"I guess it depends on the person. Not everyone is cut out for what we do here. But someone's gotta do it, or there won't be any fields to grow crops in."

     "Not that everyone here is an Iomedan!" says another person.

"Of course not, friend. Times like these, a lot of people have to work together to save the world. Even just among the paladins, you'll find Sarenites, Irorites, and a few who follow Ragathiel or Torag. Our strongest cleric follows Shelyn. But Iomedae's popular, around here. I guess a hole in the world is the sort of problem that tends to attract the followers of the goddess of valor and victory over evil."

“What does it mean, to be the goddess of victory over Evil? It’s not as if everyone wouldn’t declare that they want to win rather than lose.”

"Well, they don't," says another paladin.

     "It's a different attitude," says the one who spoke before. "Sarenrae teaches us to redeem evildoers, whenever it's remotely possible."

"And I think that's noble! It's important, to be able to believe in what people can be. But - not every evil is redeemable, and sometimes the most important thing is stopping it."

The person who said not everyone wants to win gets an interested look. “You wouldn’t say everyone wants to win? Surely redeeming people is still a - way of winning -“

"I mean that not everyone says they want to win. You look at all of the other churches out there? None of them say anything about winning."

     "I feel like that's kind of unfair to Ragathiel."

"Okay, I can't speak to Ragathiel. I only heard about Ragathiel a month ago. I mean the big ones."

“Does Iomedae actually win more than the gods who don’t say they’re about winning? Seems like everything is just worse than before She ascended.”

This gets some confused stares.

"How do you mean?"

" - well, when She ascended, Lastwall was the world's greatest military power, and the Shining Crusade had just triumphed over Tar-Baphon, and Avistan was united against threats to the world, and the Church of Asmodeus barely existed. There were still some bad things in the world, like Geb, and Nidal, that were waiting on the Age of Glory, but - not many of them. And now, Cheliax is ruled by Asmodeus, and there's this rift in the world with demons pouring out, and Iomedae's armies apparently can spare, what, a thousand men for the crusade, and what glorious victories has Good won, exactly?"

"We have a historian among us," says Seelah. "I'm not even from Avistan, I don't know what they think they're doing in Cheliax."

      "Sounds to me like Aroden didn't care enough about winning."

          "Iomedae wasn't nearly as much of a major goddess before the death of Aroden. It doesn't make sense to pin the catastrophes of a hundred years ago on the Inheritor. Since then, we've contained the Worldwound, taken back Andoran, and - well, Galt isn't Asmodean anymore, at least. Iomedae's church was at the forefront of all of that."

"I guess," he says thoughtfully, "the best possible resource allocation across all of the fights Good should pick might in fact look like everything being underfunded and overstretched but working out anyway. It's a bit corrosive to be in the middle of, though."

     "There's a lot of evil to fight."

"Are there a thousand Iomedan paladins signed on with the crusade?" asks the Sarenite.

     "No, less than that. More across all the forts to the south, of course. I don't think Lastwall sent more than a hundred people here, and they weren't all paladins."

Lastwall should support a standing army of fifty thousand in peacetime and be able to triple that in a year come war. Iomedae spent a long time working out the logistics for it. He doesn't say that because there's no reason he should know it. 

"What're they like? The paladins from Lastwall, I mean."

     "Shiny."

          "I'm going to abstain from this one."

"They are honorable and worthy allies in the fight against evil, and have far more experience than most of us do," says Seelah. "And they serve the goddess faithfully. I wish we had a thousand. We are immensely grateful to have the ones we do."

"Okay, that's how people talk about people who are the worst."

"No, no," says Seelah, smiling. "That's the Hellknights. Or Daeran, depending on how I'm feeling on any given day. ...no, I think today is a Hellknights day."

     "Desnans. But I'm only saying that because they'd laugh if they heard me."

          "Baphomet cultists. Probably the worst."

      "Today Sarenrae smiles on Sorren, for only disliking the people he's actually fighting."

"The paladins of Lastwall are good people, strong fighters, and faithful servants of Iomedae. I think it's challenging, for them, to be around the rest of us sometimes. But I'll not say a word against them."

"Challenging for them to be around the rest of us? Like because we - might as well be Desnans and Hellknights?"

"Because we're different from them. Armies thrive on being able to do things together, and when you get people together from across half the world, we're not all going to do things the same way. But at least those of the same faith can be confident that they all serve the same goals."

Marit doesn't, in fact, want to come to the attention of the Iomedaen inquisition here for being too nosy. "That sounds nice," he says agreeably. 

And tracks down the paladins from Lastwall later and in a difference face. And with a less confrontational opening. He wants their advice on swordfighting. He can pay them, if they won't do it for free.

This is a crusade! Of course they're not going to make him pay for swordfighting tips!

Well, you know, people say that the paladins from Lastwall are better than everyone else and know it.

Being good at something is no reason to insist on payment before you'll help your fellow soldiers with it. The better the rest of the army is at fighting, the more likely they all are to succeed.

Marit can convincingly swing a sword like someone who is notably talented at swordfighting but has obviously never had a day of formal instruction in his life. (He has seen many of the type). 

Lastwall doesn't, in fact, think the Crusade is going to succeed, right, or they'd have sent more than a couple dozen people.

That's no way to think. If they weren't here to win, they wouldn't be here. But Lastwall is already holding a lot of the forts to the south of the Worldwound, and it'll hardly serve the crusade's goals if any of those forts were to be overrun. It isn't as though Lastwall has a lot of top-notch fighters who are sitting around doing nothing. There's hope that more of them might arrive before spring.

(These paladins might also be holding their tongues about the others, though.)

Yeah, yeah, you're sure to lose if you think you'll lose.  But he's never really liked it when everyone's clearly living inside a story they're telling themselves. He's not going to go climb on the walls and make an announcement, he hasn't been bringing it up, but it sure looks like the part of Iomedae's church that everyone says is all smart and good at stuff is, you know, not the part that's here.