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'Oly Order of the Onery Orrery Part II
Cressida Kroft's Guide to Lawful Good Living
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So now she's laying down ground rules for her paladin order, apparently.

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And soliciting recommendations for what to call it; her mind is drawing a blank.

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You should call yourselves "The Horror Hunters" because when people hear it they'll assume the whole game long that you're the bad guys but then when it turns out in a third-act twist that you're actually the good guys and people are surprised you can act all indignant because it's right in the name of your organization that you hunt the horrors. 

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Thanks, she'll take that under advisement. 

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Or call yourselves the Death Eaters. 

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She's just going to leave the top of the document blank and circle back to it when she comes up with a name, then.

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The Lancers of the Earth
The League of the Fate
The Knights of the Sky
The Exaltation Guardians
The Mountain Soldiers
The Gate Knights
The Limbo Order
The Templars of Blood
The Order of Grit
The Knights of Exaltation
The Order of the Cherub
The Order of the Crest
The Knights of the Fruit
The Fire Shields
The Land Knights
The Maple Helmets
The Rose Squires
The Legion of Judgment
The Legion of Honor
The Order of Giants
The League of the Chain
The League of the Sister
The League of Your Mother
The Templars of the Shadow
The Crow Lancers
The Sanguine Guardians
The Nest Shields
The Blessed Guardians
The Circle of Giants
The Circle of Thunder
The Shields of Courage
The Order of the Faith
The Preservers of the Phoenix
The Soldiers of the Water
The Honor Order
The Moon Custodians
The Dust Soldiers
The Judgment Preservers
The Knights of Solitude
The Custodians of Silver
The Lancers of, heh, Desire
The Legion of the Archangel
The Templars of the Ice
The Preservers of the Isle
The Dusk Knights
The Mother Knights
The Seraphim Legion
The Falcon Lancers
The Order of Solitude
The Circle of Thunder
The Lancers of Valiance

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Where are you getting these?

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Online generator.

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"The Honor Order - Standards of Conduct" goes right at the top of the document. 

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"The Honor Order"?!

Surely - surely you're not actually calling them that!!

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Whyever not?

I like it, don't you?

It seems apt enough? 

Weren't you the one who suggested it?? 

Bluff: 1d20+2 = 6

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You don't want a name that's merely 'apt enough.'

You want one which fits perfectly, precise and custom as aerospace engineering.

But it also must be timeless. Iconic. Unique, but not overwrought

You need a name like...

The Crepuscular Holy Knights of the Promised Dawn! 

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In aiming for timelessness, I fear you overshot into the blandly soporific.

I propose this modification:

The Crepuscular Holy Avenging Knights of the Promised Golden Dawn!

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It's a good start, but I feel it needs more adjectives.

What say ye to:

The Holy Unwavering Unbroken Unbent Requiting Unremitting Crepuscular Avenging Knights of the Promised Golden Dawn!

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Or "HUUURUCAK of the Promised Golden Dawn", for short (and on the stationary).

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That's unironically kind of fun to say.

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Beneath "The Crepuscular Holy Avenging Knights of the Promised Golden Dawn! - Standards of Conduct" (she'll change it later, but is not adverse to finding levity where levity she can) Kroft writes:

Purpose of this document:

Something something get everyone on the same page, set expectations and reduce conflict, ensure fairness and justice, provide a framework to make decisions less arbitrary and personalistic, promote virtues of (insert virtues here), protect people outside the organization from people inside the organization, protect the people inside the organization from the organization, foster a supportive context to behave ethically and with professionalism, and help the paladins keep from falling, add more maybe or just organize this better and expand on points in a future draft.

You've got to start by telling people what you want to tell them - there's no reason to make that a surprise - but that's for later drafts or just using her mouth (the HUUURUCAK knights aren't very numerous yet) and here's the part that she really wants to write:

These standards of conduct should not be interpreted as all-inclusive: that a thing is against the standards of conduct is an argument that you should not do that thing. That a thing is not against these standards of conduct is in no wise an argument that you should do that thing. If you have to ask, or have to check, whether a particular something is explicitly disallowed by these standards, you should refrain from doing that something.

Cressida Kroft has had this conversation with so many Guardsmen.

It's nice to be able to put it right there in the official standards of conduct. And not have to argue with anyone used to a different way of doing things about whether or not it's appropriate.

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...But, because escape clauses are important, she adds,

Unless both of the following attain: a) it is clear with your conscience, b) you have cleared it with the Field Marshall[1] or one to whom he[2] has explicitly delegated that authority[3].

-

1. It's the ranking system she's familiar with. Why overcomplicate things?

2. "He" in the gender-neutral sense.

3. It doesn't even occur to Kroft to write "you have cleared it with your commanding officer". Your commanding officer's area of competency might be limited to leading troops in battle (or conducting criminal investigations or motivating a specific three people to do their jobs or whatever other narrow thing got them promoted to their current position during peacetime). Or they might be a problem-child with a prominent family name - many commanding officers are and you just have to work around that.

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And beneath that she'll write: 

Rationale:  

It is impossible to legislate in advance how one should conduct themselves in all possible circumstances. There are, therefore, matters which this document does not address.

Insofar as the standards of conduct are useful and demonstrate sound judgement, it is unfortunate that you may find yourself without access to that sound judgement. 

However: Insofar as these standards of conduct demonstrate sound judgement, an accurate extrapolation of what they would say is an extrapolation of that same sound judgement. 

Corollary: If you can guess what this document would say on a topic if that topic it addressed, you can just do that. Even if it seems arduous, or not to your advantage.

Inscribe a copy of this document on your heart, one more complete than the paper version and which can be consulted at all hours.

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Cressida Kroft taps her pencil pensively to her cheek. 

Then adds:

(Unless that copy written on your heart tells you to do anything iniquitous and/or stupid, in which case please don't.)

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There are many things which she can lift straight from the Korvosan Guard's equivalent book - paladin orders shouldn't steal things or lie or make promises they don't have the ability to keep or kick people's dogs unless there is in fact a pressing need. 

But what has her stumped is this:

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Paladin orders are supposed to have rules for Lawful Good living. Cressida Kroft has opinions on what constitutes Lawful Good living, but she knows that the thing she tries to be diverges from what other people also considered Lawful Good do. Cressida Kroft's rules for Lawful Good living are likely to be more constraining in places than is necessary for a paladin, in other places they'll be too permissive, else too strict along a conflicting axis...

And it's not like she wants to enforce her idiosyncratic moral code on people who aren't her. (Or, rather, she kind of does want to - but doesn't entirely endorse that desire.) Cressida Kroft feels, for instance, that all else being equal it's Lawful Gooder not to pull the leaves off of trees you're passing by.

Is that true? Does that actually help your alignment? Well, it probably doesn't hurt... and it's not like she's bothered by small acts of waste and destruction because she wants to be Lawful Good. She wants to be Lawful Good because she's bothered by small acts of waste and destruction. 

And if someone isn't bothered by these things, Kroft doesn't want to insist they be her best self. They should try and be their own best self.

(Or, rather, she wants to pin their arms behind their back and make them apologize to the tree, but she's not twelve years old anymore and that she gets affronted on behalf of plants is her problem and she's not going to make it someone else's problem as well and honestly it doesn't bother her (that) much (anymore).)

...But, that seems at odds with legislating morality in advance so that the paladins don't fall.

Wouldn't it be embarrassing if she doesn't put "I'm aware that it's satisfying to snap twigs with your fingers but the tree didn't spend all that time growing those branches out for you to come along and destroy them so unless you actually need the kindling for something" in the rules and turns out that random neuroticisms like that were the one-pound weights which made the difference in her alignment?

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Speaking of one-pound weights... or ten-pound weights, maybe.

Chastity outside marriage is commonly held to be an important component of Lawful Good, by deontologists and consequentialists both - if empirically not so important as to be disqualifying just by itself. The same goes for drinking, and gambling. Some say that it's Lawfuller and Gooder not to dance or sing as well, and Cressida Kroft thinks that seems likely enough.

The Korvosan Guard doesn't have rules against or about any of that, or anything like that. That feels too personal for a military organization to have rules about - it feels like it should be on each and every person to decide what they think is right.

She doesn't want to write the rules about any of that. Nor follow them. She isn't some moral paragon, here.

Cressida would for her own part be reluctant to join any military organization that felt free to legislate personal morality, even if by an act of god she agreed entirely with their standards and was already following them. 

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He can believe that being opposed to music and dancing is Lawful

He can't believe that it is Good.

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Kroft's stance is that stopping other people from singing and dancing is probably LN or LE, but if it's something that you're doing for your own self it seems like it should be LG.

Self-sacrifice in general seems LG to her.

She's not a moral philosopher, though.

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The most self-sacrificing people of all are Kuthites and diabolists. 

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The most self-sacrificing people of all are Vildeis and Iomedae.

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Now I'm imagining Footloose but set in Lastwall - with Reverend Shaw Moore played by the Empyreal Lord Vildeis.

Of course, we'd have to eradicate all sin in the universe before She'd agree to take the part.

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I'll add "eradicate all sin in the universe" to the agenda. 

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After the play, do you want to grab snacks and play Mario Party?

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He'd have to teach her how.

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That's why he said Mario Party, and not Mario Kart or chess!

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Excuse her, but Cressida Kroft does know how to play chess

The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentlewoman.

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Neat! What's her elo?

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What's an elo?

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Mario Party.

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Now she's feeling competitive!

If they find he's that much stronger than her he can take his queen off the board or play with a capped pawn.

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What's a capped pawn?

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Take a ring off your finger and put it on a pawn - now you must use that pawn to deliver the checkmate, and if I take the piece you can't win.

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Oh wow, I like that.

Why aren't the two of us playing chess right this very moment?

If we put our heads together, this seems like a problem we can solve.

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Maybe some day she'll have time again for frivolities or else someone will devise a version of chess you can finish in literally five minutes.

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!!

Has Olin Mull got something to show her!

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She learns that Earth has invented a way to make chess terrifying, and that they call it Blitz.

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She's not bad.

But she's also never played with a clock before.

The Primate of Varisia complicates the board purely for the sake of complicating it, offers trades, forks her pieces, his pawns and knights and bishops a wave that crashes and shatters against the shore - before long at all he's a touch behind on material but vastly ahead on time, and now she has to move quickly while he has all the time in the world to pick off her pieces and corner her king.

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He wants to play again some time in a format she's more familiar with, but at least at Blitz it seems that he's much better than her.

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Cressida Kroft takes six seconds to think.

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Check.

Check.

Check.

Mate.

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Well damn.

Good game, well played!

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Her heart is pounding.

That's the first game of chess she'd have played better with a belt of Dexterity than Constitution! 

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That was a lot of fun.

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Was it too much fun?

Do we need to establish a rule against such sinful vices as speed chess, lest Korvosa's paladins fall into Chaos and Evil?

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What's his advice? How can she provide moral guidance to people who she statistically expects to need moral guidance, and who want moral guidance from her, when she only knows how to be herself, which is sufficient to ping as Lawful Good in some circumstances but not a complete handbook to the alignment?

...By the way, thanks for existing for her to ask questions at, Olin. She hopes it's not too inconvenient for him.

She'll write everything which seems relevant to her, a sort of Cressida Kroft's Guide to Lawful Good Living, and she'll get some of the other paladins to write their own guides to Lawful Good Living - older ones, who've had the chance to stress-test their moral codes -, and LG non-Paladins like Arbiter Zenderholm, and then she'll combine the overlap and stick that in the Standards of Conduct, and turn the non-overlapping parts into different proven LG "templates" and tell new paladins to pick one or write a new template of their own which a) contains the overlap, and b) seems just as Lawful Good as existing templates to both them and the Field Marshall or whoever the Field Marshall delegates that to.

Or maybe even if it doesn't seem as LG as existing templates? A moral code is a highly personal thing, and there are costs to empowering people established in the order to be too nosy or domineering there.

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Ooh, can I write one?

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No, because you're not LG.

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I've played paladins before.

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Or so you believe.

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It's actually my third-favorite class.

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Third favorite behind cleric and what?

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Behind rogue and bard.

But clerics are fun too.