The Hero's Code

The Hero’s Code was written after the Overlord's Code, judging by the fact that it seems to be designed specifically as an inverse to that document. The heroes claim otherwise, but it was almost certainly recorded after the Overlord’s Code, and was likely created as a response to the sudden realization that perhaps standards were required if the hapless leaders of good did not want their beloved and hopelessly incompetent heroes to die like ants.

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The Hero's Code

Qualifications for Heroism

The Hero in Training (HIT) shall have a solid emotional reason for becoming a hero.
The HIT shall consider heroic posing a dangerous distraction.
The HIT shall intimately know both their strengths and their weaknesses.
The HIT shall understand they are one of many and therefore replaceable if shown to be incompetent.
The HIT shall consider chivalry and sporting chances to be acceptable risks.
The HIT shall always retain a certain amount of optimism.
The HIT shall have at minimum an annual psychiatric review of mental competency.
The HIT shall undergo intensive mentorship to work through their psychological weaknesses.
The HIT shall understand that mercy and honor are paramount.
The HIT shall understand that no magic spell is entirely reliable all the time.
The HIT shall not put their friends’ lives at risk to personally gain the glory of killing the overlord.
The HIT shall maintain a basic level of physical fitness, knowledge of the sciences, and knowledge of current events.
The HIT shall not be set up as a godlike figure and must maintain at least one friendship in which the person regularly insults them.
The HIT shall be well versed in semantics and be prepared for prophecies not to turn out the way anticipated.
The HIT shall make an intensive study of pattern-recognition techniques.
The HIT shall remember their mistakes and the mistakes of their predecessors and learn from them.
The HIT shall not be disdainful of a member of the opposite gender simply because this person is of the opposite gender.
The HIT shall consider personal safety as secondary to those they are responsible for.
The HIT shall be capable of basic combat maneuvers and focusing on more than one enemy at a time.
The HIT shall strive to cultivate relationships to cover their vulnerabilities.
The HIT shall understand that sharing burdens is beneficial to both safety and mental health.
The HIT shall not compare themselves to overlords or minions, favorably or unfavorably.
The HIT shall not allow emotional attachments to lead to the deaths of armies.
The HIT shall be able to defend themselves in hand to hand combat.
The HIT shall have studied contract law and lock-picking.
The HIT shall know that sentimentality is a humanizing trait.
The HIT shall be aware of the law of good/evil twins and react to strange behavior accordingly.
The HIT shall be willing to use a less impressive but less lethal way of ending the reign of evil.
The HIT shall possess total commitment to the ways of good.
The HIT shall realize that mistakes happen, and the best solution is to learn from it rather than deny it or bury it in the past

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