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Many
crimes are committed in Sigil every day. And even though the
Harmonium is efficient and quick, some criminals are just
extremely clever and cover their tracks well. Whenever
investigations come to a halt, whenever the criminal is
nowhere to be found, if the law has been broken and there is
no criminal to apprehend, the Harmonium calls in
Investigator Christopher Verdue. In a few minutes, he can
tell them who it is they're looking for and what they look
like. It's rumoured that Christopher was able to pin down
the Anarchist cell that gave the Harmonium Omar, the
Anarchist who infiltrated their ranks, became factol, then
tried to dismantle the faction.
Physically,
Christopher is an offsetting man. He's very thin, tall, and
extremely quiet. He wears dark glasses all the time and a
trench coat, which he claims is a symbol of his status on
his prime world. The trench coat is tan, with a large
Harmonium symbol emblazoned on the back. He also is known
for his odd habit of carrying Starwheel pistols wherever he
goes, and always keeps them loaded. [Voilà!
notes: Starwheel pistols are small, one handed arquebuses
from the world of Toril. They're rare, even on Toril, and no
one has any idea who made them. Apparently, they just showed
up one day. But then again, people are surprised that Primes
know where anything is, much less where a pistol comes
from.]
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SEE
ALSO:
- Cage
Rattlers:--
- Havrm
Ghex,
Malkalotl,
Zeines
Pauch,
Zer'Tik.
- Uncaged:
Faces of Sigil:--
- Rule-of-Three
(p.86),
Shemeshka
the Marauder
(p.96).
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Christopher
is very quiet, and doesn't speak to the other Hardheads
much. He keeps to himself, and can usually be found in his
office, where he's busy filling out reports for one
investigation or another. When not there, he's usually
roaming around Sigil, more than likely to investigate
another crime, or perhaps just keeping his contacts fresh.
Either way, he's always on the run if he's outside the
Barracks.
Christopher's
past is a complicated one. During his recruitment, they
learned that he was born on some prime world called Kronn, a
world where psionics is a respected art. There, he honed his
clairsentient talent at a local psionic university. He grew
in prestige throughout the city as an investigator of great
skill. However, one day, a group of tanar'ri appeared just
outside the city limits (The fiends had botched a
teleport to a battlefield in the Blood War). Seeing
the city, they decided that it might be a haven for baatezu,
and promptly began razing it. They City Watch put up a good
fight, and eventually killed all the fiends with the help of
a group of adventurers that happened to be nearby. However,
heavy losses were sustained, and the city was nearly
levelled during the fight. Christopher was immediately
assigned to interrogate one of the captured fiends (a
bar-lgara.) He strapped it down, probed it, and immediately
was driven insane from direct mental contact with its
fiendish mind.
It
took many high level spells and months of recuperation time
to bring him back to his normal self. By this time, the
bar-lgara had been killed in an escape attempt, and the town
was rebuilding nicely. Christopher, however, still held a
grudge for the fiends that had sacked the town. He only
remembered a bit of what he had seen in the fiend's mind,
but with that small fraction of memory, he knew of the Outer
Planes. Immediately, he went to the capital and asked for
audience with the king. There, he told his story and what he
recalled of the memory of the fiend. The king was shocked at
the ease in which the fiend could move around, and sent for
the wisest men in the land to help counsel him.
A
special meeting of experts on Outer Planar lore was called
(even those experts barely knew even vague chant of what the
planes were like, though.) They deliberated for days, then
decided on a plan of action to destroy the fiends (Only
Primes would think they could eradicate all evil from the
multiverse!) They gathered a group of high level adventurers
and Christopher Verdue, the "fiend expert", into the Plain
of Infinite Portals via a plane shift spell. After
their arrival, they immediately set forth smiting evil.
After a particularly nasty encounter with a murder of vrocks
which slew everyone except Christopher, he decided that
perhaps there's a better way of going about this.
Using
his powers, he found a portal to Sigil and hooked up with
the Harmonium as soon as he figured out the dark of who was
who in the strange city. It was the couatl Malkalotl
who first introduced Verdue to the faction's ideals; the
psionicist was dangerously close to starting a fight with a
glabrezu in the Great Bazaar when the couatl barked a few
stern words of warning in Verdue's ear. The prime psionicist
was surprised to see law enforcement officers in a city as
overrun with fiends as the Cage, but after their initial
encounter the two became firm friends, and Christopher
didn't take much persuading to join the faction. The
Hardheads were thrilled to have a psychic who could spy on
their enemies and gain valuable information from any object.
Christopher was immediately enlisted and, after training,
given the title of Inspector. More recently, he's been
appointed to replace Mover Three Havrm
Ghex, who was removed from
the notorious Cadre case after various scandals (see
SIGIS
for more chant on this).
So
what exactly makes him different from other seers? Well, one
fact is that after he arrived in Sigil, he got some training
in the Way from Thak'rok ( Prime / female thri-kreen / Psi
19 / Godsmen / N ) a Athasian who knew the clairsentient
discipline. Because of this, he was able to gain powers
which simply didn't exist on Kronn, like the high science of
cosmic awareness, making him one of the most powerful
clairsentients in all of Sigil. The chant goes that he's
even found a way to probe fiends and escape the detrimental
effects.

"Need to find a needle in
a lava flow?
Call on Verdue.
Murder on your hands and all you have is the victim's
nail?
Call on Verdue.
Christopher Verdue is the guy to call in when all else
fails."
- Harmonium faction
memo

In
fact, that's what Christopher has been doing, on the sly.
His original aim of stopping the fiends still stands, even
if he does realise how futile it is on a Multiversal scale.
Still, that hasn't stopped the psionicist from tumbling to
the dark of Rule-of-Three's
scheme to end the Blood War, and he's worked out who several
of Shemeshka
the Marauder's informers are
(one of her spies in the Harmonium was arrested and
summarily executed only recently, annoying the King of the
Cross Trade no end!)
The
canny psychic has also recently discovered that the
thri-kreen pack's leader Zer'Tik
ain't really what he seems to be at all, and has informed
the Harmonium to keep a close eye on the cutter's actions.
Along with Malkalotl, Verdue is keen on keeping the
Harmonium baatezu-clean, and if Zer'Tik makes a false move,
the pair'll do everything in their power to relieve him of
his rank.
However,
while he knows the plots of many fiends, he can't always act
on them because in the Cage it's no crime to think thoughts
(yet). But Verdue often knows when important meetings and
the like occur, and tips off Hardhead patrols who just so
happen to gatecrash these fiendish gatherings.
Verdue's
also keeping a beady eye on the SIGIS culler
Zeines
Pauch; chant goes he's
some sort of Anarchist factor or stirrer. Fact is, the
Harmonium aren't at all keen on the free-thinking SIGIS,
and'll jump at any chance to chuck a slaad wrench in the
works. Verdue's itching to scan the mind of the newsrag's
most infamous culler to learn how SIGIS tumbles to darks so
quickly.
So
if Verdue is so sodding useful to the faction, why doesn't
the Harmonium go out and recruit a bunch more prime and
planar clairsentients to solve all their cases, or to spy on
the other factions? Well, it's mainly because decent
clairsentients are hard to come by. Psionicists are rare
enough, and few psionicists then choose to specialise in
clairsentience. Training them is hard, too. Psionics are a
strenuous Art, requiring years of strict mental discipline,
and a natural spark of talent too. Despite the benefits,
psionic power is something in which Christopher nor the
Harmonium have the time to invest. So for now, the Harmonium
will have to make do with their one clairsentient. But
they're not complaining...



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