Ishmael Ashur

Ishmael Ashur, known as Lord Ashur to The Pitt's inhabitants, is the lord of The Pitt and leader of the Pitt raiders in 2277.

Background
Ashur reveals his personal history and motives, as well as much of the history of The Pitt, in a series of holotapes found in his personal safe, addressed to his daughter Marie, which must be stolen. He reveals he was once a member of the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel, and participated in their assault on The Pitt twenty years ago, known as the Scourge. During the fight, Ashur was caught in an explosion and was presumed dead, so the Brotherhood left him within the mill. After being pulled out of the rubble by scavengers trying to steal his armor, Ashur impressed them, some even considering him a god (Midea sarcastically calls him the "God-King"). He then brought together the scavengers in the area, starting the city.

He chose to start the city in The Pitt because he was touched by the tenacious locals, and the fact that it contained the only operational steel mill the Brotherhood had ever run into. So he recruited everyone in the area, killed raider leaders and made the rest follow him. When that wasn't enough, he resorted to using slaves (whom he insists on calling "workers" to remind them that they all have a chance at freedom, no matter how slim); he admits he hates to do this, but claims "it has to be done" since citizens of The Pitt are unable to have children due to the Troglodyte Degeneration Contagion. His ultimate goal is to create the first city that is "producing" once again, and he claims that every other post-War community (including the Brotherhood of Steel) has lived off of leftovers and has been unable to create things anew.

The accuracy of this statement by Ashur is unclear, as is whether or not he is including The Enclave or the New California Republic in his assessment, since those communities clearly do have advanced capacity to produce and manufacture new material. Despite Ashur's condemnation of the Brotherhood of Steel as "lazy" scavengers, in the original Fallout set many, many years before Fallout 3, they were also depicted as possessing some form of manufacturing capabilities. It's entirely possible he knew about these facts, but kept them secret to inspire the slaves further, although it is unlikely that most, if not all, factions in the Wasteland have anywhere near the industrial capacity of Pittsburgh, a major steel-producing location, even if it has only a fraction of its pre-War capacity intact. It is noteworthy that The Pitt is the only location in Fallout 3 that has visible ammunition production operations, an aspect of the city that the player can eventually utilize.

Daily schedule
Ashur is found in his office at the top of Haven, and gives speeches to the slaves of The Pitt every once in a while. He also runs The Pitt's radio station.

Quests

 * Unsafe Working Conditions: Your first interaction with Ashur is when he gives a speech to the slaves to pick a fighter for The Hole.
 * Free Labor: After you're done fighting in The Hole, he will ask to meet you and talk to you about becoming a Pitt raider. You can then choose to side with him or Wernher, and if you side with him you fight to stop the slaves revolt, and if you side with Wernher you kill him.

Behind the scenes

 * Both Ishmael and Ashur are Biblical names. Ishmael was the son of Abraham, who was exiled by his own parents. Ashur was the second son of Shem, the son of Noah. Ashur was also the name of the capital of Assyria, an ancient Mesopotamian empire in what is now modern-day Iraq.

Appearances
Ashur appears only in the Fallout 3 add-on The Pitt.

Bugs

 * Sometimes after the initial meeting dialog with Ashur he will repeat the words "Don't let me keep you" a few times to before leaving. This appears to be a bug, supposedly caused by speaking to others in Haven before speaking to Ashur or by skipping through too much of Ashur's dialog.
 * After accessing the computer in the room with Marie, Ashur's corpse is very likely to disappear if you have killed him, so be sure to loot his body before using it.
 * Ashur's speech prior to entering the arena is bugged. In the PC version of the game, he will skip every other text block, causing the speech to be much shorter (the skipped portions of the speech can be heard in the background playing at the same time as the heard portions). The full speech plays in the Xbox and PlayStation version of the game.

Gallery
Ishmael Ashur Ishmael Ashur Ишмаэль Ашур