Rating: No horror in this one, but some semi-graphic violence.

 • A Paladin's Lesson, Main Page
 • A Paladin's Lesson, Part One
 • A Paladin's Lesson, Part Two
 • A Paladin's Lesson, Part Three

A Paladin's Lesson was originally posted Halloween 1998 on Diabloii.net, and is technically the first fantasy story I ever wrote, not counting small experimental things years earlier.

I knew I wanted to write something for a Halloween feature on the site, but didn't have any real idea for what it would be about.  I don't remember how I came up with the idea for this, but pre-game the Necromancer was by far the most popular character, based solely on how cool the kids thought he would be.  (The furor at the first sight of Necromancer art, seeing that he was white-haired and silly looking, instead of dark, grungy, and uber-gothic, had to be seen to be believed.)

This one was originally posted in three parts, I think three days in a row.  I was going to cut it to two parts before posting it on BlackChampagne, but I couldn't see anywhere good to cut it in the middle of part two, and didn't want to have one part twice as long as the other (not that it really matters) so I just left it in three.

Part One/Two/Three divisions in these stories aren't based on any real logic.  I tend to prefer a medium length page and several of them to one enormously long page.  On lots of sites it matters since you need ad loads to afford the hosting, and you'd prefer two 40k pages to one 80k page for that reason, but on this site as of yet I have no worries about going over my bandwidth allotment, and hopefully no ad banners ever.  In theory the more on a page the less load, since in the above example, 2 40k pages would probably work out to one 70k page, since each one has to reload the top image, nav bar, etc, in addition to the main text content.

I don't really think this story works that well now, it's a bit too long, at least the third part of it.  The start I like, with the mysterious guy in the corner, and the idiot Paladin like a bad cop, just ready to go off on someone. The exposition of that part is pretty good, where you can see a lot about how he acts by the actions of others, rather than there being some clumsy/amateurish 10 paragraph flashback to past Paladin tavern visits.

I would have liked a bit more about what the Pal does the rest of the time, other than smashing skeletons.  Perhaps from the Paladin's PoV, or the bar tender could have thought of a story he'd heard about the Paladin beating up some guys in another town when they made a joke he didn't like.

The bit with the revenants is cool; I like how they are just shadows with steel-peeling claws.  The fact that they are spirits of people who died in the tavern isn't real well developed, and it would have been cool if there'd been a leader of them, or one that was especially grotesque, some notorious bandit who was murdered there, or a famous whore who was strangled there, something like that.

IIRC I got to part 3 and wanted the Necromancer to win, but I decided to make it more morally ambiguous, so the Paladin behaves more honorably in the street, and the Necromancer violates the rules of the "Lesson Taught".  Which isn't really defined well enough either, for that matter.  And the Necromancer had a bit too much trouble finishing the Paladin off; I think it would be better if he didn't do the healing potion stuff, and just about as soon as he got into the street the Necro could just overwhelm him.  The Paladin fighting so fiercely and trying to yield but being killed anyway gives him too much sympathy, and sort of negates his asshole behavior from earlier on.

I'll have to read it again at some point, right now it's odd, with the initial set up the good guy (Paladin) being shown to be an oaf, and the mysterious bad guy in the corner being just weird, not really bad.  It seems set up for the necro to triumph through the Paladin's ignorance, and seems to be showing their characters so that's okay, but then at the very end the necro starts cheating and the paladin proves more noble than he was earlier.  I'm not sure if that's brilliant reversal and ambiguity, or if it just muddies the reader's feelings to no real benefit.

Skills

I remember an early idea for this story was going to have the Necromancer marching in monster after monster, all revived from the dead, to battle the Paladin.  The tavern was originally the one in Act Two of the game, which is in a desert, and the monsters were going to be the ones seen in the surface desert in early screenshots.  Which would have been funny, since almost none of the stuff in early screenshots shows up in the final game in the same location, so if I'd done that all the monsters would seem wrong now, through no fault of my own (for once).

Early on all we really knew was that the Necromancer would raise corpses, and would have poison and bone skills.  I believe he had a Poison Inferno early on, which is sort of what the green attack used in this story is.  I think I rewrote the Teeth attack slightly once it had been seen in action, when it seemed important to have the skill info in my stories be accurate.

That doesn't really seem important now; it's not like anyone is reading them for game play tips, people understand that it's a story inspired by the game, not the game itself.

At the time this was written, the game was more than 18 months from release, so there wasn't much concrete info about what the character skills would be like.  The descriptions of them in this were exactly correct for what we knew at the time, and turned out to be somewhat accurate for the final game.

I wanted to use exactly the skills in the game, somewhat modified for the story, but of course dramatized and described in detail.  Thinking how cool it would be if someone could just wave their hands and make magical projectiles fly, or raise the dead, that sort of thing. In the game it's just taken for granted, your character walks into town with 20 undead monsters following you and the NPCs don't bat an eye, but my conception of the Diablo world was that most people are peasants, townsfolk, etc.  They have no magical ability beyond a light radius, have no magical equipment, etc.  So someone with a ring of +strength or the ability to cast spells seems almost as amazing to them as it would to people in the real world.

Feedback

Readers were enthusiastic about this story.  At the time there was very little fan fiction about Diablo II around, and I can say, with typical modesty, that what there was wasn't that good.  So this story, flawed though it is/was, still blew most readers away.

Also, most readers hadn't seen any D2 fiction prior to this, so in some cases the whole concept of it was just amazing.  I got people sending in alternate endings they'd written, long arguments about things in the story, my interpretations of how skills would work, etc.

Unfortunately I don't have most of the oldest mails, I've switched computers like two times since then and some stuff didn't make the transition, or else I was just replying to early mails on my writing and then deleting them, rather than saving to gloat over in the late of night.

The Paladin's Lesson was a great story, though as a Paladin fan it was sort of hard to read. Keep up the good work though.

PW

This was an odd thing, people identifying with the characters in the game they hadn't played yet, and rooting for things to happen in the stories based on that. I hadn't thought that people would have any real preferences of that type. Some other early fan stories had similar things, where people would complain that the Barbarian shouldn't have lost, since he was being designed (in the game) to be stronger than the Paladin in solo combat.

Hello?  It's a story, not the game itself, if the supposedly stronger character always won it wouldn't be very exciting, would it?

The Paladin's lesson story was a well written, thought out story. The writer obviously has a lot of creativity and talent and I would like to compliment him or her. The only thing I didn't like was the ending! The Paladin should have won and defeated the Necromancer. Good always triumphs over evil in the end!

William Butler

I'd argue that the Paladin is good.  Obviously the Necromancer is evil, but that doesn't make the Paladin in this tale "good".  He's a big dumb violent brute, boring, a bully, a blowhard, etc. Whether he deserves to be murdered and enslaved is debatable, but certainly no one in the bar crowd sheds any tears.

A couple of other general purpose emails.

That was one cool story, I'll keep checking back to see if there are any more. I just wanted to tell you that I thought it was awesome!

__________________

I read one of the stories you wrote back at Halloween called, I believe, necromancer of the yellow boar. Or something to that effect. Very well written, I enjoyed it. I was wondering if you had any other stories of the same type? Pertaining to Diablo 2 of course.

Ry0uga

I wish I had some negative ones to post, but either I didn't get any or replied at the time and didn't save them. I don't remember any though, sadly enough.  A good flaming, "You suck donkey balls!" would be fun to read, to cut the love in the room down a bit.

These are honestly all that I have now, I'm not leaving out the negative ones.  As I said, I don't have any negatives on this story, and I saved every mail from the most recent story, The Dark Lady, and none were negative, other than just slightly nit picking or the like.  An honest writer finds negative or constructively-critical feedback to be most useful, as it can encourage you to make cuts and edits that need to be made.

Glowingly positive stuff is nice, and if you have a lacking confidence or something it can certainly help your self-image, but it's not of much use in the editing department.

Here is the winner for most devoted fan.  This guy sent this in just out of the blue.  You can see the beginning to his mail up above, commenting that good always triumphs over evil.  Not in the real world I see, and certainly not in my stories it doesn't. ;)

A few days after the battle at the tavern between the Paladin and Necromancer the other knights in the paladin's order hear the tale since it has now spread all over the city by now. Filled with righteous fury, the other knights vow to avenge their fallen brother by hunting down the evil necromancer and meting out justice.

Seven paladins use their divine powers to track the necromancer through wastelands and swamps and stumble upon his keep after several weeks of searching. The keep is surrounded by the necromancer's minions, now headed by the fallen paladin as their captain. During the bright of day, they storm the keep and totally destroy the small undead army that serves the necromancer. The fallen paladin is nowhere to be found. After the sun sets all of the minor undead creatures have been destroyed and they find a hidden entrance to the dungeon beneath the keep.

The necromancer conducts his vile studies of the arcane in the dungeons and has the fallen paladin with him. The knights encounter the necromancer in his laboratory along with the fallen paladin and several other terrible undead creatures and demonic beings. A great battle ensues. Heavily outnumbered by terrible foes, the knights fight for their lives and sustain grievous injuries. Seeing his fellow knights locked in mortal combat with the forces of evil, the fallen paladin's captured soul struggles against the dark enchantment binding him to undead existence and calls upon the power of his deity to dispel this evil magic. The paladin's deity gives him the power to break free of the magic. He is then resurrected and transformed back into a living being, in full control of his own will. He aids his comrades in defeating the undead creatures, but is not able to save any of them. All of the seven knights and undead creatures are killed, and all that is left is the necromancer and the newly restored Knight. The knight is granted the power to fight the necromancer by his deity by utilizing protective auras and other holy powers. After an incredible battle, during which the necromancer summons other creatures and casts dark poisonous magic upon the paladin, the necromancer is defeated by the paladin and his soul is cast into the darkest depths of hell. Greatly humbled by the experience, the paladin vows to avenge his fallen comrades and learn all he can about the righteous powers of his knightly order. He dedicates his life to serving good and defeating evil and does many great deeds afterwards.

I like this ending much better, don't you?

Sincerely,

William Butler

No, not really. ;) 

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