Foreword

It should be said that this is not a story for everyone.

That isn’t me trying to be pedantic or putting on airs. Simply put, this story is not going to appeal to everyone. And that’s perfectly fine. Anything that is universally liked is probably so generic and least common denominator that there is nothing special about it, and nothing that sets it off from the rest of the crowd.

This story is not going to be a tale of raucous hijinks and over the top domination, as some of my other stories have been. It is not going to be a sex-filled romp through a virtual world. You won’t find much, if any, talk of sex at all in much of the book.

This story takes place in another world, which plays by another set of rules. Readers will recognize elements of the LitRPG and Isekai genres, but they aren’t going to apply in the same way as things usually do. There is no virtual world, and no respawns. And the main character is not going to be obscenely overpowered from the start.

This is a world set in a medieval fantasy setting, and that brings with it certain considerations, especially when talking about social structures and social morality. In medieval times, a girl who got her first period was considered a woman, and was eligible for marriage. This did not mean that the people of that age were all pedophiles, but that the world was a different place then. A person’s life expectancy was only 31 years, give or take, and the poorer you were, the shorter it was. The simple need to replenish a population in a world where childbirth itself took the lives of one in three women meant that people did not have the luxury of waiting until two thirds of a woman’s projected lifespan was past to seek to bring in the new generation.

This story is also going to be different from most you see in the LitRPG or Gamelit genre, because it is not focused on a virtual world, or mechanics that would be at home in any video game. Instead, this story takes a lot of elements from tabletop gaming. Specifically, this story is meant to read like one was sitting at a table during a Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 campaign. There will be dice rolls and saving throws, skill points and encumbrance. The characters will be rules-legal for a D&D 3.5 campaign, with a couple minor homebrew elements.

My intention is for fans of D&D to read this book, and feel as if they were at the tabletop, watching the campaign unfold. I want readers of fantasy to see a fantasy story, as told through the lens of a D&D campaign. I feel that the story does this, and does it well, but I know that this approach is not for everyone. And that is OK.

For all you players and DMs out there, I hope you get fond memories of stumbling through your first campaign, sometimes getting lucky, and sometimes finding you’ve made stupid mistakes that you wish you could take back, all while the dice gods and the demon lord Murphy look on in anticipation. For fantasy fans, I hope you enjoy the story, and perhaps get inspired to venture to your local gaming store, pick up some dice, and roll up a character to tell a story in a campaign of your own. And for the rest? Welcome to the dungeon. Grab a d20, and roll for initiative.

Yours,

Stuart Grosse