#Look it's not a rpg charecter without a supremely angsty background

[fantastic-mr-corvid]

After his waking conversation in the inn, Alaun turns to introspection. [A further look into the paladins head and his reasons for following the code]

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Surrounded by unknowns in a city once filled with life, the inn was a place of rest and small comforts.

The latest paladin to walk through it's doors had finally woken, tension bleeding out of his body, not once it was confirmed he was safe, but when his hesitant offer to stay and protect was refused.

It's like Seelah and Wenduag said, paladins are crazy. Allthough they meant it very differently.

Alaun was a paladin, but first he was a soldier. He had an underlying practicality, and understanding of people. The so called 'naivete' of paladins was less ignorance on his part, and more shoving your hand into what you know is a deadly trap and praying to whatever god can hear you that you can defuse it before it takes the limb.

He probably wasn't the only paladin like that, calculated recklessness is par for the course and just because you believe and follow your oaths doesn't mean you don't know better.

Blind faith in people is hard to come by in the world wound, so hard it almost comes back around to trust. The place is so bleak and your chances alone are so slim, what does it matter if you die to a centerpede or a blade in the back. Dead is dead. Well mostly.

A long way of saying he knew wenduag was not entirely on their side. That the hope she would stick around was doomed to wither- or die to locusts and hellfire. It made him all the more a fool he supposed. But he had been a fool for a long time, and he would be for much longer, gods willing.

He did believe in helping people, in walking with an outstretched hand, in making what little good you can in this world.

But he had woken up entombed by the corpses of his comrades, woken up to flashes of traitors opening the gates to the demonic hordes that had been laying seige.

He woke up to a broken city drowning in corpses.

With him alone, shimmering with Iomedaes light, alive.

He would not let this city share the same fate.