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The official description from the (unpublished) game rules, slightly paraphrased, is this: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