"Has this been tried in the past? What Evils have tended to prey upon the paladins thus lost?"

He shuffles his feet. "I'm sorry, sir, I know it must sound outrageous to someone like you that even our paladins still struggle with impulses towards Evil. I wasn't alive for it, but the story I've heard is that back when the Worldwound had just opened, people didn't have as much of a sense of what sorts of things were dangerous for paladins, so they'd assign them to all sorts of things that would be unthinkable today. So I can't say for sure, because it was before my time, but — I met a man once who swore he Fell from an argument with his wife, though it happened over letter. I don't know if he was telling the truth, but if it's possible to Fall for that, it's not hard for me to imagine someone getting frustrated after months and months dealing with the same person who just couldn't learn his lesson and stepping across the line the gods have drawn. But I don't know whether that's really what it was, you'd need to ask someone who knows more of the history."

"It doesn't sound outrageous at all. I just want to know what process created the present cautions so if anything unusual comes up it will be clear how to extend them. Are they all aware that this post is considered risky in this way?"

"Of course, part of the role of the paladin orders is to ensure they're aware of the conduct expected of them and situations that might endanger their ability to hold to it. —The very newest-chosen might not have learned, but the ones I assigned to the posting have more experience."

Nod. "What other things besides supervising the Condemned, conducting interrogations, and executing people are considered Fall risk factors?"

More shuffling. His embarrassment is leaking into his tone of voice. "Any sort of interaction with prisoners can be a risk, sir, though of course sometimes it's unavoidable if they capture someone in the field. Administering the army's budget. Handling troop discipline, either assigning punishments or delivering them. Anything that's difficult to do honestly. And of course they can't touch even minor vices, not that it would really make sense for anyone to specifically be assigned to indulge in vice. ...Really, it's safest to just set them to killing demons. They're very good at killing demons."

"...what happens if they try to administer the budget, specifically?"

"That might be a matter of Law rather than Good, sir, it can be hard to tell the difference. But — from what I've heard, sir, and I don't mean to speak ill of anyone, they sometimes start off just doing what they need to to make the budget work and over time find themselves tempted to redirect funds in less necessary ways."

"I see. Thank you for explaining."

"If it's helpful for your understanding, sir — sometimes we on the Material can't tell what the right thing to do is, or even choose to do things that we know are wrong."

"I am to the best of my knowledge fully human."

"Understood, sir. ...Would it be helpful to speak to someone who's Fallen? I'm sure it would be possible to arrange."

"...it might. If you find one conveniently available. It's not urgent."

"Yessir."

The army's paladins are all still un-Fallen by the time Blai shows up for his Remove Disease castings. By the time he's finished Removing some Diseases, someone has managed to scrounge up a couple ex-paladins for him to talk to.

"Hello. Was it explained to you why I wanted to talk to you?"

"Yes, Knight-Commander."

They are face-screaming about this about as much as can be expected from non-Chelish people who have been asked to recount the worst days of their lives!

Why do people do that. It's unpleasant and you'd expect people in Cheliax to have settled on the more unpleasant of the possible social norms. "Some of the things that have been described to me as risk factors for paladins Falling are things that it... seems unlikely that all countries avoid having paladins do, or things that I have done myself since my empowerment without apparent issue, and I am trying to isolate the problems, so that I will have a good sense of when they may have been solved and it will again be reasonable to install paladins in such positions."

"—Well, it's different for clerics — unless that was just a rumor—"

 "The problems are — people choosing to do Evil, sir."

  "...what sorts of things are paladins doing in other countries? —The Chelish ones aren't really paladins, they're Hellknights, they're sworn to Law and not at all to Good."

"I know clerics have a little more leeway, but it's not unlimited license. If something will disempower a paladin who does it once then I have a problem if I need to do it some larger but not necessarily large number of times. And I do not mean here to refer to Hellknights; I know those are seldom if ever Good. The president of Andoran is a paladin. Lastwall has paladins in abundance and nothing about the handbook they use for Worldwound fort discipline suggests that they try to keep paladins out of such a variety of positions out of fear of these pitfalls."

"I don't know anything about Andoran."

 "I think some of the rules aren't about things that are always Evil, they're about things where some people will choose to do Evil. If you never choose to do Evil then it won't be a problem, and if you slip up once you'll be able to make sure you don't give yourself the opportunity to slip up again."

  "Maybe whoever wrote the Lastwall handbook just thought it was obvious that paladins shouldn't do those things."

"Can you elaborate on 'choose to do Evil'?" he asks. Since apparently these ex-paladins were not actually very interested in what sort of things paladins are doing in other countries to engage with the information he had about that.

 Fidget fidget fidget. Swallow. "Well, sir, I — my unit had been sent out to look for another unit that hadn't come back, that some of my friends were in, and we found them, or what was left of them, and — well, we took some cultists prisoner so they could be questioned back at camp, and — it's not that I thought I was doing the right thing. If I'd been thinking about it at all I'd have realized I was going well beyond what the Goddess says to do. And if someone else had been there in my place, they might have chosen differently, and the Goddess wouldn't have had to take away their powers."

"Do you think there is some way you could have been trained to handle that situation short of simply keeping you out of it?"

 "I don't know, sir. I knew what the Goddess's teachings were, I just — didn't follow them." Swallow. "I think if I'd been really thinking about it in advance, I might have noticed that I was starting to feel tempted towards Evil, in circumstances where I'd never have had the chance to act on it, but at the time I didn't want to think of myself as the sort of person who might actually do something like that. And even if I'd noticed, I'm not sure — there wouldn't really have been a good way to tell someone..."

"- no? Why wouldn't there be?"