Zalynx

Zalynx, the Visionary, is a human mage who is obsessed with the concepts of life and death. Determined to go beyond the rules set by the Grand Design, Zalynx is ascending himself closer and closer towards godhood through his mastery of plant magic and seemingly reality defying feats.

## Lore

### **Backstory**

A mage who was fascinated by the inner workings of the grand design's world code, and the inherent connections with life and death: Zalynx sought out to create life that would actively stand in the face of these very rules. He would play god to mould pure autonomous and conscious life, and surpassing the idea of a permanent death.

The world code is almost limitless in its potential. Shaping life and reality all around us, every waking second. However, such a marvellous system does not exist without its limitations. There exist many constraints, that the most brilliant of minds since the first age have failed to crack with the most notable being: the inevitable fate of death. Zalynx had always been fascinated with the concept of death, that such a potent constant existed in a universe with such sprawling possibilities. A gifted sorceror from youth, as he studied and developed into a more compentent mage: he made it his life's mission to tackle this herculean task.

His prodigal skills earnt him an invitiation into the Arcanist Conclave: a collective of powerful magic users formed after the dawn of the second age, who championed the development of magic and technology that we now see so abundantly. They praised him for his skills and talents, and brought him into their ranks with an agreement that Zalynx would provided the equipment and resources he would need to develop his research, provided he would also help advance the goals of the higher up ranks in the group.

Zalynx continued to delve further and further into his research, and as he continued to research: he concluded that his best avenue to achieve his goals was with plants and nature-based magics. The properties of many plants - their resilience, regeneration, and adaptability - all provided intriguing possibilities to his goal. And they did all of this without needing to tap into the latent powers of potentia. The results were so fascinating, Zalynx would soon develop into one of the premier nature magic specialists in the entire world as he continued to explore the craft.

However, as time passed: his work slowed down, as Zalynx began to have to sacrifice more and more of his time to the whims of the higher ups, as well as have to deal with their bureaucracy. The higher ups had begun to grow wary of the mage's rapid development and wanted to reign him in, so as he continued to pull at the nectars of nature and the world code: they began sending him on more and more assignments, with the intent of distracting him from his own lofty goals. As Zalynx began to sink into simply being another agent: he began to look around at the grueling system he had become a part of.

As the Arcanist Conclave looked to wrangle a stranglehold on the best magic users, the higher ups were also burning through talented mages like nothing else. From even the time before breaches had become common place, the greed and desire of the higher ups had caused many mages to lose their lifes or simply burn themselves out for goals that weren't even their own. While many justified their work and numbers as the Arcanist Conclave working for the collective good, Zalynx began to grow disillusioned with simply working in the service of others, without a chance to pursue his own goals.

Not one to simply be satisfied with being a cog in the machine, he began to disobey orders and spend time focusing on his own fascinations and what he felt was important. He believed the tasks he was being assigned to were simply too inconsiquential, and a waste of his talents. He didn't like the mismanagement of talent by the higher ups, how people were seemingly being arranged at the whims of the higher ups and not properly fit to their skillset: causing the suffering and deaths of his fellow magi.

As he began to devote more of his time to his own craft, disregarding responsibilities assigned to him: the higher ups began to push back. As a result of his continued research in nature magic, he figured that experimenting on plants alone wouldn't cut it though, as they were on far too small of a scale to harness any meaningful results. So Zalynx purposely imbued himself with nature magic to enhance his connection with the core essence of the element, by removing his heart and replacing portions of it with various rare strong magical plants and flora fervorstone. No sane man would've done this, but Zalynx danced along the fine line between visionary and insanity.

The experiment was a success, causing part of his body to be entirely overgrown by nature magic and vegetation, no longer flesh or bone, now just mutilated messes of meat and plants. But for this small side effect, he was able to tap into the world code that allowed the plants to be. He had gained an innate link to praceptomancy, an art as rare as could be. When the Arcanist Conclave caught wind of this, they then expelled Zalynx for his desertion of responbility as well as practices they believed actively threatened their causes. Putting him up for execution, Zalynx disregarded this and would simply take his leave from high magic society. He held the conviction that his practices were correct and so were his goals: how talented men such as himself, owed it to use their abilities in service of others, even if they wouldn't appreciate him for it.

Fuelled by these new developments, he dove headfirst into weeks of intense research. At the end of all of that, he created his opus magnum, the Genesis Seed. Constructed from pure and concentrated nature magic, it was an artifact so powerful it seemingly managed to defy the constants set by the Grand Design and the world code. Through his early explorations with the Genesis Seed, he created Lilykind, a unique one of a kind being all in her own right. As Zalynx’s abilities grew, the larger his god complex. Believing his skills at creation were so good he no longer needed to abide by the All Mother’s rule: he used his Genesis Seed to create a massive tree in what is now current day Cala Nath. The nature magic imbued in the resulting tree was so incredibly suffocating it devoured the whole island, with gargantuan roots sinking deep into the earth and the surrounding seas.

Over time, people would flock to Cala Nath as a safe haven from the chaos of the world, as it was one of the few places known to have been majorly unaffected by the Arklight’s aftermath. But ambition would not rest for the weak and spurned into further haste by the Arklight’s destruction: Zalynx’s experiments to ascend life and break the rules of reality through his branch of plant magic turned more twisted and viler, turning the undergrowth of Cala Nath into an extremely dangerous place for his subjects.

### **Recent Events**

As his god complex grows, Zalynx's experiments with plant magic increase. as he truly began to believe in the power of plants as the avenue for new rule defying life. While Lilykind may have seemed like a resounding success, being her own autonomous being: Zalynx didn't want to rest purely on his laurels. He continued working and had managed to create purely plant life that mimic autonomous beasts, and still managed to defy the observable life cycle that plants typically displayed. But he still wanted more, and so: using his powers as the supreme ruler of Cala Nath, began to experiment on locals. No one on the island dared defy his rule, and so they let him be, they stayed quiet. Out of fear or out of respect, who’s to say? All the while, deep within the heart of this great tree, the visionary and his plants sat. With them alone, he would crack the very secrets of life and death.

## Personality

Zalynx is a heartless man, with no real regard for his various subjects. A perfectionist to the end, if any subject or experiment is even slightly below his standards: he instantly casts it out, ashamed to even be associated with anything second grade. Zalynx himself also holds other people to a similar world view, simply looking at people for their accomplishments and qualifications as opposed to their character as trivial things such as that ultimately didn't matter to him.

While Zalynx does have something resembling that of a god complex, considering himself above others in terms of abilities. However, he isn't one for insane theatrics and exudes this out of the way he carries himself, rather than the way he talks. The kind of man to prefer his work to do the talking, he is a man of few words. This high standard of his as well as preferring to focus on his work in order to keep letting his credentials speak for themselves, has made him become very detached from other people, often straight up refusing conversation with other people besides the odd snide remark.

## Trivia

* Zalynx has blood type AB.
* Developed Lilykind in the image of Heladri as a play into his ego that he can develop a god as well as ascend to one.

## Development Notes

* Zalynx's initial story concept was designed in late 2021, but was sidelined until mid-2022 due to other characters taking precedent, with an initial exploration sketch being visible in the 2021 character tests.