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Zen looks at his own hand, but doesn’t tap into any sort of well of deception within his heart, and despite everything has managed to lose almost every hand to the generally guileless Jeni. Her own pile is is substantially larger than his, but he’s happy to be doing something wholesome with someone kind. When Nadja appears, he moves over silently to give her a chance to sit if she wants to, and listens attentively at her explanation of what Adimar knows and doesn’t know, nodding along.
Zen frowns at Nadja as she scurries off, catching Jeni's expression. He leans on his big polearm, "sure. Or, you know, play a game - some of the guards have been teaching me how to play cards." He holds up his hand, "no gambling or anything, just for fun."
Zen boggles a bit, ”goes away for good? Do you mean killing him? We have evidence but no proof - he deserves justice.” He adds quietly, ”I’m not going to go murder a guy, Nadja, especially not a citizen of Sandpoint.” He opens his arms somewhat expressively, the mental in his gauntlets groaning ”I’m a guard - not an um… assassin. Is that the word?” He looks at Jeni, then back to Nadja apologetically.
Zen looks confused, "why would you need to keep the guard off our's back? I'm sure if we talked to Sheriff Hemlock, he'd give us his blessing to deal with the problem. Maybe as long as I go..." He shakes his head, "but look, we have the element of surprise. If I speak to the Sheriff quietly about the issue, I'm sure he'll let us capture P... Pillbug." He shivers a bit, then takes a few moments before responding to Jeni, "Um, you know, just attacking people probably could give the folks in town the bad impression. We might not have the best reputation as it stands, you know, because of all the poking around we do..." he tries to explain, and seemingly is ashamed.
Zen looks obviously annoyed at Najda, but the look soon passes as he wonders at the treasure they found. He glances at Kazumi, ”I think it’s just the right type of thing for Kaz, if they can hold it.” He picks it up, testing the weight, ”seems light enough to me, but I am a poor judge of these things.”
Zen can’t do much to help Nadja, as he is loathe to enter the water with his heavy armor, but he can annoy the creatures. He moves up to the edge of the water and focuses, trying to draw the ire of one of her foes, calming it down - if such a thing were possible.
Zen simply stays back with Kazumi and Jeni to keep them safe, clearly hoping that Nadia’s own instincts and skill would do the same for her. Suspecting their acid globules are going to make them resistant to acid, he prays to Nocticula for strength, and then retrieves a small amount of dull metal from a pouch, and with a gesture, throws it towards Jenni’s target.
Zen takes a few experimental swings at the last derro.
Zen shakes his head at the foolish derro, and moves to at minimum, knock them out. He discharges a minor spell towards one of the least damaged,
if he doesn't have to move up:
Zen shakes his head, "these poor creatures - driven to madness by dark magic. It is a lesson to us all to be ever vigilant lest we succumb to the same darkness." He steels himself, "whatever your plan; if they seek to harm us I will help and bring them to a merciful end, if necessary."
Zen sighs at the thingy, and steps up to Jeni, not bothering to heal her He then tries to knock some sense into the creature.
Zen utters a challenge to the beast, "calm yourself - your anger will get you nowhere!"
Zen takes a moment to heal everyone before they go down, and then focuses on his prayers until he's ready to go. Somehow, he seems even more capable at leaping about. and he seems to have some additional sight abilities
Zenobius frowns, ”no, Nadja, fighting is fun but it’s never fun to hurt people.” He shakes his head, ”these folks were just misguided. I wish we could have gotten through to her.”
Zen looks down at the cult leader and sighs, ”well, I feel bad for hitting her now, but I guess she wouldn’t back down… at least there’s one less demon worshipper.”
Zen hisses and looks a little singed and mutters ”ow…” He then takes stock of the situation and steps up, swinging at the halfling.
Zen raises a hand, "um, sorry miss. I don't want to be rude, but aren't you worshipping a, like, demon?" He puts his finger to his chin, "or something?" He pauses, "we're trying to protect Sandpoint, of course. And when we came in to just, sort of... talk to your compatriots, they just attacked us." He shrugs apologetically, "I don't have a way to prove that, but for what it's worth, we didn't want to hurt anyone."
”Um. Okay. Maybe we can look around?” He looks around a little for anything interesting in the store, then says idly, ”there’s a lot of interesting stuff here - where do you get all of it?”
Zen looks a little surprised, ”huh, I guess the parts are really scattered. We found this winding mechanism in the Pit. Does it fit? I don’t know much about gadgets, sorry…”
Zen helps Kaz a little bit with the research but is otherwise distracted a little bit by thoughts of how he will help Nualia. When they visit the Feathered Serpent the next day, he looks at all the knickknacks and lets Nadja do the speaking to start.
Zen spends the rest of his afternoon trying to convince more townsfolk to forgive Nualia. His quiet, dogged determination finds a little more success than before.
Zen theoretically has the most credibility and a lot of innate charisma, despite his somewhat mopey countenance, so theoretically he should be decent at convincing the townsfolk.
Zen uses what credibility he can muster from his position as a guard and a priest of a sort to appeal to folks’ sense of mercy and generosity.
Zen looks morose, and then nods, ”if nobody else will, I will at least, Father.” He straightens up and bows slightly, ”well, is anyone else interested in trying?” He looks like he’s ready to go through the town and speak with various people.
Zen looks solemnly like he’s going to agree, until Jeni speaks up, and then he waits a moment until he hears the response from Zantus.
Zen pauses, ”we’ve made friends with a few monsters, but it seems like the Sandpoint Devil may be a little hard to trick or negotiate with. Um, especially since we don’t know where it is.”
Zen moves in the morning to try and clue the others into the possible presence of the sandpoint devil. Stoically, he notes, ”and I intend to speak with Father Zantus, it does not do to keep him waiting.”
Jeni bumps Zen's shoulder with her own and tells him "spontaneous tattoos are cool" then rolls her eyes as she sees Nadja squeeze the guy's thigh. Not in a reproachful way, more of a 'great we're going to have another mopey guy in our small town once Gnat is done with him' way. Zen nods, reproachfully, then sighs. He drinks his water, then retrieves his sketchbook and starts a new drawing, taking in the scene around him. When the other adventurers leave, Zenobius waves meekly, "um, bye everyone. It was nice meeting you," and returns back to his drawing. When the night grows late, he stretches his sore muscles, and stands up, patting Jeni and Kaz on the shoulder, "be careful - I think Sandpoint is growing less safe again. I'm going to go on patrol for a few minutes." He grabs his gear and makes some rounds before heading to the guardhouse and retiring for the evening.
Zen nods in thanks to Arika and takes a look at Kaleb, ”I haven’t gotten my tattoos yet - I’m so anxious about what to get. I think it should be something that respects our heritage, you know? But I don’t have a lot of space,” He reveals the runes he has on his arm after unlatching his plate, ”I had these show up on their own - isn’t it strange that our people have such a connection to this land that our markings can have magic?” He closes it off and shakes his head in wonder.
”We saw some interesting magic down in the pit - but other than runes, I’m not an expert. Maybe Kaz could speak more on the issue.”
Zen looks sad for Arika, and says to the young woman, ”you know, your mother think wants you to come home, and while we didn’t have a bad time in the pit… I… I guess it was pretty scary now that I think about it.” He scratches his horn, ”I guess sometimes I’m just… too thick to get scared. You know, when I should. There were a lot of monsters…”
He fumbles clumsily with his plated fingers at his holy symbol, until he grips it, ”Faith doesn’t help everyone, but it can help some people. Like… an anchor, to hold on to. If you feel lost, it can help to find an anchor somehow, some way.” He clenches the fist around the small metal trinket, ”sometimes I get mad at stuff but then I draw a picture. Or pray. I don’t get a response or anything but it’s the same function - it um… breaks up the intrusive thoughts.”
Zen wakes up with a start, ”wuh…?” and tries to make himself presentable when the others introduce themselves, ”uh, sorry. My name is Zenobius.” and he steels himself obviously to exert patience when listening to Nadja.
When she finishes, he turns to the others with a plated fist with some water insiflde, adding, ”for my part, I’m just a sandpoint guard, you know? But we ended up helping a few other folks down there and managed to make some friends along the way. It isn’t as bad as everyone says…”
Zen helps their new friend get the ogre up to the surface, grunting during most of the trip, and then helps drag the ogre along, crafting a pallet and using his surprising strength to facilitate the movement. He doesn’t say much in the process, but mostly because he just looks tired. When they recommend going to the tavern, he glumly follows along, though when they get there, as soon as they sit down and start chatting, he’s nodding along to Nadja when he falls asleep in his seat, still wearing his armor.
Zen cries out, ”just stop attacking and we can!” Though he looks a little ashamed, knowing that it was them who started the fight. He swings his fauchard at the ogre with the flat of the blade, trying to knock them out.
Zen sighs and mumbles to the ogre, ”sorry…” and pats Najda on the shoulder, healing her He then says to the ogre, ”just stop - lay down your weapon and maybe we can talk this out.” To enforce that, he gestures and tries to punish the ogre for fighting more. Then he summons his glass shield, ”trust me - it isn’t worth it.” He raises the magical device cautiously and hopes the ogre listens to reason.
Before they engage, Zen says, ”I don’t know - it doesn’t seem very fair. This guy is just… sleeping. We should see if they’ve been involved with any villainy before we fight. I’m sure we can defeat or arrest them if they have.” When the hook is taken away, Zen tenses with his weapon, hoping the ogre doesn’t attack them.
Zen stares at both. "can you check how far the tunnel extends before we go too far? I don't want to get surprised, if something creeps out of the door."
Zen grumbles and raises his hand, gesturing at the creepy foe, and tries to punish them for harming Nadja, He then swings at the ghostly monster with his magical striking, vitalizing, fauchard.
With his last action, he tries to protect himself with a glass shield.
Zen as always is a little worried, ”maybe… who knows what we’re getting into.” He scratches his chin and is contemplative for a moment.
Zen coughs nervously ”um, are you the monster everyone worships; are you a doom?” He peers around, looking for signs of demonic influence or corruption, or even for that of the runelords, having become more accustomed to their influence.
Zen sighs, so, the mimic is easier to deal with than this cultist. Let’s just tie him up and move on…” he doesn’t seem too interested in having a conversation with a madman anymore.
Zen notes hopefully, ”I mean, if they stop attacking nobody gets hurt, right?” He smiles wanly at the aggressive cultists.
Zen takes the hits morosely, and then sighs, ”fine…”
Zen tries to overwhelm the enemies with a caustic blast of acid.
Zen then moves up a little bit to act as the focus for attacks. He says in a scolding tone, ”lay down your arms and give up- we are shutting down this evil cult!”
Zen nods at Narbulex, ”there are a lot of jobs - if you did work for the guard at least part time I could vouch for you, but you wouldn’t be able to eat the criminals or anything. We just put them in jail or send them to Magnimar. Usually.” He frowns at something unpleasant that he remembers. ”but that’s only part time - I was just thinking so people would trust you. Besides, usually the theater is only open when people are off work, so other than practice - you might get bored waiting around,” He shrugs as he looks to Nadia for confirmation of his assumptions, ”I just don’t want the townsfolk to come out with pitchforks if they meet Narbulex, you know. Honesty is the best policy, and folks will need to learn to trust them if they’re going be living with… them.” He’s struggling with how his own statement is a little confusing, but he cleans off some of the much from his polearm to distract himself, and only adds, ”let’s go to the quarters and catch some of them at rest - cults are usually crazy but maybe we can get them to surrender if we catch them by surprise. And thanks Narbulex…”
Zen considers carefully, but eventually nods, shrugging, "just remember - if people go missing, you'll be our first suspect, as Jeni noted. That said, this sounds like a much more interesting job than being a guard..." he replies glumly. "Alright, well, just wait here please. We have to go kill some demon thing."
He turns back to the mimic, "I don't suppose you know where the cult or demon stone... thing are?"
Zen sighs, ”yeah, we could find you another job maybe. I’ll tell you that a guard job in most human cities isn’t really ‘amusing’ so you’d have to… learn to make do. I guess I can talk to Hemlock and see what he says?” He shrugs, a little confused, ”and your statue forms are quite good - but my faith teaches that you should try to create - you know, things - other things. That can be a part of the world after you are gone.”
Zen dislodges his weapon with a grunt, ”Najda is right. This doesn’t make much sense. It’s incredibly difficult to get here - how have you been surviving? What would you do if we left?” He sighs, ”look - you know, you eat meat right? You don’t have to eat people. There’s plenty of meat - there’s stores that sell meat. You just have to get a job to pay for it, um…” he waves his arms, ”like you could be a town guard, like me.” He sounds skeptical of his own idea but shrugs, ”can you turn into other humanoids or just objects?”
Zen will use his reaction to reduce the damage against the ant, Zen focuses for a moment, drawing upon spiritual guidance.
He glances back at Nadja as his fauchard gets stuck again, and he sighs.
Zen does some mental considerations and holds up his holy symbol and the one that is furthest from Jeni is subject to an invective of wrath, promising retribution should they attack.
Zenobius shrugs, "I could've carried you like a baby, maybe," He stretches slightly, "you can decide which is more or less dignified." A bare hint of a smile plays across his lips.
Zen sighs, and adjusts his heavy armor slightly and kneels, allowing Kaz to climb onto his back. Once he’s sure the wizard is situated, the man glances across the ravine, and puts one plated foot back, crunching it against the rough stone and propels himself across the gap in a smooth motion. When he lands heavily on the other side it isn’t graceful, but it is practiced, as if he’s done this a thousand times before. He kneels again, allowing Kaz to get off, and then straightens himself up, brushing some dust off of his knee, and the immediately retrieves his weapon.
Zenobius looks uneasy as they converse with the Husk. He tries to get a sense of the being, wary of any its intentions, ”good Nithiss, would you ask the remnant about the consequences of this deed? What caused the remnant and the stain to be bound, so?”
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