An arcade robbery, a fatal shot, and a sudden awakening inside a favorite game... only not as the hero. Rachel Ni Chuirc joins me to unpack Knights of Eternity, a LitRPG trilogy that flips the script by dropping its protagonist into the villain’s body with Zara the Fury still in her head. What starts as a classic “save the princess” dungeon crawl unravels into a layered story about identity, agency, and the cost of choices when your own thoughts aren’t entirely your own.
We dig into how Rachel wrote the trilogy alongside her intense years on Baldur’s Gate 3, and why a pressure valve morning draft became a published series with Legion Publishers. She explains her “creamy” system design (immersive, character-led, and light on stats), and the craft behind alternating first-person chapters for the mc with third-person perspectives for everyone else. That structural shift delivers intimacy where it counts and scale where it matters. Expect honest talk about pantsing as a writing style, ruthless editing, and learning that the most powerful scenes are often quiet, human moments rather than big set pieces.
We also explore the broader world around the books and the warmth of the LitRPG community. Rachel shares early influences from anime to life in Japan, growing up over a book-filled shop in a tiny Irish town, and what’s next (a romantasy featuring a monster hunter and a sentient French-accented sword). If you care about game writing, audiobooks, or villains you can empathize with even as you want them to lose, this conversation is for you.
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