Which Faction Do You Play?

[*Strawberry Jam]

There is a government and it's controlled by the Sensates but the Fated lead the largest opposition party.
The Doomguards keep the tools of oppression that the Harmonium wants, and the Harmonium lets people do it either their way or ... well there way is the hard way. :lol:
The Fraternity of Order only cares about ascertaining if a law was actually broken.
Meanwhile the Mercykillers are a gang of thugs that doesn't mind stepping up when they don't see the job getting done. They're also the city torturers, and they'll recruit promising convicts into their gang.

"It's [city] life Jim, but not as we know it."

[*Mr_Otyugh]

I think it can be fine for role play but sometimes it can be a little excessive on many servers. It's a mystery to me but some people get really into it and forget it's not the primary focus of why people play.

Here's why: if you are roleplaying a law upkeeping character, you don't have the privilege to ignore laws being broken infront your face, or if some people report to you who and when commited a crime, it's pretty clear cut. That's not "getting really into it" that's the lowest possible requirement of it. Not to mention that you're not going to get a peaceful time as a Hardhead, there's always constantly issues happening, even if you're just trying to relax in the bar it usually doesn't take more than 30 minutes until someone comes to report or make an issue.

And people are all too keen to ignore the laws and Harmonium, right infront them, and then wonder why the Harmonium actually react to it. It just might be something about location, location and location. The most public places aren't good places for commiting crimes, for one everyone can see you do it, and they're even less good places to try to argue about it. The Harmonium cannot stand public displays of being questioned and if you put them into position where they have to choose either allowing illegal behavior, or conflict... they will almost always choose conflict, because the alternative is worse in the long run, as it sets presedence that "you can commit crimes even if we are watching and get away with it". And yes it is, because people will keep just pointing fingers at that one incidence for years to come "Well yeah, but you let that one guy commit crimes!"

If you don't want to do that, don't choose the most public places as your criminal scenes and then stay around to posture. Either adopt hit and run, go sort it out in private, or try to resolve the matter peacefully. Questioning their core duty isn't going to lead to any other place than one thing, because as lawful characters they will stick to the laws.

I am speaking from experience, I've played 3 separate Harmonium characters... the most common cause of problem is that people are unwilling to comply to anything. And with Harmonium characters generally approaching the matter with few stages of conflict escalation, it more often than not becomes clear that the opposition wants trouble, even if you say it in crystal clear methods "if you persist, I will start to use force". The thing that most misunderstand is that the Harmonium doesn't absolutely care if you agree or disagree with them, they're a very binary about their perspective of laws/peace. So if you cease and desist breaking a law, they'll stop caring, and most people keep complaining for dozens of minutes. A choir to which many of their friends join, heck they'll join even if nothing happened just because a Hardhead is around, sometimes to complain about things that actually never happened but which they used in their characters background. And that's just about the gaming environment a Harmonium can expect in SCoD. Even demons are more publicly accepted and they are a species known for absolute, physical and literal evil.

Bottom line is, playing a Hardhead isn't fun. Mostly because you listen for hours and hours how nobody likes them, and when they do manage to do something right, it's usually shrugged off as "well I coulda done that" or "about time they fixed that, bloody slow pokes". I'd just rather people didn't take them as granted or as target practice for every single rant, no you don't need to like them, but they are doing a valuable service to ensure that conflict can live on. Not because they necessarily create it, but because they care when you do.

[*KittyEmpress]

Bottom line is, playing a Hardhead isn't fun. Mostly because you listen for hours and hours how nobody likes them, and when they do manage to do something right, it's usually shrugged off as "well I coulda done that" or "about time they fixed that, bloody slow pokes". I'd just rather people didn't take them as granted or as target practice for every single rant, no you don't need to like them, but they are doing a valuable service to ensure that conflict can live on. Not because they necessarily create it, but because they care when you do.

This is totally true. I tried to play a Harmonium character and it was just an exercise in futility, where either everyone expected me to solve shit that I hadn't seen, or everyone intentionally started to go out of their way to insult all hardheads and talk about how they are all shitty and bad and should be kicked out of Sigil and etc.


The server definitely feels very Chaotic heavy, despite the fact that I know at least a few of the people who were doing said heckling used paladin dips for their EDM, and thus weren't Chaotic. :P

[*Strawberry Jam]

Well guard/cop complexes aside I do think it is very lore to dislike hardheads and moan & groan about them. It is not alignment related because the Harmonium is a mercenary group that believes it must bring peace to everywhere through oppression. I don't think they will find many allies anywhere but in their own ranks and the Mercykillers.

This is a Harmonium their philosophy is literally might makes right. There is definitely quite a lot of parody and social commentary that went into designing the themes behind all the factions.



This is the Harmonium theme song, replace the name America with Harmonium, and replace World with Planes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1mlCPMYtPk

[*Darkrob]

Yes but like any society (in game or in RL) if you're breaking the law infront of a law officer and you refuse to obey his/her order to stand down... you're gonna get your kneecaps broken.

I've given up playing Harmonium (even just retired my Measure One) because all you get is bull***t thrown at you no matter what you do. You can't win, hell... you can't even place. Everyone wants to play a tough guy and tough guys don't obey the law (how boring and predictable).

[*KittyEmpress]

The oppression part gets super over-inflated here, I feel. Do you know what the Harmonium is known for, besides its red armor? It's known for being the faction with an enormous population of paladins, which yes, even in Planescape are known as beacons of Good and Justice. They are, overwhelmingly, the most likely faction to be Good Aligned - yes, they take Evil members, but they're rare.

Edit: They are at one point described as being the largest collection of Paladins in the Multiverse, outnumbering every other organization that has notable amounts of Paladins.

To the common people of Sigil who aren't criminals, the Harmonium is the ones stopping the Evil Outsiders from killing them and taking their souls, the Harmonium is the ones who keep the insane murderous revolutionary league from blowing up crowded market places, the Harmonium are the ones who not only stop a murderer when he stabs someone, but with a touch of their hands save a life as they do it.


Yes, they believe that war is justified if the end goal is peace, and that conformity with a utopian result is better than individuality with chaos and strife. And some of their members are jerks who think Law is more important than anything else - but unlike how everyone plays it, they are traditionally viewed pretty positively, and do a lot of good things.



In the end, it's like was said above - people defy them because defying authority is cool, and players can't really do anything to them anyways! It happens on every server - and one of two things happens due to it - the guards all quit, like on Sigil, or the guards start super powerbuilding, so that when you say '*** you hardhead idiot' when they try and get you to do something, and you start a fight, they kill you in one turn.

Neither of these are good things.

[*Strawberry Jam]

Mmm I am not sure about this idea that anyone that opposes the harmonium in any way is a trouble maker or a tough guy. Is this roleplaying? :lol:

In th few months I have seen more harmonium act rude and tough guy to other people so this is a perplexing take on it. I think the source books do a very fine job in setting the tone for the Harmonium, and it is often mentioned in very tongue in cheek and funny ways.

They are by definition an antagonistic faction. The planes and Sigil have existed long before they turned up from their prime material plane, but they have since tried to forcefully spread their harmony to other worlds. This is all the lore of the Harmonium, if you read the factol's manifesto and read between the lines it isn't hard to understand that they are not liked by many.

[*Mick64]

Yes but like any society (in game or in RL) if you're breaking the law infront of a law officer and you refuse to obey his/her order to stand down... you're gonna get your kneecaps broken.

Well yes and no, in some situations, say, when you're surrounded by people friendly to your cause, it just might be the law officer who gets his kneecaps broken for trying to arrest you. See what happens in riots for example. Now imagine a riot where the civilians (Adventurers) are the ones with pepper spray and guns (Spells and magical swords and indestructible armor) while the cops (Law officers) are actually -less- well equipped for a violent confrontation.

Which on an unrelated note is one of the sad things about PWs : It's more "punishing" to have your criminal imprisoned for a few days then it is to have your guardsman stabbed to death by a gang member.

Side note aside, in-game events HAVE been showing a more "evil, dominating" harmonium. Not saying it applies to every PC, but most I've seen have been very inflexible. And NPCs as well. So I'm not surprised. I've played a lawkeeper PC (Not a guard, but basically. Very lawful, and everyone came to see her about illegal activity. Did more guard work then the guards) and while it was a different setting, different playerbase... she solved 90% of problems using diplomacy and understanding. That's how you get a guard-type PC that is liked and listened to. The thing is, that's not really how the Harmonium operates. So yeah, they're not going to be generally liked.

[*KittyEmpress]

read between the lines it isn't hard to understand that they are not liked by many.

and if you read the actual lines, you'd find they are actually among the most liked factions, the only one that is generally more popular with the common people being the Sensates, because everyone likes music and art.

Talk about 'read between the lines' all you want, but when the lines you're reading between say 'these people are generally well liked, and good people' and what you're reading between them is 'everyone hates them and shouldn't respect them', it seems more like your own bias against them.



They are so successful and the largest faction in the multiverse because they are well liked. They have a good PR face, and their evil dealings are almost entirely secret [with the big one, the extermination of elves and gnomes on their home plane not even being objectively true, just presented as an option for DMs]. Yes, they have corruptions, they have assholes, but as a whole their main PR is literally 'come to our Prime Material plane, the only one that hasn't had a war in a thousand years, that no one starves in, and everyone lives happy fufilling lives, where there is literally utopia.'

That is the face of the Harmonium, that is what people know about them. The Sensates don't hate the Harmonium because they are brutally conquering worlds, they hate them because they replace art with stability and people actually enjoy that, which is entirely contrary to the idea of the Sensates [and the Free League too]. The Harmonium doesn't oppose the Fated because the Fated want to claim everything as theirs and the Harmonium wants it, the Harmonium opposes the Fated because they legitimately think the Fated are hurting others and that the only way to justify doing that is if it brings happiness to even more people.



Do they do sketchy, evil things? Yes. Every faction does, but almost all of them do it secretly, which means that if you, as a player, judge the Harmonium on your characters for what the sourcebooks tell you about their secrets, then you are metagaming, not roleplaying. It'd be like RPing knowing that the Fated are planning to attempt a coup of the Lady of Pain, or RPing knowing that the factol of the Society of Sensations is killing his own members who he views as too hedonistic and making a bad name for the Sensates, or what not.

Yes, these are all canon things that happen and are true, but guess what - they are entirely different from the public perceptions and what a character should know.


What a character should know about the harmonium is:

Control an entire Prime, where everything is Utopianly Lawful
Is the largest faction
Has more paladins than any other group in the multiverse
Prevent crime in Sigil, and offer healing to those who suffer from crime
Openly recruit and offer people better lives, giving even Hive-born a way to escape the Hive.
Have the fewest number of Fiends of any faction.



If the DM team is making the Harmonium into the jackbooted thugs that have no good public face, then that's on the DM team - because yes, the Harmonium can be jackbooted thugs, they are literally a parody of our police system. But they don't show that side, because they understand that the best way to get their way is to have people willingly side with them.

War is acceptable if peace is the result - but that also implies that war isn't the first thought they have. They are hardheaded, and tough on crime, yes, but that's very different from how people seem to assume they are.

Here's a situation that I feel exemplifies the difference between how Strawberry thinks Harmonium are and how they are as of the sourcebook:


On patrol in the Hive, a Harmonium character notes a person being dragged into a dark alley by a few men who look like gangsters. They would A. make use of their equipment to get backup [because yes, they basically have radios to call in shit] and B. charge in right away after calling for that backup, because they're Harmonium - they are the most highly trained military force that isn't made up of Born-To-Kill Planars, a few thugs are nothing for them.

In the 'how Strawberry views them' version, the officer instead waits for other harmonium, doesn't give a *** about the kidnapped person's safety, and then kills them all.

In the actual version, the officer charges in alone, and makes sure to keep that person alive if possible, likely using their [gasp] paladin abilities to heal them if they're hurt. They probably even go on a stupid spiel about just doing their duty, ma'am/sir.

Oh, and even in the actual version, unless they gave up, the harmonium officer probably still kills all the criminals [they are after all, tough on crime]

[*Strawberry Jam]

Well the actual lines say that most other factions regaurd them as, and I'll quote "playground bullies" so there you have it. Actual lines also state very clearly that good and evil, right and wrong, this is less important than law vs chaos and evil characters are welcomed into Harmonium just as much. The actual lines also state that they go through eight weeks of indoctrination to dull the mind and learn there is only the Harmonium way and no other options.

Now if you want a faction that actually helps people there is the Bleak Cabal which operates soup kitchens and other services for those in need. But there are quirks to that faction too, such as the gloomy philosophies that nothing really matters.

The fact is that Harmonium has a place in lore and it is not as heroes that save the day, except in their own minds.

On patrol in the Hive, a Harmonium character notes a person being dragged into a dark alley by a few men who look like gangsters.

Oh and specifically the books say in several instances that the Harmonium doesn't really care what happens in the Hive and usually stays away. They focus more on places like the Ladys ward where the rich live.