Fatal Harmonic/Archive

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:	18
Height:	5'7"
Weight:	Well over two hundred million tons, and about 90 kg
Eye Color:	Brown-green
Hair Color:	Brown
Biographical Data
Nationality:	American
Occupation:	Senior student
Place of Birth:	King's Row, Paragon City
Base of Operations:	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.

Fatal Harmonic, otherwise known as Harlem, or Harm to his friends, is an unaffiliated superhero, played by Talen Lee.

Harlem has also been one of my most organic characters. While with others, such as Battlebriar and Knight Rain, I had a clear goal in mind, a clear direction for them to go in, Harlem was very much at a loose end. All of the roleplay he's wound up with has happened almost by accident; Rapace and Harlem teamed once because I was sick of trying to solo and no PUGs were biting in Faultline, and the rest spiralled out from there.

Affiliations

Listen, Dyne. Even when Harlem's not in King's Row, he's in King's Row.

- An unknown member of the 93rd to a troll invading Irregular turf, just before the troll was hit by a truck^[1].

Harlem is once again a ranked member of the 93rd Irregulars, a street gang based in King's Row. Typically speaking, the Irregulars are more of a neighbourhood watch, and their actions of self-defense and gang warfare have abated since the Skulls began using metahuman-level abilities. While he was working with Project Corona, Harlem was not allowed to operate with these friends, and he has taken the opportunity to reconnect with his gang roots^[2].

As a member of the Irregulars, he feels a strong tie to King's Row, and therefore spends much of his time patrolling the area.

Backbeat

"I find it hard to have a normal conversation with any woman who's mentioned wearing my sister's underwear."
"You're wearing her boots."

- Harlem and Backbeat

Backbeat and Harlem have been friends for several years, and Harlem has recently become aware that Backbeat is interested in him as a partner, as well as a friend. He respects her strength and independence, and she respects his; a meeting of equals, almost.

Chloe Marque

Chloe and Harlem met by chance in King's Row, and have found themselves very close friends. Sometimes Harlem sleeps in her house, and because he can touch her, he shares simple pleasures with her - sports, board games and laser tag.

Flare Girl

"Good god, you're a whore. I mean, Kacey's gone for a week and you're engaged? I never so much as kissed her and it took me longer to get over her."

- Harlem, to Flare Girl's back, afraid to say it to her face

Harlem, as an older brother, sees Flare Girl as he would see a friend's obnoxious younger sister. He has referred to her in a derogatory fashion ('That' and 'it' being some of the more common terms), and he generally sees her as a high-strung little drama queen. Of course, even if he's right, he's still rude about how he behaves; he's obnoxious and antagonistic about her when they're not working, and Flare Girl has made her displeasure known by knocking him unconscious when he refused to back down from threats from Thryth.

Gator Aide

Harlem has found the little snapper to be a proud, vigilant, and ultimately helpful cohort, and has actually been heard to remark she's going to be an unholy terror in the project in about four years' time.

The Junk Giant

Harlem treats the Junk Giant with a kind of quiet curiosity. The street life to which Harlem has become accustomed is not the kind of life that creates in one introspective attitudes about what truly defines life. On the other hand, Harlem's connectivity to the city means that he's very capable of recognising that constructed objects have life - and indeed, that all things are to some extent or another constructed.

Laurel

"Um, you couldn't sleep with my mother. She thinks you're black."

- Laurel

Harlem is utterly convinced that Laurel is a joke and is waiting for the punchline. Nobody is that nice, that white, and that pristine, in a city like this. Harlem has consistantly tried to provoke Laurel, to try and earn some reaction from Laurel, but all to no avail. The boy is simply indefatigable, and seems blissfully unaware of the class gulf that stands between himself and Harlem.

Harlem has given up on this one, really; as much as he doesn't get Laurel, he does have to admit that complete ignorance seems to work just fine as far as anti-class discrimination. Harlem can even keep himself restrained when Laurel good-naturedly steps over the line and offends him.

Rapace

"You, my friend, are head-over-retard for that girl."

- Harlem, watching Rapace watch Wayfare

Harlem now considers Rapace one of his closest friends. The pair have worked well together and Harlem trusts Rapace's ability to a fault. Harlem has, in turn, sighingly taken it upon himself to be Horatio to Rapace's Hamlet, the voice of his better angels, particularly in the matter of his love life^[3]. Harlem's attempts at friendship incarnate themself as pushiness and an almost noisome refusal to let Rapace squirm out of receiving favours, but the intent is good.

Spirit of the Row

Harlem has met, and worked with the direction of, the physical personification of King's Row itself. By and large, he seems to have little to no reason to think this is odd at all, and has not so much as commented on it. He tends to call him simply 'Big Guy', and generally speaking, moves on to more important matters of hurting people.

Personality

Harlem is a street kid, from a family of two stoners and a few half-siblings, in a rough neighbourhood with a tough upbringing. Given that he didn't gain any powers until he was fourteen, he's very used to fighting for what he wants, and is best described as scrappy.

Harlem's upbringing was about being a white kid in a black part of King's Row, and he, along with his half-and-otherwise siblings, spent a lot of time trying to indulge their father's spiritualist side. The practical upshot of it is that Harlem is well-adjusted and understanding of other people's perspectives, even though he had what would classically be seen as a harsh upbringing.

Harlem is very much an aspect of street culture, and an aspect that sees itself expressed in the way he treats people. Everything that he truly considers 'his' is very tightly guarded, as he sees that anything he can't hold in his hands, anything he can't fight for and keep through his own strength isn't really his.

Harlem is proud of his heritage, and while he is not exceptionally well-educated (certainly not compared to the supergeniuses and even normal geniuses that populate the Project), he has shown a very dab hand with practical skills. Harlem doesn't much value high theory, or advanced physics or the like, treating most things in life pragmatically.

Powers

I threw your people out of my street when we had nothing but sticks and stolen guns, Dyne. Here and now, I have god on my side. I'm not afraid of you."

- Harlem, to Thryth, about half a second before being knocked unconscious

Harlem's powers stem from an initial discussion with his father, who suggested that, as part of his growing up, Harlem should experiment with some reasonably harmless drugs, then go on a 'spiritual journey'. Harlem's father expected his son to quietly dope up in his room and have a serious thought of his life as it stretched out before him, and expected this to help the boy start to avoid what his father saw as an eventual life of street vigilantism spreading out before him. His son was prone, when he saw gang activity on their street, to call out the Irregulars, who would, with stolen firearms and makeshift weaponry, eject people from their street.

The effect didn't take well. Harlem, instead took a very small dose of some leaves obtained during research into shamanism in South American nations, stepped out of his apartment building, and whilst on the front step, experienced the single most phenomenal epiphany of his life. Standing, listening to the thumping music of the Irregulars as they celebrated their independence, surrounded by King's Row, which was surrounded by Paragon City, which was surrounded by the United States itself, Harlem felt for the first time, the sonourous heartbeat of the city itself, a bass rhythm that shook so deep that nobody had heard it for generations. It was a living thing, and people were its lifeblood. Harlem stood in awe on that step for several hours, before turning around and closing the door.

Since that day, nobody has bothered 93rd Street in King's Row.

Home-Made Magic

Ultimately, Harlem is a spellcaster, a mage by any other name. While nomenclature is an issue for those who study matters and do little else, the closest approximation that can be made is a form of shamanism. Harlem does not memorise spells, or even tap magic from inside himself. He reaches out with his soul to the world around him, touching it and binding it, finding the magic that exists in all things. Having done so, he then gives that magic a vessel of some thought, an idea or an ideal, something familiar, and uses that as his focus.

Simply put, Harlem grabs magic, sticks it to something, and wields the something like a club. Given his musical skill and his connection to the force of the city, most often he uses songs as foci, and to hell with delicacy. That he is so simply and intuitively efficient at this kind of modern-day shamanism is quite possibly impressive to more scholarly pursuants of magical study.

Heart of the City

When the ground itself is your enemy, where can you stand and fight?

Harlem is intensely connected to the city, and it expresses itself where, at his whim, the ground breaks apart, ripples open and imprisons, snares, or simply crashes into his foes. Harlem is inexact and vengeful in the application of this power - he prefers to swat a fly with a sledgehammer, rather than employ the normal finesse that many similar heroes use. More, in his mind, is generally better.

For all that Harlem is a part of the city, and tears it apart to bring low his opponents, he is still almost untraceable within its boundaries. Wherever he goes, no matter how tortured a street scene may be, as Harlem leaves, the landscape heals.

Rhythm of Life

The Heart of the City is an engine of music, a thumping bass beat that drives all life and stimulates us all. It has refrains and crescendos, crests and lulls, and Harlem can tap this force and weave songs like magic. Every flat surface around Harlem is a speaker, and he never goes anywhere without music and magic weaving around him in a song.

Harlem can weave together short songs of music - sometimes instrumental pieces, but more often than not, songs from his own collection that he imbues with shamanistic connections to protection - and weave them around himself and his friends, to protect them. The harmony as the music moves together is often awe-inspiring, as he and his friends, each one carrying the song that resonates out from them like a concert, move across the battlefield in an anthem of unassailable destruction.

What's pertinent is what Harlem can't do. His powers are crudely constructed spells attached to songs, songs that he then binds in a physical space, giving the very air around him a form of resonance. He can't:

• Generate silence, or counter noise; his only solution to sound he doesn't like is to drown it out;
• Shatter objects with subtle harmonics; he can break glass, but he has to do it with a loud note that's very much noticeable;
• Induce nausea in someone thanks to a 'brown note' mechanic;
• Cause seasickness or perform any other subtle manipulation of sound.

Often, the thematics of a song Harlem weaves are important, if not vital, to the effect of the song. The auras he uses to protect his friends tend to be anthems about home, safety, protection, fire, ice, and survival. Given his musical tastes, this gives him a huge field of possible options to choose from. He's always looking for new music, though.

Part of the Landscape

Harlem is, now that he's shamanically bonded to the city, part of the city in the same way the hills rising in Boomtown are, or the skyscrapers of Steel Canyon are. When weighed by any emperical scale, he immediately zeroes them out, even including several highway scales used for cargo trucks, and a marine cargo crane as well. Some super-strong characters have, demonstrating their colossal strength, been able to deadlift Harlem somewhat, and the conservative estimates of his 'weight' in this regard are at two hundred million tons.

Despite this, Harlem doesn't tear through floors or even walls when he's thrown around. He is steadfast and hard to move, but he moves as a normal teenage boy with a history of basketball and street fighting behind him. Knight Rain at one point described Harlem as "weighing two hundred million very small tons.", and Moloch Horridus suggested that Harlem is "a mountain, walking lightly."

Whatever the reason, Harlem seems to be very able to defy these values and project himself extaordinary heights off the ground, and his leaps and bounds have only increased over time, just as he becomes harder and harder to knock over.

Abilities

Harlem is a pretty dab hand with a trowel and is fairly well-acquainted in the behaviours around drug paraphanalia. He can also play the piano, break-dance, and is an accomplished basketball player, though since his Awakening, he has opted against playing with unpowered people because it's incredibly unfair.

Dirty Fighter

In addition to all this, however, is Harlem's education in street combat. While not enough of a force to be considered a powered individual, Harlem is quite adept at attacking opponents in close quarters melee. It's far from a speciality of his, but he's easily the match of most athletes his age in the field of bare-knuckle boxing^[4].

Let's Make a Deal

"You're buying a new TV? Okay, I'm coming with you. You'll pay too much otherwise."

Harlem has an absolutely wicked way with shopkeepers. Typically speaking, he never pays full price for anything he wants, and is excessively frugal and thrifty. Chances are it's his poor upbringing, but Harlem is also resistant to offers of charity; he finds the idea that he can't fend for himself offensive. With that in mind, everything he does is on a Quid Pro Quo basis. Hunting out resources for his fellow students - resources the Project is not likely to provide, such as video games, concert tickets, and so on - tends to result in owing Harlem a favour, a favour he tends to bank for a good, long time.

Weaknesses and Limitations

Harlem is, for all that he has the weight and mass of a mountain, he is still a normal boy who has only as much muscle mass as a fairly active youth has given him. He still takes damage as much as anyone else - though he is getting tougher - and he can only hit so hard compared to super-powered monsters, mutant freaks, and master martial artists.

Harlem is also psychically, open as a book; indeed, his mind is neatly arranged for anyone to enter and wander into, like a city itself. Harlem is a little concerned about this, but there isn't actually anything he can do per se to protect himself from that kind of mental assault - at least, nothing he can do without fundamentally changing who he is.

Harlem no longer does drugs recreationally. He used to share a joint with his father on the weekends as a father-son bonding issue, but as his heroing responsibilities have picked up and his father's marijuana use went from being casual to medical, he has grown much more serious about the topic. Harlem hasn't told anyone that his father's dying, and the topic is kept within the family.

Harlem is not a spirallingly depressed or deranged lunatic, but he is a little mopey. His work has lost its normal cheer - the quiet joy of doing the good things for those people who deserve it - and has become much more about going through the motions, making life better for those around you without the same delight that stems from same. Harlem can't help but feel that his life is to be spent making other people happy, and at the end, there will be no happiness left for him.

Character History

Harlem joined the Project a year ago, after establishing himself as a local protector of his home street in King's Row. The actual process of integration has been relatively sedate, with most of the project more interested in their own foci. Overall, Harlem is happy for the quiet inattention.

Knight of the 93rd

Harlem's first outings in Paragon City were actually at the side of Junk Giant and Gator-Aide, clearing out gang activity that infringed on King's Row. It was during this time that he first began to acquaint himself with the Project's particularly hell-bent style.

Harlem eventually returned to King's Row to beat back the gang incursions and protect 93rd street with even more direct force than before, even going so far as to thwart a potential attack on the bank.

Blackened Hollows

The three then set out to take on the Outcast and Troll scourges in the Hollows, doing their part to subjugate the persistent gangland threats there. Harlem actually found himself disinterested in this work, as he feels the Hollows are as good a place as any for the gangs to fight over.

Scourge of Perez

As of late, Harlem has been seen with large groups of heroes of all stripes running the streets in Perez Park. Taking the fight to his opponents, Harlem has been making his presence felt as a full-scale terror to the Skulls, and has been making a point of making the heavily populated paths of the Boneyard clear of all congregations of gangs. His particular abilities make him remarkably suited at this kind of street arrests.

Monster Hunter

So far, Harlem has found himself assisting groups dealing with no less than three different Giant Monsters. He's not sure how much impact he had, but he has been a stalwart assistant of groups dealing with Kraken, a Paladin, and a Babbage. Harlem has found himself extremely incensed at these creatures, finding they're entities who believe their size and size alone justifies whatever course of action they may pursue. He ultimately feels them to be the greatest of bullies in a city like this.

Welcome to Faultline

Harlem, following the path of the Lost - one of the more insidious street gangs in King's Row, a gang of quasi religious fanatics equipped with superpowered alien technology - has found the trail leading him to Faultline, where the Lost are on their own path, talking of 'the transformation'. His actual work in Faultline has been relatively light - he keeps coming back to the Row to deal with affairs there - but he has met Fusionette.

Win by the Fault

Harlem's excursions into Faultline have proven to be relatively intense. Perhaps worryingly for the cops of Faultline, Harlem's presence has brought with it some elements of the 93rd, which has in turn led to a counter-push by the Lost. Harlem has, between his warfare against the Lost and the fallout that causes around Arachnos, incited the same kind of territorial behaviour that the rest of the Row tends to own.

With Friends Like These

Harlem's excursions in Faultline included introducing himself to and befriending Rapace, who has proven to be a good friend. However, part and parcel with this friendship is Rapace's own issues with his ex-girlfriend, Wayfare, and the odd not-quite-love-triangle between Wayfare, Flare Girl, and Rapace.

Harlem has a remarkably low tolerance for the kind of social tiptoeing that's going on, and tends to apply a sledgehammer to the conversation. He's blatantly partisan - he's on Rapace's side, and his relationship to Flare Girl is antagonistic at best - but he has nonetheless, travelled with and worked alongside the three in an attempt to help out.

Harlem tries to not speak much while they're working; the betterment of the city and the betterment of its people takes, in his mind, precedence over his personal feelings on their social interaction. In fact, it blissfully means he can keep his attention elsewhere, since it's one of the few times Rapace seems to be able to focus as well.

Almost as a footnote to this, Harlem found his father was dying of a bone cancer, something unrelated to the various drugs and paraphanalia he'd been indulging in, and it has led to Harlem being very serious and quiet about the subject of family.

New Refrain

You need a girlfriend, man.

- Rapace

Harlem is now at a loose end. His attempts to help his friends - Flare Girl, Rapace, and Wayfare - have utterly bottomed out on him, with everyone sorting out their own problems through no input on his part. His father's cancer has responded to treatment, and the Rikti invasion has been pushed back through almost no work on his part.

Simply put, the young man feels useless. He's thrown himself back into his work, networking the communities of the Row with other areas. He continues to funnel youth to his sister's gyms in the Row, and quietly connect people with resources they need, be they prevention or cure. Harlem's first foray into solving 'super' problems has given him a lurching realisation that for all he wants to help, he lacks the means to truly do it. Harlem has resolved to try and keep his nose out of people's problems.

Chasing Dreams

We made Tarot because we didn't know about psychology. We made Astrology because we didn't have astronomy. The way of the shaman is to take things that don't seem to connect to human experience and make the. Because we have to - because it's how we show ourselves the kind of humans we are. And if this never comes true... then it's just a metaphor.

Harlem has recently found himself alone amongst a crowd. Since overcoming his crush on Kacey, he found himself feeling more and more adrift, but still aware; and he has taken to viewing the CD that she gave him - an untitled mix tape of songs she 'found cool' - as an unconscious prophet, a sign of a girl that he's one day going to meet, and has to notice when he does.

The idea is fanciful and romantic; the idea of one's true love, rendered in music, a sillhouette of song gifted by an unconscious Cassandra. Harlem has found on those nights where he feels his heart is going to cave in from loneliness that even the dream of love is enough to keep him going; even the hope.

Harlem hasn't got the time to be sad, or bitter about it, except when he dreams. When he lies back and lets sleep claim him, he knows he wakes up alone. He knows that in a population of millions, he, the shaman, has to travel between them, has to find the lost ones and the weak, and protect those who can't. This duty weighs heavily on the boy.

The CD

• Village Stompers - Midnight in Moscow
• The Raveonettes - Love Can Destroy Everything
• Rilo Kiley - The Good That Won't Come Out
• Adam Brodsky - Blow Me
• Magnetic Fields - The Book Of Love
• The Turtles - Elenore
• Fishing For Comets - A Black Thought
• Adam Brodsky - Uncivil Rights
• The Raveonettes - Noisy Summer
• Louis Armstrong - Dream A Little Dream Of Me
• Rilo Kiley - Portions For Foxes

Life As We Know It

"I'm going to die alone and lonely, aren't I?"
"Yeah, if that's what you want."

- Harlem and the Spirit of the Row

Right now, Harlem sees it as his duty to get a life. The Shaman of the Row has to be a bit selfish, or he's going to kill himself with worry. He never really realised why so many shaman of the past indulged in drugs and sex and had multiple wives or whatever. It's because when you spend all your waking moments helping others, you forget utterly how to help yourself... and you wind up overindulging.

Harlem still has dreams of true love. He knows he wants to find it. He doesn't know if he will. So, in lieu of that, he has been seeking ways to cheer himself up. Hobbies and pasttimes. He's found that basketball is not so fun against powereds (who can typically best him with great ease), or unpowereds (who have a hard time blocking a guy who weighs two hundred million tons). Baseball is slow, football too tactical. Music videos are like watching ugly people have sex^[5], and long TV series are predictable. Harlem still wants to find some kind of hobby, some kind of pasttime he can enjoy.

Right now, he's mainly making do by visiting bars and clubs with unused instruments and letting them be played again. It's not what he was looking for - it's a hobby that benefits others and gives life to otherwise unwanted instruments - but it's better than nothing. It's close. It's something. And maybe he'll find something else fun to do.

Breaking Out, Breaking Free

Fuck you, I want my friend back.

- Fatal Harmonic

Harlem quit Project Corona recently, realising that he simply had no reason to be there. He perpetually skipped class, finding work to do far more important than his supposed education. His truancy had led to him being eliminated from the only educational course that might have held his interest^[6], and the Project's strong focus on teams that were more than the sum of their parts was somewhat lost on Harlem, who had little affiliation within the group and spent most of his time feeling like an odd outsider.

Combined with this is Backbeat's recent disappearance. Leaving him a song in her guitar, speaking of sadness and respect and loneliness and that she would be back, Harlem turned to the only thing he had left, the search for this mystical Girl In The CD...

... only to find himself utterly distraught, that the CD had changed, changed to the face of some other girl. Harlem sat back, in Backbeat's bedroom, listening to a totally new music that described a totally new girl, his best friend vanished, his quest for true love shown to be a farce, and could do nothing but break down into sobbing, shattered tears.

Stolen Songs And Nonsense

Harlem attempted to get rid of the CD at this point. Believing the CD to be nothing more than a mirror, a device that reflected in music its listener, he realised how stupid and nonsensical his pursuit of this girl had been. First he handed it to a random passerby, who recognised him, found him later, and returned it. Then he threw it out a window, only to have it wind up on his parent's living room table when he visited them that week. He set it on the road and watched as car after car ran over the case and the CD and found it still in impeccably perfect condition. Harlem tried breaking it with his hands, and found it beyond even the ability of his unnaturally-heavy weight to snap or shatter.

Disconsolate, Harlem turned to one of his only friends left, Chloe Marque, and poured out his heart^[7], giving her the CD, hoping she might listen to it - might enjoy it. He has put distance between himself and Chloe, though - he knows he's lonely and knows he's desperate, and he knows Chloe is in love with him. He doesn't want to initiate a relationship on those grounds^[8], and he knows that much more contact around the sweet, pretty, flirtatious girl would break his resolve.

Harlem wants to forget the entire Dream Girl farce. He thinks it now a great lie - a self-delusion he needed to get past his crush on Kacey. He holds no rancor for those around him about this but feels so empty and heartless after all that he has been through. His dream girl is nothing, his prophecy a parlour trick, his hopeful romance a lie. Harlem is disgusted with himself and achingly, achingly alone.

The thing that truly burns him right now, however, is not how the prophecy is false - it's how once again, something he truly wanted he was shown he could never have. Harlem wants romance. Harlem wants a mystic true love. He wants this so badly, and worse, thinks he deserves it - his whole life having been a series of putting other people first.

And he may have thrown away two chances at it chasing a silly dream.

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

Fiction Featuring Fatal Harmonic

• A Great Day; Harlem recognises his crush on Wayfare, reorients himself, explodes at Flare Girl, and realises he has to move on.
• First Time; A right of passage; Harlem does something he's been meaning to do for years.
• Signs and Portents ~ Homemade Magic; Harbinger to the Rikti War, Harlem felt a need to talk to the Spirit of the Row.
• Sliver and Scar; The secret to happiness is to realise that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible. - Bertrand Russell
• 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...
• Letting Go Again; And thus, the CD girl dies.

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.
• During the Rikti invasion, Harlem's focus has been on the little people - so much heroic effort and time has been pulled to deal with the invasion, which means that more of the normal crimes are let to run rampant, like looting and assault.
• Harlem claims to be a virgin, though he's gotten to third base with Corollary^[9].
• 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 King's Row, and, perhaps most terrifyingly, almost a full-body length of black-stitched scar in Faultline.
• Looking Harlem in the eyes can be a breathtaking experience; you see the vista of life, of the thousands upon thousands of people under his care, the city that he loves and that loves him in turn.
• Everything Harlem wears, in his first two outfits, is second hand. The coat he wears as Knight of the Row is a gift from the other Knights, but its torn sleeves indicate that the hard-worn leather has gone for a very, very long time before the Knights bought it. Harlem is intensely proud of this.
• Harlem's boots are actually his sister's boots, with newspaper stuffed in the toes.

Footnotes

1. ↑ That fell off a nearby roof.
2. ↑ "There is no god. There's Just Us."
3. ↑ Irony abounds.
4. ↑ Who doesn't love providing an in-character reason for the Sands Of Mu veteran reward?
5. ↑ You know it has to happen somewhere, but, oh, god, did someone have to put it on film?!
6. ↑ Music and the Arts.
7. ↑ "You're twenty two? When does this stop? When does the world stop being so fucking unfair and hurtful? What do I have to do for people to not just cluck their tongues and sigh at my teen angst bullshit and start being sympathetic about someone legitimately sad about a shitty situation?!"
8. ↑ Not because it was her, but because she was there.
9. ↑ Harlem has come to treat his virginity as if it were something precious and beautiful to give to his Dream Girl - because he feels there is nothing else in his life worth giving. Richer boys can give better gifts, cleverer boys can make different gifts, and prettier boys can be better gifts; all Harlem feels he has to offer his love is the knowledge he's been waiting for her... it's not known how he's going to react to losing his idea that this dream girl exists.