...You know, sometimes there are people who are literally impossible to stop, so nobody tries. They're too powerful and they have too many allies and they've built up too many defences, so they just get to kill and torture and steal with impunity because everyone is too afraid to fight back. And there are some people who will try to fight back anyway, because we can't not, because we can't live with ourselves if we don't.
Sometimes there are people who aren't worth saving, because they're afflicted with some horrible disease that would be far too expensive to find the cure to, or they're being oppressed in some far-distant land and the mountains are impassable, or they are jailed and tortured in the dungeons of some incredibly dangerous enemy who nobody has ever escaped from, or they're just too far gone into their own evil to be redeemed. And there are some people who will try to save them anyway, because against all possible evidence and with absolutely no reason, they believe that everyone can be saved - because they can't abide a world where everyone isn't.
Sometimes there are situations with absolutely no hope, where you have to choose between succumbing to some horror and doing something awful in order to defeat it, and there are so many different enemies on all sides and so many threats and everything is so expensive and difficult that it is impossible to imagine victory without doing something horribly morally wrong. And there are some people who will die trying, die looking for that way out where nobody at all has to die, because throughout history there have been thousands and thousands of evil people who did evil things while proclaiming that they only did it because they really had to - and they didn't have to, they just needed an excuse. And someone ought to test the question of whether they could have avoided doing evil if they'd just put a little effort in, and sometimes nobody will test that question unless there's people who make a habit of testing it every time regardless of how heroic they have to be.
Sometimes there are paths of light that are too straight and narrow for any human being to possibly walk, and some people try anyway because we would rather take one single step towards perfection than a thousand in any other direction. Because - the world should know what it looks like, when someone is trying to be really truly good. Even if we only succeed in one single tiny fragment of purity, so that there is some room somewhere in some castle where for a day or a week it was a space entirely free of evil.... a place should exist somewhere outside of Heaven that is entirely free of evil, so that people know what that looks like, so they have some example to strive for and some proof that it is worth it.
The people who die trying to do these impossible things are called paladins.
And if paladins proclaim their - our - existence throughout the world loudly enough, then not one single person will ever die without hope, not one single person ever has to go to their doom knowing they have not a single friend in the world, not one single land will ever believe that their ruler cannot possibly be overthrown. Because there is always a chance. A paladin will try. Perhaps the paladin will die. Perhaps there will be a blaze of holy inspiring light and they will do the thing that others refuse to do.
Sometimes paladins die. And other times we are right.
And people like to call us foolish when we die, and call us heroic when we don't die, but I think what they should say is that - whether it is true or false that it is possible to do what we are attempting to do and live, they are glad somebody is asking the question.
This post has the following content warnings:
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
