Harmony Leading's page

Harmony was born and grew up in a brothel in Port Peril. It might at first thought seem like a pretty horrible thing, but honestly? It wasn't that bad. Prostitutes are normal human beings, and they didn't treat the child any worse than if she had grown up among a group of merchants or tradesmen. Sure, there were some things that differed from a more conventional upbringing -- she was comparatively early in her life exposed to the sort of stuff that men and women do behind closed doors. She -- or her mother, for that matter -- never knew who her biological father was. She grew up in a very heavily female-dominated environment. Early on, she had very few male role models. But at the end of the day, she played in the streets like a regular kid, had a really warm and affectionate mother who spared no love with Harmony, and was blessed with a group of 'aunts' who were there to look out for her when her mother wasn't available. It was a decent childhood, as these things go.

The trouble started when Harmony started to approach puberty. Starting to fill out from a girl into a woman, and spending a lot of time at or near a brothel was somewhat of an incendiary combination, as many customers started to cast longer looks at her. It was time to get her out of there, her mother decided, and started saving up money for sending Harmony away before she ended up following in her mother's footsteps. Alas, it went a bit to hell before the plan came together.

The thing that broke the situation wasn't anybody's interest in Harmony, but a particularly violent client of her mother's. The brothel was pretty damn strict about keeping Harmony out of the working rooms, and it was something she had learned to obey, but the screams that night were different. Bad. Really bad. And Harmony broke the rules. And the door. And a skull. That was the first time she killed. Doing so saved her mother's life, but it also meant that someone influential in Port Peril was now one child poorer. That was going to have consequences.

Harmony's mother was too badly injured to travel, so instead she gave Harmony what money she had managed to save up until that point, and begged her daughter to take good care of herself. It was a sweltering hot summer when Harmony left Port Peril on the first ship that would take her, not to return for many years to come. Thus began the wandering life of Harmony Leading (rhymes with 'heading', not 'heating').

Over the next years, Harmony took on a lot of odd jobs, a lot of them menial physical labor, such as a deckhand on ships, a dockworker in harbors, shoveling manure at a farm, and so on. One of her favorite memories from this hard working period, however, is a journey into the Chenogg Rainforest on Motaku Isle, as a porter for a Pathfinder Society scientific expedition. All her life, she had grown up with urban grays and browns, dirt and sewage, and then, she was walking in the middle of a lush verdant green paradise, with multicolored fragrant flowers and rainbow-plumed birds all around her. That trip was one of those big memories that stay with a person, and she would dearly love to experience something like it again.

A lot of the time, she stuck to advice given to her by her 'aunts', to conceal her burgeoning female body shape and dress like a boy, and that undoubtedly kept her from a lot of trouble. But as she grew older, she also learned to use what she had. Growing up in the brothel, she had seen so many times how consistently people reacted to certain stimuli, and how easy it was to manipulate people with the right tools. She discovered a natural knack for getting people to do what she wanted. Social situations, it turned out, were her natural element, and as she herself started to realize this, she started to focus her learning in the field that came easily to her. She also made a point out of learning some arcane magic that would synergize with her social skills.

Years passed. Harmony learned social skills and arcane magic. She continued to do odd jobs around the Shackles, although as her skills developed, the jobs she did started moving away from the manual labor, and more towards things like negotiating deals between merchants and skimming a 'consulting fee' off the top. She even spent some time as a fraud psychic in the settlement of Beachcomber, complete with a Varisian folk outfit and a cheap fake crystal ball, telling people what they wanted to hear, that they would be successful in life, how to fix their romantic life, and so on.

But she wanted to see her mother again. Around the end of her teens, she was completing her transformation from girl to woman, and part of that, she felt, was going back to Port Peril. No matter the danger, she wanted to see her mother again. And so she bought passage back to her old home town. Her mother was still working at the brothel, as were several of her 'aunts', and there was much rejoicing and a tearful reunion. It didn't take more than a couple of days for her presence to be betrayed to the influential person whose daughter Harmony had killed.

Because the death had, in Harmony's absence, been legally ruled justified defense, she was not in trouble with the law. But she had a powerful enemy, albeit one who could not overtly act against her in the town. Covertly, however, was another matter. "I want you to make her life a living hell before slitting her throat and throwing her overboard." Cash exchanged hands, and an agreement was made to 'involuntarily recruit' Harmony for a ship that was sailing soon.

And that is how she ended up with a drugged drink at the Formidably Maid as the campaign starts. The rest, as they say, is history yet to be made...

Harmony is True Neutral. On both the good/evil and law/chaos axis, she is not devoted to any extremes, and always weighs the situation and circumstances in her decisions. She's not the type to go back on her word immediately the moment that it becomes advantageous to her, but neither does she have an ironclad resolve to keep any deals made. It all depends on the situation. Similarly, she does not always save and help people, nor does she always take advantage of them and hurt them. Again, it's all very circumstantial.

On the Good side of the fence, she's not big on enslaving or stealing from or killing innocent people. She tries to avoid that sort of stuff where she can. She might even act altruistic and pay someone's way home or rescue children without any reward offered. On the opposite side of the fence, she has few scruples about torture to gain information from enemies who have injured her, and she could sell into slavery someone who doesn't count as an innocent to her. Innocent versus corrupt counts very, very heavily into how Harmony treats people.

When doing good: "I did some good, made the world a slightly better place, and managed to skim some off the top for me. It's a good day."
When doing bad: "I had to do some pretty crappy stuff today, but it paid damn well. I'll feel a little bit bad while having caviar. It's a good day."

She's not the "I lied."/"Rules don't apply to me." type who will stab you in the back at the drop of a hat when a reason and opportunity presents itself. She sees value in some level of social contracts and order, and is more of the cooperative sort than the fiercely individualistic sort. Having said that, "The code is more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules.", and she won't stick to her word no matter what sort of hell it drags her through. When she makes an agreement, it does endure some level of strain, but it does break if heavily stressed.

Harmony is heavily concentrated on the art of diplomancy. She does not provide the typical bard niches of knowledge monkey and secondary healer, so there would be a good opening in party composition for a knowledge-focused wizard or a heavily healing-focused character. I envision her ending up as ship's captain, talking everyone onto her side, or if another player character would be well suited for the captain's role, then Harmony could serve as ship's "ambassador", being sent by the captain in charge of non-combat away missions, negotiations, selling plunder and so on. Between the high Diplomacy, spells like Charm Person and Hypnotism, and class abilities like Fascinate and Fast Talk, this type of character is obviously geared toward trying to defuse potentially hostile situations with a non-combat solution. Of course, I don't expect to succeed nearly every time.

I'm particularly interested in fleshing out the ship's crew in interactions with them. Being a diplomancer, I want to really (metaphorically) dance among the NPCs and build relationships with them, although of course not to the exclusion of party interaction, more like to round things out. I'm really interested in playing the part of the glue between NPCs and NPCs, between PCs and PCs, and between PCs and NPCs all alike. The person everyone turns to, the person who knows everyone's secrets. This is the angle I want to work really hard. It would probably be good to have a chat about how much I can adopt/puppet NPCs and how much should be left to DM control, to make sure both are on the same page.

I am especially looking forward to having a major role in building the mutiny in Book 1, and in cracking the Tidewater Rock in Book 2. (I have read the first three books, but of course my character does not know what I know.)

I'm aiming for Leadership at 7th level, and gaining a melee-focused combat cohort at that point to shore up my obvious combat weakness. I'm also considering the possibility for an animal companion through the Nature Soul - Animal Ally - Boon Companion line of feats, if it turns out that the party is lacking in melee ability. If party melee ability is solid, I could instead head my feats in an item crafting direction (most importantly Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Wondrous Item) so that the party could have custom magic items. I'm also throwing around other ideas, I'm not locked into any specific plan other than the Leadership feat which I really would like to do. Class-wise, single-classed all the way.

01 Day: Influence Barefoot Samms Toppin (Diplomacy 25)
01 Ngt: Sleep
02 Day: Influence crew with fake fight story (Oratory 30)
02 Ngt: Sleep
03 Day: Dire rats in bilges
03 Ngt: "Whip of Calen Torn" (Oratory 25)