Valkyrie's Shadow

The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, Part III: Afterword

This story is a kingdom builder, and the latest volume was no exception even though it might have read like a kingdom destroyer. It’s the same thing…sort of?

The focus this time lies on the anatomy of social, political, and economic movements and how one might develop in the New World setting. Contrary to how most fictional – and even nonfictional – pieces portray them, they aren’t as simple as people getting angry or inspired over something. Earth’s history is filled with movements for us to study, and, no matter what type of movement it is, they must follow a certain series of steps in order to succeed. Those that don’t, invariably fail.

There are three major movements in this volume, but, before we begin discussing those, we must first take a look at the country that they take root in.

Once you add up all of the little details, it’s hard not to see the Holy Kingdom of Roble as Overlord’s fantasy Hispania. But which Hispania is it? Most people would point to its post-Reconquista form, but it seems to be more than that. When one looks at the place and person names in the Holy Kingdom, the Mozarabic tone of Al-Andalus is evident, as are some far-flung Germanic ones that one might find from the Visigoths that came before them.

In terms of its political structure, the Holy Kingdom may be compared to the Caliphate of Cordova, replacing ‘Caliph’ with ‘Holy King’. It being a staunchly religious country could lean to either Islam or Catholicism, though the attitudes and general intolerance of the Holy Kingdom’s people seem to point to their culture being drawn from the period after the Reconquista.

Ultimately, I think that Maru probably just grabbed things from here and there while mostly leaning on the late-medieval/early-renaissance period of Hispania to characterise most of the country. With that in mind, I did my best to follow his themes for the Holy Kingdom of Roble.

Right from its introduction in Volume 12 of Overlord, Roble is characterised as a ‘very religious country, though not as religious as the Slane Theocracy’. Light Novels are extremely weak when it comes to worldbuilding, though. In the case of religion, I don’t think that it’s the cause of the Light Novel ‘format’, which Maru is pretty good at jiggering around with. Maruyama is not alone in his almost nonexistent touch when it comes to portraying religion, and that results in religion being replaced by a trope or two in most Light Novels.

When one writes, everything becomes a character. Countries are characters; environments are characters; organisations are characters. Interactions between characters are the primary driving force of writing, and this is where most Light Novels fall flat. When one attempts to put together what they know about the Faith of the Four in Overlord, they basically get the healing guild that hates the Undead. That’s it.

Imagine a character whose only traits are healing powers and their dislike of one thing? Yeah, that character is literally two-dimensional. If you’ve ever wondered why religion feels so lame in Overlord canon, this is why. It’s also pretty much all religion in Light Novels. ‘Churchbad’ is added if they are cast as an antagonistic force. Otherwise, religion is just this harmless thing that exists to provide an essential service with no agency of its own.

Since I try to draw as much from canon as possible for my characterisations, religion is highly intertwined with society in Valkyrie’s Shadow as it should be in settings like the New World. People live their faith and faith grants very real power, so what does that say about the Faith of the Four?

The first thing you dredge up is that it, for all intents and purposes, is a cookie-cutter ‘good’ religion in the worst sense of the concept. It’s this weak blob of vague ethics and morality that loosely represents the values of boomer Japan. Also, for the same reason, sex and views on sex-related things make up most of its ‘input’ throughout the series. That input is basically a non-motivation, so it doesn’t do anything for the Faith of the Four’s nonexistent agency.

Purity is a commodity, making virgins and single, available women dominate the ‘eyes’ of the cultural narrative. This gives the Faith of the Four a weird sort of ‘male gaze’. Female Priests and Clerics have this sort of sex symbol treatment whenever they pop up. Extremely strong women are something like idols. The wealthy having concubines is normal. Being a paedophile is OK, as evidenced by the crowd’s reaction to Lilynette’s negotiation with Count Naiüa in Volume 14. They weren’t repulsed at the idea that she was a shotacon – they were disappointed that they themselves were out of the strike zone of the big titty Priestess onee-san.

So, what is the age of adulthood for the Faith of the Four? Maru dances around the answer in the beginning, saying stuff like how the Humans of the New World mature faster than those on Earth, but we eventually get a statement from one of Enri’s Goblins that people in Re-Estize are considered adults by fifteen. Additionally, Lilynette calls Count Naiüa’s twelve-year-old son an ‘unripe fruit’.

With that in mind, Valkyrie’s Shadow pins adulthood for individuals in countries heavily influenced by the Faith of the Four between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. Childhood sweethearts from the same village probably get married early, while anyone still single past twenty is a veritable spinster.

Since Humans are also said to mature faster in the New World, the aforementioned age range would probably be the equivalent of sixteen to twenty in Earth terms. I guess that’s how Maru tried to dodge scrutiny over sexualising minors and blurred the age of consent.

Another dominant aspect of the gender equation is the existence of a rigid patriarchy in the northern Human Kingdoms. The Overlord Light Novel incorporates it into the Kingdom of Re-Estize and the Web Novel explores the same thing in the Baharuth Empire. Jircniv famously won’t allow Roxy to discuss politics with him unless they’re in bed and Jet treats Nemel like an accessory. Reactions to women in both tend to focus on their beauty and women who aren’t attractive or strong(which is attractive) tend to be nonexistent in society’s eyes.

We get our first taste of a functional aspect of Re-Estize’s patriarchal culture when Nfirea contemplates his desire to court Enri. His thought process goes straight to rationalising that his income is sufficient to provide for her, her sister, and the new family they would raise.

To be clear, it’s not strange for a man to think that way even in the present day and, the further you go back in ‘time’, reality increasingly imposes gender roles due to the physical differences between males and females. It does present the assumption that men are the breadwinners in Re-Estize, however.

As an aside, this scene also shows that a single professional income can support multiple generations in the same household in Re-Estize. It looks like they’re economically better off than most of the modern world.

The story of Princess Renner, who purposely exploits those cultural mores, is another perspective that offers tidbits of how women are treated in Re-Estize. When analysing things from a writing perspective, one also notes that the various New World women we see in the Light Novels are fridged 100% of the time.

A woman’s happiness, according to Overlord, is to get married and raise a family. This is still getting fridged, though – especially when that woman just vanishes from existence with little more than a side note *Peers at Enri Enmot*

When we head over to the Holy Kingdom in Volume 12, we find that the ‘patriarchal’ – I use the term loosely at this point – nature of the Faith of the Four gets even worse. In the opening scene, Pavel Baraja can’t even be bothered to recall the name of his wife and daughter. To this day, we still don’t know what Neia’s mother’s name was.

Next, we switch over to Roble’s ‘Holy Trinity’, Calca, Remedios, and Kelart. In their introductory scene, we get a direct tell about how Calca’s very existence as Holy Queen is controversial and they even had to make a new title for her. There is actually a lead-in to Calca’s introduction long before we get to this point, where Maru’s golden boy Jircniv lists her as one of his three most hated women. Why is that? Because she’s good, and good is synonymous with incompetency and ineffectiveness in Overlord.

Over the course of the two Holy Kingdom novels, we see shades of the patriarchal society of Roble, but perhaps the most amusing and/or damning is the introduction of Mrs Diaz and Mister Moro in Volume 13:

She seemed to be in her twenties, and her distinguishing features were a pair of ample breasts that drew men’s eyes and a head of short hair. Apparently, it had once been long, but it had been cut short in a prison camp.

She was part of the support team which Neia had established. Neia’s supporters wanted to name themselves, and so they called themselves the Sorcerer King Rescue Corps.

Her job was to help manage Neia’s increasingly busy daily life.

While it had only been half a month since they had first met, this woman had become irreplaceable to Neia. That was because she had completed her assigned tasks — cleaning, laundry, cooking, and various other tasks — with consummate perfection.

…

“I’ll take my leave, then. Also, Bertrand Moro-shi wishes to meet you.”

“I understand. Can you help me call him in? Thank you for your hard work today.”

The housekeeper bowed to her, and then left the room. A man entered, as though to swap places with her. The woman was averse to men and feared them, and she felt uncomfortable when she was in the same location as men. Therefore, she had chosen to excuse herself.

“Baraja-sama, I apologize for disturbing you while you are resting. May I ask for some of your time?”

Bertrand Moro.

He had the stout body of a man in his forties, but the part about him that stood out most was the thinning hair on the top of his head.

The Moro family had a tradition of buttling for notable noble houses, and in the past he too had worked as a butler. That was why he served as a secretary in the rescue corps, in order to make full use of his skills.

Neia had been very lucky to meet someone like him when she had first founded the group. If she had not met him, her hair would have gone white at an early age.

– The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, Part II, Chapter 7, Part 1

Did you get all that? This is Neia’s POV, by the way. I laughed when I first read it.

Mrs Diaz doesn’t actually have a name in the Light Novels. She’s just a pair of big boobs with hair that does housework perfectly(maid). That hair was cut short because she was a prisoner(damsel). As a bonus, she’s scared of men(harmless). She doesn’t even get a solid block of introductory text – it’s instead broken up by ‘oh, by the ways’ where other information is injected as if to say she’s irrelevant as a person. When you account for the fact that Neia was crafted as a blatant reader insert and is made to act like an oji-san in this scene, it’s pretty clear where Maru’s head was when he wrote it.

In contrast, when Mister Moro is introduced, we get a distinguished professional. Mrs Diaz serves as his transparent herald and he comes in with a prestigious family history and personal record. His competency as a steward is highlighted and his appearance is far overshadowed by it. Even the structure of his exposition is clean and coherent, with an in-character introduction, body of relevant content, and conclusion based on said content.

If you thought that the portrayal of the patriarchal society of Roble in Valkyrie’s Shadow was exaggerated, think again. It’s worse than that in canon. At least women get names in this story.

The idea that the European Dark Age was a thing in history has been thoroughly debunked, but this concept still runs strong in Overlord. A pop fiction version of it, that is. In the tiny corner of the New World where the main story takes place, the people are considered little more than barbarians lost in the darkness of ignorance, superstition, xenophobia, and savage paganism.

Roble is a maritime state stated in canon to have a relatively strong navy and access to maritime trade. At one point, Remedios even suggests selling the uncommonly good equipment of the Demihuman invaders overseas – presumably to other Demihumans who can wear said equipment. Kelart’s response to her proposal also shows us that they have threats beyond their shores that they must consider, as she notes that they don’t want to strengthen the arsenals of other countries.

Some people have brought up the point that since Roble is connected to the rest of the world, they shouldn’t be so ignorant. It only takes a cursory knowledge of Earth’s history of maritime trade to understand that it doesn’t work that way. The trade fleets of antiquity, be they Arab dhows plying the Indian Ocean trade or the treasure ships of Zheng He, only sought knowledge to obtain resources, extract tribute, or expand influence.

This behaviour didn’t end as time went on. The Age of Discovery and the colonial era weren’t periods of beneficial international enlightenment: they were mostly periods of blatant exploitation. The Portuguese didn’t give a shit about the cultures that they bought their slaves and spices from, nor did the Spanish care about the engineering and agricultural innovations of the Aztecs and Inca. The only time that anyone cares about the advancement of far-flung countries is if they get their asses beaten by those advancements. For the ones that do the assbeating, the quirks of other nations at best amount to exhibits or curiosities and they certainly did not replace the home culture.

The expansionist and exploitative aspects of this behaviour are heavily curbed in the New World. Humans are among the weakest races around and the Faith of the Four does not appear to have any evangelical imperatives. What’s left to them is the acquisition of resources through trade, and, while trade might facilitate the exchange of ideas, people have to care about those ideas in the first place. As with Spain and Portugal, Roble broadly doesn’t care. It’s actually in their best interests to keep their heads down and toe the line lest they attract the wrong sort of attention.

By and large, the Holy Kingdom is the epitome of the ‘Dark Ages’ trope. In terms of magical integration, they are dead last amongst the northern Human nations. Yes, that’s right, they’re actually behind Re-Estize. Neia notes this while they’re in the Kingdom’s capital. Roble is about as mundane as it can get in the New World, and the worldview of its people in Valkyrie’s Shadow reflects that. It’s steeped in superstition and even their common sense is just flat-out wrong in many cases. This leads to many scenes that are both funny and sad at the same time, or just plain frustrating.

One will note that the language of revolution does not exist in Overlord. Violent revolution is never mentioned in open discussion, nor do New World natives do little more than sit around and suffer despite their supposedly atrocious circumstances. I guess they complain sometimes.

This might be attributed to the ‘setting disease’ discussed in previous afterwords, where the world is treated like a ttrpg session and each area is just static until the players act upon it. If one puts a bit of mechanic-centric thought into it, however, it presents an interesting tidbit about how things work under the hood.

There are two confirmed rebellions in the ‘history’ of Overlord. The first is the political movement that led to the secession of Baharuth from Re-Estize. The second is Carne Village in Volume 9.

While they seem to be as different as can be, there are two distinct similarities and Maru always injects mechanical information on purpose. The first is that both rebellions were composed of people who had lost their confidence in their former ruler. The second is that they were both led by a Commander. Enri Enmot has the General Job Class and Nobles(which are pulled from Sword World and maybe AD&D’s Birthright) are a type of Commander.

This may also be one of the major reasons that Volume 14 turned out the way that it did. Maru realised that what Nazarick was plotting in Re-Estize couldn’t work according to the mechanical rules of the setting. Philip was simply too incompetent to lead and the Royal Court was too competent to lose its grip on the country. If you think that the last part was written in error, I would suggest you read Volume 14 again. The High Nobles of Re-Estize are described as ‘terrifyingly competent’ and there were only an ‘incompetent few’ amongst the entire country’s nobility.

The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, Part III uses this mechanical tidbit to facilitate the rise of three major movements. In Valkyrie’s Shadow, Doppelgangers cannot copy New World Classes/Spells/Skills/Abilities – they would be able to cast Wild Magic by copying a TDL, otherwise – but that isn’t an obstacle to Doppel-Caspond. In fact, not having a functional ruler class means that the three factions naturally become something close to a ‘rebellion’, each under their respective leaders.

By the time this volume begins, the first revolution has already succeeded. It is a ‘managerial revolution’ facilitated by the adoption of a half-baked form of GDP that determines societal advancement, which is purposely introduced by Demiurge. Of course, it’s the progressive faction that immediately jumps on this to gain ground in a country that is largely conservative, and they do so to great effect.

For any movement to succeed, be it an independence movement or one pushing new regulatory standards, it must overcome the power of the establishment or otherwise force it to capitulate to the movement’s demands. In a ‘feudal realm’ where each member of the establishment is a king on their own land, it does so with laughable ease then the establishment itself is promoting it. These guys aren’t incompetent, either. Once adopted, the system quickly reaches advanced stages of implementation to the great misfortune of everyone it is imposed on. Overall, it’s a cautionary tale about what happens when systemic abstractions are blindly followed to their logical extremes.

In the wake of the progressives’ ‘success’, a second movement starts in the form of a counterrevolution propping up Roble’s traditional ways. Spurred to action by Old Purple, Marquis Bodipo rose as the movement’s first leader but was summarily sent beyond the wall by Doppel-Caspond to weaken the conservatives. People from Roble don’t survive that. Duke Debonei succeeds Bodipo and the selection of an unpopular leader delays things enough to get the ball rolling with Neia Baraja.

As some may have noticed, Duke Debonei is a vague reference to Louis Phillipe II, the Duke of Orleans and the Noble who helped lay the groundwork for and facilitated the French Revolution. The Summer Palace is a reference to the Palais-Royal, which the Duke of Orleans set up to be a nexus of enlightenment culture and liberal thinking in the heart of Paris. Calca did that part in the Holy Kingdom, though. The existence of the Summer Palace also served as a reason why anyone in this ridiculously hostile setting would travel on a holiday.

Unfortunately, the fate of the counterrevolution was already sealed, as Demiurge had long intended for it to be a launchpad for Neia’s Path of Justice. This too, is a loose reference to the French Revolution, where the Nobles that make the Revolution possible are thrown under the bus during the Terror.

Neia Baraja’s Path of Justice ultimately comes to the forefront in the struggle for the northern Holy Kingdom. It is not without its problems, however. Actually, it has a shitton of problems.

First off, it’s only a few months old. Even ‘spontaneous’ revolutions take years, if not decades for their underlying movements to gain ground and momentum. Its newness also means that its foundation is next to nonexistent. It is a fortress built on a chopstick, and written on that chopstick is ‘The Sorcerer King is Justice!’. Much like any pitch thrown by an ‘idea guy’, it has little to no actual substance.

Fortunately, good boi Demiurge is supporting Neia all the way, fabricating a path for the Path of Justice. For any movement to succeed, it needs resources, political will, ideological direction, and an issue to tackle that its members all agree upon. If the movement transforms into a revolution, the former three things may be converted into physical power to coerce the establishment into accepting the movement’s demands.

The conservatives provide resources until the Path of Justice can obtain its own, and the Sorcerer King Rescue Corps’ activities between the war and the start of the volume have amassed political will. The Holy Kingdom has long been rigged with issues that Neia’s very vague notion of justice can be applied to. Saye is sent not only to spur Neia’s growth as an orator, but also to ask questions that force Neia to hammer out the details of her new philosophy. It’s still pretty flimsy, however.

As with our world, revolutions that result in good outcomes are not as common as those that result in anarchy and mass atrocities. And, with Demiurge at the wheel, we can expect Neia’s revolution to be especially horrifying. We’ll catch up with ‘Phase Three’ of the Holy Kingdom project at a later date.

Once upon a time, Maruyama’s Necromancer in a D&D session was bullied by a Paladin. At least, this feels like one part of Remedios Custodio’s origin. As many d20 players may have noticed, while every Paladin combat ability/spell in Overlord can be matched with its counterpart in d20, Overlord’s Paladins are conveniently missing a crucial chunk of their non-combat class kit.

Spells and Skills like Detect Alignment, Zone of Truth, and Discern Motive are absent in the New World setting. Why is this? Probably because they absolutely blast apart the type of subterfuge, scheming, and acting that Nazarick and the bad guys that turn the world of Overlord into a shithole rely on to look smart and stay in control. This sort of ‘tweaking’ happens constantly in Overlord. In 'a story about the strongest’, anything that can screw with team Nazarick just mysteriously ceases to exist or has convenient in-setting explanations as to why team Nazarick uses it nonstop and everyone else doesn’t(I’m looking at you, Message).

If Overlord’s protagonist was Touch Me instead of Ainz, you can bet that he’d have everything that the New World’s Paladins are missing. On second thought, Paladins might be depowered even further because they’d threaten his special place in the sun and we can’t have that in Overlord.

Remedios, however, is written as if she still has a Paladin’s traditional non-combat toolkit due to the abovementioned things. Every time she becomes suspicious of something, takes a certain course of action, or comes to an uncannily accurate conclusion about what’s going on around her, d20 players can say ‘yep, this is the part where Nazarick’s plans start to unravel if the campaign was balanced and the world wasn’t continually warped in Ainz’s favour’.

As with everything in Overlord, that metatextual knowledge divides the readership into two camps: one that catches the references and understands why things are happening in a certain way, and one that doesn’t and just takes things at face value. Remedios has the misfortune of appearing like an idiot who just happens to make lucky guesses in the latter case. As a whole, it’s pretty on the nose with its spitefulness; almost like a delayed temper tantrum on Maru’s part. But, well, whatever: it’s his Overlord.

There is another side to the construction of Remedios’ character, however, which is also in line with one of the major meta-narratives of Overlord. In a story that purposely draws on many aspects of Japanese corporate culture, Remedios is meant to be the ‘shitty boss’ while Neia is the unfortunate intern(Squire) that is subjected to her shit.

And this is where both Remedios and Neia’s characterisations really fall apart, definitively proving that ‘write what you know’ ranks pretty high up there on the mountain of thoughtless writing advice. At least if you want a coherent narrative, as leaning on tropes and real-world shortcuts can still sell and are pretty much mandatory in the world of Light Novels. It’s still shit writing, though.

The characters are forced into a mould that is narratively improbable – I would even go so far as to say impossible – in the New World. There is a lot of the modern corporate dynamic(which only seems to be toxic when it comes to leadership/hierarchy in Maru’s mind) in Overlord before and after The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, but it’s one of the big things that make the arc fall flat on its face when people look past the spectacle and examine what’s actually going on. It’s all a weird office comedy in a fantasy wrapper. Yes, even Runecraft?.

Perhaps the most damning thing of all is that Maru went out of the way to tell readers that Remedios is written as that ‘shitty boss’ character. Outside of the story. I know that Light Novels heavily rely on genre knowledge, cultural memes/identity and real-world correlations to iceberg and ‘resonate’ with their audience, but that was the first time that I had ever seen an author straight-up go this hate sink is a specific type of hate sink from a different universe and that’s why you should hate her.

That being said, The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom Part I/II were what I had to work with, and I did my best to be faithful to each character while also sticking to the more serious and comprehensive construction of Valkyrie’s Shadow.

Remedios’ character journey in the Light Novels is that of a purposeful character assassination by Demiurge. She was selected to be the highest-ranking survivor of the Holy Kingdom’s military hierarchy. The Holy Queen was killed one or two steps into the war, as was the High Priestess of the Temples and every military officer of note in the northern Holy Kingdom army. The navy was tied up far away from the action in the north and the south was only allowed to join the north when Demiurge’s plans called for it(ie. when Doppel-Caspond was ready to receive them and begin laying the groundwork for Phase II).

As an aside, it’s also interesting to note that the only sovereign who was willing to look past Ainz’s Undead state and judge him by the merits of his rule – Queen Calca – was personally assassinated by Jaldabaoth. Then, Ainz’s script had him make up some bullshit to prevent the possibility of her resurrection by the Sorcerous Kingdom. A potential friend for Ainz as well as a ‘problematic’ good influence on Ainz’s character was purposely eliminated by his loyal servant, Demiurge. How touching.

Throughout the story, we see Remedios thrown into situation after situation that her class build isn’t suited for tackling. Additionally, multiple scenarios are set up that are designed to tear down the moral integrity of Roble’s defenders. Remedios is the only one shown to stick to her guns and is framed as an idiot for doing so.

Personally, despite all of the holes and its relative simplicity, I thought that Demiurge’s plan to undermine Remedios and turn her allies against her was very Devil-like(therefore in character for someone who is supposed to be an Archdevil). What shocked me is how many readers thought the giant kangaroo court that was Volumes 12 and 13 was somehow legit.

It’s clear that Remedios, who is a genius in personal combat, isn’t a genius when it comes to the problems that are selectively thrown at her. When she’s caught out of her depth, she acts like it. The fact that she has the weight of her nation on her shoulders means that she has to make calls despite not having any competent advisors as someone in her position should.

Every other Roble character makes no real choices as themselves. The entire arc from the moment they meet Ainz is ‘you have no choice, just shut up and drink the kool-aid’. What agency they had built up and their collective brainpower is just sacrificed to the ‘story of the strongest’ hivemind.

Due to the contrast between them, Remedios ends up being one of the best-written characters in Overlord. Not because she’s supposed to resonate with readers due to hacky corporate culture correlations or the fact that she’s the designated sandbag-of-the-arc, but because she’s written like a real, genuine person. She acts as an individual of average intelligence and upright character plausibly would in her situation(as someone in the New World setting).

So, what is Remedios Custodio like? This question would probably receive answers that follow the ‘Retardios’ thread that much of the fandom subscribes to, but let’s take a look at canon. When you strip away all of the references pasted over her, what is she?

Remedios did not like to think, and she was a very stubborn person. That was a flaw, but it was also the reason that she could embody absolute justice.

The nature of justice was difficult to contemplate. For instance, imagine if there were two children, one human and one demi-human. Being pure and innocent, they became friends. However, if the demi-human child was discovered by adults, he would be locked up, and the human child would plead for his life. However, if they let the demi-human child go, he might grow up to become a threat to humanity. Was killing the demi-human child just or unjust? This was not a question that could be easily answered.

Calca would have spared him without any hesitation.

Remedios, however, would kill him without any doubts. In addition, she would insist that she was righteous, and not feel a shred of guilt about it. In her heart, anything she did for the sake of the nation and people was acceptable.

When she took the throne of the Holy Queen, Calca had declared to her two close friends, “I will grant happiness to the smallfolk, and make a country where nobody will cry.” In response, she had said, “I will support you and uphold your just cause.” With that pledge in her heart, she was more forthright than anyone else, her heart filled with conviction, and the light in her eyes was like that of a fanatic.

Someone like that was clearly dangerous, yet Calca did not distance herself from her friend. The righteous impulses of loving others, loving peace, hating evil, and the desire to aid the weak were all things she ought to welcome.

And it was because of that nature of hers that what she thought and what she did were the same. Because she did not think about her words, everything she said came from her heart.

– The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, Part I, Chapter 1, Part 3

Just before Jaldaboath appears to eliminate Calca and Kelart, we get this chunk of exposition that serves as a quick characterisation of Remedios. Maru also reaffirms some of these qualities in the following scene.

Remedios is the sort that leaves the thinking to others. Or, in the immortal words of a certain Giant Space Hamster handler: ‘You point, I punch.’ She is comfortable with being that sort of person; even proud of it. Honestly, it’s a sign of maturity. She’s at a place in her life where she understands what she is and knows that it’s best to rely on others for everything that she’s not good at.

More importantly – well, most importantly – she is an ideological juggernaut. I don’t mean this in the ‘lawful stupid’ way, nor do I mean it in the ‘churchbad’ way where zealots are just repainted narcissists, psychopaths, or corrupt politicians(though it seems that many have superimposed these overdone tropes over Remedios). She is as close to the perfect Paladin as we see in the New World setting. The personification of the Holy Kingdom’s justice.

Maru does say this in the story, but, well, as with the rest of Overlord, some readers(or many, in the case of Remedios) tend to ignore the facts that he presents to focus on what they imagine a character to be.

In Japanese, what translates to ‘justice’ in English pretty much never refers to legal justice(it’s not even the same word). What it translates to is closer to ‘righteousness’, or, more specifically, the right way of living. This is an aspect of eastern culture that is deeply intertwined with moral philosophy and entrenched to the point where people can and will readily ignore breaches of the law in favour of ‘justice’.

This underlying understanding of ‘justice’ implies to the Japanese readership – and probably also south, east, and southeast asian readers – that things in the New World are framed in a certain way. The first blatant hint of how moral philosophy works in the New World appears in Volume 10, where Buddhist Priests are categorised as ‘Spiritual Casters’. When Paladins are introduced as non-Divine casters in Volume 12, it’s a confirmation of how Overlord’s magic categories are applied.

Buddhist Priests are Spiritual Casters in Overlord because Buddhists do not worship any gods, but instead follow the Noble Eightfold Path, which are the practices of Buddhism. In other words, the path of enlightenment that liberates one from samsara so they can achieve nirvana. You also see a bit of the Faith of the Four’s stupidity when some people try to categorize Buddhists as followers of the Four Elemental Gods – presumably because dharmic religions have many elemental deities.

Paladins are similar in the fact that while they may be affiliated with a faith, they do not derive their powers from belief, but conviction in an oath or cause. This is why they aren’t considered Divine Casters in Overlord even though they wield divine power. Neia’s Path of Justice is cateogrised according to the same rules. Sorry, no Pope Neia. How about Bodhisattva Neia?

In short, the existence of ‘Spiritual’ and ‘Other’ casting categories is the same as the existence of 'Human', ‘Demihuman’ and ‘Heteromorph’. They don’t exist as such in the material he hacks from, but he injects them for reasons related to how the gaming/fantasy space in Japan categorises things which just ends up confusing things even more than they already are.

So, what does it mean to be the personification of the Holy Kingdom’s Justice? It’s laid out pretty plainly in canon. Justice is doing what is best for the greater good of society, and Remedios does exactly that. Yes, that includes butchering Demihuman babies. It also makes her a good person due to how the New World’s Karma system works.

I’ve seen many readers try to inject their personal, modern Earth morality into their perception of Remedios, saying stupid things like ‘omg she’s racist’ and thus evil. I’ve also seen people cast shade on her because she discriminates against Ainz, but in a world where 99.999999% of Undead either immediately attack the living or are just pretending to get along, she is right and you are wrong. She’s not hypocritical, either. The Justice of the Holy Kingdom protects the lives and livelihoods of the Holy Kingdom’s citizens and Ainz isn’t one of them.

Remedios is the Holy Kingdom’s paragon, and the people of the Holy Kingdom subscribe to the justice that she represents. Her views are the views of the country as a whole. That’s why it’s the ‘Holy Kingdom’s justice’ and not ‘Remedios Custodio’s opinion’. Remedios is the rule, not the exception.

Keeping this starting point in mind, readers can follow the changes in Remedios throughout her character arc. In short, for most of Volume 12 and 13, Remedios is forced to act out of character by Demiurge. The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom is the story of the character assassination of the titular individual.

When we next see Remedios, the story takes us to Re-Estize. We get the perspective of Neia Baraja, and it’s evident that Maruyama has transformed Remedios Custodio into a man.

Well, perhaps not literally, but her characterisation is decidedly ‘male’. She has zero social awareness, acts like a Japanese high school delinquent from the 80s, and makes physical threat displays like she’s a dude in a wrestling show. When I first read this part, I had to stop to reread the scene, after which I leaned back in my chair, looked up at the ceiling, and thought ‘What?’

Now, I’m not saying that women can’t be physically violent, but it usually isn’t the go-to option for pursuing personal conflict. When it does happen, it’s usually when one feels that they have no other choice but to react in that manner. This hinges on mental maturity, with having the most chance of happening for stupid reasons when one hasn’t undergone full emotional development.

Does that mean Remedios is a Karen? Well, no. Remedios is a woman who’s at least in her mid-late twenties and is in a position of power. Her opening scene already shows that she’s reached a place in her life where she’s come to terms with who she is and where she sits in the grand scheme of things. If she wanted to torment Neia, there are a jillion more likely ways in which she could do so with barely a thought, far less social risk, and zero physical violence. All of them are more vicious than what she did in that scene.

We know the reason why this is, though: in the Japanese office drama setups of old, the shitty boss is almost always an abusive male character that resorts to the same threat displays and that characterisation has been superimposed onto Remedios. This has the added effect of divorcing the overwhelmingly male readership from the chance that she may be seen as desirable, tossing her into the bucket of crazy/stupid/ugly women who don’t register as women. Yes, I said ugly. There were actually some comments that earnestly asserted that Remedios isn’t physically attractive even when canon puts her in the same ‘tier’ of beauty as Calca in their opening scene.

And, yes, Overlord does this sort of thing all the time. Maruyama divides the New World’s women into two types: ‘endearing’ and ‘broken’. Where one falls on that scale affects what little agency they are allowed to have in spite of what they should be able to do. Presumably powerful women like Lakyus and Calca fall into the ‘endearing’ category: they get fluffed up for their desirability and then the story just happens to them. Those like Clementine and Remedios fall into the ‘broken’ category: they do stuff and get their ‘comeuppance’ via assorted Nazarick-related things. It’s as if Maru’s a Japanese boomer or something.

Anyway…after that, we witness Gustav’s intervention, whereupon we learn why Remedios is picking on Neia. Apparently, it’s because she wasn’t there to fight Jaldabaoth in Hoburns and that Remedios has ‘changed’ since then. That’s reasonably unreasonable, so sure. What it ends up masking along the way, however, is that Remedios is not usually like that.

In the same scene where we get the ‘new’ Remedios Custodio, we also see that the ‘old’ Remedios Custodio who cares deeply about the people in her charge(aka every citizen of the Holy Kingdom) is still there. This thoroughly confuses Neia, and it is the last time we see this aspect of Remedios’ character framed in such generous terms. The rest of the time, it is usually seen through what she gets frustrated over and how she gets targeted by Nazarick.

Demiurge(and Maru) repeatedly use that side of her to make it seem like she’s an idiot when she’s making the correct choice in many cases. At least the correct choice if you’re sane and believe that a healthy human society shouldn’t be structured according to the precepts of Machiavellianism.

From hereon in, however, the tropes have been hooked onto Remedios and since Light Novel-style writing ‘trains’ readers to rely on tropes for everything, it dictates how they interpret Remedios’ actions. Moreover, every scene with her in it casts her in a negative light in the eyes of the reader insert(Neia), the protagonist(Ainz), or just from the framework of what favours team protag.

As a writer, I must say that it was a very powerful tactic to employ. Even just one of them, as unintentionally demonstrated with General Ray back in Empire in Chains, is enough to set readers against a character and paint them in all sorts of interesting ways despite copious evidence to the contrary. It’s a cheap shortcut, though, and far from good writing. Maru does this sort of thing all the time while also demonstrating that he can write well, so it’s like he does it to see how many of his readership can actually read and how many can’t. He could also be offering commentary on the state of ‘modern’ writing, as Overlord’s overarching metanarrative is a commentary on many ‘modern’ things versus how things were in the past.

Anyway, I digress. Once we get to the Holy Kingdom, it’s setup after setup(courtesy of Demiurge and Ainz, who is trying to follow Demiurge’s script) designed to tear Remedios down in front of the people of the Holy Kingdom. When looking at these setups from a job class perspective, you see that none of them are anything that her build equips her to handle. When looking at them from a ‘realistic’ perspective, she is cast as incompetent.

Remedios is not a Commander, diplomat, or bureaucrat. The situations she is thrown into create the impression that she is always ‘wrong’ and she is allowed to be the ‘Paladin’ for everything else. A precedent is created where the correct decisions that she makes as a Paladin come into question because she was made to be wrong in everything else, which has the effect of breaking up the moral foundations of the Holy Kingdom Liberation Army.

Perhaps the most well-known among these is the hostage scene. Many people – Americans, especially – subscribe to the dusty old Nixonism that one does not negotiate with terrorists. A certain line of reasoning follows after that, but, in reality, it’s been proven that taking a direct, hard-line stance in hostage situations isn’t at all superior to other avenues. Unfortunately, since this is Overlord – and it’s a scripted event anyway – Remedios is forced to be ‘wrong’. This one is especially potent because it’s at a point where her people still believe that she’s doing the right thing.

The scenes that gaslight Remedios and play mind games with her allies also show how much of a malevolent prick Ainz is. People love painting him as ‘neutral’ or even ‘good depending on…’ and then point to his background and circumstances as if they excuse him for his actions. One is always free to make present choices irrespective of their past, however, and Ainz increasingly chooses evil as the volumes go on.

Some say that this is just na?veté on the part of the reader or Remedios, but na?veté is favouring morality over pragmatism. When you consider that this is ‘the story of the strongest’ and he can do pretty much whatever he wants and get away with it and he chooses to participate in a character assassination that is designed by the resources at his disposal to be impossible to escape…yeah. Ainz goes from ‘well, maybe he’s just a regular, everyday person bumbling around with stuff he’s not good with’ before Volume 11 to ‘this shitbag is purposely being evil’ by Volume 12.

Anyway, I could go through every scene, but this afterword is nowhere near done and I think people get the point by now. Valkyrie’s Shadow takes Remedios out of all those rigged scenes and places her in her regular role, allowing her to return to what she once was. She is as close to in character as she should be. Unfortunately for her and the Holy Kingdom, the damage done by Demiurge is already irreparable and her end is an indication that the country has gone over the brink. Remedios Custodio dies, and the justice of the Holy Kingdom dies with her.

Neia Baraja is cast as the ‘intern’ in the office drama dynamic of the Holy Kingdom arc. Stuck under her ‘bad boss’, she makes for the woobiest woobie in all of Overlord. Maru has tried to woobify other New World sidekicks in previous volumes in various ways with little success, but he seems to have struck gold with Neia’s formula. In addition, he created the archetypical reader insert. Let’s go over what makes her tick.

If Remedios is a character who is out of character with herself, Neia Baraja is a character who is out of character in the New World.

First of all, she is written as a ‘teenager’ and the concept of ‘teenagers’ didn’t exist until it became a phase of common life in the 20th century on Earth. Maruyama has been pretty good about this up to this point. Before Volume 12, there were no ‘teenagers’.

In a society like the Holy Kingdom or any of those portrayed thus far in Overlord, you are a kid, and then you are a productive member of society. The closest thing to being a teenager in Overlord is being a student at the Imperial Magic Academy, which is pretty much for the elites of society and their career path is already set. This brings us to our next problem…

Neia is enrolled as a member of a guild-like institution. She is a Squire, which is an apprentice Paladin in the setting. Apprentices have masters, so where is Neia’s? Instead of being an apprentice, the ‘intern’ role is taped to her forehead and she acts as the office gopher until Ainz comes along and takes her on a magic carpet ride. The attempt to force ‘relatability’ is extraordinarily jarring.

One might suggest that Neia’s master was killed in the opening offensives of the war. Sure, but that doesn’t delete her master’s influence. A master is a personal mentor with whom an apprentice is stuck for the better part of ten years, yet Neia’s thoughts don’t turn to her master or their teachings even once. She hasn’t been indoctrinated as she should have in the ‘staunchly religious country’ that the Holy Kingdom is supposed to be and even admits that she doesn’t understand what justice is. There is little indication that she is an apprentice at all.

When it comes to Neia’s parents, we see much the same thing. Pavel passed down his magical fantasy genes(Baraja in archaic forms of Hispanic means ‘to quarrel’ or ‘to fight’, by the way) and taught her just enough to be recruited as a scout for the Holy Kingdom’s delegation to Re-Estize and the Sorcerous Kingdom. The rest of the time, Pavel slept in a tree. Her mother is no better. She’s a nameless musclehead who is supposedly an elite Paladin. That’s a shitton of Paladin influence that’s supposed to be in her life, but it doesn’t show at all and is handwaved away as her not having ‘aptitude’.

Neia is at a stage of mental development where the influence of the role models closest to her should be dominating her worldview. Yet, we see nothing of that influence except for what helps her come into contact with Ainz. She has no moral foundation, no cultural foundation, no religious indoctrination, no meaningful institutional training, no family roots, and no friends. The result is a blank slate character primed for a reader insert and ready to fall to an inadvertent pick-me-up by the protagonist of the story.

And, well, Maruyama sure has a lot of fun with her. Because she has nothing, Ainz becomes everything. No, that’s not quite right. She doesn’t even listen to Ainz, so her delusions about what Ainz is become everything to her. A New World version of a Nazarick NPC. Ironically – or perhaps purposely – she gets paired up with Shizu, whose character archetype is essentially a projection magnet.

Throughout it all, Neia shows herself to be the biggest fool in the entire arc. Remedios is an idiot, but at least she’s an idiot who accepts that she’s an idiot and there are plenty of idiots in the world who find success and happiness like that. Given the fanbase’s reception of the two characters, that’s quite the dab on Maru’s part.

Valkyrie’s Shadow picks Neia up basically where the story left her. She gets rewoobified for good measure and good reason – she can’t focus on going from fool to tool if she’s still working for the Holy Order at the same time. Neia is also still as impressionable as ever, but care is taken to portray her as an actual member of Roble society instead of being a weirdly isolated anomaly for the purpose of being a reader insert. She subscribes to Roble’s common sense and cultural mores and she has a functional education that’s more in line with what an unremarkable Squire lined up for an unremarkable career as a Paladin should have.

There’s another element to her in this volume that some people have picked up on, and that is she is essentially a veteran. It’s an aspect of characterisation in Light Novels that tends to get glossed over and, annoyingly, veterans are either one of two things:

The first is that they are cast as the ‘loser’, usually written to be an emotional cue for the readers. An author will put a character through some PTSD-inducing events for no better reason than to elicit a reaction from the audience. Overlord is especially dirty about this and leaves behind hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of traumatised people and this is apparently supposed to entertain the reader even when it happens for the hundredth time. I know schadenfreude is a thing, but damn.

The second is that the veteran is a ‘winner’, resulting in the ‘grizzled veteran’ who gives off the air of an invulnerable badass. Also for no good reason. No, Ludmila doesn’t fit into this category. This second characterisation is also problematic because it posits that ‘losers’ naturally become victims and ‘winners’ naturally don’t. Nuh-uh, it doesn’t work that way. This is an aspect of eastern writing that severely lags behind its western counterparts and is pretty damn unhelpful.

Neia’s experience as a veteran turns out to be a bit rougher than her free ride in canon. Not only did she volunteer to serve, but the way things work in her society meant that she made a lifelong commitment to do so. An apprentice becomes a master, and a master is a master for life. Unfortunately for her, this commitment apparently means nothing to the Holy Kingdom and she is discharged after becoming an inconvenience. Not only is her livelihood taken from her, but so is her childhood home.

From that point, she is alone. And I mean alone. Society doesn’t recognise her and she sort of drifts around until she ends up with Iago Lousa. The older, more experienced veteran instantly makes an unconditional effort to save her from not only her financial situation, but also the mental pit of moral violation and disenfranchisement she’s been cast into.

After she encounters Saye, however, things go downhill again. Or uphill, depending on who you’re cheering for. The manipulative Bard rapidly gouges out a part of Neia’s newfound support mechanism and inserts herself in its place. It’s all about fashioning her into the perfect tool for Demiurge to use from there.

Neia’s story is one of a very abused veteran who is rapidly radicalised for someone else’s purposes. The Job Class system makes it even worse, especially since Neia is not aware of it and how it affects both herself and the people around her. Once upon a time, Shalltear advised Ludmila and Ilyshn’ish about not allowing their Classes to take control of their lives, but most aren’t fortunate enough to receive such instruction – Neia included.

By the time Neia is unleashed upon the Holy Kingdom, she’s the zealous founder of a poorly defined moral philosophy with the power to drive her followers into acts of mass psychosis. Fantasy is fantastic, isn’t it?

The Evangelist is an orator-type PrC in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5e. Maru made no effort to hide where the Job Class was from. It is also a type of Commander Job Class according to Maru and this seems to define ‘Commanders’ in Overlord as Classes that have skills and abilities that influence and bolster followers that aren’t pets.

That being said, the Evangelist is sort of a meme, mechanically speaking. The requirements to obtain it are pretty easy and any Job Class build can pick it up if they meet them. Players don’t usually get it outside of RP-related reasons, however. It’s stupendously weak and trashes pretty much any build.

The only situations where the Evangelist shines are in non-combat encounters or in a very weak setting. Lo and behold, the ass-end of the New World is the perfect place to make it work.

What does it do? Well, without going into the flavour text and too much of the minutiae, this. Oh, keep in mind that the area of effect radius for spells and abilities is larger in Overlord than in D&D. Much larger.

Fast Talk (Ex): At 2nd level, the Evangelist knows the right thing to say at the right time. He may make a rushed Diplomacy check as a full-round action at only a –5 penalty.

This is how Neia can blab away convincingly without training or preparation and speak to the masses without thinking through her own teachings. With a bit of oratory training, the penalty becomes a non-issue against the average citizen of the Holy Kingdom. When she’s in a situation where she can’t use this ability, you get her ‘clueless’ mode where she tries to figure out what her message is all about and how to apply it.

Great Orator (Su): An Evangelist can inspire, protect, and otherwise improve the situation of his allies simply by speaking clearly and being heard. Evangelist oratory abilities function in exactly the same manner as bardic music except the Evangelist must speak loudly and clearly, rather than sing or play an instrument.

Inspire Dread (Su): An evil Evangelist with 9 or more ranks in Perform (oratory) can inspire hopelessness in all enemies within 30 feet. This ability imposes a –4 penalty on Will saves on all enemies within 30 feet of the Evangelist. Delivering this oratory requires a full-round action to activate and requires concentration each round to continue the effect. The effect lasts as long as the Evangelist speaks and for 3 rounds thereafter. Inspire dread is a mind-affecting ability.

Inspire Hope (Su): A good or neutral Evangelist with 9 or more ranks in Perform (oratory) can inspire spiritual resilience in all allies within 30 feet. This ability gives the Evangelist and all allies who can hear his oratory a +4 sacred bonus on Will saves. Delivering this oratory requires a full-round action to activate and requires concentration each round to continue the effect. The effect lasts as long as the Evangelist speaks and for three rounds thereafter. Inspire hope is a mind-affecting ability.

Neia gets the second one because she’s ‘good’. This is what she uses to bolster her followers and soothe the minds of those traumatised by Jaldabaoth’s invasion.

Convert the Unfaithful (Su): An Evangelist of 5th level with at least 13 ranks in Perform (oratory) may attempt to convert a single enemy within 30 feet. As a full-round action, the Evangelist delivers an impassioned speech on the righteousness of his beliefs to a single enemy, who must attempt a Will save (DC = 10 + class level + Cha mod). If the creature succeeds, it is shaken for one round. If the creature fails its saving throw, it converts. Creatures with an alignment subtype (such as Angels and Devils) are immune to this ability.

A converted creature is effectively charmed by the Evangelist (similar to a Charm Monster spell). In addition, a converted creature temporarily assumes the alignment of the Evangelist and acts accordingly. This may mean some of the creature’s class abilities, spells, or other abilities are unavailable to it for the duration of the spell (a Paladin converted to something other than lawful good, for example, loses her class abilities for the duration).

When the duration elapses, the creature then has a choice: It can continue to act according to its new alignment, or it can shift back. If the creature chooses to permanently change its alignment to the Evangelist’s, it acts as if a Cleric of the appropriate alignment had cast Atonement on it. If the creature chooses to change back, it must make another saving throw (with the same save DC as before). If it fails this saving throw its alignment changes back but it needs an Atonement spell to gain back any abilities it lost due to its temporary alignment change.

This is the ‘brainwashing’ mentioned in Neia’s character sheet at the end of Volume 13. Since New Worlders develop their stuff over time rather than picking it out of a list upon levelling, Maru gives her a watered-down version for the time being that only works on people suffering from ‘unhealed emotional wounds’(aka a Will penalty). We see the effects of the brainwashing quite early in Neia’s arc for this volume when one of the Corps members is challenged on his convictions, and we see people who shake off the brainwashing much later.

Inflame the Righteous (Su): An Evangelist of 3rd level or higher with 11 or more ranks in Perform (oratory) can use this ability to wreath himself and any of his allies within 30 feet in divine flame. Each beneficiary of this ability gains the benefit of a Fire Shield spell. Use the Evangelist’s level +5 to determine the caster level of the spell. The damage caused by the spell is, however, purely divine and not subject to a creature’s resistance or immunity to fire.

This oratory requires a full-round action to perform and requires concentration each round to continue the effect. The effect lasts as long as the Evangelist speaks and for three rounds thereafter.

Inflame the Righteous is the ability that Neia is missing as an Evangelist and it’s what we see at the end of this volume. For reference, Fire Shield is a damage shield that affects anyone who strikes the character it’s on. At the Neia’s current strength, it will instagib almost any Human combatant under Level 4. This is pretty much every regular Human in the region and anyone who isn’t considered a highly experienced combatant.

It goes on for as long as she keeps it up and she doesn’t have to be in range after applying the effect to keep it up. It also doesn’t cost any mana(oratory abilities generally don’t cost mana). Quite OP in the New World.

Gustav Montagnés fills the role of the ‘ally’ in the Holy Kingdom’s office drama. Appearing as everyone’s friend or maybe a ‘peacemaker’, the ally is a crucial component for making a toxic work environment drag on for as long as possible and his introduction has him doing exactly that in canon.

First, he ‘sympathises’ with Neia’s situation and acts to take some heat off of her. After that, he ropes her into doing more work(which Neia really doesn’t want to do but is obliged to accept). Then, he convinces Neia to eat Remedios’ shit with a smile and does nothing to address her abuse. For the ‘greater good’. It’s a tactic that he repeats several times throughout the story with various people to varying degrees.

Anyone who has had to deal with or seen a really abusive work environment knows that people like Gustav are absolute cancer. They ‘hold things together’ until everything flies apart, which is usually when the people that you don’t want to quit get fed up and do exactly that. This guy is probably the worst lieutenant possible and the only way that people like him can thrive is if there’s no way for abused employees to quit. I guess the ‘office drama’ also happens to be in a Japanese black company, which makes sense since Maru refers to them so often.

Gustav is lined up for a promotion to Grandmaster by the end of Volume 13. In Valkyrie’s Shadow, we see what a character like that does when they’re on top: basically nothing, which is probably why he was appointed to the position. All of his talk and fence-sitting get him precisely nowhere in the end, and he’s stomped by Lugo Agrela on behalf of one of Gustav’s victims(Neia). Good riddance.

I’ve seen a few people refer to Ludmila as the Valkyrie’s Shadow and, uh, that’s not right. The Valkyrie’s Shadow is the network of New World characters who operate under Shalltear’s organisational umbrella. This story always follows characters that are either part of her organisation or end up interacting with them in some way, and having different characters from various walks of life allows the story to thoroughly explore the New World. This is also why we don’t see certain povs, even though people might want them. Everything in Valkyrie’s Shadow is experienced from the perspective of, well, the Valkyrie’s Shadow.

In this volume, the two members of the ‘shadow’ we follow are Liam and Saye, who are attached to Remedios and Neia, respectively.

Liam’s a pretty good guy. I take that back: he’s a really good guy. Rather than the cold, detached Assassin-type, Liam follows in the footsteps of the adults in his life and ends up as a warm, detached Assassin-type.

Does that work? Apparently, it does. Going from responsible brother to responsible killer(?), Liam is always shown as someone who focuses on his job: from gathering information in Fassett Town to feed himself and his sister, to being a sort of Rogue consultant in the Draconic Kingdom, to his work as an infiltrator in the Holy Kingdom.

When he returns to the Holy Kingdom, we see him continuing this trend, carrying out a ‘natural infiltration’ using nothing but his own skills. Unlike the hardboiled lone wolf characterisation that one usually sees pinned to the hired killer, Liam prefers to cooperate with people, builds relationships and information networks, chooses nonviolent means to effectively de-escalate situations, and acts as a generally positive influence while he operates. Ijaniya doesn’t leave mountains of bodies in its wake as it looks under every rock and table while searching for its targets, and neither does Liam. He doesn’t even kill anyone until the epilogue.

Speaking of killing people, Liam’s little massacre in the epilogue makes him look pretty strong, but he’s not actually. Well, I guess relative to the average Human in the Holy Kingdom, he is. The way he dispatched his opponents is more than due to that strength, however.

Liam is something like a Level 4 Rogue in d20 terms. That means his BAB(Base Attack Bonus) only allows him to attack once per round. One round is six seconds, meaning that a Rogue of Liam’s level can normally only attack once every six seconds. So how does he hit seven opponents in less than two rounds, never mind kill them?

First of all, he’s dual-wielding. That means he gets a second attack with his offhand at a certain penalty to offence. His targets aren’t wearing any armour and they’re all caught flat-footed, so landing hits on them is pretty trivial for Liam. With that, he can attack four times in two rounds.

The additional attacks he needs are from AoO(Attack of Opportunity). An Attack of Opportunity is an instant, single attack that is provoked when a character either tries to leave the attacker’s melee range without preparation or performs an action that creates an opening for someone to attack them through. Examples of this include casting a spell, using an item, trying to open a door, acting to help another, making untrained unarmed attacks, and so on.

Liam’s build has the Combat Reflexes feat, which allows him to perform as many additional AoOs as his dexterity bonus allows. It’s +3 for Liam, meaning that he can perform four AoOs per round.

So, the first two guys he kills go down from Liam’s normal mainhand and offhand attacks and the guy who reacts in surprise to those attacks gets AoO’d. The guy on top of Nat eats an AoO, as well, as does the guy who reacts to that attack. The last two guys staring stupidly aren’t performing any actions and thus can’t get AoO’d, so Liam takes them out with regular attacks in the second round of combat.

Every single one of those hits is a Sneak Attack. Contrary to what its name implies, Sneak Attacks don’t require the attacker to be stealthed – the target only has to be in a state where they are distracted, flanked, or otherwise unable to defend themselves against the attack. To the low-level commonfolk of the Holy Kingdom, a single Sneak Attack from Liam is fatal. When dealing with much beefier opponents(like Beastmen) they become less impressive when narrated, as seen in The Tiger and the Dragon.

Anyway, being an upstanding, likeable person has the shocking side-effect of making one popular and Liam ends up with a ‘wife’ who likes him to an extreme degree.

Initially picked up as a part of his cover, Nat quickly becomes an outlet for Liam’s frustrations(and not in the way that Nat wants) over the Holy Kingdom’s culture and the Faith of the Four. He helps her onto the path of success not only because he doesn’t want to leave her high and dry at the end of his assignment, but also as a sort of proof that the Faith of the Six is superior to its heretical counterpart.

It should also be noted that Liam’s relationship with Nat is something of a comparison between two different outcomes of patriarchy. Nat’s patriarchy has the negative characteristics that many in our day and age attribute to patriarchal society, while Liam is a (new)member of a different patriarchal society that has his actions play out in a far more nurturing manner.

The key difference between them, as probably everyone has noticed, is how gender roles work in the two faiths. The Faith of the Six’s philosophy of pursuing vocational excellence applies to both men and women, so the idea that women are commonly considered nothing more than baby machines and useless accessories is abhorrent to Liam and he goes full DIY on her.

It’s a weird, flip-flop relationship where Liam engages in patronising behaviour in order to empower Nat. Nat, on the other hand, doesn’t want to be empowered, only patronised.

Liam’s relationship with Remedios provides us with a perspective free of the ‘office drama’ theme of the LN arc where Remedios is buried in tropes, undermined at every turn, and can’t do anything about it because ‘Nazarick’. Liam’s genuine interactions naturally pull out a genuine response from the Paladin and we get to see Remedios return to her normal character from before the Demon Emperor’s invasion.

He’s actually pretty good at ‘managing’ Remedios, as Carla notes. Unfortunately, despite providing Remedios with much-needed support, nothing can save her from her fate. How Liam processes her demise and what he learns from it is an important part of the young agent’s character journey.

Overall, Liam’s tale is one of a low-level, low-agency(in terms of affecting major changes to the world) character acting as a member of the Valkyrie’s Shadow. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t do anything – it simply means that his choices tend to be more personal and influence people on a similarly personal level. In contrast to the members of the Noble Quartet, whose stories primarily deal with institutional, economic, and political facets of kingdom building, Liam is one of the windows on the ‘little people’ of the New World and how their lives are affected by the machinations of the Sorcerous Kingdom.

Liam’s work as both an agent for the Holy Order and a corrective influence for the heretics he works with ends up earning him the Inquisitor Job Class. The Inquisitor is mentioned pretty early on in Valkyrie’s Shadow and then makes an appearance in the form of Saraca’s bodyguard Girika. It then makes its canon appearance in Volume 16 as a part of Antilene’s scuffed character build.

The Inquisitor is a second-bracket PrC that specialises in hunting down enemies of the faith. In Antilene’s fight with Mare, witch hunter-style Skills are employed that cripple the casting capabilities of heretics and infidels. Statistically speaking, it is a Job Class noted for its physical durability and resilience against magic attacks – at least according to Antilene’s thoughts.

Of course, Liam has no idea he has the Job Class. Will he ever figure it out? How much homework does Director Alpha have in store for him? Which hero-tier onee-san will he be paired up with next? Stay tuned for the next episode of Valkyrie’s Shadow! Well, maybe not the next episode…

We get our first in-depth look at Saye in this volume and I’m pretty sure some people wish they hadn’t. If Saye ever held a concert, Demiurge would be doing wotagei in the front row.

First appearing as a wide-eyed little girl in Birthright, she emerges in The Tiger and the Dragon as a clever and diligent child who volunteers every day at the E-Rantel Cathedral. Little do people know – well, many of her allies in the story actually do – that she is quite the zealot. Now, we get to see her enact that zealotry with the brutality that children are capable of.

As with her brother, Saye tends to stay focused on her job. She sorts all of the people around her into degrees of ‘useful’ and ‘useless’ and manipulates them accordingly. Overall, she thinks that the Holy Kingdom is a pretty useless place, so she holds no qualms about turning it into something useful for the Sorcerous Kingdom.

Perhaps the scariest thing about Saye is that her main target tends to not suffer from direct, physical harm. She just destroys everything that they love and care about. Whenever Saye asks a pointed question or sends a minion of Nazarick to do something, one must wonder what sort of atrocity is in store.

Saye is not without her soft spots, however. She happily works in brothels and favours the people and locations that Roble’s ‘moral’ society considers undesirable. Saye also loves her brother.

No, really.

I swear!

Saye builds trust with Neia Baraja through a combination of bardic reputation and certain machinations that convince Neia that she’s reliable and world-wise. While it does seem like she drives the Faceless One around like a car from the outset, it becomes increasingly evident that her frustrations are mounting over Neia’s arbitrary and irrational thought processes.

Of course, this isn’t a problem unique to Neia Baraja, as both Saye and Liam encounter what readers probably think is a wacky and maybe unbelievable amount of stupidity. As the story has shown, however, the Holy Kingdom is a mostly insular country filled with highly conservative, wilfully ignorant, and superstitious people.

Imagine a person who has existed as a member of a small, tightly-knit community for their entire lives, can’t read and doesn’t have access to literature anyway. Mass media doesn’t exist. The Temples tell them what’s right and what’s wrong and everyone agrees that it’s correct. They don’t know or care about anything beyond their little part of the world, nor can they afford to. The structuralism-based thinking that most of our modern world’s common sense is built on isn’t a thing. What would the common sense of that person be like?

Some people say that Neia should be different from the ‘average commoner’ because famous parents or something, but why would you think that? Her dad hates the city and her mom is always deployed. She participates in the exact same system of education that every commoner uses, so why would the outcome be any different? In fact, those tendencies should be even more extreme because it’s an education for the Holy Order and the Faith of the Four is pretty damn stupid.

We see Saye give up on trying to guide Neia in accordance with the tenets of The Six in the first half of the volume’s final act. She even starts trolling her after a certain point, content that having Neia plunge the Holy Kingdom into anarchy works just as well for the Sorcerous Kingdom’s objectives as having her usher in a new order…and this is fine.

Unlike Liam, Saye’s assignment in Roble continues into ‘Phase III’, so we won’t see her until the story gets there. Oh, Saye is a Level 9 Bard, so her character sheet isn’t very exciting.

There are two mechanical topics I thought I’d bring up this time around. The first has to do with a certain aspect of Roble’s culture. The second is about power comparisons(surprise!).

Roble’s system of universal military conscription invariably brings us to the topic of build contamination. Indeed, this has been brought up several times in the volume’s comments. The question with Roble is that, even though a Player may consider build contamination a bad thing, is it actually that bad for the Holy Kingdom?

The point most frequently brought up is that, since the Humans of the region never reach their average level cap of fifteen anyway, build contamination doesn’t matter. A Leatherworker can get five levels in their main vocation, two levels in Blacksmith for the convenience of making their own metal parts, then have one level in Fighter from serving their time in the Royal Army.

No harm done, right? It’s better than if they just had five levels in Leatherworker. They can even diversify their business to protect themselves from bad turns in the market and you never know when that level in Fighter could come in handy.

To that, I say: yes, but no. Mostly no.

Having a split build isn’t just a personal problem, it’s a systemic problem. The advance of scientific knowledge is dependent on discovering anomalous or novel data. In other words, seeing the same thing over and over again work according to known laws does not help one discover anything new. It is when the unexpected or unknown happens that questions are asked and new frontiers of knowledge are opened for exploration.

A society of contaminated builds locks itself out of discovering the unexpected and unknown, at least when it comes to stuff beyond low-level mundanity. The go-to example is tier magic, where even a single level as something other than the type of caster one is can end the dream of reaching the third tier of magic long before they ever get close to it.

When applied on a country-wide level, it becomes common sense that the average person cannot become a third-tier mage. In reality, it’s very much achievable, but that whole civilisation has just locked itself out of that possibility because universal military conscription gives everyone(except for Priests and Paladins in the Holy Kingdom) levels in Fighter. They are denied all of the advancements and progress that having plentiful access to third-tier arcane magic entails.

This logic can be applied to every Job Class path. More powerful skills and abilities can never be obtained; higher realms of craftsmanship can never be realised; the country as a whole loses out on whatever production bonuses they might otherwise discover and cultivate.

Split builds enforce the mundanity of low levels in a civilisation because that society will never realise that certain things are possible for the average citizen or that those things can even exist. They will forever be considered the realm of ‘geniuses’, doomed to be so scarce as to be nonexistent for the everyday person. Those who try to achieve what common sense asserts is impossible are considered overambitious fools and punished by the systems built on that foundation of common sense.

This is what happened to the societies thus far explored in Overlord, and, well, it also happens IRL. We don't have Job Classes, thankfully...or do we?

There is a huge caveat to all this when it comes to the New World, however: class synergies exist. More importantly, completely new classes can be conceptualised. This is something that civilisations without awareness of the Job Class system have an advantage in. Generations can go by with a civilisation believing in the existence of something that something that doesn’t mechanically exist – Imperial Knight, for example – and suddenly, one day, it does.

Of course, having people do whatever, whenever, is ill-advised. That just gets you conquered in the end, but so does stagnation. Striking a balance between developing new stuff and optimising things according to existing stuff so you don’t get conquered, enslaved, eaten, or outright annihilated by your competitors is the true challenge for any civilisation in the New World.

Once upon a time, back in the Overlord Web Novel days, Maru threw out a bit of information about level gaps and how they affected one’s chances at victory. No one is sure whether it’s relevant anymore, but most of the fandom that cares about such things still treats it as factual and applicable to the Light Novels.

Paraphrased, he states that, in a situation where everything is mechanically equal(class build, equipment, personal skill, foreknowledge, etc), a duel between two characters of the same level results in a fifty-fifty chance of victory. The rest of it looks like this:

One Level difference: 40% chance of victory

Two Levels: 30% chance of victory

Three: 20% chance

Four: 10%

Five: 8%

Six: 6%

Seven: 4%

Eight: 2%

Nine: 0%

While this is all well and good, there is a very strange interpretation concerning Maruyama’s odds, and that is what winning entails. The notions fostered by this particular interpretation then gets extrapolated into other power comparisons, at which point it vaults into the realm of ridiculousness.

What do I mean by that?

Let’s take the same-level matchup, first. A 50% chance of victory implies that it’s a fight won by a paper-thin margin. The winner ends the fight with 1 HP and 0 Mana or something reasonably close to that. We can also assume that they use every cooldown and trump card at their disposal. I hope this makes sense.

As the level gap gets further and further apart, however, something weird happens. The idea that it’s a ‘fight’ vanishes. It’s just a win or a loss. Mechanically speaking, people begin to assume that the fight was so easy that minimal to no resources are expended. The loser just self-destructs at the beginning of the duel or something. Jircniv doesn’t count. Eight-level difference? Well, it was a 2% chance so it must have been a cakewalk that cost the winner nothing. Twenty-level difference? Thirty? Lol, one-shot.

However, we know for a fact that this isn’t true.

In Volume 13, we have Ainz’s fight against Jaldabaoth and his ‘Maid Demons’. We see Doppel-Lupusregina eat a Maximised Reality Slash – Ainz’s strongest single-target damage spell – and it doesn’t kill her even with a 41-Level difference. Not-Doppel-Shizu survives Ainz’s Nuclear Blast just fine with her 54-Level difference.

In Volume 16, Antilene face-tanks Mare’s Petit Catastrophe with a 12-Level gap despite getting the crap beaten out of her beforehand.

Long before these battles, we also know that Aura has the weakest personal battle power out of all the Level 100 NPCs, but if you factor in her pets, she is the strongest. Those pets are all under Level 90 – some of them aren’t even close to it – but they swing every matchup in her favour.

With this in mind, the true consequences of combat should be reexamined for those people who subscribe to the thinking I described above. A Ten-Level gap may result in a guaranteed loss, but the winner may only walk away with half of their HP and Mana – especially if their opponent had some particularly nasty skills or spells. It also means that a team of much lower-level opponents can be a very real threat.

My estimation of the Great Imperial Knights’ levels is as ‘surprisingly’ low as it is because of this: if all four were in their mid-upper twenties, a Level 30 Gazef would get trounced every single time. Instead, we are told that he actually has a fair chance of winning.

A lot of fights in Valkyrie’s Shadow employ the same logic. A Beastman Lord may have no chance of victory against a Death Knight on their own, but the presence of support and prudent threat management turns the fight into a manageable, though tedious, victory. A line of low-teens Hobgoblins, after all of their equipment, enchantments, command skills, formation bonuses, and martial arts are added up, can handily stop a Death Knight’s Level 25 offence and juggle agro around so they can rotate defensive cooldowns.

In this volume, Remedios Custodio vs Eduardo Cohen also observes the same mechanical realities. In fact, Eduardo’s preparations were overkill. The only reason they blew through so much healing was that he kept trying to convince Remedios to stand down for the sake of the Holy Kingdom.

Remedios got Gazef’d – she was demoted from Grandmaster and was thus wearing standard-issue Paladin gear – with her family sword being the only good piece of equipment left to her. Eduardo, on the other hand, got to use his House’s custom-enchanted regalia. Level-wise, he’s described as a potential hero, but is only Level 27 for the moment versus Remedios’ 34. His gear, buffs, and Martial Arts bring him up to the fighting potential of a Level 33 while Remedios in her setup fights as the equivalent of a 37.

That’s still only a 10% chance for Eduardo to pull out a win, but with so much healing on his side and the ability to taunt, Remedios’ fate is easily sealed because vanilla Paladins have poor offence and she can't overwhelm the Priests’ healing output.

As explained by Ludmila in earlier volumes, a hero dies alone. A country must not only be aware of the enemy’s opposing heroes, but also of any force that is capable of taking down isolated heroes. Those forces are far more plentiful than heroes themselves due to how Maru’s statistics play out. The power of friendship is strong in Overlord.

It’s time to catch up with all the characters we haven’t seen in a while. A long while, for some of them. Before the Storm covers the other stories of the Valkyrie’s Shadow cast from the beginning of Stone and Blood to somewhere around the end of Volume 16. This is going to be a long one. It’s totally not because I can’t think of satisfactory titles for each arc.

Once again, thank you for your continued interest in Valkyrie’s Shadow, and I hope you continue to enjoy the journey~

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