Rogue Merchant by Roman Prokofiev

Rogue Merchant by Roman Prokofiev

book 1: The Starlight Sword

Pre-order - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084TR8WD1

Release - March 23, 2020

Dear Readers,

We’re relaunching this LitRPG series by Roman Prokofiev - or rather, we’re relaunching Book One. Some of you might have already read its previous version released a while ago by another publisher under the title Cat’s Game. The author has completely reworked the book’s first chapters; he’s also already completed Book Two of the series, fully intending to keep the story going. And we fully intend to release the whole series in English.

Rogue Merchant is a classic might-and-magic-style LitRPG series with the elements of manapunk. It’s set in the Sphere of the Worlds: a worldwide multiverse comprised of hundreds of worlds, from horrible Infernos ruled by Demon Lords to mechanical worlds inhabited by sentient constructs, and gigantic markets that have sprouted at the crossroads of trade routes.

Players use astral ships to travel between worlds, otherwise they have to venture into the perilous underground tunnels of the Endless Paths. Dozens of powerful clans share this delicious pie, scheming or waging wars against each other.

The series’ main character is Cat, a wannabe merchant who specializes in procuring in-game valuables to sell them for real money. He is a Free Merchant, which is both his character’s class and his playing style - as well as his preferred problem-solving method. Cat is a cunning trickster who wriggles his way out of trouble thanks to his quick wit and his trading talents. His credo is, “Anyone can be bought provided the price is right”.

Cat starts from scratch, using every opportunity to advance his plans. This book is the story of a common trader’s rise to greatness until he becomes the world’s new legend, the most famous merchant in the entire Sphere of the Worlds.

The series focuses on the economics of a game world, including various trade methods such as regular and auction trading, as well as social and political interactions between clans and players. Plenty of intrigue and espionage, betrayal, trade wars, besieged castles and epic air battles of flying ships - all this has already made the fantastical universe of Rogue Merchant popular with thousands of Russian readers.

Now it’s your turn to enjoy it.

Interview with Dem Mikhailov

Clan Dominance: The Sleepless Ones by Dem Mikhailov is coming in less than a month. We talked to the author who's among the first ones to start writing LitRPG in Russia.

You were one of the genre’s founding fathers in Russia. Could you please tell us how it happened?

Well, I’m actually a veteran gamer. I started playing back in the 1980s, and as long as I remember myself, I always wanted to be able to travel to a game I particularly liked, to talk to my favorite characters and personally fight the villains. Over the years, this dream didn’t go away until it finally came true in my Valdira books. There, my characters don’t just play: they truly live their lives in that state-of-the-art full-immersion MMO game.

There’s a lot of discussion in the English-speaking world regarding the accuracy of the very term “LitRPG”. As one of the people who actually coined the word, do you think you could offer an alternative?

I don’t think it’s very accurate, either. By saying “RPG”, we presume that the reader takes an active part in the MC’s adventures instead of just reading about them being unable to influence the book’s events. At the time, I was trying to choose among several other options but didn’t manage to come up with anything better than this admittedly catchy soundbite.