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Message: <blockquote data-quote="edgewaters" data-source="post: 3459778" data-attributes="member: 51529">It's more appealing if we value the life of our target, but it's not what mercy in its historical or classic form is really about. You kill an insect to save a person because the insect isn't thought to be capable of suffering to the degree the person is.Killing evil beings or persons is regarded as mercy whether or not you're saving any life in a classical chivalric/Christian sense applicable to Paladins, because you are sparing them the possibility of earning themselves condemnation in the hereafter - perhaps even sparing their immortal life, if they haven't yet committed evil or if you can manage to convert them before killing them. If you take the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars, for instance, various knightly Orders could kill Cathars with impunity and be in full accord with their theology and philosophy on mercy, because they were saving the Cathars potentially thousands of years of Purgatory. It's not that they didn't believe in the sanctity of life, they did (or at least supposedly did), it's that the doctrine held them to be easing suffering to a degree that made the killing a small matter by contrast.This is a far too modern perspective for any conception of a Paladin that I'd care to indulge. You're looking for a modern sense in medieval ethics, and its just not there.</blockquote>