World
When the setting is decoration, the systems are left as bare numbers. Here factions become collectibles and identity becomes a stat.
The central martial world, the imperial court, and the lands beyond. A hundred years ago the Rebellion of the Five Heavenly Kings split it into many powers, and martial arts divide into external, internal and mind disciplines.
What follows is the world and story part of the design document. The tables are carried over verbatim.
The seven factions are a supply line, not a backdrop
| Category | Representative powers | Character |
|---|---|---|
| ① Orthodox | The Alliance (ten sects) + five great houses | Profess chivalry, fight internally for power |
| ② Unorthodox | Poison valley, black-serpent gang, forest bandits | Poison, assassination, contract work |
| ③ Heterodox | Three demonic sects | Energy-draining, revenants, fanaticism |
| ④ Beyond the frontier | North sea, southern poison valley, western esoterics, the eastern isles | Ice arts, gu poison, diamond body, swordsmanship |
| ⑤ Imperial court | Embroidered guard, the two directorates, palace army | Directly imperial — where the protagonist comes from |
| ⑥ Merchant houses | Three great houses and the escort agencies | The economy and the information network |
| ⑦ Underworld · neutral | Beggars’ guild, physicians, hermits | Information, healing, wild cards |
In a setting document that table gets read once and forgotten. Here the 26 factions become 26 bosses, and killing a boss seals an animal spirit into one of the 26 artifacts. Delete a faction and a collectible disappears; add one and a boss and an artifact arrive with it.
The same holds for the four schools. Blade, Fist, Dao and Step are factions in the setting and the four lineages of the form system at the same time, and they can’t be chosen until chapter 3 ends. Which means the world gates the build.
Identity isn’t lore, it’s a 0–100 stat
The protagonist is the fourteenth prince, born with a rare unblocked meridian body. Four people know who he is: himself, the emperor, and two allies.
This is where lore crosses into machinery — there is an identity exposure variable, 0 to 100. Being hidden is a value rather than a sentence, so pursuers attach as it rises and fall away as it drops.
| Who | |
|---|---|
| Hostile | The heterodox shadow corps · the empress’s faction · the directorate · the poison valley |
| Protective | Two court allies · the embroidered guard |
Leave “a prince in hiding” as atmosphere and nothing happens. Make it a value and the player has something to manage; give them something to manage and what they do in a town changes. The crossing from setting into system is exactly here.
Chapters hold the unlocks
Three acts — escape and the first artifact (Ch. 1–2), the pursuers’ identity and the choice of school (Ch. 3–4), and the return to the palace with three branching endings (Ch. 5).
| Chapter | Region | Boss | Artifact | Unlocks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Leaving the palace | Palace → bamboo forest → village | Serpent gang master | Black serpent | Patterns 一 · 丨 |
| 2 · Luoyang | Inn, city | Blood-hand elder | Nine-tailed fox | Patterns ㄴ · Z, exposure stat |
| 3 · Poison valley | Fog gorge | Poison empress | Serpent | Pattern ○, school choice |
| 4 · North sea | Snow peaks, ice cliffs | Snow demon | Snow leopard | Pattern X, a clue to his body |
| 5 · The court | Black desert → palace | Blood heaven emperor | Bat + union | Pattern △, identity revealed |
The rightmost column is the point. What a chapter pays out is a pattern, not a stat. A new pattern opens four more forms — four lineages times one new stroke. What Design settled as “raise difficulty by information, not by numbers” reappears here as progression.
And the identity reveal is pinned to the last chapter. The thing that became a stat above finishes in the same place the story does.
Not yet decided
- The detailed story isn’t here. Three acts and the chapter table are settled; dialogue trees and branch conditions live in a separate document
- The heterodox line is “a proposal for review — not an implementation.” Its subtitle says so, and the scope of its arts and the switching policy remain among the 11 undecided items in Spec
- The side chapters have boss and artifact names only — hawk, crow, lion. Where they attach is undecided
A setting document is easy to make thick. What’s kept on this page is only what actually reaches a system; the rest isn’t a setting yet, it’s notes.