Breaking the stereotype of the chaste paladin

[fusangite]

Fun Tangent

Just curious as to your sig line... assuming that the distance is correct from Beijing to Japan, it is 12,000 li east of Beijing. I would guess that it is northern Japan. 7,000 li to the north would (I think) put them in Siberia (Wen Schin) and 5,000 li to the East is Alaska (Tahan), which is 20,000 li from Fusang, or I'm assuming some place in western Canada or northwestern US. Am I correct?

However, 5,000 li East to Tahan may just put them in Eastern Siberia, making Fusang Alaska?

I'm from Vancouver, BC but have recently moved to Toronto. It's a bit of a shame: according to the Fusang manuscript, 20,000 li east of Fusang is a country of women. But I haven't been able to find it. Perhaps I've overshot or perhaps they are referring to Oprah's Chicago.

 

[Agback]

However, I was thinking at a more basic level: the paladin is a warrior, by profession. Doesn't his very existence somewhat conflict with some of the base tenets of 'turn the other cheek'? Or is the issue that different sects and religions place different emphasis on different translations and passages? I only ask as it seems that, in some ways, the Paladin is a very 'old testament' warrior serving a 'new testament' faith.

Indeed. But tens of thousands of Knights Templars and Knights Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights, Knights of St Thomas Acon, Mercedarian Knights, Knight of Calatreva, Knights of Alcantara, Knights of Santiago, Knights of Aviz, and Knights of Sao Thiago found ways to reconcile the two. If you are interested in this rationalisation, I suggest that you Google up a copy of In Praise of the New Knighthood by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. You might also be interested in Saint Augustine of Hippo's theory of 'Just War', which is outlined in The City of God.

"While loathing the destruction and loss of life that attend war, Augustine nonetheless believed that a "just war" might be preferable to an unjust peace. Drawing on the apostle Paul's New Testament injunction to submit to governing authorities, "who do not bear the sword for nothing" (cf. Romans 13:1-7), Augustine recognized biblical mandates for individuals to love their neighbors (to the point of renouncing self-defense) even while defending government's duty to preserve civic peace and to secure justice. He maintained that use of force is necessary—though always regrettable—in a fallen world in order to restrain evil, but that its ultimate goal must be to restore peace. "

Regards,


Agback

 

[Driddle]

My paladin has the lawful responsibility to have sex with as many women as possible, so that they will give birth to a multitude of pure, righteous souls. And that is good thing in accordance with church doctrine.

Amen.

 

[WizarDru]

I wonder how you can say that, when Arthur winds up struck down by his own bastard son, Modred. It isn't just the Arthur/Gwen/Lance triad. There are examples of romance causing issues all over Arthurian legend.

Well, that depends on a few factors: which version of the arthurian myths are you using, and what you choose to focus upon. A lot of the relationship stuff comes from Mallory, and doesn't appear with the same connotations in the Wace, Vulgate or the Boron versions. Tristram and Isolde, of course, didn't originate in the Arthurian mythos, Mallory transplanted them there. And they're classic star-crossed lovers...clearly meant to be together, but separated by circumstance, duty and the trickery of others.

In fact, trickery and deception by others is the main problem for most of these myths. I mean, a lack of communication is what plagues these people. That, and lots of malcontents with potions, most of which are responsible for people getting busy with other folks. Lots of characters in the stories have no consequences for their actions, at least not directly: Mordred rapes his way across half of England, sleeps with a large number of married women and still manages to join the round table, and eventually claims the kingship and Guiniveire....until he is finally slain by Lancelot, iirc.

I mean, Lancelot is tricked into sleeping with Elayne...and the result of that union is Galahad, the Grail Knight...and possibly tied with Lancelot or Percival as the quintisential paladin archetypical character. Not too shabby.

 

[The Sigil]

Haven't read all the pages, so don't know if this was discussed earlier, but here's my two cents...

Core D&D, for better or for worse, is a game of moral absolutes. This is the only way the alignment/outer planar/alignment subtype/holy weapon/etc. system presented in the D&D cosmos can be internally consistent.

A "lawful good" sword, for example, bestows a negative level of anyone of chaotic or evil alignment that picks it up. Suppose for a moment that the sword is an intelligent one (work with me here). What happens when Character X picks it up?

Well, if you subscribe to absolute morality, it's pretty clear. Either Character X is chaotic/evil or he is not. If he is, he gets a negative level (or two). If he's not, he doesn't.

But if your world is based on culture-based morality, it's not so clear. Suppose the intelligent sword's "culture" requires chastity of paladins. Character X is a "paladin who is required to by his religion to spread his seed far and wide." Does the character get to determine whether or not he's "lawful" and thus avoid the negative level? Does the sword? If the sword makes the determination and bestows a negative level on him, what happens if the sword is NOT intelligent but crafted by the same culture?

If the "sword" determines it, now you have to track every single cultural moor of every culture that crafted magic swords! If it doesn't, you have the odd spectacle of a "lawful" intelligent sword being dragged along by a character that it clearly believes to be non-lawful without penalty.

Now, if you wish to scrap the alignment system, that's a whole 'nother ball of wax, but the point is... in "core/default" D&D there are moral absolutes (the Book of Vile Darkness, IIRC, speaks to this fact).

A culture that preaches "sow your wild oats" as a tenant of its cultural norms is therefore incapable of producing paladins if "sowing your wild oats" is an inherently chaotic act.

Thus, it falls to the individual group to define a certain set of moral absolutes that a paladin must adhere to, regardless of culture. In other words, you can't have two paladins with diametrically opposed moral codes on the excuse that they come from different cultures and have a different view of "what is lawful." The system simply isn't set up that way.

Whether or not you feel that "sowing your wild oats" should be considered outside the realm of "lawful" is, of course, left to the discretion of your own gaming group, but in archetypal medieval/fantasy culture, doing so is generally not considered "lawful" for many of the reasons mentioned above... not the least of which is "fidelity" (not speaking here strictly of "marital fidelity" but rather a sense of responsibility and duty toward certain people, and I think it's a fairly compelling argument that you are responsible for any life you decide to create/sire - so a paladin who wantonly has sexual relations but does not follow up and/or support and raise and protect his children is guilty of neglect of duty to his offspring... thus, infidelity).

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FWIW I see the paladin's code as a sort of modified "Asimov's laws of robotics" - i.e., a set of laws, which when applied to any given situation, will tell the paladin either how he must act or that it doesn't matter how he acts (e.g., applying these laws tells you that it doesn't matter whether or not you order the roast mutton or boiled chicken in most circumstances - it's a neutral choice unless church or local law proscribes one or both).

Law 1: The paladin will never harm an innocent, nor through inaction, allow an innocent to come to harm.

Law 2: The paladin will always offer evildoers a chance to repent in order to bring them from guilt to innocence except where doing so would violate the first law (e.g., if the villain is about to offer up a child sacrifice, you do not wait to save the child in order to offer the villain a chance to repent).

Law 3: The paladin's conduct must always be honorable and truthful, except where conducting oneself honorably would put him in violation of one of the first two laws (e.g., when you stumble upon the villain about to offer up the child sacrifice, you are permitted to attack immediately; you do not have to waste the time announcing your presence and challenging him to a formal duel while he kills the child).

Law 4: The paladin will protect those/that to whom/which duty binds him (including deity, kin, church law/tradition, kith, and local law in that order) except where doing so would put him in violation of one of the first three laws (i.e., the paladin cannot lie to save his dishonorable comrades as this puts him in violation of Law 3; where the paladin must choose between local law and his "church law", he sides with his church, etc.).

Law 5: The paladin will seek self-preservation only when it does not violate one of the first four laws (i.e., a paladin is permitted to withdraw from danger, but only after all others to whom duty binds him have already withdrawn AND provided he does it in an honorable fashion AND provided there are no innocents put at risk by his withdrawal.

From application these five laws, just about any morally sticky situation can usually be handled with relative confidence as to whether or not the paladin is acting as a paragon of "lawful good."

Using this standard, a paladin who sows wild oats, under most circumstances, would lose his paladinhood as he is in violation of the fourth law, neglecting his duty to kin (unless, I suppose, the paladin's deity personally commanded the paladin otherwise; church law/tradition is lower on the heirarchy than duty to kin so culture is not an excuse).

Thoughts?

--The Sigil

 

[Vocenoctum]

I wonder how you can say that, when Arthur winds up struck down by his own bastard son, Modred. It isn't just the Arthur/Gwen/Lance triad. There are examples of romance causing issues all over Arthurian legend.

Yeah, obviously romance and sex cause the Round Table no issues at all...

The problem is that the stuff you name is in general activity that would have a bad end, regardless of the issue of sex. Broken oaths and such are bad for the Paladin Code, regardless of the issue of sex.

 

[LostSoul]

Using this standard, a paladin who sows wild oats, under most circumstances, would lose his paladinhood as he is in violation of the fourth law, neglecting his duty to kin (unless, I suppose, the paladin's deity personally commanded the paladin otherwise; church law/tradition is lower on the heirarchy than duty to kin so culture is not an excuse).

The code you've got is pretty cool, I gotta say. However, I'm not sure how, by having wanton mad sex, the paladin is neglecting a duty to his kin.

 

[Hida Bukkorosu]

some d&d worlds have magic herbs that work better than our modern birth control (cassil and nararoot in FR) - and this would have an affect on the morality attached to casual sex in that world.

 

[The Sigil]

The code you've got is pretty cool, I gotta say. However, I'm not sure how, by having wanton mad sex, the paladin is neglecting a duty to his kin.

I'll note that the following example is applicable only to male paladins; obviously, female paladins know darn well when their sexual habits have led to the appearance of kin on the scene.

One assumes, absent herbal/magical contraceptives, that at some point a habit of "wanton mad sex" is going to lead to conception of a child.

That child is kin to the paladin.

Unless the paladin makes it a point to keep track of those that might bear his children to make sure he DOES take care of any children he might sire, that's neglecting duty to kin.

Depending on how you play this, you could see a paladin lose his abilities for not keeping in touch with the object of his coupling at all (because even if a child has not yet been sired, he is neglecting a duty to check)... or it could be that in your campaign paladins use "loss of paladinly abilities" to determine whether or not the person they just knocked up and left is pregnant with their child... even better than a paternity/pregnancy test!

On the other hand, such situations - either way - might lead to some marvelously delicious role-playing situations.

On the OTHER other hand, it just occurred to me that since paladins are immune to disease, one supposes that they would have fewer "non-pregnancy" worries about high rates of sexual activity and number of partners than most... and thus might make them even more promiscuous than most... that is, until they start fathering children.

*ducks*

(Or in the case of a female paladin, she could be very promiscuous with little worry since she won't have to worry about abandoning kin... though probably I would probably NOT interpret the paladin's code this way in one of my own campaigns).

In any case, it seems clear that a paladin who decides to marry (for whatever reason) is likely to see his nookie curtailed significantly else he breaks his word of honor in his marriage vows (**insert joke about nookie trailing off significantly after marriage regardless here**).

EDIT: Which brings one other thought to my mind... in such a culture, would promiscuity among male paladins be frowned upon while promiscuity among female paladins not bring dishonor... i.e., kind of the reverse of the mentality a couple of decades ago where men were supposed to be somewhat sexually experienced and could attain that experience without social disgrace, but a woman gaining sexual experience was frowned upon (which, of course, makes one wonder where the men got all their experience...)? Just an interesting turn of the tables, I guess.

--The Sigil

 

[Trickstergod]

EDIT: Which brings one other thought to my mind... in such a culture, would promiscuity among male paladins be frowned upon while promiscuity among female paladins not bring dishonor... i.e., kind of the reverse of the mentality a couple of decades ago where men were supposed to be somewhat sexually experienced and could attain that experience without social disgrace, but a woman gaining sexual experience was frowned upon (which, of course, makes one wonder where the men got all their experience...)? Just an interesting turn of the tables, I guess.

--The Sigil

Well, keep in mind the difficulty that promiscuity would bring to a female paladin. The male one would have to worry about neglecting children he may or may not even know about; on the other hand, the female paladin who winds up getting pregnant has a few other problems. Either the paladin needs to step aside from playing at hero for a while during the pregnancy and even afterwards, or the paladin would, in my opinion, be neglecting her duty by knowingly committing actions that could place a child in danger with no intention of holding back from danger should a pregnancy occur.

Also, notably, I believe it's possible to have cultural and absolute morals coexist. It's just that let's say, lawfulness, for example, isn't defined by "Don't sow your wild oats," but instead, "Recognize and pay heed to your heritage and its laws and traditions." So there's the absolute "Recognize and pay heed to your heritage and its laws and traditions," while the culture itself defines what those laws and traditions are. The two can mesh together, at least enough to allow some leeway.

Edit: Freudian slip