Growing up a small child in Mendev, it was hardly unusual that Winifred's father had been a knight. Borne to the noble house of Lebeda, the dashing man whom her mother told her stories of was easy to imagine, though Winifred could not say that she had ever met him.
Born to an unwed young painter, Winifred's life was one far from the tales of nobility and honor which her mother had spoken. Mendev was an unusual place for an artist, to say the least - but Winifred's mother always made enough to care for her. However, Winifred's mother was not merely a simple artist, she was a devoted priestess of Arshea.
Her mother taught her just how important freedom was, and not just freedom from slavery and oppression, freedom of the mind, body and spirit, the freedom to do what one wanted to do and to be what one wanted to be, without being held back by needless constraints and rules. It was this sort of upbringing that made Winifred desire to protect the freedoms of others, devoting her life to a certain degree of perfection so that she could best serve and protect the freedoms that every man woman and child so deserves.
And so Winifred trained, turning her very body into a weapon, and then learning to augment it through arcane magics, all the while swearing fealty to Arshea. Winifred keeps a silver holy symbol of Arshea to remind herself of her mother and her freedom.
Winifred's Paladin code:
First and foremost, Winifred must respect the freedoms of others, however the freedom of one person is never more important than the freedom of another. By extension, Winifred is free to lie, so long as in doing so she doesn't impose upon the freedoms of others. Every intelligent creature, regardless of their expressions towards others or their views on the freedoms of others has the freedom to live, and thus Winifred is forbidden to kill any intelligent creature, evil or otherwise. Equally, every spirit has the freedom to rest in peace and as such, nonintelligent undead are an abomination and to be destroyed without mercy. Finally, in reporting the freedoms of others, Winifred is never allowed to interrogate anyone to force an answer out of them regarding any manner, even if it is suspected that the subject violated the freedoms of another individual.
