"Ah, so the castle is more of an aesthetic than an architectural form in this case. I guess that makes sense. What risks does the old oath expose you to?"

"Corrupted magic backslash. Not necessarily hate-monsters, but things like bad luck, powers not working or working with side-effects."

"Then it sounds like which oath you should take depends mostly on your risk tolerance. Well that and whether you prefer pets or castles I guess." He chuckles, "What sort of powers are you hoping to get incidentally? Are you interested in healing or another support role? Or are you the sort to want to leap into battle and face challenges head on? Or something else entirely?"

"My family has a castle, but I can't affect it's magic directly. Another part of the problem is that the answer to my last question is something like 'all of the above'. I would want something flexible and versatile even if it means an overall weaker power set."

"Ah, that is a challenge. The Institute tends to address that by handing out very specific magic for most purposes and relying on technology for versatility but handing out most of our technology to an unsupervised world would be a really bad idea. Do you have a start on what you think you want your oath to be? Do you have any books with examples of what oaths result in what powers?"

She has some ideas scrawled out and heavily crossed out notes for her own oath. Some of the notes include:

[first part of the sentence] . All hear my oath of magic. (If using this, either repeat three times or use Benevolence and Freedom? instead of magic)

To that I shall use all kinds of magics.

To use all tools of magic for ???
I want to journey creation.
Heralding the joy of living.

Reference to "Curiosity", "Benevolence", "Freedom"? and "Magic a lot"

The closest thing to a complete edit is the following:

My word is binding. All hear my oath of power.

Through land, sea or even sky. All hear my summon for magic.

No matter how, no matter where or when. All hear my pledge of benevolence.

Through all places in creation. All hear my promise of freedom.

(old oath) This is an oath to fight injustice. May I never break it. / (new oath) This is an oath to bring hope. May I do my best to be worth it.

She has some of examples of oaths written down. And how they work. How much you care about the thing helps giving a power boost. The adhering to the original interpretation you had helps a lot, but there is a sense where you can't escape the others and can bend things towards a direction if it is somehow suitable. Because all oaths have "hear" it is quite easy for Oathknights to get powers that lets them hear cries for help, even though the oath's phrasing is meant for the Oathknight to be heard.

"As it is, my oath is very likely to give me some sort of long-ranged teleportation. At least some versatile form of transportation. Maybe with the ability to transport things to me because I put summon in there. The first part of the third line reinforces the transportation power, but also could get grant me the ability to create things out of nothing. 'Benevolence' makes it more likely that I get non-combative powers and 'Freedom' reinforces transportation again, but also could do things like preventing me from being mind-controlled. I could easily change 'benevolence' and 'freedom' for 'magic' twice. Or for 'power' and 'magic' in an alternating sequence, which should make my magic gifts stronger, while weakening the other aspects of my knighthood. Using 'all hear' three times likely is going to boost my telepathy and I might edit that out for something like 'this is' or something suitably generic. Oh, and the first part of the second line reinforces my versatility, but has a slightly downside where would reinforce the need to actually take options to solve problems."

"Hm," a sphere shaped mirror appears in his hand. He bounces it off the ground a couple times before it vanishes again. "I'm not quite sure what to make of that if you want versatility like you said then it sounds like diversity is a good thing to go for in the oath. I do worry a bit about binding yourself too tightly though. It sounds like if you resist those bindings it gives the magic a chance to hurt you and others, if you're going to leave something like that in it's likely better to go with the newer safer oath."

"Hmm... I think I could have diversity, versatility and flexibility all there. Might be able to put them there without sacrificing the other details?"

My word is binding. All hear my oath of power.

Through land, sea or even sky. All hear my summon for magic. This my summon to use the flexible powers of magic.

No matter how, no matter where or when. All hear my pledge of benevolence. This my pledge to use diverse ways of benevolence.

Through all places in creation. All hear my promise of freedom. This is my promise to use the versatile paths of freedom.

(old oath) This is an oath to fight injustice. May I never break it. / (new oath) This is an oath to bring hope. May I do my best to be worth it.

(There is a tally mark after the "new oath" line. She isn't discarding the old oath yet.)

"Of course, there is a benefit of not spreading oneself too thin. I might just go with power and magic instead of benevolence and freedom. After all..." She mutters to herself.

"I'm not sure how much the fittedness of these lines matter, but I don't tend to see freedom as versatile, not on an individual level anyway. Respecting the freedom of others is a narrow road with a lot of pitfalls. Diverse ways of benevolence doesn't quite scan in my head either. I can't put my finger on why though. And now that I'm thinking about it there's a degree to which benevolence and freedom feel opposed to me, though that's likely just a false dichotomy imposed on my mind by institute politics."

"I was thinking more how there are many ways to be benevolent and how there are many ways to be free. Which isn't quite a virtue, but in my head sort of works. I honestly don't get how benevolence and freedom can be opposite to each other? Like... at all. I also don't see respecting freedom as a narrow road."

"Right, so for the opposition of freedom and benevolence, I think it's because the way freedom tends to be used in the political debates I mentioned is as freedom to make your own mistakes. Where the side of benevolence is more about protecting people from making the mistakes we already learned from. The sense in which respecting freedom is a narrow road comes from a broader take on what it is to be free that incorporates both that sense of freedom to make your own mistakes and being free to be yourself, in the sense of not constantly being worried about dying or being killed. Trying to balance those two concepts is what makes the road narrow."

"Ah, politics. I can't say I quite like either side of the debate? My way of seeing freedom and benevolence is kind like... If I had the power, I would give everyone enough magic to fend for themselves and them let them sort out what they want. That doesn't solve all problems, but takes most of them."

"The debate is kinda a lot more complicated than that and it partially revolves around the fact that distributing some of our technology is often worse than all or none. There are also smaller factions who mostly care about other things like the sanctity of other cultures or the potential that their natural development will lead them down paths we haven't considered and therefore by opening diplomatic ties we're destroying priceless research opportunities," he says rolling his eyes at the end. "The issue with most capabilities you can give people, and this may not be true of your magic, is that it's often easier to hurt someone than to protect yourself. To some extent you can obviate that with social structures, but it takes time for society to adapt to new capabilities."

She makes a face. "Yeah, not really the kind of problem I am good at. The freedom and benevolence thing still looks like an arbitrary dichotomy to me."

"Maybe so, I think that broadening the specifics into such big terms is likely pretty silly. But I think the underlying question is important: should we let people make their own mistakes even when it'll hurt them badly? Or not too differently: should we show people our answers to a problem they're facing or let them find their own without that sort of interference?"

"To which I propose the question: What those people want?"

"Well that is certainly a solution to the problem. I'm not sure it's the best solution, but it's a solution. The issue of course is that by asking the question, you are in a way already interfering in their lives in a way that some would say is irrevocable."

"I mean, I understand there is a difference of... effort, but I honestly don't think that doing anything isn't changing their lives and removing any choice and options from them altogether is the epitome of not actually caring for their well-being."

"That is among the arguments used against the hardline no-contact stance. You may note that I didn't mention having any stealth magic. I am in favor of opening diplomatic contact with less advanced societies. I just worry about how easy it is to use that leverage to force them to be more like us under the guise of offering help and advice. The technology we have all but necessitates massive social changes and so it's not entirely unexpected that societies look to emulate us more than they would in the absence of that sort of upheaval."

"Well, yes. It isn't an approach without problems, but that prime directive nonsense is worse."

"Agreed, I'm taking a lot of exploration missions lately because there are certain research projects that might strengthen the anti-interventionists."

"Does you world still have cultural problems with that sort of thing?"

"I'm not really sure what you mean. Are you referring to anti-interventionism, because yeah that's a pretty big issue politically as I've said. Or are you referring to what I said about research? There are some outside the institute that oppose research, that thinks we've already come too far, but that wasn't what I meant by my comment. Some research is being done into the magic that first forked me in the hopes that we can um, run afterlives for worlds without intervening there physically at all. I expect that will strengthen the anti-interventionist cause."

"No, problems caused by interventionism."

"It depends a lot on who you ask and what their values are. When we open diplomatic contact with a world there tend to be some flare ups of violence and to some degree their culture will be changed into something a bit closer to ours. People like myself think it's worth it given that we help cure their diseases and, once we have the infrastructure setup, offer uploading, but not everyone's value system places the lives of individual people as the most important thing, and our arrival tends to cut birth rates by a lot in the long term, so fewer people get born."