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Salome Haras: The Underrated Strategist

When one hears "strategist" in the context of Suikoden, most would undoubtedly think about the Silverberg family. Indeed, the Silverberg family have a monopoly on the strategist business within the Suikoden world. At the time if writing this article, it is already confirmed that Suikoden 4 would feature another Silverberg. It seems like we could never get away from Silverbergs when we need a reliable strategist.


Even Klaus Windamier, a Harmonia-educated 1st generation strategist, ends up being educated under Shu, a Silverberg-educated strategist. The monopoly of the Silverbergs seem to be near total.


However, in Suikoden 3 we witness a strategist who is neither a Silverberg or a strategist who eventually ends up entering the Silverberg school. Salome Harras, the vice-captain of the Zexen Knights is the only true strategist who has not been touched by the Silverbergs. Not only that, he is a highly competent strategist as well as a skilled politician. Although the flamboyant personalities of the Silverberg brothers overshadow this silent, bowl-cut man, he is definately the only strategist to have been involved in Suikoden 3's plot from the start, and definitely knew more about the underlying politics than any other character.


Various documents show that Salome started out as a fanboy of Wyatt Lightfellow, and that prompted him to enter the Zexen Knights. Not only that, he was the only one to have realized Chris Lightfellow's potential as a leader. While other knights chided her for being a woman and a "pet" of Captain Galahad, Salome treated Chris with respect, and was the first knight to pledge his allegiance to her after the untimely death of Galahad. This shows that Salome isn't a pompous self-loving pratt like the Silverberg brothers. He acts upon the oft forgotten virtue of loyalty.


However, this doesn't mean he is a milk-livered paper-pusher. He is capable of making fast decisions based on his firm understanding of military strategy and tactics, such as seen during the confusion that ensued after the murder of Lizard Clan chief Zepon. During this incident, the Zexen Knights were cut off and surrounded by clan warriors. Salome quickly suggested Chris to take the drastic action of torching the Karaya village. Chris balks at this idea, but it was indeed the only choice left for the knights if they wished to survive. His skill in military science is also backed statistically--he is the only character with a strategy and tactics rating of 6. Only the Silverberg brothers rank above him (but only in terms of military strategy and tactics).


During the game, Salome doesn't only appear in the Chris chapters, in fact he appears in most other character's chapters playing an important part in the plot.


During the Geddoe chapters, Geddoe's team meets up with a "contact" in the Northern Cavers, who happens to be Salome. The fact that Salome knows Geddoe shows the bottomless girth of a network he has in order to acquire information. During the Thomas chapters, he shows kindness to Thomas and Cecile, allowing Thomas to appoint Cecile as his guard captain. It was also Salome who did the politicing necessary to make councilman Durabum withdraw from attacking Budehuc castle.


However, the greatest accomplishment of Salome is to let Chris escape for her "finding herself journey" while he conducted a throuogh, ruthless coup de tat. This is only shown in the Suikoden 3 manga, but Salome lets Chris leave because he didn't want Chris to have to go through the risk of being labaled a traitor. He leads the other knights to arrest Harmonian sympathizers within the Zexen Council, such as Durabum and Rouma. After that, he methodically prepares Zexen troops at the Brass Castle, knowing that the Grasslanders will lose against the Harmonians.


Why didn't he help the Grasslanders earlier? Because he figured that the Grasslanders would be too haughtly to ask for the help of Zexen. He reasoned that the Grassland clans would have to be beaten so badly that they would be 100% willing to ally with Zexen. This plan worked, and after their defeat at the Duck village, the Grasslanders agree to ally with Salome. This is not only shrewd, but brilliant political engineering. This probably saved the Fire Bringer a lot of time that would have been wasted in disagreements between the two forces.


It is around then that the Silverberg brothers start to show up on both sides of the conflict. Salome handles Caesar very well, allowing the spoiled brat to have his way. Caesar calls Salome, "naive," and Salome doesn't get angry. He simply responds, "Then what do you suggest?" like an adult. Big difference.


However, the greatest thing about Salome is the fact that he managed to lead the largely difficult knights together. Only he would have been able to handle the tantrums of Borus, the self-love of Percival, the vulcan-like Roland, and dumb Leo and keep them together as a functioning unit. One can see that he was really the glue that kept the knights together. In this sense, Salome is not only a strategist, but also a leader.


Last but not least, he is the only strategist known to participate in hand-to-hand combat. While other strategists lounge in their armchairs, moving chess pieces on a map, Salome was in the midst of battle, clobbering heads with his mean mace, and getting hit with those huge Lizard clan spears! Not only that, he is a bloody powerful magician, I am sure many of you use him in the final battle. He is a real man! Compared to that, Caesar and Albert are whiney sissies.


With that said, I'd like to urge everyone to show some respect to Salome, who probably worked the hardest among all strategists. While Caesar's strategy was merely "run away until re get reinforcements!" Salome had to actually fight against many more forces, and adapted to each situation very well. Of course, he managed to 100% protect his nation, which obviously says that he is skilld as hell.


Discussion Thread for This Topic

Written by SARSadmin
February 28th, 2004