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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dragonblade" data-source="post: 1184520" data-attributes="member: 2804">Vallorea is not monotheistic. The Vallorean pantheon is composed of many gods, several of which have paladin orders but not all of them.Paladins of the gods Ulrick and Valinar are the most famous and militant of his paladin orders and when he wrote the above code it was probably with them in mind.  But I believe the code is broad enough to apply to most paladins but ultimately, there is no "right" way to play a paladin.The play of a paladin, must by its very nature depend heavily upon the campaign and the DM running it. SHARK's game and my own are not nice sugar coated worlds where every bad guy wants to negotiate and keeps his word.They are fantasy worlds replete with dark gods, cults, necromancers, and millions of orcs, beastmen, ogres, trolls, demons, etc. whose insatiable hunger for death, oppression, conquest and the enslavement of people everywhere can only be turned back by ruthless and militant paladins.Modern political thought cannot be applied so easily to a fantasy world because the context is wholly different.In our modern society we condemn the Inquisition because we know that there were no demons and the threat of heretics within the church was likely fabricated to maintain the personal power of certain corrupt officials through terror and censorship. There were not really any witches, cultists, or heretics to be rooted out and burned at the stake.However, in Vallorea and in my own campaign world, magic is real, dark gods are real too. There really are secret cults of bloodthirsty necromancers devoted to demonic lords. If the church didn't hunt down and destroy evil, if the church didn't promote devotion to the faith to protect people, the people really would be enslaved, sacrificed, raped, or murdered. The threat is not rhetoric, it is all too real.Furthermore, there is no socioeconomic oppression in Vallorea or censorship or bookburnings. There is national pride, but such is to be expected when you know that your gods are real and you know that they consider you their chosen people. When you can look around you and see the benefits of your god's protection and magic, and you can see the threat that dark magic and gods hold for your civilization.Valloreans are free to live as they will, to own property, to run a business, to travel freely. There is no oppression.Likewise, racism implies that orcs are a race capable of moral self-determination. In SHARK's world that isn't the case. They are twisted minions of chaos and the dark gods, corrupt and evil much like Tolkien's orcs.But to races that are not vile creations of the dark gods, and even to such individual orcs who prove to be exceptions to their kind, the Valloreans would treat them with respect and even kindness. Certainly there are some Valloreans who could be called "racist" in the modern sense, but they do not reflect the culture as a whole.And finally, I have yet to hear any argument of why the Punisher would not be a paladin. Most arguments revolve around the "he breaks the law" notion. That is surely true when you look at the Punisher in the context of a modern society built upon secular foundations of jurisprudence.But if you put the Punisher in the context of a medieval fantasy world, where modern secular notions of law do not exist and where the Punisher's actions are perfectly in line with the doctrine of a LG church, then you see the Punisher as a paladin is a natural fit.</blockquote>

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