Help Topics

Abilities are the combat techniques you draw on during a fight: strikes, stances, shields, and movement tricks. Each ability belongs to a cultivation style, and you gain access to it by raising that style's level.

How you gain abilities

• Every ability lists a minimum style level. Once your level in that style reaches it, the ability becomes available to you.
• If the style belongs to your own martial school, its abilities open up for free as you level the style.
• Abilities from a style outside your school require your family to have completed the matching family manual before you can use them.

Is there a skill-point pool to spend?

No. There are no separate "skill points" to save up and spend. What you advance is a martial style's level (also called its rank), which during the alpha climbs from rank 1 to rank 6 (mastery). Raising a style's level is what unlocks its higher abilities.

You raise a style's level in the cultivation interface (cultivate or meditate) by crafting a pill for it. Each pill is a recipe of ingredients bought in the cultivation shop with influence or gold dollars; that is the resource you spend to advance. Fighting and sparring with a style build up training progress on their own, and a higher-ranked sparring partner or a teach lesson builds it faster; this progress is not spent like points, it is applied automatically to make your next rank's pill cheaper. See help cultivate.

Using abilities in combat

• In a fight, the combat menu lists the abilities you can use right now; pick one to perform it on your turn.
• invoke <ability> queues a style ability so it applies to your next roll.
• Each ability resolves at a named speed within the round. See help ability speed.

Learning more

• score shows your styles and the abilities you have learned.
• help <ability name> describes a specific technique, for example help stone fist.
• help <style name> describes a whole style and the abilities it teaches.

Usage: abilities

See Also: ability speed combat score invoke cultivate

Many combat abilities cost you a temporary penalty on your later rolls. Ability text often calls this a malus to your "ability rolls." It is a real, tracked cost, not flavour text: using a strong ability makes you a little less sharp for a few rounds while you recover.

The two kinds of penalty

• Ability-roll penalty hits only your OTHER ability rolls. It never touches your basic attack roll, and it never penalises the very ability that caused it. Most abilities use this kind.
• All-roll penalty hits EVERY roll you make, both basic attacks and abilities (again excluding the ability that caused it). A few heavy abilities carry this on top of the ability-roll penalty.

Penalties are negative numbers added to your roll total, so they make a roll lower (and a lower roll is easier to fully resist). Each penalty fades on its own: every round it recovers by a fixed amount until it reaches zero and disappears. A larger penalty, or a smaller per-round recovery, means it lingers longer.

Do abilities roll?

Yes. An ability resolves with its own roll, to which your relevant stat modifier and any active penalties are added. The ability's own listed effect is the source of truth for what it adds; it does not borrow your basic attack modifier. Abilities that simply shield, buff, or reposition still roll, but they do not roll to "hit" an opponent the way a basic attack does, which is why they can feel like they do not roll. Spending Qi on an ability adds extra exploding dice to that ability's roll.

Tracking your active penalties

Your current ability-roll and all-roll penalties appear under "Your Status" in the combat status command, with how many more rounds each one will last. In the web client they also show in the combat status bar as a warning tag, with the per-round recovery shown as a superscript.

Every combat round is divided into segments. An ability's speed is how early in the round it takes effect: faster abilities resolve sooner, so they can land a strike, raise a shield, or move before slower actions go off. Instead of a raw number, each ability shows a named speed tier.

Speed tiers

• Instant resolves at the very start of the round, before almost anything else.
• Very Fast resolves early, ahead of most actions.
• Fast resolves in the first part of the round.
• Average resolves around the middle of the round.
• Slow resolves later, after most quicker actions.
• Very Slow resolves near the end of the round.

When two actions share a tier, the exact order is decided within the round by small timing differences. Passive abilities are always active and have no speed tier. Movement is scheduled along the same round timeline, and when a move and a strike would land at the same instant the move is taken first; see help combat for how a full round plays out and where movement falls relative to attacks.

Usage: help ability speed

See Also: styles help

Collect every finished commission you have waiting straight into your inventory, wherever you are. This is how you actually receive an item you ordered with commission: you never have to walk back to the workshop that made it.

When a commission finishes you are told it is ready and pointed at this command. Type accept deliveries (or just deliveries) and all of your ready commissions are handed over at once. If nothing is ready yet, you are simply told there is nothing to collect. A ready order waits patiently for you, so there is no deadline.

Use orders (or commissions) at any time to see what is still being crafted and what is ready to collect. Home-delivery orders are handled separately: those are dropped at your home automatically and do not need this command.

Examples

• accept deliveries: collect every finished commission into your inventory.
• deliveries: the short form, exactly the same thing.

Usage: accept deliveries

See Also: orders commission

Configure screen reader, visual aid, and text-to-speech settings. Without arguments, it opens a form to adjust everything at once.

Looking for a screen reader mode? Yes. Type accessibility mode on to turn on full screen reader mode, which converts visual layouts into linear text and auto-queues TTS narration. If you only want the output simplified without auto-queuing, use accessibility reader on. There is no separate screenreader keyword; these two settings are it.

Settings (each takes on or off):

• accessibility mode on/off — Full screen reader mode, with linear output and TTS auto-queuing.
• accessibility reader on/off — Optimize output for screen readers without auto-queuing TTS.
• accessibility contrast on/off — Toggle high contrast mode for better readability.
• accessibility effects on/off — Toggle visual effects (on is full, off is reduced motion).
• accessibility typing on/off — Pause TTS when you start typing.
• accessibility resume on/off — Auto-resume TTS after typing stops.

For an on/off setting you may also type yes/no, enable/disable, or 1/0. Type a setting with no value to see its current state.

Other options:

• accessibility speed 1.5 — Set TTS narration speed (any value from 0.25 to 4.0, default 1.0).
• accessibility keys — Show replay buffer key bindings.
• accessibility status — Show all current settings.
• accessibility help — Show the in-game command help.

Delves and puzzles

Mode on also adapts delves: the map and status render as plain text, and the carved stone puzzles that block exits no longer require arranging a visual grid. With mode on, solve rolls one of your stats against the puzzle's difficulty to find a way past the mechanism instead. See help delve for the delve commands.

Use the web form (by typing just accessibility) to configure multiple settings at once. Colorblind palettes, dyslexia-friendly fonts, and font sizes live in the webclient settings panel (gear icon).

Usage: accessibility [mode|reader|contrast|effects|typing|resume|spacing] [on|off] | accessibility speed [0.25-4.0] | accessibility [keys|status|help]

Manage activities, missions, and tasks available in the game. This command lets you discover what activities exist in your area, start new ones, join ongoing activities, and interact with them through the activity system. Activities are time-limited challenges or cooperative experiences that you can run on your own or alongside other players.

How to take part

Each activity is tied to the specific room where it was placed, so there is no single kind of venue to look for. To take part, follow these steps:

1. Type activity list to see what is running or available in the room where you currently stand. It only shows activities placed in that exact room, so if nothing appears, try other rooms nearby. Each one is numbered.
2. To begin one yourself, type activity start <name or number>. You become the first participant right away, so this works solo. If an activity is already running, type activity join instead to take part in it.
3. Each round you choose what to do, then type activity ready to lock in your turn. When everyone is ready, the round resolves and the next one begins.
4. Type activity status at any time to see the current round, your choices, and the other participants.
5. Type activity leave to step out before the activity finishes.

Subcommands

• activity list — see available activities in your location.
• activity start <name> — begin an activity by name or list number (you can run one solo).
• activity join — join an activity already in progress in your room.
• activity leave — step out of the activity you are in.
• activity status — check the current round, your choices, and the participants.
• activity choose <action> — pick an action for the round by number or name.
• activity qi <0-2> — spend qi for extra dice on your roll.
• activity help <player> — assist another participant so they roll with advantage.
• activity recover — skip your roll this round and regain qi.
• activity ready — lock in your turn once you have chosen.

Round-specific subcommands

Some rounds call for a particular kind of turn. The status display tells you which to use:

• activity vote <number> — cast your vote on a branch round.
• activity heal — recover HP on a rest round.
• activity continue — vote to move on from a rest round.
• activity assess <description> — scout the situation on a free-roll round.
• activity action <description> — describe what you do on a free-roll round.
• activity persuade — make your case on a persuade round.

How it works

Use activity list to see what is available in your current location. Some activities have limits on participants or are only available at certain times. Once you start or join an activity, you proceed through rounds where you take actions and see results. Activities can be solo or multiplayer.

Usage: activity <subcommand> [arguments]

Extend your most recent commission by ordering additional copies of the same item at the identical per-unit price. You'll see the cost before confirming, and you can choose your payment method.

Examples

• addamount 3 — add 3 more copies to your current order.
• addamount 5 — add 5 copies.

How it works

The system finds your most recent active commission and offers to add copies at the same quoted price. This avoids renegotiation if you decide you want more items once production has begun.

Usage: addamount <number>

An adventure is a guided story session that the game runs for you. There is no adventure command to start one yourself. Instead, the world watches for a player who has settled into a quiet moment and offers them an unfolding tale: a chance encounter, a problem to solve, a turn of fortune. When that happens you are dropped into a narrated scene and invited to play it out.

How an adventure begins

Adventures start on their own when you are idle. If your character has been standing still for a few minutes, is alive and online, is not in disguise, and has enough energy to spare, the game may choose you for one. You also need to be out in the wider world: adventures do not begin while you are inside Zhūwān or a kingdom capital, where there is already plenty to do. After one finishes there is a cooldown of about half an hour before that same character is eligible again, so they are an occasional event rather than something you grind.

Starting an adventure spends some of your energy, so keep an eye on your reserves with score. You can build energy back up through offline work; see help earning money and help activity.

Playing through one

While an adventure is running it is narrated for you, scene by scene, and you respond in character. You can also help steer the story with the assert command, which lets you spend Destiny to assert facts about the world: a new arrival, a complication, a sudden gift or revelation. See help assert for the kinds of things you can assert, and help destiny for how Destiny is earned and spent. Completing an adventure pays out rewards such as treasure you can sell, standing, and crafting ingredients.

Emotes show only what someone watching you could see, which leaves nowhere to put an aim that lives inside your character: sitting down to reach for the spirits of a grove looks exactly like sitting down with your eyes shut. Use intent <what you are trying to accomplish> to tell the narrator the aim behind what you are doing. Only the narrator reads it, nothing is broadcast to the room, and it is answered like anything else, usually with a roll or an obstacle. See help intent.

Adventures you bring with you

An adventure still starts on its own, but you no longer have to take whatever the world hands you. Two things can ride along on a journey and decide what the adventure at the other end is about:

• A story you wrote. Use write adventure to open the story editor and set down your own chapters, then pick that story in the travel window when you set out. The world still supplies the people and the places; your outline decides what happens. See help write adventure.
• An errand you have earned. If your party has gathered enough evidence to corner a villain, break a bandit camp, or settle a regional trouble, journey hunts lists it and travelling there opens it on arrival. See help villains and help troubles.

You may carry one of these per trip, not both.

Adventures versus delves

It is easy to confuse the two, so here is the difference:

• An adventure comes to you. It is a narrated story session the game starts automatically when you are idle out in the world. You shape it through play and the assert command, and you can steer it in advance with a story of your own or an errand you have earned.
• A delve is something you start on purpose. Type delve enter inside the ruins of southern Zhūwān to explore a procedural dungeon for loot and treasure. Entry is free. See help delve.

Usage: No command. Adventures start automatically when you are idle, and can be steered in advance with a story of your own or an errand from "journey hunts". An overview topic. See also: activity, write adventure, assert, intent, destiny, delve.

See Also: activity write adventure assert intent destiny delve villains troubles

Treasures pulled out of an adventure, such as the Shard of the Blood Altar, are trophies rather than tools. Shards, relics, and curios like these carry no combat, crafting, or ritual power of their own; once the adventure that produced them is over, they are keepsakes with a price. Each one holds a fixed value in Silver Li, set at the moment it was awarded. Their practical use is money. Carry the piece to any Floating Market stall and type sell followed by the item's name (a distinctive word from it is enough). Adventure hauls always buy in at their full recorded value, so a curio-grade shard fetches the same set sum every time, with no reputation adjustment. Away from a Floating Market, sell handles only refunds and sell-backs and will not take an adventure trophy, so you must be standing at a stall for the secondhand pool to accept it. If you would rather keep the memento than spend it, there is no harm in holding onto it. Type look followed by the item's name to read its full description. Otherwise it simply rides in your pack, worth what it is worth, until you choose to sell.

See Also: sell market adventure

Mark yourself as away from keyboard. You can specify a duration in minutes, or omit it to indicate indefinite absence. Others in your room will see a status message. Typing afk again toggles the status off.

Examples

• afk — toggle AFK on or off.
• afk 30 — set AFK for 30 minutes.
• away — alias for AFK.

Your character's activity status is visible to other players in the room. AFK automatically clears if you send any other command.

Usage: afk [minutes]

Plan and manage afterparties that spawn from an active event. Afterparties are smaller, follow-on gatherings created by event attendees. As a creator, you invite people and set a destination room. As an invitee, you can accept, decline, or join once the afterparty is launched. Afterparties auto-launch after a minimum acceptance time or when the creator forces launch.

Examples

• afterparty — open the afterparty creation form.
• afterparty status — see pending or launched afterparties you are hosting or invited to.
• afterparty go — launch a pending afterparty now (as creator).
• afterparty join Bob — join Bob's afterparty if you were invited.
• afterparty invite Alice — add Alice to your pending afterparty.

Tips

• Afterparties only work inside an active event.
• Invitees have a minimum time window before they can be moved (usually a few minutes).
• Once launched, the creator and ready invitees teleport to the destination room.
• Late acceptors can join using afterparty join.

Usage: afterparty [create|status|go|cancel|join <host>|invite <name>]

This topic covers two separate things: the AI built into the game that you meet while playing, and the community policy on AI-generated art that players share outside the game. They are unrelated, so read whichever you came for.

The AI built into the game

Some of what you see while playing is shaped by AI working behind the scenes. In plain terms, that includes:

• Animated characters who hold a conversation. Many of the people you meet can talk back, react, and act in their own voice rather than repeating a fixed line.
• Generated places. Room, building, and town descriptions, along with the weather and the mood of a scene, are often written for the moment rather than picked from a short list.
• Polished combat writing. The blow-by-blow of a fight is turned into flowing prose, on top of the underlying dice and rules.
• Composed names. Names and their meanings are put together for new people and places.
• Optional story beats. Missions, adventures, small activities, and the auto storyteller can offer threads for you to follow.

This writing is generated, so once in a while it can come out wrong: a person might say something that does not fit, a description might contradict what is in the room, or a name or detail might read oddly. That is worth reporting, and it is easy to do.

Reporting an AI oddity

Yes, you can report it. Use the ticket system, the same channel you use for any other problem. Type bug (or tickets and choose Submit Ticket) to open the report form, then describe what happened. The most useful details are:

• What was said or shown — quote the odd NPC reply or paste the strange description if you can.
• Where — which room, building, or town, and which character or fight it came up in.
• When — roughly the time it happened, so staff can match it to the logs.

Your current location, character, and any active fight or activity are attached to the ticket automatically, so you do not have to restate them. Filing the ticket alerts staff and keeps a record you can follow with tickets. For the full picture of reaching staff and tracking replies, see help contacting staff.

---

Short answer: you are welcome to use AI-generated art in and around the game. The one rule is disclosure: you must declare that a piece is AI-generated whenever there is any reasonable chance someone would otherwise conclude it is art you made yourself.

When do I have to disclose?

Whenever someone could reasonably mistake the AI output for your own handiwork. If a viewer might look at it and think you drew, painted, or designed it, say up front that it is AI-generated. In practice this comes up most often with AI art posted to the sharing channels on the Discord, but the same principle applies in any other situation where the same confusion could arise.

When don't I have to disclose?

If the generation is photographic, or otherwise not something anyone could reasonably imagine was art you actually made, you don't have to disclose it. The rule is only about preventing AI work from being mistaken for your own original art — not about labelling every image that ever touched a model.

The rule in one line

Use AI art freely — just don't let anyone believe you made it by hand when you didn't. When in doubt, declare it.

Usage: No command. The community policy on AI-generated art: it is allowed, but you must disclose AI art whenever it could be mistaken for art you made yourself (mostly the Discord sharing channels). Photographic or obviously-not-hand-made output needs no disclosure.

See Also: tickets bug contacting staff

The Commonwealth of Aldermark is a colonial industrial power from across the western ocean: a parliamentary, mercantile state under a ceremonial sovereign. It trades steam engines, rifles, and factory patterns for the empire's silk, tea, and medicines, and holds a fortified concession on Zhūwān's southern quays. It works no cultivation or magic of its own, yet its machine industry outstrips every rival, and the Five Kingdoms remain bitterly divided over whether its offered tutelage is opportunity or leash.

Usage: alias | alias <keyword> | alias <keyword> <expansion> | alias "<multi word>" <expansion>

Office of the Ambassador of Aldermark to Zhūwān. Currently held by Audanieverae Elperieormee. See `help "Audanieverae Elperieormee"` for the current officeholder.

See Also: Audanieverae Elperieormee

Office of the Ambassador of Jīnjiǎ to Zhūwān. Currently held by Měnghǔ Feng-Zhancalius. See `help "Měnghǔ Feng-Zhancalius"` for the current officeholder.

See Also: Měnghǔ Feng-Zhancalius

Office of the Ambassador of Qiānjīn to Zhūwān. Currently held by Xiāngchéng Jīn-Jindoro. See `help "Xiāngchéng Jīn-Jindoro"` for the current officeholder.

See Also: Xiāngchéng Jīn-Jindoro

Office of the Ambassador of Sìshuǐ to Zhūwān. Currently held by Tiānláng Xióng-Lanaris. See `help "Tiānláng Xióng-Lanaris"` for the current officeholder.

See Also: Tiānláng Xióng-Lanaris

Office of the Ambassador of Táimí to Zhūwān. Currently held by Jīnghún Yào-Liradi. See `help "Jīnghún Yào-Liradi"` for the current officeholder.

See Also: Jīnghún Yào-Liradi

Office of the Ambassador of Tōngzhì to Zhūwān. Currently held by Shòuwén Chóng-Shuveri. See `help "Shòuwén Chóng-Shuveri"` for the current officeholder.

See Also: Shòuwén Chóng-Shuveri

Romance of Five Kingdoms is a romantasy wuxia game set in the Àolǎng Empire, an island realm a little smaller than France, drawing on Chinese-influenced fantasy in the way that a typical Western fantasy draws on medieval Europe. It is not historical China. There is no Confucius, no Buddha, no Tang, Ming, or Qing dynasty. The gods are not borrowed; the dragons are not borrowed; the philosophy is not borrowed. Everything in this world is invented for this world. Please do not import real Chinese history, mythology, or religion into your roleplay. If something feels like it would be a reference, it almost certainly should not be. The world sits at roughly a 1940s level of technology. Telegraph wires cross the rice terraces; the great port of Zhūwān has neon signs in classical calligraphy beside traditional teahouses; trains and gunboats exist and matter. ## Honorifics Honorifics carry a lot of the conversational weight. The four short particles are **Wei** (the addressee is your superior at this thing), **Xia** (the addressee is your inferior), **Me** (the addressee is your ally), and **Di** (the addressee is your rival). They combine: Weime is a superior ally, Xiadi is an inferior rival, and so on. They shift sentence to sentence as the topic shifts. Omitting an honorific entirely is read as dishonest or coy. See `help honorifics` for the full table. ## Bowing It's customary to bow to people upon greeting them, bowing deeper and longer conveys more respect. ## Fashion The technology level of the Empire is roughly 1940s, any fashion up to this point is acceptable, drawing from most any culture. While the most common garbs are robes, dresses and suits anything which doesn't seem overtly modern is acceptable. It's a fantasy setting, so outfits can also be more varied or elaborate or creative than they would have been historically. It's also an era of refinement however, outfits that show copious amounts of skin or the like are considered in extremely poor taste. ## Gender The empire is gender-balanced. Women rule kingdoms, command armies, run merchant houses, and duel in the streets on equal footing with men. Sects, orders, and the imperial bureaucracy are all open to anyone. While sexism does exist, it's more rare and repressed than open, similar to modern society. ## Sexuality Àolǎng Culture, particularly that of the higher classes is very concerned with dynasty and family. Gay marriage is not legal and marriages are usually arranged and inescapable unless one joins the Starlight Order. However, outside of this obligation, there's very little concern with someone's sexuality and lavender marriages are not uncommon. ## Names Names in Àolǎng are always given forename-first, regardless of which cultural register a name reads in. Yuèhé Lanaris is forename Yuèhé, house Lanaris. The empire is intentionally a cultural mix: not every name will sound Chinese, and that is canon. Ambassadors and certain noble appointees use a hyphenated `-` form (for example, Sháo-Lanaris) to mark their formal role. ## Class and cultivation Cultivation, the refinement of qi into superhuman martial ability, is open only to those of noble blood. Commoners cannot cultivate; the rare exception is always quickly explained as a hidden noble bloodline rather than a true exception to the rule. This is not just flavour, it is class: cultivators heal faster, hit harder, age slower, and command rooms by walking into them. Your character's relationship to cultivation tells everyone in the room where they stand. Cultivation is martial and herbal, not religious; cultivators are not monks, and the sects are not temples. Nobles being the only ones who can cultivate is generally seen as clear evidence of their superiority over the commoners and their right to rule. See `help cultivation`. ## Drugs Opium is a popular drug in the Empire, and tends to fluctuate between different levels of legal, illegal and decriminalized with no Kingdom finding a particularly successful strategy for dealing with it. ## Legal Structures Towns are ruled by a Magistrate, and regions by a governor. While there are sets of official laws these can be overridden by the respective official. As members of a royal house you likely will never be convicted of a crime, but if you bring enough dishonor to your house you may be quietly disappeared. ## Honor Honor is very important, both Honor of the family and of the individual. Being truthful, righteous, loyal, respectful, brave, and polite are all considered very important. ## Spirits The world is animist. Almost every river, mountain, threshold, hearth, and human concept has an associated spirit, and the greatest of them take the form of dragons. Spirits can be kind, indifferent, or malevolent according to their nature. Táimí, the Singing Forests, treats spirits as part of daily life; other kingdoms keep more of a wall between civic and spiritual life, but no one denies the spirits exist. Shrines on doorways and at street corners are not decoration; they are functional. See `help spirits`. ## Magic Beyond cultivation, the main form of magic is **blood sorcery**, powered by sacrifice. It is not inherently evil. A village witch sacrificing a chicken to ward a barn is doing blood sorcery; so is a self-immolating martyr saving a town. Most practitioners, however, are malicious, and cultivator blood is the most prized fuel of all. See `help "blood sorcery"`. ## The five kingdoms at a glance - **Sìshuǐ** is the imperial heart, ruled by House Lanaris: cosmopolitan, water-themed, diplomatic. - **Táimí** is the Singing Forests: animist, decentralised, every village a law unto itself, the most "different" daily-life of the five. - **Jīnjiǎ** is martial and hierarchical: ranks, duels, brass and ox-blood. - **Qiānjīn** is the trader kingdom: loud, plural, fashion-forward, status by wealth not birth. - **Tōngzhì** is the scholar kingdom: quiet bureaucrats, libraries, and one of the empire's most dangerous intelligence apparatuses behind the spectacles. Read `help kingdoms` for the full sketches, and pick the one that fits your character rather than defaulting to the imperial one. ## The political moment The empire is under pressure. The **Commonwealth of Aldermark**, the colonial Western power, supplies the empire's imported technology and is steadily extracting concessions through unequal treaties anchored in Zhūwān harbour. **Shirogane**, a long-standing rival civilization across the water, is a separate strategic problem. ## Sects, schools, and orders These are not interchangeable. - **Schools** teach martial styles. The four great schools are Ember Fist, Veiled Grace, Mirrored Tempest, and Radiant Chorus. - **Sects** are voluntary associations with shared agendas, philosophies, or trades. Some are public, some hidden, some criminal. - **Orders** like the Starlight Order are monastic, requiring renunciation of family and rank. Joining one is a permanent identity shift. See `help sects` and `help "the starlight order"`.

See Also: Àolǎng Empire Cultivation Sects Spirits Honorifics

Beneath skies the colour of beaten bronze lies Àolǎng, the Profound Radiance, an island realm of mountains and grassy plains. Its spine is the Jīnhé, the Gold River, which winds from the snowfields of the central massif down to the brackish reedlands of the coast. The great port of Zhūwān, Pearl Bay, is the largest and wealthiest city and the main trading port with the outside world. The realm is held in trust by House Lanaris, whose heirs wear a Bracelet known as the Mandate of Heaven. Two centuries ago, the Empress Yuèhé climbed alone to the Cloud Cleft and there made covenant with the river-dragon Liúhǔ, who poured a measure of his spirit into a band of carved jade. So long as a Lanaris of true blood bears the bracelet and rules with virtue, the Mandate holds, and the dragon's breath turns aside both plague and pretender. Sìshuǐ, of four rivers and ten thousand bridges, is the imperial heartland and seat of the court. Táimí of the singing forests keeps converse with hill-spirits and lesser gods. Jīnjiǎ, Gold Scale, raises duellists whose names are written in blood upon white silk. Qiānjīn is the kingdom of merchant princes, where every counting-house is a small palace. Tōngzhì breeds scholars, archivists, and the quiet listeners of the Ministry of Silence. Today the Radiance shines uneasily. Telegraph wires crisscross the rice terraces; ironclad gunboats of the Aldermark Commonwealth ride at anchor in Zhūwān harbour, their consuls smiling over unequal treaties. In every kingdom, those who would buy foreign cannon quarrel with those who would burn the mills, and the bracelet on the young sovereign's wrist grows warm more often than comfort allows.

During an Auto-GM adventure, you can spend destiny to assert narrative facts about the world. You can introduce NPCs, change the environment, establish a connection between characters, give an NPC already in the scene a trait, create complications, give gifts to other participants, reveal secrets, catch another player's fumbled roll, buy a private moment of understanding about the part of the story you are in, or propose story convergences. The GM may adapt your assertion for tone, accept it as-is, or reject it if it conflicts with established facts.

Examples

• assert environment A thick fog rolls in from the sea — change the scene.
• assert npc A merchant arrives with unusual wares — introduce a character.
• assert trait The abbot has never been able to refuse a beggar — give an NPC already in the scene a trait.
• assert connection @Alice Alice trained under the same swordmaster the party is hunting — link a character to the story.
• assert complication @Bob A rival blocks Bob's escape route — target another player.
• assert complication You are struck by doubt — create self-directed complication.
• assert gift @Alice You find a perfect tool for her — give an advantage.
• assert revelation The artifact is cursed — expose hidden truth.
• assert rescue @Bob Your shoulder is under his the instant the rope slips — catch another player's fumble.
• assert enlightenment — understand the part of the story you are standing in.
• assert insight @Bob What is the abbot really protecting — give that understanding to someone else.
• assert converge All paths lead to the old lighthouse tonight — propose a convergence.
• assert accept — accept a pending GM adaptation.
• assert reject — decline a pending adaptation or complication.

Catching a fumble

assert rescue @name is the one assertion that reaches backwards. When another player fumbles a roll, you have until the Game Master takes the moment up to spend 2 Destiny catching it. The dice are not re-rolled: the fumble simply comes off, and their roll stands on the number they actually rolled, which may still fail. It works only on someone else, never on yourself, and only once per adventure.

Buying understanding

assert enlightenment is the one assertion that changes nothing in the world. For 2 Destiny it tells you what this part of the story is really about, what genuinely stands in your way, and what would move it, drawn from what the Game Master knows and the party does not. It arrives privately, to you or to the one player you name with @name, and nobody else is told it happened; what the recipient does with it is theirs to tell. Add a question after the type to point it somewhere specific. The adventure's held secrets and its twist stay held, and each player can take one per chapter, so it is worth spending again once the story turns.

How it works

Assertions are processed asynchronously. If the GM adapts your assertion, you'll be notified and can accept or reject the revised version. Convergence assertions require multiple participants to agree before taking effect. The system tracks destiny spend separately, so assertions are a resource you manage alongside combat and other actions.

Usage: assert [type] [@target] [description]

Usage: assist [name] [how you help]

Start a fight with another character or set your target during ongoing combat. If you are already fighting, this command lets you switch targets or prepare to attack without opening a menu. If no target is in combat with you yet, attacking them initiates a new fight.

Examples

• attack — confirm your attack on your current target.
• attack Bob — target Bob and prepare to attack.
• hit goblin — alias for attack.

How it works

Outside combat, attacking another character starts a new fight. Both fighters are drawn into a turn-based combat system and shown a quickmenu with options to attack, defend, move, or use abilities. Inside an ongoing fight, the attack command sets or changes your target and confirms your action for the current round. Switching targets reopens the quickmenu so you can change tactics before the round resolves.

Ending a fight

You do not end a fight with a separate command — there is no flee, stop, or disengage command to type. A fight ends on its own once one side is knocked out, surrenders, or escapes, and you leave combat automatically when that happens. To break off early, choose one of these options from the combat menu (the same menu where you pick Attack each round):

• Flee — run to an adjacent room and leave the fight. This option only appears when you are at the edge of the battlefield next to an exit, and the escape only succeeds if you take no damage that round, so move to an edge first and pick a calm moment.
• Surrender — give up the fight. You become helpless and stop fighting until the battle is over. (This is the menu option, not the surrender command, which is a separate roleplay action.)

Tips

• You can only attack targets in the same room (outside safe zones).
• Safe zones and some political areas may restrict PvP combat; use spar for friendly matches instead.
• NPCs must be combat-configured to be attacked; pure roleplay NPCs cannot be targets.

Usage: attack [target]

See Also: big monsters

Propose an action that requires the other person's permission. The target receives a menu with Allow and Deny options. Their choice determines whether your action succeeds. Common uses: asking someone to hug, kiss, shake hands, or any interaction that needs consent.

Both you and the target must be alive and in the same room. You cannot attempt actions on yourself; just do them directly instead. Only one pending request per person at a time.

Examples

• attempt Alice hugs warmly — ask Alice to accept a hug.
• propose Bob kisses on the cheek — ask Bob for a kiss.
• request Charlie gives a high five — ask Charlie for a high five.

Usage: attempt <character> <action>

Usage: attend [force]

Ambassador of the Commonwealth of Aldermark to Zhūwān, third son of a minor Aldermark administrative family, and the lone standing presence of a largely hostile foreign power on imperial soil. He listens visibly and weighs what was meant rather than what was said, and is widely assumed to be the most dangerous person at any dinner he attends.

See Also: Aldermark Ambassador of Aldermark to Zhuwan

Influence is standing, and standing buys access. Spend it to be received by someone who matters, or to put something to them in writing. Either way the matter goes into that person's memory and is weighed when they next make a political decision. Aliases: petition, seekaudience.

The commands

• audience: what you have pending, and who is still cooling off.
• audience Wáng: what a meeting and a letter would each cost you with that person.
• audience Magistrate Wáng: the same, singling out the Wáng who holds that office.
• audience Wáng about the grain levy: ask to be received, on that matter.
• audience Yún about the river tolls with Bao and Mei: bring up to two companions, who must be standing with you when you lodge it.
• audience letter Wáng: open the letter form instead.

Ask for people by name, and put a title in front of it when the name alone is shared: audience Magistrate Wáng finds the Wáng who holds that office. A title names a standing, never a person, so any rank this command itself uses works as one: an office (Magistrate, Sheriff, Governor, Ambassador), a court title (Empress, King, Crown Prince, Queen Consort, Sect Leader), or the very description a quote prints back (town magistrate, person of standing).

What it costs

The price is set by how far above you they sit, and a letter always costs half what a meeting does.

• The Emperor: 10,000. A monarch: 5,000. A consort or heir: 2,500.
• A governor: 1,500. An ambassador: 1,000. A sect leader: 750.
• A magistrate: 400. A sheriff: 250.
• A town's leading figure: 200. Anyone else of local note: 100.

So the cheapest access in the game is a 100 influence letter to a notable townsperson, and the dearest is a personal hearing with the throne. You are quoted the exact figure and asked to confirm before anything is spent. Each person will receive you once a week and read one letter a week, counted separately, so a refused meeting does not stop you writing.

A meeting

A granted audience is an arranged scene at their seat of office: their hall, their office, their receiving room. You have 72 hours to get yourself there, which for a distant capital may mean a journey. Once you are in the room, open it with scene and play it out; your companions are part of it. What was said is summarised afterwards into that person's memory of you.

A letter

The letter form asks for a purpose, a subject line, and the letter itself. The purpose decides what the letter is for:

• Request: you press a cause. There is no reply. The letter is remembered and weighed when that person next acts politically, which is the whole point of sending it.
• Enquiry: you ask what they know. They write back by return of courier, and a well-aimed enquiry can come back carrying something they were not obliged to tell you, up to and including a clue on a matter you are already chasing.

Letters travel: the reply arrives after the courier has had time to make the trip, not instantly. Write plainly and write well. It is read closely, by a person with their own interests.

Who can be petitioned

Anyone real and seated: monarchs, consorts and heirs, governors, ambassadors, magistrates, sheriffs, sect leaders, and the figures who matter in a given town. Abstract bodies (a foreign power, a whole class of people) have no one to receive you and no one to hold the pen; one may share a name with the great and appear when you search, but a petition to it is always turned away.

Usage: audience [<person> [about <topic> [with <name> and <name>]]] | audience letter <person>

The backstory you wrote during character creation is saved with your character. You can read it again, and change it at any time, on your web profile page.

Where to find it

Open your profile page in the web client (the Profile link in the menu, at the /profiles address). Choose the Edit Details tab, then the Background sub-tab. Your saved Backstory appears there in full, along with your Personality, Goals, and narration point of view.

Changing your background

Your appearance, background, and voice can be edited at any time. Update the Backstory text in the Background sub-tab and use Save Background. There is no waiting period for these changes.

Usage: No command. Open the web profile page (Profile link, /profiles), then the Edit Details tab and the Background sub-tab.

See Also: profile settings

Queen Consort of Qiānjīn, third daughter of the Velsu merchant clan, who brokered a concord between two warring trade houses at nineteen. She sees several moves ahead and declines, on principle, to explain the first; her loyalty to the King is total.

See Also: Qiānjīn Consort of Qiānjīn

Governor of the Eastern Tōngzhì Region, son of a civil archivist and a river-spirit cataloguer, who earned his post salvaging the Siltmouth Compact when three magistracies neared open conflict. He withholds warmth until he judges a person has earned it, and runs his archives like a swordsman's forms.

See Also: Tōngzhì Governor of Eastern Tōngzhì Region

View your current wallet (cash on hand) and bank account balances across all currencies. This is a quick status check showing how much money you have accessible and how much is safely stored in a bank. Your total combines both wallet and bank funds.

Examples

• balance — show your complete financial summary.
• bal — alias for balance.
• money — shows the same information.

Tips

• Wallet funds can be stolen or lost; keep important money in the bank.
• Different currencies are displayed separately (Gold Dollar, Silver Li, regional variants).
• Use deposit to move cash into a bank account, or withdraw to bring it out.

Usage: balance

Access the bank interface to manage your accounts. This opens a web form where you can deposit cash, withdraw funds, exchange currencies between your wallets and accounts, and transfer money. Only available when you are physically at a bank location.

Examples

• bank — open the banking interface (if you are at a bank).

How it works

The bank interface is a web form that appears as a modal. From there you can perform all banking operations. You must be at a physical bank building for the command to work.

Usage: bank

Every Jīnjiǎ military unit, militia, and guard formation raises its banner at dawn in its home square. Each banner is renewed if torn, replaced if fading. The unit's oath is re-sworn in front of whatever townspeople come to watch. The fact that Banner Day falls during Sealing, when the civil bureaucracy is closed, is the joke and the point. Jīnjiǎ does not take its orders from the seals. The other kingdoms find this in poor taste, and the Empire has periodically tried to move the date. Jīnjiǎ has periodically refused.

Fights are played on a battle map: a hex grid of the room you are standing in, with the walls, the furniture, the cover and the broken ground all where they actually are. Every fighter is a piece on it, and every decision you make in the combat menu is a decision about that map.

Combat is animated

Rounds are played out rather than reported. Arrows and bullets travel from the shooter to what they hit; blades and fists land where they land; a style's fire, ice, lightning or shadow catches at the point it was aimed and spreads outward from there, brightest at the leading edge, settling as it burns out. A weapon that fires in bursts sends a burst. What you see on the map is what the round actually did, so you can follow a fight without reading a word of it.

Lasting effects are marked on the map too. Small icons on a fighter's piece show what is currently on them; see help effects for the icons and what they mean.

Your own intentions

As you build your round, the map draws what you have chosen: the line of your attack, the path of your movement, how far your reach goes, and which shots are worsened by cover. That detail is yours alone, and nobody else on the map is shown it.

What your side is doing

You can now see what your allies have queued before the round resolves, which is what makes a plan possible.

• An ally's attack is drawn as a green line from them to their target.
• An ally's movement is drawn as a dashed teal line to where they are headed.
• Once they have locked their round in, their lines fade back, so at a glance you can see who is still thinking.
• Above the combat menu, a Your side panel lists each ally by name with what they have chosen: their main action, any tactic, and their movement. A tick appears beside anyone who has finished choosing. Someone who has queued nothing yet reads as "still deciding", and an ally the game controls reads as "chooses in the moment", because their choice is not made until the round resolves.

What allies see of you is deliberately coarse: where your attack is aimed and where you are going, and nothing else. Your reach, your cover, your route, your movement budget, the abilities you have available and the qi you have committed all stay private. The other side sees none of it at all.

The panel goes with the map, so it appears when the map is open. If you are playing without it, combat gives the whole battlefield as text, written to be read aloud.

The ground itself

The map is not scenery. What you stand on, and what stands between you and a shooter, changes the numbers.

• Cover is a wall, a table, a cart in the line of a shot. If you have neither moved nor acted that round, a ranged attack through cover is stopped outright. The moment you step or swing, cover stops hiding you and merely grazes the shot down to half damage. Standing still behind something is a real defence; fighting from behind it is a discount.
• High ground is worth a point of damage one level up and two points from two levels or more, and a ranged attacker two or more levels above adds a further two on top of that. Standing below someone costs you exactly the same going the other way.
• Broken ground and water. Brush, rubble and water shallow enough to wade cost double to cross, water deep enough to swim costs triple, and deeper than that you cannot cross at all. Climbing a level costs half as much again unless you go by stairs, a ramp or a ladder.
• Concealment is different from cover: thickets, tents and conjured shadow make you harder to shoot at a distance without hiding you at all. See help concealment.
• Things that break. Barrels, vases and windows are drawn because they can be broken and what is in them spreads. Breaking one costs you your tactic for the round; see help tactics.

Usage: Not a command. The battle map opens on its own when a fight starts. See also: combat, flanking, concealment, effects.

See Also: combat combat round damage flanking concealment effects qi dice

Alias for the notice command. View, post to, or remove from the notice board in your current room.

Usage: bb [<n> | post ["<title>" <body>] | remove | info]

Some foes are too big to fight face to face. A giant beast — a chimera, a great serpent, whatever horror the wilds produce — enters the fight as a single monster made of several parts: a head, claws, a tail, and the like. Each part has its own health, tracked separately, and the beast fights on until its body as a whole gives out — so ruining one limb is real progress even while the rest still snaps at you.

Fighting it limb by limb

• Choose Attack from the combat menu and pick the beast; a limb menu opens listing every living part with its health and distance.
• Auto (closest limb) strikes whichever part is nearest each swing — the sensible default while the beast wheels around.
• Pick a specific limb to lock onto it and concentrate your damage. A part battered to nothing is destroyed and menaces you no more.

The weak point

One part is marked ⚔ WEAK POINT in the limb menu and shows a small red dot on the battle map. The mark is a promise, not a shortcut: attacking it from the ground is just a normal hit. To collect on the promise you must climb the beast itself:

1. Mount. Move adjacent to the beast; the Movement menu then offers Mount.
2. Climb. Each round while mounted, choose Climb to work toward the weak point — it takes several rounds, and the menu shows your progress — or Cling to simply hold on. The beast will try to shake you off: a climbing rider risks being hurled to the ground (perhaps into a hazard), while a clinging rider always keeps their grip. Climbing is faster; clinging is safer.
3. Strike. Once you reach the weak point, your next attack is devastating: triple damage, dealt to every living part of the beast at once.
4. The fall. The blow enrages the beast and it flings you off. Pick yourself up, close back in, and start the climb again.

You can choose Dismount at any time to drop off safely instead.

Keep moving

• The Movement menu offers Move toward and Retreat from the beast, alongside Stand Still — and Mount when you are beside it.
• On the battle map you can also simply click any hex to move there.
• Do not loiter in a charging beast's path: a big monster tramples whoever it runs over, battering them and shoving them aside — and anyone with nowhere to be shoved is knocked flat.

Usage: No typed command. Use the combat menu: Attack → the beast → pick a limb; Movement → Mount / Move toward / Retreat from. See also: attack, combat, flee.

See Also: combat attack fight flee movement

A high-valley waystation where the Jīnhé is fordable between the Wànshí walls and Dìnghú lies below. A handful of families run the inns and stables. The Chuānjīn Xiàn railway follows the Jīnhé through the valley, and the station is busiest during trading season when herders drive livestock through to lowland markets, near-deserted in winter when the pass snowbinds. Eighty permanent souls, all of whom know each other's business.

See Also: Sìshuǐ Jīnhǔ Wáng-Lanaris

**Bìhǎi** · Spirit of the Ocean Bìhǎi embodies depth, vastness, and the alien indifference of the deep sea. It is the least comprehensible of the dragon spirits to mortals; its moods shift like tides, its motives are opaque, and it seems genuinely unable to grasp why land-dwellers fear drowning. Sailors pray to it constantly and trust it not at all. In human guise, Bìhǎi shifts presentation often; a favored form is a weathered fisherman who smells of salt and speaks in non sequiturs that only make sense hours later. Manifested: an azure-blue dragon covered in fish scales, with a great fin running from its crown down the length of its back, trailing spray and mist wherever it moves.

A fishing and salt-panning settlement turned naval provisioning point on the Hánshā desert coast, sheltered by a rocky headland that breaks the eastern wind. The garrison changed everything, the town now has a shipyard, mechanized salt pans, and a fish-curing operation supplying military rations. Even the fishing boats keep to a schedule. A coastal rail spur terminates at the harbour. The Dōngyuè Cuìwéi highlands rise behind the town, and the volcanic glow of Yānshān is visible on clear nights.

See Also: Jīnjiǎ Wǔyào Feng-Zhancalius

Mechanics

• Style: Radiant Edge (level 6)
• Type: Main
• Speed: Fast
• Range: Melee (1 hex)
• Cost: -6 to your other abilities this round, easing by 3 each round

You loose a blazing cut that sears your adjacent target for fire damage equal to half your main roll (rounded down), then sweep a two-wide by three-long swath of flame across the hexes behind them, away from you, burning every enemy caught there for the same amount. Allies and you yourself standing in the swath are spared, and the primary target is not burned a second time. Costs a -6 penalty to your other abilities that eases by 3 each round.

How to use

Used in combat. Chosen automatically in this stance.

See Also: style radiant edge

Cover someone's eyes to block their vision. The target must be helpless (either knocked unconscious or voluntarily helpless via the helpless command).

Examples

• blindfold Bob — blindfold Bob.
• hood Jane — alias for blindfold.

How it works

Blindfolding a helpless character applies a restraint that blocks their vision. They can still move and act, but cannot see. Use the untie command to remove the blindfold. A character can be both tied and blindfolded at the same time.

Usage: blindfold <character>

Mechanics

• Style: Iron Claw (level 4)
• Type: Tactical
• Speed: Fast
• Range: Melee
• Cost: -6 to your other abilities this round, easing by 3 each round

For one round you turn your own injury against your attackers: when a melee slashing or piercing blow lands on you, the striker takes fire damage scaled by your furnace heat, twice your heat for a slashing weapon and once your heat for a piercing weapon. Ranged attacks never trigger it. With no heat banked there is no retaliation. The returned fire still feeds your furnace when it removes HP, but cannot trigger a counter-retaliation. Activating it costs a -6 penalty to your other abilities that fades by 3 each round.

How to use

Used in combat. Chosen automatically in this stance.

See Also: style iron claw

Blood sorcery draws its power from the simplest and oldest currency of the living world: a life given in exchange for a working. A chicken's throat opened over a chalked sigil might still a fever or sour a neighbor's wine. A bullock bled at the village stone can turn a season's hail aside. A grown man or woman, willing and prepared, can pour out enough force to raise a ward around an entire town for a generation. The art takes no side. What the sorcerer asks for, and what the sorcerer is willing to kill to get it, is the only moral question that matters, and on that question practitioners scatter across the whole range from saintly to monstrous. The most infamous of them gather under the banner of the Scarlet Meridian, a cult that holds spilled blood to be the truest scripture and pursues workings of appalling scale. Far more numerous, though, are the solitary practitioners: hedge-witches, exiled scholars, ambitious bandits, grieving widows. In some remote valleys the village ritualist is a respected elder, and the spring lamb offered at the boundary stone is no more sinister than any other rite of the calendar. Cultivators bleed differently. The disciplines refined in the body make their blood a fuel of terrible potency, and sorcerers hunt them with patient hunger. This is among the older reasons the noble houses keep the cultivation arts behind closed gates and unmarked names; a known cultivator on the road is a walking offering. Against all of this stands the Unbleeding Seal, whose oath admits no gradient. To them a child's lamb at a shrine stone is the first step on a road whose end is the Scarlet Meridian's altars, and they ride against both with equal severity. Their purges have broken cults and saved cities. They have also burned out wise-women whose worst crime was a sparrow at the solstice, and in many country districts the white seal on a rider's banner is feared more than any sorcerer.

A supportive art of the Radiant Chorus, Blossoms Barrier wakes qi in the living world, coaxing trees from stone, sealing doors with thornwork, layering allies in verdant auras that spread and regrow with every wound. Practitioners tend the battlefield like a garden: their blossoms shield the wounded, their thorns snare the charging, their petals swirl into razored storms. The strongest wall, they say, is the one that blooms.

Weapon

This style needs no weapon and no ammunition. Its ranged attacks are channelled through your own power, so the ranged slot is the locked one and it costs you nothing to carry. Channeling is what you fire by default; if you would rather loose lead, carry a real ranged weapon and pick it from the combat menu to fire that instead.

Your melee slot is free choice: carry any melee weapon and it is used up close, or simply strike unarmed.

See help weapons for the full weapon model.

Combat bonuses

• Melee +3
• Ranged +7
• 1 HP threshold +5
• 2 to 3 HP threshold +9

Damage defense

• Resistance: bludgeoning, 3 less taken
• Vulnerability: piercing, 3 more taken

Unique Mechanic: Verdant Aura

Infuse someone's qi aura with verdant natural energy to help protect them. Points of verdant aura sit on people, not on the ground, and do nothing on their own. Nature's Kiss and Flower's Rebuke each leave one on the ally they touch; Guardian's Bloom leaves one on each of the up to three allies it shields, which can include you, and on anyone its shield later spreads to; Guardian Tree leaves one on everyone it displaces off its hex, friend or foe. Points stack with no practical cap and nothing on your own side times them out, so they sit where they were placed until they are spent or the fight ends; the only thing that takes them early is a great beast that feeds on qi. Two abilities spend them, and each spends every point held by allies still on their feet: Forest's Bulwark turns each ally's points into a shield worth (main roll)/2 per point, decaying 30% a round, and Blossom Storm burns them for (main roll)/3 damage per point held by allies adjacent to each enemy. A downed ally neither contributes points nor loses them.

Mastery Bonus

For one round per three of your levels in this style after switching out of this stance, any helpful action (shielding, guarding, going back-to-back) with an ally also gives them a point of verdant aura.

Abilities

1. Nature's Kiss. Slow tactical. You touch a friendly target with restorative qi, granting them one point of verdant aura
2. Blossom's Dance. Very Fast tactical. You wreathe yourself in distracting, obscuring blossoms as you move
3. Nature's Grasp. passive. A passive blessing of the wild
4. Flower's Rebuke. Fast main. You ward a friendly target with retaliating blossoms, granting them one point of verdant aura
5. Guardian's Bloom. Fast main. You shield a chosen ally plus the two allies nearest them, each gaining a protective bloom worth...
6. Forest's Bulwark. Fast main. Verdant energy flares in every aura across your side
7. Thorn Snare (advanced)
8. Guardian Tree (advanced)
9. Blossom Storm (advanced)

Learning this style

Any character can learn any style. There is no school to join first, no place you have to travel to, and no teacher you have to find. You learn and advance a style by brewing its pill with cultivate: your first pill puts you at level 1, and each pill after that raises you one level, to a maximum of level 9. The two styles you pick at character creation must both come from the school you choose there, and they start at level 5 (primary) and level 3 (secondary); every style you take up afterwards starts from scratch.

A teacher is optional, not required. Someone at level 6 or above in this style, ranked higher than you, can teach you if you already know it. That does not raise your level by itself; it banks a master's lesson that cuts the ingredient cost of your next pill.

What is gated is the techniques. Techniques of a style belonging to your own school unlock for free as your level rises. For a style from another school you also need your family's completed manual for that technique, which a stealth mission exists to obtain; a few internal ones have no manual and unlock on level alone.

See Also: school radiant chorus weapons cultivate teach mission discipline ability nature's kiss ability blossom's dance ability nature's grasp ability flower's rebuke ability guardian's bloom ability forest's bulwark ability thorn snare ability guardian tree ability blossom storm

Mechanics

• Style: Blossom's Barrier (level 2)
• Type: Tactical
• Speed: Very Fast
• Range: Self
• Cost: -4 to your other abilities this round, easing by 2 each round

You wreathe yourself in distracting, obscuring blossoms as you move. On any round you have actually moved, every attack against you that round deals 35 percent less damage from all sources, and this reduction multiplies with any other reductions in play. Costs a -4 penalty to your other abilities that fades by 2 each round.

Out of combat

On adventure rolls for a task the arbiter judges a fitting display of grace or charm, your dice explode on 6, 7, and 8 (self). Type blossoms to summon a drifting flurry of blossoms in the room described in your own words; it lingers for about an hour.

How to use

Used in combat. Chosen automatically in this stance.

Arm before a roleplay roll: invoke blossom_dance

Command: blossoms

See Also: style blossom's barrier

Remove someone from your event (host or staff only). Once bounced, that person cannot re-enter the event even if they try. If they are currently inside the event, they are ejected immediately. This is a moderation tool for hosts to manage disruptive attendees.

Examples

• bounce Bob — remove Bob from your event.
• bounce troublemaker — bounce someone by partial name match.

Tips

• You must be the event host or a designated staff member to use this command.
• The target must be in the same room as you.
• Bounced players are notified and cannot return to that specific event.

Usage: bounce <character>

Express respect or reverence to another character through a physical gesture. You specify a degree of bow from 1 to 90 degrees, and can add optional roleplay text to accompany the motion. The higher the degree, the greater the respect conveyed. Kneeling bows (using kbow) show even deeper deference.

Examples

• 45bow Charles — bow 45 degrees to Charles.
• 90kbow the magistrate, presenting your deepest respects — kneel and bow deeply.
• 15bow stranger with a casual nod — slight bow with flavour text.

How it works

The system rounds what observers see to the nearest 15-degree increment, so exact degrees stay in roleplay logs but nearby players get a cleaner experience. The gesture is broadcast to the room and logged for records.

Usage: (degrees)bow <target> [RP text] or (degrees)kbow <target> [RP text]

- Dùjīn Qiáo ("Bridge of Crossing Gold"): Grand bridge over the Jīnhé near Zhūwān, on the empire's busiest commercial road - Mòchuān Dù ("Ink River Crossing"): Grand bridge over the Huáimù Hé near Cángjìng, on the empire's longest road - Nánjīn Dù ("Southern Ford Crossing"): Grand bridge near Qīngyuán Gǔ in the southern trade kingdom - Ànshuǐ Qiáo ("Dark Water Bridge"): Grand bridge over the Yōután Jiāng near Fēnglǐng, on the Cháng Hǎi Guān Dào - Jùchuān Huìdù ("Great River Confluence Crossing"): Grand bridge at the Jīnhé-Yōután Jiāng confluence near Fēiyín Dū

The unified entry point for every building and construction command in the game. Typing build alone opens a menu of everything you can create or modify from your current location. The options shown adapt to where you are and what you own, so you only see actions that actually make sense in context.

The menu groups choices into two columns. Create lists new structures you can put down (a city, a block, a room, a shop, an apartment). Modify lists changes you can make to structures you already own (rename, resize, redecorate, demolish).

Examples

• build — open the build menu.
• build apartment — jump straight to apartment placement.
• build block brownstone — turn an intersection into a brownstone block.

How it works

Each menu option dispatches to the matching specialized command. You can also call those commands directly once you know their names (for instance build shop or build city). The hub menu mostly exists so newcomers can discover the building system without having to memorize the full command list.

Tips

• Some options only appear at intersections; stand at a cross-street to see the full set.
• Modify options only list structures you personally own.

Usage: build [subcommand] [args]

Mechanics

• Style: Earthen Guardian (level 3)
• Type: Tactical
• Speed: Very Fast
• Range: An adjacent ally (1 hex)
• Cost: -3 to your other abilities this round, easing by 3 each round

You pair with an adjacent ally to take their danger onto yourself, raising a stone shield that absorbs 5 damage (10 while you are anchored). From then on, each attack aimed at that ally has a 50 percent chance to be redirected to you, striking your shield first before any of it reaches your own health. The pairing lasts until you and the ally are no longer adjacent or until one of you falls. Costs a -3 penalty to your other abilities that fades by 3 each round.

How to use

Used in combat. Chosen automatically in this stance.

See Also: style earthen guardian

Purchase items from a shop. You can buy by item name, by number (if the shop shows a numbered list), or by quantity. If no shop is present or no item name is given, the shop listing is displayed. Shops at the Floating Market are also accessible via this command.

Examples

• buy leather jacket — purchase a leather jacket.
• buy 3 — buy item number 3 from the shop list.
• buy 2 potions — purchase 2 potions.
• buy — show the shop listing without buying.

How it works

The game checks for a shop in your current room. If an item is out of stock or you do not have enough money in your wallet, the purchase fails. Some shops allow credit (accumulate debt up to a limit). The game deducts payment from your wallet or adds to your credit balance depending on shop settings.

Usage: buy <item> | buy <number> | buy <quantity> <item>

Initiate a vehicle purchase. This command redirects you to the web interface's vehicle dealership where you can configure vehicle options, view pricing, and complete your purchase. All vehicle transactions are finalized through the web, not in-game commands.

Examples

• buy vehicle — open the vehicle purchase interface.

Usage: buy vehicle

Prince Consort of Sìshuǐ, drawn from a riverward branch of House Lanaris. He governs no province and signs few decrees, yet the palace household, its petitions, ceremonies, and quiet counsel all pass through his hands. The court still tells how he once turned a quarrel among canal lords into a treaty by seating them at an opera rather than a council table.

See Also: Sìshuǐ Consort of Sìshuǐ

View the festival calendar for your kingdom. By default shows ongoing and upcoming festivals within the next 30 days. Use calendar all to see every festival scheduled for the year. Use calendar <name> to read the full lore for a specific festival.

Examples

• calendar — show upcoming festivals in your kingdom.
• calendar all — list all festivals for the year.
• calendar "Mid-Autumn Festival" — read details about a specific festival.

Festival calendar is kingdom-specific. Different regions observe different celebrations. Some festivals are empire-wide while others are local to your kingdom.

Usage: calendar [all|<festival name>]

Cángjìng, the Hidden Scripture, is the capital of Tōngzhì, the northern kingdom of the Àolǎng Empire, and the seat from which House Shuveri governs. It sits in cold, forested highland country near the misty lake Yāntán, below the wind-scoured heights of Hánfēng Lǐng and the sacred summit of Xuěfēng. From here the kingdom's scholars, archivists, and quiet listeners keep the greatest libraries and the deepest intelligence networks in the realm, and the Cāngbō Xiàn and Dèngdào Xiàn railways carry the capital's business out to the coast and up into the mountains. For now Cángjìng is a landmark on the map rather than a city you can walk. It is a public overland destination you can reach by travel, but its interior streets, shops, and residents have not yet been built out, so on arrival you will find no exits to explore, no market stalls, and no townsfolk to meet. This is a known gap in the world build, not a fault in your character. Because there are no local exits yet, leaving is done through travel commands rather than by walking. Use `journey` (for example, `journey to `) to set out for another town or landmark. Use `home` to return directly to your home location. If movement ever seems truly broken and none of that works, use `stuck`, which sends you home and files a report for staff.

See Also: Tōngzhì Region Tōngzhì Yāntán Hánfēng Lǐng

The most remote settlement in Jīnjiǎ, where ancient Hǎifēng Sōng pine forest meets the northeast sea. A hundred permanent residents, doubling in cutting season. The draw is the timber: dark, dense, salt-resistant pine that shipwrights prize above all other wood. Ox-teams drag logs to a sheltered cove for barge shipment south. The Jīn Àn Xiàn and Dèngdào Xiàn railways meet here, an unlikely junction for two trunk lines, but the timber trade demanded it. Individual trees have names. The locals have a reputation for stubbornness that even other Jīnjiǎ folk find impressive.

See Also: Jīnjiǎ Wǔyào Feng-Zhancalius

A jungle-fringed cove on Táimí's northern coast, so sheltered by green headlands that approaching boats sometimes miss it entirely. Everything rusts, mildews, and grows moss, the canopy hangs over the settlement like a second roof. Fishers work the offshore waters; loggers float jungle hardwood to the cove for coastal barge shipment. The Xuěfēng peaks are visible on clear days to the north. Access is by sea and by the Cāngbō Xiàn railway, which threads through a narrow jungle cutting to reach the cove. A small, self-sufficient place where the forest provides and the spirits are consulted before any tree is felled.

See Also: Táimí Qīnghǔ Yún-Liradi

Folk call it the Spine: a knuckled ridge of ashen stone rising from the southwestern hills, its great peak shouldering above all others on the island at two thousand eight hundred and thirteen paces. The rock is pale and bitter, streaked dark where the rains run, and almost nothing grows on it; people in Wàngpō say the summit looks burnt on clear winter mornings, as if some fire passed long ago and left only the bone. Traders out of Cháo Píng and the bay villages of Rùlín Wān and Shígēng Wān go around it, never over, while the herb-gatherers of Qīngyuán Gǔ work only the lower skirts where stubborn thyme and rock-moss cling. What the mountain offers instead is weather, and those who watch its cap of cloud know when to draw the boats in. Older people in the valley say the Ashen Crags are a place the spirits abandoned, and that to sleep a night on the bare stone is to wake without one's name.

Grassy highlands drop to the sea in sheer cliffs; on windy days the spray mingles with meadow flowers. Fishers and sheep-graziers merged here over generations, perched between open ocean and the dense Fāng Yǔ Lín interior. Boats launch from a steep path down the cliff face to a rocky cove below, no harbour for large vessels, this is a small-boat coast. Wool, hill-cheese, and salted fish travel inland by the Cāngbō Xiàn railway and the Hǎicuì Xīdào coastal road. The locals read weather by instinct, watching storms build across the water from Xuánmíng Dǎo's direction.

See Also: Táimí Hǔfǎn Dúgū-Liradi

A commemoration of the kingdom's war dead and surviving veterans. The kingdom's living veterans walk a slow procession through their town's main road in their old armour or its replica. Behind them, draped over horses, are the helmets of the recently dead. The captives of the festival name are the dead, taken by war and walked once a year through the streets that remember them. At noon the procession arrives at a temple, where the names of the dead from the past year are read aloud. At sunset the helmets are returned to the dead's families. A festival of deep dignity. Visitors stand silent on the roadside.

There is no single capture or kidnap command. Taking a person prisoner is a chain of steps, and each link has its own command: put them down, bind them, move them somewhere you control, and hold them there.

1. Put them at your mercy

Nothing in this system works on someone who is on their feet. A target must be helpless first, which happens one of three ways:

• You knock them out in a fight. They drop unconscious and lying.
• They yield. helpless (also surrender) puts a character at your mercy voluntarily, at full health, for roleplay. helpless off stands them back up.
• Their hands are already bound from an earlier scuffle.

You are on a clock. A knocked-out character cannot be roused for the first minute, and wakes on their own after ten minutes. That ten-minute window is your whole opportunity to bind them and get them out of the room. Nobody can be woken while the fight is still going, and when the fight ends the clock starts over from that moment, so a long brawl does not eat your window. wake <name> rouses someone early once the first minute has passed, which is as useful for reviving an ally as it is for questioning a captive.

2. Bind them

Restraints are what make the capture outlast the wake clock. All of them require the target to be helpless and in the same room as you.

• tie <name> (also bind, restrain) binds the hands. This is the important one: bound hands keep a character helpless even after they wake, so they can still be searched, dragged and carried.
• tie <name> feet binds the feet. Bound feet stop them walking anywhere under their own power. Note that bound hands alone do not stop them walking, so a captive you want to keep still needs both.
• gag <name> (also muzzle) stops them speaking. say, emote, semote and subtle all come out as muffled sounds.
• blindfold <name> (also hood) takes their sight. look, examine and map go dark, and they can only hear roughly how many people are nearby.
• untie <name> (also unbind, free) removes everything by default. Name one to be selective: untie Wei feet, or untie Wei gag.

Nobody can untie themselves. A bound character needs someone else standing in the room with them, which is why an accomplice or a rescue party matters.

3. Move them

• drag <name> (also haul) hauls a helpless character along behind you.
• carry <name> (also pickup, lift) picks them up instead. You can upgrade a drag to a carry without letting go.
• release (also letgo, putdown) sets down whoever you are moving.

Dragging or carrying makes you 50% slower, and you can only move one person at a time. Someone already being moved cannot be taken off their captor by a third party.

4. Search them

search <name> (also frisk) lists what a helpless character is wearing, what they are carrying and how much money they have. Looking is all it does. There is no command to take an item, a coin or a garment off a prisoner, so a captive never loses their possessions. What you learn from a search is information to use in play, not loot.

Taking a real prisoner

Binding a defeated player's hands does more than restrain them: it makes them your captive, and the game starts tracking a hold with a release time. This only happens when every one of these is true:

• The target is another player, not an NPC. NPCs can be tied and dragged, but they never become captives.
• They are helpless, and not already someone else's prisoner.
• You are in an open PvP room. Populated cities and safe zones do not allow it.
• You belong to a family. A captive is held on your family's account, so a familyless character cannot take one at all.

How long you hold them is set by your chemistry with them: 14 hours per tier, so a stranger is held 14 hours and someone you have reached the Transcendent tier with is held up to 84 hours. The bond you have built with a person is what gives you a hold over them. See help chemistry.

Carrying a prisoner into town frees them. The moment you drag or carry a captive into any room that is not open PvP, the locals see them bound, intervene, and cut them loose on the spot. Your grip is broken with them. A prison has to be somewhere lawless.

Holding a captive

The hostage command manages everyone you are holding. Target them by name, or leave the name off entirely when you only hold one.

• hostage list shows who you hold, where, and when each one goes free.
• hostage bind Wei chains them so they cannot take a single step. hostage unbind Wei loosens that again. Binding requires you to be standing with them.
• hostage relock Wei re-secures a captive to the room you are in. It must be a room in your own building, and you need a residence to hold anyone at all.
• hostage summon Wei pulls a captive who has wandered off back to your side. It only reaches inside the building already holding them, and it will not pull someone out of a fight.
• hostage release Wei lets them go, no strings.

An unbound captive is not frozen: they may walk anywhere in the building they are locked into, so a captive held in a bedroom can still pace the hallway. Watch out for the exception, because it decides how much freedom you are granting: if the room you locked them into is not inside a building, such as an open-air home, there is no building for them to roam and the scope collapses to that single room. Either way, stepping outside the scope is refused, and a bound captive cannot move at all.

Prisoners taken on a stealth mission

The other road to a captive is a heist gone wrong. When a stealth mission ends with your side caught and someone stays behind to be knocked out, the winner takes them: they are moved to the captor's home and held there. See help stealth and help mission.

A mission captive is held for 24 hours, stretching toward 48 hours the higher your chemistry with them runs. Roleplay between captor and captive matters here in two directions at once: scenes between the pair build chemistry 25% faster than usual, and every logged scene pushes the release further out, up to a ceiling of 72 hours. A captivity that turns into a story lasts longer than one spent staring at a wall.

When the time runs out, a mission captive is ransomed: the two families' kingdoms feel it in their resources, and the captive is set free at the entrance to the captor's residence. A prisoner taken in open PvP is simply released where they stand, with no ransom.

If you are the one taken

You are not without moves. You can talk, unless you are gagged. You can roleplay with your captor, which on a mission captivity is the mechanic that both deepens the bond and lengthens the stay. You can walk the building you are held in, unless you are bound. And your possessions are safe, because nobody can take anything off you. What you cannot do is untie yourself, so a friend who knows where you are is worth more than anything in your pack.

Usage: tie <name> [hands|feet] | gag <name> | blindfold <name> | untie <name> [hands|feet|gag|blindfold|all] | drag <name> | carry <name> | release | search <name> | wake <name> | hostage <list|bind|relock|release> [name]

See Also: tie untie hostage stealth chemistry laws

Open an interactive menu to play card games with other players in the room. Select from available games or invite other players to join you for a match.

Examples

• cards — open the card game menu.
• card — open the card game menu (alias).

How it works

When you open the menu, you will see all available card games and options to start a new game or join an existing one. Other players in the room can see that you are playing and may join your table.

Usage: cards

Lift a helpless character onto your shoulders and carry them. The target must be in a helpless state.

Examples

• carry Bob — pick up and carry Bob.
• pickup Jane — alias for carry.

How it works

Once someone is helpless, you can scoop them up and carry them. Carrying is faster than dragging and gives you more direct control, but the carried character cannot participate in activities or escape. You move together. Use the release command to put them down.

Usage: carry <character>

Usage: census [house|zodiac|school|gender]

Heir to Qiānjīn, schooled in ledgers by day and the old courtly rites by candlelight, taught before he could grow a beard that wealth without ceremony is merely noise. He leads by inspiring rather than maneuvering, and carries the welfare of Qiānjīn's people with deliberate gravity.

See Also: Qiānjīn Heir of Qiānjīn

Mechanics

• Style: Stormbreaker (level 4)
• Type: Main
• Speed: Average
• Range: A targeted enemy
• Cost: -6 to your other abilities this round, easing by 3 each round

Loose a bolt that strikes your target for half your main roll in wind damage, then arcs from one body to the next. Each hop reaches up to 3 hexes to the nearest unstruck character (friend or foe) and loses a quarter of its force per jump. It can make up to a third of your main roll in bounces before it dies out. The first target's hex also gains a pressure zone. It costs a -6 penalty to your other abilities that fades by 3 each round.

Out of combat

Once Chain Lightning is learned, you can type lightning_fingers to make lightning arc between your fingers as a purely visual flourish, or type static_shock with another player to give them a small narrative static jolt.

How to use

Used in combat. Chosen automatically in this stance.

Command: lightning_fingers, static_shock

See Also: style stormbreaker

Alter how others perceive your character's identity. You can change your nickname (no cooldown), your forename (with a 21-day cooldown after any name change), or your surname (same 21-day cooldown). Names must be unique, contain only letters, spaces, hyphens, and apostrophes, and be no longer than 50 characters.

Examples

• change name nickname Bobby — update your nickname immediately.
• change name nickname clear — remove your nickname entirely (also accepts none).
• change name forename Robert — change your legal first name (21-day cooldown applies).
• change name surname Smith — change your last name (21-day cooldown applies).

Tips

• Nickname changes are instant and account-wide.
• To drop a nickname you no longer want, set it to clear (or none); you will go by your full name again.
• Forename and surname changes trigger a 21-day waiting period before you can change either one again.
• The first letter of your new name is automatically capitalized.

Usage: change name <nickname|forename|surname> <new value>

Send a message to everyone subscribed to a communication channel. If you are not already a member of a public channel, you are automatically added when you send a message. Private channels require you to join first.

Examples

• channel general Hello everyone — send to the general channel.
• + Hi there — quick shortcut for the OOC channel.
• channel ooc What's the best way to reach the north gate? — send to OOC.

How it works

Channels are communication lines that connect people across the world. You can join channels to stay in touch with friends, coordinate activities, or chat out of character. Messages sent to a channel are seen by all online members. Use the channels command to see what channels are available, and use join channel to subscribe to private ones.

Tips

• Use the + shortcut for quick OOC messages.
• Channel names can be abbreviated as long as they are unambiguous.
• You can unmute yourself in a channel by asking an admin if you have been muted.

Usage: channel <name> <message> OR + <message>

View a list of all available communication channels, including which ones you have joined and how many people are online in each.

Examples

• channels — show all channels.
• chanlist — alias for channels.

How it works

This command displays every channel in the game along with its type (public or private), membership status, online count, and description. Public channels can be joined immediately; private channels require an invitation. Use this output to find channels you want to join, then use the join channel command to subscribe.

Usage: channels

Qiānjīn's southernmost settlement, a fishing village on a long sandy beach near the Qīngmù Lǐng foothills. Boats are still hauled ashore by hand; the tidal flats provide natural salt pans. Low whitewashed houses, nets drying on every surface. The Southern Coastal Spur railway terminates here, connecting the fishers to the wider market, though the settlement retains a pre-modern air. The salt-panning families maintain their own traditions, including an equinox offering ceremony. Young people leave for Zhūwān or the capital, and the population has aged, but the fish and salt trade endures. An oddly traditional place for the merchant kingdom, too remote for Qiānjīn's usual restless innovation.

See Also: Qiānjīn Hǔdǐng Yún-Jindoro

A bay settlement at the foot of the Xuěfēng sacred peaks, where the mountain rises directly from the coast, its summit lost in cloud more often than not. The waterfront is still a working fishing harbour, but the upper town serves pilgrims and cultivators ascending the mountain. A stone arch carved with sutras marks the trailhead. The Wàn Lǐ Guāndào, the empire's longest road, begins its cross-island journey here. Fishers feed the pilgrims; pilgrims bring coin to the fishers. The arrangement is practical and ancient, very Tōngzhì in its quiet efficiency.

See Also: Tōngzhì Zhìwén Xīngláng-Shuveri

Control your visibility in the where list that shows who is online. You can be visible to everyone, hidden entirely (except from players who have always-visibility permission), or visible only to players who marked you as a favourite. Use this to manage your locatability without logging out.

Examples

• check in — open the locatability menu.
• check in yes — visible to anyone.
• check in no — hidden from where list.
• check in favorites — visible only to your favourites.

Usage: check in [yes|no|favorites]

Chemistry is the bond that builds between your character and another, whether the pull is desire or the sharper heat of rivalry. It is not a command you type and it is not the same as cultivation: pills, herbs, and refining qi through training belong to help cultivation and help qi. Chemistry is about people, and it shapes how brightly your qi burns in a fight.

What chemistry is

• The game tracks a private chemistry level between you and each character you grow close to. As it rises it passes through named tiers: Spark, Kindling, Flame, Blaze, Inferno, and at the very peak, Transcendent.
• Chemistry is one-directional and personal. How you feel about someone and how they feel about you are scored separately.

What it does

• Chemistry sets your Qi Level, the size of the qi dice you roll in combat (shown on your score as a word from Four up to Twenty). A higher tier means larger dice, so your qi swings harder behind an attack, a defence, an ability, or a burst of movement.
• The bond counts for most when the other person is near. Sharing a room weighs full, the same building or city less, and a partner you have not seen in days fades toward the floor.
• It counts for most of all in conflict. When you face someone you share chemistry with across the line of a fight, the heat between you multiplies your qi, fiercest of all in a one-on-one duel.
• Once your qi burns bright enough you take on a visible radiant glow that others in the room can see.

How to build it

• Roleplay together. Flirtation and strong scene-craft earn a first foothold on their own, though flirting alone only carries you to the lower tiers.
• Beyond that first spark, your shared scenes are weighed for what makes a bond deepen: wit and banter, playful rivalry, real vulnerability shown before others, meaningful gestures, dressing for the moment, and genuine care. Crudeness, cold distance, condescension, and mere passivity all work against you.
• Rivalry counts as surely as romance. A worthy adversary whose feelings are sharpened by conflict can raise your qi as much as a lover.
• Bonds are not free. Spreading yourself across many partners quietly cools the rest, and some intimacies can lower a bond rather than raise it.

Can you see who you have chemistry with?

• There is no list. Chemistry is kept private on purpose, so there is no command or panel that names the individual people you share it with, and no one can read yours.
• What you can see is the result. Your score shows a single Qi Level, the word that reflects your strongest bond, and once your qi burns bright enough others in the room see your radiant glow. Watch your Qi Level rise as a bond deepens.
• The surest sign is the roleplay itself. Chemistry grows from your shared scenes, so the people you keep returning to are the people you are building it with.

Some intimacies spend a bond rather than build it, and a deep enough bond spent that way banks martial practice. See help dual cultivation.

Usage: No single command. A how-to for interpersonal chemistry and how it sets your Qi Level. See also: qi, relationship, score, cultivation.

See Also: qi relationship score cultivation

Chéngyuè lies in a shallow basin between the western reaches of Sìshuǐ and the Qiānjīn marches, a sheet of water so still that on a clear night the moon hangs upon it without a tremor. Folk from Cuìyá Bùkǒu and Sānhé Mìjìng say the lake has two skies, the one above and the one beneath, and a careless boatman who looks too long into the lower will forget which way is up. Fisherfolk out of Rùlín Wān and Shígēng Wān work the lake at dawn and dusk for silver carp and sweet shrimp, while herb-gatherers from Cǎohǎi Yá comb the marshy edges for water lotus root and the bitter moon-grass said to grow only where the reflection falls brightest. A modest road skirts the northern bank between the two prefectures, and pale stone shelves rise on the western shore where herons roost. It is widely held that anyone who sees the moon unbroken on Chéngyuè should make no oath he does not mean to keep, for the lake remembers promises spoken over still water.

A crimson ridge of volcanic rock within sight of Yānshān, the Smouldering Mountain. The lower quarter still smelts iron rich in trace minerals and the island's purest sulfur. The upper ridge belongs to fire-element cultivators, temples and meditation halls built directly on exposed volcanic stone, monks in caves heated by geothermal vents, alchemists paying handsomely for the rare mineral salts that crystallize in the fumaroles. The Eastern Highland Branch railway reaches a junction below the ridge. Miners and monks coexist in practical Jīnjiǎ fashion: each needs what the other provides.

See Also: Jīnjiǎ Wǔyào Feng-Zhancalius

A high priest of the Grand Temple of Zhūwān, raised in the hill-country parishes of Táimí and seminary-trained, with a scholar's appetite for liturgical argument that has bested masters twice his age.

See Also: The Scarlet Meridian

**Chóulǎo** · Spirit of Regret Chóulǎo embodies the weight of roads not taken and words left unsaid. It is quiet, gentle, and profoundly sad. Not malevolent, but its presence makes old wounds ache. It is drawn to those carrying unresolved grief and has been known to sit with the dying, listening to their confessions without judgment. Favors a middle-aged scholar who always seems to be writing in a journal they never finish, with ink perpetually drying on their fingers. Manifested: a giant tortoise with a garden of dead, leafless trees growing on its back, moving with unbearable slowness through places where something was lost.

Remove all graffiti from a room you own. Graffiti is tagged text written on walls by other players using the graffiti command.

Examples

• clean graffiti — remove all graffiti from the current room.

How it works

Typing this command scrubs away every piece of graffiti in the room. The removal is instant and permanent. If there is no graffiti to clean, you get an error message.

Usage: clean graffiti

Type clear (or cls) to wipe the messages from your screen. It empties both feeds — the out-of-character panel on the left and the roleplay panel on the right — so you start with a clean view.

This is a webclient action, not something the world sees. It only tidies your own display: nobody else is affected, nothing you said or did is undone, and you stay right where you are. It is handy for clearing clutter before a scene or after a long stretch of combat output.

Because it clears only what is on screen, the connection keeps running normally. New messages appear as they arrive, and the server never resends lines you have already cleared.

Usage: clear | cls

Usage: climb

Usage: cling

Close the convertible roof of your vehicle. This command only works when you are seated inside a vehicle that has a convertible roof. Once closed, the roof shields you from the elements.

Examples

• close roof — close your vehicle's roof.

Usage: close roof

You start with whatever you are wearing and nothing handed to you, so getting more clothes means visiting a shop. There are two ways to do it: buy something ready-made off the rack, or design a custom piece and have a shopkeeper make it for you. Once you own a garment, put it on with wear <item> and take it off with remove <item>.

Buying ready-made (fastest)

Find a clothing shop (a tailor, outfitter, or general store) and use shop to browse what is in stock, then buy <item> to purchase it. The garment goes straight into your inventory and you can wear it right away. Most everyday clothing is priced in Silver Li (the common silver coin; one thousand Silver Li make one Gold Dollar), so even a new character can usually afford the basics. If you change your mind, sell a recent purchase back to the shop for a refund (full refund within fifteen minutes of buying).

Designing your own (custom)

To make a one-of-a-kind piece, use design (also blueprint) to open the designer and draft a pattern — you choose the wording and look, and it stays a draft you can refine as much as you like. Use design list to see your saved drafts and design edit <name> to revise one. Designing is always available and costs nothing on its own; you only pay when you have it made. See help design.

Commissioning a design

A design is only a blueprint until a shopkeeper makes it real. Stand inside a shop and use commission <design name> (also order or craft). The shopkeeper examines your design, quotes a price (usually in Silver Li, sometimes with a discount if they are impressed or if you are carrying useful materials), and gives an estimated completion time. Choose how to pay and the work begins. See help commission.

Commissioning permanently locks the design: the moment you commission it, the blueprint is fixed and can no longer be edited or deleted. If you want a different version later, make a brand-new design and commission that one. Use addamount to order more copies of the same locked design.

Delivery

At a credit shop (such as the newbie school outfitter) the item is made on the spot and handed to you at once, charged to your credit tab. At an ordinary shop the order takes time; when it is ready it waits at the shop until you collect it, or you can have it delivered to your home.

Usage: help clothing

See Also: buy shop design commission wear outfit wardrobe

A clue is one named piece of hidden knowledge: the farm that feeds a bandit camp through the winter, a name that keeps coming up, the reason a valley's wells turned foul. Each clue is anchored to a single region of the map, and there is no list to buy it off. Your household agents can find out that a matter exists and roughly where it lies, which is genuinely useful and is most of what fills your Clues tab. What they cannot do is bring back the answer. Learning a clue means putting the question to a person who knows, writing to one, or coming by it on an adventure.

Two kinds of clue

• Plot clues are threads of the world's hidden story, placed by hand and anchored to a region. They gate nothing and are counted toward nothing, but they are the clues an adventure is most likely to put in your hands: a venture in the region where one lies can be built around it, and seeing that venture through is how you come to know it. They are not idle colour either. The clues your party holds are handed to the storyteller running your adventures, so what your house has uncovered is part of what it has to work with.
• Trail clues belong to one quarry and are the trail it left: a recurring villain, a bandit or rebel camp, or one of the troubles a neglected region grows. These are counted. Gather enough of a single quarry's trail between your party and you may set out after it on purpose.

There is no third kind, and no clue belongs to two quarries, so no piece of evidence ever does double duty for two hunts. A trail clue you have actually learned is labelled on the Clues tab with the quarry it serves, their rank, and how far that leaves you: Hunting so-and-so, three of six threads, with a word on why a whole trail is not yet a green light when it is not. The clue seals on the map carry the same label. journey hunts is the other place it adds up, quarry by quarry, and the place a finished trail is acted on. See help villains and help troubles for how much of a trail a party needs.

What it takes to learn one

Every trail clue is written with exactly one road to it, fixed when the trail is laid and never changing:

• Several people know it. Around three of them, scattered where such a thing would be known. Reach any one of them and ask, in person or by letter, and you are told.
• One person knows it. A single named individual, and nobody else. The trail runs through them, so you have to reach them yourself: put the question to them face to face, or write to them if a letter of enquiry can reach them. No agent will get it out of them for you.
• Nobody will tell you. There is no one holding this one to be asked. It is the prize at the end of an adventure of its own, and going and seeing that adventure through is the only way to hold it.

That road is a property of the one clue, not of the quarry. A single villain's trail deliberately mixes all three, so expect a few of their threads to come from asking the right person and at least one to come only from going and doing something about it. A plot clue has no such road written into it. It carries whatever secrecy and standing its author set on it instead, which means nobody owes you an answer about one: an adventure in its region may hand it over, or somebody living in the town it belongs to may tell you, but only once they trust you as far as its author asked.

Knowing who to go and ask is the point of a lead. When there is a person at the end of a matter, the word that reaches you names them and says what town they are in, whether it came from an agent's report or from somebody's mouth.

A lead is a signpost, not half a clue

• A lead says a matter exists, roughly where the trail runs, and who to ask if there is somebody to ask. It carries none of the substance and counts toward nothing. One reaches you two ways, and the Clues tab tags every row with which of the two it was: an agent of yours came home with the scent, or a person put you onto it.
• A clue is the knowledge itself, and you have it or you do not. There is no state in between, nothing to piece together, and no clue that arrives half written.

Two labels look like they contradict that, and neither does. On the Reports tab, a clue report your agents filed is tagged (partial) when it is not a solid lead; that grades the report, not the clue, and says the agent came home with less than the best word they could have. On the Clues tab, a row under What you are still chasing is a lead about a matter, never a fragment of one.

What a lead is worth

Word your agents bring back is graded a solid lead or a faint scrap. That grade is not a measure of how much of the secret you were given, because you were given none of it. It decides how strongly the matter pulls on your party's next adventure in that region.

When your party sets out, the story can be built around a single clue: one that lies in the region you are bound for or anywhere else in that kingdom, that none of you already holds, and that an adventure could uncover at all. Which one of those, if any:

• A matter you have already been pointed toward is taken first: one somebody put you onto in conversation or by letter, or one your agents traced along a quarry's trail. You were sent, so arriving is the errand, and the adventure is built around it.
• Failing that, a matter your agents graded a solid lead is taken. This is where that grade earns its name.
• Failing both, each remaining matter gets one slim roll of its own. A faint scrap doubles that matter's odds and does nothing else.

That last qualifier is the one to hold onto. A matter that lives with a person is never in the running, whatever grade your agents put on their word about it: no amount of adventuring in the right region will produce a clue somebody could simply have told you, and the person is still the only road. The weight is real, but it bears only on the clues an adventure could have uncovered in the first place.

Lead and rumor: who brought you the word

Every row under What you are still chasing carries one of two tags, Lead or Rumor. They are the same kind of thing, a signpost with none of the substance on it, and the tag says who put it in your hands. That is worth knowing because the two read differently and are acted on differently.

• Lead is your own household's work: an agent you sent out came home onto the scent, and the row carries their own words. When they traced the matter to the person who holds it, those words name that person, and the town they are in when they have one, and that is who to go to. The row is pinned to the region you sent the agent to rather than to the matter itself, which is all the placing an agent's word ever earns. The grade beside it, a solid lead or a faint scrap, is how good the word was. Word about a matter that belongs to a quarry reads a faint scrap, because your agents are never allowed to bring one of those home whole, though a few older rows still read a solid lead; on a quarry's matter the grade tells you nothing either way, and the ordering above turns on the trail instead.
• Rumor is somebody else's mouth: a person mentioned the matter in conversation, gave you a name as worth asking, or answered a paid letter of enquiry with a pointer instead of the secret. It is pinned where the teller said the matter lies, and when there is a person at the end of it the row is titled Ask so-and-so outright. Go to that person and raise it. You were sent to them, so they will answer you whatever they think of you, and you do not have to hit on the right words to get it out of them. A letter of enquiry can reach them instead, though a letter only has room for so many answers at once, so going yourself is the sure road.

Either tag can end up naming nobody, and what to do then is not the same every time. Every chasing row carries a badge naming what kind of matter it is, and that badge is the thing to read. A Plot row never names anybody, and that is a rule about the row rather than about the world: no report and no rumor is allowed to name who holds a plot matter, whether or not somebody does. Taking your party adventuring in that region is the road that asks nothing of anyone, and these are the matters an adventure is most likely to be built around. People do hold them, though, so asking around the town the matter belongs to is worth the walk as well; just remember nobody owes you that answer, and they will weigh how far they trust you against the secrecy its author set. A Story is the opposite and the badge says so: no adventure will ever be built around one, and it reaches you only out of somebody's mouth or somebody's letter, so raising it with people who would know is the whole of what there is to do. On a quarry's matter, a villain, a camp, a curse and the like, a row that names nobody more often means your agents could not turn up the person who holds it than that there is none; ask after that quarry among the people where the row points. An adventure in that region can turn one of those up too, but only when the matter was written to be found that way, and nothing on the row tells you which.

Which of them jumps to the front of the order set out just above is decided by where the word came from, not by the tag. A Rumor always jumps it, because somebody pointed you at the matter. A Lead jumps it only when your agents traced the matter along a quarry's trail; word they bring home about anything else waits its turn on its grade with the rest. Either way it has to be one of the matters an adventure could have uncovered at all.

Neither tag is worth more than the other, neither goes stale on its own, and neither is a half-clue. Both drop off the tab the moment you learn the clue behind them, and both drop off if the matter itself is finished. Only the newest word on a matter is shown, so a row can change from one tag to the other when word arrives from the other direction.

The three ways a clue reaches you

Only three things put the knowledge itself in your hands:

• Somebody tells you. Talk to a person who knows, about the matter or about whoever stands at the end of it. Somebody who merely happens to know a thing may or may not think to mention it, so it can be worth raising twice.
• A letter of enquiry comes back with it. You wrote to somebody of consequence and paid for the courtesy; see help audience. A letter answers in full when its addressee is one of the people the clue was written to be got from, and stops at a hint when it is not.
• An adventure hands it over. This goes to whoever led the adventure: a letter to their mail, a book among their belongings to examine, or an NPC saying it to their face. On a scheduled adventure everyone who went learns it instead.

House Intelligence is deliberately not on that list, and this is the thing most worth understanding about the system. Your agents put you onto clues, name them and mark your map, which is why fresh entries appear on your Clues tab after almost every trip. Those entries are leads. The finding can be paid for; the knowing has to be earned.

Asking somebody who knows

Somebody who was made the road to a trail clue will answer you, whatever they think of you. Your standing with them decides whether the answer comes plainly, warily, or with a complaint wrapped around it, but not whether it comes at all. Anyone else is looser: a person who merely happens to know something may or may not volunteer it, and if they hold it as a secret they weigh how far they trust you before saying anything.

Where to see what you hold

• houseintel (also intel) opens your household's intelligence room. Its Clues tab is the ledger, kept in two parts. What you know is knowledge: each row carries what you were actually told, and, when the clue is a thread on somebody, the quarry it belongs to, their rank, and how many threads of that trail your party now holds. What you are still chasing is leads, agent word and word of mouth alike, each row saying which it is and carrying no substance at all. A lead is never labelled with a quarry, because it is not a thread yet.
• Turning one into the other is your errand, not your agents'. A Rumor row names the person to ask in its own title, Ask so-and-so, whenever there is one; a Lead row names them inside the agent's own words on the row instead. If a name was given, go to them or write to them. If none was, read the badge naming the matter: a Plot never names anybody even when people know it, so adventuring in that region is the road that asks nothing of anyone and asking around the town it belongs to is the other way in, a Story comes only from a person and never from an adventure, and on a quarry's matter it is more often a person your agents could not turn up. Either way, when the knowledge arrives the matter moves up into What you know on its own.
• The Reports tab holds everything your agents have ever filed. Once there is anything in it, a row of filters appears above the pile, and the Clues one narrows it to word of clues alone.
• On the map, the My Hints layer marks what you know, what you are still chasing, and any recent agent report you have not yet read, in any region, covered by your house or not. A busy region shows only its top few.
• journey hunts counts trail clues quarry by quarry, three of eight threads and so on, and lists what your party can already act on. Only clues you actually know are counted there; leads are not.

The ledger lists a clue you know by name and by the line that first drew you to it. It is an index, not an archive: the full account stays where it reached you, in the letter, in the book, or in your memory of the conversation.

Clues go quiet

A clue is retired when the matter it belonged to is finished: the villain is dead or has truly given it up, the camp is burned out, the trouble is settled, the chapter it hung on has moved past it. A retired clue stops circulating, and a lead onto one drops off your Clues tab rather than sending you down a dead end. What you already learned stays yours.

Usage: Not a command. Clues are gathered in the world; review them on the Clues tab of "houseintel", and see trail progress with "journey hunts". See also: villains, troubles, houseintel, audience.

See Also: villains troubles politics houseintel audience journey

The kingdom's signature festival. Three days of unrestrained celebration before Lunar New Year's family observances begin. Every Qiānjīn town becomes a parade ground: floats covered in fake gold (paper, painted wood, occasionally real gilt), masked dancers, beggar-monarchs crowned and carried through the streets, fire-eaters, stilt-walkers, and the famous Coin-rain ceremony, where city merchants throw real cash from balconies into the crowds. Drinking is constant. The kingdom's distilleries produce a special spiced rice wine sold only that weekend. The carnival is also Qiānjīn's traditional time for inverting roles for entertainment. The kingdom's governor briefly cedes the city to a Carnival Monarch chosen by lottery from among the city's beggars and prisoners-with-light-sentences. For three days the Carnival Monarch's word is held to be law, within carefully circumscribed limits: no actual orders are obeyed, but every shopkeeper smiles and bows. At midnight on Sunday the Carnival Monarch is "deposed" with a mock execution involving cabbages, and the governor returns to office.

There are no color codes to type. Unlike older telnet muds, this game runs in a styled web client, so colors and formatting are applied for you automatically. You do not need to (and cannot) prefix your text with codes like {r, %^RED%^, or escape sequences. Just type normally and the client takes care of the look.

What you can customize

Open the Settings page from the menu to adjust how the game looks on your screen:

• Theme picks the overall color scheme. Choose System Default, Dark, or Light, or use the quick theme toggle in the navigation bar.
• Panel fonts let you set a different typeface for the out-of-character panel and the roleplay panel.
• Line height adjusts the vertical spacing of text in each panel for easier reading.
• Backgrounds and pictures can be turned off if you prefer a plainer view or a faster, mobile-friendly layout.

What the colors mean

The client tints certain words and panels to help you read the action at a glance. You never set these yourself; they follow what is happening in the game. The general scheme is:

• Red marks harm or trouble. In combat it highlights health lost and knockouts, and a foe's health bar turns red when it runs low or critical. Red also flags a command that failed and effects working against you.
• Green marks the good news: an action that succeeded, and full or healthy health bars.
• Yellow or amber is a caution color, used for a health bar in the middle range and for warnings.
• Blue and cyan are for system and status notes from the game itself.
• Purple sets apart Game Master narration during guided scenes.

Treat these as helpful hints rather than strict rules. If you turn on the high-contrast option in Settings, some colors shift to stay readable, but their meaning stays the same.

Usage: Visit the Settings page to change theme, fonts, and line height.

See Also: settings

Get detailed combat information in a screen-reader friendly format. Inside a fight, use this command to check your status, list enemies and allies with their distances, get a target recommendation, or review available actions. This is useful for accessible or text-only gameplay.

Examples

• combat — show full combat status.
• combat enemies — list all enemies with HP and distance in hexes.
• combat recommend — get a target suggestion.
• combat status — show your HP and round number.
• combat actions — list your available actions.

How it works

Each subcommand returns structured text describing a different aspect of combat. All output is written for screen readers and includes distances measured in hexes, character names, and HP shown as current/maximum. Use this command repeatedly during a fight to stay aware of the battlefield without relying on the visual quickmenu.

Ending a fight

To break off a fight, choose an exit option from the combat menu rather than typing a command. Surrender gives up and leaves you helpless until the fight is over. Flee runs you to an adjacent room, but the option only appears when you are at the edge of the battlefield next to an exit, and the escape only succeeds if you take no damage that round. A fight also ends on its own once one side is knocked out, and you leave combat automatically when it does.

Usage: combat [enemies|allies|recommend|status|actions|help]

See Also: big monsters

Usage: combat reset

A fight is fought in rounds. Nobody has a turn of their own. Everyone decides at the same time, and then the whole round plays out at once.

There is no turn order

Nothing is rolled to see who goes first, and no list decides who acts before whom. Once everyone has chosen, the round resolves as a single stretch of time cut into a hundred moments. Two fighters who swing at each other both land; putting someone down does not call back the blow already on its way to you.

What does decide when things happen inside a round is the work itself. An ability fires at the moment its speed calls for, so a quick technique lands before a slow one no matter who chose first (see help ability speed). Movement is spread through the round rather than taken all at once, so where you were when a blow arrived is where you actually were. A tactic that protects someone only starts protecting them once your own feet have stopped.

What you choose each round

Three things, and the combat menu asks for them in this order:

• A main action, which is the one real thing you do.
• A tactic: a stance you hold, a thing you do to the battlefield, or your attention spent elsewhere. One a round. See help tactics.
• Where you move, hex by hex, up to your budget for the round.

They are separate slots, so an ordinary round is a move, a swing, and a stance all at once. What you cannot do is take two main actions, or hold two tactics.

The main actions

• Attack. Swing with the weapon in your hand. How that becomes lost health is help damage.
• An ability. One of your style's techniques. It fires at its own speed rather than at a fixed point in the round, and it leaves a penalty on your later rolls that fades over the rounds after; see help ability speed and help ability penalty.
• Dodge. Every attack against you this round is worth three less. Dodge again the next round and it is two; from the third consecutive round it is only one. You cannot move on a round you dodge, and the discount comes back to its full three once you have stopped dodging for a round.
• Sprint. No attack, no ability, nothing but ground: your movement goes from six hexes to eleven.
• Pass. Do nothing at all. If every fighter left passes in the same round, the fight ends.
• Surrender. Give up. You are helpless until the battle is over.
• Stand up. Offered only when you have been knocked flat. It costs movement, and you must be up before you can go anywhere.

Fleeing is not a main action but an exit from the fight: it appears in the menu only when you are at the edge of the battlefield beside a way out, and it works only if nothing touches you that round. See help flee.

Moving

You have six hexes a round to spend. Sprinting makes it eleven. The Qi Lightness tactic adds three, and lets you spend the nine on a run along a wall or a leap through the trees. Being slowed halves whatever you had.

Not every hex costs the same to enter:

• Broken ground such as brush or rubble, and water shallow enough to wade, cost double.
• Water deep enough to swim costs triple. Deeper than that you cannot cross at all.
• Climbing a level costs half as much again, unless you go by stairs, a ramp or a ladder, which cost nothing extra. More than five levels at once cannot be climbed without one.

And retreat is slow once you have committed. If your main action is an attack or an offensive ability, movement that carries you away from your target is scaled down: about three quarters of its speed once you pass their flank, and half speed going straight back. Rounds where you only move, or dodge, or sprint, or pass are not affected at all. Decide whether you are fighting or leaving before you commit; trying to do both is the slowest way to do either.

Locking the round in

While you are still choosing, the battle map draws your own plan in full: your reach, your line of attack, your route. Your allies see only where you are aiming and where you are headed, and your enemies see nothing. You can see the same coarse outline of what your side intends, which is what makes a plan possible. See help battlemap.

The round resolves once everyone has locked in. Fighters the game controls choose in the moment rather than in advance, so they will read as still deciding until it happens.

Usage: Not a command. A combat-mechanics overview. See also: tactics, damage, ability speed, qi dice, battlemap, flee.

See Also: tactics damage ability speed ability penalty qi dice battlemap flee combat

Usage: combatrace [save]

List all available commands, grouped by category. Without arguments, shows category names. With a category name, displays all commands in that category and what they do.

Examples

• commands — show all command categories.
• commands combat — list combat commands.
• commands navigation — list movement commands.

Available categories include: navigation, combat, communication, social, economy, crafting, entertainment, events, info, inventory, clothing, building, staff, and system.

Usage: commands [category]

Hire a shopkeeper to craft a design you have created. The shopkeeper examines your design, quotes a price (which may include a discount if they are impressed, or if you are carrying useful materials), and gives you a fabrication timeline. You then choose how to pay and the work begins.

Examples

• commission silk dress: commission a design by name.
• commission my sword design: search by a name fragment.
• commission: with no name, pick from a menu of your designs.

Are designs reusable?

Yes. A design is a reusable blueprint, not a one-time order, so a commissioned item is not one of a kind. You can have the same design made again and again. There is only one limit: while a shopkeeper is still working on an order, that design is marked "in production" and you cannot start a second commission of it. If you try, you will be told the design is already in production. As soon as that order is finished, the design is free again and you can commission it once more. The shopkeeper quotes the price afresh each time you commission, so a later order may cost a little more or less than the first.

Getting several copies at once

If you want more than one copy without waiting for the first to finish, do not run commission twice. Place the order once, then use addamount <number> while it is still in production to add more copies to your most recent order. These extra copies are charged at the same per-unit price as the order you just placed, with no new quote. For example, addamount 3 adds three more to your current order. See help addamount.

How it works

At an ordinary shop the order takes time. When it is ready it waits at the shop for you to collect, and you can keep adding copies with addamount until it is done. At a credit shop (such as the newbie school outfitter) the item is made on the spot, charged to your credit tab, and the design becomes commissionable again straight away.

Usage: commission <design name>

See Also: orders addamount design

Usage: commit

The Commonwealth of Aldermark is a parliamentary mercantile power seated across the western ocean, governed by an elected Assembly of Burgesses and a smaller Lords' Bench, with a sovereign whose role is ceremonial. Its citizens speak of liberty, charter, and free trade in the same breath as gunboats and coaling stations, and they are entirely unembarrassed by their empire. Aldermen reckon the world in ledgers: every port a column, every treaty a clause, every colony an investment expected to return. They consider themselves the natural tutors of younger nations, by which they mean every nation but their own. Aldermark seems to be the only known nation that has no magic at all, but their technology seems to surpass all others. Rumors are that they slew their gods in return for industrial power. They are known to have several 'ever-engines' which require no fuel and run forever, these power their most important factories. Aldermark first traded with the empire in 615, bartering clocks and woolens for tea and silk. By 809 they had pressed their advantage into a formal concession at Zhūwān, where their warehouses, drydocks, and counting-houses now line the southern quays. From there flow the steam engines that drive the empire's new mills, the rifles that arm both loyal garrisons and unsavory others, and the patterns for the factories rising along the coast. From there also flow crates marked as medicine, tea, and lamp oil, whose true cargo rots the lungs and purses of half a province. The embassy above the concession is the only foreign banner permitted to fly inside imperial soil. The arrangement breeds quarrel. The Lamplighters argue openly that the empire should accept Commonwealth tutelage and join as a chartered member; the Chainless Compact answers that no chain is heavier than a friendly one, and the Unforged refuse the bargain on older grounds. The River Wardens shadow every Aldermark agent who steps beyond the concession gates, and have done so with redoubled vigilance since the Lotus Quay massacre of 901, an affair in which Aldermark's hand was loudly denied and quietly suspected.

Manage an animal companion you've created. Summon it to your side, dismiss it temporarily, view its status, or permanently release it. Companions can help carry messages to other characters and add roleplay flavor to your adventures.

Examples

• companion — view your companion's status.
• companion summon — call your companion to appear.
• companion dismiss — send your companion away temporarily.
• companion release — permanently release your companion.

How it works

When you create a companion, it arrives at your side. You can dismiss it to hide it from the room (useful for roleplay), summon it back, or release it entirely if you want a different animal. Some animals can carry messages; you configure this when you create them.

Usage: companion [summon|dismiss|release|info]

See Also: make messenger mail

Mechanics

• Style: Silken Viper (level 5)
• Type: Main
• Speed: Fast
• Range: One enemy (no fixed distance is enforced)

You throw a dagger coated in an amplifier toxin. It deals no damage; instead, every toxin already on the target has its remaining duration extended by your main roll/2 rounds (a roll of 0 or 1 extends by nothing). Casting it again later extends whatever toxins are present at that moment. Casting it has no penalty. You do not need to buy or carry daggers for this, and the throw spends no item and no ammunition. Silken Viper's throwing knives come with your starting kit, and a free set is issued whenever you enter a fight carrying no ranged weapon.

How to use

Used in combat. Chosen automatically in this stance.

See Also: style silken viper weapons

Mechanics

• Style: Razor Petals (level 3)
• Type: Passive
• Range: Self

A passive that hides your fans until you strike. Your first weapon attack after entering Razor Petals spends the charge, no matter which round it happens in. If that opener is melee it deals 1.5 times normal damage; a ranged opener spends the charge for nothing.

Out of combat

You gain +5 either when attacking an unsuspecting target or when hiding a small object. Typing nick flicks your fan across someone's arm, opening a light, stinging cut, available once you share at least 3 close-proximity emotes with that person.

Adventure use

Their guard was not for a fan, and by the time it is, a fan is no longer what you hold.

• On attack tasks that are unsuspecting target, you roll +5.
• On conceal or hide tasks that are small object, you roll +5.

Arm it before the roll with invoke concealed_weapon.

How to use

Used in combat. Chosen automatically in this stance.

Arm before a roleplay roll: invoke concealed_weapon

Command: nick

See Also: style razor petals

Mechanics

• Style: Darkened Veil (level 4)
• Type: Tactical
• Speed: Fast
• Range: 6 hexes
• Cost: -6 to your other abilities this round, easing by 3 each round

You draw a pool of shadow over a hex within six hexes and the six hexes ringing it, cloaking whoever stands there in concealment for two rounds (the round you cast it and the one after). Recasting it replaces your previous patch rather than stacking. Concealment belongs to the ground, not the body: it shields whoever is standing in the shadow and ends when they step out. It blunts incoming ranged attacks, shaving off a point of damage for every full six hexes between shooter and target, so it is worth nothing at point blank and most at long range. Since damage must cross a threshold to cost any health, that can turn a marginal shot into a clean miss. It does nothing against melee or style abilities, and it does not hide you: enemies still see you and can still target you. A Solar Beacon burning on you cancels the benefit outright. Costs a -6 penalty to your other abilities that fades by 3 each round. Can be used while stealthed.

Out of combat

On an adventure, this is a group ability: it grants every member of your party a +3 bonus on stealth tasks. You can also type dim_room out of combat to draw shadow over your surroundings, dimming the room for an hour.

Adventure use

Shadows thicken around your companions.

• On stealth tasks, you roll +3.

Arm it before the roll with invoke concealing_shadows.

How to use

Used in combat. Chosen automatically in this stance.

Arm before a roleplay roll: invoke concealing_shadows

Command: dim_room

See Also: style darkened veil

Concealment belongs to the ground, not to you. A hex on the battle map is either concealing or it is not, and you have concealment for exactly as long as you are standing on such a hex. Step off and it is gone; step back on and you have it again. Nobody carries it around with them.

What it does for you

• Ranged weapon attacks against you lose bite, and lose more the farther away the shooter is. Every shot from a ranged weapon aimed at your hex has damage shaved off it: one point for every full six hexes between you and the attacker, up to four points at most.
• Melee ignores concealment completely. Someone standing next to you with a sword swings exactly as hard whether you are in a thicket, in shadow, or in the open. Concealment is protection against distance, nothing else.
• Style abilities ignore it too. Concealment blunts weapon fire, not martial technique. A blast, bolt or conjured strike from someone's style lands on you at full force wherever you are standing, exactly as cover does nothing against it either.

Because a blow has to do a certain amount of damage before it costs you any health at all, those shaved points are worth more than they look. Trimming a few points off a long shot is often the difference between a wound and a clean miss. If a weapon looses more than one shot in a round, the reduction is shared out across the volley rather than charged for each shot.

How much, exactly

• Shooter within 5 hexes: no reduction at all.
• 6 to 11 hexes: 1 point off.
• 12 to 17 hexes: 2 points off.
• 18 to 23 hexes: 3 points off.
• 24 hexes or more: 4 points off, and that is the ceiling.

In practice you will rarely see the bottom of that table, because a shot has to be able to reach you at all. Almost every ranged weapon in the world stops at 16 hexes, so 2 points is the most it can ever lose to your concealment. Only a rifle reaches out to 24, and only a rifleman firing from the far end of that reach pays the full 4. So concealment is worthless against a foe standing on top of you, steadily better as they back away, and at its very best against a distant marksman.

What it does not do

• It does not hide you. Enemies still see you, still know where you are, and can still choose you as a target. Enemy archers and gunners do tend to prefer a target standing in the open when they have the choice, but a swordsman closing on you pays your shadow no mind at all, and neither do the great beasts.
• It does not block line of sight. Only walls and solid obstacles do that.
• It is not cover. Cover is a separate thing: a solid obstacle standing in the line of the shot. Against a fighter who neither moved nor acted that round, cover stops the shot outright; against one who did either, it halves the damage instead. An obstacle the shooter is already standing beside gives no cover at all, along its whole length, since they can simply step clear of it.

Where concealing hexes come from

• The terrain itself. Thickets and brush conceal whoever stands in them, and so does a tent or awning. Those hexes read as an obscured area when you inspect the map. Brush is tangled going: it costs extra movement to push into, though nothing extra to leave. A tent costs nothing either way, and neither does conjured shadow or mist.
• Concealing Shadows (Darkened Veil): draws shadow over a chosen hex and the six ringing it for two rounds. Casting it again moves the patch rather than growing it.
• Protecting Mist (Stormbreaker): the same seven hex shape, but anchored on the caster and dragged along as they walk. It lasts a third of the main roll behind it, in rounds.
• Shadow Field (Darkened Veil): a single hex of deep darkness for three rounds. It conceals whoever stands in it, and it also halves the ranged weapon damage of anyone shooting out from inside it.

Losing it

• Walk out of the hex, and you lose it that instant. Fighting from inside it does not spoil it: attacking, being attacked and casting all leave the shadow where it is.
• Conjured shadow and mist run out on their own timer, so count your rounds.
• Solar Beacon (Solar Song) burns it away. Anyone standing in the lit hex or the six around it when it goes up is marked for two rounds: no benefit from concealment at all, and 25% more damage from ranged attacks besides. The mark is on the person, not the ground, so running into fresh shadow does not shake it, and anyone who wanders in afterwards is untouched. Against a Solar Song adept, do not treat a shadow as shelter.

Usage: Not a command. Concealment is a battle-map condition you gain by standing on a concealing hex. See also: combat, attack, stealth.

See Also: combat attack stealth ability concealing shadows ability protecting mist ability solar beacon

Mechanics

• Style: Snaring Storm (level 6)
• Type: Main
• Speed: Very Fast
• Range: 3 hexes
• Cost: -3 to your other abilities this round, easing by 3 each round

You hook an enemy up to three hexes away and deal your main roll in damage. If at the moment of resolution the target stands adjacent to one of their own allies, the rope tangles the pair together, halving the movement speed of the target and that one adjacent ally for one round. Costs a -3 penalty to your other abilities that fades by 3 each round.

How to use

Used in combat. Chosen automatically in this stance.

See Also: style snaring storm

Office of the Consort of Jīnjiǎ. Currently held by Lánglì Zhancalius. See `help "Lánglì Zhancalius"` for the current officeholder.

See Also: Lánglì Zhancalius

Office of the Consort of Qiānjīn. Currently held by Báiláng Jindoro. See `help "Báiláng Jindoro"` for the current officeholder.

See Also: Báiláng Jindoro

Office of the Consort of Sìshuǐ. Currently held by Cǎiqiú Lanaris. See `help "Cǎiqiú Lanaris"` for the current officeholder.

See Also: Cǎiqiú Lanaris

Office of the Consort of Táimí. Currently held by Húnshén Liradi. See `help "Húnshén Liradi"` for the current officeholder.

See Also: Húnshén Liradi

Office of the Consort of Tōngzhì. Currently held by Qīnglì Shuveri. See `help "Qīnglì Shuveri"` for the current officeholder.

See Also: Qīnglì Shuveri

There is no pray or petition command in this world. The way to get a staff member's attention — to report a problem, ask for help, or make a request — is the ticket system. Filing a ticket alerts the staff right away, and your ticket keeps a record so you can track the reply.

Filing a ticket

Type tickets (or just ticket) to open the ticket menu, then choose Submit Ticket — or jump straight to the form with tickets new. Fill in a category, a short subject, and a description. When you submit, the staff are notified and your ticket is logged. Your current location, character, and any active fight, activity, or adventure are attached automatically, so you do not need to describe where you are.

Quick shortcuts

For common kinds of reports you can skip the menu and open the form directly:

• bug — report something that is broken or behaving wrongly.
• typo — report a spelling or text mistake.
• report — report a behaviour or conduct concern.
• request — ask staff for something (assistance, a change, access).
• suggest — offer a suggestion or idea.

Each of these is just a shortcut into the same ticket form with the category preset; use whichever fits, or use tickets new and pick the category yourself.

Tracking your tickets

Use tickets to see your open tickets and tickets all to include resolved ones. Read a specific one with tickets view <id> (for example tickets view 42). When staff resolve or close a ticket you get a notice in-world, and the staff reply shows up under that ticket.

Usage: help contacting staff

See Also: tickets bug typo report request help

You can hold items inside other items here. A container — a pouch, bag, sack, or pack — can carry smaller items, and a handful of simple commands move things between your hands, a container, the ground, and longer-term storage. The everyday tools are below.

Putting things into and out of containers

• Put. put <item> in <container> tucks a carried item inside a container you can reach — one you are carrying or wearing, or one on the ground here. For example, put cigarette in pouch. (into and onto work too.) A container holds only so much, and you cannot put money inside one.
• Get from. get <item> from <container> takes an item back out, for example get cigarette from pouch.
• Look inside. look <container> (or examine <container>) lists what is inside it. In your inventory, a container shows how many items it holds.

If you drop, give, or stash a container, whatever is inside travels with it. To stash or sell a container, empty it first.

Picking things up and putting them down

• Get. get <item> picks an item up from the room. get all takes everything on the ground, and get money or get 100 collects coin. The aliases take, pickup, and grab all do the same.
• Drop. drop <item> puts an item down in the room for others to see and pick up. drop all sets everything down at once. put <item> with no container, and put down <item>, also drop to the room.
• Give. give <item> to <name> hands an item or coin straight to another person in the room.

Holding, pocketing, and holsters

• Hold. hold <item> takes an item into your hands so others can see it. The aliases wield and draw do the same.
• Pocket. pocket <item> puts a held item away so it is no longer on show. The aliases stow and sheathe do the same. (To send an item to long-term storage instead, use the wardrobe below; stash is a wardrobe shortcut.)
• Holsters. The one thing that holds another item here is a worn holster, which carries a sheathed weapon. If you are wearing a compatible holster, pocket <weapon> sheathes the weapon into it, and hold <weapon> or draw <weapon> draws it back out.

Seeing what you have

inventory (or inv, or just i) lists everything you are carrying along with your coin. equipment shows what you are holding and wearing. examine <item> reads a single item in detail.

Longer-term storage

For items you want to keep but not carry, use the wardrobe. It is your personal storage, reached at your home or a storage facility: wardrobe store <item> (alias stash) puts an item away and wardrobe retrieve <item> brings it back. This is the closest thing to a chest the game has, and it is tied to your storage locations rather than carried around.

store/stash only put away items you are carrying. To send clothes you are wearing straight into storage in one step, use strip stash (everything you have on) or outfit stash <name> (a saved outfit's items).

Usage: put <item> in <container> | get <item> from <container> | look <container>. See also: get, drop, put, give, hold, pocket, inventory, equipment, examine, wardrobe.

See Also: get drop put give hold pocket inventory equipment examine wardrobe

A spirit which has been corrupted by some dark magic, taking the form of some large creature or chimera of two creatures.

Mechanics

• Style: Patient Edge (level 4)
• Type: Main
• Speed: Instant
• Range: Self
• Cost: -6 to your other abilities this round, easing by 3 each round

Ready a freezing reprisal. Through the round it tracks every distinct enemy who melee-attacks you or a neighboring same-faction ally. At the end of the round, each of those attackers takes water damage equal to half your main roll. If no one attacked, the reprisal has no targets and costs you nothing. When it does fire, it costs a -6 penalty to your other abilities that eases by 3 each round.

How to use

Used in combat. Chosen automatically in this stance.

See Also: style patient edge

Mechanics

• Style: Patient Edge (level 2)
• Type: Main
• Speed: Average
• Range: Melee

Ready this as a reactive counter. Once armed, the next time an enemy strikes you in melee you answer instantly: you deal bludgeoning damage equal to your main roll, knock the attacker three hexes back, and leave them prone for one round. The counter respects Mirror Stance like any of your main rolls: while you are in the stance its roll is halved, and after you have left the stance a queued stance bonus is spent on it. If no enemy triggers it that round, nothing happens and you pay no cost.

How to use

Used in combat. Chosen automatically in this stance.

See Also: style patient edge

Conceal worn items so they are hidden from other players — the exact opposite of expose. Covered items drop out of your visible appearance and no longer show in your description. This is a subtle action; other players are not told when you cover something. You can cover multiple items at once by listing them separated by commas.

Use it to tuck an identifying pendant under your shirt, button a jacket over the garment beneath, or quietly slip a weapon out of sight. To make a covered item visible again, use expose. This command is also available as unexpose, conceal, and hide.

Examples

• cover dagger — hide a worn dagger.
• unexpose pendant — tuck an identifying pendant out of sight.
• cover weapon, badge, insignia — hide multiple items at once.

Usage: cover <item> [, item2, item3...]

See Also: ability hidden viper

Create a new event at your current location. You can quickly create an event with just a name (defaults to starting in 1 hour at your current room), or open a full form to set custom details. Once created, others can view the event with events and join when it starts.

Examples

• create event — open the full event creation form.
• create event Birthday Party — quick create an event named "Birthday Party".

How it works

Quick create defaults to 1 hour from now and public visibility. The full form lets you set description, event type (party, meeting, concert, etc.), private/public status, start time, and capacity. Once created, you are automatically added as an attendee.

Usage: create event [name]

Wooden houses bolted to spray-lashed cliffs, connected by steep timber stairways above the surf. The Fāng Yǔ Lín jungle presses to the cliff edge, staining the rock green, hence the name. The Hǎicuì Xīdào coastal road and two railway lines, the Cāngbō Xiàn and the Western Coastal Branch, connect the settlement along the coast, though the steep terrain makes the final descent to the harbour a climb. The fishers salt and dry their catch for coastal shipment to the capital, and a shrine to the sea spirit crowns the highest point. Cuìyá folk are known across Sìshuǐ for saying little and expecting less.

See Also: Sìshuǐ Yǐnghuáng Dúhuī-Lanaris

Open the cultivation interface where you train your martial arts: learn new styles, advance the ones you know, craft pills, and buy ingredients. The interface shows your known styles and their ranks, the styles you have not learned yet, and a shop where ingredients are bought with influence or gold dollars.

Examples

• cultivate — open the cultivation interface.
• meditate — the same command (so is cult).

Do I need to unlock it, or find an instructor?

Neither. Cultivation is open to every character from the start. You do not have to reach a level, join a sect, finish a quest, or visit anyone to begin: just type cultivate (or meditate) and the interface opens. There is no cultivation instructor NPC, and no special place you must travel to. The system is self-directed and menu-driven; everything you need is inside the interface.

The one way another character can teach you is the teach command, and that is player to player, not an NPC service. A fellow player who is ranked higher than you in a style you BOTH already know can teach you that style while you are in the same room, which speeds your progress in it up to a weekly limit. See help teach. Sect leaders are political figures; they are not cultivation trainers.

How it works

You raise a style by crafting a pill for it in the interface. Each pill needs a recipe of ingredients, which you buy in the cultivation shop with gold dollars or influence (more potent ingredients cost more). When you have the ingredients, craft the pill to learn a new style at rank 1 or advance one you already know by a rank. During the alpha, styles can be advanced up to rank 6 (mastery).

Training progress builds up on its own as you play: using a style in real fights and sparring with it both earn it, and a higher-ranked sparring partner or teach lesson earns it faster. This progress is not spent to buy ranks directly. Instead it is applied automatically when you next advance the style, lowering the ingredient cost of that pill, so the more you practise a style the cheaper its next rank becomes.

There is no separate pool of "skill points". The only thing you spend to advance is ingredients, bought with influence or gold dollars; the only thing you grind is the training progress above, which makes your next pill cheaper rather than buying a rank outright. Raising a style's rank is also what unlocks that style's higher combat abilities. See help abilities.

Where do I get ingredients?

Every ingredient a recipe calls for can be bought right here in the interface. Open the Shop tab: the common Herbs & Reagents (roots, mushrooms, flowers, seeds, and the like) are bought with gold dollars, and the rarer reagents are bought with influence. More potent ingredients cost more. Buy whatever a recipe is short on, then switch back to the Recipes tab and craft. This shop is always open and is all most players ever need.

Ingredients also turn up out in the world, so you may already be carrying some. Delves salt their treasure caches with them: loot a cache and the herbs bank into your supply when you leave the delve. Adventures can pay out a batch of ingredients among their rewards. Anything gathered this way lands in the same Inventory tab as the ones you buy.

Cultivation ingredients are their own catalog, separate from the raw luxury exotic materials (jade, folded steel, sea silk, and the like) sold at a Floating Market. Those feed a commission, not a pill, so there is no need to hunt for cultivation herbs at a market stall.

The Herbalist and Apothecary shops you pass in a town are a different thing again. They sell physical goods over the counter, dried chrysanthemum, boxed ginseng root, astragalus slices, a cough bundle, or a brewed tonic, priced in Silver Li and bought with the ordinary buy command like any other shop. Those are roleplay props for your pack, not cultivation stock, and browsing one does nothing for a pill recipe. There is no step where you prepare or dry a herb yourself either: a shop's drying counter is only scenery. Your cultivation ingredients live solely inside the cultivate interface's supply, are spent only on crafting pills, and cannot be sold back for coin.

Training is not the only road: a deep romantic or rivalrous bond, spent in intimacy, banks general practice usable on any style. See help dual cultivation.

Usage: cultivate

Cultivation is the refinement of qi through disciplined breath, sworn forms, and the ingestion of herbal pills distilled from rare mountain flora and stranger things besides. A practiced cultivator can shatter stone with an open palm, stride across water, deflect bullets from their skin, wield the elements like weapon, and perserve enough vitality that they never pass beyond middle-age. It is well-established that only those of noble blood are capable of Cultivation, and while occassional commoners stumble upon it's ways it's always quickly established that they had some long hidden noble blood. The noble houses cultivate openly, and beneath them the four great schools shape the discipline into rival traditions: the Ember Fist, the Veiled Grace, the Mirrored Tempest, and the Radiant Chorus. Sect elders, often centuries seasoned, guard the higher pill formulas as jealously as any crown jewel. Qi deepens through romantic chemistry, and most fiercely between rivals whose passions are sharpened by opposition. Two cultivators circling one another in suspicion, longing, or open enmity will both ascend faster than either could alone. Court matchmakers, sect rivals, and scheming dowagers exploit this without shame, and half the duels recorded in the histories are also love letters. Blood sorcerers covet cultivators above all other prey. Refined qi saturates the blood, and a single cup drawn from a sect disciple outweighs barrels taken from the commonborn. See `help "Blood Sorcery"`. Shades are also drawn to culviators, their qi making the creatures feel some semblance of life's warmth once more. The two arts stand at opposite poles of the empire's regard, and a cultivator does not walk both roads at once. Cultivation is the noble's open path: martial, herbal, honoured in the daylight, and earned only through the slow refinement of one's own qi. Blood sorcery buys its power from a life laid down, and even where a village rite passes for harmless the art keeps its place in the empire's underside. There is no law of nature that bars a noble from learning to spill blood over a sigil, and the histories whisper of a few who did. But for one whose own veins are the sweetest fuel a sorcerer could hope for, the prey turning predator is reckoned the foulest of betrayals: it spends the honour of house and self, it brands the cultivator a deviant in the eyes of every sect, and it draws the Unbleeding Seal, who ride against the sacrifice arts in all their forms and care nothing for noble blood when they catch its scent. A cultivator who hungers for swift power has the cultivation arts and the duelling rivalries that sharpen qi; the sacrifice road offers only a name no honourable house will own.

See Also: dual cultivation

Money across the realm comes in a few denominations.

Gold Dollar ($) is the standard paper currency and the value anchor. It is reserved for genuinely high-value, national-treasure-tier dealings. One Gold Dollar is roughly equivalent to one hundred contemporary US dollars in purchasing power, so think of prices accordingly.

Silver Li (Li) is the everyday silver coin. One Gold Dollar is worth one thousand Silver Li. Almost every price you will see in shops, on patterns, and in markets is quoted in Silver Li, so a tag of "45" means 45 Silver Li, not 45 Gold Dollar. Even a master-forged sword is priced in Silver Li.

Gold Talen (T) is a heavy gold coin worth five Gold Dollars. It can be broken down for change.

Frontier Li is the Frontier region's own minting of the Silver Li. It is slightly devalued against the standard Silver Li because of its rough strike, so coins from the Frontier are worth a touch less when exchanged at a bank.

To see how much you are carrying and what is in the bank, use the "balance" command (also "money", "wallet", or "cash").

Paying when a shop charges you

When you buy from a shop, the price is taken from your own money straight away, in whatever currency the price is quoted in. Since almost everything is priced in Silver Li, that means your Silver Li really is spent: the shop draws from your bank account first and then your wallet for any remainder. A cash-only shop ignores your bank and takes only what is in your wallet. Shops do not convert between currencies at the till, so if a price is in Silver Li you need Silver Li to pay it; holding the value in Gold Dollars instead means a trip to a bank to exchange first.

You only fall back on credit when you genuinely cannot pay. If you cannot cover the cost in the right coin and you are still within your first two weeks as a new arrival, the purchase goes on your credit tab instead of being refused; the newbie-school shops always offer credit this way too. Otherwise an unaffordable purchase is simply turned down, and nothing is charged. See help debt for how the credit tab works and clears.

Usage: help currency

See Also: balance buy sell bank

Some great act of dishonor or tragedy has manifested into an embodied curse, often taking the form of large, twisted animals or chimeras. Sometimes will regenerate or are unkillable unless the curse is resolved, sometimes only killable in a specific way related to the curse.

Damage in Romance of Five Kingdoms is not a pool of hit points you whittle away. A player character has six health, and most of the people who will try to take it off you have five. A blow either crosses a wound line or it does not. What follows is the shape of the path from your roll to a lost point of health. The great beasts are the exception to nearly all of it; see help big monsters.

There is no to-hit roll

Nothing decides separately whether you connect. You make one roll for the round and it becomes raw damage; the only question is whether that damage is big enough to matter. When the log says you missed, it means your blow did not push the round's running total past the next wound line. Several such blows in a row are still adding up, and the one that finally crosses the line is reported as the hit.

One roll a round

At the start of each round you roll two eight-sided dice, and they explode: roll an eight and you roll that die again and add it, up to ten times over for a single die. That one roll is your whole round. Your abilities read from it too, so you are not rolling fresh for every swing.

Onto that total go the things that help and hinder you:

• Qi dice spent on Attack are rolled and added straight in, up to two of them, and they explode as well. See help qi dice.
• Your style's attack trait, melee or ranged depending on which weapon swings, scaled by your mastery in that style.
• Your own wounds, subtracted point for point. Every point of health you have lost is a point off your attack total.
• A dodging target takes three off the first round they dodge, two if they dodge again, one from the third consecutive round onward. Dodging every round stops paying.
• Weather, but only under the open sky. Fog, rain, and snow each cost you a point, and the worst storms and blizzards cost several more.
• A lingering penalty left on your rolls by certain abilities, which fades over the following rounds.

Note what is not on that list. In the present build your attributes do not feed the attack roll, and neither does a weapon's quality or price. A masterwork sword and a plain one roll the same dice.

Weapon speed parcels it out

Your weapon decides how many times you swing in the round, from one up to eight. Most weapons roll that count fresh at the start of each round within their own band, so a light weapon flurries while a heavy polearm lands a few deliberate blows. The round's total is then divided between those swings, so speed alone does not make you hit harder. What it changes is how the damage arrives, and each swing is judged where and when it is actually made.

The ground has its say

Once the round's total is split, the battle map goes to work on each swing, and it matters as much as the dice.

• High ground is worth up to two, low ground costs up to two, and a ranged attacker two or more levels above their target adds a further two.
• Cover stops a ranged shot outright, but only against someone who has neither moved nor acted that round. Anyone who stepped or swung, which is very nearly everyone, is grazed through it instead, for half damage.
• Concealment costs a ranged attacker one for every six hexes of distance, up to four. See help concealment.
• Long range beyond a weapon's comfortable reach takes its own toll, charged only on the swings actually made out there.
• A target knocked flat is two easier to strike in melee and two harder to shoot.

Shields, then the pool

A shield, such as the one Ice Armor lays on an ally, is a separate reserve that soaks a blow as it lands, before that blow joins anything else. It drains as it works and vanishes when spent.

What gets through is gathered into a single pool for that fighter for the round, everything from every attacker together, and the rest of their guard comes off the pool:

• Flat damage reduction granted by abilities and effects, counted separately for each attacker and each damage type.
• The Qi Aura tactic, five off each separate attacker, though it can never take an attacker who connected below one point.
• Your style's defended type, up to three off, but never more of that type than is still left in the pool once the reductions above have taken their share. Your style's vulnerable type adds three, flat and certain.
• Protection effects, some covering every damage type and some only one.
• Qi dice spent on Defence, rolled and subtracted from what remains.

Not everything walks that whole road. Ability damage has its type resistances and flat reduction taken off at once, then joins the pool late, past the qi aura, past your style's type defence and your protections, with only the qi dice you spend on Defence still able to cut it. Damage over time, the bleeding and the venom, and the strikes of the great beasts both arrive later still, after the qi dice. A shield will soak them and your flat reduction still bites on a beast's strike, but the rest of the pool's guard does not touch either. And however well defended you are, a round in which several enemies connect can never be reduced to nothing: the round's total is held at no less than one for each attacker who landed a blow. That floor is on the round as a whole rather than on each attacker, so it takes a great many of them at once to reach even the first wound line by itself.

There is no worn armour. Clothing and gear are for looks, warmth, and standing; nothing you put on your body reduces damage. Your protection is your style, your tactics, your qi, and your abilities.

Damage types

Every blow carries a type: piercing, slashing, or bludgeoning for ordinary weapons, and fire, water, earth, wind, wood, metal, shadow, poison, or demon for the rest. Type is not decoration. It decides which reductions and shields apply, and it is what your style's defence and vulnerability key off. Patient Edge turns piercing aside and suffers under bludgeoning; Iron Claw turns slashing aside and suffers under bludgeoning too. Knowing what your opponent is soft against is worth more than a better weapon.

Raw damage into lost health

What survives all of that is compared against a ladder. This is the step people find surprising, so it is worth reading twice: lost health comes in whole points at fixed lines, not in proportion to the number.

• 9 or less: nothing. Reported as a miss.
• 10 to 17: 1 health.
• 18 to 29: 2 health.
• 30 to 99: 3 health.
• 100 or more: 4 health, and one more for every further hundred.

A magnificent roll of 40 and a workmanlike 31 both cost the same three points. The gap between 9 and 10 is worth more than the gap between 30 and 99.

Wounds compound

Every point of health you have lost drops every line of that ladder by one. At four health of six you have lost two, so the miss line falls from 9 to 7 and a blow of 8 now costs you a point where a moment ago it cost nothing. Being hurt makes you easier to hurt, and it takes the same amount off your own attack roll at the same time. Fights turn fast once someone starts losing.

Pushing back the other way, a style's threshold traits raise those lines for you, scaled by your mastery. One trait protects the first point of health by lifting the miss line; the other guards the second and third. Some abilities shove an enemy's lines down instead, to make them easier to wound, and pinning a foe so their back is against a wall drops their lines by three against blows from a held melee weapon.

Losing health, and gaining qi for it

Every point of health you lose hands you two qi dice, up to the pool's cap of three. Taking a beating is how you fund the answer to it. At zero health you are knocked out, not killed; see help death for what follows and help healing for mending afterwards. Heavy damage can also grind your maximum health down below six for a while; see help degradation.

Sparring is the exception to all of it. A spar scores touches on the same ladder instead of real wounds, no health moves, no qi comes from being struck, and there is no wound penalty to snowball, so a friendly match cannot run away from you.

Usage: Not a command. A combat-mechanics overview. See also: qi dice, weapons, healing, death, flanking, battlemap.

See Also: combat attack qi dice weapons battlemap flanking healing degradation death big monsters

Mechanics

• Style: Razor Petals (level 1)
• Type: Tactical
• Speed: Instant
• Range: Self
• Cost: -4 to your other abilities this round, easing by 2 each round

You move with qi lightness for one round, gaining its nimble footwork without paying the usual loss of qi dice regeneration. Costs a -4 penalty to your other abilities that fades by 2 each round.

Out of combat

When a Quick roll involves balance or footwork, every die counts as at least 4. Typing silent_entrance arms a 15-minute flag that lets you slip into a room without broadcasting your arrival to onlookers who are not near the entrance.

Adventure use

Your footwork finds the ground even when the ground shifts beneath you.

• On balance or footwork tasks that are quick roll, every die counts as at least 4.

Arm it before the roll with invoke dancers_grace.

How to use

Used in combat. Chosen automatically in this stance.

Arm before a roleplay roll: invoke dancers_grace

Command: silent_entrance

See Also: style razor petals

List all taxi dancers available for hire in the current ballroom or social venue. Each dancer has a tier (beginner, intermediate, master) and charges a fee per hour. Dancers already in session appear marked so you know they're temporarily unavailable.

Examples

• dancers — show tonight's available dancers.

Usage: dancers

There are two ways to actually dance in Romance of Five Kingdoms, and one combat ability that happens to share the word. Plain roleplay dancing with no mechanics behind it is done with emote.

Hiring a taxi dancer in a ballroom

The grand ballrooms of Zhūwān keep professional dancers on hand for the evening. While you are in a ballroom such as The Pearl Ballroom, The Crystal Ballroom, the Grand Hotel Ballroom, or the Starlight Dance Hall:

• dancers lists the dancers working tonight, each with their tier and their fee for the hour in Silver Li.
• hire <name> takes a partner onto the floor. The fee is paid from your Silver Li wallet, the set lasts one hour, and the dancer takes your arm and follows you while it runs.
• dismiss ends the dance early. There is no refund for the remaining time.

Dancing at a society event

When a host has launched a society event in the room, the host can open a group dance and guests can step onto the floor together.

• The host starts it with start activity dance (optionally naming a piece of music, for example start activity dance Morning Rain).
• Guests join with join dance. You are paired with another guest; if no partner is free yet you wait in the queue until one is.
• The host can pause dance and resume dance, shuffle to re-pair everyone with new partners, and stopdance to close the floor.
• You can step off at any time with leave.

Who you are matched with is shaped by your social preferences: guests you have marked as liked are favoured as partners, and guests you have marked as avoided are skipped where possible. Guests who spend at least half of the dance on the floor earn a standing bonus to their social influence from the event.

Fan Dance is something else

The Fan Dance of the Razor Petals combat style is a fighting move, not social dancing. After you use Fan Dance in a fight you can type flourish to sweep your bladed fans through a brief shimmering display in the room. It has nothing to do with ballrooms or society events.

Usage: help dance

See Also: dancers hire dismiss join emote ability fan dance

A ranged mystic art of the Veiled Grace, Darkened Veil turns shadow against the mind. Enemies struck by its qi grow disoriented: blows go wide, certainty curdles. Its practitioners fade from view, snap back into missed positions, send shadow-replicas to deliver kicks from across a courtyard, and wreathe targets in darkness until illusory soldiers strike them down. The fight you win best is the one your opponent fought only with phantoms.

Weapon

This style needs no weapon and no ammunition. Its ranged attacks are channelled through your own power, so the ranged slot is the locked one and it costs you nothing to carry. Channeling is what you fire by default; if you would rather loose lead, carry a real ranged weapon and pick it from the combat menu to fire that instead.

Your melee slot is free choice: carry any melee weapon and it is used up close, or simply strike unarmed.

See help weapons for the full weapon model.

Combat bonuses

• Melee +3
• Ranged +7
• 1 HP threshold +9
• 2 to 3 HP threshold +5

Damage defense

• Resistance: bludgeoning, 3 less taken
• Vulnerability: slashing, 3 more taken

Unique Mechanic: Disorientation

Disorientation builds on enemies targeted by Darkened Veil attacks and can be exploited. Enemies gain one disorientation whenever they lose a HP to a Darkened Veil attack.

Mastery Bonus

For (mastery) rounds after switching out of this style, taking an HP from an enemy or applying any sort of debuff causes them to gain a point of disorientation.

Abilities

1. Mastery Bleed. passive. A passive payoff for mastery in this style
2. Disorientation. passive. The core mechanic of the style, working quietly behind your every attack
3. Shadow's Veil. Instant tactical. You fade into the shadows
4. Distraction. Fast main. You flood a target's senses with shadowy illusions
5. Shadow Strike. Average main. You perform a powerful spin kick, and as it finishes a shadow replica of you launches from your...
6. Concealing Shadows. Fast tactical. You draw a pool of shadow over a hex within six hexes and the six hexes ringing it, cloaking...
7. Shadow's Return. Very Slow tactical. You leave a shadow of yourself where you began the round, then act freely
8. Shadow's Dance. Fast tactical. Your shadows rise into a host of illusory soldiers that fall upon every disoriented enemy at once,...
9. Shadow Field (advanced)
10. Shadow Army (advanced)
11. Invisibility (advanced)

Learning this style

Any character can learn any style. There is no school to join first, no place you have to travel to, and no teacher you have to find. You learn and advance a style by brewing its pill with cultivate: your first pill puts you at level 1, and each pill after that raises you one level, to a maximum of level 9. The two styles you pick at character creation must both come from the school you choose there, and they start at level 5 (primary) and level 3 (secondary); every style you take up afterwards starts from scratch.

A teacher is optional, not required. Someone at level 6 or above in this style, ranked higher than you, can teach you if you already know it. That does not raise your level by itself; it banks a master's lesson that cuts the ingredient cost of your next pill.

What is gated is the techniques. Techniques of a style belonging to your own school unlock for free as your level rises. For a style from another school you also need your family's completed manual for that technique, which a stealth mission exists to obtain; a few internal ones have no manual and unlock on level alone.

See Also: school veiled grace weapons cultivate teach mission discipline ability mastery bleed ability disorientation ability shadow's veil ability distraction ability shadow strike ability concealing shadows ability shadow's return ability shadow's dance ability shadow field ability shadow army ability invisibility

Mechanics

• Style: Radiant Edge (level 2)
• Type: Tactical
• Speed: Very Fast
• Range: Within your weapon's reach (3 hexes)
• Cost: -3 to your other abilities this round, easing by 1 each round

You flash blinding glare across an enemy's eyes, shifting their damage thresholds 3 points easier to cross for the rest of this round, so the same raw damage carves deeper wounds. Re-casting refreshes the effect rather than stacking it. Costs a -3 penalty to your other abilities that eases by 1 each round.

Out of combat

Typing fireworks sets off a cascade of dazzling sparks, a brief ambient room effect lasting about 30 seconds, always available once you know Dazzle with no cast needed to arm it.

How to use

Used in combat. Chosen automatically in this stance.

Command: fireworks

See Also: style radiant edge

Mechanics

• Style: Radiant Edge (level 3)
• Type: Main
• Speed: Average
• Range: Melee (1 hex)
• Cost: -6 to your other abilities this round, easing by 3 each round

You drive a dazzling melee strike into an adjacent foe for metal damage equal to half again your main roll (your main roll times three, divided by two, rounded down). Because it is both a melee attack and a main action, it feeds both of your paired counters at round end. Costs a -6 penalty to your other abilities that eases by 3 each round.

How to use

Used in combat. Chosen automatically in this stance.

See Also: style radiant edge

Short answer: no, you cannot be permanently killed. Losing a fight in Romance of Five Kingdoms knocks you unconscious; it does not end your character. There is no death penalty and no permadeath in the closed alpha. You always wake up and carry on.

What happens when your health runs out

Wounds in a fight cost you health (HP). Check yours any time with score. When your health drops to zero you are knocked out, not slain. You fall unconscious, drop to the ground, and take no further part in the fight. Surrendering before it comes to that leaves you conscious but helpless, which spares you the knockout while still ending your fight.

Waking up again

• You cannot wake while the fight is still going. The wake clock only starts once the fight is over.
• Left alone, you come round on your own about ten minutes after the fight ends, with nothing required of you.
• A companion can rouse you sooner with wake, but only after the first minute has passed. Before that you are too dazed to be woken. See help wake.

Coming round restores your awareness, not your wounds, so you will still want to mend the health you lost (see below).

Recovering your health

Your health comes back through a few reliable routes: log out and stay offline for six hours or more to wake healed, soak at the Mineral Springs Tea House in town, use delve recover inside a delve, or use activity heal on an adventure rest round. For the full details see help healing. If you would rather practise fighting without any bruises at all, spar scores touches instead of real damage, so no one loses any health.

Stepping away from a character

To stop playing for now, simply quit to log out; your character is waiting when you return. There is also a reroll command that wipes a character for good and sends you to make a new one, but it is locked unless your character is dead. Since the world does not kill you in the closed alpha, you will not reach that state through play, so reroll is effectively unavailable for a living character right now. See help reroll.

Usage: help death

See Also: healing wake reroll score spar combat

Two very different things in the game are called debt, and both repay themselves automatically. There is no pay or repay command; you do not settle either one by hand.

Energy debt

When you commit to an undertaking you can spend a little more energy than you have on hand, running your reserve as low as −1,000. While your energy is negative you are in energy debt: any reward you earn is held in escrow rather than handed over. Energy keeps building passively even from below zero, and the held rewards are released to you the moment your reserve climbs back to zero. So energy debt repays itself simply by waiting for your energy to recover; it only ever delays a reward, never destroys it. See help energy for the full picture of how energy builds and what spends it.

Your credit tab (money owed to shops)

This is the "financial affairs" debt. First, an important point: a normal shop does not rack up debt by default. When you buy something you can afford, the price is taken from your money there and then, in the currency it is quoted in (almost always Silver Li), drawing your bank account first and then your wallet. Your coin really is spent; you only land on the credit tab when you genuinely cannot pay in cash.

Credit kicks in as a fallback in two cases. In your first 14 days any shop will let you buy or commission on credit when you cannot cover the cost in cash, and the newbie-school shops always extend credit. Whatever you put on the tab becomes an outstanding balance, tracked in Silver Li, up to a limit of 250,000 Li. Outside those cases, a purchase you cannot afford is simply refused rather than charged to a tab. Check what you owe any time with balance, which shows your Credit Tab (owed).

You never pay the tab off with a command. It clears two ways, both automatic:

• An earnings skim. While you owe anything, 10% of every Silver Li payment you earn is applied straight to the tab until it reaches zero (at least 1 Li is taken whenever you are paid, so even tiny earnings chip away at it). Moving your own money around, such as bank withdrawals, currency exchange, and transfers, is never skimmed; only fresh earnings are.
• Reselling what you bought on credit. If you sell an item you originally bought on the tab, the proceeds go back toward that item's unpaid balance first, and only the surplus reaches your pocket.

So you repay money debt simply by earning and trading; there is nothing else to do.

Usage: help debt

See Also: energy balance earning money influence buy

Add a single piece of decoration text to a room you own. Decorations are descriptive details that appear when a player looks at the room, layered on top of the base room description.

Examples

• decorate A plush velvet couch sits by the window. — add furniture detail.
• decorate Vintage posters line the walls. — add wall decor.

How it works

Each use adds one new decoration to the room. You can add as many as you like; they all show when someone looks. Use redecorate if you want to replace all decorations at once with fresh text.

Tips

• Decorations stack; they all appear together in a player's room description.
• Use redecorate to clear all and start fresh.

Usage: decorate <description>

Mechanics

• Style: Radiant Edge (level 1)
• Type: Main
• Speed: Instant
• Range: Self
• Cost: -6 to your other abilities this round, easing by 3 each round

You weave your twin sabers into a deflecting guard, raising a shield worth twice your main roll that soaks only slashing and piercing damage; any other damage type passes straight through unabsorbed. The shield halves in strength at each round end, fading quickly. Costs a -6 penalty to your other abilities that eases by 3 each round.

How to use

Used in combat. Chosen automatically in this stance.

See Also: style radiant edge

Degradation is the slow wearing down of your maximum health. An ordinary wound costs you current health, which you can heal back in full. Degradation is different: it lowers the ceiling those wounds are measured against, so even a complete heal leaves you with fewer points than you had before.

How it builds up

Health you lose in a fight or down in a delve is added to a running tally. The tally belongs to you rather than to any one fight, so it carries on from one scrap to the next instead of being wiped when the fighting stops. Once the tally reaches your current maximum health, that maximum drops by one point and the tally resets to zero. Your maximum will never fall below one point. If your current health was sitting above the new maximum, it is brought down to meet it.

Because the tally carries over, a drop can land in a bout where you took only a glancing hit. The wearing down was done earlier, and that last point merely tipped it over. The tally does not follow you for ever, though: it lapses on the same six-hour clock that mends the ceiling, so a night away wipes it and you start your next fight with a clean slate.

Bouts that leave no mark

Not every exchange of blows counts. A spar scores touches rather than dealing real damage, so a friendly match costs you no health at all and adds nothing to the tally (see help spar). Certain organised events are likewise arranged so that everyone leaves in the condition they arrived in.

Spotting it

When a maximum drops in the middle of a fight, the round says so: the narration marks the grind of the fight telling on that fighter, strength worn away that will not simply be rested off. Out of combat, score reports your current health and your maximum. A maximum sitting below its usual value is degradation you have not yet mended.

Mending it

• Time. Six hours after the last time you took damage, your maximum climbs back to its usual value and the tally is wiped. Fresh damage restarts that clock, so the cure is to stay out of harm's way, which for most players means logging off for the night.
• The Mineral Springs Tea House. Soaking in the hot pool claws the ceiling back a point at a time without waiting out the six hours. Pay at the Spring Reception with pay admission, then settle into the pool and stay put. See help healing.

Usage: No command of its own. See also: score, healing, damage, spar, combat.

See Also: healing damage score spar combat delve

Delete various items you own. This is primarily used for managing rooms and places you have created. Use "delete bulletin" (replaced by notice boards) or "delete place" to remove a specific place from the current room. You must own the room to delete places in it. Run "delete place" with no place name to see a list of available places to delete.

Examples

• delete place — list places in the current room.
• delete place couch — delete a place named "couch".

How it works

Places are furniture-like decorations you create in rooms you own. Deleting a place removes it from the room permanently. This is different from "trash" which destroys items in your inventory. The delete command is specifically for managing room furniture and decorations.

Usage: delete <type>

Explore procedural dungeons with time pressure, fog of war, and hazards. Each delve is a timed adventure into the ruins of southern Zhūwān. You can move through rooms, face monsters, solve puzzles, disarm traps, and collect treasure before time runs out. Delves test your wits, courage, and timing.

Key Subcommands

• delve enter [name] — begin a new delve adventure.
• delve enter deep — begin a deep delve: free to enter, but cultivation supplies are offset two floors deeper.
• delve enter <floor> — start deeper (e.g. delve enter 4): the entry floor carries that floor's danger but is picked clean of supplies, so rewards begin one floor down at the next floor's value.
• delve n/s/e/w — move in a direction (5 sec).
• delve down — descend to the next level.
• delve fight — engage a monster in combat.
• delve grab — collect treasure (free action).
• delve recover — rest and heal to full HP (10 min).
• delve flee — exit the dungeon.

How It Works

You can only enter a delve from within the ruins of southern Zhūwān. Entry is free: delving costs no energy, whether you are opening your own run or joining someone else's. Once inside, you navigate a procedural dungeon floor by floor. Traps block movement until you time them correctly. Puzzles require solving or can be bypassed with effort. Monsters roam and may ambush you. You gain qi dice by meditating, which unlock special crossing abilities.

The Timer and Leaving a Delve

Every delve runs on a time budget of about an hour, shown in your status and on the delve panel as the minutes and seconds you have left. This is not a real-world clock: it does not tick while you sit and think. Time is spent only when you take an action inside the delve. Moving between rooms, resting to heal, focusing to gather qi, slipping past a trap, lowering an obstacle's difficulty, studying a monster or obstacle, and attempting a puzzle each cost time, and every round of a fight spends time too. Resting is by far the most costly, taking roughly ten minutes, so heal only when you must. Looking around, checking the map, and studying a trap or puzzle to read it are free. If you are delving with others the clock is shared, so the whole party's time runs down together and you all run out at once.

If the timer reaches zero you are forced out of the delve at once, and the ruin keeps half of the supplies you gathered. A delve has no finish line: you go as deep as you dare and leave with what you carry, so watch the clock and turn back in time.

There are a few ways a delve ends:

• Leaving willingly with delve flee (also delve leave or delve exit). Leaving from the top-floor entrance, where you first climbed in, banks everything you gathered. Leaving from anywhere else abandons the run and forfeits about half your gathered supplies, so it asks you to confirm by entering the command a second time. To keep a full payout, climb back toward the top floor by floor with delve ascend, then leave from the entrance you first came in through.
• Being knocked out. If your health reaches zero, whether in combat or from a trap, you are defeated and ejected from the dungeon, losing about half your gathered supplies.
• Running out of time, as above: you are forced out and keep only half of what you gathered.
• Going offline mid-delve. If you disconnect or are swept for being away, the game pulls you safely back to the surface and banks everything you gathered with no penalty, since a disconnection is not your doing.

Puzzles

Some rooms hold a carved stone puzzle that blocks an exit until you read its pattern. There are three kinds: a glyph grid (set each glyph once per row and column), a pipe network (rotate the channels so a groove runs from spring to sink), and a pressure-tile matrix (press every tile into its setting). Work a puzzle entirely through text commands:

• study puzzle — inspect the puzzle and read its layout (free action).
• solve [answer] — attempt the puzzle (15 sec). Typing solve with no answer just reopens the layout.
• delve help — spend time to reveal part of the solution as a hint (30 sec).

Joining Another Delver's Run

Delves are private by default. While you are inside one, type delve findable to advertise it as joinable (this toggles the flag; delve findable on and delve findable off set it explicitly). A findable delver is listed on the who list, tagged standard or deep and marked findable.

To join someone, find a findable delver on who, then walk to them by name. Because they are underground, you are routed to the ruin they entered from rather than to their dungeon room. Once you are standing in that ruin, type delve join to join the only findable run there, or delve join <name> to pick a particular delver. Joining costs nothing and drops you in at the entrance of the run already in progress. Every new arrival makes the enemy groups nobody has engaged yet tougher; a group already locked in combat is never reinforced mid-fight.

Who Can Find You

Two settings work together. The check in command sets your general locatability: whether you appear on the who and where lists at all. If you are hidden there, no one can reach your delve, because they cannot see you to walk to you. So check in is not the delve setting itself, but you must be at least visible for findable delving to work.

The delve setting proper is delve findable, described above. On top of that you can limit who may find and join your runs with the permissions command, under Findable Delve Access: choose Anyone can find/join, Favourites only, or No one. Set it as a default for everyone, or for a single named player. Favourites only means just the players you have favourited may join. So a delver shows up as joinable when their run is flagged findable, they are locatable on who, and the person looking is allowed by their delve-access setting.

Usage: delve <subcommand> [args]

To channel demon is to invite a second heartbeat into your chest, one that beats out of time with your own. Cultivators describe it as warm static along the spine, a whisper that knows your true name. Manifested, the element shows as a low violet light that drinks the colors around it, sometimes shaping horns, hands, or open mouths at the edges of a technique. Common folk call it the ninth breath, and spit when they say it.

Deposit cash from your wallet into a bank account. You must be at a bank or ATM location. Specify an amount or use all to deposit everything. The deposited funds are then safe in your bank account and cannot be stolen.

Examples

• deposit 100 — deposit 100 (in local currency).
• deposit all — deposit all your wallet cash into your bank.

Tips

• Deposits have a minimum transaction amount.
• You must have a bank account open in that currency (one is created automatically when you deposit for the first time).
• Use balance to see your wallet and bank balances before and after.

Usage: deposit <amount> | deposit all

Open the character description editor where you customize your appearance. You can set your physical description (height, build, hair, clothing style, scars, etc.) and other personalization details that affect how other players see you in the game world.

Examples

• describe — open the description editor.
• customize — same command with alias.
• desc — shorthand.

The editor opens in a web interface where you can compose your full character appearance in a single form, then save it. Other players see your description when they examine you.

Usage: describe, customize

Create and manage your custom item designs (blueprints). You can start a new design, list your existing designs, edit a draft design, or delete one you don't want anymore. Commissioned designs become locked and cannot be edited until the order completes.

Examples

• design — open the new design form.
• design list — show all your saved designs.
• design edit silk dress — edit a draft design by name.
• design delete old jacket — permanently delete a design.

How it works

Designs stay in draft status until you commission them. You can refine a draft as much as you like. Once a design is in production, you can't edit it, but you can still add more copies with addamount once that order completes.

Usage: design | design list | design edit <name> | design delete <name>

As a host, designate a specific character as an allowed performer for a running performance activity in your society event. Only designated performers can perform in the event.

Examples

• designate performer Mei "Spring Gala" — allow Mei to perform at the Spring Gala.

How it works

You must be hosting the event and there must be a running performance activity for the event. The designated character can then use performevent to perform their saved performances at the event.

Usage: designate performer <character-name> <event-name>

Looking for the Omen you chose at character creation (The Wanderer, The Fox, and the like, shown on your score)? That is a separate thing — type help omens. This page is about the Destiny resource you earn and spend during adventures.

Destiny is a per-character resource that exists only inside an active Auto-GM (Jianghu) adventure. You earn it by playing your character with heart, and you spend it through the assert command to weave new facts into the unfolding story.

Earning Destiny

Destiny accrues when you act heroically, make sacrifices, or stay true to your character's higher purpose. Setbacks also feed it: if the adventure pushes back against you (a failed roll, losing health in combat) and you respond with a substantial, in-character emote, your next Destiny award is multiplied. Your balance is capped at 8 points.

Checking Your Destiny

To see your exact Destiny balance, type score (also stats or status) while you are on an adventure; it is the first number on the Destiny / Fate line of your record. A quick look also hints at where you stand, described in qualitative tiers:

• None (0)
• Flickering (1 to 2) — "A faint warmth stirs within you..."
• Steady (3 to 4) — "The spirits watch you with quiet approval..."
• Bright (5 to 6) — "Heaven's gaze rests gently upon you..."
• Radiant (7 to 8) — "You feel the full weight of heaven's mandate..."

Spending Destiny with assert

Each kind of assertion costs Destiny. If you cannot afford an assertion, it will not go through.

• environment — change the scene or surroundings (1)
• npc — introduce a new NPC (2, limited to one per scene)
• connection — assert a relationship between characters (2)
• complication (targeted) — add a complication aimed at another player (1, one per target per scene)
• complication (on yourself) — add a complication to your own character (free)
• gift — hand an advantage to another player (1)
• revelation — reveal a secret or hidden truth (3, once per adventure)
• converge — propose a story convergence others can join (2, once per adventure)

The GM may accept an assertion as written, suggest an adapted wording for tone, or reject it. Use assert accept or assert reject to respond to a suggested adaptation or to a complication someone aimed at you.

Destiny and Rewards

At the end of an adventure your Destiny play boosts your rewards, up to a 1.5x multiplier. The biggest bonus comes from generosity: Destiny you spent on others (gifts, connections, complications aimed at other players) counts most. Adding complications to your own character helps a little (with diminishing returns), and leftover unspent Destiny gives a small bonus. Hoarding Destiny is worth far less than spending it to enrich everyone's story.

Usage: help destiny

See Also: omens assert adventures

Roll custom dice using standard notation. Specify the number of dice, the number of sides per die, and an optional modifier.

Examples

• diceroll 2d6 — roll two six-sided dice.
• dr 1d20 — roll a single twenty-sided die.
• diceroll 3d8+5 — roll three eight-sided dice and add 5.
• diceroll 4d10-2 — roll four ten-sided dice and subtract 2.

How it works

The formula is NdN where the first number is the count of dice and the second is the number of sides. You can add or subtract a flat modifier. The roll result and individual die values are broadcast to the room so everyone can see the outcome.

Tips

• Roll results are public. Everyone in the room sees your total and individual rolls.
• Dice limits: 1-20 dice per roll, 2-100 sides per die.

Usage: diceroll <count>d<sides> [+modifier]

High in the central mountains, cradled between ridges of dark pine and grey stone, lies Dìnghú, the Settled Lake: a sheet of black water so still it seems poured rather than gathered, holding the cliffs and clouds upon its surface without a tremor. Travelers coming down from Tiěxiá or up from the river crossings at Tiě Yán Dù all describe it the same way, and even in the high storms the lake itself scarcely ripples. The folk of Wànshí Kǒu and Bìgǔ Dù come for its cold, sweet water and the medicinal herbs that grow thick along the shaded banks; hunters track deer to the edge, though most will not loose an arrow there. Stones dropped into it sink without sound, or so the boatmen at Jìngpō Dùtóu like to claim, and the lake feeds no great trade, for it has no outflow that any have charted. Old wives in the crossing towns say the stillness is no accident, that something beneath the water keeps it so, and to break that quiet with shouting or quarrel invites a year of ill fortune.

Move toward an adjacent room in the named direction. On outdoor city streets, this begins continuous directional walking. In other areas, you step into the next room. Cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) and diagonals (northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest) are all available. You cannot use direction movement while in combat.

Examples

• north or n — move north.
• southeast or se — move southeast.
• up — ascend to a room above (single step only).

Usage: <direction>

List all public buildings in your current town. Optionally filter by building name or type. This shows shops, taverns, temples, and other facilities you can visit. You can click on a building name to walk there, or use the walk command to navigate.

Examples

• directory — list all public buildings in town.
• directory temple — find temples in this town.
• directory grand — search for buildings with 'grand' in the name.

Usage: directory [<query>]

A discipline is a tradition of martial arts. In this world the disciplines are organised into four great schools, and each school teaches several distinct fighting styles. The four schools are the Ember Fist, the Veiled Grace, the Mirrored Tempest, and the Radiant Chorus. A school is the broad lineage; a style is the particular form you actually practise within it, such as the open-handed strikes of one school or the bladework of another. Each style has its own weapon, its own feel in a fight, and its own set of combat abilities. To see everything on offer, open the Styles page on the website, under the world section. It lists every school, the styles inside each one, the weapon a style uses, and the abilities you can earn as you advance. This is the easiest way to compare disciplines before you commit. You choose your discipline when you create your character: you pick a martial school and then a primary and a secondary style from it. That choice shapes how you fight from your very first day. Once you are in the world, these commands matter most: - cultivate (short form cult) opens the cultivation interface, where you level up your martial arts and craft pills that deepen your qi. - study lets you quietly observe another fighter to learn their combat styles. - abilities shows the techniques your style grants you to use in a fight. Advancing a style's level: you gain a style by crafting a pill through cultivate, then raise it one level at a time by crafting again, each time spending ingredients bought with dollars or influence. Every level costs more than the last, and each style beyond your second (a third, fourth, and so on) costs double the one before it to advance. Fighting in earnest, sparring, and taking lessons from a higher-ranked teacher (teach