What is a zentek?

So what is a zentek?

A long time ago, near the dawn of the fantasy role-playing game era, there were essentially three kinds of characters - warriors or some variant thereof, religious spell-casters and secular spell-casters. In EPT, they were warriors, priest and magic-users. Being a big fan of "Ill Met In Lankhmar" by the great Fritz Leiber, I also rather liked the idea of a thief character class. D&D picked that one up a long time ago, so even though I used thieves as one of the primary classes, I wanted something new, something I had not seen in any game I'd researched. I liked the ideas of spell-casters whose extraordinary capabilities came from divine worship (priests) or from incantations, with or without some kind of "power word," or magicians.

However, I also wanted to see a rare but occasional type of character whose abilities, or powers, came from within, who had fairly clearly defined abilities that still had flexibility, and whose beginnings were modest, but built up through experience (and survival) to become quite powerful in the advanced stages. They also had to have some kind of behavioral constraints, if for no other reason than that with enormous power comes enormous responsibility. These characters would be loosely based on a mix of mutants (a la the comic-world's X-men and Inhumans), martial arts practitioners (along the lines of Shao Lin priests), zen monks and the insatiably curious who devote their lives to the study of how the universe works.

Thus was born the zentek - a "warrior of the spirit," one who takes life as it comes, who prefers to avoid violence even though they are quite capable of delivering it, who preserves nature but has the curiosity and drive to explore and develop as much as possible along the way.

The official description from the (unpublished) game rules, slightly paraphrased, is this:

The Zentek Order acknowledges the fundamental harmony of all things, and they study skill disciplines which center around their development as human beings interacting with and, ultimately, controlling forces of the physical and transphysical universe. Zenteks use neither weapons nor armor, they have no guild language like other [guilds], and they are philosophically opposed to combat under almost any circumstances, although they can be very good at it. Zenteks do not feel themselves to be in competition with anyone for anything, thus making them generally friendlier than sorcerers to other [characters]. However, they are just as much unique individuals as any other characters, and personalities will vary (as they should). Zenteks must have exceptional intelligence, extremely high life force, with all other character attributes above average. The potential zentek must apply at a Zentek Sanctuary (their meditation and education centers, which are usually easy to locate, since the Order is always looking for new members and such are somewhat scarce) to be admitted. The novice must then spend four years at that center learning the first three of the Zentek Order disciplines. Learning the first discipline normally requires two whole years of study, but it results in an immediate increase in self-awareness and control, thus raising the zentek's life force.

Zenteks study sixteen clearly defined disciplines, a cross between straight skills and spell-like powers, that range from self-awareness and control at the beginning to amazing energy powers towards the mastery end of the spectrum, with certain absolute restrictions that keep them viable as characters of interest. This may seem to be limited, but the ways in which these disciplines can be applied can be as creative as the players or, in this case, the author.

It's not always easy for zenteks, and it shouldn't be. Otherwise, zenteks would dominate the game, or the world, and become boring really fast. So, they cannot use weapons or armor of any kind. They are sworn not to initiate or provoke any kind of violence, though they may defend themselves in any way they feel necessary to survive. Above all, they may never harm natural animals - those which have no innate, rational, "human" intelligence (as if humans actually had any), and are both alive and unaltered by any kind of magic, even if the zentek's life is at stake.

In game terms, they are rare, and a tricky combination of player imagination and referee discrimination. For characters in a book, they may be completely unnecessary. Of course, in the Zentek Tales, they are the author's delight.

I like to think of them as sonnet-characters - there is a specific form into which they must fit, but within that form, they are unlimited.

What are Zentek Tales?

You may be wondering, what is a "zentek tale" and why should you care? Actually, you're probably also wondering, what is a zentek anyway?

The easiest part of the above multi-part question is the caring part - because it's fantasy-adventure material!

In order to explain this properly, a little history is in order. I promise to keep this short.

Back in 1977, I was in the Navy, on a ship that had just steamed up to San Francisco for a 2-3 year stint in drydock. As a navigation specialist, I can assure you that being in drydock is like being bored out of your skull - what kind of navigation does one need to do when the ship isn't even in the water?

(Answer: none - we do grunt work, like sandblasting the hull, and boatloads of paperwork!)

My best friend at that time came to invite me to this really neat thing going on down in one of the other crewmen's room - a game unlike anything else I'd ever heard of. It was called "The Empire of the Petal Throne," and he said it was a lot like D&D. (I wasn't really up on most of this sort of thing, but I knew roughly what that meant.)

To keep this short, let's just say that, as a long-time fan and avid reader of fantasy fiction, I was completely captivated. I took this game home (which, by the way, saved my sanity, or at least I think it did) and continued to play and referee (act as the dungeonmaster) the game, convincing my fiancee and some college buddies to join me as well. (We even once did a 24-hour scenario involving 100 player-characters - crazy, eh?) When I graduated and got my first job as a software developer, I found other allies in our quest for adventure, and some new games.

For a while, I toyed with the idea of taking some of the concepts I found in several of the games and combining them into EPT, but the more I worked on this, the more it became clear that I was doing what I saw as "other people's work." So, I invented my own fantasy role-playing game, containing elements of many of the games I'd seen, read and played, but with a heavy content of as much original material as I could dream up.

A large portion of that original material was devoted to the invention of the zentek character type, and upon this the idea of the Zentek Tales is based.

Okay, you say to yourself, got that much. Now, what is a zentek? A zentek is what I called the spirit-warrior character type in the game, but they are neither spirits nor warriors.

It's late and this is getting kind of long, so I'll explain that in my next post!

Web page caught up to reality - sort of...

My web page is now caught up to the most current state of ebookage (including prices, print editions, updated previews, etc.). Come on over and take a look.

Recommendations for other really good books welcome, too.

Editing can be fun, too

Editing can be fun, in addition to improving the content of one's writing. I have found a number of places where little improvements popped up at me as I was going through my list of words to check. Of course, as I went, the list also began to grow. Initially, I found three words that I saw "too frequently" (to my eyes) that I thought might need to be altered in the content of each of the five books in my series. That list quickly grew to seventeen, and now stands at more than double that, with some grouped into categories. Many of these are fairly simple, consistency checks, to make sure I use the same style for all references to a particular character's name or title.

Some of them are kind of abstract, and the list just keeps getting longer. It now fills almost a whole page in what I think of as my deep background file, which contains my references on what should (or should have) happened when, changes I've made, back stories that aren't in the books, and the like. It could be viewed as a kind of outline file, but it was constructed mostly in reverse - after the stories were already written.

What does this mean? Delays in making the works available. I'm beginning to understand why Ms. Rowling took SO BLOODY LONG to come out with Deathly Hallows - getting it right doesn't come overnight.

Now available in PRINT!

The really big news for the day is that the first book in the Zentek Ascendant fantasy-adventure epic series, Return, is now available in print - hardback and paperback.

Take a look! More information at http://zentektales.com, including previews of the first four books and ebooks of the first three. (Books 4 and 5 are still "in production....")

Jumping in with both feet

Now available in print - Zentek Ascendant, Book I: Return

Zentek Ascendant, Book I: Return is the new, exciting swords-and-sorcery fantasy epic from new author Mark A. Richter.

"So captivating, I had to force myself to put it down, just to get anything else done." - Alex H.

Return's challenging adventures take place in a harsh, medieval world, a primitive throwback from a highly advanced civilization that totally collapsed millennia ago. Nature has regained control, and lack of technology has forced mankind and its non-human allies to depend on cooperation rather than coercion. People develop their abilities depending on their guild membership and its support. Some become great knights, clever thieves, or powerful sorcerers, while others struggle just to survive their lives of impoverished peasantry or miserable serfdom.

Christophane Lord, a zentek "spirit-warrior", is the duke of a small province in the chilly northeast corner of Idlewild. Darnak Sparre, a huge knight in the famous Kalsharia Cavalry, and Chris's best friend, serves their prince as Chris's bodyguard. An exquisite but ragged novice thief named Minx plays a small part at first, but watch closely as this insouciant, ferocious beauty makes her clandestine, provocative way into the heart of the tale.

The story begins in the vast southwestern Idlewild desert, where Chris and Darnak narrowly escape the first in a mysterious series of vicious assassination attempts. On their weary way home from an extended diplomatic assignment, they chance upon some hardy friends who join them along their journey, in spite, or maybe because, of the hazards they face. Besought by multiple obstacles of different terrains, rural inns and urban intrigue, they make their precarious course across the treacherous wilds over the many miles, overcoming diverse, often lethal challenges to their lives and skills along the way.

"Chris made it a point never to ignore his intuition discipline.

"He felt that small cringe in his mind warn of danger, imminent death ahead, as he and Darnak rode down the desert road. He reined in his horse. Hard.

"The horse reared, emitted a strange, weak snort and crashed to the ground. Chris leaped clear and tumbled to the cobbled road, his cloak flapping out around him, like a large, two-toned bird, sandy hued on top, dark blue-gray underneath. On his way down, for a fraction of a moment, he took in a glance of the fletching of an arrow that had pierced his horse's chest, not too far from where his own vulnerable midsection would have been. The zentek awareness he had honed for years paid off as his intuition saved his life. Again...."

Complete with a full color map of the entire western land mass of Wilderness, Return also includes a sneak preview of Book II: Minx.

Join Chris, Darnak and Minx in the first installment of the greatest adventure of their lifetimes....