This is an odd question anons, but what would be a good backstory for a civil war between Paladins and Clerics...

Why do I get the feeling she's about to go bowling?

Clerics and paladins may very well be established concepts in the setting being established even without needing context, and when there's an explicit division between them in-universe it is pretty safe to assume they explicity exist in-universe you dweeb. If they do not exist as discrete entities, they are distinct ideologies, as "the healey ones" and "the smitey ones," as you would have it; just fluff that the popular name for each is the name of their class. After all, we didn't need the creation of calvinism agencies and arminianism licences for Wiliam Laud to inadvertently steer history towards English civil war.

Really though, why is your argument based on class names only existing in a meta sense? You can say "Kill that wizard" without saying "Kill that wizard, he's using level 78 spells so make sure he doesn't cast Sunder Sphincters," so saying "Kill the magic dood with the magic powah" to avoid seeming """meta""" seems ridiculous unless the wizards in your setting are known as flabbergasters or somesuch.

tl:dr
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JobSystem

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The Clerics have adopted quite a few converts who did evil deeds in the past, the Paladins want to bring those converts to justice for their past deeds but the Clerics refuse to sell out their own. Cue a civil war when the Paladins realize they're going to have to fight the Clerics if they want to see justice enacted on the formerly evil converts.

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Politics, would raise the question why their god does nothing though

Stormlight Archive, the Heirachracy.

Clerics are leaders of the Church, occaisonally of Society, and can freely act in the name of their god.

Paladins however, have a much stricter deal. Either they conform to certain unchanging and rather inconvenient tenants, or they just aren't Paladins anymore.

Sometimes, Paladins can be really inconvenient to Clerics. Inconvenient enough to do something about, when they're trying to get something done elsewhere.

3rd time's the charm?

In the Stormlight Archive, the church (and clerics by extension) tried to take over the world after all the Knights Radiant (paladin equivalents) quit. If they were around, they'd fight because one of the main ideals of the Knights Radiant is to protect the weak, which the church was definitely hurting during their attempts of world domination.

Lots of you are making suggestions where one group or the other is secretly evil or whatnot. Bonus points for neither side being explicitly or obviously wrong

There should really by porn of Christ-tan getting gangbanged by illuminati lizardmen. Just saying.

>This is an odd question anons, but what would be a good backstory for a civil war between Paladins and Clerics? Not just a division within the church mind you, but a division specifically between the classes.
no

count emicho's insanity during the first crusade could be a useful source.

he had all kinds of nuts folling him around. Emicho himself wanted to take over Constantinople and usher in the end times.

some of his followers didn't think they were following him, but rather a bird that contained the holy spirit.

They all went around sacking cities in europe and massacuring the jews in those cities, even when bishops raised forces to try to run them off.

It didn't end until the Hungarians crushed them (the king of hungary was still pissed because peter the hermit's peasants crusade has pillaged the countryside and burned Belgrade to the ground on their way to the holyland. So when Emicho's "crusade" showed up he didn't fuck around)

i want to يغزو her

I get the feeling in a fantasy setting that sorta shit would go a lot differently

Youre a faggot. Cleric and Paladin ARE professions and looking at any book will show you that each subdomain of clerics have clearly outlined duties and responsibilities.

Clerics can be corrupted. Paladins cannot as they'd lose all their power. Either use this or use the common perception among the common folk as a root for a civil war over almost any subject.

Clerics revere someone who they claim has reached sainthood. Paladins insist they have no authority to make such a claim, Clerics insist it doesn't matter what either of them think; a saint is a saint. There, you've got a conflict that's based both on disparity in religious views as well as their class within the church. It also involves another religious class: saint.

You could take a leaf out of the Reformation's book and have one order come down on the side of the existing religious structure and one come down on the side of reform.

Or you could pull a page out of WH40K:Chaos Rising's book and have one order figure out the other's leader and some of its higher-echelon administration are actually hyper-devil-worshipers, leading to one faction fighting the other because they know the opposition's leaders are evil, but the rank-and-file of said enemy faction won't believe them and of course the evil dudes in charge have labeled them heretics.

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>Clerics can be corrupted
That's not entirely true, while Clerics don't have to follow a strict set of Oaths like the Paladins do, they still have to serve their god and can't deviate heavily from their god's morality (chaotic/lawful and good/evil)

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If you use the original pre-3e seperation between clerics and paladins, it wouldn't be that hard. Both were holy warriors, but clerics usually followed a specific deity/religion, while paladins followed... well... the knightly ideal. If the gods collectively made a significantly uncool/non-bro move, clerics in-general would support it, while paladins would necessarily fight against it.

Take the Overwatch/Battleborn/TF2/Super Monday Night Combat ripoff, Paladins.

Someone discovered Crystals in a mine Turns out, these Crystals are really fucking powerful, more than current magic amplifiers, more than any resource (coal, etc.)

The Clerics saw a fuckton of abuses and accidents (think nuclear meltdowns/Magic Chernobyl blasting away entire towns and parts of cities), huge upticks in criminal shit (people genocided for being the wrong race, sold into slavery to mine the crystals to death, warlords and terrorists using magic crystals to power their armies and wipe out entire towns), hideous experiments on civilians by mad scientists and psychopaths, wars getting started among former ally nations for control, HUGE widening gaps in haves and have-nots and merchant groups and other private organizations suppressing the poor (if not enslaving them, like above).

They ban it as a result, and all Crystal usage can be only used by the Cleric group, lead by an Archmage known for being a Pretty Cool Guy in saving the realm from a world-ending war.

His former partner, a Paladin, sees this as a horrible fascist excuse to consolidate power (imagine America demanding everyone, ally nations included, and hand their nukes to them - the same America that nearly caused WWIII and ended WWII by dropping it on civilian population centers), stifle progress if it's not under their name (imagine that all your findings had to be submitted to CERN, and CERN would publish it under their name, and if you try your own experiments without the arbitrary restrictions in place, you're looking at a long sentence), entire towns and cities forcefully being deprived of their crystals by not-so-good guys hired by the Clerics (not that the Paladins are much better), twisted shit like forcing rebels to be resurrected and used as unwilling shock troops, the more psychopathic of the soldiers executing civilians to make an example, etc.

TL;DR: Magic Duty versus Magic Freedom

coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com/2017/11/osr-class-paladin-of-word.html

>Paladins are backing war hawk as next candidate for not!pope.
>Clerics are backing the true heir to the Church, but he is a young child and not fit to repel the massive army of demons prophesied to invade.

>The Paladins are orthodox.
>The Clerics are reformists.

>The line of succession of not!pope has grown murky.
>Law states that the title goes to his son.
>Custom dictates that it goes to his brother in law.

>The inquisitor's have pit the two against each other in order to pick up the pieces for themselves.

>A young girl claims to hear the voice of their god. She leads an army against their hated enemies, against the wishes of the Church itself.

>Their God has claimed that the flock has become impure, and must be made pure.
>Each side points the finger at each other for their slight differences in worship.
>It was a test from their god, and only those that remain peaceful among their brothers will inherit the Church's power.

Priests prefer soft methods while paladins fundamentally choose warfare and over the hard methods. Ignore the heresy posters,they ignored the root causes of the excommunications.

Their god tells them to.
>God shows up wanting to make his church stronger
>Knows that both groups cover each others weaknesses
>splits them up so they find new tactics and get rid of their weaknesses
>rezzes everyone when the war is over

Their God(dess) has stopped talking to them. Powers that don’t rely specifically on personal divine intervention still work, but nothing beyond that. Both sides look for something/one to blame as their doctrine differs.

Bump

Martin Luther pops up during a crusade, then when all the paladins return home they find out the clerics chimped out

This reminds me of the schism between the Jedi Crusaders and the Council during the Mandalorian wars in KOTOR. A group of Jedi followed Revan to war while the council wanted to hold back and observe, essentially saving the Old Republic, but many turned to the Dark Side after the war.

A translation error that makes a specific aspect of their god very vague even though by its nature the holy text has to be infallible.

Clergy are taking money from sinners, the clerics believe that holy places need money to maintain, the paladins are having none of it and believe the sinners should pay their debts to those they have wronged.

Or the discovery of texts from ancient times that cast a new light on things, one side wants to disseminate the knowledge, the other to supress it.

Remember, this guy taking issue with the clergy fleecing the sinners for money caused probably the biggest religious upset in history.

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> The empire has grown exponentially due to a series of conquests
> In olden times, when different religions became prominent in the empire, the pantheon would let the people work things out: gods that didn't directly compete with existing gods would become part of the pantheon. The ones that did would slowly wither away due to the cultural influence of the larger empire, or become subordinate gods.
> Gods, by the declaration of the primordials (who usually just slept) were no longer permitted to 'promote' holy wars and the destruction of other gods explicitly through warfare.

> Unfortunately with the exponential growth, the slow 'integration' process simply won't work.
> Two distinct factions now exist with how to manage the religious disunity in the Empire.
> One side wants to go on a cultural offensive, to bring the conquered people into harmony with the Empire before mass insurrection tears it apart.
> The theologians of the orthodoxy have determined that the edict only applies to god-decreed wars between believers, not kingdoms.
> Thus an internal 'offensive' wouldn't break such a rule.
> The opposition faction, after contemplating the nature of the Primordial Edict of Nonwar, believes that the Empire's political system must secularize to protect divinity itself and honor the true nature of the Edict.
> The opposition is made up of paladins and the occasional roaming cleric who has seen the wider world.
> Both of them however dance around the dissidents of the conquered lands, because neither of them want the empire to fall and bring about a dark age.

> As for the Imperial Pantheon, they are also split on what to do but remain silent.
> If they intervene too heavily against the clergy, they could lose many of their followers.
> If they intervene against the opposition, they might awaken the primordial.

They can however fall from the orthodoxy.

Paladins are supposed to be holy orders you dunce. That's why they have fucking oaths. So yes, Paladin is a profession. Cleric isn't, but it's easy to draw "paladin order" vs "the rest of the religion" from that.

Paladin order develops a case of heresy, mainline church rejects it and demands the Paladins do as well, refusal leads to war.