Summary,
Ryota Ishii better known as Tiberius, Guild Master of The Sanguine Dragons, has spent the last twelve years leading his guild on their journeys through the nine worlds of the DMMO-RPG YGGDRASIL. But now those times are drawing to a close. This night at the stroke of midnight the game's servers will be shut down for good marking the end of an era. It is on this last day that the guild has come together a final time to bid farewell to friends and to the game they had shared so much in. As Tiberius spends his last moments reminiscing about the past he inadvertently remains behind when the shutdown comes.
Now after Tiberius awakens and finds himself unable to log out a new truth dawns on him. He is no longer in the virtual world of YGGDRASIL and instead finds himself in an unknown world. Luckily for him, it seems his guild base has also made the transition. Yet it is not without its alterations as Tiberius realizes that the guild's NPC inhabitants have come to life since the transference.
Now, what will Tiberius do as he deals with the ramifications? But more so how will the inhabitants of the New World react to these new arrivals?
Foreword,
The Overlord series of light novels by author Kugane Maruyama is fun and interesting. Within the novels, Maruyama does a good job creating the world giving us plenty of details of its history and its inhabitants.
As with many stories of the isekai genre, Overlord is something of a power fantasy.
As typical with things of this genre a person gets whisked away to some other world where it's discovered they possess some extraordinary power. Or they have some kind of special destiny to save the world.
This fits in well with people's fantasies. I mean I have little doubt that many people who've played a game, watched a film/show, or read a book/comic haven't at some point fantasized about it.
Who hasn't thought about how cool would it be to take part in the story and go on some grand adventure? Of course, none of us who have done so has ever thought of popping into said story as just another random background character. No, we fantasize about what it would be like to travel the lands as one of the heroes, or perhaps take up the role of a powerful villain.
Ainz himself more or less follows that. In his world, he was a nobody, just another salaryman slaving away for a soulless corporation. Yet within the game of YGGDRASIL, he is a powerful member of a high ranking guild. Here he was somebody but still didn't stand out a great deal amongst the plethora of players.
Yet after finding himself transported into the New World, he is one of a kind. Practically a superman, and in some ways he may as well be a deity.
So I too decided to try my hand at writing a story set within the Overlord setting.
Now originally I went with the fittingly dubbed "Momonga & Me" style story.
It seemed simple enough, just toss my character into the Overlord story and see how it goes. However, this was more difficult than I had thought. Rather quickly it became a balancing act between Ainz and my own creation. How should I place my OC in events without taking away from Ainz? How do I resolve conflicts between them? These and other issues got me to abandon the idea and move on to another idea altogether.
So I came upon the next idea, leave out Ainz all together from the story.
Under this idea, I would have my character taking charge of the Great Tomb of Nazarick.
Yet again I ran aground of problems. The main dilemma here was the intrinsic differences between my character and Ainz. Because of this he would find some of the NPC's undesirable and would disapprove of their actions and behaviors. So I would end up altering the NPCs personalities to be more suitable. So I gave up on this idea as I found myself altering them so much they were no longer the Nazarick NPCs.
On the other hand, that failed attempt served to inspire the creation of the current form of the story.
In this version, I did away with Nazarick as a whole and instead replace them with my creations. Seeing as Nazarick and its inhabitants were used as a template for me certain similarities are to be expected.
I have also made the decision to keep the location for guild bases in the same area. The main reason for this for the narrative's sake since the majority of the events are centered in this region.
There will be a disparity between the events of this story and the events that were experienced by Ainz. Yet some events shall still occur as they were more reliant on the actions of parties outside Nazarick. Even the outcomes may be the same but the actions taken to get there can be markedly different.
This is something my old literary teacher referred to as the Broken Window Scenario. For clarification what this means is two scenarios can arrive at the same conclusion through different means.
Example: You're at home and hear a glass shatter in another room. Entering the room you find the window broken and a baseball lying on the floor. Now there a number of ways this could happen.
Scenario A) a group of children was playing with the ball when it went astray from them and broke your window.
Scenario B) the breaking of the window was not an accident as the ball was thrown out of spite.
Two different situations with distinctly dissimilar actions occur and yet the equivalent conclusion is achieved.
In regards to the settings of YGGDRASIL and the New World, Murayama has done well with providing us with a plethora of interesting details. However, there are many areas where information is sorely lacking leaving us to only speculate about it. Whether it's about various races, creatures, items & artifacts, or magic these are all subjects that have gaps to be filled. Because of these holes in the lore I, like many others, have been forced to improvise for the sake of the story. Thankfully there are countless works of fantasy to draw from. I tended to draw from sources like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, the Elder Scrolls, Warcraft, and other similar works. So don't be too surprised if you see terms, species, spells, or items that might be taken from these sources.
Now I know that not all will care for a story that does not include the likes of Ainz and the rest of the gang from Nazarick. I accept this but I do hope that those that do take the time to continue reading will enjoy it.