Alexeara Cansellarion is in his study when he gets the vision from his Goddess, which means he must have fucked up quite badly.
"Well…maybe something that looks vaguely like a uniform but isn't actually claiming any sort of rank - like this -" She demonstrates. It looks a little too sci-fi to blend in well in Lastwall.
"Mmm," says Iomedae, distracted. "You look good in uniform. Contemplated joining any armies yourself?"
"I don't know if I could stand the discipline - or take seriously any army without any, I guess. Maybe I can talk Zima - no, not him, Valentina, she's slightly less grumpy - into starting an army corps of engineers and appointing me colonel or something. Let me design the uniforms… No, still too much discipline I think. Sorry, dear."
"And now we know why original Alfirin did not join the Crusade and make history. We thought she got eaten by a bear but actually she checked it out, found it had either too little or too much discipline, and lived a quiet life feeding birds and reading the newspapers."
"You know, you could make a decent living, reading the newspapers -" Now she's sad and a little homesick. She thinks it's kind of stupid to be homesick for a place she never wanted to go back to but persists in it anyways.
"...Anyways, while I am happy to stand here and look pretty - striking? I imagine I probably look more striking than pretty in this - we were trying to figure out what you can wear."
Iomedae swallows determinedly. "I will just ask someone. 'What should I wear' is a silly childish girlish question and I am embarrassed to ask it, but 'what won't draw attention, if we imagine Lastwall is presently closely observed by its enemies?' is a sensible one."
No!! She's back to her work jumpsuit. "My ordinary manner of dress will draw too much attention at the ceremony," she says. "What would be expected?"
"Initiates from other countries who don't have a rank yet usually wear plain white robes, under armor. If you're not accustomed to armor yet I think just the robes will do?"
"Thank you," says Iomedae with dignity, or something resembling it.
In that case she will wear plain white robes to her ceremony.
The Cathedral de Sancta Iomedaea is very very nice. It's hard to imagine the Lastwall leadership she's met authorizing spending this much on an incredibly nice cathedral. Maybe magic makes the economics make more sense. There's a wildly-more-than-life-sized sculpture of the goddess, with Aroden's eye on her shield, holding a blazing sword aloft.
It's nice in the way she associates with Arodenite Taldor, beautiful to prove you can make beautiful things, grand to prove you can make grand ones. Not because it is easy, but because it is hard and we're better at hard things than the Russians.
She hadn't been expecting the shield with the eye of Aroden. For some incredibly stupid reason; of course the goddess Iomedae had a shield with her god's holy symbol on it. Iomedae's heart hurts a little.
No one's staring at her but it feels like everyone's staring at her.
The ceremony is not as short as it possibly could be; It does not have a ton of extraneous detail, but Cansellarion does give a speech, and each initiate walks to the front separately to kneel and take their oaths. They pray together, at the end, rather than individually, for the Goddess Iomedae to hear their oaths, and to help them keep them, and to hold them accountable should they fail.
It doesn't feel instantly right and perfect once it's done, like all her worries were nothing really. It also doesn't feel like a grave mistake. It feels like -
Like she's been a free person since she turned eighteen and now she's something more complicated than that. Maybe better, but definitely more complicated. She asks the Goddess Iomedae to end the evil afterlives and it doesn't feel quite the same as asking Aroden but that's got to be in her imagination.
Is there something she's supposed to do after this.
Not exactly supposed to. The other initiates are standing around socializing, being congratulated by their friends and their families and Cansellarion - some people are at this point staring at her a bit curiously, probably because she showed up for the ceremony and took the oath and was definitely not in training with the rest of the initiates who all seem to know each other. One of them does eventually wander over and ask. "Aina, was it? How did you come to join the order?"
She should make friends. It is known unhealthy to have one friend, who is also your entire support network, who is also your coworker, who you are also sleeping with. "I'm sorry, it's not just a bit of a long story but also a bit of a secret one. And yes, I'm going by Aina. Marit, right?" He was one of two in the ceremony. It must be a popular name. It was in the holy book, too, so maybe it was a popular name in her time and just not in her part of Taldor.
"Yeah, that's me. Also Quintus, over there, but I'm not the one with another name to tell us apart by. Chelish? Wait, nevermind, that's probably secret. Sorry."
She picked the name to imply it. It's true, but still kind of misleading to be implying. She looks at her shoes. "Well, if you're guessing instantly I think the secrecy-related error has to be on my end. How about you, are you from here?" This is differently excruciating than high school in America but she's not actually sure it's less so. Which is fine. She figured out high school in America eventually and at least here people share her basic premises about the functioning of the universe.
"From Vellumis, yeah. My father is a ship's captain on lake Encarthan." He would ask about her parents but apparently that's secret.
Yeah she's going to be substantially handicapped at making friends by the secrets. She's really not very much of a secrets person, temperamentally. She misses her father and there's nothing she can say that's not either outright false or wildly misleading - if she says 'my parents are dead' that means different things, in modern Cheliax - "When did you decide that you wanted to be a paladin?"
"Oh. I can't remember not wanting it. Ma says it started when I was six - Who wouldn't want to be a paladin, really? I mean - if you want to be a soldier, right. If you really want to be a farmer I guess maybe it doesn't appeal as much."
"I guess I was mostly comparing to having a lot of children, who could themselves be soldiers. Or to being a wizard before it became clear I'm not smart enough. It seemed to me like probably being a wizard was the best way to fix the entire world all at once by yourself, but only if you were very good at it, which turns out to be quite the catch."
He laughs. "Well, I'd be no good at it - And being a paladin doesn't mean you can't be a father some day - I guess you can't but that's different."