|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
While beginning to reread Path of the Hellknights, I realized how strongly the Hellknights are described as staunch supporters of the system. Which obviously makes it hard for LG Hellknights when the system is Evil (Infernal Cheliax or Nidal for example).
But when the system is Good, LG Hellknights fare superbly while LE ones will have it rough. For who will act against a Good system that actively protects innocents ? Evil will. And then LG Hellknights crush it mercilessly.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The sense I get is that there are parts of the hinterlands in Cheliax that are less Evil just because the empress is far away and ordinary folks don't cotton to that devil stuff, whereas the major urban areas are very-Thruney.
So if you're a LG Hellknight you probably want to get the heck out of Egorian but there's a lot of good you can do elswhere.
|
|
The sense I get is that there are parts of the hinterlands in Cheliax that are less Evil just because the empress is far away and ordinary folks don't cotton to that devil stuff, whereas the major urban areas are very-Thruney.
So if you're a LG Hellknight you probably want to get the heck out of Egorian but there's a lot of good you can do elswhere.
True, but that is when you hit the crux of what being a Hellknight is. Because you are not there to do good whatever the means. You are there to preserve the system first and, by doing this, hopefully do some good second (if you are LG).
So it is extremely likely that your order expects you to uphold the local legal system, except when it comes into conflict with your order's own rules. If you can do this and stay Good, great. But if you can't and choose Good over your order's expectations, you might be Good, you might even be Lawful Good but you're not a true Hellknight anymore.
Now, that does not matter too much actually. Until the other Hellknights learn of your heresies.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
But when the system is Good, LG Hellknights fare superbly while LE ones will have it rough. For who will act against a Good system that actively protects innocents ? Evil will. And then LG Hellknights crush it mercilessly.
Why would the LG Hellknight in this scenario crush the LE Hellknight mercilessly? I mean, I know why the mercilessly part, but why the crush part? LE isn't doing anything illegal; the system is working, maybe not as intended but it is working. LG wouldn't bring violence against LE just because LE found some legal loopholes that allow them to be evil. LG may work to close those loopholes but until those loopholes are closed there's really nothing LG can do to stop LE from exploiting them. Unless the Hellknight suddenly decides that Good takes precedence over Law, at which point I would think they stop being a Hellknight.
|
|
I meant general Evil not necessarily the LE Hellknight. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Now, if the LE Hellknight tries to do Evil in a system that just does not allow for it, they will be crushed. And if they stop doing Evil out of respect for Law, they are well on the way to becoming LN.
Same in the opposite case. If the LG Hellknight tries to do Good in a system that just does not allow for it, they will be crushed. And become LN if they stop doing Good out of respect for Law.
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
It does depend on your order's specific focus: You're more likely to find Good Hellknights in, say, the Order of the Pike (go out and hunt monsters to protect rural communities) or the Order of the Torrent (rescue kidnapped people). Meanwhile, other orders draw the more Evilly-inclined ones like the Rack (crush hope and rebellious thought), Chain (uphold the carceral and slave-based systems) or Gate (summon devils and basically act like Minority Report).
It goes without saying that if you're roleplaying a Good Hellknight, you want to pick the order that will ask the least evil from you.
To keep the ball going: But then, isn't it strange that a lawful good character would be fine being a member of a faction in which some of the orders are known for crushing hope or dealing with devils? Or are the orders truly independent enough that such association wouldn't be natural?
There’s several LN deities that allow both LE and LG clerics, so it’s not surprising that there are some LG people would make the choice to associate with LE.
One possible line of reasoning would be that association with such an organization would offer enough more opportunity to do good that it would outweigh whatever negatives there would be from said association.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
** spoiler omitted **
Their current standing, since the PF2 canon is that Hell's Rebels was successful and Ravounel is fully independent from Cheliax, with relations being superficially cordial but clandestinely chilly. So It's probably safe to say that they still exist, and whether other Hellknights believe that Barzillai stripping the Order of the Torrent was legitimate, probably comes down to whether they are Thrune loyalists and whether the current position of Abrogail is whether he cousin was a madman and a traitor or not.
But I don't think any Hellknights would object to their actual mission of "rescuing people who are kidnapped or held hostage" which seems like an entirely lawful (and good) thing to do.
|
|
The order of the Thorn was the first to align with House Thrune and pushed the others to do the same, which the Scourge, Chain and Gate did. The Pyre refused vehemently.
The order of the Thorn was then mostly annihilated by the order of the Pyre.
Which was later conquered without much loss of life by the order of the Scourge, even though those had allied with Cheliax.
So, yes, the orders are separated enough.
|
|
It is important to remember that the goal of the Hellknights is a peaceful ordered world, where people are safe from monsters, madmen, criminals and cultists.
Their means though, especially their focus on fear and intimidation and their stauch refusal of laxism, are extreme.
The Hellknights have been designed to be in the dark grey area where they are not just one more case of Evil knights. But they easily tend toward totalitarism on their way to global peace.
I've been reading F Wesley Schneider's posts about the Hellknights and they are pretty enlightening.
They came into being as musings about what could be similar to paladins but with a focus on order rather than mercy. Which does not mean a Paladin could not find their place there, but that the orders were not designed to make it easy for a Paladin to be a Hellknight.
|
We haven't seen the the order of the Torrent appear in second edition publication yet as far as I know. So maybe after all that, Sabinus left the order and took a civil position in Kintargo. Or something else.
The Order of the Torrent got a one-sentence mention in LO: Character Guide, so it still exits.
I don't own "Tomorrow Must Burn" so I don't know if it gets a mention there.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
** spoiler omitted **** spoiler omitted **** spoiler omitted **
I don't get why he would eat grilled raven?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't get why he would eat grilled raven?
His antagonists (the PCs) are the "Silver Ravens" and Barzillai is a loon (in the non-avian sense).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Like the "he literally bans mint" is canonical. It makes a kind of sense in the very end, but he makes it a priority when he takes over Kintargo.
|
|
I don't get why he would eat grilled raven?His antagonists (the PCs) are the "Silver Ravens" and Barzillai is a loon (in the non-avian sense).
Thank you for not slandering my state bird. :P
Back on topic, yeah, long story short, the Hellknight Orders are not a united body, and they may even come into conflict with each other where their mandates intersect and each tries to assert their authority over the other.
|
|
That's exactly it. As a matter of fact, that's the biggest source of conflict for Paladin types if they elect to join the Hellknights: the lines they refuse to cross aren't the same lines Hellknights themselves refuse to cross, and to the Hellknights refusing to do whatever is "necessary" for the preservation of order and peace is weakness and cowardice. "Necessary" in quotation marks because that word's often used to excuse atrocities, and that is a reading that can certainly apply to the Hellknights as well.
The Order of the Rack is the oldest order of the Hellknights and thus the closest to Daidian Rhul's mentality and ideas, and they aren't good: Rhul may have been a grieving husband and father and his opponents may have been demon worshipers who were able to get away with their evil for so long because they had powerful friends, but he still came away from all this believing that knowledge could be wasteful and idealism could be indolent, and it was better to keep the general populace ignorant of them to maintain a simplistic peace.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I believe it’s the Scourge that’s the oldest/closest to the original organization.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Just double-checked the Wiki, you're right. Thank you for the correction.
I made the mistake because Rhul's original Hellknights set up at Fort (later Citadel) Rivad, which later became the Rack's headquarters, as well as their secondary base at Tanarick House, where Rhul discovered and burned the Path of Grace's printing press, prompting the Rack's own hatred of them.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I mean, Aroden the idea was better than Aroden the entity. I think most would agree about that in retrospect.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
We haven't seen the the order of the Torrent appear in second edition publication yet as far as I know. So maybe after all that, Sabinus left the order and took a civil position in Kintargo. Or something else.The Order of the Torrent got a one-sentence mention in LO: Character Guide, so it still exits.
I don't own "Tomorrow Must Burn" so I don't know if it gets a mention there.
I am currently running Tommorow Must Burn and it states something similar. That the Order of the Torrent while small is still very much alive. They are stationed in castle Kintargo and help keep the peace when they can.
Would have loved a little more involvement in the AP given the context, could've really let LG Hellknights shine. But I suppose that's what GMs are for ;).
|
I am currently running Tommorow Must Burn and it states something similar. That the Order of the Torrent while small is still very much alive. They are stationed in castle Kintargo and help keep the peace when they can.
Makes you wonder what actually became of Citadel Vaull, if the Order of the Torrent is operating out of Castle Kintargo these days. Did the state not give it back to the Order after the revolution?
|
|
Castle Kintargo isn't even a superior facility to operate out of, given the Order of the Torrent's ostensible mission of rescuing kidnapping victims. It lacks a dock for access to the river, and is indeed separated from the river and the city's surface streets by a wall. Citadel Vaull had neither flaw, being on the grid and fairly nearby to the docks next to the Silver Star.
It is a superior facility to operate in, being far larger, far more defensible, and having far more creature comforts.
But it is probably not cheaper than Citadel Vaull, assuming the latter was transferred back to the Order. The Silver Council should be extremely friendly to landlords given its composition (consisting among others of the biggest landlords in the city, including Belcara Jarvis), which means low or no land taxes (consistent with the Silver Council's low-tax, laissez-faire regime generally), but high rents.
So the Order of the Torrent's use of Castle Kintargo's is likely a result of state control over the Order and use of it as a pliant political police (a control which, ironically enough, has not been achieved over the Orders in either Cheliax or Korvosa), or a signal of the Order's indolence and moral corruption, or both.
|
|
It honestly depends on which Order we're discussing and the local government they interact with: in Cheliax alone some Orders like the Rack and the Gate view House Thrune as an ally and are willing to act as goon squads for them, while others like the Scourge and the Torrent have gotten on its bad side, while still others like the Chain or the Pike seem relatively neutral towards House Thrune.
Outside Cheliax, the Order of the Nail enjoyed a great deal of influence in Korvosa until Ileosa demanded actual fealty from them, at which point they packed up and returned to their Citadel to wait her out.
So, generally the Orders TRY to maintain some degree of independence from the rulers that employ them, but it depends on how well they get along with said ruler and how likely their own mandates are to clash with the ruler's whims.