"Us, he's curious about, like we're in a zoo. Behold the exotic diabolist in captivity made of the Treaty."

"I think I'm more of the zoo exhibit at the moment," he looks around at the rest of the room again.  "Really though, what else would I do, sit in my room all day except when the commander wants my opinion on something? Now there's a depressing life."

"That's why you need a party."

"Not going to find one up here. Nobody comes this far if they're not teleporting or about to, and that's not a paladin with no spells's speed."

"I think I'll be all right without. Managed an entire conversation without feeling particularly tempted to hate any of you, anyway."

"For some reason when a real prick comes through the Commander is like, hey, neighbor, would you like a real prick? and they say, oh, yes, I can't get off if I'm not torturing people for looking at me funny, send him right over and I will give you this boring guy. Everyone here is very dull as a zoo exhibit."

An unhappy snort. "Yeah, I sure got to see plenty of the other sort on the way here. Didn't talk to them very much."

"Because you'd hate them and then sneeze wrong about it."

"Might, yeah. And also just because it would've been pretty unpleasant."

"How do you tell if you're doing a thing because somebody's a prick and not just 'cause you feel like it?"

Oh what a good question. The man gets an approving look for it, though Marcus is aware that he might just hate that too.

"Lot of learning to pay attention, mostly. And helps to be in a habit of mostly not doing the sorts of things you'd do because somebody's a prick."

"They teach you paying attention in paladin school?" he snorts.

"I haven't gotten much paladin school, but they do talk about it a lot."

"- well, how do you not fuck up all the time if you don't have school about it?"

"...You know, you're right, it does sound pretty ridiculous when you say it like that. I think it's mostly just that the Goddess knows how to pick people who'll probably manage. It's not like it has to be everyone."

"So you're guessing. Maybe half your rules you just made up."

"What?" He's not sure if he missed a step in this conversation or if the man does that on purpose when he doesn't like where things are going. "No, they teach us the rules just fine, it's how to make sure you don't break them that's the complicated part."

"They teach you the rules in the paladin school you don't go to?"

Snort. "All right, yeah, that part gets complicated. So, there are paladin orders, a lot of different ones. Some of the big ones run real schools, like in Lastwall, and a lot of the other ones you can just join the order as a normal person and learn how they do things and hope the Goddess picks you up. But often the Goddess picks you up first while you're doing some other thing with your life, and then you gotta find an order to teach you the rules and so on. I was the second way, so I was a paladin first, and I'd heard enough sermons to have the general idea, but I found an order I wanted to join and spent a few weeks learning how they did things, swore the oath, and went back to the front. So, some school, but not a lot like some people get. That make more sense?"

"Orders like how there are kinds of Hellknights?"

"I think so? I barely know anything about Hellknights, what are their orders like?"

"The ones here are Order of the Godclaw but there's the Chain, the Pyre, the Nail, etcetera, back home."

"... Here meaning where exactly?"

(Does he want to meet a Hellknight? Well, yes, he does, but is it a good idea?)

"The Wound. You must've passed some of them to get here, but the numbered forts're mainline military."

"Ohh. Yeah, there were some weird ones the patrols didn't stop at. Huh."

"What do the ones back home do?" Something horribly Asmodean, probably, but it's still good to know these things.