Beliefs

The primary, overriding ethos of the Pardoners is simple: We Are At War

They are at war with the Darkness, both within and without.

They are at war with its soldiers: the common Damned, the mysterious Reapers, and the turncoats in the Haunters.

They are at war against the Dark Walkers - both those who disguise themselves as "Ferrymen," and the ones who can't, anymore.

And they are at war with wayward Wraiths who allow themselves to become Lost and Damned.

There may be "non-combatants" in this war, but there are no civilians - only soldiers of varying rank and file. Those whom the Pardoners refer to as Charges are there to take orders, lest they too fall to the Darkness. And those whom the Pardoners refer to as the Enemy are there to go - preferably straight back where they came from, with several bulletholes in their head{s}.

There can be no middle ground: no compromise, no surrender. There is only victory or defeat, and the consequences of defeat are far too terrible to contemplate.

 

Marching Orders

The Concord has other beliefs as well, all of which derive from the special nature of their War. They drill these into Postulants while they teach them swordplay, marksmanship and the secret Arts of Castigation. And seasoned Pardoners often repeat them, over and over again, while they're out on patrol; They say it both clears and clutters the mind, confounding the Shadow's attempts to ruin the exercise.

* Soul Is Sword And Shield

Body is soul, to the dead, and both become highly malleable when Shaped. And at the same time, the integrity of the soul is all that stands between death and Damnation. This is why Pardoners are often encouraged to imagine their entire body - and soul - as one great weapon, aimed at the Enemy.

* To Understand The Enemy Is To Defeat It

Admittedly, this is something of a misnomer: there is no defeating the Darkness, as it's too great to truly defeat, much less destroy.

However, they can thwart it, push it back and hold the line. And the best way to do that is to arm oneself with knowledge. If you know what the Enemy wants, you can anticipate its moves, and act accordingly. But without that knowledge, you're fighting blind - swinging at literal shadows.

* Some Can Be Saved, Others Cannot

The Pardoners exist to fight the Enemy, and cannot take the time to save everyone. If they are battlefield medics of the soul, they have to be ready to perform triage, and give the bulk of their attentions to those who aren't too far gone, or at least show some hope. And they have to be ready to dispatch those who are too far gone, lest they cause harm to others on their way down.

This is one of the reasons why Pardoners don't get too emotionally attached to the Wraiths they minister to. In fact, they are exhorted to imagine shooting each and every new Charge in the face whenever they first see them, and repeat the mental exercise with each subsequent encounter. This acts to remind them that everyone is expendable in this war - even the Pardoners, themselves.

* The Fewer, The Better

Knowledge is dangerous in the hands of the untrained or untrustworthy. As such, no one outside the Pardoners needs to know anything more than certain key facts. Namely, that Darkness lies within and without, Wraiths are at war with that Darkness, the Ferrymen are compromised, and surrender to the Shadow is treason.

Any Pardoners who tell "non-combatants" more than that are walking dangerous ground. Any who tell them the Concord's truest and darkest secrets - or spread the knowledge of Castigation - are traitors. And treason has but one penalty, to witness their actions against the Haunters.

* We Are Expendable, Knowledge Is Not

Every Chapter maintains what is known as a War Journal: a record of everything they have done, seen and learned in the fight against the Darkness. Every Pardoner who finishes her rounds for the day is supposed to write down at least something, and on a "good" day the Chapter might get a full page or two out of each of its members.

The idea is that, should a serious Storm hit, or their Chapter be wiped out, the record of what they learned would be retained. A Pardoner on a Long Patrol, or someone from the Curia, might come by their ruined Necropolis and collect it, and the knowledge will be passed on in its own way.

 

Enjoy the Silence

Speaking of the importance of knowledge...

Those who are in on why the Pardoners hate the Ferrymen, and why they call them all Dark Walkers, sometimes ask why Ferrymen can talk but Dark Walkers can't. Surely this proves that not all Ferrymen are Dark Walkers, and vice versa?

The Pardoners have an answer for this. Once, long ago, they knew ways to learn the secret names of the "Ferrymen," and could banish them from the Deadlands, and back through the Barrier. This is the reason why the Dark Walkers could not hope to defeat the Pardoners, during The Concord, for it would take but a word to cast them back down to whatever Hell lies beyond.

Unfortunately, the methods of learning the secret names - and the names, themselves - have been lost over the ages. And while the banishments were powerful, they were only good for so long: the Dark Walkers could eventually crawl back up to the light, after hundreds of years. And many of them have...

But such was the power of the names' use that any "Ferryman" who was struck down by one was rendered silent forever more. They remain unable to do so much as speak their own name, or any other word.

So the Dark Walkers who can't talk are the "Ferrymen" the Pardoners banished, untold ages ago. And the "Ferrymen" who can talk are the ones they didn't get to around to throwing down.

But give them time.



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