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From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

Harlem Foreman, the Fatal Harmonic
Fatal Harmonic
Player: @TalenLee
Origin:	Magic
Archetype:	Controller
Security Level:	32
Personal Data
Real Name:	Harlem Foreman
Known Aliases:	Harm
Species:	Homo Sapiens
Age:	19
Height:	5'7"
Weight:	Well over two hundred million tons, and about 90 kg
Eye Color:	Brown-green
Hair Color:	Brown
Biographical Data
Nationality:	US Citizen
Occupation:	Shaman
Place of Birth:	Kings Row, Paragon City
Base of Operations:	Kings Row, Paragon City
Marital Status:	Single
Known Relatives:	Father, mother, one sister, two half-brothers, a half-sister
Known Powers
Shamanistic connection to cities and people
Known Abilities
Good with plants and animals
Equipment
None. Harlem is remarkably austere.
No additional information available.

[edit] Character

Harlem is a musical prodigy born into a family too poor to nourish his gift and a town too cramped to recognise it. Without a strong environment to nurture his musical talent, he had to find his own avenues to explore his ability. Part of this involved membership in the Kings Row gang scene, having fallen in amongst the violent 'neighbourhood watch' group known as the Knights of the 93rd. As part of that cultural background, Harlem developed clearly into a gifted young man always feeling a step behind his own potential.

Loyal, serious, and hardworking, Harlem is an ascetic with a deep and abiding love of people, and a wrathful resentment of those who would abuse them. With power and success, he feels, comes responsibility, which means exploitive business practices are considered the same kind of bullying as one might see in a playground. Given a sense of power beyond the scope of most people thanks to his unique talents with music and home-made magic, Harlem shoulders this responsibility himself - even though his appearance belies such strengths.

Harlem found himself in a relationship with London Reign, which was a decision he wasn't sure he had a part in making.

[edit] Powers

Harlem is a powerful mage and shaman, whose magic is bound to the framework of music. Every spell he wants to weave he has to hook to a song, and those songs he uses tend to connect to the ideal of the spell. These spells are not the only type of magic he can enact, however - he can stomp the ground and bend steel and stone and rock entirely to his will, as the city itself is an extension of his body. In turn, he's an extension of the city - he can't be knocked back or thrown around, connected as if to the ground itself.

This power has its limitations. The further he gets from Kings Row, the weaker his powers become. Peregrine Island is one of those odd spots. However, since he's attained a certain sense of clarity about his purpose, he has developed the ability to take a bit of Kings Row with him - which people can visibly see as a six-foot-tall, rock-fisted beast of a creature that loyally follows Harlem around.

[edit] Metatext

[edit] RP Notes

• Harlem is capable of feeling what's transpiring across the city. He can't peer in your window and know what you're thinking, but as a general sense, he knows there's something, something going on when there's a problem or an altercation. The further he is from an area, however, the less able he is to be certain of what's going on.
• Harlem weighs both several million tons and a few hundred pounds. This duality is disorienting to those capable of extreme feats of strength.
• Harlem is slowly becoming semiliterate. It's difficult and slow, so don't expect him to be able to read quickly.

[edit] Themes

Harlem's creation predates the time when I really considered characters to have centralised themes. He was during a period where I would create a new controller every week. In this revamp, I've been trying to strip away the unnecessary and the useless elements that had accrued around the character in time, to eschew the needless elements of him. Harlem had become a lot of things, and this page, like the character, had become cluttered with an ancient past of unnecessary information that was of no interest to anyone in particular.

With that reorientation came revelation. Harlem's central theme has been there since ere I first made him. Hope. Harlem has had hope, he's lost hope, but all the stories he has are about hope in some way or another. The relationship with Wayfare was the quiet, silent hope that somehow, one's good intentions and selfish desires can meet. The CD girl was an avatar for his hope, where he mounted up more and more extreme coincidences in his mind with the idea that if he wanted something truly, impossibly, outrageous, he could have it. The sadness that has followed Harlem has been a result of dashed hopes. For a time there, Harlem strongly believed the first step on the path to despair was to hope.

He got over it. Now he's part of home for everyone in Kings Row.

Musical Themes

• Home Sweet Home - Home Made Kazoku
• Suburban Myth - Less Than Jake
• In The City - The Eagles
• You Belong To The City - The Eagles
• Default - You Can Count On Me
• Hurt - Johnny Cash
• The Kids Aren't Alright - The Offspring
• Desperado - The Eagles
• Out There - Sister Hazel

[edit] Writing

1. A Great Day; Harlem recognises his crush on Wayfare, reorients himself, explodes at Flare Girl, and realises he has to move on.
2. First Time; A right of passage; Harlem does something he's been meaning to do for years.
3. Signs and Portents ~ Homemade Magic; Harbinger to the Rikti War, Harlem felt a need to talk to the Spirit of the Row.
4. Sliver and Scar; The secret to happiness is to realise that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible. - Bertrand Russell
5. Clinging to Nothing; As the CD has shown to be nothing, Harlem considers the women in his life, and exactly what's wrong with him. This started me on the path towards the next piece...
6. Letting Go Again; And thus, the CD girl dies.

[edit] Trivia

• Both of Harlem's parents are still alive.
• Harlem has two half-brothers and a half-sister who are the results of his parent's experimenting with open relationships. One is a doctor, who is more than a little embarassed about his father's pot-smoking habits.
• Harlem favours heavier music, in the vein of ska and punk, to the typical music of his neighbourhood, which favours hip-hop and rap. Regardless, he tends to not mind either way, as long as the music has a beat he can dance to.
• Harlem's tattoos are alive, and reflect the area of the city he's in. They're glittering and fine-lined renderings of regal and royal heraldry in Steel Canyon, tribal and shamanistic when he's in Kings Row, and, perhaps most terrifyingly, almost a full-body length of black-stitched scar in Faultline.
• Harlem solo'd the Faultline plotlines with only Sands of Mu as temporary powers, and solo'd from 5 to 12 in the Hollows street-sweeping with Stone Cages on auto-cast and his player AFK.

[edit] References