Victoria Watts

Victoria Watts is a NPC in Fallout 3. She is involved in The Replicated Man quest.

Ms. Watts is involved in an organization called The Railroad which, like it's namesake, works to protect escaped slaves, mainly androids. She has traveled to Rivet City to protect the identity of Harkness. After you are asked to hunt him down by The Institute, she will request that you feign his death using an Android Component that she gives you. If you assist her in saving Harkness, she will later ask you to not speak to her again (for their safety).

Appearances
Victoria Watts only appears in Fallout 3. When you have started The Replicated Man, she sometimes appears when you go outside. If the quest is triggered outside Rivet City, perhaps in Big Town and followed up on in Megaton, she may confront you before you leave Megaton.

Aside from her travels to seek you out, she can be found on the upper balcony of the Rivet City Marketplace, near the pool table.

Also her appearances may be random as she has been known to be encountered almost anywhere, including inside Little Lamplight, east of Paradise Falls, and outside of the Fairfax Ruins or in Minefield, regarding the The Replicated Man quest.

Appearance Triggers
Rather than being a random encounter, Victoria Watts seems to hone in on you. Once triggered, she starts running towards you from Rivet City. Thus, the time and place of the encounter depend on where you were when you triggered her and where you happen to be by the time she's covered the distance to you. As such, you can potentially meet her anywhere, including in rather incongruous locations and situations (such as inside of Arlington Library.) She also seems to be able to go through locked doors as she has been reported to turn up in your Tenpenny Tower Suite. This can also be unfortunate, however, if she happens to catch up with you in a particularly dangerous area, such as Old Olney, since she could very easily die on the way out after delivering her message.

The actual trigger for Victoria's homing instinct appears to be using dialogue options with other NPCs to ask about the android such as when one player asked Moira about the android and was acosted by Victoria outside of Craterside Supply upon exiting. The availability of these android-related NPC dialogue options, in turn, seems to depend either on getting the quest from the main source in Rivet City, or by finding at least 2 holotapes or other notes about the android in other locations. If you have not been to Rivet City, therefore, but just innocently use the android-related dialogue options, your subsequent encounter with Victoria can be somewhat surprising, especially if it happens during a firefight (see below).

Victoria's purpose is to present the player with an ethical choice in this quest. As such, she is immortal until she delivers her message to the player. This can cause problems if the player is currently in combat. Victoria fast-travels to the player's general vicinity and then enters the 3D world at the farthest creature-appearance distance from the player. From this point, she runs toward the player. Because she is friendly to the player at this point, creatures hostile to the player will attack her. She completely ignores them (she's after you and only has a knife anyway) and they can't kill her. As a result, Victoria can easily run up to the player closely pursued by a whole train of enemies. This can lead to combat being interrupted by her speech, and to her being hit by stray bullets.

Post Dialogue
After speaking with you, Victoria Watts will remain in the general area in which she first encountered you. She may attempt to travel to Rivet City, but she is incapable of "fast-traveling", and only moves position if the player is in the same active map cell as her. As a result, she is almost certain to be killed and eaten in the Wasteland if encountered far away from Rivet City.

If Victoria Watts reaches Rivet City, she will join the population there and perform a generic Rivet City citizen daily schedule. She can be spoken to again by the player, but has no additional dialogue.

Bugs

 * She also appears under the water when leaving from Pinkerton (if you leave from the bottom exit) and she waves a knife in her hand and just stands there underwater. When she appears in the water, her head will spin upside down while speaking (this also happens to Eclair). This is most likely a glitch but it's pretty funny. She can also be seen, without weapons, just swimming in this hallway.
 * Victoria can sometimes fail to recognize the completion of the The Replicated Man quest. If you agree to help her, then subsequently resolve the quest otherwise, she will continue to goad you to turn the component over to Dr. Zimmer and tell him Harkness is dead.
 * The GECK reveals that this bug occurs due to faulty dialogue ordering and conditioning. She should instead say "Nothing Stops the Railroad" but the dialogue string is BELOW "Don't you have a component to deliver" whereas it should be ABOVE it since the former has additional conditions. (Dailogue strings near the top of an NPC's dialogue list take prority over ones below it. A complete reversal of moddification load orders.
 * Sometimes she will spawn in the wrong place at the wrong time, such as underwater when you are searching for Pinkerton. She seems to have unlimited breath.
 * She has been known to track players down and meet them at exceedingly long distances away from Rivet City, encounters range from Vault 101 to Bigtown, Victoria has even been known to go as far as the Republic of Dave and Raven Rock!
 * Even though she approaches the player away from Rivet City, when you speak to her, she will still say that there is man named pinkerton "here in Rivet City" even if you are no where close to the place.
 * If you kill her as she approaches you but before she speaks with you she will confront you later even though she has already been killed.
 * Sometimes the River City marketplace will randomly go hostile and kill her. (Found in 360 version, needs to be confirmed)
 * Sometimes she will randomly spawn while walking to the testing sight for the deathclaw scrambler(found on Xbox 360,needs to be confirmed)
 * Sometimes she goes to Zimmerman's room and sleeps there. It's funny because sometimes Zimmerman "catches" her in the room sleeping (railroad member in his room)