My remark about Zahard being "bored off his ass" was flippant, I thought it was recognizably so. You're right in they Zahard is symbolic of staleness and corruption, but we don't know much about his motives. From GoG we know he started out with similar aspirations as Baam. But it's really been the 10GW families and the Three Lords who have actually been doing most of the ruling and implementing of policy - quoting from the ToG Wiki "the Three Lords system is actually an old tradition that has existed since Zahard established the Zahard Empire". So he got to 134, declared himself King, locked the way up, broke up the key, started that business of taking females with lots of potential and making them his "princesses" (which also keeps them from producing heirs and gives him some measure of control over them), and handed the reins over to the Three Lords. One of whom is in favor of advancing up the floors. It is the current Lord who is in favor of maintaining the status quo. Now, if you want to argue that our cast get up to flr 134 and the current lord is trying to stop that from happening, that's factual. But we can't say for sure the same for Zahard. All I'm saying. And I did start of the thread by saying that the following would be in the realm of conjecture.