"One way to make trade-offs is to decide how much you're willing to risk. The traditional way, the safe way, is very likely to succeed but it's not very likely to accomplish much more than it usually does. There are many paladins in Vigil and they are to a large degree - interchangeable. Their leaders can think of them in numbers, not only as individuals. And that is a good trait to have, for an organization and an army. It's also the reason I was a poor fit for joining them, even if I had wanted to follow tradition."
"The only reason to ever take a greater risk, a path unlikely to succeed, is the promise of greater payoff. It's not something you should do often, or risk too much on, because one large failure may matter more than even many large successes. You can't accept your loss and go on to fight another day, if you're dead. Empowering one paladin, though, is an acceptable gamble for a Goddess."
"I tried my best to understand why Iomedae had chosen me. There are ways of interpreting Her actions, when you're not important enough to ask Her in a Commune, and few people are that important. You ask yourself - how is the world different, because She chose me and not another? What would I have done differently, if She had chosen me when I arrived in Vigil, or before I ever journeyed to Lastwall, or after I had gone home? What outcome in the world is She trying to achieve, by doing the exact thing She has done? What did She intend for me to understand about Her choices?"
"If I had been chosen at home, I would still have gone to Lastwall to train. It would have been a waste of time, to have me an empowered paladin for months on the road."
"If I had been chosen when I arrived, before I had months to experience how people see half-orcs in Lastwall, I would have probably joined a paladin order in Vigil. It's expected and encouraged, and I would have taken Iomedae's blessing on my arrival as validation, that I had come to the right place for me in Her service."
"If I had gone home, and been chosen only then, I would have gone to Kenabres, and spent my life fighting demons. Perhaps it would have been good, to have another paladin in the city on the day Khorramzadeh attacked, but the attack was not foreseen. It would have been another safe path, and my year in Lastwall would have been a waste of time, not a great loss in the grand scheme of things, but a loss nonetheless."
"I decided that, by choosing me when She did, she was telling me to leave Lastwall, and not go home, and try to do the best thing I could that other paladins were not already doing."
"And so I went to Ustalav, Numeria, the River Kingdoms, everywhere there were not nearly as many paladins as in Lastwall and Mendev, everywhere people were suffering, preyed on by bandits and monsters, without good governance or safety, and I tried to help them as best I could."