Paladins

The Paladins are a secretive warrior society charged with defending the Barrier and protecting human communities from the Others. They are presented not simply as soldiers but as a distinct institution with its own hierarchy, battlefield culture, internal loyalties, and moral authority. Their presence in Seattle exposes the strain between that mission and the increasingly complicated reality of Kalith-human coexistence: the Paladins fight beside Kalith warriors, distrust the Regents who govern them, and resist policies that treat lives on either side of the Barrier as administrative problems.

Nature and Mission

The Paladins operate behind a veil of secrecy. Even Sasha Willis, who works for the Regents, has seen only occasional glimpses of the St. Louis contingent, while her father tried to shield her from the world in which the Paladins live. Their secrecy protects both the organization and the wider population from knowledge of the Barrier, the Others, and the dangerous crossings that make ordinary geography a site of constant threat.

Their work is fundamentally military. When the Klaxons sound, Paladins abandon discussion and rush toward the danger, leaving others to confront the moral burden of what their battles cost. Larem q’Jones watches them answer such a call with envy for their clear purpose and dread for the casualties it will produce. He wonders how many Kalith will die before the Barrier is restored and how many of his Paladin friends will bleed. The alarm therefore reveals both the force’s necessity and the violence embedded in its mission.

The Paladins also possess specialized operational knowledge and restricted spaces. Their tunnels connect to combat zones and to elevators used to move personnel away from the Barrier. D.J. Clayborne gives Larem q’Jones an access code and directs him to use a different elevator to reach Sasha Willis, warning that a battle near the Barrier could make friend and enemy difficult to distinguish. Headquarters is consequently both a military base and a controlled threshold, with access governed by safety rules rather than by civilian entitlement.

Authority and Internal Governance

The Seattle Paladins are formally subject to the Board of Regents, but the relationship is marked by distrust. When Larem q’Jones argues that the Regents could order the removal of inconvenient Kalith and simply find other Paladins to carry out the order, Devlin Bane rejects the possibility, insisting that the organization owes Larem and the other Kalith too much. Larem wants to believe him, yet his history of betrayal makes institutional assurances difficult to accept. The exchange shows that Paladin loyalty is not identical to obedience: Devlin Bane claims a moral debt that can limit what distant authorities are permitted to command.

The arrival of a new Regent representative turns this tension into an open institutional confrontation. Devlin Bane must silence an angry gathering before introducing Sasha Willis, and the Paladins react with disbelief when he apologizes to a Regent. Their hostility is not merely personal resistance to a new administrator; it reflects accumulated failures by the governing organization. Sasha Willis acknowledges that the Paladins have no reason to trust her because the Regents have failed them too often, while Devlin Bane urges them to give her a chance and argues that she cannot be worse than Kincade.

The appointment also reveals the Regents’ preference for administrative control and provisional oversight. George explains that Sasha Willis is being sent to Seattle partly to buy time while the Board investigates Colonel Kincade and determines who else participated in his misconduct. The Paladins, meanwhile, fear that the new policy will be imposed without understanding conditions on the ground. Sasha Willis’s authority is legally broad, but Devlin Bane insists that he remains responsible for the safety of everyone entering Paladin headquarters. Their dispute over whether she may move through the tunnels dramatizes the conflict between civilian administrative access and professional military control.

Relations with Kalith Warriors

The Paladins’ relationship with Kalith warriors is one of the organization’s defining contradictions. Larem q’Jones once belonged fully to Kalithia, serving honorably as the Blademate of a Sworn Guardian. In Seattle, he accepts a Paladin paycheck for teaching weapons practice a few hours each month and remains dependent on an institution that is still learning how to accommodate him. His position is neither that of a conventional employee nor that of a fully recognized member: he is valued for his skill, watched because of his origin, and uncertain whether he belongs.

Devlin Bane attempts to make respect for Kalith warriors an explicit Paladin norm. During a training session, he reminds the men that Kalith warriors living among them have earned that right through courage, loyalty, and blood, and he refuses to tolerate anything less than respect. The declaration functions as an internal code of conduct, opposing the belief that Kalith presence is merely a dangerous concession. It also places the Seattle contingent in conflict with members who continue to treat Kalith as outsiders.

That conflict becomes lethal when Larem q’Jones confronts Kalith Others who reject him as a traitor because he lives in the light. Their leader calls him no brother and threatens to kill Sasha Willis unless Larem explains how to escape the tunnels. Larem lowers his blade in an attempt to reduce the tension but refuses to let the woman be harmed. The attackers define humanity as sufficient grounds for death; Larem answers by placing his oath above factional solidarity. His action shows the Paladins’ wider significance: their alliance with Kalith warriors is not simply strategic, but a test of whether inherited identities can survive competing obligations.

After the encounter, Larem q’Jones is left with another “large chunk of his soul” lost to violence, yet he continues because he has vowed to get Sasha Willis to safety. The Paladin structure gives him a duty that crosses species and worlds, even while the organization cannot erase the death and disease surrounding its wars. His service therefore exposes the emotional cost of the Paladins’ attempt to turn former enemies into comrades.

Combat Culture and Justice

The Paladins’ combat culture is built around skill, readiness, and an unusual relationship to death. Their willingness to fight recklessly is partly enabled by the fact that death does not necessarily end their service, a condition that makes them formidable but also distinguishes them sharply from human guards. The contrast produces resentment among the guards, who are expected to bleed and die permanently when the Barrier remains down too long or the Paladins cannot contain a battle. The Paladins’ resilience is thus both an advantage in defense and a source of social inequality within the security system.

Training is a central means by which the organization preserves its fighting capacity and defines belonging. Devlin Bane arranges for Larem q’Jones to provide special instruction to Craig and other Paladins. Larem’s comfort with his sword makes clear that his authority comes from embodied expertise rather than administrative appointment. The training session also becomes a public demonstration that Kalith knowledge can be incorporated into Paladin practice without being stripped of its origin.

Yet the same martial code can produce dangerous personal confrontations. When Duke provokes Larem q’Jones, Larem picks up Lonzo Jones’s sword and offers it to Duke pommel first, explaining that he wants to be able to tell Devlin Bane that he gave Duke a chance to defend himself. The gesture invokes a warrior’s standard of formal opportunity, but it also places a human opponent in a contest he is unlikely to survive. Paladin-associated justice therefore occupies an unstable space between procedure and vengeance: a weapon, an offered choice, and the threat of death can all serve as evidence of fairness within one encounter.

Political and Thematic Significance

The Paladins represent the collision of military necessity with bureaucratic governance. Sasha Willis hopes to restore scheduled testing and scans through the Handlers, while Devlin Bane evaluates reforms according to their practical benefit for the warriors who must live with the consequences. When Sasha Willis proposes sending the Paladins’ suggestions back to the Board, she presents herself as a channel through which field experience might influence policy. Devlin Bane agrees, but his skepticism indicates how little confidence the fighting force places in distant promises.

The organization is also a contested social boundary. To enemies, Paladins are defenders of the human world; to hostile guards, they are unnatural beings who can afford to be reckless; to Kalith allies, they may become former enemies capable of honor; to the Regents, they remain a force requiring supervision. These competing classifications explain why the Seattle contingent is so resistant to being treated as a simple instrument of policy. Its members possess their own loyalties, memories, and judgments about who deserves protection.

By the later confrontation with Chaz Willis, the political stakes are explicit. Chaz argues that allowing Larem q’Jones and the other Kalith to remain in the human world may be a major mistake because their presence muddies the clarity of the Paladins’ traditional mission. He cannot easily reverse the arrangement without provoking rebellion, however, and plans to report that the situation should continue. The Paladins have thus become an institution transformed by the very coexistence their mission was never designed to manage. Their decisive narrative role lies in that contradiction: they guard the boundary while helping to make the boundary socially and morally impossible to preserve in its old form.