Movement - Romance of Five Kingdoms

The Àolǎng Empire spans five kingdoms, dozens of towns, and one of the great port cities of the known world. This guide covers how you get around: step by step inside a location, on foot or by rickshaw across a city, and by rail, gunboat, or carriage between distant towns.

Moving Inside a Location

Every place in the world is divided into rooms connected by exits. You move between them using compass directions, named destinations, or the names of people you want to find.

Compass directions are the fastest way to step from one room to the next:

north    south    east    west
ne       nw       se      sw
up       down

Single-letter abbreviations (n, s, e, w, ne, nw, se, sw, u, d) all work. On outdoor city streets, moving in a direction starts you walking continuously in that direction; you will keep going through each intersection until you type stop. Inside buildings and indoor rooms, a direction command moves you exactly one room.

Named targets let you navigate without knowing the exact layout:

go to market
walk to Grand Temple
run to Yùhua

The engine finds a path from your current position to the destination and walks you there. It accepts room names, character names, and place names. If your target is ambiguous, you will see a menu to pick from.

Movement verbs are all interchangeable in terms of where you end up. Using creep, saunter, stride, stagger, or any of the other synonyms simply colours the message other players see. You can also add a manner adverb:

walk slowly north
stride boldly to the gate

Type stop or halt at any time to cancel movement in progress.

Checking exits before you move:

exits

This lists every passable exit from your current room with a direction arrow and the name of the room it leads to. Rooms connect by shared polygon edges, not by hand-placed door records, so an exit exists whenever two adjacent rooms share a passable boundary. A door or gate will only appear in the exit list if it is currently open; walls always block.

Going home takes you directly to your registered home room without typing a full address:

home

If you have not set a home yet, use sethome while standing in a room you own.

Following and Leading

You can shadow another character’s movement automatically:

follow Yùlín

Every time Yùlín moves, you move with her. Type stop following to break off.

For Yùlín to allow you to follow her, she must first grant permission:

lead Yùlín   (said by you, grants her permission to follow you)

To revoke that permission:

lead stop Yùlín

NPCs can also be asked to follow you with lead <npc name>. Whether they comply depends on their disposition and the request.

Getting Around the City by Taxi

The Àolǎng Empire sits at roughly a 1940s level of technology. Cities have two tiers of hired transport:

Rickshaws are free and travel at about twice walking speed.
Black cabs cost 20 to 100 silver li and move at roughly four times walking speed.

Auto-hail on long walks

You usually do not have to think about taxis. When you type go to <destination> or any of the named-target movement commands and the route is longer than about 500 feet on foot, the game treats the trip as “a long walk” and routes you through a taxi automatically. The flow chains together cleanly:

If you are inside a building, you walk out to the nearest street.
A rickshaw or black cab takes you to the street nearest your destination.
You walk the last few rooms into the destination building.

Which tier of ride you get depends on your transport preference. If you have set rickshaw, you board a rickshaw without confirmation. If you have set cab, you board a black cab and the fare is deducted from your wallet. If you have not set a preference yet, a quickmenu appears offering Walk, Rickshaw, and Cab with their estimated travel times. If you cannot afford the fare you picked, the game falls back to walking.

To set or change your default transport preference:

taxi

This opens a short menu where you can choose rickshaw, black cab, or walk-only (never auto-hail). Your preference persists between sessions.

Hailing manually

You can also hail a ride directly to a destination without using go to:

taxi to Grand Temple
rickshaw to harbour
cab to Night Market

The command aliases hail, cab, and rickshaw all work. cab to <destination> always requests a black cab; rickshaw to <destination> always requests a rickshaw; plain taxi to <destination> uses whichever tier you have set as your default.

If you own a personal vehicle, you can also drive it:

drive to market
drive home

Your vehicle must be parked in your current room. If it is elsewhere, the command tells you where to find it. If your vehicle is parked here when you ask for a long walk, the auto-hail prompt offers it as a third option alongside taxi and walking.

Traveling Between Towns and Kingdoms

Journeys between settlements use the world travel system. Towns are hours or days apart even by the fastest vehicles the empire offers: trains on the rail network, gunboats and river ferries along the Jīnhé and the coasts, and road carriages for inland routes without rail.

The travel map

The easiest way to plan a journey is to open the world travel map. Type journey with no arguments:

journey

A modal dialog opens over the webclient with a pre-rendered tile-based world map. You can zoom in and out with the + and - keys (or the on-screen controls), pan by dragging, and recenter on your current location at any time. Major settlements, garrisons, and known wilderness sites are picked out as clickable hexes.

Click any destination and the side panel fills in with your travel options: estimated transit time by each available mode (train, gunboat, ferry, carriage), the fare where relevant, and any flashback shortcuts you qualify for (see below). Pick an option and you depart. Press Escape or click the close button to dismiss the map without committing.

If you would rather skip the map and name a destination directly, you can do that too:

journey to Zhūwān
journey to Cángjìng

This brings up the same travel options for that specific destination without showing the full map. Choose your preferred mode and you depart. While traveling you can check your progress:

eta

This shows your destination, vehicle type, current terrain, distance remaining in hexes, and estimated arrival time. You can also view who else is aboard:

journey party

To leave a journey before it ends, use:

journey disembark

You are set down in the nearest wilderness room along the route. This cannot be undone; you will need to arrange a new journey from there.

To cancel a journey completely (this drops you at the wilderness point and ends travel for your whole party):

stop journey

Group Travel

If you want to travel with others, assemble a party before departing:

Run journey to <destination> and choose Assemble Party from the menu.
Invite companions who are standing with you in the same location:
```
journey invite Sháo
journey invite Weiming
```
Wait for each person to accept the invitation.
Launch when your group is ready:
```
journey launch
```

To disband a party before launching:

journey cancel

Flashback Travel

Flashback time is an out-of-character convenience that reflects the time your character has been away from active roleplay. Every real-world minute you spend not participating in a scene accrues as flashback time, up to a cap of twelve hours.

When you start a journey, flashback options appear in the travel menu alongside the standard option:

Flashback (Instant): if you have enough flashback time to cover the full journey, you arrive immediately and the time is deducted.
Flashback (Reduced): if you have partial flashback time, travel is shortened and you cover the remainder normally.
Flashback Return (Instanced): you arrive instantly at the destination and a portion of your flashback time is reserved to cover the return trip. While in this instanced state you can only interact with characters who traveled with you; use journey return to jump back to your origin instantly using the reserved time.
Backloaded (Instanced): you arrive instantly and a return debt is noted. You can roleplay freely at the destination, but you will need to repay the debt before further instant travel is available.

Check your available flashback time any time by running journey with no arguments.

You cannot begin a new journey while already traveling or while inside a flashback instance. Use journey return to exit an instance first.