#I feel like I can't *quite* write it realistically without it coming off as campy

[morgana-ren]

i feel like this is a safe space for He Who Was content bc theres not nearly enough with him. tbh i can just imagine a hopeful sunny and stupid Paladin thinking they could change him but just getting absolutely wrecked by him. sweet n friendly beacon of hope to someone He can make terrified and use :)))

Oh yeah, here is a good space for He Who Was. We do love him here.

Honestly, I would be totally curious to see how they try to go about it.

He Who Was is a little... how you say... off the deep end. He's lost his mind in the shadows. He's doing things on pure instinct now, but his brains have been a little scrambled. He's still maintaining a routine for the Raven Queen, but he is technically forsaken. I think at this point, he's just reveling in the madness of it all. He's too far gone to be saved.

But that wouldn't stop someone full of optimism and sunshine, really. It's clear he isn't well and that's obvious going to jumpstart her instinct to try to drag him to the light and save him.

At this point, he is just fully going to take advantage of that, whether he gets his mind back or not.

He seems a sight bit manipulative no matter how many screws he has loose, so I'm sure there's some impressive instinct there that he can hone if he really wants to. One of the downsides about being kind and sweet is it tends to make you far easier to take advantage of, and he seems the type to know how.

I'm sure there's some very good scenarios out there to be written. I personally don't know much about Paladins (I've never really played one-- the closest thing to an ultra-religious character I'll play is a cleric and I usually prefer magic over steel) but I don't doubt that there's some good shit to be done there.

I think if you could clean him up and get him out of the shadows (and manage to clear his head a bit) he'd fall back into sanity a little bit-- or we hope he would. However, he's still technically an 'evil' character, so even sane, he likely just becomes more dastardly and manipulative.

Someone very dedicated to showing him the light might very much get dragged down into the darkness with him.