Planescape - Harmonium Founders

[Cabe Zeree]

Evening,

I am hoping there's enough Planescape people here to help me out, I know it has a little following here on the boards. ;-)

I’ve run into a conundrum concerning the Harmonium, and since there are soooo many creative people on the boards perhaps I can just tap a little bit of that.

Now according to the books the Harmonium all began on a prime world called Ortho. A group of adventurers set out to tame a lawless and wild region, but the crazy thing is they succeeded. Since neighboring nations were pestering them with their disharmony, they just continued the trend, whether the new lands/nations liked it or not. Eventually they claimed the whole world, moved to the planes, and bam you have the Harmonium.

If you were going to create the band of adventurers that began the whole thing, what would the party be like? In the story I’m planning, they’re long dead, so I’m looking for ideas of characters after they’ve obtained the height of their power. But I'd still like to have some detail on the party.

How many in the party?
The 3e standard of four, or maybe one or two more, less, more?

What races were they?
The books say the Harmonioum drove off, or got rid of most of the elves and gnomes, because they couldn’t cut it in the new regime. So probably neither of those races in the party, and the same goes for half-orcs, other monstrous, or usually evil races. Then again, it would be ironic if one of the founders of the harmonium was one of these races…

What classes?
A paladin would probably be a requirement. And, looking at the ideals and character of the hardheads, I’m guessing the party would be combat heavy. But what about magic? Perhaps a cleric of a god of Law, or maybe they just gain their power from the idea of Law, Justice, Harmony, etc. How about a very ordered spell slinger, with spells focusing on getting people to follow his orders, or imprisoning spells?

What level?
What height of power did they obtain in life? I’d prefer they weren’t epic, but they can be powerful, or maybe Ortho was “low powered” at the time.

My ideas, level 14 or 15 overall:
Human, Paladin
Dwarf, Cleric of Law and Strength
Human, Ranger/Rogue (just enough levels to help out with traps and the like)
Elf, Fighter/Enchanter (gave up illusion)

So what are your thoughts, completely different?

 

[Grover Cleaveland]

See

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arcade/2894/ps/ortho.html

and

http://www.geocities.com/ripvanwormer/harmonium.html

for my ideas on Ortho and the founding of the Harmonium.

 

[Shemeska]

I'd suggest perhaps a human, a dwarf, a half-elf who happened to be shunned or had some terrible formative experience with his elven ancestors, and just for sh*ts and giggles... how about a Beholder. *grin*

A nice combination of genuine lawful, nice people, one just plain vindictive or misguided one, and a xenophobic tyrant.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Some people have a more idealistic concept of how the Harmonium formed.

While I have a more negative one based on the description from the Factol's Manifesto, that views the Harmonium's creation as the rise of fascism on Ortho.

However the way it could be, is that it could be both depending on who you ask...

 

[Zappo]

Be mindful that the Factol's Manifesto was written by a Harmonium opposer IC. For what we know, their system may actually be working rather well on Ortho. Maybe the bit about chaotic races disappearing is outright false, or maybe it is a misrepresentation. If you wanted to make the original Harmonium really good without tarnish, you wouldn't break continuity.

 

[Cabe Zeree]

See

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arcade/2894/ps/ortho.html

...

So the beholder idea is homebrew, not mentioned in a book anywhere? Part of me likes the idea of puting a beholder in the party, the other does not. But the party dynamics would be intriguing, especially if the paladin and cleric didn't know for the longest time... I like the half-elf idea though.

I think I'll keep it a mix, those who intended good, and those who had ulterior motives; mix em up, and you get the Harmonium. It sounds pretty much like the Harmonium pre-faction war.

So the party is:
Human, Paladin 15, apparent leader (good)
Dwarf, Cleric of Law and Strength 14, friend of leader (good)
Half-elf, Enchanter 12/Fighter 4, manipulator and true leader of the party (ulterior motives)
Other...still unknown

Thanks for the ideas!

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Even if you're idealistic about Ortho, I like the idea that one member of the party opposed them at some point, and the party turned on them. Making it the Rogue would be stereotypical-- and probably helps with the idealism, while making it the Cleric suggests that even the Lawful Good gods of their world thought they were going too far.

Of course, all of the stories have been changed, and that member of the party is no longer spoken of. Photog-- err, paintings of the "missing" character have been altered, and his name's been scratched out of history books. (Idealistic or not, the Harmonium is very clearly in favor of censorship.)

If that party member were also, say, an Elf or a Gnome...

 

[wingsandsword]

If you wanted to make the original Harmonium really good without tarnish, you wouldn't break continuity.

Except that it's pretty clear that the Harmonium are NOT good aligned, they are about Law, which they often mistake for Good. They have plenty of Lawful Good members, yes, and their actual written and codified ideals would count as LN(G), but in practice they are much more Neutral than Good.

The big, non-partisan proof of this is that they caused an entire layer of Arcadia to slide from Arcadia to Mechanus because they were so lawful, and not good, that they were effectively collectively cast out of the Upper Planes. In other words, when they had an entire layer of an outer plane to themselves, it gravitated not to a LG planar direction, but to LN.

Personally, I really like the idea that the Harmonium was effectively the rise of Facism, and what would happen if a facist empire conquered an entire world and moved out into the Planes. Especially since it probably did start out as an idealistic, probably LG group that wanted to impose justice and order (mostly order) on an unjust and anarchic world (or their own part of it). Then they started to win, and their followers took their original ideas and corrupted them somewhat, and things spread uncontrollably, until they parrot the original words of their revolution, while doing things that would make their founders weep for what is done in their name.

 

[Grover Cleaveland]

So the beholder idea is homebrew, not mentioned in a book anywhere?

Factol's Manifesto mentioned that Ortho has a thriving population of beholders, but we don't know that the original Knights of Harmony had a beholder in them.

They were a regular-type adventuring party. They could have had a beholder, but mostly they were into cleaning out dungeons and slaying dragons. They had no idea, at the time, that they would be founding a worlds-spanning nation.

The modern Harmonium, as a whole, is neither good nor evil, but its idealistic followers might have been good, before they came under the sway of some very ambitious people who wanted to use the heroes and their fame to gain unpredecented power. Almost certainly there have been some periods in the Harmonium's history where its Octave Council had quite a lot of evil in it, and it might still today.