Some of the help files seem to contradict. For the character I have imagined, they are definitely orderly in the sense laid out in "help ethos" but less so in the more law-oriented sense laid out in "help alignment." Will my Orderly elf get smited if he breaks the law - not out of random desire to cause trouble or fits of fancy, but because he must break the law in order to do what he thinks is right?

Some of the conflicting information likely comes from the fact that originally our ethos options were the standard lawful, neutral, chaotic, and we changed lawful to orderly for some of the reasons you mentioned.

Lawful characters, in theory should all be orderly, since they adhere to clearly defined rules, but an orderly character's process does not need to specifically be the laws. Just so long as they have some form of structure or internal process.

Just out of curiosity...

Has a chaotic character ever gotten dinged for not being chaotic enough?

That seems fairly hard to do.

Or, for that matter, has anyone gotten dinged for not being orderly enough, esp. considering orderly doesn't imply "not attacking people in town"?

IIRC, there was a Tribunal a couple years back that got kicked out of the cabal and ultimately turned neutral and maybe eventually chaotic (I don't remember) for consistently behaving like a psycho. I remember feeling like it was more the player coming off their hinges than genuine, deliberate RP, but nonetheless the needle moved accordingly.

Beyond that, if it has happened it's certainly uncommon. That said, if a character doesn't seem to fit their ethos that may impact various Immortal's opinions of them, the outcome of role contests, etc.

I was IC friendly with the character, believe I was Marshall at the time. What I recall happening is a little different than this.

He was Provost and a long lived character/good presence for Tribunal at a time when they had little to none. He had decided to help Fortress against Empire including raiding for the Codex. Imms decided this didnt work for them and smacked him around, stripped him of the post but left him in the cabal. Not sure but i thought it was you who made this call, Umiron.

He didnt take it well, I tried to talk to him about it IC, he never went ooc, but going off the hinges is a good description. He decided to burn it all down.

You can believe in a greater order that governs all things, and that you should burn the cities to uphold that order. There just has to be a straight reason behind it.

You can be an OG conjurer who is about keeping planar whatever in due shape because otherwise the world ends. Killing an abomination or two in the city because of it? No problems.

But that being said, if you're going to break laws under an orderly character, make sure to back it up with role entries or RP that explains it, because by default that's not really expected.