Now, since talking is a free action, let me proceed to tell you the story of my last couple of days in great detail, which won’t take any time here in the present because your world is broken. Specifically, let me spin for you the tale of how the gods told me, again, to please stop breaking the world.
—Jake, preparing to regale his latest exploit
A Dungeons & Dragons fanfic by David Storrs
(available free on his Patreon page).
Jake is a 40 year old programmer who has been yanked to the land of Flobovia and made ruler of said country, due to a quirk in local law. He is thus in the unique position to be the de facto dictator of about thirty million citizens and having to deal with the invading army of Deorsi.
To deal with that, he has only his wits, his encyclopaedic knowledge of the world (courtesy of a mind whammy by the wizards who summoned him), and the outsiders view on the rules governing Flobovia and what he soon comes to call Stupidworld. You see, the world as it is, is modelled after the rules of Dungeons & Dragons, with the Rules As Written interpretation. So Jake naturally has to employ munchkinry to have even a chance of saving Flobovia and its capital city, Capital City…
The Two Year Emperor provides examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: Literally. Jake's Landguard has Robert, Rob, Bob, and Aerith. Though generally the names tend to be on the mundane side.
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Wall of Force is two-dimensional, with all the implications thereof.
- Anti-Magic: Par for the course and a neat trick the Landguards use.
- Apocalypse How: Since Stupidworld is currently on its way to a species extinction, if not all life…
- Batman Gambit: Albrecht and Afi
- Character Level
- Cheap Gold Coins
- Clown-Car Base: Gryfhammr.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: What would have happened hadn't Jake rescinded the punishment of the bet with Colborn.
- Death Is Cheap: Except for Jake
- Deity of Human Origin: Gods having "ascension" verboten implies this possibility.
- Divine Conflict: Team Life and Team Death have a proxy war. Death is winning. Regularly.
- Divine Intervention: Of the Cosmic Retcon variety to circumvent Jake's mortality, or inaccessibility to resurrection magic of Stupidworld.
- Divine Ranks: There are major gods, like the True God (Shailos), the death god Neklos, not so major gods like Loki and some others, minor gods and curiously enough overgods setting the rules for the "regular" gods.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Duncan. He also moonlights as a One-Man Army.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Considered.
- Eternal Recurrence: So far the undead apocalypse happened at least half a dozen times, once every few thousand years. And is currently in the process of happening again, even if it hasn't reached Flobovia yet.
- Evil Laugh: When a particularly nasty idea takes hold in Jake's brain.
- Experience Points: Duh.
- Forgotten Superweapon: Played with, in the sense of deliberately forgotten. Since the weapon in question would be devastating, and forgetting it had considerable advantages as well.
-
Game-Breaker: Jake had multiple so bad they necessitated divine intervention.- Infinite Wishes + Freeing the Genie, in a sense. Vetoed but only for the last maybe six thousand years.
- Infinite Money. No veto.
- Infinite Spells bought from NPCs, or rather buying spells in the market in a capacity completely untenable for the population, let alone the market, to provide. Vetoed.
- Geas: Part and parcel of the world. And unbeknownst to him, already applied on Jake
- God Needs Prayer Badly: There is definitely a correlation, but it's unclear which enables the other.
- Gone Horribly Right: The Archmagi and Landguard altering Jake's mind to remove any morality or restraint. When Jake finds out, it means they have a genius with no morality or restraint who wants revenge on them. By the time the dust clears, 2/3rds of the Archmagi and most of the Landguard are dead.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: No one is exactly evil, including the ones who are. The Deorsi are just trying to survive the Zombie Apocalypse, Afi is just trying to not be turned into a sockpuppet by his god, and the Flobovians would just like to be left alone to enjoy their utterly ridiculous economy.
- Have You Seen My God?: Herrún. In fairness, she's dead. But they're working on it.
- Heroic BSoD: Due to in-universe Executive Meddling Jake was pretty much amoral towards Flobovia's enemies. Once he regained his faculties he curled up into a ball or drowned in a magic booze bottle.
- Immortality: Let's see…
- Immortality Bisexuality: Albrecht has been old enough to be both father and mother.
- Immortal Procreation Clause: Inverted by Deorsi law.
- Living Forever Is Awesome: The Deorsi in general, also Jake's opinion
- Longevity Treatment: Provided free of charge by the Deorsi church.
- Resurrective Immortality: Magic generally allows for resurrection. Currently the oppositely aligned death god takes exception.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: The opinion of the archpriest is that people are meant to die when they die and living forever is subverting His divine plans.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Jake slips increasingly from this into becoming alcoholic to deal with PTSD, which is entirely unknown on Stupidworld.
- It's the Only Way to Be Sure: An ace Jake keeps in reserve.
- Kill the Ones You Love: Due to a ridiculously high diplomacy check Big Bad Afi was emotionally considered a dear friend when Thomas struck him down.
- Knight Templar: The Landguard protect the Land, the Law, the Ruler—in that order.
- Level Grinding: Openly discussed and employed.
- Loophole Abuse: It's all about munchkinry.
- Mind Rape: In a curious example used both offensively and defensively as a Laser-Guided Amnesia slash psychological Healing Shiv.
- Morale Event Horizon: Made a whooshing noise as it passed Jake.
- My Country, Right or Wrong
- Not the Intended Use: We did say munchkinry, right?
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Exploited brilliantly by Thomas when everyone fails a diplomacy check.
- Orbital Bombardment: One of the first tricks out of Jake's bag. When enemy commander Albrecht showed he understood the trick and thanked Jake for showing it to him, cue Oh, Crap!.
- Precision F-Strike: In the entire >200,000 words, there has been one swear that could not be used on US primetime TV.
- Prestige Class: Probably not happening according to
Word of God - Pungeon Master: Loki and Jake when they engage in a pun duel. Though the latter learned to rein himself in, since his opponent is a Physical God. It is simply wiser to keep him happy than to try to win those duels.
- Puppeteer Parasite: What the death god probably would do, if he knew of Afi's deception. Depending on the degree of puppeteering this might range from And I Must Scream to Empty Shell.
- Reasoning with God: The whole reason (pardon the pun) Jake is still alive, or—technically speaking—didn't die. Loki also can be reasoned with, within reason, as long as one is reasonable, otherwise one becomes seasonable.
- Religion Is Wrong: Jake's stance. It tends to come with problems in a setting with multiple physical gods and miracles happening.
- Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Suze as head chambermaid apparently had this role to previous emperors, with more implied…
- Secret-Keeper: Herrún is one of the divine variety. Sacrificing secrets (and thus being unable to remember or even recognize them) gives her power.
- Shout-Out:
- Lots of Firefly references, including about half a chapter which is an unabashed shot-for-shot copy of the Big Damn Heroes trope name episode, Safe.
- And a couple to Star Wars.
- "I spared an idle moment to regret that we couldn't use Plan M. Colburn died in Plan M. I liked Plan M.
- Shrinking Violet: Suze
- Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Had thankfully been abolished by a previous emperor.
- Indentured Servitude still existed, though. Implied to have been taken care of.
- Summon Everyman Hero: Explicit code of law in Flobovia. For good and bad.
- Symbiotic Possession: Of the divine variety.
- Team Pet: Also Suze. Everyone wants her to overcome her confidence issues.
- The Hero Dies: Necessitating Divine Intervention.
- There Are No Therapists: Not much of an issue for the Stupidworlders. For Jake, on the other hand…
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: When Apocalypse How can be considered a viable tactic…
- The Trickster: Loki
- The Undead: In bunches.
- Turn Undead: The Landguard blow up lots of undead just by yelling at them.
- Trapped in Another World: Part of the premise.
- Vancian Magic
- The Unfettered: Mind-altered Jake.
- When She Smiles: Suze, due to her nearly crippling self-confidence.It turns out that, if we ever ran out of magical torches, Suze is quite capable of lighting up a room with her happy smile.
- Zombie Apocalypse: What happens when things go From Bad to Worse
