LetterSequence formatting when starting a paragraph

Question

Ok so I know about the \lettrine package and using it to adjust the first letter of a paragraph. What I am interested in is adjusting the first three or four letters of the first word of a paragraph. For example:

Hello, this is the beginning of my paragraph. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

^ in the above example I want the H in hello to be super big - similar to using lettrine. But now I want the e to be capital and also big, but smaller than the H, and then the first L to also be capital and smaller than the E but larger than the remaining text. Think of it as having 3 beginning characters - each having varying heights - all above the text base (not hanging like the letterine default).

The equivalent in a regular word processor would be: [26pt] {H}, [22pt] {E}, [18pt] {L}, [11pt] {lo, this is my starting para...

I cannot use lettrine more than once in a row, as the letters stack vertically.

What I do currently is:

\documentclass[11pt]{book}
\usepackage{lettrine}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lettrine}
\setcounter{DefaultLines}{1}
\renewcommand{\DefaultLoversize}{0.4}
\setlength{\DefaultNindent}{0em}

\begin{document}

\lettrine{H}{}\begin{Huge}E\end{Huge}\begin{LARGE}L\end{LARGE}\begin{large}L\end{large}o there. Ramble ramble ramble....

\end{document}

Answer 1

This is a starting point, in order to see that it's not really a good idea. ;-)

\documentclass[11pt]{book}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern} % or other fully scalable font family

\usepackage{lipsum}

\newcommand{\mypar}[3]{%
  \par\addvspace{6pt}% for the big letter
  {\fontsize{26}{0}\selectfont#1}%
  {\fontsize{22}{0}\selectfont#2}%
  {\fontsize{18}{0}\selectfont#3}%
}

\begin{document}

\mypar{H}{E}{L}o there. \lipsum[2]

\mypar{H}{E}{L}o there. \lipsum[3]

\end{document}