The World
Romance of Five Kingdoms is a wuxia romantasy set inside the Àolǎng Empire, the Profound Radiance, an island realm of mountains, river plains, and a single great port city where the rest of the world presses at the gates. Martial discipline and political intrigue braid into one story here: the same character who duels on a rooftop at dawn may be scheming over imported whiskey at a court banquet that evening. The five kingdoms of the empire, Sìshuǐ, Táimí, Jīnjiǎ, Qiānjīn, and Tōngzhì, each carry a distinct philosophy and aesthetic, and your birth kingdom shapes not only your backstory but the rivals and allies your character will naturally attract.
The wuxia layer runs deep. Sects organise most martial artists into orders with their own codes, rivalries, and secret techniques. Schools of martial study channel qi in fundamentally different directions, so two skilled fighters may be nearly incomprehensible to each other in a duel. Cultivation, the lifelong refinement of one's qi through practice, meditation, and sometimes alchemical pills, is the main progression system and the preoccupation of most player characters. The more you cultivate, the stranger and more powerful your techniques become.
The romantasy layer is equally structural. Most marriages in the empire are arranged. Qi grows stronger the more opposed your character is to their romantic interest, so the game rewards relationships built on friction, rivalry, and slow-burning desire. You will attend elaborate balls in absurdly expensive court dress, exchange backhanded compliments that do real social damage, and navigate the gap between who you want and who your house expects you to pursue. The living world around you includes sixteen elder spirits, hundreds of NPCs with daily schedules, and a political situation shaped by two major external powers, the Aldermark Commonwealth and Shirogane, whose consuls and agents are already in every major city.
Your character is one thread in this. You weave it with others. The best stories in this game emerge from the crossing of those threads: a rival who becomes something more complicated, a secret technique that falls into the wrong hands, a duel that turns into a scene neither participant expected. None of that is scripted. You make it happen.
Character Creation
When you create a character you make three structural choices that define who your character is in the world. These are not cosmetic; they shape your starting relationships, your martial abilities, and how other characters read you from the moment you enter the game.
Birth Kingdom
You are a prince or princess of one of the five royal houses. Each kingdom has its own culture, aesthetic, and social logic.
- Sìshuǐ (House Lanaris)
- The imperial heartland. Four rivers, ten thousand bridges, and a court built on patience, balance, and the art of seeing all sides at once.
- Táimí (House Liradi)
- The spirit lands. A radically decentralised kingdom where every valley has its own gods and no clear line separates daily life from the supernatural.
- Jīnjiǎ (House Zhancalius)
- Gold Scale. A rigid military society where duelling culture pervades every level, rank is worn openly, and earning your name through adversity is the highest virtue.
- Qiānjīn (House Jindoro)
- The merchant kingdom. Status is fluid and transactional, fashion changes with the season, and the cities are the loudest and most chaotic in the empire.
- Tōngzhì (House Shuveri)
- The knowledge kingdom. Scholars, archivists, and quiet assassins who look like scholars. Its most dangerous rooms look like its most boring ones.
Zodiac Sign
Your birth year's animal sign is less a mechanical modifier than a personality archetype that the game's culture treats as real. Six signs:
- Phoenix:
- Rebirth, passion, transformation. Magnetic and emotionally intense; they reinvent themselves constantly.
- Bear:
- Endurance, warmth, quiet strength. Slow to commit but immovable once they do; others gravitate to them for stability.
- Serpent:
- Intuition, subtlety, hidden knowledge. Reads rooms instantly; drawn to secrets and the space between what people say and what they mean.
- Crane:
- Grace, justice, clarity. Carries natural dignity and strong convictions; drawn to service, scholarship, or art.
- Wolf:
- Loyalty, hunger, instinct. Lives through bonds; fiercely competitive but channels it through collective identity.
- Tiger:
- Boldness, magnetism, restless energy. Dominates a room without meaning to; trusts instincts and moves decisively.
School and Style
Your school determines the fundamental logic of how you fight and how your qi moves. There are four schools, each with several styles within them. Choose a school that fits how you want to play in combat and in cultivation.
Ember Fist
Overwhelming power and unbreakable stances. Channelling qi into devastating strikes and superhuman endurance, hardening the body like forged metal. Fire, earth, and metal elemental techniques.
Veiled Grace
The unseen strike, the redirected gaze. Speed, misdirection, and precision. Shadow and poison manipulation, acrobatics, and assassination techniques refined into high art.
Mirrored Tempest
The tactician's school. Reading the geometry of a fight and turning an opponent's strengths into weaknesses. Grappling, counterattacks, and water and wind manipulation.
Radiant Chorus
Projecting qi outward rather than through the body. Elemental projectiles, shields, healing, and empowering allies. The school prized by every kingdom for its restorative arts.
Each school contains multiple distinct styles with their own techniques and playstyles. Full details are on the Styles page.
Your First Hour
Welcome to Romance of Five Kingdoms. This guide covers everything you need to get comfortable in your first session: how to ask for help, how the interface works, how to move around, and how to talk to other players.
Getting Help
Type help at any time to see a summary of common commands. To look up a specific command or topic, add it after help:
help look
help combat
help emote
You can also type a question and the built-in AI assistant will try to answer it:
help how do I fight?
help what is a delve?
If you are not sure what a command is called, helpsearch <keyword> searches the entire help database by keyword. The commands command lists everything available to you, optionally filtered by category (commands navigation, commands combat, etc.).
Aliases for help: h, ?
The Newbie Channel
When you first log in you are automatically added to the Newbie channel. This is an out-of-character (OOC) channel for new players to ask questions. No question is too basic. Everyone starts somewhere.
To chat on the Newbie channel, use the left (OOC) pane or type:
channel newbie Hello, I just arrived!
You can also use + <message> as a quick shortcut to send to the default OOC channel. To see all channels you can join, type channels.
The Interface
The webclient has two panes side by side:
- Left pane (OOC) for out-of-character chat, channels, and private messages.
- Right pane (RP) for in-character actions: movement, emotes, speech, combat, and most game commands.
There is one shared input box at the bottom. Press Tab to switch between the two panes. The placeholder text reminds you which side you are on: the left says “OOC chat” and the right says “Say, emote, pose.”
Press Enter to send. Press Escape to clear the input without sending.
Tip: If you start typing something on the wrong side and press Tab, the game saves your draft so you do not lose it when you switch.
Switching Output: onleft and onright
By default, output from a command appears in whichever pane makes sense for that command type. You can override where the result displays by prefixing your command:
onleft <command>sends the result to the left (OOC) pane regardless of command type. Good for keeping your RP feed clean.onright <command>sends the result to the right (RP) pane.
Examples:
onleft commands
onright who
Switching Input Context: asleft and asright
These prefixes change how the server interprets the command, as if you had typed it on the opposite pane.
asleft <command>executes the command in OOC context, even if you typed it on the RP side.asright <command>executes in RP context, even if typed on the OOC side.
Aliases: atleft = asleft, atright = asright
Keeping Commands in Input: sticky
Prefix any command with sticky and the input field will not clear after you send. Useful for repeated dice rolls, repeated emotes, or anything you plan to fire off several times in a row.
sticky roll 2d6
sticky emote taps the table impatiently
You can combine prefixes in any order:
sticky asleft say Hello
sticky onleft roll 2d6
asleft sticky emote waves
Global Sticky Mode: stickymode
Typing stickymode by itself toggles sticky mode on or off for your entire session. When sticky mode is on, the input field never clears after sending, as if every command had the sticky prefix. Type stickymode again to turn it off. A short confirmation banner appears when you toggle it.
Automatic Grammar Fixing
You can enable grammar checking in the settings menu and it will highlight any potential grammar issues in text you’ve typed. Hitting control/cmd and . will automatically apply fixes.
Undoing a Message
Made a typo or sent the wrong thing? Type undo within 60 seconds to delete your most recent message from everyone’s screen. It works for emotes, says, whispers, and channel messages. Type undo from the same pane where you sent the message (left for OOC, right for IC).
You can only undo your single most recent message. There is no further history to undo.
Moving Around
Use compass directions to move between rooms:
north south east west
ne nw se sw
up down
All have single-letter shortcuts: n, s, e, w, ne, nw, se, sw, u, d.
On city streets the engine starts continuous directional walking so you glide through multiple rooms smoothly. Inside buildings and interiors each command moves you one room at a time.
You can also use walk, run, crawl, stroll, and many other movement verbs for flavor and varying speed:
walk north
run to tavern
crawl east
angrily stride west
Type stop to halt continuous movement. You cannot leave a room while in combat.
Seeing Who Is Online
who shows who is online in your current zone. Add here or all to narrow or broaden the scope:
who -- online players in your zone
who here -- only this room
who all -- everyone online, grouped by zone and event
Alias: where
Looking Around
look with no argument shows the full room: description, exits, characters present, furniture, and objects.
look -- the room
look door -- a specific object or feature
look Mei -- look at another character
look Mei's sword -- look at something Mei is holding
look north -- peek at the exit to see where it leads
Aliases: l, look at
examine gives you the detailed prose description of the room itself, separate from the quick overview look provides. You can also examine <target> to inspect characters and objects more closely.
examine
examine room
examine Mei
Alias: ex
Basic Emoting
emote (also pose or :) performs an action visible to everyone in the room.
If you start your emote with a lowercase letter, the game prepends your character’s name automatically:
emote waves at the newcomer.
-- Result: Liya waves at the newcomer.
If you start with an uppercase letter, you must include your own name in the text (for possessive or third-person constructions):
emote Liya's hand rests on the hilt of her blade.
The game adds a trailing period if you omit punctuation. Use undo if you make a mistake.
Talking to People Out of Character
ooc <name> <message> sends a private, out-of-character message to another player. This is separate from channels and visible only to the two of you:
ooc Mei Hey, is this your first time in Zhuwan too?
ooc Mei,Roku Great scene, both of you!
You can address multiple people at once by separating names with commas. Type ooc with no arguments to see your recent contacts.
For broadcast OOC chat visible to everyone on a channel, use the left (OOC) pane or channel <name> <message>.
News and Announcements
news shows staff announcements grouped into three categories:
announcementfor important game updatesicfor in-character world newsoocfor out-of-character announcements
Unread articles are marked [NEW]. Read them by number:
news
news announcement
news 5
Aliases: bulletin, announcements
Reporting Bugs and Suggestions
tickets opens a menu for submitting and tracking player requests. There are quick shortcuts for common cases:
bug -- report a broken feature
typo -- flag a text error
suggest -- submit a suggestion
request -- request a new feature
report -- flag player conduct
Staff receive an alert when you submit. You can track status and read resolution notes with tickets list and tickets view <id>.
Letting People Know You Are Busy
afk marks you as away from keyboard. Others in the room see a brief broadcast so they know you stepped away. Type afk again to clear the status. Add a number to set a duration that auto-clears:
afk
afk 30 -- away for 30 minutes
gtg signals that you are about to leave. It works the same way: optional duration, room broadcast, cleared when you return or the timer expires:
gtg
gtg 15 -- leaving in about 15 minutes
Both statuses appear in who and finger output so other players can see your availability at a glance.
Aliases: afk = away, gtg = gottago
Quitting the Game
Type quit (or logout or sleep) to leave safely. Your character goes to sleep in the room where you logged out. The game records your playtime and clears any active states before logging you out. You cannot quit while in combat.
Tip: If your connection drops, you have about five minutes to reconnect before the game times you out. The server also logs you out automatically after three hours of inactivity, so you will not stay stuck online if you forget to quit.
Explore the World
Need Help?
Our community is here to help. Ask questions in the Newbie OOC channel in-game, or reach out to staff directly.
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