Paz Lo is a human crawler and Santero who encounters Carl and Princess Donut on the Eighth Floor. He travels with his cousin Anton Lopez and Sister Ines Quiteria. His protective magic and heavy armor make him the group's front-line defender, particularly against undead creatures. Paz worships Ogun until a dispute over a shrine brings the god's punishment upon him. After Sister Ines turns the dying Paz into a totem card, his continued awareness makes the card's use a source of conflict among the crawlers.
Arrival on the Eighth Floor
Carl first examines Paz near a park in the Eighth Floor's Cuba-themed area. The display identifies him as crawler number 8,199,454, a level 45 human Santero and a worshipper of Ogun. Paz wears nearly complete silver plate armor, with elevated boots and a palm-frond worship symbol above his head. He also has a backward baseball cap. The armor's size makes him look imposing, but his expression is frightened when the two parties meet. Anton, a crossbow user, and Sister Ines, a cat-girl Poet Laureate, are the other members of his small party.
The encounter nearly turns hostile because the trio has seen an old program clip of Donut threatening cat girls. Paz is the one who finally explains their fear to Carl, describing what they believe she said. Donut acknowledges making a threat to dancers at the Desperado Club, while disputing one detail of Paz's retelling. Carl calms the exchange and asks the crawlers to share chat access. The first impression is therefore shaped by a specific warning Paz's team received, rather than an attack by either group on the floor.
Information from Tserendolgor gives Carl a fuller picture of Paz's team. She knows Paz through chat and identifies Anton as his cousin. Their original group was larger, but had suffered heavily on the Sixth Floor; the survivors are close to Sister Ines and friendly with Osvaldo's group. Tserendolgor also reports that Anton killed two members of their former party after they tried to kill the nun. Her account gives Carl reasons for caution without resolving why the original party fractured. She warns him that Paz possesses a self-destruct spell whose blast is directional and whose use would kill its caster.
Once the misunderstanding with Donut eases, Sister Ines proposes a practical alliance: Carl and Donut can help capture a monk seal as a squad member, and her party will help them secure one in return. During the walk to the beach, Paz laughs when Mongo pushes him over while inspecting the reflection in his armor. He also talks about real Caribbean monk seals, explaining that his father had told him about them. These exchanges replace the panic of the first meeting with ordinary conversation, although Carl observes that the two parties have not yet fully learned to trust each other.
Santero abilities and the seal capture
Sister Ines describes a Santero as a necromancer cleric and says Paz has healing and protection spells. Paz summarizes his own combat role more plainly: he takes enemy attacks while others fight. Carl observes that Paz can heal and withstand substantial damage. His most conspicuous defensive skill is Turtle, which gives him a powerful temporary shield and turns him into a metal shell. While it lasts, he cannot move or attack, and he cannot cancel it simply because the fight changes. If the shield breaks, the remaining force of the blow can still hurt him.
The team's first attempt to capture a monk seal with Carl demonstrates both the strength and the limitation of that build. Paz approaches a seal called Yago to draw its attention while Carl moves in under invisibility with the team flag. Anton, Sister Ines, and Donut attack from a distance. Yago repeatedly strikes Paz's shell hard enough to shake the beach, but Paz keeps the creature focused on him even while the others damage it. The shield is nearly exhausted when Yago raises a defense against ranged attacks. Paz reports that he still has ten seconds before he can move, forcing Carl to step in and divert a final blow that might have killed him.
When Turtle ends, Paz stands and summons an enormous mace. He strikes Yago as Carl ducks under the swing. The sequence shows that he can deliver a heavy melee attack once the defensive lock ends; he is more than a passive shield for the group. It also explains why the earlier seal had been a problem for his team: Sister Ines says they had been forced to kill that one after it overwhelmed Paz's defense too quickly. The captured seal encounter depends on Carl intervening at the moment Paz cannot defend himself by moving.
Ogun's patronage contributes a different set of abilities. Mordecai describes Ogun as a god associated with blacksmithing and protection and says his followers resist charm and gain stronger weapon attacks. Sister Ines says Ogun gives Paz and Anton several protective spells, though she refuses to worship him herself. Those descriptions are what the characters believe the arrangement provides. Paz's later account of why he chose Ogun reveals that the protection he most wanted had not worked as he expected.
The corrupted ghommid settlement
Paz's group accompanies Carl and Donut to a cemetery resembling Colón Cemetery. Paz recognizes the entrance but notices that the dungeon has altered the place with a fence; Anton says a relative is buried there. Sister Ines initially heads toward the gate, and Anton follows. Paz argues that they should heed Carl's warning and survey the perimeter before entering a space that might lock behind them. Sister Ines eventually agrees. His hesitation delays the entry long enough for the combined group to examine the enclosure, although the survey does not reveal every danger inside.
The cemetery contains a corrupted ghommid settlement. As soon as Paz crosses the gate, the System warns that the presence of a Santero has aggravated the unsettled dead. Paz explains that certain undead will target him alone and follow even if he retreats. His holy armor is meant to help him survive that attention. Sister Ines adds that each unsettled creature killed gives both her and Paz a temporary strength increase. The benefits do not prevent the group from facing an enormous horde: the gate closes, the dead converge on Paz, and the crawlers must fight toward a safe room. Donut rebukes him for explaining the aggro effect only after they are trapped.
The unsettled ghommids include non-corporeal enemies, so ordinary physical blows cannot be relied on against them. Paz destroys one that has already taken Anton's crossbow bolt while Sister Ines and the others attack the advancing crowd. His presence draws the settlement's hostile population, yet he and Sister Ines also gain strength as those creatures die. The same class trait makes him useful in a controlled fight and dangerous to bring into a dense corrupted town. The group survives the first rush by combining attacks, holy preparations, and Donut's movement spell to reach the safe room.
On a later push toward the temple at the settlement's center, Paz becomes immobilized by a Terrified debuff. Sister Ines removes it more than once, but it returns, leaving him unable to run while the undead close in. Bomo carries him only after Paz unequips his breastplate: although the armor feels manageable to Paz when worn, its equipped weight makes him too heavy for another person to lift easily. Carl and the others protect him on the way into the temple. The episode reverses Paz's normal function as the party's defender, making his companions responsible for moving him through the enemies drawn to him.
Ogun's shrine and judgment
Inside the temple, the crawlers confront competing claims to the Sun of Reawakening, which can restore only one ruined shrine. Paz and Anton receive a quest from Ogun to repair the shrine marked by a blacksmith's anvil. They understand that disobeying him will bring a smite. Paz hopes Ogun might help against Asojano but cannot promise that repairing the shrine will summon the god or solve their immediate predicament. Asojano, meanwhile, wants the Santero to restore his own shrine.
The attempt to obey Ogun fails amid the fight and interference from other divine figures. Anton throws a piece of Ogun's shrine outside while affected by another goddess's influence. Paz tries to stop him and later urges the others to retrieve the piece, but the undead outside make that impractical. Paz and Anton then work on Legba's shrine after Legba offers protection from Ogun. Asojano's attack interrupts them as well. Carl's party instead completes Yemaya's shrine. The men are hurt by an Inevitable debuff before Ogun appears, and the restored temple leaves them on the floor in pain.
Ogun judges Paz and Anton for the result. He says driving off Asojano might have helped them, but allowing his sister Yemaya to return is unforgivable. Sister Ines protests that Carl's group made the decisive choice and that the two men were influenced by another goddess. Ogun immobilizes her, then presses a hand against Paz's face, leaving a severe burn. He briefly heals Paz before the health loss resumes. Ogun withdraws his grace and removes Paz's ability to heal the condition afflicting him. Rather than kill Paz immediately, he leaves him conscious and steadily dying.
Carl tries to help both cousins. He casts Black Nimbus on Anton to interrupt the benefits of worship and uses healing scrolls, including one on Paz. Ogun says the spell has removed Anton from his protection and mercy but not from his wrath; he then kills Anton. Paz witnesses his cousin's death and cries out. After Ogun leaves, the hand-shaped burn remains visible across Paz's face. Paz tells Carl that Ogun cured his other conditions but left the Inevitable debuff, and that he no longer worships the god.
Paz's warning and conversion into a card
As his health falls, Paz gives Carl information he had withheld about Sister Ines. He says her cat-girl racial skill makes nearby people want to like and protect her, and that he and Anton repeatedly forgot the warning after learning about it. According to Paz, they began worshipping Ogun because a priest said the god could keep them from being controlled. Paz says the hoped-for defense failed: soon after they became worshippers, they forgot why they had chosen him. His account explains a private motive behind their devotion that Sister Ines's earlier description of protective spells did not reveal.
Paz also tells Carl that he and Anton were guards at a women's prison before entering the dungeon, while Sister Ines had been an inmate. He says she had poisoned members of her convent before imprisonment. Even as he warns Carl about her influence, he refuses to reduce her to that history. He says she has fought beside them in the dungeon and has not committed an evil act there, and he does not ask Carl to kill her. His concern is that Carl should understand the effect he believes has bound the surviving members of the team to her.
Paz refuses another potion and asks Carl to let him go. He speaks of having asked for forgiveness and believing that he will not be alone after death, directly answering Ogun's threat that he would cross the veil without protection. When the immobilized Sister Ines recovers, she tries to take him for treatment and blames Carl for the shrine choice. Paz asks her not to blame the others and tells her he has disclosed her past. He repeats that she should let him go. Instead, she stabs him with her team flag. Paz becomes a card as his health runs out, despite having made his wish clear.
The summoned Paz and the end of the card
Carl and Donut seek Sister Ines afterward, intending to confront her over Paz and destroy his card. During a later card battle, she summons him against a giant snake. The summoned Paz still has Ogun's burn and recognizes Sister Ines. He begs her to stop because he cannot bear another summoning. The snake catches him in its mouth while she orders him to prepare his self-destruct skill. Another player's forced card play causes her team to flee before she finishes the command, and Paz's summoned form dissipates. His speech and distress show that the card produces more than an unresponsive likeness, even though the account does not explain what the card has preserved of the original person.
Paz is summoned again during the conflict with the goddess Ysalte. Carl receives a message that the goddess has brought out a changed version of Paz and that Katia has contained him in a shield. A subsequent System notice credits crawler Paz Lo with killing Ysalte. Donut reports that Katia supplied him with a special bolt, that he drove it into the goddess's eye, and that he used his directional self-destruction to concentrate the blast at her neck. Katia later notes that the System gave Paz the kill credit even though her bolt was essential to the attack. The event fulfills the destructive potential Tserendolgor had described when Carl first met him, but under the coercive conditions of a summoned card rather than by Paz's choice while alive.
After Ysalte's death, Donut holds the card in a backup slot. Its description calls Paz the God Predator and a level 101 former crawler. Katia says Ysalte's equipment has been transferred to the card and has improved Paz's armor. Donut wonders whether carrying it to the next floor could allow someone to free him. Carl remembers Paz pleading for the summons to end and rejects continued use. Katia and Imani agree that tearing the card accords with what he wanted. Donut tears it, and it vanishes without giving her a player-killer skull. The System's changed label and the card's combat value do not alter the request Paz made before Sister Ines converted him or the suffering he expressed when summoned.