October Novel Prep Challenge

I was going back over some of my earlier days and clarifying certain things (character bios and the like) and I remembered that I'd basically left my villain's history (aside from joining the Burnt Men and rising to become their leader) blank. I've done some research, but I'm having a hard time explaining his religious extremism without going the "he's a psychopath" route or the "something horrible happened to him" route. Otho has a very well-developed sense of right and wrong, he's just too black and white in that definition, and far too rigid in what he considers right. So he isn't really a psychopath. Nor is he one of those hypocritical religious types who espouses poverty and lives surrounded by wealth and excess. He practices what he preaches; he just preaches that the Goddess and her people are evil and should be destroyed. I'd say a good corollary in literature is the High Sparrow in ASoIaF (aka Game of Thrones). But I'm having issues figuring out how Otho-the-teenager is willing to join an extremist group that literally sticks your face in a fire as their final initiation without falling into the psychopath or victim trap.

Any ideas?
-Quaddy


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