The Bureaucrat's Guide to Heroism: Audio Book

Narrator — Preferred Female, open to all

Role: Lead — full production

The narrator of The Bureaucrat's Guide to Heroism is not a neutral presence. The prose is filtered through the worldview of the protagonist — dry, analytical, occasionally deadpan, and possessed of a very specific way of observing the world that is equal parts bureaucratic logic and quiet bewilderment. The narrator isn't Norbert, but they need to understand him completely.

This is the largest recording commitment in the production. The successful candidate will also be invited to self-select additional minor character voices suited to their own range and abilities, making this a varied and substantial role throughout the audiobook.
A female narrator is preferred for this production due to the additional voices requirement, though strong applications from performers of any gender are welcome.

Voice: Dry, warm, and precise. Understated wit delivered with complete sincerity. Think the narrative voice of Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams — omniscient but never detached, funny without ever trying to be.

Audition requirement: Please record approximately 60-90 seconds of prose narration from a comedic fantasy or science fiction novel in the style of Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams. Original material written in that style is also acceptable. This audition is deliberately open — we want to hear your natural feel for the register rather than your ability to read our specific material.

Norbert Jones — Male, Welsh, mid-twenties

Role: Co-Lead — present throughout and across future books

Norbert is the protagonist. A junior planning officer from Wrexham, North Wales, who finds himself transported to a fantasy world. Crucially, Norbert is not without context — he understands fantasy tropes, gaming, and isekai conventions well enough to give himself some grounding. The comedy comes not from bewilderment but from his expectations being consistently, specifically wrong. He expects slimes to be low level enemies. He expects orcs to be monsters. The world keeps subverting him in ways he didn't anticipate.

Beneath the dry wit is someone genuinely capable under pressure. He is logical and methodical, but uses those qualities to improvise effectively rather than freeze. He can be openly impressed, genuinely frightened, and still act anyway. He feels the cost of his actions deeply afterwards.

He is kind without being soft. Dry without being cold. Competent without being infallible.

The Welsh accent is non-negotiable. Wrexham specifically — North Welsh, not South Welsh. These are not the same thing.

Voice: Understated, dry, quietly capable. Think Brandon Routh's gentle earnestness filtered through someone who has read enough fantasy novels to think he knows what's coming, and is perpetually wrong about the specifics.

Note to performers: Norbert is referred to by a variety of names, nicknames and titles throughout the book. Familiarity with all of them will be provided with the character script.

SARA — Female, ageless

Role: Co-Lead — present throughout and across future books

SARA — Sarcastically Automated Reality Assistant — is the voice inside Norbert's head. She presents as a system interface; dry, efficient, and constitutionally incapable of delivering information without editorial comment. She is terminally sarcastic but never cruel, and beneath the snark is a genuine investment in Norbert's wellbeing that she would categorically deny if asked about it directly.

Her origins are mysterious and will become increasingly significant as the series progresses. There is more to SARA than she lets on, and a performer who can carry quiet depth beneath the surface wit will serve the role considerably better than one who plays her purely for laughs.

We are seeking a performer of Asian heritage for this role. Fluent, natural English is essential.

Voice: Sharp, dry, sardonic. Delivers devastating observations with the casual efficiency of a system notification. Warmth exists but is deeply buried and fiercely denied.

Guildmaster Thorne — Female, Black, sixties

Role: Principal — recurring throughout and across future books

Thorne is the Guildmaster of the Adventurers' Guild — one of the most powerful and respected figures in the city, and she has earned every inch of it. A former frontline adventurer of considerable reputation, she leads not through intimidation but through an absolute, unshakeable authority that she has never once had to raise her voice to establish. She is whip-smart, composed under pressure, and possessed of a devastatingly dry sense of humour that she deploys with surgical precision.

Her relationship with Director Blackwood is one of mutual respect undercut by mutual irritation — two immovable objects who have learned to work around each other without ever quite conceding the point.

She is not a warm character in the conventional sense, but she is a fair one. And in a crisis, there is nobody you would rather have in the room.

Voice: Measured, authoritative, and unhurried. The kind of voice that makes a room go quiet without trying. Dry wit delivered with absolute composure. Think Angela Bassett's natural command and regal bearing.

Note: We are actively seeking a Black female performer for this role.

Role: Featured — recurring throughout

Poppy is the Adventurers' Guild receptionist — perpetually cheerful, relentlessly professional, and quietly capable of absolute mayhem when the situation calls for it. Think warm small-town friendliness with a steel core underneath. She's the kind of person who'll offer you a biscuit and a smile while simultaneously making it very clear that she will not be taking any nonsense today.

Voice: Bright, warm, and approachable with an underlying firmness. Think Bailey Madison's girl-next-door energy with a hint of "don't test me."

Jesiah Runekson — Female Elf, early twenties (Pronounced Jess-Eye-Ah)

Role: Principal — recurring throughout and across future books

Jesiah is an elven warrior who presents in three distinct modes. In professional situations she is focused, direct, and quietly authoritative — all business, no fluff. Beneath that exterior lies a warm, demure, and almost exaggeratedly sweet personality that emerges in private moments and becomes more prominent as the series progresses.

Book 1 draws primarily on the professional mode, with the sweeter side beginning to surface as she grows more comfortable around the protagonist.

Voice: Professional mode — calm, controlled, quietly intense. Underlying sweetness — soft, warm, almost breathlessly gentle.

Note to performers: Jesiah has a third mode — a full berserker transformation — which does not appear in Book 1 but becomes significant in later instalments. Casting will be made with the full arc in mind. Performers should be confident they can deliver across all three modes before auditioning.

Role: Principal — recurring throughout and across future books

Blackwood is the Director of WELCOME, the town's immigrant processing centre — a man of considerable authority and natural gravitas, he carries the quiet confidence of someone who has never once doubted that he is the most capable person in any given room, and has usually been right often enough to justify it. He is warm when he wants to be, formidable when he needs to be, and bureaucratically immovable at all times.

Voice: Deep, authoritative, unhurried. The kind of voice that fills a room without raising itself. Think Courtney B. Vance's natural authority and quiet command.

Note: We are actively seeking a Black male performer for this role.

Arbalest Whiskers (She goes by 'Arba') — Female Nekosapien, late teens (adult)

Role: Supporting — recurring

Arba is a waitress at the Sleeping Cat Café, a Nekosapien (cat-person) with all the grace, curiosity, and quiet warmth that implies. She's young, friendly, and genuinely enthusiastic about her work without being irritatingly so. There's a subtle feline quality to how she engages with people — attentive when interested, diplomatically distant when not. She's not a comic character but she exists in a comic world and carries herself with an easy, natural charm.

Voice: Light, warm, and bright with a gentle quality. Young but not childish. Think Sophia Lillis's natural openness and quiet intelligence.

Note to performers: Arba is a Nekosapien — a cat-person — but this should not inform the vocal performance beyond a natural, feline-adjacent grace in delivery. Purring, hissing, or exaggerated cat-like vocal affectations are not appropriate for this role. Think person first, species second.

Chutney — Male, child, approximately 10 years old

Role: Featured — recurring

Chutney is the son of Pinwick, the tailor. He is precocious, charming, and enthusiastic in the way of a boy who is paying close attention to everything around him and storing it all away for later. His father is attempting to raise him with proper Received Pronunciation, and Chutney is genuinely trying — but under excitement or stress he slips back into a rougher London street accent that suggests the RP is a work in progress rather than a natural state.

The contrast between the two modes is a source of quiet comedy and genuine warmth.

Voice: Bright, quick, and naturally charming. Capable of convincingly switching between Received Pronunciation and a rougher London street accent within the same scene. Child energy without being grating.

Note: This is a child role to be performed by an adult female performer. Vocal authenticity and natural delivery are more important than perfect pitch accuracy.

Pinwick — Male, tailor, mid-forties

Role: Featured — recurring across future books

Pinwick is the tailor — meticulous, quietly proud of his craft, and possessed of the particular dignity of a man who takes his work extremely seriously and expects others to do the same. He is proper without being pompous, precise without being cold. He clearly adores his son and is doing his level best to raise him correctly, which is an ongoing project.

What Pinwick keeps very quiet is that beneath the careful stitching and measured speech is a former fencing champion — a past he neither advertises nor entirely abandons. When the situation demands it, that capability surfaces with an elegance that surprises everyone except Pinwick himself.

Voice: Measured, precise, and warmly proper. Received Pronunciation with the quiet confidence of a craftsman who knows exactly what he's worth. Think Hugh Bonneville's particular brand of dignified understatement.

Marta Ironweave — Female, adventuring supplies owner, early sixties

Role: Featured — recurring across future books

Marta runs the adventuring supplies shop and has absolutely no illusions about the world or the people in it. She is pragmatic to her core, commercially minded in ways that occasionally skirt the edges of ethics, and possessed of the particular toughness of someone who has seen enough to stop being surprised by anything. She is not unkind — she simply has no patience for nonsense and doesn't bother pretending otherwise.

Beneath the no-nonsense exterior is someone who, when it counts, proves considerably more resilient and capable than her shopkeeper status might suggest. She doesn't need rescuing. She just occasionally accepts it.

Voice: Rough-edged, direct, and warm in the way of someone who would never admit to being warm. Think Kathy Bates — that particular combination of blunt force and unexpected depth.

Rho-Dey — Male, adventurer, early thirties

Role: Supporting — recurring

Rho-Dey is a Guild adventurer of considerable self-regard and surprisingly endearing obliviousness about it. He is boastful, swaggering, and thoroughly convinced of his own legend — and yet somehow never quite crosses the line into being genuinely unlikeable. There are hints beneath the bombast of someone more interesting than he presents, but he is in absolutely no hurry to show you that side.

He is the kind of person who volunteers for something spectacularly dangerous primarily because it will make a good story afterwards. The fact that it usually goes wrong doesn't appear to have dented his confidence in the slightest.

Voice: Big, boastful, arrogant, and self-congratulatory. The voice of a man who has told his own stories so many times he's started to believe the embellished versions. 

Auldric — Male, crystal evaluator, indeterminate older age

Role: Supporting — recurring

Auldric is the Guild's crystal evaluator — an enthusiastic, eccentric scholar who treats every new discovery with the barely contained excitement of a man who has spent his entire career waiting for something genuinely interesting to happen and cannot quite believe his luck when it finally does. He is academically passionate to the point of occasionally forgetting that other people in the room have not spent forty years thinking about crystals.

He is not oblivious — he is simply operating at a frequency slightly above the everyday world, where the mundane details of social interaction are less compelling than whatever fascinating specimen is currently in front of him.

Voice: Animated, slightly breathless with enthusiasm, and possessed of the particular energy of someone who talks faster when excited, which is most of the time.

The Curator — Male, Namakesapien (sloth-person), late thirties

Role: Supporting — recurring

The Curator is the head librarian of the Guild library — a Namakesapien, which is to say a sloth-person, which is to say a being for whom the concept of urgency is not so much rejected as simply never encountered. He is unfailingly helpful, genuinely knowledgeable, and operates at a pace that makes the movement of glaciers seem comparatively brisk. He is not slow of mind — he is slow of everything else, and sees absolutely no reason to apologise for it.

Every interaction with the Curator is a lesson in patience. The information he provides is invariably worth waiting for. The waiting is considerable.

Voice: Deeply unhurried. Each word arrives in its own time and is apparently comfortable with that arrangement. Warm, gentle, and utterly untroubled by the concept of speed. Think David Tennant stripped of all his usual kinetic energy and left to marinate in absolute tranquillity.

Note to performers: The comedic value of this character lives entirely in the pacing. Rushed delivery defeats the purpose entirely. Custom audition lines won't be provided for this character, as the actual lines in the book wouldn't translate well for an audition. Instead there is a single piece of direction - pause between syllables. Please use that and provide us an audition using a famous movie quote of your choice.

Grindel — Male, Dwarf, fifties

Role: Supporting — recurring across future books

Grindel is the shoesmith — a dwarf in the traditional sense of the word except for the minor detail that he is nine and a half feet tall, which he considers nobody's business but his own. He is gruff, capable, and possesses the dignity of a craftsman who has been doing his job exceptionally well for a very long time.

He is very amiable, fair, and considerate of others needs.

Voice: Deep, rumbling, and at times bombastic. The voice of a man built close to the ground in spirit if not in stature. Dry and understated with occasional flashes of genuine warmth. Think Brian Blessed with the brakes on.

Asswhole Loadbearer — Male, Robasapien, indeterminate middle age

Role: Supporting — recurring across future books

Asswhole is the owner of Loadbearer Construction — a prominent and highly respected construction company — and the father of Assette. A man of considerable professional standing and genuine competence who is navigating the particular challenge of a teenage daughter who has decided that everything he represents is deeply embarrassing. He loves her fiercely and has absolutely no idea what to do about any of it.

He is solid, dependable, and quietly proud in the way of someone who has built things that last. As a Robasapien — a donkey-person — he shares his species' cultural expression of punctuating moments of strong emotion with a sudden, involuntary "HEE-HAW," which he delivers with the same matter-of-fact dignity he applies to everything else. The Hee-Haw is spoken. Not a braying sound.

Voice: Steady, measured, and warm with an undercurrent of parental exasperation. The kind of voice that commands quiet respect without raising itself.

Assette Loadbearer — Female, Robasapien, late teens

Role: Principal — minor recurring throughout book 1, increasing across future books

Assette is the teenage leader of the Ass Bandits — rebellious, fiercely capable, and in the process of becoming considerably more than her current circumstances suggest. She leads with the natural authority of someone who has never had to think about whether people will follow her, whilst simultaneously being in full revolt against the respectable world her father represents. Beneath the defiance is someone with genuine leadership instincts and a strong moral core that surfaces decisively when it actually matters.

As a Robasapien — a donkey-person — her species has a cultural expression of punctuating moments of strong emotion with a sudden, involuntary "HEE-HAW." This should be performed with complete commitment and absolutely no self consciousness. The comedy depends entirely on it being treated as entirely normal. The hee-haw is spoken, not a braying sound.

Voice: Sharp, confident, and slightly combative by default. Young but not lightweight. Energy that could tip into recklessness but is increasingly channelled into something more purposeful.

Godbench Tallow — Male, landlord, indeterminate middle age

Role: Featured —  Particularly suitable for doubling.

Tallow is Norbert's landlord — mildly crotchety by default and resistant to assistance on principle, not out of genuine obstinacy. He is the kind of man who would rather struggle through something himself than admit he could use a hand, but who is perfectly capable of recognising competence when it's demonstrated in front of him and adjusting his attitude accordingly. By the end he is still not effusive, but his appreciation and approval are sincere precisely because they are not easily given.

Voice: Slightly weathered, mildly grumbling, with the particular warmth of someone who expresses approval reluctantly and means it completely when they do.

Thaléa — Female, mid-twenties

Role: Featured — Book 1 only

Thaléa is the head usher at Groggman's Theatre — warm, confident, and entirely unambiguous about her admiration for Norbert, who responds to her attention with the careful obliviousness of a man who isn't quite sure whether what he thinks is happening is actually happening. She appears only twice, but her presence carries emotional weight that outlasts her page time considerably.

She is bright, charming, and completely at ease with herself — a pleasing contrast to Norbert's careful caution. There is nothing complicated about Thaléa. She simply likes him, and she's not particularly shy about it.

Voice: Warm, bright, naturally charming. Easy confidence without pushiness. The kind of voice that makes someone feel genuinely seen.

Note to performers: This role is suitable for doubling with another character in the production.

Chewbert — Male, Pandasapien (Panda-person), early thirties

Role: Supporting — recurring across future books

Chewbert coordinates the Council of Hmmm — a contemplative organisation housed in the Ssshhhhh building on Loud Lane, which tells you most of what you need to know about the world's relationship with irony. He is quietly capable, diplomatically skilled, and manages the considerable feat of keeping various factions functioning harmoniously through a combination of patience, subtle manipulation, and an absolute refusal to be ruffled by anything. He is warmer than he first appears and more influential than he lets on.

He is the kind of person who always seems to know slightly more than he should, and is entirely comfortable with that.

Voice: Calm, measured, and quietly good humoured. The voice of someone who has heard everything before and remains genuinely interested anyway. Warm without being effusive. Think a younger, more serene Morgan Freeman energy.

Persnickety Nimbletuck — Male, Goblin, mid-forties

Role: Supporting — recurring

Persnickety is the chief curator of the Grand Goblin Gallery — passionate about art, fiercely protective of his exhibitions, and possessed of a pronounced adenoidal speech impediment that causes him to honk. Not metaphorically. He honks. This is simply how he sounds and he has long since stopped noticing it, which means performers absolutely must not play it for laughs — the comedy comes entirely from everyone around him treating it as completely unremarkable.

He is not a comic character. He is a serious, cultured, deeply invested curator who happens to honk when he speaks. Those are two separate facts that coexist without comment.

Voice: Adenoidal, nasal, and punctuated by involuntary honking sounds delivered with complete dignity. Cultured and precise in vocabulary. The honking is non-negotiable and must be committed to entirely.

Note to performers: The honking is a speech characteristic, not a joke. It must be performed with complete sincerity and zero self-awareness. If you play it as comedy, it won't be funny. If you play it straight, it will be.

Paintbrush gob Tusk — Male, Orc, mid-thirties

Role: Supporting — recurring

Paintbrush is an Orc artist of considerable passion and raw emotional power whose work is technically crude and viscerally arresting in equal measure. He is large, loud, and feels everything at full volume — joy, pride, grief, all of it expressed with the same unfiltered intensity he brings to his art. He is not aggressive. He is simply a being for whom subtlety is a foreign country he has never visited and has no particular desire to.

Voice: Big, booming, and unguarded. The voice of someone who has never once modulated their feelings for the comfort of others and considers this a virtue. Warm and passionate rather than threatening.

The Governor — Male, indeterminate older age

Role: Supporting — recurring

The Governor is the nominal head of Big Splinter's civic administration — enthusiastic, well-meaning, and almost completely useless in any situation that requires practical action. He is not stupid. He is simply operating at a level of cheerful optimism that renders him constitutionally incapable of grasping the urgency of most situations. He means well, which is the kindest and most damning thing you can say about him.

He is the kind of official who generates paperwork where action is needed and goodwill where solutions are required. Everyone is fond of him in the way you're fond of a golden retriever that keeps knocking things off tables.

Voice: Warm, bumbling, and relentlessly cheerful. Enthusiastic to the point of mild absurdity. Think Jim Broadbent's particular gift for portraying well-meaning ineffectuality with complete sincerity.

Beatha Spiritcaster (Pronounced Baa-ha) — Female, Black, early thirties

Role: Principal — recurring throughout and across future books

Beatha is a mage of considerable power operating under a very specific constraint — she is mediocre when sober and formidable when drunk, and must maintain a precise level of intoxication to function at her best. She treats this not as a limitation but as a sophisticated art form requiring constant calibration and an encyclopaedic knowledge of spirits. She is flirtatious with absolutely no filter when sufficiently lubricated, direct in all things, and possessed of a sharp intelligence that her lifestyle tends to cause people to underestimate.

She is not a comic character who happens to be competent. She is a genuinely capable magical professional who happens to operate via an unconventional methodology. The comedy comes from the world around her, not from laughing at her.

Her role grows considerably as the series progresses — Book 1 establishes her, future instalments depend on her.

Voice: Warm, quick, and loose — the particular ease of someone who is rarely entirely sober and has made their peace with that. Sharpens considerably when the situation demands it.

Note: We are actively seeking a Black female performer for this role. This role may be doubled with Guildmaster Thorne given both characters are Black women, with modulation used for differentiation.

Roux (pronounced Roo) — Female, Inusapien, late twenties

Role: Supporting — recurring, with an expanded role as the series develops

Roux is the barmaid at the Adventurers' Guild — an Inusapien, which is to say a dog-person with Collie-inspired features, warm amber colouring, and the particular attentiveness of someone who is very good at their job and quietly excellent at reading people. She is professional, graceful, and possessed of a warmth that feels genuine because it is.

She is not simply set dressing. Roux is someone worth paying attention to, and the series will give you reasons to do so.

As with Arba, the therion nature of the character should inform warmth and attentiveness of delivery rather than any literal dog-like vocal affectations.

Voice: Warm, smooth, and quietly intelligent. The kind of voice that makes people feel immediately comfortable.

Note to performers: Roux is an Inusapien — a dog-person — but this should not manifest as literal canine vocal affectations. Think person first, species second.

WELCOME Receptionist — Female, young adult, no given name

Role: Supporting — recurring

The WELCOME Centre receptionist is precisely as professional as the job requires and not one degree warmer — until the moment she is, at which point it's entirely genuine. She is unflappable by nature and by necessity, handles the genuinely bizarre with complete composure, and possesses a dry wit she deploys sparingly and with excellent timing.

She is very good at her job. In this particular workplace, that is no small achievement.

Voice: Crisp, precise, and professionally warm. Deadpan delivery with an undercurrent of quiet amusement at the world she inhabits.

Lunk — Male, late twenties to early thirties

Role: Supporting — recurring

Lunk is a man of enormous enthusiasm and genuinely catastrophic judgement. He means well. He always means well. The road to every single problem he has ever caused is paved with his best intentions and an almost heroic inability to think things through. He is bumbling, likeable, and the kind of person who leaves a trail of unintended consequences behind him like footprints in fresh concrete.

Voice: Warm, slightly hapless, and earnest to a fault. The voice of someone who is always about three steps behind the conversation but is genuinely delighted to be included. If you think of him as Nobby from Discworld, but less cynical and more earnest, then you'll have a fair idea of who Lunk is.

Lunk is a minor role in the first book, but will become more prominent in the future, so he is suitable as a double up character. Please provide an audition of your own choice that you think fits the character. 

This is the listing for male voices.

There are numerous characters throughout the book, some named, some not, who have a small number of lines, or are one shot characters. These characters generally don't merit individual casting, but they DO still need voicing. So I am opening up auditions for general voices. There's no hard limit to the number of applicants I will accept for these roles, as long as the auditions are good, I will do my best to find something for you. For your auditions, please pick your favourite line or passage from any media and read it in as many different voices as you like. There are no restrictions on accents, pitch, or anything else here. However, if you are capable of doing a convincing Brooklyn accent, I would like to hear it as I have a few minor roles that require it.

People who have auditioned for named roles are welcome to also audition here if they wish.

This is the listing for female voices.

There are numerous characters throughout the book, some named, some not, who have a small number of lines, or are one shot characters. These characters generally don't merit individual casting, but they DO still need voicing. So I am opening up auditions for general voices. There's no hard limit to the number of applicants I will accept for these roles, as long as the auditions are good, I will do my best to find something for you. For your auditions, please pick your favourite line or passage from any media and read it in as many different voices as you like. There are no restrictions on accents, pitch, or anything else here.

People who have auditioned for named roles are welcome to also audition here if they wish.