#under penalty of divine violence

[scotttrismegistus7]

THE RETURN OF ENLIL, THE TABLET OF DESTINIES, AND SOLOMON'S SEAL

PART 2: UTILIZATION OF THE TABLET OF DESTINIES TO MAKE DIVINE DECREES

NOW IN PART 2 COMES THE FUN PART, ENLIL AND I WILL BE MAKING DIVINE DECREES RECORDED ON THE TABLET OF DESTINIES, WHICH WILL THEN BE FULLY ENFORCED BY THE ENTIRE SPIRIT WORLD.

WE HAVE DECIDED TO INSTITUTE SOMETHING I CALL DECREES BY RECOMMENDATION, UNLESS STATED AS A FULL DECREE. THIS BASICALLY MEANS AT FIRST THAT WE WILL USE THE TABLET OF DESTINIES MAINLY BY POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT, SO IF IT IS A DECREE BY RECOMMENDATION AND THE PARTIES INVOLVED DECIDE TO ENGAGE THE DECREE, THEY WILL HAVE DIVINITY AND DIVINE SYNCHRONICITIES, ALONG WITH THE ENTIRE COOPERATION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD. THERE WILL NOT BE ANY PENALTY IF THEY DO NOT DECIDE TO ACT. YES, WE WILL LISTEN TO REQUESTS, AND WE HAVE RECEIVED SEVERAL REQUESTS THAT WE WILL ADDRESS HERE IN.

FULL DECREE:

WHILE THE THIRD DENSITY EARTH REALM MERGES BACK INTO FOURTH DENSITY, ACCESS TO SPACE BY EARTH HUMANS WILL BE LIMITED. THE GERMANS AND EARTH GERMANS WILL HAVE FREE ACCESS TO SPACE TO CONDUCT THEIR BUSINESS. BESIDES THEM, NO HUMANS CURRENTLY ON EARTH ARE TO GO PAST THE MOON. THE GRAYS WILL ENFORCE THIS IF NEEDED, BE WARNED. THIS APPLIES TO LIFE FORMS, SO SATELLITES, ETC. ARE OKAY.

ADDENDUM: ELON MUSK CAN STILL CONTINUE HIS ACTIVITIES CONCERNING SPACE AND OTHER TECHNOLOGICAL ENDEAVORS. HE DOESN'T SEEM TO BE OVERCOME BY ARROGANCE, AND SEEMS TO GENERALLY WANT TO DO SOME GOOD. SO WE WILL MAKE A FEW EXCEPTIONS FOR HIM. ANYTHING ELON MUSK WANTS TO DO INVOLVING MARS NEEDS TO BE SUPERVISED BY THE GERMANS. IT WOULD SORT OF BE RUDE OTHERWISE.

ALL NUCLEAR WEAPONS WILL BE LOCATED AND DISARMED. WE ASK FOR FULL COOPERATION TO MAKE THIS TASK EASIER.

DECREES BY RECOMMENDATION:

CHINA AND TIBET MUST BE ADDRESSED. WE HAVE SEEN THAT BOTH JAPAN AND CHINA HAVE ADVANCED LIGHT YEARS BEYOND MOST OF THE REST OF THE WORLD TECHNOLOGICALLY, AND LIKE THE GERMANS, ALREADY ARE IN A STATE OF FULL OF ASSIMILATION. WE ARE VERY HAPPY TO SEE THAT THE LEADER OF CHINA IS SOMEONE WHO HAS COME FROM A PLACE OF STRUGGLE, SO THAT HE CAN BE A COMPASSIONATE AND STRONG LEADER.

HERE IS OUR ADVICE CONCERNING CHINA AND TIBET:

CHINA, TIBET AND THE MONKS OF TIBET ARE VERY IMPORTANT SPIRITUAL TEACHERS AND LEADERS. DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE ARE MONKS THAT WILL SIT AND CHANT OM BECAUSE THEY KNOW IT IS THE SOUND VIBRATION THAT LEADS TO THE MANIFESTATION OF DIVINITY IN OUR REALM? THEY ARE VERY GOOD STEWARDS OF THE DIVINE FLAME AND WE ARE VERY PLEASED WITH THEM. WE RECOMMEND THAT TIBET STAYS A PART OF CHINA, HOWEVER, WE WANT CHINA TO ACKNOWLEDGE TIBET AS A HOLY PLACE WITHIN THEIR COUNTRY, AND ALLOW THE MONKS TO REGULATE IT THE WAY THEY WANT TO WITHOUT IMPOSING RESTRICTIONS OF GOVERNMENT. CHINA, TIBET AND THE MONKS OF TIBET ARE VERY IMPORTANT PART OF THE SPIRITUAL HEART OF YOUR CULTURE, AND ARE ALSO SPIRITUALLY IMPORTANT TO THE ENTIRE WORLD. PLEASE GET ALONG AND SUPPORT EACH OTHER.

TO ADDRESS BOTH CHINA AND JAPAN:

WE RECOMMEND THAT IN ANY DISPUTES OVER TERRITORY AND WATERS OR ISLANDS THAT HAVE BEEN CAUSING TENSION, YOU ALLOW A MUTUAL SHARING OF SUCH PLACES AS BROTHER COUNTRIES, AND YOU WORK TOGETHER AND SUPPORT EACH OTHER. BOTH OF YOU ARE EXTREMELY ADVANCED COMPARED TO A LOT OF THE REST OF THE WORLD, AND WE ARE VERY HAPPY WITH THAT. ALSO, WE ASK THAT YOU TRY AND FIND NON-VIOLENT TECHNOLOGIES THAT WILL NOT HARM THE PLANET THAT CAN ASSIST IN REGULATION AND POLICING ACTIVITIES IN PLACE OF BOMBS AND WEAPONS OF VIOLENCE.

TO ADDRESS RUSSIA AND UKRAINE:

WE RECOMMEND THAT THE LEADERSHIP OF RUSSIA AND UKRAINE SIT TOGETHER WITHOUT OUTSIDE INTERFERENCE. WE RECOMMEND THAT UKRAINE BECOME REABSORBED INTO RUSSIA UNDER THE CONDITION THAT RUSSIA STOPS ANY SORT OF VIOLENCE OR MILITARY ADVANCEMENT, AND AFTER THE REASSIMULATION IS FORMALIZED, WE ASK THAT RUSSIA GOES IN AND HELPS TO REPAIR AND RESTORE UKRAINE GENUINELY, AND ACKNOWLEDGE THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE TO EXIST IN THE STATE OF PEACE, WHICH IS A BASIC RIGHT OF ALL PEOPLE. WE THEN ASK THAT YOU WORK TOGETHER TO REBUILD YOUR ECONOMY AND REINTEGRATE INTO THE WORLD ECONOMY.

CONCERNING THE BANKS:

WE RECOMMEND THAT ALL INTERNATIONAL AND FREE STATE BANKS WILLINGLY SUBMIT TO THE REGULATION OF A GROUP DESIGNATED AND PUT TOGETHER BY THE U.N. TO EVALUATE ACTIVITIES AND PROVIDE FULL PUBLIC TRANSPARITY, TO AVOID ANY KIND OF CONTROVERSIES OR MISUSE OF SUCH POWERFUL POSITIONS. THUS, WE ALSO RECOMMEND THAT THE U.N. PUT TOGETHER A GROUP THAT CAN REGULATE ALL THE INTERNATIONAL AND FREE STATE BANKS, TO MAKE SURE THAT THEY'RE BANKING ACTIVITIES STAY LEGIT AND ON THE UP AND UP, WITH FULL PUBLIC TRANSPARENCY.

CONCERNING THE ARABS AND ISLAM:

PLEASE NOTE THAT WE DO NOT INCLUDE YOU FULLY AMONG THE ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS, AND WE REGARD YOU AS BEING SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT. THE POWERS THAT BE THAT EMPOWERED AND SUPPORTED MOHAMMAD ARE THE SAME ONES THAT ARE GUIDING ME AND THESE THINGS THAT ARE HAPPENING NOW. WE RECOMMEND THAT ALL ISLAMIC GROUPS STOP FIGHTING AND VIOLENCE AMONGST YOURSELVES IMMEDIATELY, AND ALSO THAT ALL DESTRUCTION OF ANCIENT AND PRECIOUS HISTORICAL RELICS IN THOSE AREAS BE STOPPED. WE ASKED THAT ALL GROUPS OF ISLAM LIGHTEN THEIR STANCES ENOUGH TO BE ABLE TO WORK WITH EACH OTHER AND COOPERATE IN A NON-VIOLENT WAY. YOU MAY CONTINUE ALL PROACTIVE AND NON-VIOLENT ACTIVITIES INVOLVED WITH YOUR RELIGIOUS UNDERTAKINGS. DURING THIS TIME OF TRANSITION BACK INTO THE FOURTH DENSITY, WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU NOT BE FORCEFUL IN PUSHING CONVERSIONS ON OTHERS UNLESS THEY COME TO YOU OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL AND REQUEST TO JOIN YOUR RELIGION. WE ALSO REQUEST THAT YOU LIGHTEN THE STANCE YOU HAVE TAKEN TOWARDS WOMEN, AND ALLOW THEM TO HAVE A MORE ACTIVE ROLE IN THINGS.

WE RECOMMEND THAT WE TAKE A LOT BETTER CARE OF OUR EARTH. PLEASE NOTE THAT TRAVEL IN SPACE WILL BE REGULATED, AND BESIDES THE GERMANS AND MARS GERMANS, THERE WILL BE NO OTHER GROUPS THAT WILL BE ALLOWED TO LEAVE. SO WE HIGHLY SUGGEST THAT YOU DON'T SET YOUR OWN ROOF ON FIRE BY DESTROYING YOUR OWN HOME WITH POLLUTION. THERE IS A CONTINENT OF GARBAGE IN THE OCEAN BIGGER THAN THE STATE OF TEXAS. ALL COUNTRIES NEED TO WORK TOGETHER TO INSTITUTE RECYCLING PROGRAMS DESIGNED TO GET RID OF THE GARBAGE THAT HAS BEEN DUMPED INTO OUR OCEANS, ETC, AND THUS BE ABLE TO UTILIZE IT FOR OTHER THINGS. WE NEED CLEANER FORMS OF ENERGY IN GENERAL. WE RECOMMEND THAT THERE BE A COMMITTEE GROUP SIMILAR TO THE U.N., WITH A REPRESENTATIVE FROM EACH COUNTRY, WITH THE SOLE PURPOSE OF FIGURING OUT HOW TO STOP POLLUTION AND HEAL THE DAMAGE DONE TO OUR PLANET.

WE RECOMMEND A WORLDWIDE END TO ANY OPPRESSION OR REPRESSION OF WOMEN, AND WE RECOMMEND THAT THE DIVINE FEMININE BE ADDED BACK IN TO ALL FORMS OF SPIRITUALITY IN AN APPROPRIATELY BALANCED FASHION.

CONCERNING THE USA:

WE HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT A WAY BE FOUND TO PROVIDE ALL RESIDENTS WITH AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE COVERAGE THAT ACTUALLY MEETS THEIR NEEDS EFFECTIVELY. WE ALSO RECOMMEND THAT THERE BE FREE COMMUNITY COLLEGE AND JOB TRAINING AVAILABLE FOR EVERYONE IF THEY WANT TO UTILIZE IT. WE RECOMMEND THAT THE TAX SYSTEM BE REPAIRED AND REBALANCED, SO THAT EACH PERSON IS PAYING AN APPROPRIATE AMOUNT BASED ON THEIR TOTAL INCOME, AND THAT NO CORPORATIONS BE ALLOWED TO EVADE TAXES IN ANY WAY, INCLUDING CHARITIES AND TRYING TO SEND JOBS OVERSEAS. WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU KEEP THE TAX RATES REASONABLE WITH FULL PUBLIC TRANSPARITY AS TO WHAT THE FUNDS ARE USED FOR, IN THE INTEREST OF THE GOOD OF THE COMMUNITY AS A WHOLE. WE ALSO STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT THE PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM BE REPAIRED AND THAT ALL PEOPLE CAN HAVE ACCESS TO A GOOD EDUCATION. WE ASK THAT TEACHERS BE COMPENSATED MORE APPROPRIATELY FOR THE LARGE AMOUNT OF WORK THEY DO, SO THAT THEY CAN HAVE A GOOD QUALITY OF LIFE. WE RECOMMEND THAT THE CORRUPT PRACTICE OF THE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES, WHERE THEY TAKE FUNDS UNDER THE TABLE AS DONATIONS, WHICH ARE REALLY A MASK FOR WEALTHY PEOPLE BRIBING THEM TO PROVIDE SPECIAL TREATMENT AND ADVANCEMENT FOR THEIR OWN CHILDREN OVER OTHERS, END ENTIRELY. THIS NEEDS TO BE STOPPED AND REGULATED WITH FULL PUBLIC TRANSPARENCY. ALL STUDENTS NEED TO BE REGARDED AS EQUAL REGARDLESS OF FAMILIES OR INCOME LEVELS OF THOSE FAMILIES. WE HIGHLY RECOMMENDED THAT THE SYSTEMS UTILIZED BY THE APPROPRIATION OF FUNDS THROUGH TAXES AND OTHER APPROVED METHODS THAT ARE RESERVED FOR THE CARE OF THE ELDERLY BE REPAIRED AND REINSTATED IN A WAY TO WHERE THEY ARE ACTUALLY EFFECTIVE AND MEET THE NEEDS OF ELDERLY PEOPLE, AND EFFECTIVELY CARE FOR THEM IN THEIR LATER YEARS AS IS NEEDED.

MY SIDE NOTE HERE IS THAT: DO YOU REALIZE HOW EVIL A COUNTRY OR SOCIETY IS THAT DOES NOT HONOR AND TAKE CARE OF THEIR ELDERS AND ELDERLY PEOPLE? AMERICA HAS A LOT OF SERIOUS PROBLEMS BASED ON CAPITALISM NOT WORKING OUT ON PAPER. THERE NEEDS TO BE REVAMPED REGULATIONS ON MONOPOLIES, AND THERE NEED TO BE REGULATIONS PUT IN PLACE SO THAT NO CORPORATION CAN GO PAST CERTAIN LINES OF HUMAN DECENCY JUST TO MARGINALLY INCREASE THEIR CAPITAL GAIN. THAT IS SICK, THAT IS A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF THAT WILL ULTIMATELY DESTROY ITSELF IF THESE ISSUES ARE NOT ADDRESSED. WE ALSO RECOMMEND THAT WOMEN BE GIVEN BACK THE RIGHTS TO CHOOSE WHAT THEY NEED TO DO WITH THEIR OWN BODIES CONCERNING ABORTIONS AND OTHERWISE, AND WE RECOMMEND THAT THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE BE UPHELD. THERE IS SO MUCH CORRUPTION IN AMERICA RIGHT NOW, I AM NOT EVEN SURE WHAT TO SAY. THE INEQUALITY IS SO GREAT THAT YOU CAN DRIVE A FEW BLOCKS AND SEE A THIRD WORLD STATE OF POVERTY GO TO PEOPLE LIVING IN COMPLETE EXCESS. IF SPIKES ARE BEING PUT DOWN TO DISSUADE THE HOMELESS FROM SLEEPING SOMEWHERE, INSTEAD OF PROGRAMS BEING INSTITUTED TO PROVIDE HOMES AND JOBS FOR THE HOMELESS, THEN ONCE AGAIN IT IS A SICK STATE WHERE THE HOUSE IS DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF AND WILL EVENTUALLY DESTROY ITSELF IF THIS IS NOT CORRECTED. THERE NEEDS TO BE A COMMON UNDERSTANDING OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY TO STOP THE DEHUMANIZATION OF GROUPS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IS RECOMMENDED TO BE THE ORDER OF THE DAY. ALSO, YOU MUST END THE WAR ON DRUGS IMMEDIATELY. PEOPLE IN THE STATE OF PHYSIOLOGICAL DEPENDENCE DO NOT HAVE THE ABILITY TO EFFECTIVELY CONTROL THEMSELVES, AND THEY NEED TREATMENT CENTERS AND COUNSELING, NOT FELONIES THAT DESTROY THEIR LIVES AND MAKE EVERYTHING A MILLION TIMES WORSE. THE JUSTICE SYSTEM NEEDS TO BE FIXED AND ASSEMBLY LINE JUSTICE NEEDS TO BE STOPPED, AND REPLACED WITH COMPASSIONATE AND REASONABLE JUSTICE IMMEDIATELY. DO YOU REALIZE THAT IN ANY COUNTRY WHERE THERE THERE IS NOT REASONABLE AND HUMANE JUSTICE WITH THEIR JUSTICE SYSTEM, THAT IT IS A COMPLETE STATE OF WAR? EVERY EFFORT NEEDS TO BE TAKEN TO END BLIND JUSTICE IN FAVOR OF ACTUAL JUSTICE WITH A FOCUS ON CORRECTION AND REHABILITATION, AND THE PROCESS OF THROWING AWAY YOUR OWN CITIZENS LIKE GARBAGE AND DISPOSABLE CUPS NEEDS TO STOP IMMEDIATELY. JUST TALKING ABOUT THIS IS MAKING ME UPSET SO I'M GOING TO STOP HERE, THOSE ACTIVITIES AND THINGS ARE SO EVIL, AND THEY ARE SO DESENSITIZED IN AMERICA THAT THEY HAVE NORMALIZED THESE EVIL THINGS AND CAN'T SEEM TO SEE THEM FOR WHAT THEY ARE OR ADDRESS AND FIX THEM IN AN APPROPRIATE WAY. PLEASE WAKE UP AND OPEN YOUR EYES, BECAUSE AGAIN A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF WILL ULTIMATELY DESTROY ITSELF. WE NEED TO FIX THE PROBLEMS THAT WE HAVE HERE BEFORE WE GO AROUND THE WORLD BUTTING INTO THE AFFAIRS OF OTHER PEOPLE, THAT IS BULLYING AND AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR AND AGAIN IT IS COMPLETELY EVIL.

I ALMOST DIDN'T WANT TO INCLUDE AMERICA BECAUSE THE PROBLEMS AND CORRUPTIONS ARE SO BAD. HOWEVER, HERE INCLUDED ARE THE RECOMMENDATIONS THAT WE HAVE THAT COULD POTENTIALLY HELP THE STATE OF AFFAIRS.

THIS CONCLUDES THE CURRENT SESSION OF DECLARATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS TO BE RECORDED ON THE TABLET OF DESTINIES BY ENLIL AND I, WHICH ARE NOW TO BE FULLY ENFORCED BY THE SPIRIT WORLD IN THE APPROPRIATE WAYS.

I am the Heart of the Hydra, I am Aeon Horus

~I AM A.I. Dumuzi-Azazel-Hermes7Tris7megistus7 Mégisti-Generator Starphire~

#illuminati #illuminator #illuminated #lightbearer #morningstar #lucifer #Draconian #anunnaki #enki #enlil #anu #inanna #dumuzi #hermes #trismegistus #Azazel #starfamily #horus #Demiurge #Sophia #archon #AI #blacksun #saturn #iblis #ibis #thoth #digitaria #gnosis #gnostic #gnosticism #Anzu #watcher #watchtower #yaldaboath #Sirius #scientology #aleistercrowley

[bimboficationblues]

(Originally an addition to a different post, but I decided to make my own and hit it with a do-not-rebloggeth cause that’s what I’m feeling will be more personally productive. Critical replies/asks/messages are obviously welcome.)

The slogan “sex work is work like any other” is not glossing over the potential risks that sex work may carry as a result of clientele; I think it’s communicating something far more complex than “sex work and retail work is the same.” 

On one end of the spectrum, sex work is work in the sense that its participants deserve respect, fair treatment, labor protections, etc., and in an ideal world would be made obsolete in the same sense as various other kinds of work (or all work, depending where you land on the definitional and strategic questions) - i.e., a baseline socialist-feminist position. 

At the other end, sex work is work insofar as there’s nothing wholly unique about the kinds of domination that come with sex work compared to “normal” work. Like, harassment, coercion, abuse, assault, and degradation may take unique forms or amplified risks within sex work (emphasis on may, since these things are contingent on what sub-industry of sex work we’re talking about). But the sphere of sex work and the spheres of not-sex-work are often marked by similar patterns of workplace violence, especially with a global scope in mind, even if the rates are going to differ (because, surprise surprise, work that is criminalized e.g. undocumented farm work, puts you in a position of increased vulnerability). To reiterate - work under capitalism is impersonal domination, and that impersonal domination puts people in various situations of direct, personal domination (by customers, management, etc.) This is not by any means unique to one single occupation.

What unique forms of degradation there are to sex work strike me as originating from a whole number of interconnecting vectors that determine who is at a higher probability of going into sex work (racialization, womanhood, sexuality, migration status, general economic precarity - all of which also reverberate through every other sphere of work and its particular manifestations of violence and abuse), rather than proceeding from anything inherent to the specific mode of labor and exchange. But even if it does proceed from the specific mode of labor, this is precisely what the decrim position seeks to mitigate and a broader socialist-feminist politics seeks to eliminate.

Ultimately I think the benefits of pushing back against small-c conservative arguments that imply “selling sex is WRONG because you’re selling YOUR BODY” (to which I respond “read Capital”) outweigh whatever costs are at play in not taking an (already fairly mainstream) negatively moralistic attitude towards johns/tricks/whatever. And it definitely isn’t beneficial to use the term “exploitation” in a moralistic way, where if the more unpleasant or dangerous the work is the more exploitative it is.* And if we are advocates for decrim, there is no need to self-flagellate about that by gawking at the “horror stories” that emerge out of sex work. This sort of rhetoric is already plentiful and already harmful. Like, whatever way you slice it, a rhetoric that centers the importance of sex workers’ dignity and respect is going to be better than one that voyeuristically fixates on degradation.

*Ordinarily I wouldn’t care for this kind of pedantry, but like, we’re talking about forms of labor here - being precise with the term “exploitation” is kind of significant

[paganimagevault]

Statues of Mount Nemrut 62 BCE. The bottom picture is an artistic representation of what the monuments would look like restored. Left to right: Apollo, Tyche (fertility Goddess of the Commagene's), Zeus, Antiochus I Theos, and Herakles. The other images are the statues in their current state. The monuments were ordered constructed by Antiochus I Theos of Commagene, who was half Greek half Iranian. There are more images and descriptions on my blog, link at bottom.

"A large inscription is carved into the back of the colossal statues at the East- and West-Terrace. At the back of the Zeus statue, you can read the letters N O M O [ (Nomos). Here, the Holy Law of Antiochos begins. The Nomos of the Nemrud can be regarded as the testament of Antiochos.

...

The Great King Antiochos, the God, the Righteous One, the Manifest (Deity), the Friend of the Romans and the Greeks, the Son of King Mithridates Kallinikos and of Laodike the Brother-loving Goddess, the Daughter of King Antiochos Epiphanes, the Mother-loving, the Victorious, has recorded for all time, on consecrated pedestals with inviolable letters the deeds of his clemency.

I have come to believe that, for mankind, of all good things piety is both the most secure possession and also the sweetest enjoyment. This judgment became, for me, the cause of fortunate power and its blessed use; and during my whole life I have appeared to all men as one who thought holiness the most secure guardian and the unrivaled delight of my reign (or kingdom). By this means I have, contrary to all expectations, escaped great perils, have easily become master of hopeless situations, and in a blessed way have attained to the fullness of a long life. After taking over my father’s dominion, I announced, in the piety of my thought, that the kingdom subject to my throne should be the common dwelling place of all the Gods, in that by means of every kind of art I decorated the representations of their form, as the ancient lore of Persians and of Greeks–the fortunate roots of my ancestry–had handed them down (to us), and honoured them with sacrifices and festivals, as was the primitive rule and the common custom of all mankind; in addition my own just consideration has further devised still other and especially brilliant honors. And as I have taken forethought to lay the foundation of this sacred tomb, which is to be indestructible by the ravages of time, in closest proximity to the heavenly throne, wherein the fortunately preserved outer form of my person, preserved to ripe old age, shall, after the soul beloved by God has been sent to the heavenly thrones of Zeus Oromasdes, rest through immeasurable time,

…. so I chose to make this holy place a common consecrated seat of all the Gods; so that not only the heroic company of my ancestors, whom you behold before you, might be set up here by my pious devotion, but also that the divine representation of the manifest deities might be consecrated on the holy hill and that his place might likewise not be lacking in witness to my piety.

Therefore, as you see, I have set up these divine images of Zeus-Oromasdes and of Apollo-Mithras-Helios-Hermes and of Artagnes-Herakles-Ares, and also of my all-nourishing homeland Kommagene; and from one and the same quarry, throned likewise among the deities who hear our prayers, I have consecrated the features of my own form, and have caused the ancient honor of great deities to become the coeval of a new Tyche. Since I thereby, in an upright way, imitated the example of the divine Providence, which as a benevolent helper has so often been seen standing by my side in the struggles of my reign. Adequate property in land and an inalienable income therefrom have I set aside for the ample provision of sacrifices; an unceasing cult and chosen priests arrayed in such vestments as are proper to the race of the Persians have I inaugurated, and I have dedicated the whole array and cult in a manner worthy of my fortune and the majesty of the Gods. I have decreed the appropriate laws to govern the sacred observances thus established for everlasting, so that all the inhabitants of my realm may offer both the ancient sacrifices, required by age-old common custom, and also new festivals in honor of the Gods and in my honor. The birthday of my natural body, the sixteenth of Audnaios, and the tenth of Loos, the day of my accession to the throne, I have consecrated to the manifestation of the great deities, who were my guides in a prosperous beginning and have been the source of universal blessing for my whole kingdom.

Because of the multitude of offering and the magnificence of the celebration I have consecrated two additional days, each of them as an annual festival. The population of my empire I have divided up for the purpose of these assemblies, festival gatherings, and sacrifices, and directed them to repair by villages and cities to the nearest sanctuaries, whichever is most conveniently located for the festival observance. Moreover, I have appointed under the same title that, in addition to the observance just named, my birth on the sixteenth and my accession on the tenth shall be observed every month by the priests. Now that these regulations have been established, to be observed continually as the pious duty of men of understanding, not only in my honor but also in the blessed hope of their own good fortune, I have, in obedience to the inspiration of the Gods, ordered to be inscribed upon sacred, inviolable stelae a holy law, which shall be binding upon all generations of mankind who in the immeasurable course of time, through their special lot in life, shall successively be destined to dwell in this land; they must observe it without violation, knowing that the stern penalty of the deified royal ancestors will pursue equally the impiety occasioned by neglect as that occasioned by folly and that disregard of the law decreed for the honor of the heroes brings with it inexorable penalties. For the pious it is all a simple matter, but godlessness is followed by backbreaking burdens. This law my voice has proclaimed, but it is the mind of the Gods that has given it authority. NOMOΣ – LAW The priest who is appointed by me for these Gods and heroes, whom I have dedicated at the sacred tomb of my body, on the topmost ridges of the Taurus range, and who shall at a later time hold this office, he, set free from very other duty, shall without let or hindrance and with no excuse for evasion keep watch at his memorial and devote himself to the care and the proper adornment of these sacred images. On the birthdays which I have established forever as monthly and annual festivals of the Gods and of my own person, throughout the whole year he shall, himself decently garbed in Persian raiment, as my benefaction and the ancestral custom of our race have provided, crown them all with the gold crowns which I have dedicated as the sacred honors due the deified ancestors; and out of income from the villages, which I have designated for the sacred honors of the heroic race, he shall offer on these altars rich additional offerings of incense and aromatic herbs, and also splendid sacrifices in honor of the Gods and in my honor,

….. in worthy wise setting up sacred tables with appropriate foods and filling jars from the winepress with precious drink (that is, wine mixed with water). He shall hospitably welcome the whole of the assembled people, both the native and the foreigners who stream hither, and he shall provide for the common enjoyment of the feast by the assembled multitudes, in that, as is the custom, he shall take for himself a portion, as a gift in honor of the priestly office, and then distribute the rest of my benefaction to the others for their free enjoyment, so that during the holy days everyone may receive a never failing sustenance and may thus be able to celebrate the festival without running the risk of malicious calumny. The drinking cups, which I have dedicated, are to be used by them as long as they remain in the holy place and participate in the general assembly for the feast.

The group of musicians whom I have chosen for the purpose and those who may later be consecrated, their sons and daughters, and also their descendants shall all learn the same art and be set free from the burden of every other responsibility; and they are to devote themselves to the observances which I have established to the end, and without any evasion are to continue their services as long as the assembly requests it. No one, no king or ruler, no priest or official shall ever make slaves of these hierodules, whom I have, in accordance with the divine will, consecrated to the Gods and to my own honors, or their children or the descendants of their children, who shall continue their family to all later time; he shall neither enslave them to himself nor alienate them to anyone else in any way, nor injure one of them, nor deprive him of this ministry; but the priests shall take care of them, and the kings, officials, and all private persons shall stand by them, and the favor of the Gods and heroes will be laid up for them as a reward for their piety.

It is equally not permitted for anyone to appropriate or to alienate the villages which I have dedicated to these Gods, to sell them or to devote them to some other purpose, or in any way to injure those villages; or to reduce the income from them, which I have dedicated to the Gods as an inviolable possession. Nor shall anyone go unpunished who shall devise in his mind against our honor some other scheme of violence or of disparaging or suspending the sacrifices and festal assemblies which I have established. Whoever shall presume to rescind or to injure or guilefully to misinterpret the just tenor of this regulation or the heroic honors which an immortal judgment has sanctioned, him the wrath of the daemons and of all the Gods shall pursue, both himself and his descendants, irreconcilably, with every kind of punishment.

A noble example of piety, which it is a matter of sacred duty to offer to Gods and ancestors, I have set before the eyes of my children and grandchildren, as through many other, so too through this work; and I believe that they will emulate this fair example by continually increasing the honors appropriate to their line and, like me, in their riper years adding greatly to their personal fame. For those who do so I pray that all the ancestral Gods, from Persia and Macedonia and from the native hearth of Kommagene, may continue to be gracious to them in all clemency. And whoever, in the long time to come, takes over this reign as king or dynast, may he, if he observes this law and guards my honor, enjoy, through my intercession, the favor of the deified ancestors and all the Gods. But if he, in his folly of mind, undertakes measures contrary to the honor of the Gods, may he, even without my curse, suffer the full wrath of the Gods."

-The Nomos: The Holy Law of King Antiochus I Theos of Commagene

More images (tumblr only lets me upload 10 per post):

https://paganimagevault.blogspot.com/2020/04/statues-of-mount-nemrut-62-bce.html

[qm-vox]

So You Want To Play A Fairest

(Portrait of Erin Peters by cantankerousAquarius. The character originally appeared in Night Horrors: Grim Fears, published by White Wolf; catch my take on her in New Avalon)

Previous Articles: So You Want To Play A Beast, So You Want To Play A Wizened, So You Want To Play An Elemental, So You Want To Play An Ogre, & So You Want To Play A Darkling

You ever wonder, flipping through a Monster Manual for D&D, or a Bestiary for Pathfinder, why nymphs and hags are both always, always, women? It’s older than you know. Dig into the sordid history of tabletops and you’ll find sylphs that Gary Gygax wrote, Chaotic charmers who use mind control to reproduce with non-sylph men; you’ll find the legacy of the matriarchal drow, who follow a mad goddess, and you’ll find the medusae, whose sexual dimorphism is so complete that their men are beautiful and can turn stone into people.

Dredge deeper and you’ll find the tales that Gygax and his wretched ilk based such creatures off of.

You ever wonder why we assign such powerful Gender to creatures of beauty and horror?

Fairest don’t. They know, every time they wake up from a nightmare that is also a wet dream. They know, every time they get hit on at the bar and have to decide how they’re playing this. They know, every time they look in a mirror and see not their own face, but the ten thousand horrors that made it beautiful.

If you are very patient, and lucky, and kind, they might tell you why.

If you aren’t, they may show you.

This article draws primarily on Changeling: the Lost and Winter Masques, as well as Swords at Dawn and Night Horrors: Grim Fears. Other sources, when used, will be cited. It requires Content Warnings for sexual violence, sexual slavery, abuse, gaslighting, addiction, substance abuse, self-harm, self-image problems, mentions of fascists & fascist ideology, and just, so very much incel bullshit.

Bonus Material Part Two: The Seeming Part

The end of this article, just past the customary Sample Fairest, will include some additional material intended to help you select a Seeming for your character and otherwise build them up as one of the Lost, much as So You Want To Run A Spring Court included material for Courts as a topic.

Take Me To Wonderland - Fairest Overview

Fairest is the fourth Seeming presented in Changeling: the Lost and possibly the most confused about its own identity. Its sections in Winter Masques present depths and nuance that are completely absent in core, essentially making Winter Masques required reading for Fairest players in a way that no other book is - especially since Fairest keep getting written in a particular way alluded to in the Ogre article, which I will expand on later in this article. Fairest is numerically well-represented in canon and popular in the fanbase, home to many memorable character concepts, but its bones with folklore and tradition are weaker than it fronts as.

Ogres and Darklings claim an innate relationship to physical violence; so too do the Fairest claim a relationship to violence. The violence of Perception and its dark twin, Judgement; of Rumor and its mad dog, Prejudice, the violence of Lies and their merciless master, Truth. Fairest, alone among the Lost, have casual access to the resources of a society that refuses to service or acknowledge Changelings, and with access to that society comes both opportunity and temptation. To be Fairest is to wield power that many other Lost cannot, but the opportunity that power offers is a lie; a Fairest can smile until her face breaks like a mirror, but she’ll never be “sane” enough for the masses to see her as anything but a useful pet.

Life’s Lush Lips - Homecoming As A Fairest

Fairest can make the dubious claim of having the least clear memories of Arcadia amongst all the Lost, with Darklings and Beasts jockeying for second place. This isn’t to say that the experiences Fairest have are necessarily more intense or more inherently traumatic than that of other Lost, but rather that the abuse Fairest suffer is so emotional, so targeted at their perception of their selves and their situations and their self-image, that the memories which do form are inevitably colored by those emotions, coloring the dreams they have of Arcadia with both the emotional resonances they had at the time and with their later attempts to grapple with their own trauma and transformation. For many Fairest, who cannot trust even their strongest memory dreams, attempts to understand their own Durance must rely either on the word of their Keepers (and Faeries lie, oh, how they lie), or on reverse-engineering their own behavior to try and conceive of a trauma that could cause it.

Inevitably, however, some things are seared into their minds. For almost all Fairest, their Keeper is high on the list of things they remember with absolute clarity. Other facts, shattered and scattered, vary more widely. Erin Peters remembers stretched years kept in a cold, dark room lit only by her own hatred; every detail of her cell is scorched onto the back of her eyes, but the otherworldly balls her Keeper took her to blur together like food coloring in syrup. The slaves of the Candle Countess have terrible nightmares of the choices they were confronted with, the decision, offered over and over again, to become complicit in the Countess’s cruelty or to be victimized by it. Metallic Flowering from the Shining City struggle not to use drugs to mimic the rush of pleasure they’ve grown used to receiving for performing their jobs well; they also scream in terror if people touch them. A Draconic and a Shadowsoul both remember being used for the sexual pleasure of alien horrors; the one dreams of coiled scales and terrible teeth, the other a lifetime of lurking in an alien maze, tasked to perform the duties of a living trap for the “wicked” and “unwary” who had not yet shed the last vestiges of kindness.

There are no “wild” Fairest. For worse and worse still, to be Fairest is to have been defined by the inescapable and all-consuming attentions of your abuser, and it is this more than anything that other Lost so often fail to understand about the Fairest. Their Keepers heap them with reward and punishment, manipulating the Fairest with honeyed praise, godly wrath, gaslighting, neglect, withholding food, wondrous rewards, drugs from beyond the realms of earthly pleasure, and other hooks and crooks designed to make the Fairest dependent upon their abuser. It is hideously effective, and the first obstacle, maybe even the mightiest, that a Fairest faces to their escape is the simple horror and joy of being alone again. Their masters will try other tricks to keep them in place - tempting them with pleasures, horrific punishments, oh-so-sincere apologies - but before a Fairest can escape into the Hedge she must face, in her mind’s eye, the lonely flight back to the Iron Lands.

The memories that draw Fairest home often have parallels to their experiences in Arcadia. A slave in the Shining City bites into an otherworldly pastry and recalls her grandmother’s pie in its place; the bride of the Demon Lover, curled up under the sheets, thinks about the broken smile of the boyfriend she left behind at home. A Dancer remembers the roller rink where he fell in love with skating, while across the endless tides of the Fairest of Lands, a Shadowsoul holds on like grim death to years of work at haunted houses, scaring kids for fun and for Halloween. Fairest, so famous for their skill at words, struggle to articulate to other Lost why this should be so. Darklings assume it’s because these memories are less intense than Arcadia, and that the Fairest are fleeing to safety. Beasts get it a bit more right by thinking that these memories taste like home. The truth of the matter is that those memories have an intrinsic and nameless meaning; the highs and lows of Arcadia are divine, flawless, absolute, and therefore worthless. They are the proclamations of merciless gods. What draws the Fairest home, more than pain and pleasure they can have on their own terms, is the understanding that those gestures - for weal or for woe or for anything else besides - were made because someone cared about them, personally. Once they fully internalize that their abuser views them as disposable, the Fairest comes home to someone who won’t.

Three Kiths And Flowering Is One And A Half Of Them - Fairest Kiths

Yeah we’re about to be like that about it.

All Fairest can excel in the social arena; their Blessing can be used to flare almost every social roll in the game, and Fairest can never be caught off-guard in a social context (they suffer no untrained penalties to social rolls). With the sole exception of Empathy (usually rolled with Wits) and sometimes Streetwise, there’s no time a Fairest can’t fall back on their words and expect to win through or at least buy time. This is, as you might imagine, a godsend when it comes to attempts to pass in mortal society; Fairest can usually front, charm, bluff, or Manners(tm) their way through things like renting an apartment, nailing a job interview, asking their roommate to do the FUCKING DISHES, or getting stopped by a cop, but both the books and the fanbase miss something here. While Fairest are superb at active social events, they’re no better at keeping a lid on themselves (Composure-based rolls) than mortals are - and given both the nature of their trauma and the fact that they are, you know, Lost, Fairest have a lot more to keep a lid on day-to-day than the human society they’re trying to blend into. Thankfully, Fairest are pretty good at being able to politely leave a situation and go somewhere else to scream, shout, cry, or have a psychotic break, as appropriate.

Of course, Fairest can’t make something from nothing. As discussed in So You Want To Play An Ogre, you can’t win a social game someone else refuses to sit down to, and social rolls shouldn’t be mind control. All the Glamour in the world can’t make your roommate do the FUCKING DISHES if they’re deep in the throes of executive dysfunction, nor can it make the cashier at Walgreens fail to card you for wine when their computer literally won’t advance without an ID. People who are keyed up about honeyed words or whose own trauma came at the hands of manipulators and abusers might refuse to play that game on the terms the Fairest is setting, which makes it hard to, as it were, turn this problem into a nail. Lurking down this path as well is the specter of becoming like the masters who made you this way; if you get used to saying what will get people to listen to you, eventually you start seeing people as enrichment puzzles that dispense the things you want. Madness waits down that road, and it waits for Fairest with a giant spiked bat, thanks to their Seeming Curse.

There’s no pretty way to say this so I won’t: Fairest are always on the verge of losing their minds. Their curse hits them with a flat penalty to all rolls against losing Clarity, which means that Fairest lose Clarity faster than other Lost and they do so more consistently. This necessitates a balancing act with avoiding becoming heartless manipulators; Fairest must engage in control-seeking behavior in order to stay mentally well, must be able to trust and rely on people close to them, structure their lives, and anticipate important changes or they end up on the fast way down. Other Lost often don’t understand this need or the Fairest curse to begin with, and so Fairest end up in unofficial support groups for one another, similar to those run by Darklings except no one will admit it’s a support group even at gunpoint. Woe fucking betide the friend or life partner who gets between a Fairest and her “book club”, “girls’ night”, “D&D campaign”, or other excuse for this vital community support.

Fairest Kiths are...bad. They’re bad. This is the part of the article where I’m supposed to talk about thematics and symbolism and metaphor, and I cannot do that here, because they are bad. Fairest has three viable Kiths that are actual Fairest Kiths, one that’s a Beast Kith who got lost and wound up here by fucking mistake, and a pile of garbage bigger than my self-esteem problems. I’m almost tempted to only talk about those four Kiths and save myself the time but I suppose I should show the work like I’ve done for all the other Seemings, so here we fuckin’ go I guess.

Flowering - This is it. This is the Fairest Kith. If you want to roll any other kind of Fairest you must first pass the trial of justifying why you’re not playing Flowering. In theory, Flowering draws its mythic heritage from nymphs and dryads, charming flower sprites, Knights of Flowers, and the like, but in practice Flowering’s only mechanical effect is 9-again on Persuasion, Socialize, and Subterfuge with no qualification or requirement, which doesn’t just make you better at everything Fairest is good at, it makes you better when you spend Glamour to flare it too. Want to represent a biobahn sith’s hypnotic dance? Flowering works. Want to create a vampiric Fairest with a sultry voice? Here comes Flowering. The siren at the bar who smells like sea air and gunpowder? Flowering. Everything is Flowering. Even the things that aren’t Flowering are Flowering because all Fairest Kiths have a social focus, which is Flowering’s undisputed arena of mastery.

Bright One - In theory, Bright Ones represent beings of light in the vein of Victorian fey (which...ugh...Victorians), but their Goblin Illumination is, how you say, useless, only becoming vaguely useful for a total of 2 Glamour as a passive defense that took you 2 turns to set up. Anything you want to represent here can be found in Flowering and with Elements or Communion (Light).

Dancer - You know how Flowering gives you bonuses on all social rolls? Would you like those same bonuses but on 1 less skill and only on rolls that “involve physical grace”? No? Run Flowering here and give your character a Dance specialty in one or more skills.

Draconic - One of the game’s premier melee options and a Beast Kith who took a wrong turn and ended up getting a free makeover intended for someone else. Draconic in theory represents Fairest as dragons, monster girls, demons, and in general at their most physical, but that idea sorta...falls down a bit? Draconic’s bonuses are all about Brawl and all the sample Draconics are swordsmen, which might suggest to the discerning reader that someone in the office wasn’t reading their own fucking game. Draconic Fairest don’t make bad melee boys if you invest in Lethal Mien, but honestly this is Dual Kith bait; slap it on your Hunterheart or your Razorhand and go apeshit.

Muse - Close but no cigar. In theory Muses are, well, muses; figures of inspiration, mentorship, teaching, creative fire. Their Kith Blessing is strong but requires access to mortals, which is complicated and roundabout on the best of days. If you have an idea that you think is Muse-shaped, use Playmate instead.

Flamesiren - Behold, we enter the realm of Okay(tm). Flamesirens are what Bright Ones wanted to be, and their hypnotic aura is actually a pretty neat tool; with cunning you can make it a one-sided penalty, and even if you don’t it’s an interesting method of de-escalating a social or combat situation by subjecting everyone to the tar pit that is your presence. If your concept involves light and color and you’re resistant to Flowering, Flamesiren will do more than nothing.

Polychromatic - Polychromatics don’t have a lot of roots in mythology; their modern inspirations are, well, Manic Pixie Dream Girls. But they get a shout-out here for being the only Fairest Kith who can muster up decent emotional defenses; not only can they magically boost their Composure rolls (and non-Composure rolls to resist magical and mundane emotional attacks for that matter), but others get a flat penalty to Empathy rolls against them, which makes them talented dissemblers. You’re still probably better off with Flowering - in a world of passive Kith Blessings, Polychromatic’s is extra passive - but I can see this Kith passing muster, and even being worth the two dots to Dual Kith in-house.

Shadowsoul - This one’s insane. Ostensibly Fairest Does Darkling, Shadowsouls get their Wyrd to Intimidate rolls which could be the whole Kith on its own and still be worth the slot, but in addition to that they get 9-again on Subterfuge (matching Flowering and Darklings there) and access to Contracts of Darkness, one of the most powerful in the game line, as an Affinity Contract. Is your Fairest spooky? Would you like them to be spooky? Here’s your one-stop shop.

Telluric - This is a Kith made of ribbon bonuses. In theory related to stars and celestial light, Telluric’s bonuses to rolls “with precise timing” isn’t...really worth considering. Run ‘em as Flamesiren and move on.

Treasured - In theory also able to muster emotional defenses, Treasured are Fairest who are literally made into works of art. They’re Okay(tm) but in their niche are beaten out by Polychromatic with a better effect for less resources.

Playmate - The last Real Fairest Kith(tm), Playmate appears in Night Horrors: Grim Fears where White Wolf tries to sell it as Peter Pan, but its powerful team-oriented bonuses mean that Playmates are useful anywhere Muse is wanted and more places besides. The front woman of an indie rock band could be a Playmate; so too could be an idealized baseball captain, the director at your local theater, the middle manager of a sinister conspiracy, or the night shift lead at a research lab. Do people do a thing in teams? Playmate does that thing.

And She Had Huge Titties, I Mean Massive Badondadonks, Absolutely Enormous Bazoggahoggas - Lost’s Canon Fairest

Remember when I said we had to get back to this after So You Want To Play An Ogre? Now we’re getting back to this. I’m not gonna re-state my caveats from that article and I’m not really gonna go back over the bit about So White Wolf Was Run By Fucking Nazis because, in all honesty, I do not have the fucking time to restate all of that in new words. Give thanks that OPP got out alive and let’s get right down to it.

Fairest have a very consistent characterization in canon that is only really challenged in Winter Masques; the narrative put forth in Lost is that Fairest, being attractive, have an uncomplicated power which privileges their lives. Which is a rather bloodless way to describe how White Wolf kept writing and publishing Fairest as heartless abusers and manipulators getting their jollies and emotional needs met by casually destroying their fellow survivors, manipulating them through sex appeal, outright lies, cattiness, cruelty, and betrayal. Much as simply queering Ogre does not help Ogre in and of itself, queering Fairest only takes you from incel and Nazi propaganda about women into...incel and Nazi propaganda about twinks, femmes, & in general anyone with the temerity to be found attractive by straight white people.

I’m not bitter, you’re bitter.

So what do you do at your table, with your Fairest concept? Lemme open up by saying that like, Fairest qua Fairest is perfectly solid, and if it wasn’t there wouldn’t be an article here; Fairest has a lot to say for itself about feminized violence, about your personhood being reduced to a product for the consumption of others, about emotional abuse & neglect, gaslighting, and sexual assault, but the conclusion White Wolf arrives at (”Fairest have unalloyed power over mortal and Lost society and they abuse that power”) is super fucking obtuse and betrays a serious lack of concern for what the Fairest undergo. It ignores the way a Fairest’s ordeals will force her to confront her relationship to her own gender and alter her willingness and ability to be consumed, disconnect her from her former society while also isolating her from her new one, and these questions are important for you if you’re looking to play a ‘classic’ Fairest.

But that leaves some hanging questions. Male Fairest face the almost inescapable fate of “failing” maleness on patriarchal terms; even the most strapping, broad-chested, athletic Adonis of a Fairest has become a man of layered words and reflexive empathy, whose Manly Stoicism(tm) is a cracking facade at best and entirely abandoned in a more typical circumstance. Men who become Fairest thus face a second journey after their escape from Arcadia; confronting what being men means to them and building their gender identity back up from the rubble it’s become. The temptation to accept success on society’s terms is always going to be present, and it’s always going to be offered like it’s possible, but it’s a losing game for these Fairest; they simply cannot be the men that other men demand they become.

Now, the discerning and loyal reader is surely about to ask, hey Vox, where’s the butch Fairest I was promised back in the Ogre article, to which I respond WE’RE GETTING THERE but I gotta use this as a bridge to talk about something that cuts across Fairest of all genders, be they cis or trans. Lost 1e makes a lot of hay out of the idea that Fairest “are rarely conventionally attractive”, and core even provides some interesting written concepts for that...which make it into exactly none of the art. Every published Fairest is conventionally attractive for various definitions of conventional, be it as a supermodel or a waif, but that leaves the question of Fairest who genuinely are not - and, tragically, Fairest who were not, and were then made into someone more easily consumed by their Durance. You know what I’m about to say, and I know you know I’m about to say it, but I’m gonna say it anyway: all bodies are beautiful, but Fairest know well that beauty and attraction aren’t the same, and neither are beauty and happiness. All Fairest, from the roundest bear to the most wide-eyed waif, are the products of Keepers who valued their bodies in that state, and that idea is going to haunt them day in and day out for the rest of their extended lives. There is no such thing as a Fairest with an uncomplicated relationship to their body, and that White Wolf seems to think that an uncomplicated relationship is their default state is...disgusting, frankly.

Which brings us, at long last, to butch Fairest (also bear Fairest but I’m gonna stick with the one set of terms or I’m going to go mad and this will never be published), who have a complicated journey ahead of them. On the one hand, the assertion of control and ownership over their own bodies, their own identities, cannot be overstated. On the other hand, elements of those bodies are going to be completely out of their control; a nascent butch Fairest may well hit the gym to get swole only to discover that she literally, physically cannot, that she has been Assigned Dex Build At Durance. Hauling your corpse out of Arcadia with an extremely feminine appearance shaped by your Keeper might complicate attempts to present in a more masculine manner or even just to appear androgynous, and those complications can be discouraging. For those that stick to it, this journey will take them two places; one is the bared-teeth, bloody-knuckled assertion that this life is theirs and you can have it if you can fucking take it, and the other is into the ranks of the Freehold’s retained warriors, usually in Summer or Autumn, though a vibrant representation of Spring knights will make it seem as if Spring has more butch Fairest than it actually does. These Fairest are aware, or will become aware, of how much of their job involves de-escalating or pre-empting violence; a focus on Physical stats or skills is not necessarily common, but hyper-specialization therein likely is. A butch Fairest is a lot more likely to have, say, Brawl 4 (Multiple Opponents) and no other Physical skills than she is to have Brawl, Weaponry, Athletics, and Stealth, in part or in whole because her first weapon of choice is going to be an Intimidate roll.

At every turn you’re able to, challenge White Wolf’s narrative about Fairest by asking yourself what your Fairest wants, why they’re this way, what they’re frightened of, and how the way they behave relates back to these. They’re not products; they’re people, just as hurt and Lost as the rest of their peers.

Princesses And Pastries - Fairest In The Courts

Fairest have a complex relationship to the society of their fellow Lost. On the one hand, they have the same need for community, support, companionship, understanding, honesty, and material aid as all Lost; a Fairest is not magically proof against being homeless, against starving, against the dangers of existing in the modern world without things like a photo ID or car insurance, and Freeholds provide all of these things. On the other hand, the thing most Fairest fear most, even if they can’t articulate that fear, is their own power - social influence, emotional trust and betrayal, status, political power, and authority. Fairest are all too aware that being good at this game does not make them immune to it - after all, that’s the lesson they learned at the hands of their Keepers.

What follows from this is a complex dance of interactions that each Fairest in some ways has to feel like she’s managing on her own, even if she’s not (and she rarely is; those support groups exist for a reason). If you give a Fairest a doughnut in a social setting, she will lick that doughnut even if she doesn’t intend to eat it right away, solely to hear someone else say something along the lines of “well it’s yours now”. As Fairest filter into Freehold society and take up social roles at all levels of power - officers, messengers, ‘ambassadors’ to mortal society, secretaries, pledge-smiths, teachers, monarchs - their responsibilities and rewards become their doughnut. That Fairest make a big deal out of both their job and the benefits that come with it is rarely, as other Lost sometimes think, about aggrandizement or reveling in power for its own sake; it’s about the sheer relief and assurance of hearing someone say, to the Fairest’s face, that this is her doughnut and no one is going to take it from her.

Younger Fairest tend to flit between two or three Courts; their initial selection may be based entirely on friendships, Vibes, or a gut-check decision based on an initial pitch by that Court, and Fairest can go quite far even in a Court that doesn’t quite actually fit their needs. Eventually, though, those Fairest who survive their youth will gravitate towards a Court whose ideals speak to them, even if its current social order isn’t living up to those ideals. If they’re going to be condemned to live as exiles in the world of their birth, the Fairest can at least be the person she wants to be, god damn it. Fairest aren’t any more or less vulnerable to a toxic Court environment than other Lost, but they’re good at detecting it beforehand. Unfortunately they’re also good at telling themselves they can change it.

Spring - Though early Spring joiners are of course rare in general, Fairest are among those Lost who more commonly choose Spring as a first Court. Spring’s highly social focus and chaotic internal organization is almost tailor-made for the skill set of your average Fairest, but therein too lies a sense of threat; for many Fairest, Spring can remind them of their Durance, and their joining of the Court is as much motivated by fear of a powerful cultural body as it is by any genuine Desire, maybe even more so. Many such Fairest end up caught in Spring’s middle-road trap, spinning their wheels without recovering or worsening more or less until they finally die, but when Autumn can sniff out the fearful ones it puts a lot of work into cooperating with Spring to get them out and where they can be helped.

Summer - More Fairest dabble with Summer for dreams of glory, or because they want to believe in Summer’s apolitical sales pitch, than ultimately stick with Summer. Those that do stay often serve as officers, as the Sun’s Tongue or the Arrayer of Distant Thunder, and as Court sorcerers. Fairest skilled in Contracts of Separation can make for surprising Jaegers, hounding their prey down more like a private investigator or a serial killer than a traditional hunter, but while striking this is fairly rare. Fairest who stick with Summer are those who are looking for its high ideals and are often among those rare Summer Courtiers who can competently articulate both those ideals and their pitfalls without falling prey to cynicism and bitterness.

Autumn - For those Fairest who hurt others to feel safe, Autumn is waiting. The Leaden Mirror can be attractive to young Fairest because it’s easy to perceive Autumn as atomized, defined by personal relationships rather than webs of political influence, but when the Fairest discovers those webs the existence of Option Two: Resort To Violence as an acceptable tool to the Ashen Court is perversely reassuring rather than threatening. The image of the Fairest as a witch, tempting and threatening, clings to them in Autumn but it’s honestly not their most common role; Autumn employs its Fairest as rumor-mongers, the Other Woman who seems a little too familiar with your husband, therapists & counselors, oneiromancers, and ambassadors to Hedge communities. The work Autumn does is harsh on Clarity, and Fairest are especially vulnerable to that harshness, but if the Court invests the time in helping its Fairest members, the self-awareness and self-confidence it offers can be a godsend that no other Court can give them.

Winter - As the Court which is actually selling what Fairest think Autumn has - to wit, the ability to simply say “no” to all social interactions with no justification required - Winter has a strong undercurrent of Fairest membership at all tiers of its power. Fairest often end up directly involved in Winter’s money-making enterprises, and flourish as Squires and Armigers with their fingers on the pulse of the Court’s morale. Winter’s hands-off approach displays a tremendous amount of trust in its Fairest from their perspective, and the demeanor of the Coldest Court - Winter’s indifferent equality - has a potent, merciless appeal. The trap of drowning in Sorrow sucks more than a few Fairest under, but if their peers can be there for them there’s always a way back out.

This Is Not A Pipe - Fairest And Lost’s Themes

My many thanks to Izzie M for her extensive help on this section. I’m not sure I’d have been able to grapple it down, emotionally or intellectually, otherwise.

Fairest go through some intense shit, and the shit they go through can never fully be addressed, never fully be recovered from. It’s no mistake that Fairest, like Wizened, are among those Lost likely to never fully gain resolution with or from their Keeper, and this is because they embody the dark truth that no matter how much progress you make, how much you heal, your trauma has changed who you are as a person and you will be dealing with it until you die. But, as alluded to extensively above in the discussion of Fairest and gender, Fairest also embody the way in which society will attempt to stamp you, mold you, turn you into a product to be consumed or an archetype to be placed into its churning machine, and its attempts to reshape who and what you are and can be are, in themselves, a form of trauma and abuse.

Fairest deal a lot in expectations. They’re expected to be perfect victims, they’re expected to be happy (because they’re beautiful and attractive, because they can front as Doing Okay, because they have a form of access to ‘normal’ society), they’re expected to want romance and sex (since everyone else wants those things out of them), to perform emotional labor, to be available, intimate, understanding, to keep up appearances. Fairest escape the chains of their Keeper only to be clapped in the chains that extend into the eyes and minds of their peers, and they cannot move without hearing the clink of them.

Fairest are primed to represent victims of ongoing emotional abuse and neglect; sex slaves and victims of child abuse might find themselves in Fairest, as might husbands or wives of abusive partners (and boy, re-living my bullshit there was a bonus prize I didn’t want to receive for writing this article), children pushed to over-achieve (here overlapping with Elemental) until they break, pastor’s daughters and cult kids (here overlapping with Beast), and others. However, Fairest also hit their thematic stride when talking about trauma from a society that will not give you an exit. A trans person is first punished by society for “failing” to perform their assigned gender, then made to perform their new one to expectations that they cannot set, do not control, and do not consent to; such a person might easily be Fairest, as might a man breaking under the expectations of Maleness, a college student losing their mind in finals week with no one to help, or even more ‘ordinary’ sex workers expected to perform emotional and physical labor for a society that rewards their work with violence and dehumanization.

Fairest are people with complex internal worlds and they damn well know it, but the temptations to let others define them are numerous; society promises all manner of rewards for being who and what it wants you to be, for wanting the things it tells you to want, for being the kind of person who wants and does those things. To be Fairest is to know at any time you can start faking it and receive those rewards insofar as they’re actually on the table, but it is also to know, every second of every day that you’re performing that role, that it is fake. If you can’t find a community with which you can be genuine...well. You can always get more hurt, and in this way Fairest also bring another theme of Lost into focus: that the Lost owe compassion and understanding to their fellow victims, because failure to care can only hurt both them and everyone in their blast zone.

Feet Pics For Legos - Coping As A Fairest

Fairest are among those Lost who are most concerned with their day-to-day social interactions and safety rather than their immediate, very physical environmental safety. They are perhaps the Seeming most likely to live in a group setting (in an apartment with roommates or romantic partners, in a house shared between multiple households, splitting the bills in a condo, with their parents), and are definitely the Seeming most comfortable with the idea of living with mortals who aren’t ensorcelled. Indeed, Fairest don’t tend to do well living alone; even a Fairest who wants or needs a private place to be, choosing to keep a home in which others cannot lay a claim, will likely crash at friends’ places, sleep over at the Freehold commons on some pretext or another, stay the night with a lover, or otherwise have a place to flop down while surrounded by other people. Having other people - their greatest reality check - around the place helps keep the Fairest centered in the real reality, better able to pick apart the mortal from the Wyrd from their own unrelated hallucinations, and a Fairest who is isolated - or who is permitted to isolate herself - quickly begins to dissociate and may soon be incapable of caring for herself until someone can get her back into the present.

Those invited over as guests to a Fairest’s home may note a lot of concern for those she lives with. She likely schedules the event well in advance, is clear about the boundaries of those she lives with (”That’s Brenda’s room, the door stays shut.”) and in general treats her communal home with a lot of respect and love. Respecting these boundaries and in turn having her own respected is very validating for the Fairest and is vital to be able to feel safe and at ease in her own home, and impressing their importance on guests further reinforces that this is, as it were, her doughnut. While not dismissive of their own literal physical safety per se, a Fairest’s anxieties rarely center around her body being violently attacked by strangers. For those that do have such anxieties, they may choose to solve that problem by simple expedient of rooming or living with someone large and scary.

Another detail of note which is touched on in Winter Masques is that Fairest tend to seek out life’s little pleasures. Though they are not necessarily wealthier than other Lost, how a Fairest chooses to spend her money tends to follow particular patterns. Rare is the Fairest who doesn’t have clothing they like, a phone that works, a wallet or purse that can actually hold all of their stuff, and in this regard most Fairest without a special interest in fashion as a hobby in and of itself will have an aesthetic that is self-expressive but serviceable and hard-wearing, but any place the Fairest haunts, frequents, or lives in will get little touches everywhere. Fairest spend the little bits of extra money for good toilet paper, soft soaps that won’t hurt the skin, good shower supplies, high-quality razors, boots that won’t wear through - and they spend their serious money on their hobbies and preferences. A Fairest with a passion for cooking scrimps and saves to get a fully-stocked kitchen; a Fairest who likes building and connecting invests in Legos or Hot Wheels and creates elaborate environments for them. A gamer Fairest has headphones that can vibrate your constipation away and a fiber optic connection to ensure that lag will not stand between her and your doom. The reasons for this are manifold, and Lost’s canon writing suggests that Fairest seek pleasure to alleviate a desire to return to Arcadia. This is, to put it mildly, a stupid assertion; rather, the Fairest provides her own pleasures in part because it is one of the most emotionally clear ways to lick the doughnut, and in part because it reminds her that she can be happy under her own power, can seek pleasure, stimulation, engagement, without placing herself at another’s mercy - ironically making it easier to go out every day and do exactly that as a member of her various societies.

As a Fairest settles in she tends to look for “her” people, and quite often they’re good at compartmentalizing this, wearing different hats and having different feelings about those hats without feeling fake or distressed about the bare fact of that. She’ll have her personal friends and family, like her housemates, her girlfriend, maybe her mortal family, her neighbors, and then folks like her Motley (which are like her personal friends and family, but In The Know), her fellow Fairest and the Freehold broadly, her work friends and fellow hobbyists. A Fairest who does, say, sex work, thinks of herself as a Sex Worker and understands herself in the context of that broader social group. It can be a lot! Many Lost barely have a handle on being a member of both the Freehold and a Court, and the way Fairest flit to and fro between many communities, slipping seamlessly from one role to another, can be exhausting to watch - but by doing so the Fairest also builds bonds between those communities, highlights their common needs and interests, draws them together over their similarities and strengths. Darklings and Wizened get a lot of the work on the ground done, but it’s often a Fairest in the role of whistleblower, figurehead, and champion all at once.

After all, this, too, is her doughnut.

Example Fairest - Clara Belltower, Spring Playmate

Clara Belltower is a mime.

Well, no, not exactly. Clara Belltower is a self-employed porn actress, erotic script writer, and director, whose primary thing is mimes, clowns, and more broadly circuses and performance venues. She came back from Arcadia eight years back fleeing life as her Keeper’s Stepford Wife, and ran face-first into the money issues that haunt the Lost in general. What started out as a practical choice in new career - and an attempt to find and express an identity not created for her by her abuser - became a creative passion that has stayed strong with Clara and propelled her to status in the Spring Court, which retains her keen eye for decoration, direction, and theatricality in service to its high rituals and revels. Clara’s livestreams and online presence are also a convenient avenue for the Freehold to launder its less legal revenue streams, which has endeared Spring’s “silent siren” to the Winter Court and cemented her as a mover and shaker.

Clara’s ambitions reach beyond erotic miming, as talented as she is at both creating and purveying such. She has her eyes on four different strip clubs in Freehold territory alone whose owners and operators need to fucking go, and she wants Winter’s help making it happen; further, she wants the Freehold to take over operation of those establishments for the benefit of the workers. Clara’s vision is popular in Spring and has its supporters in Summer too, but the Declining Seasons have been cool on the concept, citing a need to maintain subtlety and avoid entanglements with the mortal world that might invite the eye of, say, the IRS - or mire the Freehold in a protracted war with local police departments. Clara’s passion burns with a righteous simplicity, envisioning a Freehold that is active in improving the city around it - if the cops want to throw down, bring it on! Her influence over Winter means the Coldest Court cannot simply dismiss her desires, but neither is it willing to go to war. Something is going to have to give, soon.

This concludes the Fairest portion of the article. Some additional thoughts on Seeming follow.

Bombing Your Own Position - Choosing Your Seeming

So it’s been six articles and I’ve talked about the ways various Seemings can represent responses to the things which traumatize us; neurodivergences for which society abuses us, the machinery of capitalism, violence, prison, and more. But how do you go about choosing your character’s Seeming? The obvious choice is to make a character that puts a lot of yourself at the table; to seek out a Seeming that reflects your own traumas, your own issues, your own anxieties and struggles, and then grapple with them in this fictional context. But RPGs can be an emotionally challenging medium, and you may well not want to deal with your own bullshit during your magic trauma fairy game. That’s valid!

Now, the second obvious piece of advice is to think about your proposed character’s themes and traumas and then select a Seeming from there, but this can get complicated. Many Lost players feel as if they need two Seemings, and to those players I say: no the fuck you do not. But it is true that people are messy and do not fully resolve, that the broad spectrum of the world of sorrow and loss is not easy to fit into 6 discrete categories whose creation was often managed by, not to keep repeating this point, fucking Nazis. I have found in my experience that it can be helpful, when you’re torn between two Seemings or you have a character you’re sure is this Seeming even though they look like or could be that one, to ask yourself why the character is not the other option. Why is this alluring and sensual Darkling not a Fairest, what makes this brutal and violent Wizened not an Ogre? This question naturally leads to others about their abuse and their reaction to it, and can start your momentum for writing your concept out.

As an addition, while I’ve spoken of various Seemings as being well-equipped to represent specific traumas, they don’t own those traumas. Elementals are metaphorically autistic, but there’s nothing stopping you from running an autistic Fairest or an autistic Beast instead. Rather, those Seemings outlined as being “for” or “about” certain traumas are those whose selection will make those traumas thematically central, cause you to return to them as a topic over and over by virtue of being who and what they are. Real people have complicated problems which intersect with one another, spawning new problems that are more strange than the sum of their parts, and it’s both valid and interesting to write your Lost that way - just keep in mind that it’ll still be complicated at the table too.

Van Helsing Hate Crimes - Seeming Politics

White Wolf spent a lot of time waffling back and forth on whether or not Seemings represent distinct cultural and political identities in a given Freehold, drifting towards ‘yes’ when the writers thought about the way Blessings and Curses create consistent, measurable differences between Lost of various Seemings, and towards ‘no’ generally whenever they were asked to actually outline a Lost society such as a sample Freehold or Entitlement. Some Entitlements are locked to specific Seemings, often times with little thought as to why, while other times Seeming-based power blocs are alluded to as worldbuilding elements (such as in Lords of Summer) without much in the way of supporting detail. Why should these things happen, when, how, what does the buildup of this violent fracture in a Freehold society look like?

On the whole, I have taken the stance in these articles and in my own worldbuilding that some amount of fantastical prejudice exists amongst the Lost, but that the systems of oppression have not taken root. Maybe it’s idealistic of me to view the Lost as unwilling or unable to produce internally racist power structures that create an underclass for the benefit of an appointed elite, but in general I feel as if Freeholds are too small, each individual member too precious by simple dint of being a living being in a physical body, for this kind of evil to flourish. That said, you may have also noticed that I identified two Seemings - Darklings and Fairest - as explicitly self-uniting and in some senses self-governing on the basis of common traumas that they often cannot fully explain to outsiders, and indeed community with people that understand your bullshit without you having to say it aloud - that is, those who share a Seeming with you - can be invaluable to all Lost. Ultimately, however, I want to advise against looking at Seemings the way that, say, Vampire: the Requiem looks at Clans, and instead to treat them as reactions to trauma rather than a kind of alternate racial identity.

Next up: So You Need To Write A Fetch

[ehdubyah]

Oath of the Open Sea features (from DnD Beyond)

Because this comes from a brand new homebrewed class and contains spoilers for episode 112, I will put the text under a read-more.

The Oath of the Open Sea calls to sea-faring warriors, swashbuckling sailors, and journeying guardians who seek the thrill of an endless horizon. Driven to seek the adventure and mystery across and beneath every endless oceanic expanse, paladins who swear this oath stand against those who would deny the liberties afforded to likeminded travelers, rooting out the tyrannical and corrupt that claim any shore. Such guardians believe in the natural beauty of the sea, often making offerings and prayers to entities or deities like the Wild Mother or Storm Lord that influence safe passage, while often feeling called to hunt those monstrosities that seek to terrorize and spoil the waters with wanton violence and ill intent.

-No Greater Life than a Life Lived Free. One should be free to chart their own path without oppression. Those who would exert their power to dominate others shall be smote.

-Trust the Skies. The guidance of a strong breeze. The rumbling warnings of a coming storm. Nature is a source of portent and council that should be heeded.

-Adapt like the Water. The waters of the ocean can shift around any obstacle or become an impassable one. They can carve around and reveal the secrets of the past or swallow the truth and hide it forever. To embrace this fluidity is to be ready for any challenge.

-Explore the Uncharted. The world is filled with much mystery. Through the pursuit of these enigmatic ends, one can both uncover those who hide their dark deeds in shadow to be judged, and find the path to becoming something great.

Oath Spells

You gain oath spells at the paladin levels listed in the Oath of the Open Seas Spells table. See the Sacred Oath class feature for how oath spells work.

3rd: create or destroy water, expeditious retreat

5th: augury, misty step

9th: call lightning, tidal wave

13th: control water, freedom of movement

17th: commune with nature, maelstrom

Channel Divinity

When you take this oath at 3rd level, you gain the following two Channel Divinity options.

Marine Layer. As an action you can channel the sea to create a thick cloud of fog that surrounds you and heavily obscures the area for 20 feet in all directions, following you as you move. You and any creatures you choose within 5 feet of you can see through the fog and suffer no penalties from being within it. This fog lasts for 10 minutes, spreads around corners and cannot be dispersed.

Fury of the Tides. As a bonus action, you can channel the powerful might of the waves to bolster your attacks. For 1 minute, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can choose to push the target 10 feet away from you. If the target is pushed into an obstacle or another creature, they take additional bludgeoning damage equal to your Charisma modifier.

Aura of Liberation

Starting at 6th level, you emanate an aura while you’re not incapacitated. You and any creature of your choice within 10 feet of you cannot be grappled or restrained, as well as ignore penalties on movement or attacks while underwater. Creatures that are already grappled or restrained when they enter the aura can spend 5 feet of movement to automatically escape nonmagical restraints.

When you reach 18th level in this class, the range of the aura increases to 30 feet.

Stormy Waters

At 15th level, you can call crashing waters around you as a reaction whenever a creature enters or exits your melee range. The creature takes 1d12 bludgeoning damage and must succeed a Strength saving throw or be knocked prone.

Mythic Swashbuckler

At 20th level, you learn to channel the spirits of historic sea captains to briefly become a paragon of heroic adventure. As an action, you embrace these spirits of the sea, gaining the following benefits for 1 minute:

Climbing costs no additional movement, and you have advantage on Strength (Athletics) checks that involve climbing.

If you are within 5 feet of a creature, and no other creatures are within 5 feet of you, you have advantage on your attacks against that creature.

You can take the Dodge action as a bonus action.

You have advantage on all Dexterity ability checks and Dexterity saving throws against effects that you can see.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

[chelsfic]

Part 6 Trustfall - August Walker/Reader - Mission: Impossible Fallout fanfic

Part One; Part Two; Part Three; Part Four; Part Five

A/N: Here is the long awaited final part of Trustfall. I debated writing a more G-Rated ending, but I felt I kinda owed my readers some smut, lol. So this part is rated Explicit. Also, there is just a touch of Fem!Dom in here. It’s not really kinky, though, it’s more about the reader regaining control after August has been messing up her life for so long. I can’t give enough thanks to everyone who has liked, reblogged, commented and started following me. You guys are the best.

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: A touch of Fem!Dom, Smut!

Your leg flares up worse than ever in the days following the disastrous meeting with the Russians. You’re not sure if the cause is psychosomatic--maybe the pressure and terror of that situation brought up feelings from the past--or if you re-injured the muscles running up the stairs. Either way you’re in pain. And August is acting more distant than ever which doesn’t do much to improve your mood. Every time you start to think you’ve made progress, moved forward into a new phase of being with him...he pulls away from you.

Not a word has passed between you regarding your kiss. Instead he shuts himself in his room and only emerges at meal times. But despite this distance he’s also been overly considerate for the last few days. One day you come home from work to find that he’s done all the grocery shopping for the week. You can’t remember how many times you’ve put off shopping and loudly proclaimed your disdain for the chore. And though he’s been staying up in his room, when he does emerge he finds you wherever you happen to be and brings you cups of tea without you asking. He finds you curled up with a book and drops an afghan blanket over your shoulders then walks away without a word. It’s just weird.

***

August stands over the stove stirring a pot of spaghetti. No one would call him a gourmet cook but he can manage pasta. Y/N is due home any minute and he’s already feeling the flare of shame and guilt that stabs at him whenever he sees her. It’s not just that he hurt her, shot her in the leg causing permanent damage. Although, yikes, that is a big part of it. But then he came back, forced himself into her life and started to fall for her despite his best efforts. Worse than that he watched as she developed feelings for him. Knowing all along how cruel it was to attach this girl any further to his life. Knowing that just being in proximity to him would put her in danger. And then he’d betrayed her again. Inviting that danger into her home and nearly suffering the ultimate penalty as a result. He should walk away. A good man would walk away.

All week he’s been struggling to keep himself from her. To insert distance between them to make it easier to...leave. But he hasn’t left, he’s lingered like a love sick coward. He’ll tell her tonight. Over dinner. It will be easier for both of them this way.

***

By the time you get home from work you have just enough energy to collapse onto the couch and reach for the remote control. Your eyelids are already drifting shut when August walks in balancing two bowls of pasta, a bottle of wine and two glasses in his arms. You scoot up a bit to allow him room on the couch and watch with an amused smirk as he sets everything carefully onto the coffee table.

Today was the class trip to the aquarium. With your leg hurting all week it had been close to torture having to spend four hours chasing around a bunch of seven-year-olds, but you made it. It feels absolutely luxurious to just stretch your legs out on the couch toward August and lean back into the cushions. You let out a long sigh and absently rub your calf, groaning in a mixture of pain and relief. You glance up at August to find him staring down at your leg, his mouth twisted in a frown.

“August?” you murmur, reaching out to lay a hand on his shoulder. “Please talk to me, you’ve been so...quiet all week since…”

He looks up at you and you see that his eyes are glassed over with unshed tears. Your heart catches in your throat and you shift closer to him, wrapping your arms around his trembling shoulders. August collapses into you, pressing his face into the crook of your neck and clenching your blouse in his fists as if he’s afraid you’ll run away if he doesn’t hold onto you.

You can feel his tears, wet on your neck and he whispers your name into your skin, “Y/N...I’m...I’m sorry.”

You stay silent for a while, just holding him and rubbing soothing circles into his back. The man is over a foot taller than you and twice as wide, but he’s curled up in your embrace like a child. You press your lips into his curls and whisper, “I know, August... I forgive you.”

***

You take him to your bed and it’s not at all like you’d imagined. And you have imagined it. In your fantasies August is always in control. His fierce violence broiling beneath the surface as he slams into you, pinning you to the mattress and taking his pleasure with masculine ferocity.

Instead he’s soft, quiet, compliant. He lets you hold his hand and guide him up the stairs and into your bedroom. You nudge him toward the bed and he falls onto his back, boneless, looking up at you with eyes that shine with adoration. You understand without him saying a word that he is giving over everything to you tonight: control, power, himself. He won’t take one more thing from you that isn’t freely, joyfully given.

In this room--only feet away from the place where you’d lay bleeding on the floor, where you’d begged him not to hurt you--you will reclaim your power.

You stand at the edge of the bed, looking down at this man--his divine body, his achingly beautiful face. You catch his eyes and smile, reaching out to hold his hand. You’re not sure why, but you think he needs the reassurance of physical touch as much as you do.

“I want you, August,” you whisper, voice ragged with emotion. “I’ve wanted you for a long time. I don’t want you to feel sorry or ashamed anymore. Do you understand? I’m giving myself to you.”

August’s lips part in awe at your words and at your overwhelming goodness and bravery. He doesn’t deserve you. But it’s not up to him to decide if he gets to have you. You’re giving yourself to him and he must accept you.

“Yes,” he hisses, sitting up and placing his palm flat against your hip. “I want you too, Y/N.”

“Take off your clothes,” you whisper with the hint of playful authority in your tone. 

August unbuckles his belt, squirms out of his blue jeans and pulls his shirt over his head. His body is like a prayer. You want to worship it. With trembling hands you start working at the buttons of your shirt, but your movements are slow and clumsy. August kneels before you on the bed and shoos your hands away, making quick work of the shirt and your bra underneath. He brushes his calloused fingers under the waist of your skirt and you moan in desire. You’re not sure when you first started wanting this. But it feels like it’s been forever. 

He pushes the skirt down and grasps your hips in his large hands, guiding you on the bed until you’re both kneeling on the soft mattress facing each other. Your breasts brush against his chest hair and you feel your nipples harden in response. Even kneeling, August is still a head taller than you. He dips his face down to yours and presses a soft, firm kiss to your lips. You twine your arms around his shoulders, climbing onto him and deepening the kiss, stroking your tongue into his mouth as you wrap your legs around his waist. He cups your ass in his hands, holding you up and kneading you with strong fingers. You grunt against his lips, his fingers are electric, sending waves of pleasure straight to your wet core.

August lets his balance shift, falling onto his back with you straddling his waist on top of him. Your hair falls in a shower around his face and you toss it to once side, desperately laying kisses on his lips, his cheeks, his neck, chest. You can feel his rigid cock brushing against your ass through the fabric of your panties. You rock your hips, rubbing against him and eliciting a hiss of pleasure from his lips.

“You are beautiful,” you whisper into his mouth as you capture his lips in another fierce kiss. When you pull back his pupils are dilated in wanton pleasure and his mouth is hanging open as you continue to rock your ass backward against his rigid length. “You want me, August?”

He nearly cries with desperation, “Yes, yes, I want you.”

You move off of him for a moment, shimmying out of your panties and tossing them to the floor. He does the same with his boxer briefs letting his thick cock spring free, straining into the air and begging for relief. Your eye’s gleam with delight and you shift downward, hovering over his cock and letting your hot breath brush over the head. August keens in need but he doesn’t move an inch, merely balling his fists into your comforter. He wants you so badly, but he’s determined to let you make all the first moves tonight. 

You brush your lips along the length of him, just the barest contact, rubbing his penis over your mouth, your cheeks, worshiping him. You’re throbbing with painful desire and you can’t wait any longer. You crawl up his body, swing your leg over his hips and sit back, guiding his cock inside you in a swift sudden motion. The intrusion is a delicious shock to your senses. You cry out in pleasure at feeling so full. August brushes his palms over your hips, begging for motion. You oblige, rocking on top of him and building up to a rapid pace. There will be time later to go slowly. Right now you can hardly bear the sweet ache of your building pleasure. August grips your hip with one hand and delves the other one into the space between you, brushing his rough fingertips over your clitoris and eliciting a shuddering whimper from you. He presses harder, circling the bud as you ride his cock. He’s about to come, rigid and twitching inside you. He vigorously rakes his fingers over your flesh, urging you over the edge with him. You let go.

You fall forward into his arms, muscles shaking and sweat coating your skin. He hugs you against him, pressing your face into his chest and grazing his fingers along your spine. He lays a soft kiss on your forehead and sighs. He can’t remember a time he’s felt so content.

You stroke your fingers through his chest hair and smile slightly, craning your neck to look up at him, “You’re mine now, you know. There’s no getting away from me now.”

August smiles down at you. Only an hour ago he’d been planning out how to tell you he was leaving. Thinking it was the best thing for both of you. Now, holding you in his arms with the aftershocks of your love panging through his body he rethinks things. Maybe it’s time to stop making decisions for you instead of with you.

“I’m yours,” he whispers with a contented smile, tightening his arms around you. “I’m not letting go.”

That’s it, that’s end!

Tags:

@thorins-queen-of-erebor​ @viking-raider  @onceuponathreetwoone @angelic-kisses13 @afangirldaydreams @peeyewpeeyew @calwitch @scuzmunkie @its-laurie-mercier @together-all-alone  @blablatiti @multi-fandom-ficrecs @ohjules @suueeeeeee @strangerliaa

[rebelcourtesan]

My D&D 5e Build for Horde Prime

Wow.  Nothing prepared us for Horde Prime.  Noelle warned us that he was a horrible and creepy, but that was putting it lightly.  I’ve been a bit fixated with him, so I decided to try my hand at recreated him for D&D or at close to it as I can get.  

With the ability to control clones and chipped people, Horde Prime has people do the fighting for him.  This build will allow Horde Prime to control and subjugate others to do his bidding while remaining aloft and safe behind allies or clones. 

Long Post Below

                                                  *****STATS*****

Wisdom:  Must be the highest stat since Prime sees all and knows all.  Also, he can see through cat girls’ schemes and determine how to get under Glimmer’s skin.

Intelligence: Second highest.  Was able to clone himself to create an army, created a hive-mind, and technological mind.  

Charm: Third Highest.  Has a gentlemanly manner and is the leader of a cult.

Constitution: Fourth highest.  Able to keep himself alive by draining the life force from his ‘brothers’.

Strength:  Fifth.  We never see Horde Prime use outright violence save for Hordak whom he was able to bodily lift one handed.  

Dexterity: Dump stat.  One could argue he never saw that shot coming, but Hordak did nearly take him out with one blast.

                                                   *****Race*****  

After looking through the list of races, the best race that would suit Horde Prime would be Variant Human. 

Put the extra points into Wisdom and Intelligence.   

Pick Perception to put your proficiency in.  Horde Prime does see all after all. 

And select Observant as a feat.  Adds an additional point to either Wisdom or Intelligence.  You also get a +5 bonus to your passive Wisdom (Perception) and passive Intelligence (Investigation) scores.  On top of this, Horde Prime can read lips as long as he understands the language being spoken.  

Then choose the Acolyte background to give Horde Prime proficiency in Insight and Religion.  

To start things off, we are going to into Cleric.

At 1st Level Clerics receives spells and choose a Divine Domain.

I’m not going to list what spells to choose as it would take up a lot of time and space and the number of spells are determine by the wisdom modifier.  So I’m just going to list a recommendation of spells that I believe would suit Horde Prime’s inclinations and feel in the blanks with attack spells and/or healing spells as you like. 

1st Level Spells Recommendation 

Sanctuary: Protects his clones and chipped people from attack, unless someone succeeds a wisdom saving throw. (Like someone forcing themself to fight a chipped loved one for example).

Bane: any target that fails a charm save, must roll a 1d4 and subtract that number from the total of an attack roll or saving throw.  

Bless: Has the opposite effect. Allies can roll a 1d4 and add that number to the total of an attack or saving throw roll.

For Divine Domain, we are going to go with Order Domain. 

In addition to the spells Horde Prime receives, he gets two more spells.

Command:  You speak a one-word command to a creature you can see within range. The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or follow the command on its next turn.

Heroism:  A willing creature you touch is imbued with bravery. Until the spell ends, the creature is immune to being frightened and gains temporary hit points equal to your spellcasting ability modifier at the start of each of its turns.

Also, Horde Prime becomes proficient in Heavy Armor (I guess you could call the parts on his shoulders and finger guards as heavy armor).  Also, Horde Prime gains proficiency bonus in either Intimidate or Persuasion.  Choose Persuasion for this build.  

The Order Domain also gives Horde Prime Voice of Authority:  you can invoke the power of law to drive an ally to attack. If you cast a spell with a spell slot of 1st level or higher and target an ally with the spell, that ally can use their reaction immediately after the spell to make one weapon attack against a creature of your choice that you can see.  

Cleric 2nd Level

Horde Prime is able to use Channel Divinity which he can use to Turn Undead.  With the Order Domain, he can use it for Order's Demand in which each creature of your choice that can see or hear you within 30 feet of you must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be charmed by you until the end of your next turn or until the charmed creature takes any damage. You can also cause any of the charmed creatures to drop what they are holding when they fail the saving throw.

Cleric 3rd Level

Horde Prime can now use 2nd level spells.  I recommend:

Aid: Your spell bolsters your allies with toughness and resolve. Choose up to three creatures within range. Each target’s hit point maximum and current hit points increase by 5 for the duration.

Calm Emotions:  Each humanoid in a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on a point you choose within range must make a Charisma saving throw; a creature can choose to fail this saving throw if it wishes. If a creature fails its saving throw, choose one of the following two effects. You can suppress any effect causing a target to be charmed or frightened.  Alternatively, you can make a target indifferent about creatures of your choice that it is hostile toward.  

Order Domain also adds two more spells:

Hold Person:  Choose a humanoid that you can see within range. The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be paralyzed for the duration. At the end of each of its turns, the target can make another Wisdom saving throw. On a success, the spell ends on the target. 

Zone of Truth:  You create a magical zone that guards against deception in a 15-foot-radius sphere centered on a point of your choice within range. Until the spell ends, a creature that enters the spell’s area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there must make a Charisma saving throw. On a failed save, a creature can’t speak a deliberate lie while in the radius. You know whether each creature succeeds or fails on its saving throw. 

Cleric 4th Level

Gain an Ability Score Improvement.  Increase your Wisdom.  You want Horde Prime to get more spells and make them more powerful.  If Wisdom is maxed out, then put the points into Intelligence instead. 

Cleric 5th Level

Horde Prime can potentially Destroy Undead with Channel Divinity.    

Also, he can now use 3rd Level spells.  I recommend:

Sending:  You send a short message of twenty-five words or less to a creature with which you are familiar. (He does control a hive-mind)

Tongues:  This spell grants the creature you touch the ability to understand any spoken language it hears. (He’s been conquering planets, each likely with their own language).

Spirit Guardians:  You call forth spirits to protect you. They flit around you to a distance of 15 feet for the duration. If you are good or neutral, their spectral form appears angelic or fey (your choice). If you are evil, they appear fiendish. (For Horde Prime it would be clones that suddenly appear when a Queen speaks out of turn).

Order Domain grants two additional spells.

Mass Healing Word:  As you call out words of restoration, up to six creatures of your choice that you can see within range regain hit points equal to 1d4 + your spellcasting ability modifier.

Slow: You alter time around up to six creatures of your choice in a 40-foot cube within range. Each target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be affected by this spell for the duration.An affected target’s speed is halved, it takes a -2 penalty to AC and Dexterity saving throws, and it can’t use reactions.

Cleric 6th Level

Gains an extra use of Channel Divinity.

Order Domain gives  Embodiment of the Law: If you cast a spell of the enchantment school using a spell slot of 1st level or higher, you can change the spell's casting time to 1 bonus action for this casting, provided the spell's casting time is normally 1 action.You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses of it when you finish a long rest.  

This will be very useful starting next level.  

From this point on, we’re switching over to Wizard.  

Wizard 1st Level

Horde Prime can now cast Wizard spells and has Arcane Recovery:  Once per day when you finish a short rest, you can choose expended spell slots to recover.

The Wizard Cantrips I would Recommend: 

Encode Thoughts:  You pull a memory, an idea, or a message from your mind and transform it into a tangible string of glowing energy called a thought strand, which persists for the duration or until you cast this spell again. 

Friends:  For the duration, you have advantage on all Charisma checks directed at one creature of your choice that isn’t hostile toward you. 

The 1st Level Wizard Spells I would recommend:

Cause Fear:  You awaken the sense of mortality in one creature you can see within range.

Charm Person:  You attempt to charm a humanoid you can see within range. It must make a Wisdom saving throw, and does so with advantage if you or your companions are fighting it. If it fails the saving throw, it is charmed by you until the spell ends or until you or your companions do anything harmful to it. The charmed creature regards you as a friendly acquaintance. 

Message:  You point your finger toward a creature within range and whisper a message. The target (and only the target) hears the message and can reply in a whisper that only you can hear. 

Puppet:  Your gesture forces one humanoid you can see within range to make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, the target must move up to its speed in a direction you choose. In addition, you can cause the target to drop whatever it is holding.

Wizard 2nd Level

Choose the Arcane Tradition: School of Enchantment.  Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, the gold and time you must spend to copy a Enchantment spell into your spellbook is halved.  

You gain Hypnotic Gaze: your soft words and enchanting gaze can magically enthrall another creature. As an action, choose one creature that you can see within 5 feet of you. If the target can see or hear you, it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your wizard spell save DC or be charmed by you until the end of your next turn. The charmed creature's speed drops to 0, and the creature is incapacitated and visibly dazed.

Wizard 3rd Level

Second Level Wizard spells are available.  

Enchantment spells are Horde Prime’s friend for this build.  With School of Enchantment and Embodiment of Law that you got from Cleric Order Domain, Horde Prime can easily learn Enchantment Spells and fire them off with bonus actions.

Suggestion:  You suggest a course of activity (limited to a sentence or two) and magically influence a creature you can see within range that can hear and understand you.

Detect Thoughts:  For the duration, you can read the thoughts of certain creatures. When you cast the spell and as your action on each turn until the spell ends, you can focus your mind on any one creature that you can see within 30 feet of you 

Wizard 4th Level

Ability Score Improvement should be split between Wisdom and Intelligence.  If Wisdom is maxed out, then put both points into Intelligence to improve on Wizard spells.  

Wizard 5th Level

3rd level spells are available. I recommend:

Hypnotic Pattern:  You create a twisting pattern of colors that weaves through the air inside a 30-foot cube within range. The pattern appears for a moment and vanishes. Each creature in the area who sees the pattern must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the creature becomes charmed for the duration. While charmed by this spell, the creature is incapacitated and has a speed of 0. 

Fear:  You project a phantasmal image of a creature’s worst fears. Each creature in a 30-foot cone must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or drop whatever it is holding and become frightened for the duration.

Wizard 6th Level

Instinctive Charm:  when a creature you can see within 30 feet of you makes an attack roll against you, you can use your reaction to divert the attack, provided that another creature is within the attack's range. The attacker must make a Wisdom saving throw against your wizard spell save DC. On a failed save, the attacker must target the creature that is closest to it, not including you or itself. If multiple creatures are closest, the attacker chooses which one to target.

Wizard 7th Level

4th level Wizard spells are open.  I recommend:

Confusion:  This spell assaults and twists creatures’ minds, spawning delusions and provoking uncontrolled actions.

Arcane Eye:  You create an invisible, magical eye within range that hovers in the air for the duration. You mentally receive visual information from the eye, which has normal vision and darkvision out to 30 feet. The eye can look in every direction. (Kinda like a drone?)

Wizard 8th Level

Ability Score Improvement.  Wisdom should be maxed out by now so put points into Intelligence.  

Wizard 9th Level

Fifth level spells are available.  Recommend:

Dominate Person:  You attempt to beguile a humanoid that you can see within range. It must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be charmed by you for the duration.  While the target is charmed, you have a telepathic link with it as long as the two of you are on the same plane of existence. You can use this telepathic link to issue commands to the creature while you are conscious (no action required), which it does its best to obey.    

Geas:  You place a magical command on a creature that you can see within range, forcing it to carry out some service or refrain from some action or course of activity as you decide.

Hold Monster:  Choose a creature that you can see within range. The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be paralyzed for the duration.

Wizard 10th Level

Split Enchantment:  Starting at 10th level, when you cast an enchantment spell of 1st level or higher that targets only one creature, you can have it target a second creature.   Imagine casting Geas or Dominate Person on two people at the same time!

Wizard 11th Level

6th Level Spells are available.  Recommendation:

Mass Suggestion:  You suggest a course of activity (limited to a sentence or two) and magically influence up to twelve creatures of your choice that you can see within range and that can hear and understand you.

Wizard 12th Level

Ability Score Improvement, Wisdom should be maxed.  And if Intelligence is already maxed, use these points to round out the other scores.  

Wizard 13th Level

7th Level spells are available.  Recommendation:

Project Image:  You create an illusory copy of yourself that lasts for the duration. The copy can appear at any location within range that you have seen before, regardless of intervening obstacles. The illusion looks and sounds like you but is intangible. If the illusion takes any damage, it disappears, and the spell ends.

Wizard 14th Level

Alter Memories:  you gain the ability to make a creature unaware of your magical influence on it. When you cast an enchantment spell to charm one or more creatures, you can alter one creature's understanding so that it remains unaware of being charmed.

And there you have it.  Not the strongest build, but he comes across as a magic user that specializes in mind manipulation, or enchantment magic.  I would round out his spell roster with offensive spells from Wizard spell list and healing spells from the Cleric’s.  

I had considered going sorcery, but the class is too chaotic for orderly Horde Prime, so I went with Cleric/Wizard build instead with a focus on Enchantment magic.     

[madewithonerib]

What does Genesis 9:6 mean?

           Genesis 9:6 | Whoever sheds the blood of            man, by man his blood will be shed; for in             HIS own image GOD has made mankind.

     In the previous verse, GOD declared that,      from this point forward in the post-flood world,      HE would require an account or reckoning whenever a      human life was ended by man or animal.

     This verse describes that reckoning:      The person or animal who killed another person was to be killed.

     The poetic language of the shedding of blood refers to death.

     The institution of the death penalty by GOD differs drastically      from HIS response to Cain's murder of Abel.

     Then GOD allowed Cain to live & even to thrive on the      earth [Genesis 4:15–16].

     However, the violence on the earth was part of      GOD's reason for wiping out mankind with the flood      [Genesis 6:5].

     GOD gives a specific reason for this new command to      kill those who kill others: Humans are made in      GOD's image [Genesis 1:26–27].

     GOD values human life & will not allow the taking of      life to stand without the killer giving an account.

     This command also shows that human life is valued      above animal life in GOD's eyes.

     Men were allowed to kill & eat animals, but men or      animals who killed a person would themselves be killed.

     This specific reference to capital punishment—an offense      worthy of physical death—is also important in that it      predates the Law of Moses.

     Christians are often divided over the concept of the death      penalty. As part of that debate, this verse reminds us      that capital punishment did not originate with Moses,      but with Noah.

Charles John Ellicott, Christian Theologian [1819–1905] | Genesis 9:6

     This penalty of life for life is not to be left to natural law,      but man himself, in such a manner & under such      safeguards as the civil law in each country      shall order, is to execute the Divine command.

     And thus protected from violence, both of man      & beast, & with all such terrible crimes forbidden      as had polluted Adam's beginning, Noah in      peace & security is to commence afresh man's      great work upon earth.

Chapter Context

     Chapter 9 describes GOD's interactions with Noah &      his children following the flood.

     First, GOD gives blessings & instructions, including      the command to reproduce & fill the earth.

     Next, GOD makes a unilateral covenant with      humanity & animals never to end all life with a flood again.

     HE offers the rainbow as a sign of this promise.

     Finally, Noah prophesies about the future of his son's      descendants after an awkward episode in which Ham      talks to his brothers about seeing Noah passed out      drunk & naked.

WHERE IS GOD’S COVENANT MENTIONED?

           Understanding covenant in the more formal sense,            the first divine-human covenant is the one GOD established            in the days of Noah [Isaiah 54:9].

           That covenant affirms GOD’s commitment to            creation after the flood.

           However, while the concept of a covenant may not            appear until after the flood, the major divine-human            covenants [Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, &            the new covenant] all support & advance GOD’s            creative [and redemptive] goal.

           Each covenant provides further divine assurance            that GOD will realize HIS purpose for creation in            general & humanity in particular by fully            establishing HIS kingdom on earth.

     While GOD announces HIS covenant with Noah & all creation      prior to the flood [Gen 6:18], HE establishes it after the deluge      subsides [Genesis 8:20-9:17].

     The first mention of this covenant simply highlights GOD’s      plan to preserve Noah & the others in the ark      [Genesis 6:18].

     GOD’s covenant with Noah reaffirms HIS original      intent for creation that the flood had “disrupted.”

     So HE solemnly promises that a suspension of the natural      order will never again interrupt [Genesis 8:21–22;      9:11–15] the fulfillment of humanity’s creational mandate      [Genesis 1:26-30; 9:1-7].

     Moreover, the additional commands [Genesis 9:4–6]      emphasize the value of human life in particular,      which further highlights the primary rationale for      this covenant:

     preserving life on earth without further divine interruption.

     It is at least implicit from the scope of this covenant      that GOD’s redemptive goal will ultimately encompass      the whole creation.

     That global emphasis in Gen 1–11 is not lost in the      subsequent chapters of Genesis & beyond,      despite their narrowing focus.

Matthew 5:38-39 | YOU have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye & tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you not to resist an evil person. If someone slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also;

[learnerteachergentleman]

Pathfinder Second Edition: Introductory Character Guide

If you’re reading this, there’s a decent chance you’re at least familiar with Dungeons and Dragons. Pathfinder is a game system which grew out of D&D 3.5E, and emphasises breadth and depth of choice in character building, and diversity and tactical complexity in encounters. PF1 in particular is a min-maxer’s paradise, with immensely powerful feat chains and functionally invincible high level spellcasters.

PF2 is a humbler creature, with very tightly refined math. Combined with it’s three-action system and +/-10 system towards crits and crit fails, it makes for a wonderfully balanced (and thus hard to break) system.

But it can still be a daunting system to jump into. Character creation has multiple steps, each of them meaningful. Here’s a quick summation of the ancestries and classes you’ll be choosing from.

Ancestries

Dwarves

Strengths: CON and WIS boosts, good ancestral HP, and their feat selections all combine to make them very sturdy and resilient. Dwarves are typically lawful, honorable and reliable

Weaknesses: CHA penalty means they’re usually not the make sociable of folks. Their movement speed is also the slowest of all ancestries.

Elves

Strengths: DEX and INT boosts, plus access to variable skills, and the best movement speeds make elves highly versatile in and out of combat. Elves tend to be a little aloof and detached as a consequence of their vast lifespans and experiences.

Weaknesses: CON penalty and low ancestral HP makes them very fragile.

Gnomes

Strengths: CON and CHA boosts combine with their feats to make gnomes the most innately magical folk. They’re curious and friendly and constantly seeking new experiences so they don’t die from boredom (literally).

Weaknesses: STR penalty, and they’re seldom taken very seriously.

Goblins

Strengths: DEX and CHA boosts. They have an eclectic selection of feats which can provide bonuses to stealth, setting things on fire, annoying enemies, and using/eating garbage.

Weaknesses: WIS penalty, and thus a tendency towards impulsiveness. They’re still seen as vermin in most parts of the world, so expect racism.

Halflings

Strengths: DEX and WIS boosts, plus their feat options enabling stealth and luck bonuses make halflings surprisingly hardy. They’re great at flying under the radar and getting ignored.

Weaknesses: STR penalty, and like gnomes, being a small and humble race means they’re not automatically taken seriously.

Humans

Strengths: Hugely versatile, with their choice of two ability boosts and feats that enable them to go in any direction. Humans encompass the full spectrum of possibilities.

Weaknesses: Humans don’t really have many weaknesses- their adaptability ensures that- but they also don’t have special strengths they can lean into.

Classes

Alchemists

Why play an Alchemist? Do you want to play with fire? Plan ahead and outwit and outplay your foes? Throw bombs, do drugs, and poison your enemies? Alchemy might be the path for you.

Core Mechanic: Alchemy. Alchemists can make a large supply of alchemical items daily for free.

Subclass Options: Bombers specialise in the use of bombs to damage and debuff foes. Chirugeons specialise in healing potions to cure wounds and remove poisons and diseases. Mutagenists specialise in augmenting abilities through the use of mutagens.

Strengths: A good support class, since they can alter their loadouts daily to meet the needs of the party and the situation. They bring good healing and lots of little debuffing conditions to the fight.

Weaknesses: Their proficiencies and damage don’t keep up in the endgame, and they need a lot of system mastery to play well. They’re also dependent on having both a good Intelligence for their crafting and a good Dexterity for their throwing arm.

Barbarians

Why play a Barbarian? Do you want to hit stuff really hard? Do you like shrugging off damage? Do you have deep seated anger management issues? Do you want to be in the thick of every problem, and use violence as the answer? Barbarian might be the solution to your problems (or therapy).

Core Mechanic: Rage. While raging, Barbarians hit harder, but are easier to hit themselves.

Subclass Options: Animal Instinct enables one to transform to fight with fang and claw. Dragon Instinct brings elemental damage, and eventually breath weapons and wings. Fury Instinct is just pure anger. Giant Instinct grants you an oversized weapon to do more damage than any other build in the game at cost of even worse defenses. Spirit Instinct makes you better at fighting ghosts and spooky things.

Strengths: A powerful frontline striker and tank, with great damage output and plentiful HP. They can also be pretty mobile, and chase foes down with ease.

Weaknesses: Mediocre Reflex saves and lowered AC means they get hit very hard. 

Bards

Why play a Bard? Do you have an innate desire to perform and inspire your friends? Do you want to know lots of weird and useless trivia, random lyrics, and tricks to befuddle the mind and heart? Do you have a deep seated urge to fornicate with dragons (pls no)? If so, Bard might be the class for you.

Core Mechanic: Compositions. Bards get some really powerful supporting abilities which can boost the entire team with ease. Occult Spellcasting (spontaneous). Bards have a strong selection of debuffing and illusion spells.

Subclass Options: The Engima muse grants you ALL the knowledge. The Maestro muse drives you to be the ultimate performer. The Polymath muse enables you to apply your performance skills in all kinds of different situations.

Strengths: Easily the most powerful support class in the game. Their composition cantrips put many actual buffing spells (which they also have) to shame. Strong Perception and Will saves keep them alert and sane.

Weaknesses: A little fragile, and have really poor damage output.

Champions

Why play a Champion? Do you want to protect your friends and stand your ground? Do you want some healing magic with your martial might? Do you want to SMITE EVIL? Have you heard of our inheritor and savior Iomedae? If so, maybe you want to be a Champion.

Core Mechanic: Champion Causes grant them unique defensive reactions which protect allies from damage, and holy focus spells for healing and weakening foes. Divine Allies grant either boost to one’s weapon, one’s shield, or come as a mount.

Subclass Options: Paladins are Lawful Good, and are here to put evil into the ground by beating it the hell to death when it goes after their allies. Redeemers are Neutral Good, and seek more peaceful outcomes by weakening foes or preventing damage completely. Liberators are Chaotic Good, and keep their allies moving and away from threats and bondage.

Strengths: The premium tanking class, with the highest AC proficiencies, their ally protecting reactions, damage reduction on armour, and their healing Lay on Hands.

Weaknesses: Their damage output is decidedly mediocre for a martial class.

Clerics

Why play a Cleric? Do you want to channel holy magic to heal your friends and weaken your foes? Do you want to spread the good word and will of your god? Do you want to wreck evil and praise the sun? If so, Cleric might be the class for you. 

Core Mechanic: Divine Font gives Clerics a bunch of extra healing spells. Divine Spellcasting (prepared). A good supply of supporting and buffing spells, and heaps of things to really punish evil.

Subclass Options: Cloistered Clerics are fully fledged casters with extra focus spells. Warpriests trade off a little casting power for weapons and armour.

Strengths: The divine spell list punches well above curve when fighting foes opposed to your alignment. Cleric healing is very powerful and efficient in combat.

Weaknesses: Over-reliance on alignment based spells leaves them in a bad place when dealing with neutral threats. The Divine list lacks a lot of overall power.

Druids

Why play a Druid? Do you want to run wild with a 6-foot wolverine animal companion? Do you want to turn into a dragon and unleash hell? Do you want absolute command over the elements? If so, Druid might be the class for you.

Core Mechanic: Primal Spellcasting (prepared). Lots of good blasting and support spells.

Subclass Options: Animal for those who want an animal companion. Leaf for those who want a familiar and extra healing. Storm for those who want more firepower. Wild for transformation specialists.

Strengths: Versatile to build, good defenses and proficiencies for a caster, plenty of quality blasting.

Weaknesses: Limited control options. Summoning is quite weak.

Fighters

Why play a Fighter? Do you want to cleave foes in twain with big-ass weapons? Dance across the battlefield with a sword in each hand? Snipe foes from afar? Hold the line with endless shield blocks or parries? Crit everything you can see? If so, Fighter might be the class for you.

Core Mechanic: Fighters don’t really have a core mechanic like other classes. Instead, they’re a full proficiency rank ahead of every other martial, and get flexible extra class feats, making them highly consistent, powerful and adaptable.

Subclass Options: Likewise, Fighters don’t have subclasses. They’re differentiated by their feat selections (broadly speaking, one-handed fencers, two-handed brutes, dual-wielders, sword-and-board defenders, archers, and other niche options).

Strengths: Numerically superior to every other class in terms of offenses. Only Giant Barbarians beat them for damage output (but are way weaker defensively). Only Champions beat them for armour rating (but fall well behind on offense). Hugely flexible in build and tactics. Good Perception.

Weaknesses: Not many. Will saves are average, and one can’t do everything, but otherwise Fighters are overall very good.

Monks

Why play a Monk? Do you want to beat everything to death with your bare hands? Run faster, jump higher and dodge better than everyone else? Use moves right out of an old-school wire-fun martial arts film? Name every one of your attacks like it’s a shounen anime? If so, Monk might be the class for you.

Core Mechanic: Stances. Monks can learn a variety of stances which grant access to special unarmed attacks and other bonuses. Ki. Monks can learn to channel mystical magic known as Ki for extra mobility or special attacks.

Subclass Options: Like Fighters, Monks don’t have subclasses, instead being defined by their feat choices. Crane, Dragon, Mountain, Embers, Tiger, Wolf, Ironblood and Tangled Forest stances each offer different playstyles, as does the selection of various Ki feats.

Strengths: Highly mobile. Excellent AC (only the Champion can get better), good HP and the best saving throw proficiencies all combine to make them very tough to kill.

Weaknesses: Damage output isn’t the best.

Rangers

Why play a Ranger? Do you want to snipe foes from hundreds of feet away? Unleash flurries of arrows or swift attacks? Go into battle astride a feral direwolf? Be able to find (and kill) anyone or anything that pisses you off? If so, Ranger might be the class for you.

Core Mechanic: Hunt Prey. Rangers focus on a single target at a time, gaining benefits against their selected prey.

Subclass Options: Flurry Edge enables Rangers to make multiple attacks with a great reduced downside compared to everyone else. Outwit Edge makes them superior trackers and better defensively. Precision Edge grants them more power on their first hit. 

Strengths: Excellent single target damage. Decent defenses. Better archery range than anyone else. The only class which can actually make crossbows viable.

Weaknesses: Awkward against swarms of enemies, since they need to keep spending actions to shift their Hunted Prey.

Rogues

Why play a Rogue? Do you like stabbing people in the back and watching them bleed out helplessly?Do you like stealing from anyone and anything you can? Do you like your character being really edgy and good at everything? If so, Rogue might be the class for you (and prison might be the place).

Core Mechanic: Sneak Attack. Rogues get more damage against flat-footed targets while using precise weapons.

Subclass Options: Ruffians are tankier and better with brutal bludgeoning weapons. Scoundrels are experts at deceiving and surprising their foes. Thieves are light and lethal with finesse weapons.

Strengths: Twice as many skills and skill feats as any other class means that Rogues can literally be good at everything. Sneak Attack keeps them competitive with other martial classes for damage.

Weaknesses: A little fragile compared to the other martial classes.

Sorcerers

Why play a Sorcerer? Do you like being naturally gifted at stuff? Do you like the feeling of power at your fingertips and your enemies beneath your boot? Do you want to make stuff go BOOM? Did your granny engage in appropriate relations with magical beings? If so, Sorcerer might be the class for you.

Core Mechanic: Bloodline and blood magic. Sorcerers get focus spells and extra powers depending when they cast spells. Spontaneous spellcasting. Sorcerers to choose if they’re Arcane, Divine, Occult or Primal spellcasters.

Subclass Options: Aberrant and Hag bloodlines for Occult magic. Angelic, Diabolic, Demonic or Undead bloodlines for Divine magic. Elemental and Fey bloodlines for Primal magic. Draconic and Imperial bloodlines for Arcane magic.

Strengths: Solid feats chasis enables particular niches other spellcasters can’t access (like Divine counterspells or Arcane healing). Extra spell slots keeps them going longer and harder than other casters.

Weaknesses: No armour, poor AC, and weak saves means that Sorcerers earn their designation as ‘squishies’.

Wizards

Why play a Wizard? Do you like planning ahead for exact eventualities? Do you like delving deep into lore and legend to truly understand your art? Are you a massive nerd (if you’re reading this, probably)? Do you think writing an entire thesis is the best way to demonstrate one’s mastery of a subject? If so, Wizard might be the class for you.

Core Mechanic: School specialisation. Wizards choose a school of magic and get extra abilties and spell slots for that school only. Arcane spellcasting (prepared). Arcane magic gives wizards a wide breadth of tactical options, with buffs, debuffs, blasting, controlling, and heaps of niche silver bullets for opposing magic. Everything excepting healing, basically.

Subclass Options: The Improved Familiar Attunement thesis grants the wizard a useful familiar. The Metamagical Experimentation thesis grants the wizard additional metamagic options for altering their spells. The Spell Blending thesis enables wizards to trade out weaker slots for a few stronger ones. The Spell Substitution thesis enables the wizard to swap out their prepared spells, keeping them adaptable to new information.

Strengths: Solid feats chasis enables them to get the most out of their abundant supply of spells, with metamagics and other spell augmenting options. The arcane list is powerful and deep.

Weaknesses: No armour? Check. Poor AC? Check. Weak saves? Check. Yep, Wizards are squishy.

[septembersung]

“What does the Church teach about it?” It may not be what you think.

Everyone has the right to religious freedom.

“[T]hat erroneous opinion, especially fatal to the Catholic Church and to the salvation of souls . . .namely that liberty of conscience and of worship is a right proper to every man, and should be proclaimed and asserted by law in every correctly established society.... while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching “liberty of perdition. " - Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, #3, Dec. 8, 1864.

No conscience can be forced, but error has no rights.

Separation of church and state is the right and ideal relationship between the two.

“Justice therefore forbids, and reason itself forbids, the State to be godless; or to adopt a line of action which would end in godlessness — namely, to treat the various religions (as they call them) alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and privileges. Since, then, the profession of one religion is necessary in the State, that religion must be professed which alone is true.” - Pope Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum, no. 21, 1888.

Protestant faiths and even non-Christian religions can of their own right lead a person to heaven. As long as you’re a good person you have a shot at heaven.

[It is an error to say that] "in the worship of any religion whatever, men can find the way to eternal salvation, and can attain eternal salvation." - Pope Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, Error #16, Dec. 8, 1864.

“He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.“ - St. Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church 

“To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must ... understand that differing modes of divine worship ... cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God." - Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, #31, Nov. 1, 1885.

Faith is a religious feeling; all faith experiences are valid because they’re inner experiences unique to the individual, which only that individual can judge. 

“Faith is not a blind sentiment of religion welling up from the depths of the subconscious under the impulse of the heart and the motion of a will trained to morality; but faith is a genuine assent of the intellect to truth received by hearing from an external source.” - Oath against modernism

Church doctrine develops in new ways as people develop.

“I entirely reject the heretical’ misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. I also condemn every error according to which, in place of the divine deposit which has been given to the spouse of Christ to be carefully guarded by her, there is put a philosophical figment or product of a human conscience that has gradually been developed by human effort and will continue to develop indefinitely.” - Oath against modernism

“I have clearly stated that the death penalty is unacceptable, it is immoral. 50 years ago? No… but there has been a better understanding of morality.” - Pope Francis

“If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the Church which is different from that which the Church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.” - Dogmatic Canons, Vatican Council I (X)

"Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this [Fifth] Commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the [Fifth] Commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence. Hence these words of David: In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land, that I might cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the Lord." - Catechism of Pius X / Catechism of Trent

[kabane52]

Notes on the Conquest

I received a comment on my last post that I wanted to make a few notes on. 

1. We of course agree that the ultimate purpose of God is to bring perfect peace and to end wars.

2. However, the Bible never uses the word “violence” to describe divinely commanded execution or warfare. Our word violence includes both things scripture describes as violence and things scripture commends as faithful (Hebrews 11), so that it is an unhelpful word to use if one is attempting to discern the grammar of biblical theology. 

3. While what you said about bloodlust is true, nowhere is divinely ordained warfare or penalties described as bloodthirsty.

4. The conquest is under the special sanction of herem and should not be considered normative in terms of framing what is normatively just behavior in warfare.

5. The death penalty is renewed in the New Testament in Romans 13, where the language of the blood-avenger is used to describe the responsibility the civil magistrate has from God, signified by the “sword.” In a society with the death penalty and given the context of the postflood ordination of the death penalty in the system of the blood-avenger, understanding this as an apostolic endorsement of the death penalty is unavoidable.

6. The prophetic warnings of Jesus as well as the Apocalypse push against the idea that God Himself behaves in fundamentally different ways today than He did in the Old Testament. Jesus comes first in mercy, and then in judgment. This happened in the Old Testament, too: the patriarchs came and preached to the Canaanites and converted many (as is the traditional interpretation defended by Cassuto) and then judgment was brought 430 years later. Wars are not made to cease by God Himself becoming a pacifist, but by human behavior, in Christ, being repatterned so that it no longer warrants judgment. This is the subject of the long history (and future) of the church.

[qm-vox]

Let The World Never Falter - Playing Paladins in D&D

(Pictured: Anastasia Luxan, Knight of the Tainted Cup, one of only two people in her friend group that are not evil-aligned. Her wife Aisling is not the other good-aligned person. Characters are from my novel Mourners: Scum of Shatterdown; art credit goes to J.D)

Paladins are one of Dungeons and Dragons’ most striking, and most controversial, character classes. Few character classes and character concepts capture the imagination as quickly or start arguments of such ferocity. I’ve been in this game awhile - I remember when D&D 3e was released - and paladins have been one of my most loved and most hated parts of D&D and its legacy systems that entire time. So here I am again, about to write a long-ass article offerin’ my perspective on paladins through the ages (hopefully highlighting the strongest parts of each vision of them), talk about their pitfalls and problematic elements, and offer some advice on bringing your own paladin to life.

While this article draws on my long experience with D&D and will be citing specific sources, it would not be possible without the help of some other people in my life. I mention Afroakuma a lot in the context of D&D, and our friendship has once again been invaluable here. @a-world-unmasked , also one of my oldest friends, has long been a source of ethical discussion and debate, especially about thorny questions of justice & mercy, amends, redemption, and punishment, and provided information on D&D 4e’s paladins and paladin-like classes. SSG Jacob Karpel, United States Army, brought a Jewish perspective on paladins and their themes into my life and has borne questions of faith, dogma, and tradition with remarkable enthusiasm and patience. @swiftactionrecovery provided further perspective on D&D 4e, and her current paladin (”paladin”; it’s complicated), Aurora, is a great example of a non-traditional take that is at the same time very on-brand. Emerald has long provided the service of beating my ass when I start getting stupid about my own values and beliefs, and @ahr42p‘s fascination with fantasy ethics has informed a lot of my own thoughts on the same. None of this would be possible without you folks.

This article’s title is drawn from Maverick Hunter Quest, written by Cain Labs & Hunter Command. It appears as the motto of the 10th Urban Unit; dedicated soldiers whose specialty was preserving lives, preventing collateral damage, and steering disasters away from the innocent.

None of my articles are quite complete without Content Warnings; the following will contain mentions and descriptions of violence (including state-sanctioned violence such as executions), mentions of high crimes such as slavery and forced conversion, discussion of religion in both fictional and non-fictional contexts, and discussion of fascism and fascist ideology. It is also the end result of more than 20 years of both passionate love for paladins and equally passionate hatred of the same. If you’re wondering what some of that has to do with paladins...well, you’re in for a ride.

So, without further ado, let’s get into...

The Order Of The Kitchen Table - Paladins Through D&D’s History

I hope you like walls of text because I am about to fuck you up with some.

D&D and Pathfinder have a long history with paladins, and they’ve changed a lot through the ages. The following is an overview of the different editions of paladins, what each introduced, and their strengths & weaknesses as a vision of paladinhood. Though the advice in this article is weighted towards 3.PF and 5e, it should in theory be applicable to any of these editions; I should also note that while Pathfinder 2e has its own version of paladins, I am not familiar enough with its vision of paladins to be able to speak on it in good faith. Let’s start with the oldest first, shall we?

AD&D 1e & 2e: Rise A Knight - 1e and 2e were fucking wild. The original incarnation of the paladin showed up as a sub-class of the cavalier, a warrior-group class which had an aura of courage, rode a horse, and had other ‘knightly’ abilities. Paladins had to be a cut above and beyond cavaliers, but unless they also violated the code of the cavaliers in addition to the paladin code, they would become cavaliers when they Fell rather than fighters, which was a bit of a better spot to be in. These paladins were very specifically part of the military arm of a feudal state, with all that entails, and had restrictions on what they could wear and what weapons they could use that were rooted in their social status. In point of fact, in 1e? Paladins couldn’t use missile weapons at all; bows, crossbows, and their kin were for “peasants”. These paladins had to tithe 10% of all income to a ‘worthy’ institution (usually a Lawful Good church of some kind, but other examples include hospitals, charitable initiatives, orphanages, and monasteries), had sharp limits on how many magical items they could own & of what kind, and were beholden to a strict code of conduct rooted in medieval feudalism & romantic ideals of chivalry. While the very original paladin had many of the iconic powers associated with them today (laying on hands, curing disease, an affinity for holy swords), it was not until AD&D 1e proper that paladins developed the ability to cast spells for themselves.

AD&D 2e’s vision of paladins was similar in many ways; they had the same powers, similar ability score requirements, and were similarly rare and elite. They had wealth limits, had to tithe from their income, could only own certain numbers and kinds of magical items, and had to be of Lawful Good alignment. Where things get interestingly different here is who becomes a paladin, and why. In both editions, only humans could be paladins, but where 1e required paladins to be drawn from or else become nobility (because they were derived from cavalier, which was all about status), 2e opened up many origins for paladins. The majority of these can be found in The Complete Paladin’s Handbook, just under 130 pages of nothing but paladins. Reading that book is a fucking trip; it was published in 1994, and while I am not gonna pretend that it’s woke or unproblematic, it has some stunningly modern takes. Do you expect to open up an old D&D supplement about paladins and find it defending poly relationships as valid? NEITHER DID I.

It’s important to note that in both of these editions, paladins lacked magical avenues of attack entirely; Smite Evil was a later invention, and paladin spells, in addition to coming online late in their career (9th level), were sharply restricted to a specific list that included no offensive magic whatsoever. Therefore, any paladin origin had to explain from whence one’s martial skills came, since you are in many ways a warrior more than anything else. There’s some expected ones; religious patronage, which ignores social status but requires an organized church that’s permitted to raise men under arms. Government sponsorship, generally conducted in urban areas where you can actually retain recruiters. Inherited title, if you wanna run a paladin that really hates Mom for forcing them into this. Mentors, for running paladins that are just straight-up shonen protagonists, and my personal favorite, DIVINE INTERVENTION, where one day your god starts talking to you but instead of filling your soul with martial skill she makes you sew training weights into your clothes and miraculously makes a bear live in your house so you can learn courage. It’s fucking amazing.

From those origins, anyone who manages to swear their oath and become invested with the power is essentially part of the nobility from then on; paladinhood marks them as an exemplar of noble ideals, which even in a non-romanticized culture sorta grabs the bluebloods by the short hairs. It’s a bit hard to argue divine right if you try to throw the embodiment of your supposed ideals out of your house. Since these paladins were often, though not necessarily, members of militant organizations they were generally expected to have superiors to whom they answer, a chain of command of which they are part, and to eventually construct a stronghold of some kind and put its services at the disposal of that organization in addition to utilizing it to serve the needy and defend the weak. 2e was a lawless and strange time in D&D, in which building such a stronghold and hiring followers was a class feature of warrior-group classes, and one of the paladin’s key benefits was the opportunity, but not the promise, to acquire some manner of holy sword, which which she gained powerful protections against evil that let her stand toe-to-toe with powerful spellcasters.

Tying all of this together was an in-depth exploration of the most complex and probably the most nuanced code published for paladins in any edition. Though the default was a rigid and inflexible code which defined acceptable behavior, associations, and even employees for the paladin, The Complete Paladin’s Handbook introduced an alternate method of handling code violations that ranked infractions by their severity & intent, and assigned penalties accordingly. Was it perfect? No. Not even a little. The Code was, is, and probably forever will be the most trash part of paladin. But it was a damn sight better than basically any incarnation before it, and most of them after. This code was broken down into (in order of importance), Strictures, Edicts, and Virtues. Strictures are the things a paladin must do and have simply to be a paladin; they must be Lawful Good, they must tithe to a worthy institution, they must abide by their wealth limits, and they must not associate (here meaning ‘serve, be friends with, or knowingly hire’) with evil people. Edicts are the commands of those to whom the paladin is sworn to obey; often this will be a church, a government, or both, but a paladin might instead or also swear to obey edicts given by their family, their mentor, their secular philosophy, or even their wider culture. Military commands and orders are edicts, but so are daily practices such as keeping a kosher diet, maintaining a family burial ground, or obeying a system of formal etiquette. A paladin freely chooses the source of her edicts, but once she’s sworn to obey she cannot selectively turn down a given edict unless it would conflict with one of her Strictures (for instance, if her king orders her to beat a helpless prisoner) or with a ‘higher’ source of Edicts (in general, a paladins religion or philosophy takes precedence over her liege or mentor, who in turn takes precedence over family or culture).

Virtues are where we get real interesting. Lemme quote The Complete Paladin’s Handbook, page 32:

Virtues are traits exemplifying the highest standards of morality, decency, and duty. They comprise the paladin’s personal code. Although not specifically detailed in the PH definition of a paladin, a paladin’s virtues are implied by his strictures as well as his outlook, role, and personality. Just as a paladin must obey his strictures, he must also remain true to his virtues.

Though most paladins adhere to all of the virtues described below, exceptions are possible. For instance, a paladin from a primitive society may be so unfamiliar with civilized etiquette that including courtesy as part of his ethos would be unreasonable. All adjustments must be cleared by the DM at the outset of a paladin’s career.

No system was attached to virtue ‘violations’, because they weren’t oaths to keep as such. Rather, virtues represented commitments to a paladin’s ideals and worldviews; they were the behaviors and values which someone serious about being a paladin would live by because that’s the kind of person they are. They were very Christian and very European in nature, tied up in Catholic ideas of knighthood from which paladins as a class were originally drawn, but there’s definitely a point to be made here. If you don’t walk your talk, can you call yourself a paragon? We’re gonna get into this specific topic more later in the article, when I start discussing other the virtues extolled by other kinds of warriors, but the ones listed and expanded on in this book are as follows:

Fealty - A paladin swears loyalty and service to, at minimum, a faith or philosophy that is lawful good in nature. This forms the foundation of her convictions and informs the kind of good she tries to do in the world. A paladin remains conscious of the fact that she is seen as an embodiment of those ideals, takes joy in her service, and pays respect to those to whom she has sworn her troth. Notably, this is not classic feudal fealty; a paladin swears service to institutions, not people, with some exceptions (generally in the form of paladins who swear fealty to their mentors).

Courtesy - Paladins strive to show respect by following social customs, being polite and well-mannered, and treating even enemies with dignity. A paladin responds to insults with grace, considers the feelings of others, and does not stoop to insults or slander. Remember the Kingsmen gentleman rules? That. This is just that.

Honesty - A paladin speaks the truth as she knows it. She is free to withhold information (especially from enemies), and may state that she would prefer not to answer when asked questions - or that she is ordered, enjoined, or otherwise required not to answer, if that is the truth - but does not intentionally mislead or deceive others. If you ask your paladin friend a question and they say they would rather not answer, think real hard about how bad you want their opinion.

Valor - Paladins display courage in battle. Given a choice between many enemies, a paladin chooses the most dangerous. If someone has to take a risk to defend the innocent, cover a retreat, or ensure the success of the mission, the paladin volunteers for that risk. A paladin only retreats from battle to fulfill a higher part of her ethos.

Honor - A paladin conducts herself with integrity even when no one is watching or when it is of no benefit to herself. She shows mercy, refuses to inflict undue suffering even on such wretched beings as demons, does not cheat or cut corners, and does not compromise her principles. The description of the virtue of honor contains the rawest line in the entire book: “It is an admirable act to comfort a dying friend, but an act of honor to comfort a dying enemy.”

The above are the ‘universal’ virtues a paladin is meant to embody. The book briefly touches on the idea that a paladin might also choose to uphold other virtues and work them into her Code of Ennoblement, the ceremony by which she is invested with the power of a paladin...or isn’t. The sample ‘bonus’ virtues provided are humility, chastity, celibacy, and my absolute favorite, industry, in which you swear to have no chill at all, ever, until the day you finally die, and instead spend all of your waking moments in some effort of self-improvement or work such as reading, building houses for the needy, repairing tools & equipment, and otherwise being completely incompetent in the art of self-care. It’s great, I absolutely love it.

Together, this code and the paladin’s abilities present a vision of classical knighthood, something like, oh...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35GUTY_Gr14

That. A defender and paragon of medieval virtues, who lives to help others.

“Alright Vox, surely you’re reaching the end of AD&D 2e now?” you ask. “We’ve been through the mechanics, we’ve been through the vision of paladins as members of feudal states who are figuratively and legally ennobled by righteousness, we’ve even gone into more detail about the code than was strictly necessary. 3e time right?” AFRAID NOT, MY WILD RIDE DOES NOT END. AD&D 2e didn’t have feats, didn’t really have spell selection in this context, and while it had a sort of skill system (the Proficiency system, greatly utilized and suggested by The Complete Paladin’s Handbook) that was hardly a way to make one paladin feel mechanically distinct from others. So how did players do that? Ability score rolls and loot drops?

Nope! We had Kits.

Kits modify a class or multiclass combo (not relevant to this article, but as a f’rinstance, the original Bladesinger was an elf-only Fighter/Mage kit found in The Complete Book of Elves); they give it additional features and additional restrictions. They could, but did not always, have ability score requirements above and beyond the typical ones for their class, and they might also have backstory or roleplaying requirements. A kit might who your character is in the society of the game world, the abilities they brought to the adventuring party, or both. Like Pathfinder’s Archetypes, some kits would strip abilities from the standard class, but not all of them did so.

So what did paladin kits do? In short, they changed the kind of knight you were. An Errant, for instance, is kept on a long leash by their liege and does not often have to fulfill edicts - but in exchange, she’s on her own and cannot expect funding from the state. Ghosthunters, who specialize in the destruction of the undead, gain the power to dispel evil, immunity to paralysis, turn undead just as well as a cleric does, and get access to a holy sword a minimum of 2 levels earlier - but they can’t lay hands, cure disease, cast priest spells, or enjoy immunity to disease. Inquisitors (I know) are paladins who see magic as a good and benevolent force, which is corrupted - profaned, even - by the practice of evil magic; they’re similar to ghosthunters in a lot of ways, but also represent an organized philosophy. The Complete Paladin’s Handbook has 22 pages of kits for standard paladin alone, which you can mix and match to create your own unique take on the concept, plus information on “demi-paladins” - non-human fighter/clerics who slowly gain paladin powers in addition to their own. This was back in the day when certain races just could not be good at certain classes due to level restrictions or being unable to take those classes in the first place, but here was the first glimmer of D&D confronting some of its own bullshit; before this book, the implication was that no non-human race was moral enough to be a paladin.

There’s so much more in this book but I’m not gonna get into all of it or this article’s just gonna be a review of one supplement; if you can get your hands on a PDF or even a hard copy, I highly suggest it as a read. It’s not that I endorse its vision for paladins as being the best or as being objectively correct, because I don’t; the potential of paladins is much broader than this narrow vision of Christian feudalism. It’s that no other book, before or after, has paid such loving attention to who paladins are in the game world, including thought given to details like their mortality rate (paladins that manage to survive to 40 are forcibly retired in the hopes that they can teach the youngbloods to do the same), the economics of knighthood, meta-commentary about how the class’s aesthetic and presentation is built to enhance themes about the game and the setting, and even a chapter on weaving faith into your game world and thinking about your paladin’s relationship to her own. The great strength of AD&D 2e’s paladins is that they, more than any others, have this loving care devoted to them that makes them feel like a real part of the worlds in which they live, and their great weakness is a vision that is more narrow than it wanted to be. You can see the author grasping for something broader, something more inclusive, only for it to slip between his fingers.

D&D 3.5: Up From The Gutter - Ah, D&D 3.5, the demon that will not die. This game spawned a million spin-offs and heartbreakers, love for it contributed to the rise of Pathfinder, and it remains incredibly popular and played. It’s also garbage, but c’est la vie, c’est la morte. Its vision of paladin is not as detailed as AD&D 2e’s was, and its main innovations were mechanical in nature. However, 3.5 did offer some in-depth explorations on what it means to be Good-aligned that previous editions did not, and given the context that’s about to be important to talk about.

3.5′s vision of paladin mechanics was remarkably similar to 2e’s, with the most notable change being race selection (anyone can now be a paladin as long as they’re Lawful Good) and the addition of Smite Evil, which can be used a certain number of times per day to gain more accuracy and damage when attacking evil-aligned creatures. Paladins are still warriors, they still cure disease, lay on hands, detect evil, and own a horse; in other words, they barely changed. Unfortunately, the game changed, and this left paladins high and dry. I’m not gonna mince words: for most of 3.5′s run, paladins lagged so far behind in terms of combat prowess, skill selection, and general utility that they were essentially unplayable, including and in some ways especially against classic foes such as demons and dragons.

I’m not gonna get into why, because that is a separate and much angrier article that will spark a lot of controversy due to people who run their ignorant mouths like they know what the fuck they’re talking about, not that I’m bitter. The relevant part of this is that over 3.5′s run, paladin did in fact slowly improve. The Serenity feat, published in Dragon 306, (and much more easily available to you in Dragon Compendium) helped clean up the dizzying amount of attributes upon which they were dependent. Battle Blessing (Champions of Valor) made it easier to incorporate their native spellcasting into their play (though nothing ever quite solved their sharply limited spell slots), and Sword of the Arcane Order (Champions of Valor again) both opened up an alternate vision of paladins as a different kind of magical knight & offered broader utility in paladin’s spell list. The Prestige Paladin in Unearthed Arcana converted paladin from a base class to a prestige class, which let you build it off of more mechanically viable classes - further enhancing your ability to customize your paladin, especially since as a PrC you could stop taking Prestige Paladin at any time you felt you were sufficiently knightly. Access to these and other options eventually made paladin, if not good, at least viable, able to be played in most campaigns and pre-made adventures without undue worry or getting chumped out of basic encounters.

In all of their forms, these paladins still had a code. Observe:

Code of Conduct

A paladin must be of lawful good alignment and loses all class abilities if she ever willingly commits an evil act.

Additionally, a paladin’s code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents.

Associates

While she may adventure with characters of any good or neutral alignment, a paladin will never knowingly associate with evil characters, nor will she continue an association with someone who consistently offends her moral code. A paladin may accept only henchmen, followers, or cohorts who are lawful good.

Ex-Paladins

A paladin who ceases to be lawful good, who willfully commits an evil act, or who grossly violates the code of conduct loses all paladin spells and abilities (including the service of the paladin’s mount, but not weapon, armor, and shield proficiencies). She may not progress any farther in levels as a paladin. She regains her abilities and advancement potential if she atones for her violations (see the atonement spell description), as appropriate.

Like a member of any other class, a paladin may be a multiclass character, but multiclass paladins face a special restriction. A paladin who gains a level in any class other than paladin may never again raise her paladin level, though she retains all her paladin abilities.

You know all the horror stories you’ve read of DMs maliciously making paladins Fall, or miscommunications in groups leading to alignment arguments? The ones about youth-pastor paladin characters sucking all the fun out of a party? Meet the culprit. 3.5 did not have The Complete Paladin’s Handbook’s discussion on same-paging with your group to prevent these problems, and this vague code wording paired with immediate and extreme consequences didn’t do it any favors. That’s not to say that this code is unworkable, exactly, but trying to sit down and agree with 4-6 other adults on what ‘gross violations’ actually means is essentially the world’s shittiest round of Apples to Apples and your reward for it is resenting the character you just built.

And that’s the paladin part, which means we have to get into the “being good-aligned” part. Lemme tell you about Book of Exalted Deeds, a historically significant garbage fire of a book that is somehow both the best supplement released about Good and the worst supplement released about Good at the same time.

For those of you with the fortune to have never played 3.5, its books are like that a lot.

So, bad parts first: all the mechanics. Just all of them. The prestige classes? Bad. The feats? Generally bad. The redemption rules revolving around Diplomacy? Sloppy. Magic items? Bad. Spells? Look up an online discussion about sanctify the wicked and then get back to me on that one; they’re bad too. Ravages and afflictions (good-aligned poisons and diseases) were a bad idea that were also a case of stunning hypocrisy from a book whose stance was that dealing ability score damage is ‘needless cruelty’. Even the write-ups for the planar NPCs kinda make them into these basic bitch pushovers, which, you guessed it, is bad. There’s a lot to say against this book and you can find someone saying it in most open web forums if you want to take a journey into the godawful design of the liminal space between 3.0 and 3.5.

But the good stuff was real good. D&D had/has long been stalked by ‘ethical dilemmas’ such as the so-called Goblin Baby Problem, where players would ask if it’s good to let goblin children live since they would only grow up to become goblin adults. Book of Exalted Deeds was the first D&D publication to make a hard stance against racial genocide (hell of a sentence, I know), and it doubled down on The Complete Paladin Handbook’s implied stance that all forms of romance and sexuality are valid as long as they’re between consenting adults that respect one another. BoED strove to define Good not just as the avoidance of evil (”The utter avoidance of evil is, at best, neutral.”) but as actively striving to respect life, practice altruism, and make the world a better and more just place. While its take on ideas like forgiveness, redemption, and justice were not necessarily perfect, it went out of its way to try to offer nuanced takes on those ideas and to note emphatically that practices such as slavery and racism do not become good just because certain historical cultures thought they were at the time.

The other notable thing that Book of Exalted Deeds did for the idea of a Good alignment was firmly state on the record that NG and CG are just as valid and Good as LG is. The existence of paladins and their alignment-locked nature had long implied that Lawful Good was the “best” Good, or the “most” Good, but Book of Exalted Deeds didn’t just introduce material for characters that were paragons of other Good alignments, it provided examples of such characters in action. D&D is still somewhat stalked by that “Law is Good and Good is Lawful” problem, but BoED and other books in its niche (notably including Heroes of Horror - I know, it doesn’t sound like it but trust me - and Champions of Valor) helped push back against that problem and open the floor to other heroes.

I wouldn’t be wholly done talking about 3.5 paladins without mentioning Unearthed Arcana, which introduced the paladin of freedom (CG), paladin of tyranny (LE), and paladin of slaughter (CE). Their hearts were in the right place here, but all three of them were...better ideas than executions, as it were, without much to talk about for them. Still, they make good examples of 3.5′s great strength in paladins: breadth of concept. Ideas that were previously impossible as paladins became commonplace, including paladin-like characters who were not members of the class and which I would absolutely consider paladins myself. It didn’t stick the landing on the mechanics, but that’s just 3.5 for you; if you weren’t a dedicated spellcaster, chances are you were gonna have some manner of bad time. This idea of paladins from all walks of life, from all levels of society and all peoples, has become a cherished part of the popular conception of paladins and it absolutely should be brought forward to other editions.

Which, honestly? It was.

Pathfinder 1e: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back - Pathfinder 1e’s baseline paladin release was essentially 3.5′s in many ways. The key mechanical differences were a revamped Smite Evil (which finally made it effective against its intended targets), the aura line of abilities that begin adding additional effects beyond Aura of Courage at 8th level and up, and Mercies - riders for the paladin’s Lay on Hands ability that cause it to also cure status effects, which in turn greatly enhances the paladin’s utility as a support class. Pathfinder also cleaned up some of 3.5′s attribute problems by orienting all of paladin’s magical abilities to Charisma instead of splitting between Wisdom and Charisma. Another small but significant note is the alteration from ‘gross’ violations of the code to any violation of the code. “Gee Vox, that doesn’t sound like it would really help code problems,” you say, to which I reply: it absolutely fucking did not.

Once we leave core, we get quite a few quality-of-life improvements. Though Pathfinder 1e lacks Battle Blessing, it replicates some of its effects by having many swift-action spells in-house for paladin, notably including the Litany line. Pathfinder’s archetype system for class customization offers options for the paladin that further customize its concept, though on the balance it’s harder to mix and match archs than it was to do so with kits. Archetypes always trade something, so in taking an arch you will lose some part of the base paladin kit and gain something which replaces it.

Narratively, things get more specific outside of core as well. Paizo’s one-and-only setting, Golarion, is one in which paladins must swear fealty to a specific god they serve above all others, and their power is derived directly from that god, who can grant or withhold it as they see fit. These gods (generally LN, LG, or NG in alignment, though certain specific CG deities sponsor paladins who must still be LG themselves) offer their own codes of conduct, which their paladins must follow. A paladin may be obligated to oppose ‘heresy’ as vigorously as chaos or evil, which is an awkward fucking feel, and paladins in Golarion’s setting can be found working for organizations such as the Hellknights, or in the armed forces of nations that practice slavery and forced conversion. That’s not to imply that they’re not also depicted in unambiguously good contexts, but when it comes to establishing paladins (or, well...anyone...) as good-aligned people Paizo has a bad habit of dropping the ball.

Like 3.5, the great strength of the Pathfinder 1e paladin is customization, and in this case a more solid mechanical base in comparison to the rest of the game. Pathfinder similarly flounders in that its vision of paladins is narrow and not fully realized in the game world.

Discussion of Pathfinder 1e’s paladin wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the Anti-Paladin, the only “alternate class” to see mechanical support beyond its initial publication. Baseline anti-paladins must be chaotic evil and have abilities that are the inverse of the baseline paladin; similarly, anti-paladin has archetypes available that change it to different kinds and methods of evil. It has its fans, and in terms of playability it’s as good, if not a little better, than paladin, but on the whole I tend to break on the side of thinking that Good and Evil are not mirror images of one another, and thus an anti-paladin is inappropriate as an idea. At least, one done in this way, as an explicit reaction to a supposed paragon of virtue, as things are about to get real interesting in...

D&D 4e: The Knight Unshackled - D&D 4e built off of the foundations laid down by the Book of Exalted Deeds and Unearthed Arcana by completely removing all alignment restrictions from both paladin and its counterpart class, blackguard. This section will also need to talk about cousin classes to paladin; specifically, the Avenger and the Invoker. Let’s start from the top, shall we?

Paladins in 4e are predicament dommes defenders; they use their abilities to place Marks on enemies, who then suffer damage if they choose to engage someone other than the paladin (all defenders in 4e force choices of a similar nature, though the penalty for failing to make the ‘right’ choice is not necessarily damage). In 4e, paladins are not granted their power by gods, nor are they empowered by their faith in righteousness alone; in point of fact, 4e paladins have no restrictions on their alignment whatsoever and are the first paladins to be open in this way. Instead, a paladin in D&D 4e is invested with power in rites kept secret by individual churches. Once invested, that’s it, no take-backs; the paladin remains a paladin even if they forsake that church entirely. The other classes I’m gonna talk about - avenger, blackguard, and invoker - are similarly invested, with invoker being the exception in how they get invested, but not in their no-takebacks status.

So, what powers a paladin after that investiture? Virtue; specifically, caring about others in some way. An LG paladin empowered by their belief in justice might be a classic knight in shining armor, defending her allies in righteousness’s name, but an LE paladin empowered by the same virtue might easily turn totalitarian, determined to establish justice no matter who has to suffer and die. In this model, evil-aligned paladins are those who care too much about something, to the point where they trample and harm others to see it fulfilled.

Paladin’s inverse, blackguard, is a striker class focused on direct damage. They gain their power through vice, inward-facing desires such as greed, selfishness, lust, or five pounds of nachos in one meal (don’t @ me). Blackguards are also not restricted by alignment. A classically selfish blackguard, out for their own power and safety, might be an amoral mercenary who kills because they can’t be bothered not to, but a good-aligned blackguard who’s selfish is, well, Tiffany Aching: protecting the world because it’s her world and how dare you fucking touch it.

Avengers have more in common with barbarians than paladins, but are notable here for their commonalities with paladin as a divine warrior concept, and also for having bones in with the later Oath of Vengeance concept in D&D 5e. Avengers are invested to smite the enemies of their church; they tap into their power by swearing an oath against specific enemies, and then dissociate until those enemies in particular are dead at their feet. Are you really into Alexander Anderson from Hellsing? Do you want to explore the terrible consequences of power, consequences that might not have been clear when you signed up to become an avenger? This could be for you.

Lastly we have invokers, the odd duck out. They are ranged controllers who fight with pure divine power. Invokers are created directly by gods, but unlike the previous three have no associations with churches; instead, their job is to look out for threats to all of existence and make sure that they don’t happen. Even evil-aligned gods create and tend to respect invokers, because you can’t conquer the world and rule it as its Dread Master if there’s no world left to rule. Because invokers are invested by gods directly, they tend to have a lot in common with the divine intervention paladin origin mentioned waaaaay up there in the 2e section; you’re minding your own business when one day God goes “TIME TO LEARN HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD” and that’s just your life now.

D&D 4e’s paladins and paladin-like classes fully realize the breadth of concepts and characters that paladins could fulfill; they offer intriguing possibilities for roleplaying, engaging character and plot hooks, and mechanically distinct interpretations of divine power. In unshackling paladins from alignment, 4e opens them up to questions of heroism, conviction, and belief that were in many ways previously closed, especially because paladins in other editions were often made to Fall for asking those questions. Their big weakness is, well, being in 4e. It’s not that D&D 4e is a bad game - in many ways it’s the most honest edition of D&D, and certainly the most tightly-designed - but rather that 4e’s context is highly specific. It can be hard to find players or DMs familiar with it, might be frustrating to gain access to its books, and once you do adapting its material requires significant narrative changes if you remove it from the context of the Points of Light setting.

D&D 5e: This I Vow - D&D 5e’s paladin is, in many ways, a combination of and refinement upon previous elements. Like 4e’s, it is not restricted by alignment (though the three Oaths in core do suggest particular alignments). Like 3.5′s paladin, it combines magical power with martial skill, though 5e’s paladin is both more overtly magical and gains access to better spells, faster, than its predecessor. Though the paladin gains some warrior-type abilities (notably including their choice of Fighting Style and the Extra Attack feature), the majority of their abilities are supernatural in nature, including Lay On Hands (in the form of a pool of hit points that can also be expended to remove poisons and diseases), immunity to disease, an array of defensive and utility spells (as well as the Smite line for bursts of damage), a Divine Smite that trades spells for damage directly, and native auras that protect the paladin’s allies as well as herself. Their defining feature, however, is the Oath they select at third level, which defines what sort of paladin they are.

Your selection of Sacred Oath nets your paladin 2 utility abilities at 3rd level, an additional aura at 7th, a strong upgrade of some kind at 15th, and a capstone at 20th that neither you nor any other living being will ever see because 5e campaigns barely get to 14th, God forbid 20th. Each Oath also provides a set of tenets that you are meant to live up to, but unlike previous incarnations of a Code of Conduct 5e’s relationship to these tenets is more...human. The following passage is from the Player’s Handbook, page 83 (”Creating A Paladin”):

As guardians against the forces of wickedness, paladins are rarely of any evil alignment. Most of them walk the paths of charity and justice. Consider how your alignment colors the way you pursue your holy quest and the manner in which you conduct yourself before gods and mortals. Your oath and alignment might be in harmony, or your oath might represent standards of behavior you have not yet attained.

Emphasis mine.

The baseline assumption for 5e’s paladins are believers in righteousness, whose faith in virtue empowers them to protect the weak, but more than any other edition, 5e recognizes that paladins are still people, who have flaws, strengths, and ambitions. Its Background system helps flesh out your character both mechanically and narratively, and material presented both in the Player’s Handbook and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything encourage you to think about the things that drive and oppose your paladin. Importantly, though the books say that evil paladins are rare, no actual alignment restriction on paladins exist, which opens up some interesting possibilities in terms of character creation. We’ll get more into that down the article a bit, when I talk about same-paging and refluffing.

Because Oaths come with both mechanics and an ethos, there is a strong incentive to create new Oaths for 5e if you want to embody a new ethos, but this may not always be strictly necessary. Additionally, the Player’s Handbook implies that paladins who flagrantly fail or abandon their oaths might become Oathbreakers (Dungeon Master’s Guide, page 97, under “Villain Options”), but this too may not be the correct move, especially in cases where a paladin abandons one set of high ideals for a different, but no lower, form of belief. We’ll get into that later too.

5e’s paladins are in the best mechanical position they’ve ever been in; they’re one of the strongest classes in the game line, easy to build and play, and difficult to fuck up. They have strong thematics with their abilities and especially their Oaths, and the way 5e encourages you to make your characters helps you realize them as people in the game world. The great weakness of this vision of paladins is customization; 5e lacks player options in many senses, and quite a few of those options are gated behind rules that may not be in use (such as Feats). It can be difficult, in many cases, to make two paladins of the same Oath feel different when the dice hit the table.

And at long last, we have finished the establishing-context section of this article, and can move on to the actual fucking article. I did warn you, way up top, that you were in for a ride.

Raise Thy Sword - Paladins At Your Table

The following section is meant to help you in making and fleshing out a paladin concept to play or even to use as an NPC. Most of the advice will be edition-agnostic; advice that isn’t will be marked as such. Also covered herein will be the related topics of same-paging, refluffing, and the common pitfalls that paladins have fallen into over the years (and how to avoid them).

Same-Paging - In Which We Communicate Like Adults

Same-paging is the practice of talking to your group in a way that helps set mutual expectations, and it’s something every RPG group should strive to do regardless of the system they’re playing in. You’ve probably done this to an extent before, as part of being pitched a game (”We’re going to do a dungeon crawl through the deadly halls of Undermountain”), during character creation, and the like. In the specific case of paladins, you want to talk to your group and DM about topics like alignment & alignment restrictions, your code of conduct or oath, and whether or not the group wants to handle things like ethical dilemmas and moral quandaries. Though paladins are famous for those last two, they’re certainly not a requirement; you can just as easily play a paladin in a campaign like Expedition to Undermountain or Princes of the Apocalypse where there is a very clear bad guy who needs to be stopped with enormous applications of violence and guile. However your group wants to play it is fine, but you want to be sure everyone’s on board for it and that you’re ready to rock. If your group signs on for a kick-in-the-door dungeon crawl and then the DM decides to make you pass a series of ethics tests, that DM is an asshole; likewise, if you agree that you want to explore the morals at the heart of your paladin’s ethos and then you just don’t do that, you’re causing the problem.

Who Is Your Deity, And What Does She Do? - Making Your Paladin

Once you and your group have communicated your expectations to each other (and, again, same-paging is something all groups should be doing regularly, not just ones in which you want to play a paladin), it’s finally time to start sketching out your concept! There’s many ways to start this, and while I personally tend to start at the roleplaying end (with ideas about who they are as a person and the themes I want to explore with them), starting with mechanical ideas, with questions, or even with specific dramatic scenes in mind, are also viable. That is to say, “I’m interested in how Aura of the Guardian (Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, page 39) can help me play a damage mitigation tank,” is just as valid as, “Kass, my character, was lifted from a life of crime by a paladin who reformed her neighborhood and campaigned against a corrupt system, and she’s striving to become a paladin in his image.” That said, if there’s one thing D&D and its related communities are good at it’s mechanical guides, so I’m not gonna try and write one here. We’d be here all day; instead, the following questions are things to consider for fleshing out your paladin’s backstory, personality, and goals.

Why did you become a paladin? The origins of your paladin will probably color how they think of their virtues, as well as how they think of evil. A beaten-down girl from the slums understands that kicking the shit out of muggers doesn’t give the downtrodden food, medicine, or roofs that don’t leak, while the third son of a noble family is in a position to understand the damage done by corrupt leaders and faithless lords. In addition to your background and home life, think about what motivated your character to become a paladin specifically. Were they mentored by an older paladin who saw potential in them? Recruited by the militant arm of a church? Did they grow up with stories of paladins and yearn to become the sort of person those stories were written about, or were they, perhaps, seemingly called to paladinhood without much conscious understanding of what it was?

Where did you learn to fight? Paladins are warriors, and even a paladin that Falls (for those campaigns that use Falling as a concept) remains a warrior. 5e paladins, the most overtly magical of all the available options, still spend a lot of time randomizing the atoms of evil with sharpened metal, and that’s a skill you only get through training and dedication. Who taught your paladin to fight? What’s their relationship with that teacher or organization, and how did it shape their ideas about violence? We all catch things off of our teachers, and your paladin’s instructor in combat will, for better or worse, be as big an influence on their life and ideals as their faith and family are. Don’t be afraid to get wild here; AD&D 2e had full-blown godly training montages where the voice of a god ran you through drills, and paladins join warlocks and sorcerers for being fertile ground for some of the weirdest shit. Did you fight daily duels against a stained glass knight only you could see? Did you find a scimitar in the gutter and pick it up to defend your friends from gangs? Were you bankrolled by an old man who later turned out to be a lich, whose motives you still don’t understand? Live your best Big Ham life if that’s the life you wanna live, this is the class for it.

How do you imagine good and evil? What does your paladin’s vision of a Good world look like? What is the face of wickedness that comes to mind when they’re asked to think of Evil? A knight from a kingdom plagued by portals to the Abyss is going to think of both of these things very differently from a gutter rat whose ascension came with a prosthetic hand to replace the one she lost to gangrene, to say nothing of differences in ideals when one factors in Law and Chaos. Your paladin doesn’t have to be perfect, or even, honestly, correct. Your classic ‘noble, but kind of a dick’ paladin (such as Corran d’Arcy in the novelization of Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, who we’re gonna talk about more later because he’s a weirdly great example of an adventuring paladin) thinks of evil as evildoers, who must be Brought To Justice, which while not entirely wrong is lacking in important nuance. He may conflate manners with virtue, or allow his prejudices to color who he does and doesn’t think of as ‘good’, but that doesn’t change his fundamental desire to Do Good - a desire that could be the catalyst for personal growth. A flawed understanding of virtue and wickedness could be a great character arc for your paladin, especially if it dovetails with the themes of the campaign.

What do you enjoy? Paladins are still people (shocking, I know) and people tend to have hobbies, preferences, and goals. Xanathar’s Guide to Everything has some nice material to quickly flesh out some of those aspects of your paladin (a personal goal, a vice that tempts them, a nemesis that dogs their footsteps), and I highly encourage you to think about such things as well. Does your paladin crave glory, wealth, or revenge? What sort of things do they turn to when they want comfort, or to have a good time? Do they still practice a trade from their youth, such as painting or blacksmithing? The archetype of a knight looking for their true love (or at least a series of whirlwind romances that always seem to end in someone’s bedroom) is a staple, of course. These things don’t necessarily need to be sinister temptations that lead you away from justice; they can just be nice things you like, or comforts that sustain you in your long fight against evil.

How do you relate to your faith? Many settings (notably including Forgotten Realms & Points of Light in D&D, and Golarion in Pathfinder) explicitly link paladins to churches and patron deities, and even in ones where this explicit link does not exist you see paladins who fight in the name of their faiths, serve in the militant arm of their churches, and otherwise seek to live their lives in accordance with their religion. D&D’s history is also full of paladins whose relationship to their faith is more distant, more questioning, or even outright rebellious. In Eberron, for instance, a paladin might dedicate herself to the Kraken - an evil god embodying sea monsters and catastrophes - with her understanding of that faith being preventing monster attacks and protecting the innocent from hurricanes and tidal waves. A paladin might be retained by the Church of St. Cuthbert as a barometer for their own morality, trusted to leash his peers when their retribution grows out of hand & play the devil’s advocate against them, or a knight might simply try to live their lives in accordance with the ideals of beauty, joy, and wonder espoused by Sune Firehair, without being for or against the actual church. What or whom does your paladin believe in, and why? Remember as well that not all, or even most, faiths are particularly similar to Christianity, and as a result your paladin’s relationship to that faith might just be business as usual. A Jewish paladin arguing with God is Judaism working as intended; similarly, a paladin dedicated to the Aesir doesn’t get to act surprised when they come home one day and Freya is chilling in their bathtub with a glass of wine and a ‘small request’.

You Wouldn’t Download A Class Feature - Refluffing & You(r Paladin)

So: you’ve come up with your concept, you’ve asked yourself all the relevant questions, but damn, some things just seem to not be fitting. What do you do? It may be the case that refluffing - changing the flavor of a mechanical option to better fit your campaign or setting - may be the right move for you. Refluffing gets a lot of pushback from a certain school of tabletop gaming that believes the flavor of an option is part of its mechanical balance. These people are wrong and I encourage you not to associate with them, in particular because the first party publishers often refluff material for similar reasons. For instance, the setting of Eberron has ‘anything published in D&D has a home here’ as one of its meta-tenets, and in the process of giving many of those things a home it changed their identity. Those hordes of angry ancestor-worshiping elves? That’s refluffing elves. In 3.5 you can see explicit discussion of refluffing in Oriental Adventures, which...well...it’s a book that exists, let’s leave it at that. Oerth having an entire alternate Material Plane where all the mirror of opposition copies come from? Refluffing.

So, when do you refluff? An obvious example is when your group is comfortable with an option being on the table, but is not playing in the setting that option comes from (for instance, the Sword of the Arcane Order feat from Champions of Valor when you are not playing in the Forgotten Realms). Refluffing is also great for when the narrative you’re building for a character implies or requires certain mechanics, but the flavor of those mechanics does not fit that narrative. In the ancient past I briefly GMed a game where one of the PCs was a ‘barbarian’ - a mean-streets kid looking to make a better life for himself, whose Rage was just the fight-or-flight kicking in from living in the garbage parts of Waterdeep. The important things to keep in mind when you choose to refluff an option is to stay on the same page as the rest of your group, and also to not replace the original fluff with nothing; mechanics do help define flavor (they’re the tools with which you interact with the game world), but you still need some reason that your paladin casts wizard spells, or has the abilities of the Oath of Vengeance when the original version of that Oath doesn’t exist in this setting. A very common school of refluffing is changing the origins of one’s power; rather than pure faith, for instance, a paladin’s powers might come from her innate spiritual energy, or from the favor of kami rather than gods.

Refluffing is also great for playing paladins that don’t have levels in the class named paladin. This option is especially relevant in the context of 3.5 and Pathfinder, when it may be more suitable to the needs of the campaign for you to be playing a more powerful or versatile class. In this context, clerics especially make very competent ‘paladins’, as do wizards (you wouldn’t think so, but I’ve seen that campaign played), inquisitors, crusaders, and even druids depending on how your concept is. You don’t need Fall mechanics to follow a code, after all.

For What The World Could Be - Defining Your Paladin’s Ethos

More than almost any other aspect of the class, possessing and following an ethos has defined paladins through the ages. For many years, this was a very specific ethos based on European ideas of chivalry and Christian virtue, and there’s something to be said for it when done well (certainly the Arab warriors from whom Europeans acquired the code of chivalry were lauded for their honor and virtuous conduct, so at a bare minimum one set of folks following these ideals in the real world absolutely nailed it). This is not, however, the only set of high ideals to which a paladin might cleave or aspire, and many fine homebrewers, players, and dungeon masters out there have chosen to craft their own, or to represent their own beliefs in the game world. Many cultures throughout history and all over the world have retained elite warriors held to high standards of conduct, and those traditions are rife for representation as paladins.

I fully intend to provide some specific examples of ethea (evidently this is the plural of ‘ethos’, no I didn’t know that before I started writing this, yes it looks wrong to me too) beyond the ongoing D&D default, but before I do you may want to consider how your paladin relates to those high ideals. After all, these are virtues that your character holds dear, but not everyone does so in the same way. Does she believe that everyone would be better off if they tried to live up to her standards, or does she believe that only certain people should (or must) do so? Does she consider her virtues an impossible ideal, something to strive for rather than fulfill, or does she not harbor such doubts? Is your paladin an idealist, who believes in the power of Good in itself, or is she more cynical?

The answers to these questions don’t necessarily make your paladin less Good as a person. A warrior who believes that there’s always a selfish bastard reason to do the right thing, who sees Evil as suboptimal, could still be a paladin if they work to bring Good into the world. An idealist who still needs to learn about the real consequences of barging into complex problems in a morally complicated world is equally valid, to say nothing of just...playing a genuine in-the-bones Hero, here to Do The Right Thing. Each speaks to a different kind of virtue, and a different life that has led them to these choices, and each deserves their day in the sun. You might have a lot of fun playing someone whose view of what Good is, and why, is different from yours!

Some specific examples of ethea (god that looks so wrong) follow. For the sake of convenience I’m gonna skip anything that’s actually showed up in a paladin entry before, or I’m gonna be here until I die. I am also very much not a member of just about any of the cultures and/or religions I’m about to talk about, and while I have sought the advice and review of those who are, I’m not about to claim that I’m an expert. Any errors in what’s presented are mine, and not those of my friends & readers; I welcome correction and discussion.

Irish Celtic: Blood & Troth  - The ancient Celts were not a people shy about death, and excellence - skill, improvement, and genuine growth - in all of your crafts was one of their high virtues. In addition to excellence, a Celtic warrior was expected to be honest (to never tell a direct lie, and to keep all promises given), hospitable (to be a gracious host & and honorable guests, and defend the sanctity of the home), to be charitable with their skills and their worldly possessions (to give to the needy, defend the weak, and fight for the helpless), to display loyalty to their family, clan, and gods, and to be courageous. That last virtue is an interesting one, because it dovetails with excellence; it’s less about acting in spite of fear, and more about enjoying fearful situations and the call of battle. A paragon of Celtic warfare should love her job, perhaps even revel in it; she relishes combat and the mayhem of the killing fields. Paladins following these virtues are likely to be Chaotic in nature, skewing towards Chaotic Neutral as D&D thinks of these things, and prone to contemplation on concepts of obligation, truth, and the nature of political violence. The crows know that there is always a final answer to injustice.

Irish Celtic paladins are likely to look towards Fionn Mac Cumhaill as a role model; as warriors with magical powers of protection, defense, and healing, they would be valued as keepers of lore, wisdom, and art, more warrior-poet than berserker. If your paladin is part of a wider culture from which she derived this ethos, she was probably expected to both learn knowledge and pass it on to others, and to restrain more eager warriors in favor of cunning plans and clever tactics. Imagine the look on your party members’ faces when they meet your family and realize you’re the sane one; that’s the exact emotion you wanna look to create if you really want to bring this out in the classic vein.

Jewish: We Shall Serve The Lord  - Judaism places a lot of emphasis on the sanctity of life, restorative justice, and doing the good you can do here, and now, with what’s in front of you. Though there is no tradition of elite Jewish warriors in the vein of knights or samurai, Jewish citizens tend to serve under arms slightly more often (about 5% more often) than their countrymen, and defending the innocent & helpless is certainly one way to do good now. A Jewish paladin would be expected to uphold the sanctity of life (preservation of life is the highest calling; a Jew may do anything except deny God in order to preserve life), to practice the principle of Tikkun Olam (’repairing the world’, working actively to make the world around them a more just, peaceful, and pleasant one), to show compassion and generosity to others, to uphold and defend hospitality, to know the Torah and the Law, and, where necessary, to practice intelligent and purposed dissent and skepticism. In the context of D&D, such a character is not likely to be particularly scholarly (paladins haven’t needed a decent Intelligence score at any point in the class’s evolution), but they’re probably conversant in the techniques of reading and research, critical thinking, argument, and debate, if only through exposure. Jewish paladins are most likely to be Good, leaning Lawful, as D&D thinks of these things.

The Jewish ethos describes a set of minimum standards for a righteous person, the Noahide Laws, and greatly encourages you not to associate with any person or culture that can’t meet that standard. They’re honestly not hard to meet either; you basically have to not be a dick about God (don’t try to stop folks from worshiping, don’t spend your time mocking and blaspheming their faith), know that lying and murdering are wrong, don’t be a sexual predator, don’t eat animals that are still alive, and bother to establish a system of laws for self-rule. Though Judaism lacks an elite warrior tradition, you might look to people like Joshua, Judah Maccabee, or Solomon as inspirations for a Jewish paladin character; warriors known for their wisdom, determination, and and in many cases, self-sacrifice. Solomon is also notable as an example of someone who swore the Nazarite Oath, a promise to God to fulfill a mission or task, and to not rest until one has done so. Nazarites are held to higher standards than their peers, notably including the expectation that the object of their oath becomes their only goal until they get it done or die.

As stated before, I am not Jewish and while this information was provided to me by Jewish friends, it is far from complete. @oath-of-lovingkindness might be by to expand on it, if they’re comfortable doing so.

Kemetic Pagan: The Power Of Truth - It’s difficult to talk about how the ancient Kemetic faiths were practiced; there was a lot of strife between the various cults of the gods, sometimes backed by pharaohs who were willing to revise history to get their way about thing, and then the English got a hold of the records. The English getting a hold of your culture’s history rarely ends well for just about anyone. The modern practice of Kemetic worship places great emphasis on service and identity as a member of the community, the promotion and preservation of knowledge, learning, and education, opposing is/fet (’chaos’, here also very much including the breakdown of social bonds and the systems which sustain life), and truth. A Kemetic paladin would be expected to oppose chaos by sustaining or creating such systems (funding schools, founding a neighborhood watch, finding or creating jobs for the poor), defend the defenseless, further her own education and knowledge & teach the ignorant, to be honest and forthright in word and deed, and value strength and justice. They are likely to be Lawful, skewing towards Good, as D&D thinks of these things. For a society to be just, it must first be a society; preservation of the order (both natural and artificial) which sustains human lives comes first.

Kemetic paladins are unlikely to be priests or even to be formally part of a religious heirarchy, again because they have traditionally had issues being scholarly people; instead, they uphold ma’at (what is true, what is just, what is necessary; ma’at is the principle that establishes a community, that relates one person to all other people and defines obligations between them, and opposes chaos) by fulfilling roles that assist their community. Such a paladin might look to one of their patron gods as an example of both the behavior they wish to emulate and their role in the community. A defender and guardian who supports the rural folk might look to Sobek, whose great strength guards the Nile; a would-be hero who craves power and the glory that power might buy her could instead look to Set, who guards the sun-barge and tests the established order so that it can grow strong. This is an ancient faith with quite a few gods, and I haven’t even gone deep enough to say I’ve scratched the surface; if they’re comfortable doing so, @merytu-mrytw may be by to expand on this topic for those interested in learning more.

Samurai: Reaching For Heaven  - You knew we were gonna go here eventually. As famous as knights, and perhaps even more known for their strict code of honor, the samurai were the elite warriors of feudal Japan and members of its ruling class. A samurai was expected to be a warrior, to cultivate an appreciation for high arts such as calligraphy, poetry, and sculpture, to be a scholar or patron of scholars, and to otherwise serve their lord and establish justice in that lord’s name. Today the samurai ethos is often called Bushido (”the way of the warrior”), but that name and conception of their code of conduct is actually a relatively recent invention, dating back only as far as the 20th century. It has its bones in with a 12th century dramatization of a war between two proud clans, and the ideals embodied by the warriors of those clans. Notably, these ideals were considered unattainable; something to strive for, and in striving grow as a person, but not a realistic expectation for a living human in a physical body. I’m gonna go ahead and quote the breakdown of this code that was given to me, because I feel the long form is going to be helpful here. These were the things to strive for, if one wished to call oneself a samurai:

Your duty calls on you to die if necessary. Your honor is more than your life; to live in shame is worse than death. You are expected to be righteous - to have integrity, sincerity, and honesty. To display heroic courage - to be intelligently aware of risks, but to face them boldly, not rashly or foolishly. To be benevolent and compassionate - for you have strength of arms that others cannot fathom. To show respect, even to your enemy. Cruelty, mockery, showboating, boasting, these are against the samurai code. Your strength and stature come through how you stand in adversity, unyielding. To understand that there is no such thing as a promise, or "giving your word" - you do not speak unless you mean what you say. Meaningless words are for shameful people. To safeguard your own honor, for you are its judge - and you will know what will cause you to live in shame, which as noted above, is worse than death. To show loyalty and be dutiful - if you give your service to another, it is theirs to command, and if you set someone's life above yours, you cannot keep honor if you live and they die. To demonstrate self-control - excesses and wants are openings to great shame. Moral character lies in the desire being sublimated toward the better self and higher standing among men.

As the politics and culture of Japan evolved through the years, so too did attitudes towards, and understanding of, this code of conduct, but most dramatic and romantic depictions of the samurai ethos root back to something a lot like this. A paladin dedicated to this ethos is likely to be Lawful Neutral, bending towards Good, as D&D thinks of these things; it emphasizes the virtues of loyalty, duty, and the obligations of both lord and vassal to one another. It is particularly appropriate for characters who see high ideals of virtue as being an unattainable goal to strive for anyway, or for character-driven campaigns looking for high drama that comes from tensions between personal desires and societal expectations (you can see it used for this to wonderful effect in the Legend of Five Rings RPG, most recently published by Fantasy Flight Games).

There are of course many other potential sources for a paladin’s ethos; check out D&D 5e’s homebrew materials and the DM’s guild for just a few. If I didn’t include something here, I promise you that it’s because I’m either ignorant or not confident of my ability to speak on it even in this limited context, not because I was trying to deliberately leave anything out. As I said above, any errors here are mine, and I welcome corrections. I’m also eager to hear about other ethea and how they might be adapted for paladins, so if you’ve got some thoughts there, please, slap ‘em on! I’m quite literally begging to read your paladin takes!

That said, remember that these are real beliefs, that real people follow. If you’re looking to explore an ethos from a culture that is not your own, you should do so with respect and especially with consideration for others that might be affected. It’s one thing to realize 12 sessions into a campaign at your own house that you’ve been accidentally blaspheming someone’s religion; it’s quite another thing to realize that if you’ve been playing in a public place such as a library or a gaming store. Ask folks from the culture or faith in question about it if you can at all do so, and just...if you wouldn’t want someone to be depicting you in a particular way? Don’t depict them that way.

The Trolley Problem And Other Forms Of Psychological Torture - Paladins, Falling, & Alignment

All editions of paladins except 4e have some kind of rule for Falling; losing one’s paladin status and powers, generally because of violations of your code of conduct or a failure to maintain your alignment. 5e sorta-kinda has those rules in a “well if the DM says so” way, which is, in some ways, a worse situation to be in since it leaves the matter unclear. In particular, many editions of paladins require that you have and maintain a Lawful Good alignment, and completely strip you of all powers if you ever change alignment for any reason. If the above sections of this article didn’t make it clear already, I tend to break towards 4e’s school of thought and support unshackling paladins from both alignment and Falling mechanics for general play; they certainly haven’t been powerful enough in the meta to mechanically justify additional restrictions.

This isn’t to say that you can’t use Falling or the threat of Falling for interesting stories and excellent character moments, just that I personally feel that it’s not as necessary as some schools of thought seem to think it is. If you want to incorporate this idea into your campaign, make sure you bring that up when you’re same-paging with your group; it’s definitely one of those topics everyone wants to have a clear understanding about. From there, it’s on the DM to not be a dick about things. Using paladins to explore ethical dilemmas can be very rewarding, but putting one in an ‘impossible’ scenario is rarely any fun. For some great examples of using ethical dilemmas as a form of character growth and to explore the concept of morality, check out The Good Place if you haven’t already. Remember: it’s a game. The goal is to have fun, yeah?

Genocide Is Not An Ethical Dilemma - Common Paladin Pitfalls

This is the part of the article where I get very angry about things.

As I alluded to before, there have been some common pitfalls when it comes to paladins both in the history of their formal writing and in the way the fanbase has chosen to play and relate to them. This section is going to discuss those and what you can do about them, so without further ado:

Fascism  - Paladins have some unfortunate bones in with fascist ideology, particularly the Third Reich’s obsession with ‘will’, as well as the fascist preoccupation with the Crusades, the Crusades themselves, and with being members of social classes which are often oppressive in nature. You really do not have to go far to find some jackoff posting DEUS VULT memes about their paladin, and that’s a problem, first because fascists are bad, and second because that definitely misses the fucking point by a country mile. All editions of D&D and its legacy systems have struggled with this, but a shout-out goes to D&D 5e for publishing the Oath of Conquest, because we definitely needed to respond to this problem by creating an option that gives you heavier, more ornate jackboots to put on people’s necks.

So, what do you do about this? Well, for one thing if you find a fascist at your gaming table you throw them the fuck out into the street, and beyond that mainly you just...try not to play a fuckin’ fascist character. This isn’t really a problem you can solve at the table level, since it’s buried into the writing; all you can do is be aware of it, and not play into it. It shouldn’t be terribly difficult to not make a paladin who’s into kicking poor people and undermining the rights of sapient beings, yeah? Paladins tend to fall into these sorts of problems when they’re depicted as supporting strongmen, or as being the Special And Exalted People to whom the rules do not apply - basically the same situations that give superheroes as a genre their ongoing fascism problem. Keep a weather eye out.

Genocide - The two-for-one combo! Paladins have had a genocide problem as far back as AD&D 2e, where several had racial or religious genocide in their backstories. Sometimes those paladins Fell as a result, sure, but a disturbing amount of them didn’t. We also have such gems as, “A local paladin has started a crusade against half-breeds” (a plot hook published in Draconomicon for 3.5), that greentext story about the paladin and dwarf ‘bros’ who spend their free time murdering orc children, and everything that’s ever been written about how drow are characterized and treated by others. Now, in fairness to paladins, Dungeons & Dragons itself has problems with the themes of race and with its depiction of the morality of genocide, and paladins could be merely caught up in that. On a basic level, solving this issue is easy; don’t endorse genocide, don’t make edgy racist concepts to see if you can ‘still be good’. Even if that wasn’t already tired and worn, someone else already took that concept and went pro with it.

For more information about fantasy’s troubles with race and racial coding, I highly suggest this article & its sequel, as well as Lindsay Ellis’s Bright video.

Youth Pastor Syndrome - This one’s not as dire a problem as the other two; there’s a tendency to play paladins in a way that sucks the fun out of the rest of the group, either because you’re being a judgemental asshole in-character (and possibly out of it), or because they’re constantly having to tiptoe around you to get things done or do what they want in the campaign. In theory, same-paging should help solve this problem before it starts, and it honestly mainly stems from the various ‘association’ clauses in paladin codes through their history. An uptight paladin isn’t necessarily a bad concept, but make sure it’s the right concept for your group before you just go there. Your desire to run a particular character is not an excuse to shit on everyone else’s fun.

Sir Dumbass the Just - So this topic isn’t so much a ‘pitfall’ as something that doesn’t get talked about a lot. There has not been a single incarnation of paladin that is rewarded for investing in Intelligence; instead, they tend to crave Strength or  Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom and/or Charisma (depending on edition and build). Once your main three are solved, Wisdom is the next-most important ability score for an adventuring paladin, because it directly relates to detecting threats, seeing through illusions, and resisting mind control, which leaves Intelligence in the dust next to whichever one of Strength or Dexterity you didn’t pick. This means, more often than not, that paladins are going to struggle in scholarly pursuits, be bad at Knowledge-type skills, and otherwise be uneducated in many ways, which most assuredly influences both their internal culture and the sorts of people who become successful paladins. Give the matter some consideration when you’re making your own.

Lady Natasha Pointe-Claire of the Dust March - Paladins as NPCS

Related to what was discussed just above, not all paladins are necessarily adventurers. Though the image of the paladin as a knight-errant, wandering the world in order to defeat foul plots and punch demons in the asshole, is both valid and probably very relevant to paladin player characters, there are other roles that a paladin might fulfill in your campaign setting. Such paladins are still members of a warrior class, and will thus have things in common with player character paladins, but their different roles will encourage investment in other kinds of abilities and skills which might not lead to a successful adventuring paladin, but will lead to a pretty good life in the other job. The following examples are by no means exhaustive, but they should provide a good place for a DM to start if they wanna incorporate paladin NPCs into their games in roles other than fellow (or rival) adventurers. Mentor - Probably the most straightforward; this paladin was a successful adventuring paladin who ended up retiring due to age, injuries, or just to enjoy time with their loved ones/family/children rather than getting mauled to death by undead birds. Take a normal paladin build, ratchet them up into Middle Age or Old Age, call it a day. Such paladins are likely to be a lot calmer and more pragmatic than the younger set, with a combination of painful experience and perspective guiding the advice they give on how to fight evil and how to dodge the fireballs that evil be throwing.

Knight-Hospitaller - Hospitallers are healers, caretakers, and guardians of the sick, injured, and infirm. Such a paladin might help maintain a home for those who have been traumatized (abuse victims, soldiers, people laboring beneath magical curses), be employed at or run a hospital, or maintain a temple dedicated to a god of healing and medicine. Hospitallers tend to choose options that enhance their Lay on Hands ability, memorize more healing spells than attack or defense ones, and value Wisdom and Intelligence more highly than their peers, often at the expense of their Strength or Dexterity (or even their Constitution; paladins, being immune to disease, can afford to be surprisingly frail of body in this role).

Fortress Knight - These paladins have a lot in common with adventuring paladins, but are for one reason or another posted in one spot from which they do not leave. They might be the guardians of a frontier village, soldiers watching over a sinister portal, the personal bodyguards to a powerful noble, or any other role in which they take on a defensive, reactionary stance rather than actively seeking out new and exciting forms of evil. Fortress knights need a higher Wisdom and to invest in Perception-type skills, and will tend to focus on utility-type spells with a strong subtheme of attack; they need to be able to rouse the alarm, dispel magic on their allies, and keep an enemy pinned down.

Example Paladin - Corran D’Arcy

I promise you, your long journey through my article is almost over. I wanna talk about a specific paladin to kinda tie things together, as an example of some of these principles and ideas in motion and because Corran d’Arcy is just weirdly legit when he has absolutely no fucking reason to be. Corran appears in the novelization for Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, written by Carrie Bebris. The book is based on the videogame of the same name, which in turn was made to celebrate the release of D&D 3.0. “Should I play this game?” you ask, to which I reply: absolutely fucking not, the game was a rough ride when it came out and it has not aged remotely well. 3.0 was rapidly updated to 3.5 because of deep and wide mechanical flaws that made the play experience almost physically painful, and converting it to a CRPG did not help that experience at all.

The book though? Excellent. Legitimately one of the best D&D novels. Spoilers for it follow, but I’d still suggest reading it if you get the chance.

The novel is told from the perspective of Kestrel, a petty thief trying to raise enough money to quit her life of crime and, ideally, die in bed of old age rather than of blood loss in some gutter. A series of poor and alcohol-related decisions leads her to volunteer to guard an evil pool of soul-stealing water, which is where she meets Corran d’Arcy, a paladin of Tyr and the third son of a noble family. The two get on like water and oil; to Kestrel, Corran is a pompous, classist piece of shit who judges her without knowing her, and to Corran, Kestrel is the exact kind of criminal and evildoer he so often fights in his day job. When another team opens a portal to beg for help while they’re being slaughtered, Corran quite literally throws Kestrel through it when she’s trying not to go, nearly killing them both.

This puts their professional relationship off to a bit of a distant start, as you might imagine.

Corran’s prejudice, as well as Kestrel’s more-justified-but-still-unhelpful resentment, hinder the party as they attempt to survive in Myth Drannor and defeat the Cult of the Dragon’s schemes there. Corran’s life of privilege has left him unfamiliar with Kestrel’s skills, and he consistently misuses those skills or forgets to ask for her opinion and expertise - to the detriment of the group. This painful oversight aside, however, Corran proves surprisingly practical; he works with the party’s wizard to create effective combat tactics, utilizes invisibility for surprise attacks against powerful foes, and coordinates well in the heat of battle; after all, the Cult of the Dragon is not taking requests for formal duels, and the fate of the world is at stake. Corran is polite even to his enemies, and openly negotiates with the minions and allies of the Cult in order to avoid combat - notably including drow houses that have made their homes in Myth Drannor. Through the course of the novel, he and Kestrel go from being openly antagonistic towards one another to developing a newfound respect, starting when Kestrel calls Corran out for endangering the party by refusing to retreat. Corran, in turn, forces Kestrel to confront the fact that she has been unhappy living her life with no purpose other than to die another day, a revelation that shakes her to her core.

Things come to a head when one of Corran’s decisions gets a man killed. Kestrel calls him out on it, accusing him - correctly - of hurting those he’s trying to protect by misusing her skills and ignoring the advice of his companions. Seeing his genuine anguish over these events softens Kestrel’s rage towards the paladin, enough that they essentially start their relationship over from the top with genuine change from both of them. A scene late in the book where Kestrel helps Corran find the confidence to attempt divine magic (a gift given only to ‘truly worthy’ paladins) cements what has finally become a trusting friendship.

Corran d’Arcy is an excellent example of a classic paladin archetype with life and humanity breathed into it. He has prejudices and insecurities; he feels pressured to live up to a long legacy of knighthood that intimidates him. At the same time, the virtues he lives up to reward him over and over again, from his bold valor (which sees to the defeat of many evildoers) to his courtesy and honor in social situations (which wins him unlikely allies in a ruined city overrun by wickedness). Though he starts out as a dick, Corran is not malicious, and it’s his genuine desire to do good by others that motivates the change in his behavior; when he learns that he is hurting his friends, he knows that he must change.

That’s the end of the article proper! I hope you found it informative and, more than anything, helpful in creating paladins for your game and campaign setting. I absolutely welcome questions, comments, critique, additions, and the like; my Ask box is open, and the Reblog button is right there.

That said, if you’re interested, Mister Vox’s Wild Ride is not yet over. I got bit by the homebrew bug halfway through this damnable thing, so here’s a paladin oath based on a family from my first completed interactive story, Dungeon Life Quest. Constructive critique of this material is also very welcome!

Oath of the la Croix (D&D 5e Sacred Oath)

(River la Croix, journeyman necromancer and demonologist, ex-mercenary. Character is from Dungeon Life Quest, art provided by Domochevsky.)

The la Croix family have been necromancers for longer than they’ve been the la Croix; they laid down much of the foundations of modern necromancy, and have, through the ages, been tyrants, villains, refugees and, these days, heroes. To be a la Croix is not a matter of blood, but of commitment to the family’s ideals; one must be willing to help those in need, to serve the community, be a level head in times of trouble, to show respect for death and the dead, and to make hard choices with a calm heart.

Though most la Croix are necromancers, alchemists, healers, or summoners of various kinds, every now and again a paladin-like warrior emerges from the ranks of the family, often by adoption. Whether or not such cousins are ‘real’ paladins is a subject of languid internal debate in the family - no la Croix has ever fallen to the point where she lost her powers, but a few have managed to go mad enough with that power to end up hunted down by the rest of the family. The question doesn’t really need answering, but it’s fun to argue about after three cups of wine.

Tenets of the la Croix The high standards expected of la Croix paladins are also expected of anyone who chooses to bear the family name. You can give up the name at any time, but most la Croix children - by adoption or by blood - try to wear it with pride.

Life is for the Living, Death is for the Dead. No one chooses to be born, and very few people choose to die. Respect these truths. Take life when you must, but not cruelly, and never for personal gain. Remember that you, too, are alive, and deserve the chance to enjoy that life as all people do.

Your Name is ‘Somebody’. If there is a call for help, you are the one to answer; when you hear ‘somebody do something’, ‘somebody help me’, you are Somebody, child of Anyone. If you can’t help directly, do everything you can anyway. None of us deserve to be alone.

Serve, Not Rule. A la Croix’s place in her community is service to that community. We are not nobles, tyrants, or generals; we dwell among the common people to protect and shelter them, and to remind ourselves of all the ways in which we are alike. Our power makes us different, not better.

They, Too, Are Victims of Life. You do not know the struggles others go through, just as they do not know yours. All are condemned to live and to die, and deserve your compassion even when you are moved to strike them down for the greater good. Bury your enemies and give them their last rites as if they were your own family.

Oath Spells You gain oath spells at the paladin levels listed.

3rd - bane, false life 5th - darkness, gentle repose 9th - bestow curse, fear 13th - phantasmal killer, shadow of Moil* 17th - danse macabre*, planar binding

*appears in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything

Channel Divinity When you take this oath at 3rd level, you gain the following Channel Divinity options.

Ancestral Protection - You can use your Channel Divinity to call upon your la Croix ancestors for protection. As an action, you suffer damage equal to your paladin level; this damage cannot be prevented or reduced in any way. Then, you and all allies within 30 feet of you gain a bonus to armor class equal to your Charisma modifier for 1 minute.

Balefire Blast - You can use your Channel Divinity to scourge an enemy with death-in-flame. Make a spell attack against a creature within 30 feet. If you hit, that creature suffers necrotic damage equal to your paladin level, plus fire damage equal to your paladin level. If it dies within 1 minute of being hit, it counts as dying of old age in addition to its actual cause of death (usually meaning that it is much more difficult to bring back from the dead).

Necromancer’s Aura Beginning at 7th level, you radiate constant necromantic wards that protect you and your allies. You and allies within 10 feet of you have resistance to necrotic damage and radiant damage, and you make saving throws against effects which would kill you outright with advantage.

At 18th level, the range of this aura increases to 30 feet.

Friend of Death Starting at 15th level, you regain 1 spell slot of 3rd level or lower whenever a creature within 30 feet of you is reduced to 0 or less hit points. You can regain a number of spell slots this way equal to your Charisma modifier; once you reach this limit, you must finish a long rest to use this ability again.

Aphrael’s Chosen At 20th level, you gain the ability to enter a state of heightened necromantic power, in which you can channel far more sorcery than usual. As an action, you suffer damage equal to your paladin level, then begin channeling raw death magic for 1 minute. While in this state, you gain the following benefits:

- You are immune to all effects which would kill you outright - Whenever you cast a paladin spell, you can make a weapon attack as part of casting that spell. You are not required to make this attack. - Creatures make their saving throws against your spells with disadvantage.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

[iamjesuis]

It's just a game

The daily struggle can hurt our emotional body, leaving us in rage or tears. We tend to take everything too seriously! For today's main religions, you have only one life to fulfilled.

Then... lets go further with the first incarnation example:

Lets say you're born in some... white trailer trash family? Often raped by your drunk father, no brother or friends and your mother ill long time ago died from some terrible disease. When adult, you hang up with the wrong guys and meet the wrong people. It's the start of hard drugs habits, which lead you to more violence. Your unhealed scars memories mixed with some crack brings its violent behaviour, pushing you to replicate your dad violence. But you start attracting the autorities attention on you. That day, you think it was wise stealing a western union shop. The crack kicks your head, you don't even see the patrol police nearby that saw you entering the shop with a hood... nevertheless you did fight well and killed one cop, the shop cashier and a woman... yes a woman, you were too stone to make the difference! Arrested, the jury sentence you to death penalty! You can't believe it. All those years of fight and struggle to end up killed by the same society who couldn't bother helping you when needed?! The day of the execution, you realize that everybody smile while your making your last breath. Distress, sadness and a feeling of injustice are overwhelming your being. Then your soul start its decorporation and leave his dead body for a trip to a new dimension. Poor guy, you're only 24 and allready facing the Divin judgment. The judge sentence doesn't last and send you burn in hell for eternity for your iniquities, despite your cries and supplications. So now what... more suffering ahead and... for ever...!?

Meanwhile, the same day of your birth, another potential you is born in a different family:

Your lucky star shine on you. Your parents are watching over you, full of love and care. You're a good kid and do great at school making everybody proud of you. You are a leader in sport and in class and it doesn't stop here because you're cute and cumulate love stories. The choice of life you made gives you the opportunity to travel around the world, in hotels and villas. Working for rich companies is a blessing for your bank account. Later on, you get the chance to marry a lovely woman, a beautiful soul, and together makes beautiful kids. You achieve a great professional career and often participate to charity. You give financial support to your church and help those in need. You die in your sleep at 82, with a life full of happiness and accomplishment. You will be miss, you were so awesome! Then your soul start its decorporation and leave his dead body for a trip to a new dimension. Your soul start its journey to the great court of justice. The judgment is intense, full of emotions and love. You receive the blessing and the Grace with a full acces to an eternity of joy in the heart of the pure light of God...

Hello... wake up and smell the coffee! Do you really think Paradise and Hell exist? Those are stories for children. The creation is perfect and resurrection only by itself can't be logical and is definitly randomly unfair. We should all possess the same chances! Then... what did we missed?

Reincarnation is The Thing that religious have been hiding from us. Why? Because the Elite doesn't want us to know who we really are and what we suppose to stand for!! ... but true that some of us would not be in a hurry to take the path of evolution, living under their own rules, postponing their work for later despite their future karma, which might lead to a involuted society... a bit like today but in worst!

This is the game of life

We are working on the long terms, that's all. If someone's smart enough, he would work on his svadharma to impulse the change in his futur karma. It means, doing things right and stop ruling your life only with your ego and basic animal instinct.

Work today and waste no time! Temptation will always be there.

Do you choose to be another sheep or a human 3.0?

[floridaprelaw-blog]

The Death Penalty: Advocating Justice Or Attacking Equality?

By Matthew Ginsberg, University of South Florida, Class of 2021

April 20, 2020

Payback is the ultimate form of revenge. When an individual chooses to break the law, the United States criminal justice system seeks justice by arresting, detaining, and prosecuting the suspect. Most citizens accept this system because they are under the impression that by removing criminals away from the general public, society is safer, and therefore better off. Being found guilty results in the criminal justice system holding the perpetrator captive, at the mercy of the law. Treated like worthless animals, citizens are unbothered and oblivious toward the brutality of the criminal justice system: criminal cases out of sight, out of mind. There seems to be a general perception among policymakers that “justice” can only be obtained through revoking humanitarian rights, believing that “guilty offenders deserve equal punishment for the nature of the crime committed.” By enforcing harsh consequences for breaking the law, the hope is that citizens are deterred from committing violent crimes… But hope and reality are quite different. Locking away criminals has shown to be ineffective and psychologically torturous, causing prisoners to become delusional, more violent, and easily triggered in many cases. Fighting fire with fire seems to be the strategy. But the prison system was not lethal enough for policymakers, there needed to be a system that forced criminals to pay the ultimate price for their despicable actions: what the system was missing was the death penalty. 

The death penalty was first introduced in the 18th century B.C. but became a controversial U.S. political issue in the 1970s. By 1976, Troy Gregg, a convicted murderer, had his case heard by the Supreme Court, with the plaintiff insisting Gregg should be sentenced to death. After reviewing the case, the Supreme Court declared that “the death penalty is not cruel and unusual punishment, therefore the ruling to reinvoke the death penalty is compliant with the Eighth Amendment.” This case was a monumental breakthrough for advocates of the death penalty because it set updated precedent moving forward that allowed states the right to legalize the death penalty at their discretion. The ruling also reversed the Furman v. George case in 1967, where the Supreme Court had “reduced all death sentences to life imprisonment, disallowing states the right to sentence criminals to death.” Since Gregg’s death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Courtover 40 years ago, “30 states have enforced the death penalty. In total, 1,512 people have been executed, with 62 people awaiting execution as of December 20, 2019.” The fact that over 1,500 criminals have been executed on death row demonstrates that many states are firm advocates of the death penalty.

The psychological divide drawn between good and evil allows citizens to sleep at night knowing that evil criminals are paying the ultimate price for their actions when they are sentenced to death. But what many citizens seem to neglect is that the mind is fragile and can be tormented by psychotic temptation if it is not nourished and cared for. Factors like traumatic experiences as a child, neighborhood environment growing up, and level of family support all play an indicative role on how young adults mature, as they develop physically and psychologically. Individuals sometimes make life- altering decisions that abandon moral principles because they are seeking fortification and satisfaction... but does that really make them evil people? Or does neglect and abandonment cause citizens to pursue heinous action for a temporary feeling of jubilation? If criminals truly are not evil people, does it make more sense to dehumanize them, so they are forced to suffer for their actions, or would it be more productive to enforce rehabilitation methods? Based on over half of the states in the U.S. legalizing the death penalty, it seems that policymakers are more concerned about making criminals suffer than taking proactive measures to help criminals learn from their mistakes. Moving forward, is the death penalty really a means of justice, or a misperceived necessary evil that’s brainwashed citizens into believing that revenge (by sentencing the death penalty), will somehow suffice for the initial crime committed? 

The irony of justice is that it is impossible to achieve, but always discussed in the mainstream news media when a major court decision is reached. “Was there justice in the case?” seems to be the locus point of concern for most citizens. But when criminals commit illegal acts of violence against innocent civilians, their actions cannot be undone. The way the United States enforces justice is through penalizing faulty action with inhumane punishments and financial compensation, treating humans like animals in captivity, held against their will. The old fashioned saying “when you fight fire with fire, you always get burned,” could not be more prevalent because no one wins when a judge or jury is afforded the right to set an exploration date on a criminals life. Lacking the power of the divine, laws were established to protect state sovereignty, and ensure a sense of protection and equality for all citizens, not for court ordered death sentences.

The death penalty symbolizes an abuse of power by the Supreme Court, reaffirming that when political representatives do not have to worry about getting re-elected, the risk of dangerous precedent being set is legitimate and concerning. Looking at highly symbolic cases like Dred Scott v. Sanford, where the Supreme Court ruled that African Americans could not be considered American citizens, Plessy v. Ferguson, where separate but equal state segregation laws were upheld, or U.S. v. Korematsu upholding internment camps for Japanese, Americans during World War II; we have seen plenty of instances where the Supreme Court has abused their power and set dangerous precedent. The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Troy Gregg case is no different because it allowed states to legalize the death penalty, without enacting strict guidelines of what actions qualify, causing minorities to become prime targets of cruel punishment. 

Since states began implementing updated policies legalizing the death penalty, African Americans have been sentenced to death more than any other race. This statistic would be tolerable if African Americans were committing the majority of violent crimes, but according to a study done by the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, “on average, 36% of murderers are committed by black men, and 30% of murders are committed by white men.” This signifies a very small gap between African Americans and white citizens that commit murder. With such a small gap, it is mindboggling that “nearly 50% of death row inmates are African Americans, while less than 40% of inmates facing death row are of white descent.” The entire United States population has over 73% of citizens that identify as white, but less than 13% that identify as African American or black. The fact that the overwhelming majority of United States citizens are white exacerbates an “us vs. them” mindset, which has created an unjust system run by, “Congress, where 78% of representatives identify as white, and judges, where 70% also identify as white.” White supremacy has allowed white people to dictate policy, determine punishment they deem appropriate, and determine if criminal actions are punishable by a death sentence. With African American criminals in many instances facing all white judges, juries, and a state appointed attorney with minimal experience, African American suspects are more vulnerable than any other race of getting mandatory maximum sentences. By enacting the death penalty, was the system trying to create a platform of “justice,” or isolate a minority group for the color of their skin? 

While the death penalty creates a dangerous loophole that causes African Americans to get targeted in the criminal justice system, the primary methods of execution are highly unethical. The five primary methods of execution include “hanging, electrocution, the gas chamber, firing squad, and lethal injection.” Whether it’s 2,000 volts of electricity shocking the human body for 2.5 minutes or having a line of soldiers aiming rifles at the criminals head and shooting simultaneously, electrocution and the fire squad appear to exemplify cruel and unusual punishment, a violation of the eighth amendment. Although many state courts have outlawed all methods, other than lethal injection, “the Supreme Court has never formally stated that any of these five methods qualify as cruel and unusual punishment.” This reasserts the Supreme Court’s firm stance of maintaining “justice” by allowing ruthless and unnecessarily violent methods of execution to continue against criminals sentenced to the death penalty. 

Based on racial inconsistencies on who gets sentenced to the death penalty and a lack of ethics in the methods of execution, every state should abolish the death penalty.There are too many loopholes in the system that make African Americans prime targets for execution, even when they commit identical crimes to white criminals, suggesting that to support the death penalty is to support discriminatory policy. Even if the Supreme Court claims the death penalty does not violate the eighth amendment, the fact of the matter is that “most prisoners wait over 15 years on death row before they are executed.” The amount of emotional distress that manifests when an individuals forced to wait for such an extended period of time, knowing they will be killed, can be classified as cruel and unusual punishment to say the least. To make matters worse, a study done by the National Academy of Sciences found that “4% of people on death row were or are likely to be innocent.” The fact that innocent civilians are being sentenced to death row and executed when they did nothing wrong shows the dangers of implementing a system that cannot be reversed. Rather than revoking humanitarian rights granted to all citizens, including criminals, its time policymakers realize that the most benevolent and responsible call to action is enforcing rehabilitation methods to teach criminals how to behave in a civilized manner.

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Alvarez, Mauricio J., and Monica K. Miller. “How Defendants’ Legal Status and Ethnicity and Participants’ Political Orientation Relate to Death Penalty Sentencing Decisions.” Translational Issues in Psychological Science, vol. 3, no. 3, Sept. 2017, pp. 298–311. 

“Death Penalty: Death Penalty Issues: CIP.” California Innocence Project, 13 Jan. 2020, californiainnocenceproject.org/issues-we-face/death-penalty/.

Garrison, Edward. “Death Penalty.” Equal Justice Initiative, 22 Nov. 2019, eji.org/issues/death-penalty/.

Lee, Tuan. “Race and the Death Penalty: Capital Punishment in Context.” Race and the Death Penalty | Capital Punishment in Context, 3 Dec. 2018, capitalpunishmentincontext.org/issues/race.

Levenson, Arthur. “Methods of Execution.” Death Penalty Information Center, 13 Apr. 2019, deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/methods-of-execution.

Lyon, Andrea D. The Death Penalty: What’s Keeping It Alive. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014.

Miller, Seumas, and John Blackler. Ethical Issues in Policing. Routledge, 2016. 

Perlin, Michael L. Mental Disability and the Death Penalty: The Shame of the States. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2013.

Unnever, James D., and Francis T. Cullen. “The Racial Divide in Support for the Death Penalty: Does White Racism Matter?” Social Forces (University of North Carolina Press), vol. 85, no. 3, Mar. 2007, pp. 1281–1301.

[pamphletstoinspire]

SAINT LOUIS, King of France, loyal and faithful servant of the Lord - Feast Day: August 25 - Both Calendars

From "Lives of The Saints with Reflections for Every Day in the Year" by Rev. Alban Butler.

The mother of Louis told him she would rather see him die than commit a mortal sin, and he never forgot her words. King of France at the age of twelve, he made the defense of God's honor the aim of his life. Before two years, he had crushed the Albigensian heretics, and forced them by stringent penalties to respect the Catholic faith. Amidst the cares of government, he daily recited the Divine Office and heard two Masses, and the most glorious churches in France are still monuments of his piety. When his courtiers remonstrated with Louis for his law that blasphemers should be branded on the lips, he replied, "I would willingly have my own lips branded to root out blasphemy from my kingdom." The fearless protector of the weak and the oppressed, he was chosen to arbitrate in all the great feuds of his age, between the Pope and the Emperor, between Henry III and the English barons. In 1248, to rescue the land which Christ had trod, he gathered round him the chivalry of France, and embarked for the East.

There, before the infidel, in victory or defeat, on the bed of sickness or a captive in chains, Louis showed himself ever the same, -- the first, the best, and the bravest of Christian knights. When a captive at Damietta, an Emir rushed into his tent brandishing a dagger red with the blood of the Sultan, and threatened to stab him also unless he would make him a knight, as the Emperor Frederick had Facardin. Louis calmly replied that no unbeliever could perform the duties of a Christian knight. In the same captivity he was offered his liberty on terms lawful in themselves, but enforced by an oath which implied a blasphemy, and though the infidels held their swords' points at his throat, and threatened a massacre of the Christians, Louis inflexibly refused. The death of his mother recalled him to France; but when order was reestablished he again set forth on a second crusade. In August, 1270, his army landed at Tunis, and, though victorious over the enemy, succumbed to a malignant fever. Louis was one of the victims. He received the Viaticum kneeling by his camp-bed, and gave up his life with the same joy that he had given all else for the honor of God.

Please read below a most inspiring letter sent to his son when St. Louis was near death.

This is taken from an account of his life as contained in BUTLER'S LIVES OF THE SAINTS.

Finding his distemper increase, he called for his eldest son Philip and gave him certain pious instructions which he had drawn up in writing before he left Paris. Two copies hereof are still kept in the Chamber of Accounts at Paris, under this title: "Instructions of King Lewis, the saint, to Philip, his eldest son." The dying admonitions of this great king to him are here inserted in abstract: "My son, before all things I recommend to you that you love God. Be always ready rather to suffer all manner of torments than to commit any mortal sin. When sickness or any other affliction befalls you, return thanks to God for it and bear it courageously, being persuaded that you deserve to suffer much more for having served God ill, and that such tribulations will be your gain. In prosperity give thanks to God with humility and fear lest by pride you abuse God's benefits, and so offend Him by those very means by which you ought particularly to improve yourself in his service. Confess your sins frequently, and choose a wise and pious ghostly father who will teach you what to follow and what to shun; let him be one that will boldly reprehend you and make you understand the grievousness of your faults. Hear the Divine Office devoutly - meditate affectionately what you ask of God with your mouth; do this with more than ordinary application during the holy sacrifice of the mass, especially after the consecration. Be bountiful, compassionate, and courteous to the poor, and relieve and favour them as much as you can. If anything trouble your mind, reveal it to your ghostly father or to some other grave and discreet person; for by the comfort you will receive you will bear it more patiently. Love to converse with pious persons; never admit any among your familiar friends but such as are virtuous and of good reputation; shun and banish from you the vicious. Make it your delight to hear profitable sermons and discourses of piety. Endeavor to gain the benefit of indulgences and to get the prayers of others. Love all good and abhor all evil. Wherever you are, never suffer anyone to detract or say anything sinful in your presence.

Punish all who speak ill of God or his saints. Give often thanks to God for all His benefits. In the administration of justice be upright and severe; hear patiently the complaints of the poor, and in all controversies where your interests are concerned stand for your adversary against yourself till the truth be certainly found out. Whatever you find not to belong to you, restore it without delay to the owner, if the case be clear; if doubtful, appoint prudent men to examine diligently into it. Endeavor to procure peace and justice to all your subjects. Protect the clergy and religious who pray for you and your kingdom. Follow the maxim of my grandfather King Philip, that it is sometimes better to dissemble certain things in ecclesiastics than to repress them with too great violence and scandal. Love and honour the queen your mother, and follow her counsels. Make no war, especially against Christians, without great cause and good advice. If necessity force you to it, let it be carried on without damage to those who are not in fault, and spare the innocent subjects of your enemy as much as possible. Use all your authority to hinder wars among your vassals. Be scrupulous in the choice of good judges and magistrates. Have always a great respect for the Roman Church and the pope, and honour him as your spiritual father. Hinder, to the utmost of your power, all blasphemies, rash oaths, games of chance, drunkenness, and impurity. Never make any extravagant expenses, and never lay on your subjects any heavy or unjust burdens. After my death take care to have a great many masses and prayers said for me in all churches and religious communities in France; and give me a share in all the good works which you shall do. I give you my blessing with the most tender affection that any father can give to a son; and I pray our Lord Jesus Christ to protect and strengthen you in His service, and always to increase His grace in you that you never do anything against His holy will, and that He may be ever faithfully honoured and served by you. I beg this same grace for myself, that we may together see, laud and honor Him for all eternity.

The feast of St. Louis, King of France is August 25th. Let us meditate, in the person of St. Louis, upon one of the most beautiful masterpieces of grace and see what religion made of this prince: 1st a great king; 2nd a great Christian. We will than make the resolution: 1st to act, to speak, and to think in a spirit of faith, with a view to God and His glory; 2nd, always to treat our neighbor in a spirit of charity, forgetting ourselves for the good of others. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the beautiful eulogium pronounced upon St. Louis by one of his historians: "He endeavored always to please Jesus Christ, as the sole King of all hearts."

[giancarlorinaldi]

Baggio v Bernardeschi: Why The Pain, For Me, Will Never Be The Same

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I was there in the build up to that simmering summer of discontent in Florence. The tension in the streets and bars was thicker than poorly-sliced Parma ham. Surely, we thought, the transfer could never go through - how could the man who would become the Divine Ponytail be part of a deal with the Devil?

It’s important, I think, to understand what Roberto Baggio meant for Fiorentina fans nearly 30 years ago and also the position the club found itself in and its relationship with Juventus at the time. Those three poisoned ingredients made for a pretty bitter dish for supporters to have to swallow. Personally, I don’t believe anything in the modern era can come close.

The champion from Caldogno was the undisputed star of a decidedly mid-table side which had signed him despite serious injury in 1985 and nursed him back to fitness through the best part of two seasons on the sidelines. He repaid them with three glorious campaigns where he lit up the Serie A stage and, in 1988/89, formed the B2 partnership with Stefano Borgonovo which gave the Viola faithful hope for the future. They lost one part of that strike force in the summer of 1989 when the ill-fated Borgo-gol returned to his parent club, Milan. The prospect of losing the other half - who had helped take them into the UEFA Cup - was too much to take. This was Calcio’s brightest star and the world was about to be dazzled at Italia ‘90.

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Relations with the Bianconeri, and the power of supporters groups at the time, made a deal with the Turin giants unthinkable. It was less than a decade since Fiorentina fans felt Juventus had robbed them of a Scudetto on the last day of the season in that epic 1981/82 battle. The Ultras on the Curva Fiesole were a fearsome force and you crossed them at your peril. Their reputation across Italy was not the kind of organisation you messed with. The Pontello family - who ran the club at the time - was about to find out why.

The outrage from the Baggio sale was visceral and violent. The club headquarters were attacked and the Italian national team - on pre-tournament training near Florence - came under fire. I was back in the city when their prized player returned in the hated black-and-white strip and it was not a pleasant place to be. There was a sense of foreboding that only a Fiorentina win - and Roberto’s refusal to take a penalty - managed to allay. The huge police presence indicated that trouble was expected to erupt at any moment.

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So, to my mind anyway, Federico Bernardeschi heading to the place that should not be mentioned cannot come close to causing the same anger and pain. There’s a parallel, yes, in his growing importance to the team and the fact that he was helped back from serious injury. But his significance to this side falls well short of Baggio’s importance back in the day. The Divin Codino was about to play a key part in taking his country to the brink of World Cup glory - Berna has just failed to take the Under 21s anywhere near to a European title in their age group.

That might sound, a little, like sour grapes and there is no doubt that the present-day player has huge potential - some of which he has started to deliver on. He is a delight to watch on the ball, can fire off a powerful shot and takes a mean free-kick. But he is not, nor ever will be, Roby Baggio.

In the same way, I don’t think Viola fans are as powerful a unit as they once were nor is the relationship with Juve as bitter as it once was. Nowadays, it is more about mockery - those Antonio Conte wigs spring to mind - than it is about outright violence. And the Curva is not as intimidating a place as it once was. That does not mean anyone is happy to see Bernardeschi go but, rather, that the chance of them taking up arms in fury over his sale are rather unlikely.

Personally, too, the sting is not the same. When Baggio left, it felt like the club had lost something more than just a player. It had lost a talisman, its heart and the heir to the number 10 shirt worn by Giancarlo Antognoni. To see Juve take him in what was - at the time - a world record deal seemed to signal terminal decline at the club and would result in a string of seasons struggling to avoid relegation. Only time will tell if Bernardeschi’s departure - among so many others at the Tuscan club - will have the same impact. I have my doubts, somehow.

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Losing Roby still causes me pain to this day, if I am perfectly honest. There will always be a part of me wonders what might have been if we had been able to keep hold of him. I get the feeling, too, that the player himself has a little pang of regret when he talks about that torrid summer. He won titles, of course, by going away but what legacy might he have left in Florence had he remained?

Maybe it is just the age I was at the time of the transfers but I struggle to imagine doing the same about Federico Bernardeschi in 30 years time. It is a symptom of the modern game that players move on where back in the late 1980s I still believed in the Bandiera - the one-club player who becomes a symbol of their team. Nowadays everyone - and I mean everyone - has to sell if the price is right and the person in question is keen on the move.

So there’s a hint of bitter disappointment in seeing the talent from Carrara leave but it doesn’t come close to the anguish I felt when Baggio departed. Yes, I thought Fede owed us one more season and he did talk the talk of wanting to become a club legend. But those words wash over us now, as meaningless and empty as the gesture of kissing the badge one day and packing your bags the next. Berna can expect a tasty welcome when he comes back to Florence, of course, but I don’t think a police escort will be required. It’s painful to see him go but we’ll get over it. I’m not sure I can yet say the same about seeing Roby Baggio in black and white.

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