Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 8 - Chapter Pr

Preface

Tabletop Role-Playing Game (TRPG)

An analog version of the RPG format utilizing paper rulebooks and dice.

A form of performance art where the GM (Game Master) and players carve out the details of a story from an initial outline.

The PCs (Player Characters) are born from the details on their character sheets. Each player lives through their PC as they overcome the GM’s trials to reach the final ending.

Nowadays, there are countless types of TRPGs, spanning genres that include fantasy, sci-fi, horror, modern chuanqi, shooters, postapocalyptic, and even niche settings such as those based on idols or maids.

The scene opened on a small room in the Snoozing Kitten.

It was a modest, well-cleaned four-person room; the beds and desks had been moved out to make room for a feast. In its center a motley selection of tables of approximate height had been pushed together to form a single dining space surrounded by seats of various sizes to match the height of their occupants. Anyone who knew any of their esteemed number would be champing at the bit for a chance to sit among them.

Sat at the head of the table was the group’s leader: Fidelio, renowned as the Saintly Scourge of the Limbless Drake. His wife Shymar was snuggled up beside him, despite the meager space. To their sides were the saint’s compatriots.

There was Rotaru the Windreader, a stuart whose entire efforts were presently focused on knocking away the cuts of cheese that his fellows endlessly pushed his way with jeers and laughter.

There was Hansel, a huge bald man known as the Bell Crusher, whose hand was clutched tightly around his cup in clear impatience for the first drink of the night.

There was the Gourmand Zaynab, the party’s mage, whose brown-skinned hands quivered in excitement to finally break into the meaty main dish that stood smack in the middle of the table.

And finally, at the two lowest seats at the table, there were two fresh-faced adventurers basking in the glory of their seniors. They were known around Marsheim as Goldilocks and the Silent, already renowned as a pair not to be trifled with.

Margit had taken up her usual place on Erich’s lap, yet their usual cool demeanors were nowhere to be seen.

But that wasn’t surprising in the slightest. They had been invited to a feast held by the hero himself after finishing a grand adventure that had lasted an entire season. Here they were in the party’s inner circle, able to witness their glory firsthand, to hear every last detail of an epic quest bested by elite adventurers, so fraught with danger as to have grievously injured anyone less valiant than them. There was no way in all the world that they would be able to put a lid on their excitement.

Hansel had invited them on the grounds that it would be educational for the new adventurers to hear of Fidelio’s adventures straight from the source, but the excited pair were on the edge of their seats to simply enjoy the tale; they were hardly in the frame of mind to take notes.

“All right then, has everybody got a drink?”

Encouraged by Fidelio’s remark, everyone poured their preferred drink. Fidelio must have had quite some money to spare, for the table was lined with famous beverages purchased straight from the Wine God’s temple. There were cheaper drinks too, but it was clear that they had gone all out for today.

“Very good. Now then, I would like to preface this with thanks to our God for favoring us with safe passage back ho—”

“Hurry it up already! You may be called a saint, but I don’t remember you affiliating yourself with any parish!”

As Hansel brusquely cut off Fidelio’s speech, the rest of the party burst out in laughter. Lay preacher though Fidelio might have been, the fact that Hansel’s call for him to stop with his stuffy speeches didn’t ruin the mood hinted at either Fidelio’s own good character or the group’s natural bonhomie.

“Fine, fine! All right everyone—to our adventure!”

“To our adventure!”

The group all called out in unison with their cups raised—except for the two newbie adventurers, who were a beat behind the rest—before each downing their first drink.

The postadventure party was full of vivacity, as if to suggest to any onlooker that this was the only way a party should be. Lips were quenched with cups that refused to stay empty and looser tongues began to reminisce on the past adventure.

“Y’know, I gotta say, this time was actually pretty gnarly. To think that the deepest chamber of those ruins had been mazified!”

“I’m saying no to any adventures involving tight spaces for the next while. Us stuarts aren’t actually rats, you know! I’m so done with crawling through pipes!”

Hansel was already on his third cup of a strong, unmixed spirit. His face bore a few fresh scars. Apparently Rotaru had undergone a similarly trying experience, for he had his own share of complaints. Looking closer at him, the stuart’s beloved beard was frizzy at the edges—perhaps the last faint trace of a burn?

“I overused... I must be leaving the town for short while.”

Zaynab was the party’s only backline member, and so she didn’t have any obvious injuries, but it was evident that she had used almost all of her catalysts during the strife. Not only was she a methuselah blessed with their natural penchant for magic, she was a first-class adventurer—and she didn’t use second-class catalysts.

“The albino fox’s skull now in tiniest of pieces... The biggest shame.”

“What did you say it was again, some kinda rare artifact? Can’t you just use a skull from a regular ol’ fox? Just get Rotaru to help you hunt one down.”

“Shut your trap, Hansel! I don’t intend to work for the next month. I am not hunting a single fox, thank you very much. Plus I can’t leave my place empty for too long or the owner gets on my tail about it. Just pick up a hunter from off the streets and help them make a little pocket money.”

“A normal fox skull will not be doing. Mystic albino foxes are not being so common.”

Zaynab was a maledictor—a career hex-slinger, her art obscure even among Imperial mages. In order to safely use a curse, one needed some kind of vessel or substitute to absorb the backlash from the spell. It seemed that Zaynab’s had come from a vanishingly rare and mystically potent specimen.

That went to illustrate just how dangerous an enemy they had faced.

“So, what kind of foe did you fight?”

Erich couldn’t hold back his curiosity any longer and asked the group. Fidelio gave a wry smile and began to tell of their tale:

In the westernmost reaches of the Empire lie many ruins and archaeological sites, the result of a period of endless civil war. Among these are not just carcass-cities choked with the dust of ages, but holy places of gods—gods with limited patience for the indignity of their ruin, as well as the power to wreak vast misfortune upon the world should They reach the limit of Their appeasement.

The Rhinian pantheon had once set about to welcome these gods—who had not only been ousted from Their homelands, but had also been long forgotten—as Their fellows. Some refused to acquiesce to this, choosing to lead themselves into abjection instead of joining the Rhinian pantheon.

The truth was, to be swallowed up by another pantheon of gods brought with it irreversible change. It wasn’t so simple as receiving a new Rhinian name and scribing some ceremonial chants in the local cant.

The gods exist upon a higher plane, on another level above the base reality of our world of height, depth, and breadth where mortals live. But as They are beings of thought and spirit, They are heavily affected by those who worship Them—Their believers.

Given this, the original qualities that these gods possess undergo an indelible change should They join another pantheon. Think of it like how some folk will bend themselves out of shape to get by in a new community.

Even if They joined the pantheon initially as an act, the longer the gods were forced to continue in this manner, the more Their mental state warped to match it, and thus the gods changed. Several deities across the land, unhappy with the ways They were changing, decided to retaliate in a battle They could not win; in the end, Their places of worship were razed to the ground, branded as heretical.

These old temples in the centers of state power were utterly destroyed, so that any trace of the old gods’ legacies could be erased. Such treatment in the borderlands had not been so thorough, and to our loss, it had not been possible in Marsheim, absorbed as it was in its own martial bother.

It is true that here and there, the Empire did the bare minimum to destroy these places of worship or tear down their idols. However, in other places, to appease neighboring citizens, they simply barred entry to the temples. Doing such naturally led to the spiritual land growing stagnant, lingering feelings of vengeance thickening like pus, and whatever divinity that lay there festering in turn.

The adventure had called for Fidelio and his party to purge the last vengeful vestiges of these derelict deities, left behind in concession to the Empire’s limited manpower and budget.

“It used to be a lamia village,” said Fidelio. “There was a shrine hidden beneath one of the ruins that you could only get to through a small hidden passage.”

“I expect it was, what, three centuries old? As Their believers dwindled, the god’s divine protection grew weaker. When the last of the faithful up and left to gods-know-where, or their numbers reached zero, the god ended up perishing in front of Their own idol. It ain’t no surprise that They were left with one or two lingering regrets, really.”

Hansel spoke all while cutting up his premium steak—eating beef from overfed cows was a custom only among the Empire’s noble class—with a sympathetic air, and in response everyone gathered gave a silent prayer.

Such tragedies were common the world over, but no one could remain completely steely eyed when faced with the reality. The fates of both the god, who gradually grew more resentful as Their believers dwindled to nothing, and those same believers from long ago, who died without Their grace, were tragic.

“Reports came in from a few folks from a nearby settlement, saying that there was a serpent, thick as a grown mensch from shoulder to shoulder, living in the city’s ruins. When we arrived, we found an ichor maze had formed right where the fallen god had breathed Their last. We’d made sufficient preparations, yet it was still quite the ordeal.”

“W-Was the serpent really that huge?!”

“Nah, rumors have a tendency to snowball, Goldilocks. It was, hmm, about half that size, I guess?”

Even so, that would mean its body was about a meter around. Who knew how long that meant it was, but if it swallowed a person, it would be impossible to tell from the outside. An utter monster was the only fitting description for it.

This hulking former god traveled through the sewers that remained below the ruins of the city, enlarged by the ichor maze that it had created. As the party heard the tales of previous adventurers who had tried to lay siege upon it, despite the mummies of the deceased believers that ruled the land, their respect simply increased for the poets of the time who had returned alive to pen their tales.

At any rate, the two new fresh-faced adventures at the table would have had no chance of surviving as they were right now. Even wasted away, even exhausted, the divine were on another level. It was no less true of the shell left behind when divinity dies.

But to think that this party of adventurers had taken on this beast, navigated the ichor maze, all while fending off the hordes of lesser foes in the space of a single season... This was no simple feat.

The well-renowned poet—lovingly called “the Catchpenny Scribbler” or “the Faux Poet” by Fidelio—had begged Fidelio to be present at the feast, saying that it would be difficult for him to cobble together a song that didn’t seem like a transparent exaggeration, but Fidelio had turned him down. It was easy to imagine how much the poet would struggle in penning this tale.

“Although, an adventure like this might still be a ways off for you two. It isn’t every day that you bump into a fallen god, even here at ‘Ende Erde.’”

Buoyed on by the atmosphere of the crowd, Erich was pleasantly tipsy and so fully engrossed in the party’s tale that he didn’t consider any flags the conversation might have raised.

It was a fact that the Trialist Empire of Rhine’s pantheon of gods had taken root in this land too. Any gods that had openly sought to harm people had essentially all become subjugated after joining the Rhinian pantheon, and so worrying was, in all honesty, not a necessity.

“Although, it’s true that the stronger the foe, the more you seek to gain. It might be worth setting your sights this high at some point.”

“Yeah, you said it. The serpent’s hide that we got from this quest was pretty damn nice, I must say! We’ll need a real pro to work it, but I think we can make some light clothes that won’t make a sound out of it.”

“Ugh, I wish I got a cut of that beautiful hide... I coulda used it to pad my armor to make myself an even better frontliner than I am already!”

“C’mon Hansel, be happy that your scout will get some new fancy armor that’ll prevent him from dying in a stupid accident. If you ask me, you’re plenty hardy as you are!”

“Everyone is claiming spoils of the war. I am lamenting loss of the skull of the serpent...”

Zaynab pulled a bag from one of her inner pockets and opened it out upon the table to reveal a set of serpent fangs large enough to be mistaken for mensch daggers. Despite being separated from their venom glands, they could house powerful curses—ideal catalysts for Zaynab.

Despite her spoils, the mage was despondent. The party had been unable to bring back the venom glands—the part which contained the most power—unharmed, and not only that, they’d had to give up on taking back the serpent’s skull, which could be used as a hugely powerful cornerstone of curse magic.

“There was no blasted way we could’ve hauled that skull back! It was bigger than me!”

The task of moving a skull that outweighed an adult stuart would have been difficult for an army battalion with carriages; it was only natural that this party of four wouldn’t sacrifice everything else just for the sake of one coveted yet highly specialized treasure.

“Overly greedy adventurers dyin’ on the road back home is a tale as old as time. But you wouldn’t quit yappin’ on about it, so we used preservative medicine to bring this bloomin’ thing for you!”

Displayed proudly in the middle of the table was the main dish—a huge rack of ribs.

The two fresh-faced adventurers had been hesitant to dig in on the grounds that they were unsure what sort of meat it actually was, but to think such a tale lay behind it!

The serpent’s abdomen from the portion of the body nearer the head was Zaynab’s spoils, in addition to the aforementioned fangs. Fidelio was usually against holding postadventure parties at the Snoozing Kitten, but this huge piece of meat was the basis for his compromise.

After all, it was highly unlikely that a location unused to Fidelio’s party’s reputation would even agree to cook the damn thing. Serpents weren’t a regular menu item in the Empire, and a regular person wouldn’t even consider the act of consuming the corpse of a fallen god.

Zaynab had tested if the meat was poisonous back in the temple—which helped her case—and although everyone was enjoying it now, bringing something like this back was something that would usually not fly. But the party wasn’t superstitious, and so the maledictor’s appeals reached their flexibly pious leader’s heart.

The argument boiled down as follows: eating it and taking its strength for their own was the greatest offering and show of thanks they could make to the fallen god.

Zaynab’s argument, odd as it was, rang true, and so the other three agreed. And so, the fallen god’s meat had been carefully seasoned, coated in an alcohol-based sauce to rid it of its gamey flavor, then thoroughly cooked before being plated up.

“This is the meat from a serpent god, right? It...wasn’t a god that resembled a massive lamia, was it...?”

“What rudeness. I am always seeking beauty in food. Eating people is against ideals.”

“Yeah, come on. If it had been humanfolk we would’ve all made sure to not even let that idea get off the ground.”

Even as the methuselah put on a rather hurt expression, Goldilocks couldn’t help but feel a little exasperated—one’s gustatory ethics shouldn’t be reducible to something as basic as “Is it a person or not?” It was true that he’d eaten snakes once while he’d been roughing it, but who got into such hard times that they would think to eat a god?

No, considering Zaynab, it was more likely that if this was her original reason for signing on, then she would remain intractable in her ideals unless the situation was absolutely dire. She’d been so keen to join this adventure in the first place most likely because she had heard they would be encountering a huge serpent the likes of which didn’t exist in the colder reaches of the west, which must have set her taste buds tingling.

At the group’s insistence, the inn’s young owner and party leader, Fidelio, unsheathed a huge dagger and began to slice the meat.

Despite it being in front of his eyes, the young adventurer was still incredulous that not only had this man slew and brought back this quarry, his wife had managed to cook it up. Just what had the Hearth Goddess been thinking as She looked upon the mortal realm at a kitchen blessed with Her favor, where the carcass of a foreign god had not only been cooked up, but plated so delectably?

While praying for the serpent god’s peaceful rest in the afterlife, everyone (apart from the adventurer known as the Gourmand) bit into their herb-cooked meat with surprised expressions upon their faces.

For such a sacrilegious food, it tasted normal. Scrumptious, even.

The flesh was soft and juicy, unparalleled by any of the beef, pork, or fish arrayed around the central dish. While stewing in the pot, it had continued to absorb the heavy herb-based sauce that Shymar carefully kept adding for a plain yet rich, sophisticated flavor that lingered on the tongue.

It was difficult to ascertain whether it wasn’t greasy because it had once been a regional deity or because of Shymar’s skills in the kitchen, but at any rate the one who suggested this incredulous meal fortunately was not forced to take responsibility and eat the whole thing.

By the time several bottles and barrels of booze had run dry and the remains of the main dish were but licked-clean bones, the conversation had moved on to a sermon for the newbies on just how grueling an adventure could be.

“If I’m bein’ frank, I thought this was another case of some countryside folk layin’ it on thick with their rumors, with the monster seemin’ bigger than they thought ’cause they were scared, but I guess sometimes a big ol’ baddie is gonna end up waitin’ for you.”

Hansel was chewing on some good old regular pork, not serpent, as he gave his own advice to the adventuring pair, his tongue just possibly loosened by the alcohol.

Simply put, his advice was never to underestimate what looks like an easy gig.

Erich didn’t need to be told. He had already experienced his fair share of grim turnabouts, after all. He had almost died on an errand from his former madam to pick up an old book, he had encountered all sorts of hardships on patrolling this same madam’s new territory, and he didn’t even know how many people he had ended up cutting down during the simple task of coming home.

That wasn’t even factoring the pair’s recent troubles in being dragged into a straight-to-home-video escapade just trying to live decent lives as adventurers. Yes, it had been driven straight into their bones that there was no such thing as a peaceful adventure.

All the same, hearing these tales of adventures in lands they had never been to and the accompanying tribulations was music to their ears.

“Oh, I’ve got a good one. Remember what, two years ago, when we were comin’ back from dealing with some bandits and we ran into that checkpoint some local bigwig had put up?”

“Oh yeah! Ugh, what an ass. Looking down on me just ’cause I’m a stuart.”

“Agreed. Unless you’re not talkin’ metaphorically, of course.”

“Piss off, that was totally unnecessary! You better wear armor to bed tonight, Hansel, so help me gods!”

“Bad thing happened once distant time ago. Before meeting of this party. In time when the speaking of Rhinian was not possible. Did not have understandings of legmacy...legitimimicy...rightness of checkpoints. Did not know meaning of ‘stop.’ Lots of money...taken away.”

“Yeah, if I recall, after we told you what the rules are you went and cursed the lot of them, eh? You, what was it, cursed the money that would end up going into their pockets, right?”

“Money... Gold... It is root of evil. Easy to curse. Goldilocks, a warning for you. To be picking up change on ground could cost life.”

It was clear to Erich that in the western region of the Empire, it was dangerous going whether you were in a city or out. In particular, forces who were outwardly faithful toward the Empire didn’t hesitate to stoop to crime in their rural lands, far from the eyes of a margrave.

For this tale in particular, the local residents had gathered up all the money they could to hire the adventurers to oust some bandits who had holed up in an abandoned fortress—Erich was surprised that such a hackneyed way of living was possible—and after defeating them, they had been stopped at an illegally raised checkpoint and forced into a fight that was supposed to show them their place.

The moral of the story was that unless the local knights and nobles had been dispatched from the heart of the Empire, they had a tendency to be a disagreeable sort. They liked to claim the feats of others for their own, turning in criminals that had been captured by others and taking the bounties for themselves. Their pursuit of power pushed them into barbarity.

It was evident that the common knowledge that fraud was a mark of shame didn’t apply to them. Erich too had once taken up the words of a certain demon who said “It’s not a crime if you don’t get caught,” but it was a frustrating situation when the situation was reversed.

“Two years ago, huh... Was that the rug store incident? Rotaru, you remember, don’t ya? It was where some of your kids work or somethin’.”

“Ahh! Yeah, I’ll never forget that! Those knight bastards who would attack a caravan of merchants if they were friendly with the government!”

The stuart’s beard twitched with rage.

Unlike most adventurers, Rotaru had a family and threw himself into adventures to put food on the table. Stuarts were biologically inclined to have many children, and Rotaru could never have enough money to send his twelve sons and daughters to private schools and provide them with a decent life.

In many ways, Rotaru was the odd one out when it came to his family. Although he didn’t personally speak the palatial tongue, he had managed to send every single child to private school; many of his children had managed to find decent jobs at large businesses.

Erich was hugely curious what parental education had led to none of Rotaru’s children succumbing to the call of an adventurer’s life, despite their father being a frontliner for the saint himself.

However, he wasn’t yet close enough to inquire into Rotaru’s family situation without accidentally upsetting him, so he silently listened to the lesson. Erich, too, had reached his thirties in his previous life, and was fully aware that derailing a story would merely push the point of the conversation even further away. This was especially true when alcohol was going around.

“You really gotta keep an eye on those who have power, Silent, Goldilocks. If you see a noble with ‘von’ in their name around these parts it ain’t nothing more than window dressing. I learnt my lesson when I was just a kid. If any of my daughters even so much as chats up a so-called noble, I can kiss them goodbye to a life as one of their wives.”

“Yeah, I ain’t got any good memories with that lot either to be honest. Nothin’ worse than a rotten magistrate.”

“Wait a second... So the canton where you slew the limbless drake was...”

“Yep, overseen by a knight who was affiliated with an influential house. If the viscount hadn’t been an understanding sort I expect I would have ended up bringing him to Margrave Marsheim’s manor myself.”

It was untrue that Margrave Marsheim was merely neglecting the provincial areas; rather, he was struggling to find the best manner in which to get the vengeance-glutted bigwigs stationed under him to open their hearts. However, despite a reshuffle of the foreign noble’s local underlings, he had little success in his attempts to create a network across these powerful houses.

This was no real surprise. In Japan, it was a group of scary southern samurai who had managed to overthrow a military government that had leeched money from across the country for over 250 years. While Margrave Marsheim had successfully taken the head of the previous king, he had also erected a bust of this man in front of the imperially gifted bathhouse. Any who wouldn’t be swayed would merely find it even more frustrating.

Vengeance lies deep within one’s bones. The local powerhouses would stop at nothing if it meant causing trouble for the Empire. This was a lesson from his seniors that Erich had carved deep into his heart.

“We are outliers. People give job, then they throw us away. Important lesson.”

“I’d hate to agree with her, but it’s exactly as Zenab says. I’m a man who’s not on a family register, who hasn’t even got a fixed place to live. If you end up takin’ this whole thing lightly, thinkin’ you’re nothin’ more than a hired arm to cut down your employer’s enemies, then you’ll end up somewhere no good.”

Hansel was in agreement with Zaynab, who was sucking at the marrow of the serpent god’s ribs. Although he always had a cheerful front, it seemed he had quite a difficult past.

Indeed, there was a time where adventuring had acted as a place of refuge for people like that. Not everyone would hire someone whose identity couldn’t be verified. And so, the only paths left to those cast out by society were to stoop to crime or to pray for incredibly good luck as they searched for a kindhearted employer; but either option posed its own pile of administrative problems.

Because of this it made sense to receive the good graces of the Adventurer’s Association and do a few boring jobs to make a little quick coin. In times of hardship, it seemed like even the abode of those heroes who lived outside the shackles of national borders drawn in the Age of Gods couldn’t escape the humdrum realities of daily life.

“Take care when choosin’ your client. This goes especially for when you’re gettin’ clients outside of Marsheim. I know that won’t be far off for you, Erich.”

“Thank you kindly for the advice, Mister Hansel.”

“People around town keep wary of rumors, which means upright jobs are still goin’ about. Ah, you better keep your guard up too, Silent. You might find yourself on a quest to do a little investigation, then next thing you know, you find yourself strung up as an accomplice for attempted robbery. It’s not easy to prove your own good name.”

“We’re really grateful to learn how to avoid these common pitfalls. Thank you, Mister Rotaru.”

“Aw, quit it. Call me Rotaru. It makes my beard twitch to hear a young lady call me ‘Mister.’”

The conversation had taken a grave turn, but still the festivities continued.

By the end, Shymar was shouting at the wasted men of the group, and if the awful scene of two adventurers on wobbly legs cleaning up their own vomit was omitted from the poet’s tale, it was a fitting ending to a grueling adventure that the poet would enjoy fashioning into a song.

However, there was something that Goldilocks, who was helping to tidy up with the landlady, didn’t realize because he had far exceeded his limits despite his Heavy Drinker trait... He had completely missed the common rule that in TRPGs, when the PCs are told to be careful, it usually signals that danger is sure to come.

[Tips] Marsheim is managed as an administrative state of the Empire and is ruled by nobles from its central region. However, they are struggling to deal with the local powerhouses, with no indication of forward progress.