ZenithalAftermath

Zedrik Salean, known by most others as simply Zed (or zenithalAftermath), is a player of Session 5 of SBURB Mega. His true Extended Zodiac sign is Gemza, though this is through a mutation. His former sign is Arza.

Zed uses rust red as a text color and uses the letter Z to replace the letter S when he types. When experiencing pent-up emotions, substitutes S with ZZ instead, switches to capital text and uses Øs to replace the letter O.

Zed is reserved, non-confrontational, and doesn't do good with crowds. He enjoys EXTRPG, though is nervous around new people. He's smart, logical, and panics if being threatened.

Biography
Pre-Entry: Zed was born as an ordinary rust blood, which let him have a lusus and kept him from being culled while he was still in the brooding caverns. When he turned 4 sweeps, his blood color suddenly shifted an unnaturally bright gold, giving him psionics and taking away his typical spirit-oriented rust powers.

He was an avid player of EXTRPG, and created a character which, unbeknownst to him, was inspired by his ancestor, The Strategist. He also participated in forus, but was never able to connect with anyone due to how volatile and opinionated everyone was.

After rolling a die in his hive to see how his day would go (and rolling a 19), he decided to leave the forum for good and create a memo on Trollian, adding a bunch of random people and hoping for the best. A troll on there, Cervus, had gotten a sponsorship which gave him access to 12 keys.

It was revealed that another troll on the memo, Kitara, lived on top of the cliff above Zed's cave systems, and so he went to visit. They talked, and attempted to load the game while they were both there, only to get an error saying that they were too close together.

He cut his visit short, going back to his hive and getting Kitara into what was later revealed to be the Medium, but not before breaking a nightstand to open the Cruxtruder and witnessing her lusus get prototyped.

A troll in the memo (Murriz) places the machines in Zed's hive, and his loving lusus Bleats got prototyped by the Kernelsprite.

Post-Entry: Zed enters the Land of Questions and Cards, a place where the buildings are made out of many kinds of cards, and where the days are dictated by towers that display different tarot cards. After being drowned in goat consorts, Zed goes to explore the land and find a city.

He stumbles upon a shop selling Minor Arcana cards under the Swords suit, which the shop-keep claims to be magical. He takes the Ten of Swords and the Two of Swords, plays a modified version of Blackjack with the shop-keep, and goes about his day.

He finds a tower that is displaying a right-side-up Wheel of Fortune (signifying good luck) in a park, and falls asleep on a bench there, waking up on Derse. After examining the room, he finds that all of the EXTRPG expansion books are more Derse-Oriented, having the espionage expansion and other more violent ones, along with one that is simply titled The Seer Expansion. It has the Mind symbol on it, but is otherwise blank. In frustration and confusion, Zed decides to write in it before waking up again on LOQAC.

Zed wakes up in the park again, returns to his hive, and is faced with his sprite (Bleatssprite). When he tries to be affectionate with it, his advances are denied due to the face that he would be prototyped if he touched it. As a solution, Bleatssprite tells Zed to "find something that would be nice to him" to prototype the sprite a second time with. Zed chooses a tarot card of EXTRPG character, Zee Stormbringer, and the sprite turns into Zeatssprite.

After Zed prototypes the sprite, he runs away because he fears that now that he's faced with his idol, Zee will realize how "disappointing" he is. He runs until he can't anymore, finding a lake, sitting down at the pier, and crying. He messages Kitara to ask for help, but can't tell her that he's having a breakdown due to the feelings of inadequacy (both from being a pushover and being a mutant) that he had kept pent up, which forces Kitara go to through a gate and look for him herself. While she does this, Zed lets out his pent-up anger, throwing the die that he used at the beginning of the day into the lake. He's faced by Kitara, who doesn't really care that he's a mutant and says that she'll support him to matter what. He cries in her arms for a few minutes before getting tired out and falling asleep with her at the base of a tree. Zed wakes up again on Derse, writes again in The Seer Expansion, and decides to go out and explore the gothic towers. He ends up on the roof of another player's tower, lays down, and gazes up into the Furthest Ring. Due to the interference of the Horrorterrors, Zed is able to tap into his Mind-related powers. He's suddenly able to understand the entire nature of the game they're playing and everything that they'd have to do to claim the Ultimate Reward without a hitch. He decides to write it down so that his "waking" self could come back and discover it, and... immediately passes out once he's done. He wakes up with no recollection of what it is that he actually did while on Derse, save for the fact that he "did something important".