Still being something of a lore noob, I have to ask: Is being, apparently, someone worthy of receiving personal attention from him a good thing? To clarify, basically last mission ended up with myself and the team at a casino to handle some mob business. Played the slots, roulette, etc. Made my way to a poker game(the hacker already there), along with an elvish gentleman. Eventually cleaned everyone out save myself and him. I almost clean him out, and then he asks for 'one more hand', and pulls out the keys to...well, whatever the 2072 equivalent of an Aston Martin is, some ridiculously nice, expensive custom-built two-door. Hand plays out..he goes all in. I go all in as well. I lose. He tosses the keys to me anyway, something about not having had a challenge and the idea of a cultured ork being rare.

Oh, and I find out something a few min later: a card left in my pocket. A very, very old card, wild-west era almost, with a gunshot hole in the corner, and the picture of a joker\harlequin. The hacker and street-sam troll OOC start flipping out. All I know is he's an old crazy elf.

Just how screwed am I? Or how badly is the team in trouble?

Quick answer, Harlequin is probably the most powerful metahuman mage on the planet. Nice for you GM to have played up his chaotic nature by having you get the keys anyway.

He is without a doubt one of the big boys in the Shadowrun universe. And like working for/with/near any of the big movers and shakers there can be big rewords and big risks. Basically if Harlequin is around something major is likely to go down, and its a good idea to be on your toes.

I do hope noone had planted a bomb on the car to get him before he gave the keys away.


cheap move but it was either you or the valet

No.

Consider him as a elven shaped dragon and think about it carefully




and never ever ask him if you can borrow his facepaint

Never trust an elf.

Especially one that is 5,000+ years old.

Bye
Thanee

P.S. But he is basically a good guy. Just a lil eccentric.

Harlequin is probably one of the deadliest/most powerful individual metahumans you're ever likely to come across. He was a master Mage and swordsman 5,000 years ago and has pretty much only gotten better since. He's also had a good couple hundred years to pick up firearms as well.

That said as immortal elves go he's probably the most predictable. At least in that he's completely unpredictable. My read is he's got a good heart, but is something of a tragic hero who follows his own moral compass, and screw the rest. He's got a penchant for theatrics (and that lovely facepaint). And he holds grudges awfully well too.

In Conclusion,
Harlequin: Likes a good laugh. Likes a good story.
Occupation: Travelling dilettante, reluctant hero.
Notable Quotation: Ha! Fraggin' Ha!
Take him at face value, watch your back and always remind yourself: his Matrix handle is the "The Laughing Man." What is he laughing about?

...*epic facepalm* And Im playing the face that likes to TELL good stories, tell jokes, and is a Large Ham.

Ill just get working on my will in-character.

could be your GM is just fucking with you O.o
wheels within wheels within wheels and all that . .

true that

we had one part of my last game when someone signed in as good old H at a hotel and OOC we were very worried

All came to a head in the classic in the street stand off and IC we didnt back down cause we had no real reason to be worried. Turned out ok was someone trying to blag it as someone much scarier then they really were


Damm wannabes eh

Enh, true, given the GM's style its possible. He's also a fan of steadily ramping up the scale of things assuming of course you make it that far. So there's evidence for both. So frak it. Ill go have some soycaf and if H wants to drop by, Ill break out the booze and a deck of cards.

I'd think Harlequin would be one of the less impersonated of the big canon characters. After all, he's probably one of the least publicly famous Immortal Elves in the Sixth World, outside of the shadows. He spends most of his time dealing with the Elder Gods things which want to destroy the world as we know it rather than holding public office.
Or Addressing the young elven technologist assemblies.

I'd venture a guess that only those who were publicly hiding their identities (Council of Tir Tairngire) or recluses like Leonardo are less well known.

As far as being worried about your character, Harlequin (if it's really him) may just be paying you a compliment, and then going off to slay his own proverbial dragons after you gave him a fun time. That doesn't mean the car ISN'T trapped or a time bomb waiting to happen but it also doesn't mean it absolutely is.

Maybe your GM bought the Harlequin's Back PDF and is now setting the stage for it...

Bye
Thanee

Be careful. Sometimes your GM is just throwing a little extra color in, sometimes they have a really cool plot using the old fluff set up, and sometimes they really want to play a "super-awesome" GMPC that you're gonna watch do everything for the next three sessions.

Fluffwise he's bad news, a dragon or great dragon level threat.

It all depends. Do you consider Dunkelzahn a threat or not? Because the Big D listened to Harlequin's orders not to discuss the Immortals & Horrors & all that rot...

I wouldn't really say that. He's involved in the biggest thing going down in the next thousand years, but it tends to only involve sporadic activity; he has time to pursue petty vendettas, spend an awful lot of time on Shadowland, and has canon fiction showing him feeling aimless and just holing up and drinking (ancient magical liquor, granted, but still). My guess is that most of the time he's just keeping himself occupied. Making him annoyed at you is always bad, really catching his interest is likely to make your life excessively interesting, but if you just had a passing encounter with him it could easily turn into nothing at all.

~J

Or his GM may be

The OP should *not* read the spoiler.

You should put the warning before the spoiler if you want any chance of it actually not getting read.

~J

Enh, I dont click on spoilers until at least glancing at the rest of a post, so no harm done in this instance.

Or you do what I do with him; just to have an NPC that can do anything he wants to cheese off some of the PC's, particularly by Levitating them, gently, into things, and making "Bump!" noises.

Granted, this has only occured maybe twice ever in my running SR (over a decade at this point) and he did do some other things to help further the overarching plot of the campaign. Still, good times screwing with the PC's and them being unable to do anything about.

Harlqeuin has been seen once in passing in the background by the players as a contact of a old PC gone NPC (pretty much the groups Jayne Cobb as the rest of the players are NOT combat heavy), but little is known about him other that he seems to be a bit flakey....but seems to have a hold over said NPC. I treat Harl like one would treat Fire. with respect and distance. he should only be used lightly in a inscrutable manner

Depends, really. Would an ant find the personal attention of a child with ADHD and a magnifying glass to be a good thing? "Ooh, shiny! Look! Look! It's so small! It has legs! And, wow! Look at it go! I wonder what happens when I do thi*POOF* Oh, no, it's on fire. Look, another ant!" It's pretty much the same thing, on both a power scale and a reaction scale.

Sometimes wise GM's just throw characters in just to have you run into them in passing. It wouldn't necissarily take it as implication that you've got his attention, Harly is just playing out his distinctive style flaw with the card.

It might be just color or it might be foreshadowing. people have already mentioned H is probably one of the single most powerful entities alive. The peer of great dragons not just in wealth and konwledge but real power too. That should give you pause to think.

Now one other element no one has brought up yet. He is also the single most powerful force for Good in the world. He meddled before but when the Big D sacrifieced himself he passed to H the mantle of the protector of meta-humanity.

In that role H has acted in convoluted plts to direct humanity along paths that will help them grow and protect them from dangers outside their own creating. It would not be too much of a stretch to see him as the last shining knight, Gandalf, Obi-wan kenobi. He seems flighty and chaotic but he is usually several moves ahead of all the other players in the game and knows it. but the wild guy facade usually blinds you to his ability which is just how he likes it.

It would not be too far off to think of him as Lancelot, looking for Galahad.

Is there a book where he's portrayed like that? Again, the opening of HB suggests that most of the time he's more like Lancelot, alone and alienated from what friends he has that haven't died and cooped up in a hermitage.

~J

I think it's more who he has the potential to be, and is likely to grow back into after Big D's sacrifice. Giving him Richard's armor and Excalibur in his will is a big nudge in that direction.

Excalibur doesn't exist. It exists as an idea in the metaplanes, but Ehran and Harlequin outright say that it's horseshit.

He's not 'alone and alienated' - he vists Aina in the 2050's, and it's mentioned that he goes to Tir Na Nog for a wedding (or Tairngire? I can't remember) and the like. He was by himself because he didn't have any purpose to commit himself to.

Which did not prevent D to mention it in it's will, even if he admits he has misplaced it somewhere . A gift is not necessarily a material item, it can be the gift of a purpose and a motivation to somebody momentarily lacking them through the mention of a symbol and a reminder of a past long gone.

The sword maybe, but there's SOMETHING that's defined as Excalibur. To the point that the Pendragon was carrying it around and H went and talked to him about it (off-camera, of course).

Conceding the point for the sake of argument (because I don't have time to do the research—and I'll grant that, on rereading the whole HB intro, he perks up quite a bit by the end), he still appears to have a fairly open schedule compared to some of the other Power Players—meaning that showing up does not imply Big Things Afoot nearly as much as one might expect.

~J

My reading of HB is that the huge quest of it is part to fight the Enemy, sure, and part to actually help H do so as well. There are heavy themes of reluctant hero, or even a self defeated hero as most of H's manifestations in the various realms seems to know the fight he is getting into is one that ends in his death. They also generally end with things getting better after that, but that brings in the concept of sacrifice for the good of all.

I do like the bits from the Will, and honestly always wanted to see another harlequin module where he drags the PC's into a quest to find Excalibur, physically real or not.