What would a paladin do..

[Eyeball]

..finding herself/himself in Zalanthas?

Any opinions?

[zealus]

Just had the thought yesterday...
I think templars are basically paladins of the Sorcerer kings, no?
But yeah, I'd imagine freak out because their god is no longer with them 

[LucildaHunta]

A god ending up in Zalanthas for a short time would be interesting.

[Malken]

Try to "save" a prostitute PC and tell her how much he loves her half an hour after meeting (and most often sleeping with) her.

[Jihelu]

Depends on what the Paladin's oath or god is, but probably be useless as the veil between worlds prevents the divine power they use from working.

RIP: Paladin.

[Draechen]

Do they have nice boots? Asking for a friend.

[Large Hero]

A traditional Lawful Good Paladin? They'd get Ned Starked pretty quick.

[boog]

Try to "save" a prostitute PC and tell her how much he loves her half an hour after meeting (and most often sleeping with) her.

So ... I've been playing around paladins my entire Armageddon career and I've never known it?

Fuck.

[tapas]

A lawful good paladin would determine that all denizens of Zalanthas are selfish, neutral evil (at best) worshippers of a malignant diety.

They would then engage in righteous purge.

[AdamBlue]

A lawful good paladin would determine that all denizens of Zalanthas are selfish, neutral evil (at best) worshippers of a malignant diety.

They would then engage in righteous purge.

Deus Vult, my brother. We live in a land infested by the darkness's grip, where evil finds itself made manifest in the world and has conquered all, and men are slaves to these nefarious beings. The only thing that will purge this insufferable and unconquerable evil is the rigorous test of fire. Let us burn them on the pyre, and then scatter their ashes to the silt sea.

[Grapes]

TL;DR nonsense incomming, shield your eyes.

Lawful good has always been one of the more conflicted alignments I've seen. If they wanted to maintain their alignment, they would have to be far more lawful than good, and accept that the powers that be are necessary evils. If they tilt more to the good side of the scale, they'd quickly have to chuck their lawful ideas out the window and get creative. Of course, this discussion is funny because of what Jihelu pointed out.

If we're going by Athasian lore, Armageddon being inspired by Dark Sun, then the gods once DID pierce the veil, opened a portal, took one look around and noped out. The only extra-planar race to TRY to settle on Athas were the Gith, you know, those astral pirates that dine on mind flayers and wage war against the gods. It didn't end well for them and left many gith stranded in a world that can be summed up in two words: Super Hell.

Athas is shrouded by the veil of the grey, there is no afterlife typically, most souls are dissolved by the grey. There are exceptions, either through terrible dragon magicks, a particular cause that means more to the soul than life itself, or in some cases, both, can result in some sort of specter/wraithlike incarnation, there's an entire tomb filled with armor-adorned lawful-good ancient wraiths that protect the tomb of their leader. There are no gods, because there are no links to the divine planes that aren't forcibly cut off by the grey.

This is different from the elemental planes in that the elemental plane connection is closer, which is why clerics are typically elemental clerics, and not divine clerics. It is hypothesized that an Athasian could, theoretically, find their way to other worlds through the elemental planes, but only a few have been known to do so, one of whom was a dragon cursed to sleep for all eternity somewhere in Ravenloft or something. It's possible some of the more powerful dragons, such as the full-dragon, Boris, and the not-quite-so-full-dragon-but-also-a-vengeful-lich Dreagoth have travelled to Hell for whatever reason.

Reason 1: Athas is made difficult to access because of the grey
Reason 2: No god in their right mind wants that to change

Athas has some interesting parallels with the world in "The Dosadi Experiment", except it's even more hostile to life. This wasn't always true, during the early ages, the world was populated by powerful halfling mages who took to long-dead magicks such as flesh-crafting, drawing on the power of the sun to create the known races, causing the oceans to recede. By the time of the current age, there exists, ONE ocean on the far end of the world, which is a place you REALLY do not want to go because it's protected by these insane floating brains called "Mind Lords" and their creations, souls trapped in crystaline form with no memory forced into servitude.

Notable denizens of the world of Athas include, druids driven mad by vengeful nature spirits, and the Pyreet, immortal shape-changing druids who will fuck your day up if you piss on the ground wrong. Pyreet or whatever are a very interesting aspect of the world because they will often stalk adventurers, testing them, trying to find good souls to ensnare in their crazy plans to save the world. One of these was named Rajaat.

Rajaat is basically a horrible, magickal monster who, get this, created, created the sorcerer kings. He didn't go looking for good folks, he went with the opposite, his plan was to assign each of them a task, to genocide one or two of the halfling-created races and take their power. The sorcerer kings went with this because Fuck You I'm A Dragon, and proceeded to undertake their tasks with varying degrees of effectiveness, for example, all the goblinoid races were wiped out, which is why they don't exist in Athas. Only elves and dwarves were able to thwart those assigned to wipe them out. Rajaat's ultimate plan was to wipe all those races out, take the energy of the sorcerer kings, by killing them of course, an then, return it to the sun in order to spark a new age, where the halflings would once again rule the planet and everything would be just peachy...

... except, of course, the sorcerer kings discerned this ahead of time, it was tasked to Boris, the one full-dragon, to contain Rajaat's soul in the plane of shadow for all eternity. To do this, Boris required a yearly human sacrifice, and no small number would do. Each of the kingdoms had to sacrifice, 1000 slaves a year, for Boris to wrest the life-energy from in order to keep this crazy pyreet contained. This is the world a traditional Dark Sun campaign takes place in. For those more, masochistic, there's the timeline after the so-called "Age of Heroes". Basically, a mul gladiator, a half-elven cleric (eventually turned sun-sorcerer), a corrupt Templar, and a handful of others, overthrew the sorc king of Tyr when he was about to attempt a transformation into a full dragon, because, you know, the sorc king was, not only going to eat a bunch of people, but go mad for years and go on a destructive binge. The fools didn't stop there though...

They refused the tribute to Boris. This naturally resulted in a Huge Freaking War. The heroes kill Boris through some crazy convoluted plot devices. Rajaat escapes. Corrupt Templar team member betrays and murders a key figure in the team, then tries to make a deal with Rajaat to become a dragon himself. Breed shows up with a dark lens and blasts Rajaat with the power of the sun or something, or maybe Captain Planet showed up, I don't know. Rajaat is defeated, but the Templar is bonded to him. The dark lens contains Rajaat and is tossed into the magma around Boris's stronghold.

This sparks the emergence of the cerulean storm, as Rajaat is not properly sealed away, just, sort of screwed. Basically, it's a weather-tantrum that spawns violent cyclones of rain and hurls them across a land which has sparsely known such. The damage is catastrophic, entire cities are broken, citizens uprising to overthrow their sorcerer kings, and the rise of the para-elemental planes commences. Paraelements are combinations of primary elements, such as Rain, Magma, Silt, Lightning. The para-elementals are young, new, and dangerously destructive, chaos ensues.

Somewhere far to the north is a hippy enclave nurtured by a sorc king who has gained forgiveness from the land, from a druid, who is in the process of becoming an avangion. Defilers and preservers flock to the scene, defilers, for forgiveness, and preservers to begin on their own path to becoming an avangion. This place maintains a primary city that retains the image of having a sorc king, where people dissappear frequently, except instead of them being murdered, they get drug off to said hippy commune in the night. The commune, while hidden, has a higher population than the city, but is shrouded in secrecy, as no one who ever goes, leaves, because to leave, may betray the existence of a movement that could threaten the kingdoms of the world.

Somewhere in the south-eastish parts of the world is a sorc queen who cultivates forests, who tries to get right with the land. Supposedly her people love her, but she's a sorc queen, if they don't she can always rip their heads off, who has made an alliance with a nearby sorc king who, being paranoid, wishes to do the same, so that his people do not rise up against him, as some neighboring sorc kings have been deposed. Neither of them have much success but they fiddle with the idea.

Then there's Dreagoth, perhaps the foulest thing in the world since the death of Boris. Draegoth was one step away from becomming a full dragon when Brutus showed up to give him the Caeser treatment... it didn't last, however, because the loyalest little Templar of Dreagoth used terrible necromantic sorceries to raise him from the dead. Now, he's a draco-lich, and rules an underground kingdom. As far as anyone knows, Dreagoth is dead. Period. Except, while technically true he's enslaving humanoid races and using magic on them to make them into reptillian servants. There's no news from this area, and hardly anyone knows it's even a thing, you can't exactly fly over it and be like, looky there, an underground city. Draegoth wishes to exterminate all life which is not twisted by his magic.

[Grapes]

In short, your paladin loses all powers. There are no means for divine energies to penetrate the grey. You are now a fighter, except more sucky. This DOES NOT MEAN you cannot find another source of power, it just means until you do you are a piece of poo.

EDIT: Also, if transporting theoretical classes and characters, keep in mind that gravity, at least on Zalanthas, is ten times stronger (if my understanding isn't utter bollocks), life forms have adapted, bones are more solid, lives are shorter, and just about everything you meet is going to be faster, stronger, more clever, and hardier than their counterparts in a more tame setting.

[Marauder Moe]

I thought we figured that gravity was either less than that of Earth or atmospheric oxygen content was much higher, or else we wouldn't be able to have so many large animals (and particularly the large athropods).  Or.. you know... a wizard did it.


Anyway, strangely enough, my latest D&D character is a very classic lawful-good Paladin who found himself in a morally gray setting.  However, instead of ramming a stick up his butt and being a pain to the party, he learned to adapt.  When corruption is so ingrained in a society, it pretty much becomes the law of the land.  Thus my LG Paladin found himself doing all sorts of seedy things (deceit, bribery, thuggery, theft) with the justification of "this is how things work here."

It's also a big decision of pragmatism.  Do you throw away your life over your principles and make no difference in the world?  Or compromise on some and live to do some good?

[Grapes]

Of COURSE a wizard did it, although if anyone implies such in public they'll be burned at the stake.

Grey areas, like that big one that divine energies don't penetrate.