Isabel Cruz

Isabel Cruz, also known as the Mechanist, is a robotics expert living in The Mechanist's Lair in 2287.

Background
When Isabel was a child, she was as timid and soft spoken as she is today and did not have many friends, so robots and comic books were really all she had growing up. In fact, Sparks was the first robot she assembled and her first real friend.

Later in life, Cruz came across a ransacked caravan where she found a drawing of the Mechanist, a comic book hero from before the War, and she decided she wanted to bring that character to life; in her own words, "it was too late to save that caravan, but becoming the Mechanist was [her] way of keeping hope alive." She was initially drawn to the Commonwealth by the General Atomics factory, but she never expected to stumble upon a military base dedicated entirely to robotics beneath the RobCo sales and service center. Doing what she did best, Cruz built incredible robots from what she could find, and hoped to save the Commonwealth.

To this end, she tried her hand at recreating robobrains after recovering some schematics, and succeeded assembling her own model which she designated Jezebel. However, this robobrain was captured by the Rust Devils. But Cruz was not discouraged; if anything, Jezebel's absence prompted Cruz to update several of the robobrains already present in the facility to handle menial tasks, and bring the facility's command center back to its original functional state. Furthermore, she took a new mission upon herself: saving the Commonwealth. She had hoped that her expendable robotic army could police the region (even within a 15 mile radius) and protect the denizens of the wasteland.

This would have been all well and good, but the robobrains Cruz programmed to direct the other robots misinterpreted their programming: they were programmed to save wastelanders, but in doing so, they reasoned that the best way to do this was to terminate them. Probabilities suggested that there was a better chance of the wastelanders dying of unnaturally violent causes than live through them; therefore, it was best to end their existence immediately, rather than prolong their suffering and impending expiration.

Completely unaware of this flaw in their programming, Cruz continued her reign of terror as the Mechanist, sending her robots all over the Commonwealth. The reign only came to an end when the Sole Survivor confronted her in her lair. Should she be talked down and convinced of the errors of her ways, Cruz will feel extremely remorseful and betrayed, both by her robots and herself. She looks at everything she accomplished, how she programmed her robots to do good, and how it all blew up in her face. As recompense, she remains quite busy tracking down rogue robots, still waiting for the truth about her actions to fully sink in.

Quests

 * Restoring Order: The Mechanist must be dealt with one way or another.
 * Rogue Robot: If Isabel Cruz is spared and talked down, she will provide the whereabouts of other robots that continue to terrorize the Commonwealth.

Other interactions

 * If Isabel Cruz is spared and talked down, she will become a merchant. Most notably, she sells shipments of fiber optics.

Inventory

 * † During Restoring Order
 * ‡ After Restoring Order

Appearances
Isabel Cruz appears only in the Fallout 4 add-on, Automatron.