The Future of Zenos Yae Galvus(heavy spoilers for 4.5)

[Iscah]

The Future of Zenos Yae Galvus(heavy spoilers for 4.5)

On putting spoilers in topic headings... I know you're trying to avoid spoiling people, but you have to be careful because the heading itself becomes a spoiler - announcing that Zenos is not only in 4.5, but has a future beyond it.

[Bright-Flower]

It's potentially an ass pull I think. But there are way sit could be explained. With the Sahagin priest there was no delay, which begs the question of why it took Zenos so long to transfer bodies. His body was left there with no sign of his soul leaping to another body.

Not it could be that Zenos simply didn't know how to jump bodies right away, so his soul stayed in his body for a time, but it's kind of odd that the Sahagin we saw an immediate effect upon his body's death and his soul jumping to another. Is Zenos just immortal now like an ascian? How long would he have to wait to jump bodies before the lifestream reclaims him or is he just immune to that now?

This all could be explained but it raises some questions for me. Especially given that Zenos didn't expect to survive and had no real motivation that know of to cling on to this form of life given he seemed content to die at the end of 4.0.

[Iscah]

This all could be explained but it raises some questions for me. Especially given that Zenos didn't expect to survive and had no real motivation that know of to cling on to this form of life given he seemed content to die at the end of 4.0.

I think it's likely to do with his artificial Echo behaving in unexpected ways - a bit like Fordola's personal-hell clairvoyance allowing her to hear everyone's thoughts. (And doesn't that seem like a plot point waiting to happen? I'm sure we haven't seen the last of her, especially now that Zenos is also still at large. There are all sorts of interesting discoveries you might make if you can hear a person's real thoughts no matter how well they hid their visible identity.)

In Zenos's case, I imagine that instead of simply dying as expected, he found himself still conscious but trapped inside a dead body. In which case, either he doesn't immediately know how to 'transfer' his soul like the Sahagin does, or he simply has the sense not to - after all, if he does it straight away in sight of other people, they're going to know and try to stop him again.

So, maybe he's stuck there until Mr Unfortunate Elezen gets tasked with moving the body, at which point Zenos transfers in and takes over, and nobody else is any the wiser.

[Bright-Flower]

I hope we see more of Fordola, she was the only one of the major SB villains I liked. (Though Zenos has the potential to become more interesting in 5.0). But I feel like the short story they have where she's off fighting primals with Arenvald might be their way of giving her an epilogue and she might be fading into the background the same way Hilda did post 3.0. There's certainly room to bring her back, ala mhigo isn't safe and the war with the empire isn't over, but I"m hot holding my breath. Despite not liking Zenos in 4.0 I'm kind of rooting for his quest to go well because of how it could shake things with Varis/Elidibus/Solus in the empire.

There are certainly ways they could explain Zenos' soul not popping up right away, and I suspect they may have some exposition once the WOL meets him again, but we'll see.

[Iscah]

...fading into the background the same way Hilda did post 3.0.

She didn't fade at all, she just switched story-tracks.

Go play MCH 60-70.

[Jyera]

Zenos has admittedly always gotten on my nerves. His insistence we were kindred felt to me exclusively like projection; he'd make all those statements about what my WoL was really thinking, and she and I would both stand there like "... dude what"

His 4.0 ending was a gorgeous twist in my perception of his character and I felt like it was a narratively powerful closure. I was excited/bewildered at first when he popped up in 4.2 (shortly revealed as Elidenos), and taken aback when Elezenos showed up; except that the latter sort of deflated on me from line 1.

He's back after an elegant finale and... absolutely nothing about him has changed. He's right back to his ennui and fixation with The Most Dangerous Game and we're sort of... stuck with that. I trust the writers to make this worth my while, but I think I'll have a migraine if we're supposed to wind up attached at the hip to the guy. I just don't like or find his role interesting enough for that (do you think cosmic restraining orders exist? asking for a friend LMAO).

[SannaR]

We also don't know if his soul was just floating around and didn't know how to pop back into his body until Elidibus snatched it and then had an oh that's how moment. Do we know when exactly it got stolen? I mean both body snatching couldn't have happened while other people were watching or people would have done a number of things like freak out, get all halt you're under arrest, or get all kill it, or a mix of these things. I do wonder how fresh a body has to be for our robe friends can't take it over. Are they able to halt decay in some way or would a slightly decayed body still smell for rotting flesh let alone not look good and probably take up more aether than they'd want to in keeping it animated.

Like I've said they need to do something with him and maybe show him more often or I'm sure even his fans are going to start to want him to have stayed dead.

[MrThinker]

Do we know when exactly it got stolen?

Sometime between his off-screen burial at the end of 4.0 and that scene of Elidibus and Varis on the airship at the very end of 4.0, since he is already Zelidibus by then. We get told in 4.1 that some people tried to desecrate the graves of Zenos and the Garleans, so it could have been during that confusion.

[SannaR]

I meant like was it only a few days or a week cause the body tends to not stay fresh for long and unless Elidibus can stop decay or make it not smell god awful I'm thinking it would have to of been a day or two. Which brings up the whole what happens with the body if they're not taking over someone who's alive body? Does it just turn to ash? I mean it has to just vanish or we'd find corpses out of the blue or fresh graves. I know I'm probably just thinking too much into all of it but we are dealing with a group of people who literally are body snatchers.

[Bright-Flower]

Sometime between his off-screen burial at the end of 4.0 and that scene of Elidibus and Varis on the airship at the very end of 4.0, since he is already Zelidibus by then. We get told in 4.1 that some people tried to desecrate the graves of Zenos and the Garleans, so it could have been during that confusion.

Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if the chaos was actually sewn by Elidibus directly or indirectly to make getting the body easier.