Paladins

A Paladin is defined first and foremost by its Sacred Oath. Where many Paladins are members of religious orders, or elite knights serving royalty, at its core a Paladin is beholden first and foremost to their Oath, and it is that rare power of adherence that their power comes from. To be a Paladin is to sacrifice the self for a greater cause, becoming a Paragon that inspires for generations to come. The first Paladins were the Golden Twelve, handpicked by Impilturas I and trained by the Silver Great Wyrm Nymbryxion himself once the Convergence had concluded. These Twelve were the most elite of knights and served as the personal guard of the Impilturian Emperor, with no more than Twelve Paladins at a time. Their Oath was to the Imperial Duty, and bolstered by the power of the Silver Dragon. However, from this time onward there would be other Oaths that would arise, with knights of certain specific creeds beholden to Oaths outside of the original intention by the Twelve.
While the Oath itself can be different, all Paladins have certain oathgiven qualities that differentiate themselves from any Fighter or Cleric, putting themselves on a level above. With superhuman senses, mystical healing properties, with immunity to sickness and fear that cows a lesser being, a Paladin must perfect themselves in order to remotely rise to the level worthy of their Oath. Paladins are not only magic users, using their connection to the supernatural Arcanum to bolster themselves even further, but also must be potent warriors. While the majority revere gods and divine orders, drawing power from divinity, at the core, it is the Oath that is the true source of their power.
If nothing proves the use case for a Paladin, their Smite ability is their most potent. Pushing their will to destroy the opposition to their Oath, a Paladin is a crusader, with a strict way of living that involves endless toil, violence, and a relentless pursuit of perfection. Most who pursue the path of a Paladin fail, and even those who have successfully begun the path often fall short of the weight of their Oath. A failed Paladin is far different than an Oathbreaker, one who chooses to become a knight for the darkness.
The common Oaths of Paladins in this World are:

Oath of the Ancients. The most famous Paladin of the Ancients is the Green Knight who challenged the Golden Twelve to a competition. When Ser Gallain chopped off his head, the Green Knight picked up his head and demanded the knight come to his home in Astora where he would return what was given. It was a test of the gallancy of the Twelve, and when Ser Gallain came and showed no fear, the Green Knight allowed him to live. Paladins of the Ancients, also known as Green Knights (in reverence to the one in the story), or Fey Knights are found almost solely within Astora, where they are the elite warriors in service of the Druidic Circles. While this connection is not required, all Green Knights have a love of the natural world, and are sworn to protect the beautiful and live-giving things against the darkness and the corrupt. They are particularly biased towards the destruction of the undead, and other despoiling forces.

Oath of Conquest. To be a Paladin of Conquest is to swear your Oath in service to Law, with no regard to lesser things such as empathy, hope, and protection unless it serves the Paladin's purposes. There is nothing but the goal of domination in the mind of a Paladin of Conquest, where everything else in the world must adhere to the perfect order they supply, with the punishment of death perfectly reasonable. Known also as knight tyrants or iron mongers, these warriors make some of the most powerful villains in history, from the raging warlord to the king with his iron fist. Some of these knight tyrants even go one step further, and pledge their Oath upon the powers of Hell itself, using its power to further their domineering goals, becoming the terrible Hell Knights.
Oath of the Crown. When one thinks of a knight, their thoughts may immediately jump to a Paladin of the Crown. These Paladins, or simply called knights, or sentinels, are paragons of the values their respective society values. These knights appear most commonly as orders serving a king or emperor, with their most valuable tenants being lawfulness, service to their lord, honor, chivalry, courage, and protection. While a Paladin of the Crown is more likely to serve a just and good king, their loyalty is to their liege first, morality a tight second. It is obedience and adherence to the laws the hold a society together before conniptions with the moral costs involved, though they strive to make these walk hand in hand. The most famous and powerful Knights of the Crown are the Golden Twelve of Impiltur.
Oath of Devotion. To be a Paladin of Devotion is to hold the greatest ideals of goodness and law, and have possibly one of the hardest tasks in maintaining their purity. Known also as white knights, holy warriors, and cavaliers, a Devotion Paladin must become the loftiest ideals of justice, virtue and order, and become an example for all others to follow. A white knight follows tenants of honesty, courage, compassion, honor and duty, different from the Oath of the Crown in the sense their Oath is to the ideals themselves instead of to the ideals their liege should perform. These are the most likely to find themselves attached to orders of gods of law and good, having more clerical sense than any other Paladin. They are lights against the darkness, smiting any blight upon the world with holy fire like the angels they revere.
Oath of Glory. An Oath of Glory Paladin isn't so much a knight as a Herculean hero, honing their body and mind into a Paragon of physical excellence. The Oath they take is one where the sole goal is to reach the highest heights, pursuing fame, glory, and ever more testing challenges for them to overcome in a quest to become literal perfection. To take the Oath of Glory is to become a man of action, exemplar discipline, and perform ever increasing feats of legend. A Paragon may be considered self-serving, and certainly some are, but most have taken up the Oath in the name of heroism and protecting those they care for, and also uplifting others around them to follow their example.

Oath of Redemption. Known as a Redeemer, a Paladin of Redemption is very different from the mighty warriors and crusaders that the other Oaths produce. These paladins are more interested in peaceful resolution, and offering an olive branch to those that have strayed into the paths of wickedness. There is a capacity for wrath, make no mistake, but it must only be turned on creatures of pure elemental evil. A Redeemer adheres to the tenets of peace, patience, innocence and wisdom. More than any other, a Paladin of Redemption is more invested in the magics it wields than their strength in arms, which are used primarily to facilitate peaceful restitution. A Paladin of Redemption is likely to quest in the hopes of bringing a soothing word to the forgotten and dispossessed. Many others find their way as diplomats and emissaries, renowned for their lack of deception in seeking peace between nations.
Oath of Vengeance. If any Oath could be described as Wrath, it would be the Oath of Vengeance. Also known as dark knights, or avengers, a Paladin of Vengeance sees the wrongs in the world and cannot stand by, tapping into this Oath to bolster their power to reap unholy revenge against any who would sin. The purity of self of this paladin is unimportant next to the all-consuming need for justice to be wrought on the wrongdoers. While most Avengers use their sword as a shield for the innocent, slaying wickedness in the name of the good and innocent, there is always the temptation to turn this blade against any who would do wrong. Zealous in their hatred, an Oath of Vengeance Paladin must contend with the fires of their wrath not consuming everything in their path. Some of these paladins have become infamous for burning down a village of people because they harbored a single criminal who wronged that paladin. No cost too great, after all.

Oath of the Watchers. There are countless threats that threaten the World, but none are so hazardous as those from the extraplanar. Leaks from the moons and stars can find their way in the Material World, digging in and corrupting the natural balance of the World, be it the purist angel to the foulest demon, all extraplanar creatures are threats to the balance. Fortunately, most good aligned outsiders only intrude to assist the Gatekeepers and Watchers and then remove themselves once the outer planar force has been extracted. This Oath is only taken by those who join the Order of the Watchers, and are known as Watchers exclusively. It is rare for a paladin of this oath to turn its sword to the mortals of the world, unless they are expressly in the process of constructing a breach, which it is the responsibility of the Watchers to locate and destroy. As such, vigilance is the bread and butter of such a paladin, always aware there are those who may dismantle the cosmic balance everywhere. Anathema is another word for a paladin of the Watchers put on them by the extraplanar creatures.

Oathbreakers (Blackguard). The Blackguard are only known as Oathbreakers as many of them are fallen paladins, having once pursued the goal of goodness to fall into pure evil. Where a failed paladin couldn't keep their pursuit of strict adherence to their Oath forever, an Oathbreaker is one who smashed their Oath and took a new one, one of spreading darkness and evil across the World. Blackguard is just as much of an Oath as any other, but theirs reaps the benefits of the Black Arts, with dread, pain, disease and suffering their goals, with power over the undead as well. Blackguard become Dark Lords, crusading in the name of a dark master, or their own selfish machinations. The most common paladins to slip into the ranks of Blackguard are Conquest paladins who go a step too far from their goal of domination and merely desire to bring ruin, or Vengeance paladins who fall off the goal of writing wrongs and instead becoming avatars of hatred that will kill everything. It takes much more for a paladin of Devotion or the Ancients to lose their glowing light for a burning black flame. Make no mistake, one doesn't merely fall off the path of a paladin into the realm of an Oathbreaker, it is always a conscious choice, and there are some who take the Oath of the Blackguard as their first and only step