dnd paladin character concept: a knight raised alongside a magic user, who loves his friend, considers them family — but the magic user through a twist of fate ascends to godhood, vanishing from normal human life. so the knight swears fealty to the fledgling god so he can have some connection to them even still & the god who loves him dearly in return blesses him with gifts and divine powers as a way to reach back toward him, back toward earth. this paladin’s vows are easy to keep, like second nature… and prayer is both automatic and personal
can you imagine being a new god’s firstborn devotee? their most beloved, their milk tooth? he knew his god when they were a lanky teenager and helped lie for them when they used to sneak out of their studies. the two of them would crack each other up late at night until they thought they might hurl. no other paladin knows his god as intimately and well — he saw them pimply and awkward and human and real, and worships them even still. that kind of devotion is impossible to manufacture
the paladin chooses a quest to follow, with the caveat “should my god allow it.” he goes to pray by the river — they used to seek the river together every time they made large decisions, and it was by a river he swore his sacred oaths — and murmurs “will you allow it, old friend?” to the water. a flower blooms at his bent knee. (his god trusts his judgement; they will never forbid him any path he requests to follow.)
This is lovely, though I don't think I quite agree with the god ALWAYS approving. Love isn't always saying "Yes", sometimes it's saying "No", no matter how hard it is.
The god loves their paladin and trusts their judgement implicitly, but there are instances the god has perceptions of what a course might lead to that only a deity can foresee, the destructive (or worse, self-destructive) forces which might be unleashed that a human could never anticipate.
And so, sometimes, instead of a flower blooming, the mournful cry of a bird is heard across a suddenly too still forest. And then the paladin knows that his friend is warning him off this course and so will not follow it, resisting all attempts to dissuade him, because he trusts his deity as he trusted his closest friend.
