In My Time of Troubles
is a self insert fanfic of Dungeons & Dragons 2e by theirishdreamer where the author is reincarnated as a orc named Karguk a few years before the Time of Troubles, a Dungeons and Dragons event where the gods descended to earth. He is tasked by the one who reincarnated him, the orc god of strategy Ilneval, to become strong and prepare for the coming Godfall.
In My Time of Troubles contains examples of:
- Always Chaotic Evil: orcs have a strong tendency to do this. In fact, that Stormfang had so many
Lawful Evil orcs is implied to be due to Karguk's Lawful Good tendencies and intelligence affecting the people around him. - Ascend To A Higher State Of Being: what ends up happening to Karguk the Reader, also known as The Shrouded Lord, orc god
- Bad Boss: Most orc gods. You want to do something not inherently destructive? No. Go pillage and murder across the countryside.
- Bright Is Not Good: Ned the Master Necromancer, former Dread Pirate, likes to wear brightly colored robes.
- Crapsack World: And how! Everyone is racist towards everyone else, the gods (even the good ones) are complete jerks, and death is by random monster is common.
- Death World: Faerun, very much so
- Ensemble Cast: at over 1 million words long, In My Time of Troubles has gathered quite a cast of characters.
- Flaming Sword: Karguk's reward for clearing out a part of the dungeon below his stronghold
- Genre Savvy: as a former D&D player with access to the source books Karguk is very genre savvy... even when its not necessarily is helpful
- God of Evil: the orc pantheon.
- Good Is Not Nice: Karguk has an alignment of Lawful Good. He still supports conquering and slaving the surrounding lands because Faerun is a Crapsack World and the head of his pantheon forbids orcs from farming or doing anything to make sure they have enough food to grow without pillaging the surrounding lands
- Other characters fall under this too. One human paladin cast a spell to determine who had a Good alignment within her clan, and then murdered all those that didn't including infants.
- Great Big Book of Everything: Kargul gets his hands on what he calls the Tome of Wiki, a book that allows him to reread everything he has read before. As Karguk is a reincarnated modern man, he uses this to read wikipedia articles on subjects like plumbing. To a lesser extent, he also has access to the dnd 2e sourcebooks.
- Kill the God: Karguk's plan for dealing with Gruumish, the evil head of the orc pantheon
- Legion of Doom: Sparta starts turning into one of these as Karguk expands.
- One-Man Industrial Revolution: Karguk is attempting to do this to strengthen Sparta. So far a notable success is the creation of paper.
- Raised by Orcs: Rose, Karguk's adopted daughter. Spent her teenage years as a hostage learning how to fight. Ended up a bit of a Blood Knight.
- Religion of Evil: Every god in the orc pantheon has the evil alignment. Most are Chaotic Evil as well. Or, at least, that's how it starts out...
- Religion Is Right: seeing as all the gods are real and active this one is a given.
- Squishy Wizard: Averted by Genre Savvy Karguk who wants armor to help him not die
- White Mage: Averted by Karguk's Shaman master, Phargk. Phargk was born with a gift for healing. As that is not a respectable orc ability, he figured out how to twist that into being very good at torture.
