. After destroying the bunker, when you exit she will initiate a conversation saying that she will not tolerate you fighting the Brotherhood, but she does not leave, she only tells you that this is your last chance. If she chose to remain in the Brotherhood, then she will abandon you as a companion and you will no longer be able to talk to her.

Option: Kill all Brotherhood personnel
Killing all Brotherhood personnel in the bunker will also complete the objective. This path will lead to karma loss, as some of the named Brotherhood scribes and paladins are considered "good" non-player characters. However, this can be accomplished without the a karma loss by hacking the turret control unit, and turning them against all Brotherhood personnel. However, the player must still kill the elder and his two guards "manually" since there are no turrets in the elders' office.

Journal Entries
Part V