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but it's an entirely new level of tragic when somebody you've actually spoken to gets turned into a bot account. it's like peeking at a zombie apocalypse through the window and realizing one of the shambling corpses was your friend.

and then the zombie catches sight of you, lurches up to your window, and shouts through the glass that they accidentally reported your account to tumblr and you'll be deactivated unless you click this link.

if you get something like this ↑ they're gonna follow up by instructing you to contact tumblr support on discord and give you contact info; or they're gonna link a website that looks sort of like tumblr support and say you have to email them; or any variety of "you must now contact tumblr, here is how you contact tumblr."

whatever they send you, it Does Not lead to tumblr. it leads to the master zombie that bit them and inducted them into the ranks of the undead, and will bite you the second they have your email and password. i might be confusing zombies and vampires. anyway,

it's easier to fall for these messages because the blog doesn't LOOK like a bot blog, because it ISN'T a bot blog. it's a normal person's blog that got accessed by a bot, meaning the blog's content CLEARLY looks like a real active user when you click on it. and yes—it might even be a blog you already know. sometimes bots like this go down a blog's DMs or reblogs and message people they've previously interacted with.

But here there are paladins.

There are signs that the Church and knightly orders know to watch for in new acolytes and squires, subtle connections to the divine less stable than that of a cleric. Of these identified candidates, only few are offered the special training necessary to become full paladin initiates, and even fewer complete their training. You do not become a paladin by accident. You must choose it, day after day.

As soon as a Damned Innocent is identified, they're paired off with a waiting paladin initiate who has completed their training. A bond begins to form between the two, eventually becoming complete and unbreakable, even by death, when the paladin formally swears their oaths. From that moment onward the paladin is responsible for being guardian, role model, and parole officer to their ward.

The bond is a symbiotic one. The paladin's holy magic cannibalizes some of the Evil infecting their ward, breaking it down and burning it for fuel. In exchange, the Evil's grip on the ward is suspended, allowing their true personality and will to assert itself.

Not every story of this sort ends happily. A paladin's bond gives their ward the chance to choose good, but it cannot make them do so. Sometimes a ward chooses, of their own free will, to embrace the full breadth of their nature. In these cases, the paladin's oaths to protect innocents force them to cross blades with the person closest to their heart in all the world.

Perhaps even more tragic are the Oathbreakers, once-paladins who abandon their oaths and draw on their ward's Evil directly for greater power with less responsibility, damning them both in the process.

It's not a perfect system. Far from it. It is as fallible as the men and women who make it work. But it is hope where there would otherwise be none.