Why's the WoL Changing to Paladin?

[Lauront]

Zodiark might be benign and just do what he's told, but the Ascians as of Shadowbringers pretty definitively still are evil. We learned that their motives might be sympathetic, but their methodology is still to cause wars, the death of countless people, and create untold suffering to cause extinction event after extinction event with the final goal of commiting full on genocide.

They aren't protecting or defending anything. Not anymore at least, they'd long ago resorted to monstrous ends in order to regain something they've lost that they might not even be able to be returned since the 13th is a void.

They are - the world as it was prior to the Sundering. They've lived to see their own people reduced to pale imitations of what they used to be thanks to that. Elidibus is acting out of his duty to enact the will of the Convocation and steer the star back on its true path, whereas Hades was willing to take a more pragmatic stance. The Sundering is often completely left out of the equation, much as is the fact that they're god-like beings in their original form. As Theodric says, "evil" in this regard is a matter of perspective, and when faced with annihilating life forms that are to them weakened, decayed forms of their own people in order to gradually restore their souls with each Rejoining (as that is the effect of them in the end), with no other real way of reversing the Sundering, I believe their viewpoint makes sense and is only "evil" from the perspective of the sundered; much as the sundered themselves think little of putting to death beings that are lesser than them. Irrespective of whether you consider them "evil", they are certainly committed to protecting something, and that is the star as it was originally. Whether tempering commits them to their goal, or not.

Much is made of the 13th, but 1) it'd still be 13/14ths even without it, and 2) it may well be that they can reverse the corruption of the dark aether to a state were it can be rejoined with an appropriate counter balance. The view that its aether is gone is down to Sharlayan measurement tools (are they even precise enough to capture the effect of darkness on aether?) and we have suggestions already that it could be a position that can be rectified. So I am unconvinced about that as well.

Oh and on the matter of imagery, I would note that 1) the derplander's shot there resembles the Emissary's moon shots (the Emissary himself taking the form of a Paladin in SoS) and 2) they did stress when showing that art that it shows no good, no evil, no light, no dark. Make of that what you will.