"...I think it doesn't, because that's not been the case for generations, though it's abstractly interesting. So I am in no way forced to give any captures from the bandits a death sentence, joining the Condemned is the normal outcome they would expect, and I do not think it can involve an obligate oath and if the process to join the Condemned requires an oath I therefore need some other option to provide, which I don't have; so it seems I am constrained to no longer require oaths of conscripted Condemned."

"In terms of which alternative is best, do you prefer for them to give their oaths than to not, or would you be seeing it purely as an accommodation you were making for Mendevian traditions?"

"I would find it very convenient if they all happened to want to give their oaths, that just seems highly optimistic."

"I suspect most of them will be willing to swear, though not all, if you simply ask them to take the oaths when they're sentenced. More if you remind them that they could have gotten the noose, though that might be too close to a threat for comfort even if you don't mean it as such. For the rest — I don't have a better solution than asking them to commit to the specifics without actually swearing anything, and reminding them of the consequences for treaty-breaking or desertion or disobeying orders."

"Well, I'd certainly be ready to execute them for doing any of those things oath or no oath."

She nods. "Anything else?"

"I'd like ears out on the question of how well my conversations with interested parties today about the no rape policy and the illegal order policy are percolating through the force and I'd expect you to be able to distinguish between garbled and clear retellings."

"Alright, I'll let you know what I hear."

"Thank you. Dismissed."

What is the camp dinner situation?

They are serving dried beef, bread, and peas. The officers sometimes get fancier food, and he could try to get in on that if he wanted to, but the last Knight-Commander ate the same food as her men and people are subconsciously assuming he'll feel the same way.

Well, he's not a fan of beef but he has eaten quite a lot of it without complaining and is not going to change that now. He will maybe go heavier on the bread and peas if this is a self-serve situation though.

It's not self-serve (though he's the Knight-Commander, so they'd give him more peas if he asked).

Despite the complaints some people have had about his policy changes, the mood in the camp is overall cheerful. People are chattering excitedly about the day's victory, and seem particularly heartened by the fairly minimal casualties on the crusaders' side.

Oh good.

He should probably get telling Seelah his tragic backstory at some point soon, probably after dinner so she can sleep on it before showing up to the adventures tomorrow though he doesn't actually expect she'll have an issue with it. Is she busy?

She's currently arguing with Elan about their former mutual friend Jannah, but she is perfectly happy to have an excuse to stop!

Great, he'd like a private word.

Once they are sat down out of earshot of everyone:

"You've never seemed curious what my original timeline was like, though I did mention it in your hearing."

"—well, sir, of course I wondered about it, but I thought you wouldn't want me to ask in front of the others."

"Well, it happens that I wound up telling everyone else in the party more about my history while you were elsewhere occupied and this seems an omission. My timeline is a lot like this one but it's next year, there, and there's a party of archmages running around doing things - most notably, conquering Cheliax, closing the Worldwound, and - I assume though cannot guarantee it was them who did this last - provoking Asmodeus into dropping His clerics one morning."

"That's wonderful news, sir!"

Long pause. 

"...Do you mean to say that you were allied with the archmages, or — the opposite?"

"I mean to say that I woke up without spells one day and was without them for some weeks before Iomedae took me up, and I cannot keep this a particular secret because the commander of fort #11 up north in this timeline has my face and name."

She nods seriously. "No matter what you did in the other world, if the Goddess trusts you're trying to do better, that's good enough for me." There's another long pause. "I don't think I ever told you how I became a paladin, did I?"

Has he too been displaying bewildering levels of incuriosity? "I don't believe so."

"When I was fourteen, my parents were killed in a gnoll raid, and rather than finding honest work I turned to theft to survive. I started small, food and spare change, but over time I stopped trying to take just what I needed to survive and started to take whatever I thought I could get away with."

She looks down. "Eventually the raids got bad enough that a holy order that was passing through came to help. But all I could think about when I saw them was how much their gear would go for on the black market. I picked out the nicest helmet and lifted it while Ser Acemi was sleeping."

It's fortunate how being a paladin makes it impossible to be afraid of how telling this story will go. "I'd been planning to sell it straight away, but some part of me still knew that what I'd done was wrong, and every time I tried to find a buyer I felt so guilty I couldn't bring myself to sell it. But I couldn't work up the courage to give it back, either. Before I'd made up my mind, there was another raid, and — one of the gnolls caught her straight on the forehead. She was dead in an instant. There was a funeral for her afterwards, and I took the helmet and tried to crawl onto the pyre to die with her."

She meets Blai's eyes again. "...At that point the rest of the order pulled me out of the fire and told me that was a terrible way to make up for what I'd done, but that if I was willing to follow their rules they'd be willing to let me train with them so one day I'd be strong enough to do the work she could have done if she'd lived. And when I'd been doing that for long enough, the Goddess saw that I really meant it, and that I could be trusted to stick to it, and chose me as a paladin. So I guess what I'm saying is — you're not the only one here with Evil in their past, but what matters to the Goddess is what you do in the future."

That is two party members who were pulled out of fires what was the point of having that thought. "Thank you. I trust my own stability in Her service, it's just rather awkward to explain."

"I'd like to hope most people here will understand that you're serving the cause of Heaven now."

"Thall had some disquiet about it but unless he vanished recently and quietly did not decide to quit over it."