Icarus and Friends
Sadie Adler
Sadie's contact, Arturo Bullard, agrees to take Arthur in his hot air balloon to scout out the Sisika Penitentiary.
- Mission giver
- Sadie Adler
- Playable
- Not stated
- Location
- Sisika Penitentiary, Bluewater Marsh, Lemoyne
- Target
- Not stated
- Unlocked by
- Not stated
- Unlocks
- Not stated
Player notes
Arthur meets Sadie Adler at Doyle's Tavern in Saint Denis to discuss John Marston's imprisonment at Sisika Penitentiary. Sadie leads him out of town to meet Arturo Bullard, a balloonist she has hired to survey the prison. Bullard welcomes Arthur aboard his hot air balloon but refuses to carry Sadie, claiming that flight is unsuitable for women. Arthur leaves with Bullard while Sadie remains on the ground.
Arthur manages the balloon's height as it crosses Lemoyne and reaches Sisika Penitentiary. From above, he searches the prison fields and spots a man he believes is John. The guards notice the balloon and open fire, forcing Arthur and Bullard to climb beyond their range. As they travel back, Bullard sees Sadie being pursued through Bluewater Marsh by O'Driscolls.
Arthur takes up a rifle from the balloon and shoots at Sadie's pursuers. Bullard is hit during the fight, then shot again and falls from the basket. Arthur brings the balloon over a bridge, lowers a rope to Sadie, and pulls her aboard. The balloon soon loses its fuel and crashes on the bank of the Kamassa River.
Arthur and Sadie fight O'Driscolls attacking from across the river and from the nearby woods. Once the gang is dead, Arthur blames Sadie for Bullard's death and her reckless chase. She asks whether he saw John, and Arthur confirms it. Sadie proposes breaking John out of Sisika Penitentiary, then tells Arthur that Colm O'Driscoll has been captured and sentenced to hang. She intends to see that he does not escape.
Trivia
- โDespite the fact that the mission "Money Lending and Other Sins VII" can be completed before this one, Sadie will still say "Strauss is a bundle of nerves" as if he is still a member of the gang. However, since Sadie hasn't been back to the camp since the mission "Fleeting Joy", it makes sense that she wouldn't know Strauss had been kicked out by Arthur.
- โDue to Arthur's sickness becoming severe, going anywhere near the area where Sadie is after "Fleeting Joy" will trigger "A Fork in the Road".
- โHowever, near the end of "The Artist's Way III", Arthur can run into the bar where "Icarus and Friends" begins, but Sadie will not be present and Arthur will then suffer his coughing fit in the bar, prompting the other patrons to flee.
- โIf Arthur is wearing any "fancy" hat (consisting of Legendary Animal hats, the Tricorn Hat, the Exotic Hat, one of the two helmets, etc.) during the balloon ride, Bullard will comment on it and jokingly say that he likes to "stand out in the clouds".
- โWhile ascending, Arturo recounts a story of a man who had "ran afowl" of a rotten oyster mid-flight, leading to a "harrowing experience" for all involved. In the previous mission "The New South", Dutch recounts how he came across Josiah Trelawny by chance in an outhouse in some random town, who greeted Dutch with surprise and then asked for some privacy due to having eaten a rotten oyster. Due to Trelawny's highly transitory nature, this has led to a fan theory that the man who Arturo mentioned was actually Trelawny himself.
- โWhen looking for John at the Penitentiary, his location will depend on which field the player examines first. For instance, if they search the field on the right, John will be in the one on the left.
- โIf the player fails to pull Sadie up onto the balloon, she can be seen falling from the rope to her death.
- โAfter completion, the player can loot all of the O'Driscoll's bodies as they have a lesser chance of the law coming to investigate.
Mission data from Red Dead Wiki, CC BY-SA. Not affiliated with Rockstar Games.
Last verified September 14, 2026