A couple of (hopefully) simple questions about paying the claim for a lost military challenge as a defender:

1. From the core rules, when a defender loses a military challenge they "must choose and kill a character". Let's say that I'm defending, I lose, and I've got a character with the Gilded Plate attached ("...save attached character from being killed..."). Can I choose that character and then pay 1 gold to discard the Gilded Plate (i.e. to save the character), and still be considered to have paid the claim cost - after all I chose a character and that character would've been killed without his Gilded Plate? You could argue that the Gilded Plate prevents the character from being killed at all, hence the claim has not been paid ("must choose and kill a character").
2. Let's now say that I've got The Power of Blood plot card in play ("Noble characters cannot be killed"). If I have a noble character in play, can I choose him to pay a failed military defence cost, and then just say "ah, but he can't be killed"? If I can, does this satisfy the claim cost (similar to question above)? Or is this a type of immunity and I cannot even nominate the character in the first place?

These questions almost seem too simple, but I'm not seeing anything in the rules or FAQ which make me 100% confident that I'd be giving the correct answer. Which are the relevant passages that I'm missing or misreading?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

1) Yes, you can save a character from been killed by a military claim. The fact that you have to choose a character and kill him doesn't mean you can't save him

2) No, you can't choose a character that cannot be killed to be killed (it is a little non-sense). You have to choose an eligible one and Lord characters with Power of Blood revealed are not eligible, so you can't even kill them by your own initiative.

Thorin's answers are completely correct. Just want to add a little bit of general rules information:

#1: Responses that use the words "save" and "cancel" are the only true interrupts in the game. As such, the military claim effect initiates when you choose a character to die, then it is interrupted by the save so that when you get to resolution, the military claim effect doesn't resolve "properly." However, it was initiated "properly," so claim is considered to have been paid. In essence, since the save comes after the choice to kill, you are not allowed to "go backwards" and choose a new character to die after the save. So it is the timing of the save that makes military claim count as "paid" even though the character is saved and thus not "chosen and killed."

#2: The FAQ for the game clarifies that when something is "cannot be X," you are not allowed to choose it for X. Thus, a "cannot be killed" character cannot be chosen for any kill effect, including military claim. So in relation to the timing discussion above, when you initiate military claim, you are not allowed to choose a CBK character for that initiation, but you still have to choose some character. This means that non-CBK characters cannot "hide behind" CBK characters to avoid being chosen for military claim, but if all you have are CBK characters, you can't kill anything when you lose a military challenge.