"You outsourced your morality to Pharasma?!"

Weeping Cherry, meanwhile, is having an entirely different reaction to Irabeth's explanation.

She had thought that being 'Lawful', the thing that she supposedly shares with Irabeth, was the thing she values where you can do better on average across possible futures by restricting your behaviors in ways that are sometimes locally worse. When she first met Gord, and he was frightened of her, she offered to let him go back to Golarion without following him. And that would have been really incredibly tragic, for all the people in Hell who she would be unable to save. If she had known then exactly how high the stakes were ...

Well, she would have wept, if he decided to go back to Golarion anyway. But she would have let him do it, even at that cost, because she has a principled commitment to not making people worse off than they would be if they treated her antagonistically, and a principled commitment to let people have freedom of movement.

And normally, that would be small comfort. She would console herself with the thought that even if this one particular case was tragic, she still had followed the better policy. But in this particular instance, the benefit is even more obvious.

She has been talking to Bar about how the door works. While Bar doesn't control how or when the door opens, she has said that there are patterns. The door tends not to open in ways that create situations that require Security. Moreover, the door tends not to open for people who will be completely incompatible with the patrons already in the bar.

If she were not the kind of person who would let Gord go under those circumstances -- if she were the kind of person who would have escalated to a fight, or threatened to follow him thereby trapping him in Milliways forever -- the door may never have opened for her at all.

And that is the core of what she thought they called Law on Golarion -- restricting what you will do in a way that opens up opportunities you would otherwise never get. Hearing Irabeth, a supposedly Lawful Good person, talk about how she would break her oaths for a big enough payoff ...

Well, she's no longer certain she understands what 'Law' means to them.

"So definitely address Gord's question first," she interjects. "But also the things you said about breaking promises if the advantage of doing so is high enough seems ... I don't understand why you would do that. I hope I can ask you to clarify that at some point, because otherwise I think I might have misunderstood what you mean by 'Lawful'."

"We - wait, what? We don't care about Good because Pharasma does, we care about it because it's Good, and it so happens that Pharasma also cares about it for Her own purposes!"

"Pharasma defines what Good is!! She judges everyone, and the detect alignment spells have to follow her verdicts! Every time you say you want Good whatever it turns out to be, or to help everyone who turns out to be Good, instead of the things you actually care about, you're giving Pharasma a vote!"

"She can't change the definition! I don't know how or why Creation came to be this way, but we care about Good as it is now, regardless of Pharasma!"

"The gods aren't stupider than us! Any time you think you see a glaring hole in their logic, or in the logic of everyone who ever followed them, you're almost certainly wrong, and you should stop and carefully try to figure out why."

"Iomedae doesn't ally with everyone Pharasma labels Good, or for that matter Lawful. She has her own goals and values, regardless of what anyone else calls them. She adjusts her tactics in cooperation with others who want some of the same things She does. And it turns out that the set of gods who mostly want what She wants are the Good and Lawful Neutral gods. That doesn't mean she allies with them because of their alignment, it means alignment is a valuable tool for figuring out who to ally with!"

"But you, personally, don't let the Good gods tell you what to do because they're valuable allies for the cause you're already fighting in. You do it because you think they know better than you do."

"Of course I do! The world is full of people who are wiser than I am! I deferred to my father when I was a child, I deferred to my priest when I was a young woman, and I defer to Iomedae as an adult!" Did Gord never have anyone in his life whom he really trusted, for questions of Good and Evil? That would explain so much.

"The gods don't tell me what is ultimately Good. I don't need them to know that murder and slavery are both Evil. I need them to know how to best fight Evil, and what compromises to make on the way there. And that includes whether to absolutely forbid murder, or slavery, or breaking oaths, because at the scale of the gods directing all the paladins in the world, those are the tradeoffs you have to make. If we followed our individual consciences and each took different oaths, we wouldn't be able to cooperate, and all those goals would suffer."

"You say you wouldn't let them tell you slavery isn't 'Evil'. But you let them tell you when it's justified, and whether to permit it. If you forget about labeling things as Evil or Good for one turn, you'll notice this has the same exact result."

"We can't just forbid all Evil everywhere! If we never tolerate anything, never make any tradeoffs, we'll lose! We can disagree whether it's worse that there's still slavery, or if it would be worse if there was no slavery and much more torture, but the fact that either one of those things still exists is just another way to say Good hasn't won yet! And if Iomedae and most of Her allies think that day will come sooner if we permit slavery and forbid oathbreaking instead of the reverse, than I trust Her about it!"

"So it doesn't matter what we actually do, what happens in our lifetimes, as long as we make the promised day come sooner? You talk a lot about having to make hard choices, as a paladin, but if Iomedae could whisper in your ear all day long, would you do everything she told you to without question?"

"I followed the Crusade because they promised us victory, and peace in our lifetimes. They failed, so I thought their sacrifices weren't justified, but apparently they weren't to blame as long as they obeyed their orders, and Good hasn't won yet but if we want it to then we had better hold our noses and get on with committing the right kinds of Evil! No matter how much it takes or how long, we should just keep doing the best thing, and trust the gods to tell us what that is? No matter what we do on the way there, as long as we win in the end?!"

"That is not Good! I refuse to believe that this is Good! Maybe it's Lawful, because the Asmodeans are the ones who say free will is bad and people should just obey their gods! I don't care what the gods say, I'd rather die than keep hurting people for the greater Good! And I'd rather kill than let you keep doing it!" Gord is almost panting by the end, and there are tears in his eyes.

Oh Inheritor, he is being emotional again this is not helpful. Focus. He has a valid point - a terribly wrong one, but still valid - and he is hurting because he's being asked to condone Evil, which is not really any different from committing Evil even if Pharasma disagrees, and - this is what she is supposed to do, as a paladin. Help people who are being hurt by Evil, even by the abstract knowledge of Evil and the unbearable fact of its existence. Help them come to terms with it, for their own sake.

She doesn't know what to say to Gord that would help him, beyond what she has said already. She doesn't have any complicated plans to debate, any hard choices to make. But she cannot be afraid. And when all else false, she falls back on honesty, and openness, and trying to share the other person's pain even if she cannot take it all onto herself.

"I hear you. I don't think you're wrong, fundamentally, only tactically, and not more wrong than most people. Everyone - every mortal has some things they absolutely won't do, some terrible kinds of Evil that would break them to see happen even to others. You're not any less Good than me, or less wise or righteous, or at fault, for - breaking about something else than I would."

"I don't know what more to do or to say that would help. So I'll just say that - the world is terrible, and we, I am working as hard as I can on fixing it. I'm far from perfect, I may be wrong about following Iomedae, and I'm very very happy that you want Good and will fight for Good despite disagreeing with me. I wish there were more people like you, because you're trying. I desperately want to avoid having to fight you, even if I don't know yet how to do that. I wish we could be allies. I wish the world was fixed already. I wish I thought tomorrow's battle was the last we'd need to fight."

"I'm sorry, that there is Evil and we haven't fixed it yet. I share your pain. We're on the same side. We'll keep doing our best, and reaching out to each other when we can, until we get it done."

Somehow, after all the arguing, that deflates his anger. She's following gods and the Law and arguing on their behalf, but at the end of the day, she's just a woman like him. Someone doing the best they can, maybe wrongly, maybe foolishly, too trusting and too conformist, but - 

"You're right. No matter how wrong I think you are about other things. I know you're trying, too."

"There are other - truths, like Good, that we share with some gods. One is that striving makes us stronger. Striving is the only way forward. We win, or die trying. But if we do not try, we'll never win."

"Maybe I'm arrogant, trying to have it all without compromise, to climb up the mountain in the way no matter how tall. To say I won't have won if I allow Evil along the way. But if I do not try, we'll never know if I could have done it. And if I die, I'm glad you're still be there, walking the terribly long but slightly safer way around the mountain."

Oh thank goodness. Or Goodness, maybe. She thought that she was going to have to defuse that, but it seems as though they've managed it on their own. Now the only question is whether -- to stretch an overburdened metaphor entirely too far -- she can set the ticking remnants of that conversation down in a way that will provide a trellis for the mutual understanding that has grown here.

"One of the things that I think is emblematic of good -- the thing I mean by good -- is that it's the thing that many people can reach for from different angles when they all care about each other. Wanting other people to be well means we're all working for the same thing in our own ways, in a way that no other cause really does."

She pulls a minor illusion trick to make eye contact and smile at them both simultaneously, trying to make them understand that she is happy to have been here for this discussion. Her HUD gives a countdown for the eye contact duration, and then she cancels the illusion to focus on one and then the other.

"Irabeth -- I really appreciate your candor and willingness to share. Gord -- I appreciate your commitment to uncovering the roots of your disagreement. That whole conversation was pretty emotionally charged, but I hope that it accomplished what Cayden wanted and made you see each other for who you are. Do either of you want a hug and/or some time alone to reflect?"

On the one hand, calling an end to the conversation like this will be awkward if they did actually have more to say to each other. On the other hand, it will be really awkward if whatever topic of conversation comes up next means that she has to prevent Gord from attacking Irabeth. On the gripping hand, she really does think that a moment to reflect on the others perspective will make more progress than restating things in different ways will.

"Thank you. I will definitely want to reflect when we're done, very likely more than the once."

"I've learned a lot - about you personally, Gord, and about people like you. I should have tried harder, in the past, to find out why some of the people I was fighting were on the other side. Reached out more, to those who were trying to find Good but couldn't accept our way of doing things, or who were acting out of their personal needs and pain, and tried to offer them a better way, so that they need not have been our enemies. I will think on how we might have done better, my allies and I, and I will try to do better in the future."

"You're a much better man than I assumed at first. I'm very glad that is the case, and I'm very glad to have learned it, and to have met you. I will strive not to make such wrong assumptions again."

"I've also learned a lot. About you, and about the other paladins and the Lawful Good alliance that you insist on representing. I learned you're not, really, an average representative paladin, because you're better than that. Some other paladins I've met would never have considered that someone might have good reasons for fighting them, if that someone detected Evil."

"A few hours aren't enough to truly understand someone, or to convince them they're wrong. I'm not admitting defeat. I'm going to keep trying, to understand you and to persuade you, until we find a way not to fight anymore. We won't know if we can, until I try."

Those other paladins didn't have a miraculous boost to their Wisdom granted by Iomedae Herself! ...That's probably unwise to point out.

"Cherry, you asked a question earlier. About how I can say, and expect, that I'd break some promises if it were worth the cost. It's a very good question."

"Lawful gods, and some Lawful outsiders, literally cannot break their promises. They are - I don't know how it works, but we're taught that it's impossible no matter what they do."

"Mortals aren't like that. There's no way for me to become unable to break a promise. I can't get rid of my own free will, even if I wanted to."

"So one way in which we could break promises - besides being forced to, obviously, like under torture - is to be tempted. To see a huge enormous Good that we could achieve, or something we personally care about very very deeply, and to choose it. It's not that we'd choose to break one promise but keep the rest. It's that we'd stop being Lawful, usually irreversibly, and those of us who are paladins or inquisitors or clerics of some Lawful gods would immediately and unavoidably Fall as well."

"Some people think of it as a trade. Whatever value you put on keeping your promises, of ever being trusted again, of having powers granted by your god, it's still finite. You could be offered more value than that, and accept. For most Lawful people, this can be a valid choice, if they account for all the effects of them, personally, not being Lawful anymore, and of people not trusting them, and so on. People usually fail to sufficiently account for that, but that's the theory."

"A common example is - what if you're a Lawful Good soldier in a Lawful Neutral army? You might be given lawful orders that force you to choose between losing your Law, and losing your Good. There's no universally right answer to that, and many people don't have a way to fight for the cause they want to, under Lawful Good commanders and standards of conduct."

"Paladins aren't like that. We can carry out our work only if we are trusted, universally and unconditionally. Immense value is lost, when any paladin Falls - especially if it's deliberate, and not a momentary mistake under strain that they immediately regret. Not just the value to them personally, or to their order, or whoever was concerned with the promise they just broke. All the value that would be created by all paladins who live and who will ever live, in the whole world, is permanently reduced, as people correctly learn to trust paladins less. This is such an enormous amount of value that, normally, no paladin should contemplate making tradeoffs with it, and we're taught to never try. It's much, much more likely to be a malicious temptation or an honest mistake. If it's ever truly good for a paladin to lose their powers, their god can determine that and renounce the paladin, instead of doing it the other way around."

"But it's still a finite amount of value. If, in a completely unprecedented situation, I thought I could - save all the souls in Hell, by Falling - and that Iomedae had no way to advise me or make the choice in my place - I would seriously consider doing it. Realistically, even a small chance of my being wrong about the outcome and the cost would probably outweigh the apparent benefit. But if I really believed that was the choice to be made, and that I was right about that, then - a huge but finite cost can be worth it, to achieve the right thing."

"So you're completely right that breaking promises is a tradeoff," Weeping Cherry agrees. "But the problem is that if you are the kind of person who would break a promise, you have already paid the cost, without necessarily seeing the benefit. Breaking a promise doesn't just influence whether people will trust you going forward -- it influences whether sufficiently smart people will have trusted you to begin with."

"Suppose that you are a god, choosing other gods to make bargains with in order to benefit you both. Since you're a god, you are very clever and very wise, and you can see under what conditions the other gods would betray you. You have a choice between trading with god A, who is lawful and incapable of breaking promises, and god B, who is not lawful and might occasionally betray you under the right circumstances. If the benefits of trading with god A and god B are equal, you will prefer trading with god A, because it reduces your tail risk."

"In the same way, a god choosing mortal followers to empower can look at what kind of person you are, and see under what circumstances you would break. Every promise you make to them comes with this big built in list of caveats. And so when they are choosing who to empower, it is cheaper to empower people who will break fewer promises, because they don't have to spend as much to cover the risks."

"So that's one way that weighing the cost of breaking promises is tricky. You can't just consider the future reputational costs, you also have to consider the past costs that being the kind of person who would make that tradeoff has already imposed."

She pauses for a moment to collect her thoughts.

"But also, in the same way that breaking promises might very occasionally let you take advantage of an unexpected opportunity, not breaking promises sometimes gives you unexpected opportunities. I was talking with Bar about how the door to Milliways opens, and apparently the door uses some kind of foresight such that it very rarely opens to someone who will immediately cause a fight."

"So I open the door on Gord, and learn that there are other worlds. If I had been the kind of person to break my promises, I might have held him hostage, and forced him to open the door back to Golarion so that I could get in. But if I had done that, then the door's foresight means it wouldn't have opened to me in the first place, and we wouldn't be making an assault on Hell."

"In general, keeping promises is the same kind of thing as not attacking people who come to negotiate with you: even a small chance that you would behave badly imposes big costs which you have to pay whether or not you get a chance to profit off of your flexibility. So it is absolutely a tradeoff, it's just a tradeoff which seems to me to weigh more heavily on the side of keeping promises than you would think if you considered only half the costs."

"You mentioned an example: a person being given a lawful order -- I want to clarify that this is a different kind of thing. I don't, actually, recognize the power of any other person or government to give me orders. I think the entire concept of taking orders from other people is vaguely suspect, actually. I think that someone given an obviously Evil order should absolutely just ignore it, and that therefore they shouldn't promise to obey orders like that in the first place."

"I keep my word not because there is any hierarchy or institution which expects me to, but because after a lot of careful thought I have determined that it is selfishly better for me to keep my word as much as I can. I was not always very good at it -- I made some terribly silly promises when I was young. But with age and practice I have gotten to a place where I feel confident that this policy serves me better than a less extreme one would."

"You're absolutely right that people will, and should, take into account the chance you will break a promise! That's why we're not supposed to ever do it outside of wildly unrealistic thought experiments! But we can't just decide to make that chance zero. We can try not to do it ourselves, but we can't promise people that paladins are literally incapable of breaking promises."

"In practice, paladins Fall due to mistakes, by taking tradeoffs that they absolutely should not have taken, by being broken, or just by - deciding, or rather finding out, that they don't care as much about what all the paladins in the world can do, as they do about saving the people suffering right in front of them. It's very, very rare, but it's known to happen. I don't think that - allowing the theoretical case of correctly deciding to Fall, which is still theoretical even for us right now, adds much to that existing uncertainty."

"If you need a truly absolute guarantee, you have to get a promise directly from a god. Most people can't afford to talk to the gods, even through their clerics, and - obviously I'm a poor substitute for Iomedae. But it's what we have."

"You are also correct that trading with Lawful gods is better, all else being equal. That is, in fact a reason, some gods choose to be Lawful - Iomedae explicitly considered it, and recommended it to others, and for all I know some of the ancient gods might have made that decision deliberately as well."

"And - the gods already choose the mortals best suited to be paladins. Those who hope to be chosen should strive to be the best candidates they can, including in never breaking promises or even contemplating breaking them. I think what I'm describing is, if not absolutely unavoidable, then at least the best thing that can be achieved in practice with mortals. We don't often ask the gods how we should change our teachings, but we do do it sometimes, over the centuries, and we also consult summoned Lawful Good outsiders, who are not as wise as the gods but often wiser than we are. And Iomedae confirmed some of this during her life, talking to Aroden, and after Her ascension She did not tell us she had been wrong. So I expect that if we're wrong about this, it's not to a very harmful degree."

"I think - though I wasn't taught this explicitly and may be wrong - that there are two reasons we teach new paladins that it's theoretically permissible to break their word."

"If we told them they're expected to categorically never Fall, that they'll be held to a standard of perfection, it would be - unhealthy for them. They would judge themselves harshly for the very human impulse of even wanting to do some Good that would break an oath. They wouldn't understand why one might consider making such a tradeoff; and later, faced with a terrible temptation, they would not know the correct argument that this particular tradeoff isn't worth it. They would think the temptation threatened their virtue, instead of their reason. And that - probably ends in more paladins Falling to temptation."

"And if we told everyone else that paladins categorically never Fall, then most people wouldn't believe us. They would hear of paladins Falling in a few historical cases - which is true - and think us conceited, or arrogant, or foolish, or worst of all lying, pretending to a higher virtue than we possess, even if we carefully said only what was true."

"So we teach new paladins - as I was taught - that such tradeoffs are possible, because it follows from the general case that most things are tradeoffs, that we ultimately seek Good and paladins oaths are not in themselves a crucial piece of Good. We teach them that the gods may, in fact, make such tradeoffs, because They are very wise and very knowledgeable. And that they should never make such tradeoffs, just as they shouldn't expect to personally slay Tar-Baphon, and just as it was terrible and culpable foolishness for some paladins to attack Geb. And we tell everyone else that paladins sometimes Fall - always regrettably, often tragically, and not ever because they made the right tradeoff - but it's something of a mitigating virtue, to be seen as Falling because you foolishly thought you were saving everyone in Hell, rather than because you foolishly believed a demon's illusion, even though these might be two ways of describing the same event."

"I'm not sure how to reason about Milliways. Perhaps, if the criterion is whether you'll have a fight, then you could have been - superhumanly convincing and made him open the door anyway. Or perhaps, instead not giving Gord access to you because you would attack him, Milliways would not give you access to Gord, and instead would give you someone who would agree to let you into Golarion. But I'm - really confused about how this logic works and I don't want to speculate."

"As for following orders, I can't speak to your personal situation. But to fight our wars we have had to have armies, and other organizations like paladin orders, and even governments. All of these have people swear to follow lawful orders, within the scope of their mission. And even ordinary laws involve sometimes ordering people to pay a fine, or otherwise to do or to stop doing something, and being a member of a society with laws means promising to obey such orders."

"A lawful order need not be Evil, for someone to decide they would rather break their Law than follow it. Here is an example." (She is so glad she went to Vigil! She got the chance to learn the Lawful side of paladinhood from the best, even if it was mostly self-study in the public libraries and then a few rushed weeks with the order that hosted her.)

"A family is divided by conflict. Two brothers live in different countries that make war on each other. Both honestly believe their side of the war is right, and freely chose to fight for it. But when they come face to face with each other in battle, they find that they would rather break their oaths to serve than kill each other. Both are hung as traitors, each by their own army."

"The orders to fight another army and kill its soldiers were Lawful, and not Evil. But they were not Lawful Good, because two Lawful Good armies wouldn't fight each other, and if for some very surprising reason they did, they would - or at least should aspire to - recognize that two soldiers mutually recusing themselves from the order of battle was a better tradeoff than not doing that, and so they would not condemn them for it."

Gord keeps up a running commentary. He doesn't want to annoy Irabeth by telling Cherry what he thinks of her arguments, so he's entertaining himself by doing it in his head, and imagining Cherry's reactions if he did.

People who swear to things sometimes come to regret it! So much they'll even break their promises! This is only surprising if you think people are wiser and more foresightful than the actual gods, two-thirds of whom (at last count) refuse to make binding oaths.

Lying to people about paladins being archons would only make things worse! (He's very glad the paladins at least understand this, even if it's clear some of them would become archons in a heartbeat if they knew how.) 

It would make things worse because it would... make other people laugh at them for making such claims? Well, yes, that's a valid point, Gord would totally be on the laughing side.

Lawful orders: bad for your Good! Lawful Neutral armies: extra super bad! He really wishes the paladins had taught that example in the Lawful Neutral Mendevian army on the crusade.

Brothers shouldn't kill each other if they don't want to! He could have told you that when he was a child, and he didn't even go to paladin college!

She looks thoughtful.

"So you might very well be right about the correct way to teach this to large groups of people. You come from a large organization that tries to instill lawfulness, whereas I have been working on this on my own. But it feels a bit as though it is a bit disingenuous to say 'this is an explicit tradeoff but you should never actually make it'. And it would be more honest to say 'just as it is unreasonable to expect a horseman to never be unseated, it is not actually possible to absolutely never break your word under any circumstances. But we have thought about it, and you should try to just never break your word, even if you see a reason why it would make sense to do so in the moment, and here's why'," she explains.

"When I heard you say 'I would break my word for the right price', that was unsettling to me because even if yes, ultimately keeping your word is just a tool like any other, drawing a bright line at 'try your very best not to break it' seems to me a much clearer way to think about this than keeping in mind the explicit tradeoff all the time. I would expect someone who had the bright line rule in mind to actually break their promises less when confronted with an illusion or something like that, because their instinctive response would be 'no', not 'let me carefully consider this in a way that could be an opening for mistakes'. And I'm so used to thinking in terms of the bright-line rule that hearing you violate it was jarring."

"Does that make sense as an explanation of why I found your remark surprising? On reflection, I suspect that the real answer to 'which of these presentations is better for helping someone acquire this skill' is that it varies from person to person, so the thing that seems obvious to me still may not be the best dogma for an organization to adopt."

She decides to skip commenting on how Lawful societies don't actually need to go to war, no matter whether they're good or not, because that sounds like an enormous digression.

"I don't know what the best way of teaching it might be, in general or for different people. I know the standard way, the one that got put into books and that at least most paladins are taught. Perhaps some other paladins come to adopt different habits of thought, and are not worse off for it. I admit I have not asked very many of my fellows about this; the books have served me well enough."

"We all agree about the conclusion, though: we should just try never to break our oaths, and also they're tools, and any tool can be broken or discarded for a large enough reward. But we do not expect a large enough reward to ever be on offer, and we should just try to disbelieve any such reward that we're offered."

"I will try to explain - how I think of my oaths, and what they mean to me personally, separately from them being promises to other people."

"We are taught to always distinguish the goal from the means. The strategy, from the tactics. The victory, from its price. To keep imagining Good without the lesser Evil it required."

"And we also have to make tradeoffs. To make the best, the right choices. We have to think of everything we do in terms of price and reward. As Iomedaeans, even more than other gods' paladins, because one of Iomedae's roles is triage, in the war against Evil. But a mortal can't stop to weigh every factor, for every choice she makes. This is a way - not the only way - where my oaths help me."

"If I see a man fighting off a demon, I will help him. I won't stop to think of the risk to myself, the price I might be paying in not being able to help many others if I die that day. Because I have committed myself to helping in that sort of situation, unless I am nearly certain I would die to no gain. Without an oath, even if I helped him by choice, I would have to reflect later - did I make the right choice? Did I risk my life unduly, when it by rights belongs to other people besides myself? And that doubt might cripple me, or it might just slow me down, but it almost certainly wouldn't help."

"This doesn't work because I believe my the oath is truly inviolable. It works because I am used to thinking of prices, and I understand that the price of breaking the oath would be far, far more than all the people I could help in my life. That horrible price is motivating, much more so than death or lesser failure. And so I do not need to consider whether I should have broken my oath, to avoid risking my life in helping that man."

"So we do try to just - never break our word. And the way we motivate ourselves to do it is by remembering the awful consequences should we break it."

"It might help to know that paladins are magically immune to fear. Their gods think excising one of the core human emotions makes them - better at their task, I assume."

"I've always thought it a very Lawful way of solving the issue of people being afraid to risk their lives or to stand up for the right thing. Cayden would help them be brave enough to overcome their fear, instead, and I much prefer his way - not to say that paladins shouldn't be allowed to remove their fear if they want to, it's just that as a minor miracle it seems like something Sarenrae would use to comfort escaped slaves, not - a general to stiffen their soldiers."

"My point is that paladins are weird. You shouldn't be too surprised that you can't understand the way they handle motivation and temptation."

"Oh! Yes, I forgot to mention that. Thank you, Gord. Not all paladins are immune to fear, only sufficiently powerful ones, but that's still most of us, and we can also make other people near us less afraid - not categorically unafraid, just more able to overcome their natural fears that they're already trying to. There's special training, to prevent us from becoming too reckless in the absence of the fear we're accustomed to."

"So it's reasonable to assume some teachings meant for paladins would work less well for other people. There are many other organizations of people who take oaths, but I'm not very familiar with their literature on how to relate to their commitments."

"Oh! Wow, yes, that's important context," she replies. "I ... knew that you were aliens, so I was already trying (and not succeeding very well, when you're so similar-seeming) to be open-minded about your psychology. But I don't really know what it would do to me to be unafraid."

"I'm afraid all the time, mostly of what other people think of me. I have tweaked my mind in various ways -- mostly by playing with my hormone and nutrition balance -- but I'm really cautious about doing so, because I don't want to accidentally lose myself or make myself worse. And I am less afraid now than I used to be, and happier for it. But I would never dream of trying to remove my fear entirely, because I have no idea how I would do that safely without collapsing my mind. Fear is an intrinsic component of my motivation system. I think my self-tree will probably be willing to pay you to demonstrate your anti-fear effect at some point, to see what it does to us. That's not urgent, though."

"Thank you for the context on your oaths, that's helpful," she continues. "I don't use my oaths in quite the same way -- my self-tree publishes recommended how-to guides and action plans for situations where we need to make decisions quickly, but we don't promise to follow them -- but I can see how something like that would be useful, and using them like that makes sense to me."

"We wouldn't advise most people to become permanently unafraid if they could, just as we don't think everyone should take our oaths. Everyone else uses short-lived spells that protect against fear in the moment, or against magically-induced fear. But being afraid of how other people might think of you is exactly the kind of thing a paladin would be impaired by, in doing the right thing despite what anyone else might think."