Strictly Business

 is a Fallout 3 quest. It is also an Xbox 360 and PC achievement.

This quest will begin the first time you discover Paradise Falls and attempt to enter it. A guard/slaver (Grouse) will approach you and tell you that you cannot enter Paradise Falls unless you have business there. He will offer to let you in only if you go and enslave select people off his list. He will split half the profit with you for each person. He will let you in to Paradise Falls after you have enslaved at least one person.

This quest involves enslaving the following characters for the slavers of Paradise Falls. Enslaving is done with the Mesmetron and a Slave Collar, which you will get from Grouse as well as the notes Slave Collar Insructions [sic], Mesmetron Manual and List of "Recruits". (Make sure to return to him after each slave to collect a new slave collar for the next one.)

Alternatively you can bribe the guard 500 caps to let you in, skipping this quest.

It is also possible to get in without completing the quest if you've got very bad karma.

Another option, while this will not complete this quest but rather skip it, is to kill everyone in the slave camp. You will gain a lot of good karma for doing so, and access to all of the goodies in the gun shop in town.

To note, when you enslave the NPCs in question the town may become hostile. Try enslaving in sneak mode while no one is around or simply run out of the area and come back later.


 * Flak from Rivet City
 * Red from Big Town
 * Susan Lancaster from Tenpenny Tower
 * Arkansas from Minefield

If Flak, Red, Susan, or Arkansas are dead before the quest is given, they're not on your list. If the last of the four are killed, a "Quest Failed: Strictly Business" message will appear on screen, though Grouse will still have the same dialogue and provide the same items.

Arkansas is sniping from a platform in minefield. If you've gone there already for The Wasteland Survival Guide, or just randomly, he probably attacked you and you killed him for it, he's fairly aggro. One strategy is to wait until night(midnight) and sneak up to his post (sneak 70+) and mez him from behind. BEWARE to take out some of the mines as it may alert Arkansas and/or Arkansas may accidentally step on one of them as he runs off to Paradise Falls. Another method is shooting his rifle out of his hand in V.A.T.S. I have a Small Guns at level 100 and I am using Lincoln's Repeater so it was shot from his hand from so far away he never Detected me. When the rifle is gone he will run downstairs with a pistol. Its easy to Mez him then.

Susan Lancaster may be found on the top floor of Tenpenny Tower in her penthouse suite (at night). Simply shut the door, mez, and collar. However sometimes at night she will travel quite far northwest in sexy sleepwear. If you've gotten the ghouls into Tenpenny Tower, chances are they've killed all the smoothskins(even with the diplomatic approach). Simply wait a bit northwest from Tenpenny Tower and wait an hour at a time until you can intercept her travels, mez, and collar.

Red can usually be found in her clinic. If she's not there try walking around a bit and then enter her clinic again. If you did not complete the Big Trouble in Big Town quest yet, Red is captured by super mutants and held in the Germantown police station. You can simply capture Red from there but it will prevent you from completing the Big Trouble in Big Town quest. If you want to get the best of both worlds on this one, and if you don't mind being a pretty evil character, you can massacre Big Town after receiving the Big Trouble in Big Town quest. This has no effect on whether or not the quest can be completed, since the targets aren't at Big Town yet. After the bloodbath (the Big Towners are very poor fighters, I even managed to enslave one of them, though they got themselves killed en route to Paradise Falls), proceed to the Germantown Police HQ and rescue both Red and Shorty. When you bring them back to the empty Big Town, they don't seem to show any indication of noticing the bodies. Fight off the mutant attack which follows, then proceed to enslave Red and kill Shorty (if you have the Contract Killer perk, no ear will be present on Shorty's corpse).

Flak can be found in his room on the Upper Deck (at night), and is probably the most difficult "recruit" to capture. One strategy I used: Wait [select button or 'T'] outside his room until about 12am (he walked out soon after I did) then follow him to the dead end by Doctor Li's room. Make sure there are no guards then mez him. Exit stage right into the lab before he sees a guard. You should be safe after this. Another proven strategy is to wait for him patiently to go have a drink at the Muddy Rudder. If asked about the place in dialog, he will tell you that "No one asks too many questions down there." Rivet City security is usually absent from the area as well, since Brock handles altercations. Mez Flak and get the collar on him, regardless of who's there, and the only hostile you'll have to deal with is Brock, who for me was easily dispatched by my follower Charon, who was Johnny on the spot with a shotgun blast to Brocks face. I don't think security even noticed when they saw Flak run by with a slave collar around his neck. If you enslave Flak, Shrapnel will disappear from Rivet city. He will return only once in a long while (every few days/weeks). he can be seen wandering the wastes and even in Paradise falls. There does not appear to be any pattern to his wanderings. For this reason it may be better to kill Flak rather than enslave him. This way Shrapnel will stick around in Rivet City


 * Putting on the Slave Collar will lower your Karma by 100, regardless of who you put it on (including Arkansas).

Flak, Red, Susan, and Arkansas end up in the slave house once you capture them. If your science skill is high enough, you can get their collars off. However, they simply wander out and get killed by the slavers. Moreover, Arkansas starts shooting at anyone wearing a slave collar, once you free him.

Even after the quest is completed, Grouse will give you a slave collar. Sometimes it glitches and you end up with more than one. Slave collars can't be dropped, since they're quest items. However, you can use them on other NPCs, and get a caps reward from Grouse.

If you tell Grouse that slavery disgusts you during the initial dialogue, the slavers will turn hostile and you'll be unable to get this quest.

If you intend to kill Grouse it would be a wise choice not to take this quest since you get stuck with at least one screwed inventory space from slave collar.

Glitch you can take advantage of: If you grab the box key from Eulogy's Pad you can open the gate to the slave pen and gain entry inside. The VIPs will be in the slave house and you can speak to them. If you choose the "deal with it" option, you can can return to speak to Grouse and he'll thank you for capturing them, even though he already did so. You can do this many times and still receive the 250 caps plus an additional slave collar for each.

Bugs

 * If you are evil enough, you can use a [Karma] check to force Grouse to let you in without collaring any of the VIP's.


 * If you Mesmerise and then pop a collar onto a victim, tell them to go to Paradise Falls, and then die/reload previous save, the character you've enslaved before you reloaded the save may appear in the Paradise Falls slave pen, without a slave collar on, and with all of the dialog options they normally had (for instance, you can still trade with Flak in the slave pen if he does not have a slave collar). Reloading the save will not fix this problem every time, so you may have to somehow get the target to come near you in the slave pen where you are able to Mesmerize and fit a collar onto the target. If Arkansas was the target, he will pull out his sniper rifle and began shooting everyone around him.


 * Make sure you don't need to deal with any of the enslaved people ever again! I needed to speak to Susan Lancaster after I enslaved her. After killing all the slavers, I got into the pen, released her and Flak. (Red paradoxically wasn't even there anymore; Arkansas was killed in an earlier Quest for Moira) After that, talking to them was impossible. Only one phrase was left, and that even without audio! Killing her was the only way convincing Tenpenny. Reloading is an option, but will not always work since it happened to me even only finding Flak in the pen! My solution to this was a big reload, first talked to Susan, the enslaved her. The same counts for Red I guess. I first saved her from the super mutants, then enslaved her. This was a good choice, because she never reappeared in the pen, not even after a few test-reloads!


 * Don't Mezz Shrapnel when in or around his room. You can't kill him or the doctor once they are mezzed.  I was locked in his room with him and the doctor after I mezzed them both, and couldn't get out or kill either one.  You can shoot them but afterwards it says they are asleep and not dead.  You also can't search or pick-pocket them.  I had to wait in the room for 10 minutes, "killing" both of them over and over, until someone from outside finally opened the door.  I had to kill some other people to get out and had the same problem with Harkness (I didn't mezz him, but still couldn't kill him).  I was later able to get back into Rivet City with no problems.  I also ran into Shrapnel at a couple other locations but still wasn't able to kill him.


 * I had an incident where I had enslaved Red from the moment I released her in Germantown, but I continued to get the "Speak With Red" from the Big Trouble in Big Town quest. I had already received my reward for her capture, but she was no-where to be found. Upon returning to Big Town, I found her leaving her clinic and running with the slave collar on, presumably to Paradise Falls. I spoke with her, removed her collar and finished the Big Trouble in Big Town quest.


 * I Mezzed Eulogy Jones and he went crazy and started shooting at his two slaves, who promptly went at him with swords shouting "Take this, slavers!". Once they'd killed Jones (one of them died in the battle), the remaining slave picked up Jones' Magnum and attacked me, although I could still talk to her. When I talked to her, she replied something like "Eulogy doesn't like me to talk to the Johns." while shooting me in the face.


 * If you Mezz Flak and put the collar on him while in the Rivet City marketplace and run out before he does, he will be lost and you will not be able to finish the quest.


 * If you use the easy exp glitch where you go to the pen and tell all four of the slaves to deal with being a slave, then go back to Grouse he will give you 250 caps for each of the slaves you talked to and a slave collar that take up 1 WG each, which you can not get rid off unless capturing a slave