Fallout 3 Walkthrough - Head of State

This quest will give you a chance to earn a little bit of money and help either the slaves or the slavers in the fight for the wasteland. You can get this quest by going to the Temple of the Union. This sanctuary is in plain sight along the thick highway in the top right corner of the map. It's in the curve. You can get a marker for it by freeing a slave in a random encounter or assisting Victoria Watts by keeping Harkness safe in "The Replicated Man."

Once there, you need to talk to Hannibal Hamlin. He will ask for you to help him get to the Lincoln Memorial and help Caleb Smith properly restore it.

Caleb Smith will need a nice poster of what the Lincoln Memorial used to look like if he's going to repair it. This is pretty easy to get. You need to go over to the Museum of History, as if you were going to Underworld. Turn to the left and go downstairs into the office area. There are several feral ghouls here and they will be leveled. If you have Broken Steel, then they may be reavers.

Hopefully you have the ghoul mask. If not, then just move carefully and blow them away with a good shotgun. Move forward and to the marker. The poster you need will spawn in an office at the top of the stairs inside the concourse. There's also a lot of other Lincoln artifacts here. Of particular note is Lincoln's Repeater. This powerful rifle should be on display inside the office area as well. There are also a few other posters, a Lincoln action figure, a phonograph of Lincoln's voice, and his coin collection. All of these things can be sold to Hannibal, Abraham Washington in Rivet City, or to Leroy Walker with the slavers. They tend to offer the same range of prices. Hannibal should hold on to what you sell him though, so if you plan to backstab him, feel free to sell to him and then get it all back from his body. You might as well double dip.

Regardless of this chance to earn some money, you just need the poster to advance the quest itself.

You also need to make your choice though. Who will you side with in the battle?

Hannibal wanted you to go to the Lincoln Memorial to check for super mutants. If you travel there, you'll find that someone's been holding back the super mutants for awhile. It seems that some slavers are lying in wait, expecting the slaves to rally at the memorial.

If you stay off the steps of the memorial, they won't shoot at you. You can visit their leader, Leroy Walker, in the little office area. He wants you to find Hannibal for them and help crush the slave sanctuary.

So we have a choice.

Help Hannibal

Helping the slaves is straightforward. Pull out a good weapon (I used Lincoln's Repeater for the poetic justice) and gun down the slavers. There are several of them guarding the Lincoln Memorial, but they should succumb pretty quickly to headshots. The only real trick is avoiding the traps at the top of the memorial. They have a lot of powerful stuff up there. If you want to be more creative, you could also try telling them that the slaves are hiding in Old Olney. This should be a speech option, if you've visited the real Old Olney before. The deathclaws will rip them apart. Don't just tell them that they are hiding near it, since this seems to signal out the Temple of the Union.

Once they're dead, just report in to Hannibal and give Caleb the poster. They'll set off on their journey.

It will take them a long time to get there. You might have to wait for a few in game days. It takes them forever to actually walk there though, if you follow them. They'll need a lot of protection and a lot of patience. I suggest you just let the game's fast travel system protect them. They'll settle in once they get there.

Help the Slavers

This is easy too. Just tell them where the Temple of the Union is. They'll move into position outside of it in a day or two. Report in and watch the slavers defeat the small guard force at the Temple. You can also do the killing yourself, if you want to be more proactive about it. Once they're all dead, the slavers will thank you and head off.