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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4950466" data-attributes="member: 4937">This is where the confusion comes from.  A paladin is in no ways bound to abide by 'the law of the land'.  A paladin is bound to abide by the laws of a lawful and good authority that they recognize.  A paladin that is traveling abides by the lawful authority of that land in so much as doing so does not contridict his duty or the necessity to do good.On one level, this is a very uninteresting question.  The fact that the land is 'the Nine Hells' doesn't really matter.  So long as obedience to the lawful authority of that land does not contridict his higher duty, then he will obey the lawful authority.  But, in this case it is very easy to imagine that obeying devils is going to contridict his duties as a Paladin and a Paladin would be to say the least loath to enter into any non-adversarial relationship with a devil.  I would go as far as to suggest that you couldn't remain a Paladin should you find yourself with some sort of personal duty to obey the powers of Hell.  So at one level, the answer to this question is probably going to be in practice the very straight forward and intuitive, "His duties require him not to obey the powers of Hell."    On another level though, this raises a very interesting point - to what extent do the lawful authorities of Good (with a lawful bent) share duties with the lawful authorities of Evil.  That is, does a treaty of some sort exist between these powers, and does each side recognize the other as having certain rights and obligations as part of an orderly universe?  For example, do the lawful good authorities recognize perhaps the right of the lawful evil authorities to the souls of the condemned, and vica versa, of the right of the lawful good authorities to the souls of the redeemed?  Are there points of law that they could share between them, and if so what would they agree on?  Such answers are probably too dependent on a specific campaign world to answer here, but it does raise the real possibility that a 'Paladin in Hell' could lawyer his way around some situations by forcing the devils to adhere to their own laws.  To a certain extent, as the Paladin is an 'honorable foe', I would also think that the question here is equally, to what extent are the devils bound by their own laws to treat fairly with a Paladin?  That isn't to say that they aren't hellbent on subverting, tricking, and decieving such a foe, but I think they'd be forced to do so within the letter of their own code of behavior - whatever that is.It's inconcievable that you could follow the laws of a lawful good domain without being good, and equally inconcievable that you could follow the laws of a lawful evil domain without being evil.  Such laws would be intrinsicly good or evil and would codify a life that would be utterly benevolent or depraved.  I would say that a Paladin is bound to follow the laws of Baator only insofar as those laws are just and fair.  Afterall, for all that separates the two powers, they are united in a common opposition to lawlessness, individuality, license, disorder, and so forth.  However, as even two lawful good powers might have very different laws in the details and practices thereof, it is very hard for me to imagine how an utterly good code and an utterly evil code would share much in common.</blockquote>

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