deegandungeons asked:

Tell me more about yeen jesus?

argonian-alchemist answered:

Well, I was tasked with coming up for a new character and also set a personal goal of ‘what exactly will my DM let me get away with as long as it’s all logical and above board.’ So I took the age old alignment quandary “if you raise an orc child in a good society will they grow up to be evil” and did my own interpretation of it. So I rolled up a Gnoll Paladin.

So backstory; there’s this lovely little village on a quaint little river of goodly, gods-abiding people. But with rivers come trade, and with trade comes smuggling. With smuggling comes slaves, and with slaves comes slavers. So these gnoll slavers had been harassing this village for years, sacking and pillaging it, taking the good folk away in irons if they caught them. Basically they were the most vile and repugnant a society can be, a direct foil to the peaceful villagers.

After one of the raids an elderly couple found what they believed to be a pup wounded in the raid and took him home. Being old and not quite as sharp as they once were, they didn’t realize they’d adopted a baby gnoll, unceremoniously abandoned during the raid. By the time they realized what they had they’d grown too attached to him to kill him. Instead they raised him like the son they never had, raising him to be a good, gods-loving man. Knowing his monstrous strength could be a problem they taught him carpentry, a good humble discipline to keep his hands and mind busy. And so the gnoll carpenter was known throughout the village, often viewed with suspicion but more or less accepted as a part of society.

He had helped to build new walls for the city to repel the raids from the other gnolls. And they had held out… for a time. The gnolls returned though, with fire and pitch, and the walls he built instead became a cage of fire that burned the village to the ground, killing many of his friends and his dear only family. In a fit of rage, the humble pacifist yeen, who had all his life been taught never to raise his hand in anger, took his hammer and CRUSHED the skull of the nearest gnoll he could find. Something in him was urging him on with this righteous fury. He fought back against the slavers, taking as many of them as he could before they retreated empty handed. But the damage was done.

Knowing he had failed the village, that the villagers whom were already suspicious of him would never trust him again, and that there was no one here for him anymore he took him hammer and left to answer The Call. He swore an oath that day, that so long as he could heft his hammer never again would

He met up with some adventurers not far from his home that had been tasked with eradicating the gnoll menace and after an awkward exchange in which the ranger tried to kill him, he joined the party and helped them exterminate the gnoll menace once and for all. He wasn’t satisfied with merely getting justice for those lives lost though. So long as there were others who preyed on the weak, he couldn’t rest. The party returned to the main city. He went to the temple and (with some initial resistance) officially became a Paladin.

My favorite part was during the slaver massacre the human ranger had asked him “isn’t this kinda fucked up for you?” and without missing a beat and he replied “Do you not kill human criminals?”

Other players have prompted and prodded me about ‘when’s the arc where he has to reevaluate his morality and accept that he is part monster?’ and my answer has been consistently ‘never’ because that’s not who he is. He loved his mawmaw and pawpaw, they raised him well, and he honors their memory by holding close the things they taught him. He will never stray from the righteous path because it was lovingly paved for him to follow.

…

So here’s a fortress worth of text about my very simple gnoll paladin. I have a couple more stories about him, but the original group broke up over a year ago, and I haven’t found a new home for him since, sadly. (not lots of people like gnoll PCs, much less PALADIN gnolls).