"No religion here means, many gods obeyed here? All good and obedient gods?"

"Yes, you can portray a persona who believes any religion from anywhere, so long as you're not trying to make it an official part of an event or something. We've got a couple people in the barony who do Islamic Golden Age and a couple pre-Christian Iron Age personas. But you don't have to obey any gods at all unless you want to!" 

"...you have to obey gods if you want to go to Heaven."

Robert is so embarrassed. "Iomedae, he just said it's not a religious thing. We can't take you if you're not going to respect their rules."

Big smile in Robert's direction. "I'm sure we're just dealing with a language barrier - we have plenty of deeply religious participants!" 

To Iomedae, with much less of a carefully faked smile: "It's okay if you believe that, and it's okay if you want to have a persona who believes that, so long as you can get along alright with people who don't believe that, or don't want to talk about it, or don't believe in gods at all - okay?"

Maybe there's an additional confusion he can address. "We aren't actually affiliated with the church at all. They just let us use their space for practice." The building is pretty obviously religious, after all, so that's an easy mistake to make. 

If there are people who think that disobeying gods is a good way to go to Heaven, then they're ....badly mistaken and not going to go to Heaven as a result. She is not sure what it means to get along with them. Obviously she is not qualified to prosecute heresy when she isn't even in a holy order yet. But he says 'people who don't believe that' like it's an active disagreement and that - really seems like quite a big and important problem. 

...which people might take a knight seriously about and will not take a foster child seriously about. "I want follow the rules. There lots of things I do not know. It is not a holy order, but - it is okay I am a holy warrior?"

If he was going to be pedantic at a literal child who clearly doesn't speak English well, he could explain again about not being a LARP and how they don't have anything like a paladin class.

(He went to a LARP once, and the paladins and clerics got yellow beanbags they could throw at people to restore hit points. He deeply objected to the idea of becoming more powerful through attending more events in order to "level up" with "character points" and ended up sticking to the SCA, where his skill level is his skill level and he never feels like he has to pay a tithe before he's allowed to excel. But throwing yellow beanbags at people was kind of fun because they couldn't even complain when you hit them square in the nose and yelled I'M HELPING! I'M HELPING!) 

He's not going to be pedantic at a literal child who clearly doesn't speak English well.

"Yes! Totally okay to be a holy warrior. Lots of people are Crusaders, but you could also be a holy warrior from a different time period and culture if you're willing to research it. But first you might want to learn some swordfighting or some arts, find something you enjoy, and see if it's for you before you invest a lot in a persona?" 

She didn't really follow most of that but she got the most important bit. "I want to learn swordfighting!!"

Yes! This is a need he can meet! He trained many years to be able to be the sort of person who can help with this!

"You are in the right place for that! - one second."

He will go and get his shield first because seriously - he thinks he's going to have an actual bruise on his ribs from her first attempt to kill him. He's used to newbies hitting him lightly and needing to be gently coaxed into hitting him harder with lots of reassurance that he is fine and not hurt, and also used to newbies having zero understanding of body mechanics, and regrets his life choices a tiny bit. Not very much. 

His shield has a gorgeous red and gold design with martlets. "Alright, show me that attack again, but this time I'm going to block with my shield because I like my ribs intact. Try to hit me in the helmet, I'll probably block with the shield, I'm just looking at your form."

She'll go for his visor. The sword is too thick to actually slip through the bars but it's what you'd want to do with a real sword, rather than ineffectually slashing at the side of his head.

She moves a sword like someone who has really had quite a lot of practice for a fifteen year old and who has good habits, or in particular the habit of picking blows that would be lethal if they landed and putting her considerable strength into them.

"Good!" he yelps, more out of the habit of acknowledging the blow than out of any active intent to praise. 

Gabriel shakes his head for a second, making sure his neck still works. 

Oof that was also unexpected and in a way that is entirely his own fault. Usually he tells a newbie to hit him, and they do a tennis-racket swing and then he demonstrates a flat snap and then they work on that for a bit. It was probably a matter of time before one of them decided to thrust him in the visor. It is, in fact, his own fault for not explaining the rules to Iomedae - she's not a native English speaker, she probably did not understand that he wanted the same attack again. And his own fault for not blocking it - he ought to be perfectly capable of blocking a thrust from a newbie if he's going to go around in a white belt, but he'd been holding his shield away from his bar grills so he could look at her form with his eyes. No excuses though. 

"Alright, so! We do combat on the honour system. If you hit someone hard enough that you would've killed them if it was a real attack, then they say good, and you win the fight. If you hit with a glancing blow or poor technique, so the blow wouldn't have penetrated their armour, they say light and you keep fighting. If you hit someone in the arm or leg, they lose use of that limb. Generally if you thrust to the face, you only have to do it very lightly and people should still say good, because you don't really need to use any force to put a sword in an open-face helmet and we don't want to break necks while sparring. So you only need to use directed positive pressure - just a bit of a push - for face thrusts. The power on your first blow was very good. Do you need me to say any of that slower or differently?" 

She caught maybe a quarter of that. She's usually only catching about a quarter of things, but if you smile and repeat back the exact words you can get by that way for many things.

Not for this, this is too important.

"I think, sir, that was rules, and important, and God help me obey, you say it again slower and also differently."

He can do that! He loves the honour system so much and is proud of the culture it represents.

"So, when we fight, we are pretending we are fighting in historical armour with historical swords. Chainmail or leather armour, open faced helmets, and real sharp steel swords. We don't want to actually kill each other, so we are using rattan swords and we have extra protection for our faces and as much armour as we like. But if you are hit by an attack that would have hurt you badly through some chainmail, if it was a real sharp sword, then you should say 'good', and that means you lose the fight. It's an honour system - no judges or electronic scoring. If you have lost the fight fairly, you must say so to your opponent. With me on that?" 

Oh, that is a good custom. It is the custom a holy order would have, if they needed to establish who had won fights for some reason. It is a custom that says, everybody here is honorable, so we can do things a way that -

- no, actually, her delight is building as she contemplates it, because - in a sense that is the entire and whole core of being a paladin, isn't it, that if you are honorable, and everybody can trust you to be honorable, then you can dispense with all the costly parts of everything which are just there as guards against evildoers. In Heaven probably the Emperor wanders the streets without bodyguards, and need not wonder which of his advisors are being truthful, because things are better when people are Good. The core of Goodness is not giving your food to the hungry, though you should give your food to the hungry. The core of Goodness is that honorable things are stronger than dishonorable things, that honor is a kind of wealth - 

- a kind she'd feared America didn't have -

"As in Heaven," she says. "I am with you."

Honestly 'as in heaven' is a very sweet thing to say and he can get on board with this whole.... Crusader persona or whatever is going on. 

"Great! And if someone hits you a lot harder than you're comfortable with, you can tell them it's excessive and they'll hit you lighter so you don't get hurt. If someone hits you and you think it would not stop you even with a sharp sword, you can say light to tell people that you are not dead and you can keep fighting. Does that make sense too?"

"I have not been - hurt enough to die but for God in a real fight. I would be - not sure, some things."

"That's okay! If you aren't certain in practice you can just say you aren't certain and we can help you learn calibration. Once you have enough armour to be safe, we can hit you good and hit you light so you can tell the difference."

Gabriel shoots an apologetic look at Robert. "Going to have to check exactly what she's allowed to do right now - how long until she's sixteen?" 

“She, uh, doesn’t know her birthday. I think they just put January 1st on the forms.”

He so so so badly doesn't want this girl to be told that she has to use nothing but foam swords and fight whichever twelve-year-old shows up for youth combat. Not with the way she lights up upon being given a sword - he can imagine it's probably a break from how powerless it must feel to be a foster kid. He also doesn't even know much about youth combat off the top of his head, because Kalomeros has never had a strong youth combat program and he thinks it's dormant right now.

"Would you give her permission to do armoured combat? She won't be able to authorise and fight in any actual tournaments until she's sixteen, but she can get some armour on and give it a go at practice."

He is PRETTY sure the marshals will not yell at him for this but he's also just not going to go and ask Reynhard what the rule is for people who don't know their birthday because he knows Reynhard is not going to know the answer and then Iomedae is not going to be allowed to fight until someone finds out. 

"Well, how dangerous would you say it is compared to, say, hockey, or football, or something?"

Roger and Lucia are very enthusiastically murdering each other in the background as this conversation happens. Roger just hit Lucia hard enough in the head that she staggered back two paces with a cry of, "Good!"

Then she's right back up in his face making a noise like a thunderstorm as she beats her sword on every edge of his shield, looking for openings that he isn't giving her.

A couple other fighters are moving out onto the field now, and one of the knights is lazily putting a newer fighter through some warmup exercises. Those produce significantly less noise. 

This would probably be easier if Roger and Lucia were not doing that! He can't begrudge them, though, they have that special rivalry that comes from starting at the same time and improving at similar rates so that they're always alternating which one is pulling ahead of the other today, and that kind of rivalry makes people want to take harder and dish out harder. He knows from experience. 

Bright smile. 

"We actually probably have similar or lower rates of injuries to football and hockey!" he says cheerfully. It helps that he's saying true things even if he's worried it's not going to convince his normal coworker from his extremely normal job. "I know it looks dangerous, but we have a strong community that looks out for each other, and we're very conscious of armour standards and safety.... you know, people shouldn't be hitting each other in football, but that often means they're not really wearing enough protective gear or preparing for when something does happen. We're always thinking about how we can make sure we're still able to fi-" don't call it fighting, "-do this sport when we're seventy."

"Kiddo, promise me you'll be safe?"

"It is good to die fighting as holy warrior. It is how I will die. My life give first to God, and no can obey you if you ask me not to give life to God.

But live longer if good at swording."