Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 9.1 - 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.

There are few points in one’s life where a loss can be described as absolute. After all, life isn’t as logical as an ehrengarde game, nor do you have the board left over to reflect on what went wrong—all you have are your unreliable memories and mercurial regrets. Any given situation, taken as a whole, makes for such a complex tangle of fates that it makes you question the efficacy of your local gods’ managerial skills. There are just as few moments in one’s life where your fate really hinges on a few tiny, infinitely flexible decisions.

The assassins were unable to say with certainty what it was that had put them in such a corner.

“O-Oww...”

After the arrival of an inexplicable whirlwind, the assassins were forced to retreat to Marsheim’s sewers—which were far more noisome than the capital’s nigh on immaculate system. None of them knew what had caused the sudden gusts; you couldn’t rely on mere meteorology to explain a freak cyclone strong enough to pitch bricks and trash at flesh-ripping speeds, confined to a single walled-in lot.

The pained groan came from the small-statured assassin that had taken the brunt of Erich’s heavy sword swing. She cast off her hooded cloak to reveal a small, furred body, not even a sword’s length in height, covered in a sleek umber coat. In Rhinian they were called hlessil, or, as less charitable folk of the northern isles had dubbed them, drolljacks—a foul, cruel name, meant to mark them as a race of clowns at best and incorrigible bandits at worst.

In her cloak, the hlessi’s silhouette resembled that of a mensch child well enough, but out of it, you could see her digitigrade legs and the tall ears atop her head.

“I’... ’urts...” she whispered, clutching at her wounded left arm; in agony as she was, it was not pain that constricted her voice—she was steelier than that—but biology. Her kith were not gifted with the robust vocal cords of other demihumans; they could speak only in hushed, breathy tones and high screams. This hard limit on their expressive range relative to most other thinking beings—confined to private, quiet correspondence or the sound of naked desperation—painted a target on their backs, especially in less tolerant realms than the Empire.

Tears trickled out from her eyes—almost fully black, due to the size of her pupils and sclerae. Her nose ran terribly. Her face showed the creeping discovery of her own agony plain as day. The most hardened fighters could fight through their pain. A rush of endorphins and a finely honed battle instinct had let her silence the alarm bells in her brain, but with the fight over, they had receded. The searing pain in her arm took hold of her attention with an iron grip now. Taking a fatal blow with one’s arm had been perfectly logical in the heat of battle, but now her arm was heavy and throbbing.

“Lepsia, you okay? I’m here.”

The one who called out to the hlessi was a vierman—her four arms bared as her cloak trailed behind her. She came silently around a bend in the sewers to lend support to her companion as the hlessi crumpled to the ground.

Out of all her crew, she had the most cause to go about cloaked. Viermen looked essentially identical to mensch—but for the extra set of arms tucked just under the first shoulder blades. Most of her species found it convenient to conceal their mid-limbs from prying eyes, tucking them back and out of sight under heavy clothes in public. A midlimb could never be as quick or as strong as either arm from the prime set, but the novelty and versatility of the extra arms had a way of attracting folk convinced that a vierman was just a natural step up from boring old mensch.

This vierman woman in particular wore long gloves over all four of her arms, and most of her body was covered in a leather cloak. The faint glimpses of dusky skin through the slits in her clothes at the thighs and upper arms—like Rhinian red tea faintly diluted with milk—suggested an ancestry that her face, now unconcealed, confirmed. The shade of her black, short-bobbed hair, in conjunction with the rest, suggested that she’d come—be it by descent or by sojourn—from the deserts, steppes, and the great salt lake south of the hamadas that crossed the Eastern Passage. One could guess that, one way or another, it was Rhine’s last war that had delivered her to this side of the border.

“Bleeding stopped? Everyone worried,” the vierman said to the hlessi.

“Shahrnaz...” Lepsia replied.

The peoples of the east didn’t have such deep-set eyes as those in the Empire, but many of them had long eyelashes. Shahrnaz’s reddish-black eyes were colored with an unmistakable concern.

“Can you move?”

“No...’an’t...”

“Okay. I carry. Be strong.”

Shahrnaz carefully placed her arms around Lepsia and gathered up her small companion. Her midlimbs braced her back and knees while her first pair cradled her small friend’s shoulders and legs for optimal safety.

“Where’s ’e o’ers...?”

“All together. The Sheikh too.”

Marsheim’s sewage system paled in quality compared to Berylin’s. There were fewer slimes put to work less competently, and so the air was thick and foul. Shahrnaz carried her wounded fellow with silent footsteps. It was not the way a warrior ran—these steps were honed by a life in the shadows.

Everything about the way Shahrnaz moved indicated that she was no mere fighter.

She slowed her steps as she reached a bend, focused her hearing, and drew out a small pocket mirror to check what lay ahead. She didn’t move immediately, however—she checked once more that she wasn’t being pursued before pressing onward. Everything she did reeked of reconnaissance training.

But Shahrnaz was no mere snoop or scout. She’d had to be absolutely covert—her work hinged on her ability to devise and dispense death without leaving any trace of her involvement.

Finally the pair of them reached an open area about the size of a room at a small inn.

“Doing quite all right, Lepsia?” a voice came echoing down from the ceiling. Across the room, two figures clung to the walls surrounding the passage leading onward. Both entrance and exit were narrow; perhaps this room was a spillway for overflow during heavy rains.

One of the figures was a huge arachne woman. If you crossed the Narrow Road Islands past the southern continent’s eastern edge, you would find yourself on the subcontinent located on the central continent’s southernmost peninsula. It was here that huntsman arachne could be found.

Huntsman arachne eschewed the use of their webbing for nests, unlike their kin, the jumping spider arachne. Neither were they like their tarantula compatriots, who used their webs to extend the reach of their senses. No, a huntsman’s webs were meant for combat.

Huntsman arachne were physical fighters. They were the largest of their kith, with the might and leverage to topple a callistian with ease. They were quite the oddity among arachne, known as they were to quickly circle and ensnare their prey to satiate their hunting cravings. At times, they gave up their spoils to use them as bait to take down an even greater quarry. In contrast with this fearsome reputation, this woman’s voice was incredibly calm and gentle.

“Main was rather worried. Main should have fought off that swordsman...” the arachne went on.

The arachne was still wearing her hood and veil; what skin she bared was a creamy, perhaps sandy color. Her Rhinian was natural and well enunciated, save that—for reasons unique to her—she refused to use Rhinian pronouns. Thus, no one knew her true name. Her teammates simply called her by the word she used to address herself: “Main.” There was no deep meaning to it; it was simply a foreign word of a language spoken in the subcontinent that meant “I” or “me.”

“A sword is easier to snag than a spear for Main. And for tum, well, it’s easier for tum’s speed to deal with a quick spear, is it not? Ve were quite a handful for ham...”

Main’s teammates already knew that tum meant “you,” ve was “they,” and ham was “we” or “us.” Main’s language didn’t mark gender via pronouns—whoever she spoke of, the third person singular was “vah.”

The arachne’s well-structured face showed obvious concern as she examined the injured Lepsia. The steady flame of her hunger for vengeance upon the adventurer who had so grievously wounded her comrade blazed behind those long-lashed golden eyes.

“But Main... They s’ole your ’eb...” Lepsia said.

“Main’s web?” the arachne replied. “No, no, Main let ve take vah. Main can make more, and vah’s so much harder to use when a weapon tangles or cuts vah.”

The arachne’s “garrote wire” was spun from her own natural reserve, meaning that it could be abandoned without much cost. It was useful for throwing her foes off-balance and ensnaring their weapons. Its disposability was key to its tactical convenience—it was, in short, a “fire and forget” weapon.

It was as Main had said—the mensch swordsman would probably have made a more suitable opponent for her. A sword’s grip was nothing like a spear’s; to many sword fighters it was like an extension of their arm. The most well-trained sword fighters were sensitive to the slightest disturbance of their blade, and so having a web tangle all of its cutting edge made for an incredible nuisance. It would be like forcing a master pianist to play in boxing gloves. Losing your delicate senses was a difficult thing to bear.

Main had no notion of this, but although Erich had a small library of countermeasures to attacks or interruptions from his foes, his style of fighting put a heavy focus on prevention. He worked to always remain one step ahead of his enemy, and that meant he was unguarded when it came to direct meddling. It was ironic, considering how many of his ploys hinged on a well-timed use of his Disarm skill. One could not blame the young adventurer—the fault most likely could be found in the fact that he had found a legendary weapon so early in his life. The Craving Blade could neither be stolen nor destroyed, and so any concern he might otherwise have felt about the threat of having his own moves being turned against him had been shelved away to gather dust.

Goldilocks’s limited arsenal was a self-imposed weakness; given no other choice or further time to develop, he would most likely realize his misstep and correct course with suitable countermeasures, eventually. But until that day came, Main knew she had an edge.

“No, ik’s my faulk for nok *tik* finishing her. I’m *tik* sorry,” said the other figure who had also taken up a position on the wall.

Her shadow loomed large as she swooped down, but she landed with less sound than a single drop of rain. Her long silver hair fell in tresses over the more human half of her frame, glowing slightly in the gloom.

“Primanne, don’t be ridiculous! Even ham didn’t notice until the last moment. Ve’s scout is truly talented,” Main retorted.

“Yes, *tik* buk, ik’s my job to nokice surprise akkacks and *tik* dispakch them,” the kaggen replied.

Unlike the other three, Primanne was of a race with a long history on the central continent. In particular, you could find them in the Empire’s upstart western neighbor, the Kingdom of Seine. Sadly, said history there was more troubled than that of their mensch and methuselah neighbors; an entire population born permanently brandishing deadly shears at the ends of their arms was bound to struggle with getting on in polite society, whether or not they had simple prehensile tarsi to reach out and hold at the true ends of those deadly meathooks.

Upon her bamboo-leaf-shaped torso were two wings that allowed for short flight. Unfortunately their large bodies meant that they couldn’t fly as well as other insectoid demihumans, and they paled in comparison to the wing power of sirens. Complicating their social prospects further, a kaggen’s lower mandible was an unusual, delicate assemblage—one that only someone with truly masterful elocution could use to speak in humanfolk tongues without inadvertent clicks and perennial difficulties with certain consonants.

“If only I killed the swordsman and thak scouk to *tik* skark with...” the kaggen muttered.

Primanne had removed her hood—an item enchanted for covert operations that not only cast the wearer’s face in shadow, but also hid their expression and eyeline from onlookers—to reveal an attractive face. The people of Seine favored healthy, sun-kissed skin; Primanne’s elegant face was the color of wheat. She had innocent eyes that drooped slightly at the edges and a small beauty mark on one side of them—a coveted feature in her homeland.

Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of a kaggen’s face was their large bifurcated jaw—a trait guaranteed to replace any impression of sweetness and charm with an aura of predatory menace in all but the most ardent and courageous of freaks. If she stood with her mouth shut, your average passerby would simply think that she was a refined beauty from the western lands. However, her image changed as soon as she spoke; her jaw opened horizontally, splitting neatly down the middle. Even at rest, closer observation could handily reveal the seams; it left a false impression of puppetlike artificiality. Even sepa had an easier time managing the social hurdles posed by their anatomy, learning to lip-sync around their envenomed mandibles.

“I’m jusk so *tik* fruskraked... I should have *tik* killed thak arachne girl...” Primanne went on.

Many in the Empire felt uncomfortable when they heard kaggen speak Rhinian and some struggled to interpret them at all. All the same, it was hardly worth blaming them for their own evolutionary quirks. Though for most kaggen, the soul-deep hurt of alienation itself (putting aside the matter of the material inequities) was a nonissue. Kaggen were an oddity in that they were, if not asocial, then certainly socially agnostic. Language, theory of mind, and the ability to participate in communities were not integral to their way of life—most felt no need for companionship outside of reproduction, and had the guts of steel and vicious immune system necessary to abide quite happily in total solitude. Primanne was out of the ordinary; most kaggen would never bother to learn Rhinian and attempt to integrate into any society, let alone a foreign one.

“No... If o’ly I cu’ down tha’ s’upid swor’sman...” Lepsia interjected.

“I am fault,” Shahrnaz said. “Should have not used bolts. Should have come.”

“Main got greedy,” Main added. “Main wanted to launch a surprise attack, but Main should have gone for the swordsman or the target instead...”

“No, no... I didn’k *tik* nokice them approach. I should’ve done a bekker *tik* job.”

Each one of these assassins was a veteran of their trade. They might have suffered defeat today, but their dedication to their work led them to consider all of the possible other scenarios that would have shut down or averted their conflict with the adventurers who had interrupted their mission. A less skilled group would not have felt the sting of regret so dearly; they knew their limits and the limits of their foes too well. They’d played poorly, and they knew it—now they could only ruminate on where they’d gone wrong, and how to avoid repeating their mistakes.

A single clap put an end to their complaining. It seemed to clear the air itself out of the room; the four assassins fixed their collective gaze on the end of the room, where a figure stood among the shadows.

“Are we feeling better now?”

The voice came from a mensch woman whose appearance was at odds with the grimy surroundings; her fancy black evening gown looked better suited to a noble’s manor. She was tall and slender, yet the dress, with its copious frills and ribbons, seemed a measure too up to speed with a young girl’s tastes. If she were at a ball, one might chalk up her choice to contrast her height and her girlish sensibility in hopes it would stand out fashionably and curry favor with those looking to play favorites or play the field with their freak flags in full display—but any action to be found here surely wouldn’t care for such frippery.

The complex tattoos that stood out here and there where a little skin showed—at her upper arms or thighs, where her gloves and boots ended—were a clear sign that she wasn’t just a woman with a discerning eye for fine clothes. She was covered in magic formulae. Such magic circles had gone out of fashion around two centuries ago—on the campus of the Imperial College, such markings had been denounced as “overblown and pretentious,” the indelible mark of a deeply insecure magician—but this woman favored them. She had tattooed them onto her very skin so as to leverage their reality-warping abilities to the utmost extent.

She didn’t have a staff—otherwise a signature of the magus’s trade—but she did have a ring that glittered dimly on her gloved left hand. An older magus would probably label her as a mage with quite the vintage taste. Or they would laugh in her face at her refusal to get with the times.

Magia weren’t just technocrats—they were nobility in their own right. Many had forgotten, or hadn’t realized, that among the things they discarded for the sake of elegance or ease were techniques that made up for this discrepancy. On this matter, she had freed herself from the unnecessary shackles of nobility and the bitter gossip of the bureaucratic world, and instead poured her efforts into her talents. In a way, in emulating the ways of the magia of old, she was perhaps a more fitting magus than those she had left behind.

“Yes, but Sheikh...” Shahrnaz said.

“We’ll discuss what went wrong later,” the woman said. “We shall retreat to our base and treat Lepsia. Be careful with her—the smaller the body, the more severe even the slightest loss of blood becomes, after all.”

“What tell the client...?”

“That is a concern for a later hour. I shall explain... No, actually, I think I’ll have a word. It seemed like the drug didn’t work on him.”

“Will we be in trouble?” Shahrnaz asked.

From the shadows, she went on in a voice that caused her entire body to shake—whether from laughter or anger, it wasn’t clear. “We were paid to catch a cat, not hunt a wolf. Did you get a proper look at the man?”

The group lived and died by the quality of its intel. If it was more accurate, then they could plan better for the situation.

“That was Goldilocks Erich,” she went on. “The poets didn’t embellish much, it seems.”

The four other assassins started chattering; that was the name of Marsheim’s most famous rising star! He was making moves to build organizational power and, most famously, had defeated Jonas Baltlinden—the shame of the adventuring community, a man once thought invincible. How much would they need to be paid to remove one of the city’s foremost and most upright adventurers?

“When our client missteps, the lot of us suffer for it. A pity that actors of our caliber must endure an amateur’s plot.”

“What should ham do, leader? Main will follow any one of tum’s orders,” the arachne said.

“Go out ahead to B-6; see if that way out is clear. We’ll need a word with our client’s client before we might formulate a better plan.”

The woman stepped forward out into the dim light. Her face was more stern than beautiful. She had sharp, well-defined features, and her pale skin—bluish where the veins ran—indicated that she most likely had roots in Rhine. Even the headdress, tied with strings that matched her clothes, wasn’t cute enough to change her image.

Her jet-black hair was dyed red and purple in places and was cut to ruler-straight dimensions. Perhaps all these elements, too, were chosen with magical purposes in mind.

“Wh-Whak abouk *tik* thak method?” Primanne asked. “Ah, buk *tik* the cak made off with ik though...”

“No, we cannot,” their leader replied. “According to my information network, Goldilocks has noble connections. I doubt we can expect him to have a short fuse we can count on. But it does make our plan of attack simpler.”

She scrunched up her narrow eyes—bordered by coral piercings—in a vicious smile. Her mind raced as she adapted her stratagem, sorting through every asset known to her. The corner of her mouth lifted up in a smirk, and the lily of the valley decorating her right cheek scrunched up with it. Even the complex tattoo inked deep into her skin responded to her desire for battle, the formula weaved into it glowing with wicked intent.

“I think I shall provide the youngsters a little lesson,” she said, “on what happens when you throw yourself into a fight blind.”

The women walked through the room, and despite the water that had settled from the previous day’s rain, their footsteps made no sound. After all, even though they had different roles within their team—scout, vanguard, rear guard, mage—they were bound together by their honed covert ability to pass entirely without trace.

This invaluable skill had been won at the end of grueling training and field experience. In the end, though, they would find that this path into the shadows that had been so perfectly prepared for them would deliver them, flailing and drowning, into a deeper dark than they could imagine.

Their fate was not so different from that of any other adventurer who, chasing dreams of heroism, finds themselves rooting about in the gutter for change instead. Even with the most well-trained talents, one misstep could lead them off the path toward their ideals for good.

Ideals and dreams were like a candle in the wind—if the breeze changed even slightly, the flame could wink out for good. And for most ideals, that would be the end of it—a quiet and undignified conclusion, ramifying on no one, signifying nothing. But some ideals, caught in the winds of adversity, shed embers far afield, where they catch, blaze, and drive on with the current until there is nothing left to burn.

“We’ll challenge their adventuring spirit. That newbie evidently didn’t receive his blessing through a clan.”

The assassins, who had entered a darkness from which they could not return, dealt in their silent handiwork not for wealth, but for blood and blood alone.

“The One Cup Clan will have our revenge—with interest. He has taken our sister’s limb; we shall take all four of his.”

They were a singular force, the secret queens of their domain. They did not hesitate; they did not question; how could they? What higher authority was there to answer to?

“Let’s leave this place. What awaits us is far more invigorating than the dirty work we’ve been doing. Let the slightly higher grade of trash peddle their distractions to the lower-city’s refuse; our calling has a higher purpose. Don’t you think?”

Four voices called out in response, each in their own tongue, yet seamless in their reinforcement of one another—yes, always. These five were no mere pack of overdressed and overpaid brigands; there was no desperation in their hearts. They were angels of death walking among mere mortals; women who lived for evil, upon evil, through evil—designing pretty deaths, arranging pieces on the board of the only game that mattered precisely as it pleased them. Their foulness was enough to pinch your nose at.

They moved deeper into the darkness and out of sight.

[Tips] The Trialist Empire of Rhine is home to races that aren’t seen elsewhere on the Central Continent, some of which aren’t even regarded as human elsewhere.