You arrive in the Three Kingdoms with no reputation, no official position, and no army of your own.You are just another ordinary person caught in a time of war.
You may begin as a foot soldier, clerk, or scout, carrying out orders from your superiors and completing one seemingly minor task after another. Delivering a military report, presenting a clever strategy, winning a battle, or meeting the right person could be the first step toward changing your fate.
But a time of war shows no special favor to a traveler from the future.
Breaking your word, taking someone else’s credit, offending a superior, choosing the wrong side, or simply failing to complete an assignment could cost you your position, your friendships, and everything you worked so hard to build.
Can you rise from obscurity and make your mark at the center of the Three Kingdoms?
Begin as a Nobody in the Three Kingdoms
Create your own name, appearance, and abilities, then enter the chaos in the years 190, 194, 198, 200, 202, or 208 AD.
You will not begin by choosing a warlord and commanding a great army. Your starting faction and rank depend on the era and your background. You will meet the people within reach first, then gradually encounter military officers, scholars, generals, and rulers.
Your Martial Skill, Command, Strategy, Administration, and Eloquence determine the duties you are suited to perform.
You can rise through the ranks through military merit, or build your career through administrative achievements, strategic accomplishments, reputation, personal connections, and the support of your direct superior. The higher your office, the more people and resources you can influence—and the more responsibility you must bear.
People Remember What You Do
Talk with people, give gifts, write letters, request meetings, ask favors, or present your ideas.
They respond according to their identity, personality, faction, current situation, and everything they have experienced with you. They remember your promises, your help, your insults, and the credit you took from them.
Relationships are not just a single approval meter that goes up and down.
Closeness, hatred, suspicion, weariness, career rivalry, family ties, and direct superior-subordinate relationships all affect whether someone will meet with you, speak on your behalf, take responsibility for you, or carry out your orders in good faith.
Some people will seek you out. Others will use you from the shadows. Important figures may also send military reports, family letters, warnings, requests, and private invitations through the courier network.
Accept Orders—and Give Them
When you hold a low position, you must complete the assignments given by your superiors, look for chances to prove yourself, and find a way to ensure your achievements are recognized.
Once you gain an official position, you can assign tasks to your direct subordinates, sending them to gather intelligence, transport supplies, contact important figures, or take part in military operations.
Your subordinates may flatter you or ask for promotion. They may also grow resentful when they receive unfair treatment, dangerous assignments, or too little attention. How you distribute opportunities, credit, and responsibility will determine whether they truly follow you—or merely wait for a better patron.
Recruit Retainers and Build Your Own Household
As your status rises, you can recruit retainers, negotiate their monthly pay and titles, assign them responsibilities, and help them maintain their own household troops.
Your retainers are not emotionless cards.
Each has their own strengths, loyalty, expectations, injuries, and ambitions. One may be suited to managing grain shipments, another to gathering intelligence, and another to leading a charge.
You can order a retainer with troops of their own to form a siege army using their private household troops, then assign other retainers to join and strengthen the force.
But they will remember every victory, defeat, casualty, and decision about who receives the credit. If you keep underpaying them, ignore their injuries, or send the same person into danger again and again, even your most loyal follower may eventually walk away.
Every Month, the World Moves On
Time will not stop and wait for you.
When a month passes, every faction acts according to its military strength, supplies, technology, geography, ambitions, and the pressure of history.
Wars change the owners of cities. People are promoted, defect, fall ill, or die. Major events in distant regions will not appear before you all at once; news reaches you gradually through relationships, letters, military reports, and the courier network.
History has its own momentum, but it is not unchangeable.
One suggestion from you may only save a shipment of grain. A successful operation may, years later, help decide the outcome of a battle that changes the fate of the realm.
You can remain loyal to your original lord and rise through the ranks. You can govern cities, develop faction technology, and take control of military and political power. Or, when the time is right, you can seize a city, raise your own banner, and establish a faction of your own.
There Is More to Life Than War
War and official duties are not the whole of your life.
Make friends, visit scholars, give gifts, and take part in martial tournaments, scholarly gatherings, meetings of warlords, and merchant fairs featuring rare goods.
You can also arrange a betrothal and marry the person you choose.
After marriage, your spouse will remember your departures, defeats, homecomings, and broken promises. They will also take part in family affairs, business, social connections, personal security, and the plans you make together.
At the same time, you may have to deal with retainers asking for higher pay, subordinates seeking promotion, political rivals setting traps, financial pressure, assassination attempts, and the uncomfortable question of who should receive credit for your achievements.
Decide How History Will Remember You
You may rise from an ordinary foot soldier to become a powerful regional official and help your lord unify the realm.
You may seize command of an army, capture cities, and establish a state of your own.
Or you may lose your position through a series of bad choices, be abandoned by those close to you, and eventually meet your end amid political struggles and accumulated crimes.
Your ending will look back on the factions you served, the people you gained and lost, the family and household you built, the achievements you accomplished, and the price you paid to survive.
The victors will be written into the history books.
But in this Three Kingdoms world, everyone who truly lived through the chaos will leave behind a story of their own.
During Early Access, we will continue improving character memory, married life, task assignments, promotion pacing, the balance of war and resources, historical event connections, interface presentation, performance, and save compatibility.
