Harold

Harold is a special and important character in the Fallout story, who lived in the Hub around 2161 and in Gecko around 2241, and thus met both the Vault Dweller and the Chosen One. He is horribly mutated and looks more or less like a regular ghoul (if you could say there's anything regular about them), but there's more to him than meets the eye.

Life of Harold
Originally, he himself was a vault dweller. He emerged from Vault 29 in 2090 and began a successful career as a trader and merchant, venturing across the wastes. Eventually though, as he became an important player in the Hub, he began to notice the increasing frequency of mutant animals attacking his caravans. Frustrated, he decided to deal with this. He and a group of other adventurers--among them a man named Richard Grey, a doctor living in the Hub who was equally perplexed by the strange mutants--tracked the mutant population and eventually found its source: an old Military Base that seemed to be spawning mutant critters.

Inside, most of them found death, killed by all the mutants that littered the base as well as its automated security systems. Harold, Richard and a few others made it fairly deep into the base, where they found immense vats filled with a strange thick, green solution that seemed to be mutating the animals. A large robotic arm knocked Grey into a vat, where Harold assumed he died. Harold himself was knocked unconscious. He awoke some time later out in the desert, already starting to mutate. A caravan eventually found him and brought him back to the Hub, where he settled into a destitute existence.

The Vault Dweller first met him in the Oldtown section of the Hub. Oldtown was the part of the Hub where the poor lived as well as a moderate ghoul population. Harold is one such mutant and he makes a living begging for spare change. In exchange for some money, Harold provides the Vault Dweller with a great deal of information, mostly dealing with the Mariposa Military Base and Richard Grey, as well as the deathclaw that lives near the Hub that Butch Harris, leader of the Far Go Traders, needs you to deal with.

Sometime between 2162 and 2242, a small tree (which he calls Bob, although he likes to joke that his name is Herbert) began to grow out of the side of Harold's head, showing that even the sterile mutants can be the source of some kind of life. It is an entirely new species of tree - unique and special, just like Harold.

Many years later, the Chosen One, grandchild of the Vault Dweller, runs into Harold again in Gecko, the ghoul town not far from Vault City. After the destruction of the Hub by the fleeing mutant armies following Fallout, as well as the destruction of the Necropolis, most of the ghoul populations of those two towns migrated far north to form a settlement around an old nuclear power plant built by Poseidon Oil before the War. Anyone else would likely be killed by long term exposure to radiation, but the ghouls just find it pleasant. When Harold arrived, the plant was being run dangerously and stupidly. Harold quickly took over from the well-meaning but inept leaders of Gecko and got the reactor into some kind of working order. When the Chosen One arrives in Gecko, Harold asks him to help fix the reactor. To do so, the Chosen One must secure the aid of Vault City's officials, which is no mean feat.

You still hear mention of Harold from time to time. Apparently, the tree growing from his head has gotten larger, and if rumors are to be believed, fruit is growing from it. The seeds are said to remarkably tough, and several of them have taken root even in the most barren stretches of the wasteland.

By the 2250s, Harold the ghoul was ill. The tree in his head developed an unknown disease and was dying. Much to his surprise, Harold found himself affected as well. He didn't think he was going to die, mind you, but still... he just didn't feel right in the head.

So, he set out on a quest for a cure. Naturally, he didn't have an easy time of it either. People just didn't seem to want a ghoul around any more. But, Harold didn't let that stop him. He persisted in his quest until he came upon the Twin Mothers tribe.

Much to his surprise the tribe took him in and accepted him as he was. He explained his quest to the tribal leaders and was told that they would consult their goddess. Days later, Harold was approached by the tribal shaman and given a potion to drink. It was a foul concoction, but it worked. Fred, the tree, got better and was happy again.

Harold couldn't let such a good deed go unrewarded so he offered to help the tribe in any way that he could. They smiled at him, thanked him, but declined his help. "The goddess will provide," they always said. Harold, nice ghoul that he is, said that he would like to pay his respects to the goddess. He was taken to the tribal shrine and granted a private audience. He wasn't really surprised when the projected image of a woman appeared before him, but he was taken aback when she told him where he could find her.

Harold traveled to the Nursery and has been there ever since. He is considering settling down and spending the remainder of his day, however long that may be, in the tranquility of the gardens.

Nature of Harold


To the untrained eye, Harold appears to be a plain old ghoul. This is not so, however. Ghouls are the result of massive radiation damage to a human body: Harold is a product of the Forced Evolutionary Virus. No, he's not a super mutant, but the result of a unique combination of radiation damage from constant low-level exposure, indirect exposure to FEV (actually, we don't know just how Harold was infected with FEV as he blacked out for a while) and a fair amount of random chance. He's not a ghoul, he's certainly not a super mutant. To quote Tim Cain, "Harold is special."

Further more, Tim Cain has this to say on the subject: "As for contact [with FEV], any contact at all will infect the subject, but the amount of contact determines the result. For example, I imagine Harold had some contact with the virus, but he was not fully immersed in it, so he became a different mutant than the Master's subjects. Full immersion, of course, is the preferred method of infection, as it provides the virus a large surface area for infection."

Another similar FEV-created, ghoul-like mutant is Talius.

Appearances in games
Harold appeared in Fallout 1, Fallout 2 and a horrible appearence as a hidden playable character in Brotherhood of Steel. He was voiced in the first two games by Charles Adler. He was to appear in Van Buren, the cancelled Fallout 3 project by Black Isle.

Quotes

 * Vault Dweller: How did you survive? Harold: Didn't. Got killed.
 * I'm looking pretty good for being dead.
 * Chosen One: Is that a tree growing outta your head? Harold: Jealous? His name's Herbert. I talk to him when I get lonely. Heh heh just kiddin', his name's Bob!

Harold Гарольд