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[Lord Mhoram]

I have two moments that I alway list in my "Reasons I play"

My wife was playing a paladin of Athena (the goddess of Tactics in our world). He got to high level 18th or so, and had never made an alignment mistake... the character was heading for sainthood pretty much... and my wife tells me "I want you to do the fallen paladin thing with Thonolan." I was stunned, fallen paladin for this guy. So I pondered and stole a bit from a Donaldson book I ran and away I went.

I set up a plot, a mission from his temple, that made him choose chaos or evil. He chose chaos, and lost his paladinhood. The temples would not admit him for possible questing to retain it. He had fallen, he was a high level ex paladin, he turned his back on the faith ect ect ect.

So The Wife plays him as totally demoralized, with him hating life and her loving every minute of it. He ends up hooking up with a mercenary unit made up of neutrals, and while he is head and shoulders better than anyone there, he kept refusing leadership... leading was his old life. He still held to some of his religious principles (chastity, and honesty) but he drank a lot, and got into fights. We played him this way for a few months, enough for him to gain a few more levels. He really became freinds with a number of the NPCs, and they really liked him.

Then the merc captain tells them of a really sweet assignment that he just got. They go there, and it is a temple of Ares (who Athena is at war with effectively). They were going out to guard a strike force that would assault a temple of Athena (the merc captain took this as much to twist the emotional knife in Thonolan). Thonolan says "No.". The captain and he have words, and he pulls out his sword and slaughters the captain. "I am in command now, and this is not going to happen". The priest that was working with the old captain orders an attack on them, and Thonolan kills him in self defense. His dying breath he summons an minor avatar of Ares (I used a modified DDG write up for the avatar).

Ares know full well who Thonolan is, and talks to him, and tries to convince him to join the ranks, and get his powers back as an anti-paladin. Thonolan thinks hard about it, and turns him down. They fight, and Thonolan wins, killing the avatar of Ares- Which will keep him from manifesting on this prime for a time. Thonolan choose to fight as a passive suicide and didn't think he would win.

The onlookers are in awe.

Athena appears and tells Thonolan she is so proud of him. My wife, looking totally confused stammers "wh... what?".
And Athena explains that she purposefully put him in the position to lose his paladinhood, because as an ex paladin he could get close enough to get Ares, who would try to recruit him, and he held true to her, even after she seemingly abandoned him. My wife was totally flabbergasted at this turn of events, that the whole thing was a tactic, but it was so perfect for the goddess and the character, she loved it. So Thonolan was returned to paladinhood, and was sainted.

And my wife got a fallen paladin plot for the "perfect paladin".