Fanfic / Of Maple Syrup, Skeletons, and War Crimes

We all know the drill. Nazarick arrives into a dark fantasy world and much happens until eventually our dashing "hero" conquers a kingdom of his own.

Here instead our dashing hero arrives into a dark fantasy world too, but one of heroes and villains, of alien invasions and cosmic entities and he does found a kingdom of his own too. One built over the ashes of the eviliest place on Earth.

Of Maple syrup, skeletons, and war crimes is a Round Robin Crossover Fan Fic between Overlord and Marvel Universe created by Deatstroke. In it, an unexceptional Japanese salaryman wakes up in his game avatar Ainz Ooal Gown commanding the now-sentient sources of Nazarick, and finds himself in the Canada of the Marvel Universe. They proceed to conquer it and begin their ascension as big players in a superhuman world, navigating both politics and other forces that can match even their immense might.

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Of Maple syrup, skeletons, and war crimes contain examples of:

• Affably Evil:
  • Ainz, despite acting the part of an evil overlord, is actually very forgiving and generous to his subjects. Most of the NPCs of Nazarick merely see it as part of his immense mercy and make them even more loyal to him.
  • Doctor Doom and Magneto become this to Ainz when they begin their partnership with him, to the point that he sees Doom as a real friend.
• Alternate Universe: Along with the changes produced by dropping Nazarick into the Canadian tundra, this story takes place not in the primary continuity of Marvel Comics (Earth 616) but in one of the many other worlds in the Marvel multiverse. (Earth 323) This is a justification for allowing the authors to drop or modify events and storylines from the comics that they didn't care for or that would get in the way of the story they wish to tell.
• Always a Bigger Fish:
  • In the canon for Overlord, Ainz and company are vastly more powerful than anyone else. In a version of the Marvel Universe, Ainz and the Floor Guardians may be near the top rankings for people in this world in their areas of specialty, but they aren't at the top and there are beings of other planes or dimensions or out in space that easily overshadow them.
  • Dr. Strange is this to Ainz in the magic department, mostly due to his status as the Sorcerer Supreme with an encyclopedia of skills and years of experience fighting cosmic horrors. However, Ainz’s arrival opened the doors to extra-dimensional beings that Strange had to battle alone for months nonstop to drive them back. While Strange decides that he could probably take down Ainz, the battle will be incredibly long and difficult.
• Anachronic Order: The first chapter begins with Nick Fury being informed that Canada has gone to war and then surrendered to a nation or group called Nazarick. Subsequent chapters jump back and forth between events after this conflict, and events leading up to it. Being a Round Robin, there is also the tendency for participating writers to jump in with whatever bits of the story they wish to cover, which may happen at different points in the timeline.
• Anti-Villain: Compared to the extremely repressive and borderline evil Canadian government, Ainz comes off as a saint and things even improve somewhat in Canada. However, he’s still very ruthless and willing to do morally questionable things to ensure and increase his power.
• Bash Brothers: Surprisingly, Shalltear and Logan become this after spending most of their first meeting trying to kill each other.
• Benevolent Boss: Ainz is this with both the NPCs and the people who end up under his protection.
• Berserk Button: Any person who isn't Ainz claiming to be a "supreme being" in the presence of one of the NPCs will immediately draw their ire. Pandora's Actor hearing the Master of the World do just this actually gets the usually easy going Doppelgänger to immediately decide to want to kill him.
• Be Yourself: A monstrous example with Dario Agger, who decides to shed off his human guise for his Minotaur form and behave with utmost ruthlessness after seeing how Ainz took over Canada and was accepted by the common people. This convinced him that people won't care if they see him as a monster unless they are "on their side" (the American government) and above punishment as long as they have powerful influence and wealth.
  Dario: So if a leader of a nation can be a walking skeleton and be loved in spite of the atrocities he commits... why should I even bother?
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Ainz forms one with Doctor Doom and Magneto.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Ainz is an undead Overlord who took over the country of Canada. However, he is actually a lesser evil, as the government he overthrew had literal concentration camps for mutants. As a result, although normal people are scared of their new ruler, the freed mutants celebrate their newfound freedom.
• Cheerful Child: Nora is smiling and laughing all the time after Ainz rescues the mutants.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Ainz has some of the scientists and soldiers that he captured from the concentration camp tortured for information.
• Combat Pragmatist: Logan, despite getting thrown around by Shalltear’s utterly broken power, can get a few good licks in by taking advantage of his ridiculous Healing Factor and playing on her sadistic tendencies.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Dario Agger is the amoral CEO of Roxxon who's working behind the scenes to push the United States of America into invading Canada. He's not doing this because he's upset about Ainz's actions, but rather that he took Roxxon's oil facilities. Dario also has a habit of killing his employees when they disappoint him, if he needs to make an example, or if he just needs a one-use stress ball.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Canada stood no chance against the forces of Nazarick.
• Dead Fic: The fic has not been updated since October 1, 2021.
• Death Is Cheap:
  • Ainz’s resurrection magic allows him to easily bring people back from the dead, either as their normal selves or undead servants.
  • Bruce Banner’s whole deal as the Immortal Hulk, though for him it's Played for Drama and Played for Horror. Mostly because Bruce actually wants to die, death is incredibly painful to him, and the Hulk always brings him back.
• Elaborate Underground Base: The forces of Nazarick created one called Moria somewhere under Canada. It started out as where liberated mutants would stay, but would later become the home for Nazarick's main intelligence gathering operation and the place where most raids or other types of operations into the world above were launched.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • Most of the superheroes and even Nick Fury consider Ainz to be a ruthless, incredibly powerful, and cunning supervillain on par with Doctor Doom. While they are right that he’s powerful, they have no idea that Ainz is basically making things up as he goes which usually pans out.
  • Ainz, amusingly, refuses to believe the completely frightening and ridiculous fact that aliens and other horrors exist and constantly invade Earth only to be repelled by superheroes, with all the world's governments being completely incompetent to do anything else other than watch and try to claim credit while chasing the real saviors after the situation is resolved. He believes that there is really a conspiracy in the works to keep the public compliant.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Ainz is very egalitarian when it comes to recruiting people. As long as they're useful, it doesn't matter who/what they are.
• Evil Versus Evil: The forces of Canada vs. the forces of Nazarick is this. On one hand, there is a secretly despotic government that does inhumane experiments on mutants. On the other, are the human-hating, and sometimes eating, monsters of a Guild from another universe.
• Expy: Emma and Nora are extremely obvious substitutes/replacements for Enri and Nemu.
• Fantastic Racism: The denizens of Nazarick all look down upon those not of Nazarick. However, they do so in different ways.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Not that friendly, but the conquered Kingdom of Canada has undead walking around as beat cops who are actually effective in fighting genuine crime and maintaining the kind of social order people need to go about their lives. Of course, there are plenty of sinister undertones in the sorts of laws they may be enforcing.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Captain America doesn't want to believe that a country that allied with the US could commit atrocities similar to what Nazi Germany committed.
  In the air hung the perfectly realistic representation of something Steve was intrinsically familiar with. The details had changed, old wooden guard towers replaced by high technology cameras, dogs complimented by tracking devices and soldiers wielding sleek rifles. Yet Steve could not confuse it for anything else, for he knew too well what it was. The cruel sneers of the guards, the emaciated faces of the prisoners, the screams, the filth, the suffering. Steve had seen one too many of them during the war.
  But these were not the camps in Poland or Germany. It was not the Black Forest that surrounded them, but coniferous trees up to where the eye could see. It was not people whose skin colour or religion which were trapped inside, but people with characteristics that could only be defined as ‘mutations’. There were no German soldiers dragging bodies to mass graves, nor where the tears of their still living captives paid any more heed. It was not the Swastika which flew produly from the flagpole, but the Maple Leaf.
  Steve did not want to believe it, Steve would not believe it.
• Healing Hands: After Ainz takes over Canada, he has his subordinates who can do this to heal every person with disabilities, supposedly to increase the workforce, but possibly also for good PR.
  • Before that, Ainz had Lupusregina to heal those among the newly rescued/recruited mutants who needed it, which given that they were in a concentration camp was probably most of them.

• Lack of Empathy: Doctor Strange sees that Ainz is more like this rather than pure evil.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: The denizens of Nazarick are, with few exceptions, complete monsters who see all non-denizens of Nazarick as second-class creatures at best, or food/toys to destroy at worst. Despite this, they are somehow still better than the unrepentant, anti-mutant hunting/experimenting government behind Canada.
  • This is made even more apparent after it is shown that Canada was secretly taken over by a supervillain who has plans to conquer the world and literally sees mutants as materials to use to achieve said goal.
• The Mole: This seems to be Pandora's Actor's mission, having joined Alpha Flight. In a form other than his default one of course.
• Mook Horror Show: One Canadian soldier has a front-row seat as Shalltear wrecks the tanks that are supporting them. He decides to lay down his weapon and accept his end rather than fight on. This accidentally saves his life, as Shalltear was ordered to not kill anyone who surrendered.
• Mundane Luxury: Lampshaded in a chapter set the day after the first lot of mutants are freed from a concentration camp and taken in by Ainz, with it being outright stated that when "the small things can be paradise on Earth when rediscovered, even in the midst of trial and tribulation" when you've been deprived of them. For the newly liberated mutants, the small things in question included being warm, clean clothes and bedding, real food (rather than kibble rumored to be repurposed pet food) in sufficient quantities for them to feel full, and being able to sleep for as long as they need to.
• Noble Demon: Both Ainz and Doctor Doom are this, which is why they happen to get along so well.
• No-Sell: When spying on Doctor Doom from a secondary base, Ainz makes sure to put up defenses to prevent detection and travel into the room he's in. Not only does Doom know he's being watched, but he also teleports to Ainz's location with no difficulty whatsoever, something that astonishes Ainz.
• Number Two: Emma is becoming this to Ainz when it comes to the mutants under his protection.
• Outside-Context Problem:
  • Ainz and the Marvel Universe are this to each other, with Ainz displaying the utterly broken power of an Isekai protagonist possessing his maxed-out game character while the Marvel Universe throws at him superheroes, Mutants, government conspiracies, superhuman dictators, aliens, and extra-dimensional horrors.
  • Shalltear is taken aback by the fact that she can’t break Logan’s Adamantium bones, and her frustration and anger leave her open for his attack once he heals up. Even when her Class Skill, Purifying Javelin, slows down Logan's Healing Factor significantly, he's able to apply Worst Aid by cutting out the flesh that's infected.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • Ainz shows no mercy to the Canadian government agents who run the mutant concentration camps, partially due to their pointlessly cruel execution of prisoners and partially because it reminded him of how his mother died.
  • Although all of the people who work in the mutant concentration camp get their just desserts, special mention must go to Ajax, who gets demolished by Albedo.
• Recruitment by Rescue: How Ainz ended up with hundreds of mutants under his command shortly after arriving in Marvel Canada. It should be noted that, unlike the inhabitants of Carne in canon, said mutants were fully aware that Ainz was an undead supervillain from the get-go; but as far as they were concerned, this was very much overshadowed by him being the one to free them from a concentration camp.
• Shoot the Messenger: Dario Agger's assistant informs his boss about Ainz's refusal to return Roxxon's oil facilities before begging Dario not to kill him for telling the bad news. Fortunately, Dario doesn't as his underling remembers to beg.
• The Short War: Nazarick conquered Canada in less than an hour after declaring war. It ends up being called the One Hour War In-Universe.
• Shout-Out: When Nora meets Ainz, she believes he is a supervillain because of his presentation.
• Take That!:
  • One of Dario Agger's hapless and very terrified employees is named Jose Quesada.
  • Another member of Roxxon's board is a man named "Ailes" as in Roger Ailes, with Roxx News being a thinly-veiled copy of Fox News that purposefully spreads right-wing talking points to benefit Roxxon's bottom line.
• Terrifying Rescuer:
  • Ainz is this to the abovementioned rescued mutants. Especially since as previously mentioned Ainz did absolutely nothing to conceal what he is and dealt with the camp's guards with brutal efficiency and quite a bit of necromancy. Circumstances resulting in them getting a good enough look at a decent-sized chunk of Nazarick's forces for it to be extremely clear that Ainz had an army of monsters at his command didn't help. On the other hand, all the crap they'd gone through prior to Ainz showing up meant that, while scared, the mutants weren't anywhere near as afraid as you'd expect.
  • Shalltear was given the job of locating a facility that was imprisoning and selling mutants. This trope inevitably ensued.
• This Cannot Be!: This is Puck's reaction to learning that Canada has been under the control of a supervillain for years.
• Torture for Fun and Information: Lupusregina, helped along by a few other NPCs, cheerfully demonstrate how to remove the collars and chips that were attached to the mutant prisoners. They do this by showing how they are used and removed from one of the prison managers. Apparently, they didn't even know what anesthesia was. Thankfully, the issue was brought up before they started doing it to the mutants.
• Villain Protagonist: Ainz and the residents of Nazarick are this. While Ainz is intentionally playing the part, most of the other residents of the tomb are varying degrees of sadistic and bloodthirsty in spite of their quirks. In addition to that, they all hate, or at least look down on, anyone who isn't either one of them or a Supreme Being.
• Wrong Assumption: Doctor Strange assumed that since Ainz was the first sign of the alteration of magic in the world, that he must be the cause and sought to destroy him. He only realizes this isn't the case after a short conversation with Ainz and Doctor Doom.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Doctor Doom assumes that Ainz is a strong magic caster from another plane who somehow ended up stranded on Earth. He also thinks that Ainz was spying on him because the undead was looking for an equal.

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