I don't know how to be good at everything but - sure, if it's possible obviously I want to and - I guess, practising the virtues of faith and hope, I should believe I can? 

Go down to the village and try to do the most good you can for them. Come back to me in two days and tell me what you are missing about what paladins ought to be.

When she returns the second time Lucy doesn't bring a candle. Instead she brings a jug of water from the clearest spring on the mountainside and a clean dishrag bought from the village's tiny inn. She very carefully cleans all the candle wax from the altar and wipes away anything else that looks like dirt or dust until the white stone is spotless. Then she sits crosslegged in front of it and thinks about honour and goodness and duty and love. 

The people of the village mostly don't have problems I can solve by smiting them. 

I healed twenty people because I can heal ten per day and a lot of people have... constant little injuries from life that build up, over time. Cooking-fire burns, and old bad legs from a time a plough fell on them, and calloused fingers with fishing-hook injuries, and knee scrapes, and training bruises. There is an old man who is sick and I will heal him too, tomorrow, but I would have to give up the healing of five other people to do it today.

They have a lot of - small ways I can do good. I helped repair an old woman's roof because it would have been dangerous for her to climb up and fix it herself. I blessed the fishers to help them catch more. I taught some children a bit of swordfighting so they can defend themselves. But none of those things feel like they help as much as smiting monsters would. And they didn't.... have any monsters I could smite in the two days I was there.

They tell me they are scared of sea monsters and scared of bandits and scared of the king asking more in tax than they can pay, but I do not think I can singlehandedly clear the sea of sea serpents without more power. The bandits... they could fix that problem if I helped them all work together but they're scared to fix it. And maybe that's the other thing a paladin ought to do, we ought to inspire people to believe things are possible so we can lead them. I think they didn't believe it until they saw I was part aasimar and I.... wish that wasn't relevant, honestly. 

So there are problems too small to be worth your time, and problems too big for you to tackle, and no problems at all that are exactly the right size? That sounds like making excuses. 

I think I could get the village to win, against the local robber gangs, if I armed them and trained them and led them and... inspired them.

But - I have to be really good for it to work. People really don't like the idea that someone is better than them and they don't like outsiders coming in and reorganising their lives, but they do want to believe in the ideal of.... a hero coming to save them. And that's why it helps that I'm an aasimar paladin, it somehow makes it... not their fault that they haven't solved everything themselves yet. But my birth shouldn't matter and if I'm going to go around telling people a hero is saving them then I have to actually live up to that.

Is that what I was missing? That a paladin also inspires people and makes them believe in something? 

You held Bless, Compelled Duel, Purify Food and Drink, and Detect Poison and Disease. Why not prepare Cure Wounds and heal twenty-four? 

I do think spending my Bless the way I did was a mistake. It wasn't actually very useful to the fishers, I think it just made them feel good. But - checking all the wells and food stores for poison and disease seemed more useful than healing four more people. And I always keep Compelled Duel because it means if someone attacks an innocent person I can force them to fight me instead. 

One of the things a paladin does is admit when they've made mistakes, and commit to doing better, because they understand that they must do better. 

Very few people can actually do that. They hold on to things they want to believe about themselves. 

I want to believe that I'm cut out to be a paladin. But I don't think that's... incompatible with thinking I have to do better.

If very few people can be paladins, but paladins ought to exist at all, then the people who can be paladins ought to be paladins. 

Do you think that makes you special? Better than other people? 

Kind of yes actually? But not in a way that means I get to be mean or cruel to them! But - they should also be - 

That is another one of the sins you can leave on the altar. 

I do not know how to do that! I don't know how to square - doing things that everyone ought to do but not everyone does - and also having more duty than other people and special obligations that other people don't have at all - and also trying to be the ideal of a perfect hero - but also not thinking I'm at all special - 

But you'll try? 

But that sounds like the sort of thing I could try. I will think very hard and see more of the world and maybe learn enough philosophy for that. 

Do you know why I gave up having a name? 

It's because what sounds beautiful to one person may sound ugly to another, and what gives the right impression in one language might give the wrong impression in another.

There is no perfect name. And I am a god of perfection. 

Oh. 

And a paladin ought to just do whatever is right. 

If you swear to strive for perfection, then I will give you enough power that you can fight these bandits. And then you will come back to me and tell me what a paladin is. Perhaps then you will overthrow the king.

Lucia descends the mountain as a paladin strong enough to be immune to disease. 

She is not an Oath of Devotion paladin or an Oath of Conquest paladin or an Oath of Redemption paladin or an Oath of the Crown paladin because all of those commit to some parts of Goodness but not other parts.

She is an Oath Paladin.

She hasn't sworn to be perfect, but she's sworn to try. 

Lucia comes back to the mountain and sits for a while sharpening her sword, because there is no reason for her hands to be idle while she tries to think about philosophy. She doesn't use her hands for that. 

I think defeating the bandits made me stronger. A lot stronger. And I could go looking for more enemies that are the right sort of challenge level for me, so I can become stronger, but it feels... suspect.

The king asks for tax money so he can become stronger. He says that once he is strong enough he will pacify the borders and pay druids to bless the fields and bring peace and prosperity to the land, but I think that is deeply suspicious because he could be doing more of those things now, and he.... has a self-serving reason to want to be stronger and hold on to power. I think he is lying and he just wants to be stronger. Or he isn't lying all the way, maybe he really will use some of the money to build roads, but he is lying enough that it doesn't matter.

I don't want to be that way. So I think I should fix the world now.

But I'm also not sure overthrowing the king is.... something I should do until I know who should replace him. It shouldn't be me. And I don't want to just make a giant civil war where thousands die. 

There is supposed to be a lich further in the mountains. Maybe I want to fight him. 

Can you fight him? 

No. I want to anyway.