Reginald Cormoth is a paladin of Iomedae, and not a weak one either, and nothing would easily change that.

But he has heard of a much younger religion. Robardo isn't the only Tettian in Andoran anymore. And there was one in Lastwall who made enough of an impression that the church asked in a commune, "Should we generally try to work with Tettians", and got a Yes.

Paladins tend to get told about that kind of thing, even if they're not affiliated with the church at all.

Of what he has heard preached by this new religion, the thing that most left a mark was the idea that you should spend an entire five minutes thinking about something, trying your very best to be clever. Much of what people limit themselves to, because they think they're not supposed to act differently, isn't really a part of the "rules". They've just assumed they shouldn't do anything new or clever because nobody else does, because everyone else has also assumed all that is not done is impossible or illegal. Pretend for five minutes that maybe you're smarter than everybody else in the whole world, and really try to think.

So Cormoth takes the suggestion from a bunch of university wizards who've never seen real naval warfare and really thinks about it.

"I'll take this under advisement", he replies, "and if Almas University knows any 3rd circle wizards or greater looking for employment, who know the spell, I believe they'd be likely to find it from the fleet office of the Grey Corsairs in Augastana. Yes, at wizards' rates."

Ranged combat is happening above the waves, but that's not his problem.

The ballistae are the distraction.

Nobodies going to pass the perception check, to see a stealthy medium sea-creature well under the surface sneaking up behind their ship, when there's a low-energy fight already going on at the other end.

His weapon is a kind of curved staff of a flexible wood, with a handle at one end and a square cup at the other.

It's purpose is to increase the length of his arm, and therefore his throw. A gillman is good enough at swimming to tread water with both arms above the surface, if he needs them for something.

He pelts it directly into the ships' rear, beside the rudder.

He yells the command word before 2000 pounds of stone moving at what a professional baseball player could achieve if he was twice as strong and his arm was twice as long moves smoothly through the ships wooden hull without appearing to slow down.

Everyone who fails an acrobatics check falls over.

The stone does stop, but the additional weight has an effect on the ships balance.

The hole is now at waterlevel. The ranger swims aboard as the surprise round ends.

The ships cargo is already trying to surrender. There really aren't that many soulsold he needs to kill first.

This was annoying before but now it's worse. I should probably do something.

Who's behind this anyway?

Follow the power structure.

Who did that ranger report to. Who did that captain report to.

Hey, isn't that Iomedae's squirrel?

Hey Abadar
Hey Abadar
Hey Abadar

What

Andoran piracy has gone too far, it's destroying the inner sea economy and stopping people in different countries from trading with each other.

We should do something about it.

I do agree that the piracy is interfering in free trade.

Is there anything We can cheaply do?

This is all Iomedae's fault. See this squirrel here? He's behind everything.

She's supposed to be Lawful. You should get Her to stop.

Hey Iomedae
Hey Iomedae
Hey Iomedae

What

Your mortal is committing rampant piracy, disrupting international commerce.

He's supposed to be a paladin, he shouldn't be doing crimes at all.

I'd prefer it this much if You made him stop, but don't understand why I should have to be offering to pay someone like You to stop this in the first place.

Cormoth has does nothing wrong and I'm not going to forsake him for his good deeds.

He has broken no promises, and is not party to any legal agreements that would condemn his rampant piracy.

Your offered payment is not sufficient to sway Me from my current intended course.

But he's interfering in Free Trade!

The Trade will be a lot Freer when he's done interfering in it.

Still there, Asmodeus?

Sure, what's up fellow Lawful Sane Deity?

What can We cheaply do about it?

There are more clerics of Tet in the world now then there were a few months ago.
They've started to get a reputation.
It's not, honestly, a bad reputation.

The white chess bishop has mostly caught on as the holy symbol in Avistan, despite rumors followers in Tian Xia are using some weird foreign thing instead.

Many have taken to wearing colored robes, and a colored stole depicting two white bishops.

Agreement is yet to be found on what the colors should be.

Robaldo wears his pink and blue.

He wears a helmet of copper-plated lead that doesn't bother to cover his face, a mirrored visor that does nothing except prevent you from seeing which way his eyes are pointing, and rubber boots regardless of the weather.

His favourite spell is "Unseen Servant".

They do as well in adventuring parties as any other cleric, although not all of them take to it.

The healing spells heal just as much as you'd expect them to, and they usually wont bill you for it.

They will call you an idiot for getting hurt in the first place, and tell you what you should have done differently.

They're chaotic differently from how other chaotic clerics are chaotic.

It's like they're very Lawful, but they're obeying a completely different set of laws that you don't understand.
As the stakes get higher, rules fall off the bottom of their list until you couldn't predict what they'd do even in principle.
It's like they only really believe in one law, Win, but they'll try to cover up that fact by pretending to believe in as many others laws as they can, to confuse you, until it's either too late to matter or too difficult to keep up the stronger version of the ruse and they have to relax the pretending.

Legal systems. Social conventions. Ettiquette. Fashion.
Physics if they've got enough spell slots.

They're only pretending to believe in that stuff to give you a false confidence that they're normal people, when really they aren't.

They'll do things you weren't expecting and then feign confusion as to why you ever expected them to do otherwise.

They'll do things that don't occur to regular people as being options.

They'll act like, if you thought they were making an implicit promise to behave like a noble's son, because they're dressed like a noble's son and talking like a noble's son and their father happens to be a nobleman, and that comes back to bite you, it's entirely your fault. You're the one who expected stuff, idiot.

Attempts to make charitable donations are met with

"Wow, you're just giving me money? Sweet."

Attempts to extract charitable donations are met with

"You're just going up to people and asking for money? Does that work? Whats the return-rate?"

Clerics who aren't wizards will do anything they can to get prestidigitation anyway, or "Least Wish" as they prefer to call it.

Everyone agrees they're still nice people. Easy to get on with.

It's not, honestly, a bad reputation.