Serini: Good or Evil?

[ebarde]

Being part of the Sapphire Guard indicates your allegiance, it's an extremely exclusive order that handpicks it's members based on their ability to uphold a certain agenda. It's a faction with stakes regarding the gates, not only that but every single member of that order has sworn an unbreakable oath that informs how they'll act upon situations such as this. Also, she knew about the Sapphire Guard because it has been estabilished that every member of her party knew generally how the other gates were being defended. During the flashbacks you can even see them arguing about it, and Soon claiming that a paladin's honor was the only way to defend the gates.

[brian 333]

Serini knows that O'Chul was involved in the destruction of a gate. Why should she care about anything he has to say?

It's like a policeman finding the guy who was caught on camera breaking into a house standing by the window of another house in the dark. Why would he care what the (alleged) burglar has to say?

Serini has no reason to even care what the paladins have to say, so why waste time talking to them?

"Paladins, I got this. You being here is messing up my plan. Why don't you go home now and get out of my line of fire?"

"The fate of the world is at stake. We can't do that."

There is no conversation she could have that would generate useful results, so why bother?

[Shadowknight12]

I'm not sure I follow here. What are the Order getting a fifth chance at? Did the O-Chul and Lien get a fifth chance at something?

Serini says it herself: "you had four chances to earn your desired set of outcomes" (personally I think it's a bit unfair of her to lump the defence of Lirian and Dorukan's Gates with that of Soon and Girard's, but I think Serini is lumping the OOTS and Soon's followers along with her old adventuring party into the same "Gate defenders" bag).

Ok, so you think them being here and spying is betraying Soon's oath? Do you thin kthat if it turns out that Serini has also been spying (herself betraying the oath), that undermines her relying on the paladin's betrayal to kidnap them?

Well, Hinjo himself says that "Without something to protect, the Sapphire Guard's oath is dissolved and we are free to lend aid", which is very much not what Soon and the others agreed to way back when. If the Sapphire Guard can say "the destruction of our Gate allows us to ignore our oath and start interfering with the remaining Gates" then that would allow Serini to gather information on what happened to each Gate after it was destroyed without being a hypocrite, especially since we know Dorukan did it first when Lirien was killed in Start of Darkness. Dorukan and Lirien seem to have been the first ones that broke the accord, perhaps even before Girard and Serini (who seemed to stay in contact but at least away from each other).

Not to mention, when the Order of the Stick triggered Girard's illusion at the fake Gate coordinates, it said "this is set to notify both her and us of this" and the spell did not include any divinatory component, it simply assumed it was Soon or his paladin lackeys, so as far as Serini knows, the people who triggered that spell in the coordinates given to Soon were the paladins and not the OOTS.

That said, even if it turns out that she has broken the oath all along, she wouldn't be the first to do so (because again, Dorukan and Lirien did it first), and I wouldn't consider her a hypocrite because I don't think she captured them because they were breaking Soon's oath. I think she captured them because paladins are, in general, just overall bad news in the world of OOTS. I don't blame her for wanting to get rid of them and not wanting them anywhere near a superpowered villain and a device that can end the world. Serini literally tells us why she can't let them go, and it's because she thinks they'll choose non-existence over letting Xykon win. I think that's a solid-enough reason to eliminate any and all paladins anywhere around the final Gate.