Harold

"Be kind to the Smoothskins. One saved the world once. 'Course, they broke it to start with."

- Harold

Harold is a unique FEV mutant - originally a human from Vault 29. He was born in 2072, five years before the Great War. During an exploration of a military base called Mariposa, he was exposed to F.E.V. Initially, he mutated into what appears to be an ordinary ghoul, and is later distinguished by a tree growing out of his head.

He left Vault 29 in 2090, and lived in the Hub's Oldtown around 2161, in Los around 2208, in Gecko around 2241, and in Oasis around 2277.

By 2277, he is a gnarled face in a tree growing in the Oasis Grove. During his many adventures, he has encountered such influential people as Richard Grey, the Vault Dweller, the Chosen One, the Lone Wanderer and the Initiate.

Early life
Harold was born in 2072 and was only five years old when the Great War started and he was forcibly locked in Vault 29.

Harold's home, Vault 29, was initially populated by young children which were brought up by Diana, a human brain connected to a supercomputer, who posed as a goddess to its inhabitants. In cases of population unrest a test subject would be chosen to be released from the Vault early. The subject would return and tell the Vault dwellers the condition of the world outside and whether or not it was safe to leave the Vault. Of course, the test subjects would never return and this fact would deter anyone leaving again for a while.

Harold was one such subject, selected in 2090. He was released from the Vault, stunned by the security system, and picked up by a robot to be taken to the Nursery, where Diana resided. At the nursery he was given the choice of staying with Diana or exploring the outside world. However, if he chose to explore, she would have to 'condition' him so that he could not reveal anything about her or the nursery to the world.

Harold agreed to stay with Diana but managed to escape. During his travels he kept the nursery a secret because he felt it was his duty to the world to keep such a future 'gift' intact until the world was ready for it

Merchant career
After leaving his home Vault, he 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.

Expedition to Mariposa
Harold 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 creatures.

Inside, most of them were killed by the mutants that littered the base as well as by 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 (F.E.V) that seemed to be mutating the animals. A large robotic arm knocked Grey into a vat, where Harold assumed he died (actually, he became the Master). 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.

A mutant down on his luck
The Vault Dweller first meets him in the Oldtown section of the Hub, where Harold 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 some tactical information on the deathclaw that lives near the Hub which Butch Harris, leader of the Far Go Traders, requests the Vault Dweller deals with as he is losing his caravans to it.

Sometime between 2162 and 2241, 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. It is an entirely new species of tree - unique and special, just like Harold.

Traveler of the Wasteland
After the destruction of the Master army, Harold left the Hub and became a traveler who visited various places around the Wasteland. It's known that he traveled in Texas to Carbon where he had a sexual encounter with Carbon's prostitute, Ruby, and the ghoul-city of Los around 2208. He wanted to have a good time in Los after leaving Carbon but the arrival of super mutants and the loss of his hand, his toe and his eye in the city changed the deal. The Initiate helped Harold to recover his members so he could leave the city before its destruction. Harold's travels ended in Gecko in 2238.

Leader of Gecko
In 2241, the Chosen One, grandchild of the Vault Dweller, runs into Harold in Gecko, the ghoul town not far from Vault City. After the destruction of the Necropolis following Fallout, most of the ghoul population of the town 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 solve the Gecko powerplant problem.

Back home
By the 2250s, Harold 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, but, 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 mutant around any more. But, Harold didn't let that stop him. He persisted in his quest until he came upon the Twin Mothers tribe, which originated from his home, Vault 29.

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. Bob, 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 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. His return to the nursery was a moment of joy for Diana and a 'new experience' to him, as much of his early memories faded with age.

Harold traveled to the Nursery and spent considerable time there, He even considered settling down and spending the remainder of his day in the tranquility of the gardens. However, eventually he left and traveled even further East.

If the Prisoner gives Diana the information on F.E.V. and New Plague from the Boulder ZAX, Diana would be able to create a cure to the New Plague virus in the form of a small fruit, by genetically engineering it from Harold's tree.

Oasis
Harold eventually found himself overwhelmed by the growth of Bob, and he became rooted to the ground during his travels in the northern Capital Wasteland region. Here he was discovered by several people who began to worship him as a god, forming a small and exclusive cult known as the Treeminders began to form in secrecy. Bob began to blossom and many plants grew in this area, which became green with life. During this period, Harold developed a mutation which enabled him to "see" the area around Oasis, through the very trees that came from Bob's seeds.

He would use his newfound ability to bring in wanderers, all the while hoping one of them would put an end to his troubles- unfortunately, the Treeminders' strange ways and insistence on using an intoxicating, potentially poisonous "sap" (as a "purification" ceremony) drove off most of them, many in worse mental shape than they were prior. His persistence would pay off when the Lone Wanderer came into view. On Harold's orders, the Treeminders allowed the Wanderer safe passage into Oasis.

Harold reveals his true identity to the Wanderer, and begs for mercy; after being stuck in the same position for decades he is eager for death. Although commanding the Treeminders to perform questionable deeds for his own amusement provided some entertainment, it did not last. The other dwellers of "Oasis" either ignore or, in their religious fanaticism, interpret Harold's wishes as a moral and spiritual test, much to Harold's chagrin. Thus his only recourse is to ask the Lone Wanderer to take his life. However, two members of the Treeminders (namely, the leader of the cult and his wife) are found arguing about Harold. The leader of the cult wishes for Harold's gift of plant life to be kept safe and confined to Oasis, while his wife wishes for Harold's gift to be shared and spread throughout the Wasteland.

They each ask the Lone Wanderer to accomplish their own wishes, and the Lone Wanderer must decide whether to carry out Harold's wish of death, the cult leader's wish of keeping Harold's spreading growth confined to just the Oasis, or the wife's wish to spreading his glory across the Wasteland. Through granting Harold's wish, the Lone Wanderer's skin will be as hard as Harold's. If the Wanderer chooses to keep Harold alive, he tells Harold that he has been given a gift and must stay alive to save the lives of others. Harold, finding a new reason to live, replies that he was selfish to want to kill himself, and then asks Bob if he agrees. Harold finally says that he is at peace with himself and, for the first time in a long time, he is finally happy.

Nature of Harold
To the untrained eye, Harold appears to be an ordinary ghoul. This is not so, however. Ghouls are the result of massive and/or long-term radiation damage to a human body; Harold is a product of the Forced Evolutionary Virus. Unlike most people who are exposed to FEV, Harold did not become a super mutant, but is the result of a unique combination of radiation damage from constant low-level environmental exposure, indirect exposure to FEV (it is unclear how Harold was infected with FEV as he blacked out for a while) and a fair amount of random chance. Thus he's not a ghoul, and he's certainly not a super mutant. To quote Tim Cain, "Harold is special."

Furthermore, 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.

Interactions with the player character
Fallout

Fallout 2

Fallout 3

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel

Inventory
Fallout

Fallout 2

Fallout 3

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel

Notable quotes

 * "You cut with the dull edge of the knife, don't ya?"
 * "Golly-be-damned if they weren't springing up like rabbits with a mission."
 * "Technically...it's a thingie."
 * "I'm cranky, old, and I've been that way ever since I changed."
 * "Wanna know how to keep an idjit in suspense?"
 * "Sometimes the meat slides right off the bone, if you know what I mean. Heh heh. Whoo. That was a wild time."
 * "Watcha need youngster?"
 * " Spare change, old friend, old pal? Can you help a poor mutant down on his luck?"

Appearances
Prior to Fallout: New Vegas, Harold was the only character to appear in every Fallout game. Harold appears in Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3, and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. A ghoul named "Harold" with a tree growing out of his head appears in Fallout Tactics, although it is unclear whether this is actually the Harold.

Additionally, Harold was to appear in both Black Isle's cancelled Fallout 3 and Interplay's Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2. A cult called the Church of Harold is set to appear in Fallout Online.