Ruin Explorer
Legend
Late to the party here, but my experience is more often that the Harpers in D&D are straight-up the CIA as presented in a lot of popular fiction (I won't comment on realistic or otherwise said fiction is), where they're aggressive interventionists, operating with zero mandate, zero legality, zero regard for the laws or really the people of the area they've decided to operate in, and doing what basically amount to pre-emptory political assassinations and extraordinary rendition (black bagging, kidnapping, whatever you want to call it), as well as massive thefts and all sort of violence, murder and mayhem. Just with a huge amount of self-righteousness about it and elaborate self-justifications as to why it's wrong this guy to kill people but super-okay for them to do it.the Harpers are so opposed to Tyranny that they can, at worst, be Anarchists (in a bad way).
And that's when they're being presented as the good guys by TSR and WotC...