Fantasy world

World Setting: Tarentas Continent

Geography: A medium-sized continent with a warm climate, tropical rainforests in the south, vast grasslands in the center, and long stretches of icy mountain ranges in the north.

Technology: High Middle Ages, powered by human labor, animals, and windmills. Iron forging, chainmail armor, and stone castles are common.

Governance: Divided into three major kingdoms that peacefully balance power through trade agreements, but the borderlands and deep forests remain lawless.

World's Ironic Context: There is no "hero system" or "divine blessing." Everyone is born ordinary. To excel, one must train; to survive, one needs allies.

💰 2. Currency System (Standard Coinage)

The currency system uses direct exchange based on the value of metal ores; there are no banknotes. The exchange rate is 1:100 for ease of calculation.

Copper Coins: The currency of ordinary people, used to buy street food, salt liquor, or cheap lodging.

Silver Coins: 1 Silver coin = 100 Copper coins. This is the currency of merchants and adventurers. Used to buy common weapons, leather armor, or hire wagons.

Gold Coins: 1 gold coin = 100 silver coins. Noble or high-ranking merchant currency used to buy land, enhanced weapons, or high-quality horses.

🧝 3. Civilized Races

All races live together in large cities; no race is a natural blood enemy.

Humans: The most numerous, highly adaptable, excelling in politics, trade, and organizing well-structured armies.

Elves: Long lifespan of approximately 200-300 years (not immortal), residing in port cities and frontier forests, skilled in arts, diplomacy, and archery.

Dwarves: Physically robust, preferring to live in mountainous regions and mining areas. Skilled in engineering, iron smelting, and architecture.

Halflings: Tiny humans, about chest height. Peaceful, skilled in agriculture, cooking, and often skilled merchants.

🐺 4. Monsters & Beasts

Since there are no levels, the level of danger is primarily determined by the "number of normal people needed to deal with them."

Goblins: Green monsters, about the height of a child. Weak and cowardly when alone, but clever at ambushing and using poison.

Dire Wolves: Large wolves, the size of horses. Ferocious, hunt in packs with a leader who commands them systematically.

Wild Slimes: Boneless, jelly-like creatures found in swamps. Not ferocious, but feed on decaying matter. Their distinguishing feature is that they are invulnerable to stabbings; fire or destruction of their core is required.

Wild Griffins: Predatory creatures, half-bird, half-lion. They live on high cliffs and often swoop down to steal villagers' cattle. A high-level threat.

1. Additional Intelligent Creatures (Civilized Races)

Lizardfolk: Lizard-men, inhabit wetlands and build houses on rafts. They have thick, natural armor and excel at seafaring, using swamp herbs, and throwing weapons (throwing spears). They often trade dried seafood with humans.

Centaurs: Half-human, half-horse, nomadic people who roam the vast grasslands of the central plains. They govern in tribes, are very loyal to their word and honor, and excel at horseback archery and high-speed movement.

Gnomes: A small, slender race similar to dwarves, who often live in large tree hollows or shallow caves. They excel at herbal research, basic alchemy, and inventing small mechanisms such as intricate padlocks or highly accurate hourglasses.

🐺 2. Additional Monsters and Beasts (Monsters & Beasts)

🟢 Common Level (1-3 ordinary people, manageable or avoidable)

Corpse Eater (Corps-Eater): A giant worm, as long as a human arm, with pale brown skin. It lives in graveyards or underground where decaying remains are found. Its soft body makes it difficult to be stabbed, but it is extremely afraid of salt and fire.

Wild Harpies: Giant birds with heads and chests resembling human females. They live in tall treetops and like to swoop down to steal shiny objects. Their high-pitched cries are deafening and distracting to their prey.

Mandrake Creeper: A parasitic plant with roots resembling walking humans. It likes to hide in piles of leaves. If stepped on, it emits a loud scream that deafens humans and animals. It is often hunted by adventurers for use in potions.

🟡 Danger Level (Requires a guard of 5-10 people or a well-prepared group of adventurers)

Wild Orcs: Large, humanoid creatures with gray or dark green skin. Twice as strong as humans, they live in ferocious groups. They are not foolish monsters, as they are skilled in using iron axes and animal hide armor. They enjoy raiding border villages.

Gargoyles: Stone statues of winged animals awakened by ancient magic. They often guard abandoned ruins. Their skin is made of real stone, impenetrable to sharp weapons; only sledgehammers or heavy weapons can break them.

Dire Bear: A giant bear over 3 meters tall when standing. It has a thick, armor-like mane and skin incredibly tough and resistant to arrows. Its attacks can shatter human bones with a single blow.

🔴 Catastrophe Level (Severely Dangerous; Requires a Standing Army or Elite Adventurer Party)

Spike-Tailed Wyvern: A large, two-legged dragon the size of a single-story house. It flies at high speed, hunting prey from the sky. Its deadly weapon is its tail, which has venomous barbs that paralyze victims within minutes.

Mountain Ogre: A large, one-eyed giant, almost 5 meters tall. It usually lives in deep mountain caves and possesses immense strength, capable of swinging entire trees as clubs. Its skin is thick and highly resistant to pain.

Swamp Hydra: A giant, five-headed reptile that lives in deep swamps. It can attack prey from multiple directions simultaneously. The terrifying thing is that if its head is severed, the skin at the cut site will quickly stop bleeding (but it doesn't regenerate immediately like in legends). Fire is needed to stop the wound from healing.

1. The Red Light District and Entertainment Zones: "The Sub-District"

In a medieval world without social welfare, homeless or in debt women and men often ended up in the dilapidated areas within the outer city walls.

Low-Grade Brothels (The Pits): These were merely dilapidated wooden houses, reeking of cheap liquor and tobacco smoke. Clients were mostly laborers, low-ranking guards, and penniless adventurers. Services cost only a few copper coins. Sexually transmitted diseases (known locally as "rotten fever") were rampant and incurable; the only option was to let their bodies deteriorate on their own.

High-Class Brothels (The Silk Houses): Located within the inner city walls, these were lavishly decorated. The prostitutes were trained in music, eloquence, and the art of sexual intercourse. Clients were nobles and wealthy merchants, paying in silver or gold coins. Behind the scenes, drugs were used to control the women and prevent escape.

Extortion and Protection Business: Every brothel had to pay "protection money" to the local mafia or corrupt guards. Failure to pay or attempting to escape would result in punishment. They would be beaten until crippled and then thrown away to become forced laborers.

⛓️ 2. The Slave Trade

Even though some kingdoms had laws against it, in practice, the "black market" flourished because cheap labor was essential for running this world.

Origins of Slavery:

Debt Slavery: Villagers who borrowed silver coins from ruthless lenders and couldn't repay would have their wives and children seized as collateral.

Prisoners of War and Victims of Trafficking: People captured from border villages raided by orcs or bandits, if they survived, would be bundled together and sold in large cities.

Types of Slaves:

Hard Work Slaves: Sent to work in the deep mines of the dwarves or sugarcane plantations in wetlands. The survival rate was very low; most died from accidents, starvation, or lung failure within 2-3 years.

Household Slaves and Concubine Slaves: Had a slightly better standard of living, but had no rights over their own bodies. Owners could beat them, order their execution, or sell them off at will without consequence from city law.

🥔 3. "Yagas Root" and the Food of the Lower Classes

In a world of uncertain agricultural yields and where nobles taxed all the grain, the poor survived on this root vegetable.

Characteristics: Yagas is an underground tuber with a dark gray skin and corpse-like nodules. It thrives in degraded soil, near cemeteries, or in arid areas.

Taste and Toxicity: It has a very bitter taste and a sticky, glue-like texture. It contains a mild poison that accumulates in the body if not cooked properly (requiring at least three boilings to discard the water). The poison gradually eats away at the brain and peripheral nerves, causing numbness in the hands and feet, tooth loss, and long-term blindness.

Symbol of Despair: Having to eat yagas as a staple food signifies that life has hit rock bottom. It was the food of slaves and beggars. Ordinary people only ate it during severe droughts when there was no wheat to eat.

☠️ 4. Living Conditions and Threats in the Shadows

The Rat Gangs: Groups of orphans and homeless people who form criminal gangs, pickpocketing, robbing drunkards in alleyways, or accepting jobs delivering secret letters and poison.

Morning Corpse Collecting: Every morning, guards drive horse-drawn carriages through the narrow streets to collect the bodies of those who starved, abandoned slaves, or victims of robbery, and dump them into a large mass grave outside the city.

Organ and Corpse Traffickers: Rogue alchemists or sorcerers often buy fresh corpses for medicinal experiments or dissections, paying silver coins for them. This has given rise to the profession of "illegitimate undertakers" who secretly dig up corpses to sell.

This world has no interdimensional monsters to destroy it; only hunger, greed, and oppression kill people daily. What role would you like your protagonists/adventurers to begin their lives in this darkness? (e.g., runaway slaves, low-level debt collectors, or corpse collectors)

In the continent of Tarantus, adventurer's associations, or "guilds," are not glamorous organizations upholding justice, but rather "job placement and life brokerage companies" that profit from the sweat and blood of those with no other options in life.

Because this world has no leveling system, guilds operate with a realistic and cold-blooded approach, as follows:

🏛️ 1. Guild Reality

Location: Most guild buildings are located in dilapidated areas near the city walls, permeated with the smell of blood, tobacco smoke, and cheap liquor. Heavily armed guards stand at the gates to prevent the poor or beggars from causing trouble.

The Ruthless Guildmaster: Guild leaders are usually middle-aged former adventurers who are disabled (e.g., missing limbs or blind) from their work, or disgraced nobles. They work for money and a percentage of the profit, not caring whether the clients survive or not.

The Cut System: For every completed quest, the guild immediately deducts a fee of 20% - 30% of the reward, claiming it's for processing fees or data verification. And maintenance costs for the facility.

🗂️ 2. Name Badge and Work Division System (No Levels, Only Reputation)

Without levels, guilds use "Guild Badges" to indicate the "reliability and survival ability" of adventurers.

Wooden Badge - Field Rats:

Group: Runaway slaves, unemployed villagers, orphans, and fugitives with nowhere to go.

Type of work: Dirty and manual labor such as cleaning stables, hauling monster corpses, boiling yams, or acting as bait for grassland wolves.

Compensation: A few copper coins (just enough for rice porridge and a place to sleep in a pigsty). Survival rate is very low; if they die, the guild simply discards the badge.

Rusty Iron Badge - General Mercenaries:

Group: People who have survived the wooden badge for over a year, covered in scars, and starting to buy blunt iron weapons. And old leather armor can be used.

Type of work: Escorting wagons across town, hunting goblins that invade vegetable gardens, or providing reinforcement for city guards.

Compensation: Received in silver coins. This group is a core part of the guild.

Bronze Badge - Professional Survivors:

Group of people: Skilled individuals with clearly defined specializations, such as expert trackers, former deserters who are proficient with swords, or dwarf stonebreakers.

Type of work: Hunting dangerous monsters such as forest orcs, beerbers (killer bears), or clearing out bandit lairs.

Compensation: Large amounts of silver coins, or sometimes gold coins.

Silver Badge - Earthling Legends:

There may be fewer than 5 of these in a single town. They are seasoned survivors of major battles, undertaking national-level jobs such as hunting wyverns or guarding high-ranking nobles. The payment is a huge amount of gold coins.

📑 3. The Guild's Cold-Blooded Rules

No Deposit: The guild will never pay any advance payments. If you die in the line of duty, your reward money will be immediately confiscated and transferred to the guild treasury.

Your corpse has no value: If you die, the guild does not provide a service to transport your body back to your hometown, unless your teammates carry your body back themselves (which usually means stripping your corpse of its belongings and leaving it in the forest to reduce the weight of the wagon).

Job Stealing: The guild doesn't prohibit Iron Plate adventurers from secretly killing Wooden Plate adventurers in the forest to steal monster parts for cash, as long as there's no clear evidence in the city.

Binding Contracts: Adventurers who owe the guild for medical expenses or equipment will be forced to sign a "pawn contract," undertaking life-threatening missions until the debt is repaid. Most often, they die before the debt is settled.

💰 4. The Dark Side of the Guild: The "Black Board"

Besides the general mission boards where guards or villagers hire you, behind the guild leader's office is a "black board" reserved only for the influential and wealthy.

Kidnapping: Abducting village girls or runaway slaves and sending them to low-grade brothels. Or send them as concubines to nobles.

Cleanup Jobs: Assassinate rival merchants, extort money from villagers who refuse to pay protection money to the mafia.

Human Hunting Jobs: Hunt down slaves who escaped from the dwarf mines. The guild will reward them based on the condition of the corpse (full payout if captured alive, half payout if killed and beheaded).