In any case, no harm done.If I can explain a bit about why I brought up Ajantis...? It's clear the Bioware development team bent the rules in Helm's case to suit their needs. We both know they did this elsewhere, as well. My point wasn't so much to focus on Helm as it was on the fact that a roleplayer can, if they wish, turn a set of rules governing the environment they DM or play within into something of a living culture populated, not just by stereotyped trades, but by individuals with occupations. The occupations form a framework, to my way of thinking, and I strongly suspect, to yours, while the roleplaying comes in the extent to which you fill the outlines of that frame with experiences, background, temperament, training, etc. We may differ on the extent to which the frame informs each individual.
Galahad's of French origin, in so far as being educated in England during the period when the so-called Vulgate Galahad was being written (parts of which date back to the 13th century) meant being scholarly in Latin and entertaining in French and contemporary French urban culture. I think you're right that he represents the Lull pole of knighthood, the one that sees the knight as basically an avatar of Christ. However, there were many orders of knighthood created that had nothing whatever to do with performing a mini-Augustine and bringing Christ (as opposed to Jerusalem) down to earth. Some were designed as political powerbases, or social clubs, or for a specific function--like the Knights Templar, originally created to protect Roman Catholic pilgrims (which is to say, all pilgrims from Western Europe) in the Middle East. Many of the finest knights by our modern standards showed personally deplorable character, aside from valor. Thomas Malory himself, the author-compiler of Le Morte D'Arthur and the Galahad material, was almost certainer a extortionist, thief, and murderer, and possibly a rapist.
But I'm getting away from the subject.
As I see it, playing the perfect paladin would be to play many carbon copies of one another, and that would be pretty boring. If the laws of whatever god a paladin followed were simple and immutable, requiring unhesitating obedience without any personal background or necessary interpretation, the profession might as well be reduced to a series of ubiquitous guards, only with religious overtones. On the other hand, roleplaying also detects that we can't have a bunch of people claiming to worship a law deity who basically do what they want. I think that somewhere between the two lies an area where paladins can make interesting characters that fit into their assigned professions and belief systems.And in a sense, this also duplicates Lull. After all, where Lull did constantly urge his readers to look to and analyze the bible for qualities befitting human behavior, he also considered that there were literally hundreds of these godly qualities within the basic ones provided in his text about knighthood. (Lull actually created a system of mnemonics involving revolving wheels-within-wheels, triangles and squares to track all this, called the Lullian Circle. Fascinating stuff. His methods are still in secular use, heavily modified, today. I've had occasional good results with them, though I prefer Simonides' Method of Loci.) Consequently, each Christly knight had a selection of approaches based on what behavior seemed best to them for a given circumstance: kill or establish heavy penance? If kill, seek to convert first? If convert, what examples to use to bring about a conversion? If the conversion is true, is death still required? If it is, what form should it take, and when should it be done? If heavy penance is needed, what sort, and should it be aimed primarily at the eventual reconciliation of the sinner with the kingdom of the faithful, or at reassuring the flock that God and their Mother Church cares for them? Those are strictly either/or, but in fact there were many choices at any given time, all informed by biblical and patristic study, that might yield any number of contradictory results upon which to fashion a godly life. Of course, we can't take this stuff too far. But my point is that knighthood wasn't a simple thing, a one-path-fits-all. Lull points to a distant, shining star, and says that's what knights should aim for. But each knight must chart their own course. I can pull out plenty of individual historical examples form other authors, if you'd like.
So the actions regarding Viconia that I listed above were meant to highlight not the obvious join/not-join, but the reasons behind each, that could derive from a personal understanding of what the same god wants, and flesh out that particular paladin character more. And while any five followers of a Law God may state that the law as received is perfectly obvious and simple, it's more than likely each of them pulls upon a different mix of past and emotion to come to their decisions--even when it's the same decision. That's the kind of roleplaying that brings a paladin to life, I think.
