Ten Thousand Days For The Sword (Playable Preview)

by Emily Zhu
with special thanks to
the citizens of Pocket Dimension,

Government Slutdown,
and Jesus Mother Fucking Christ
and my parents
CHAPTER 0: PROLOGUE
Horses exist in zoos, you're pretty sure. That's where they, more or less,
belong. It's not like there's a stable next to the auto shop or something. Are
there... wild horses? In.... nature? Presumably, at some point, there must have
been. Probably not, anymore.
Oh, the race tracks, though. Duh. They probably have stables. Couldn't lose
twenty thousand wen a day if there weren't losing horses to bet on.
Horses don't belong at the gas station, but there's one here anyways. Its
rider is wearing a leather jacket studded with old military medals; what looks
like a torso-sized cogwheel, slung over her back like a shield; a broadsword,
underneath the cog-shield; and a pair of holo-screen shades.
She dismounts. She slides her card through the machine. The pumps start
pumping. The horse sticks out its neck, dips its snout, and begins drinking
gasoline directly from the nozzle. The rider holds the spout up to the horse's
mouth, at a bit of an awkward angle.
She meets your eyes, and shrugs. You know how it is.
You don't know how it is. Later, you will see her on the news, clotheslining
a police officer on horseback at seventy miles per hour. You will understand
even less, and also, so much more.
CHAPTER 1: INTRO
Ten Thousand Days For the Sword is a game about the 游俠 youxia who
fight for justice in the island-spanning megacity of Xiatian. They duel for
honor atop colossal diesel boilers and for blood under sparking holographic
billboards. They guard the temples and statues of Xiatian's secret history.
They navigate the warrens and slums of its criminal underworld. They
negotiate their ideals in the speaking-halls of the Great Sects. They shatter
the skyscrapers of its dukes and lords.
Citizens across Xiatian whisper about the deeds done in darkness even as
they cling to the light, to the semblance of peace and order. But those who
have entered the jianghu know there is no law or hope in this city -- save
what they cultivate in their heart and at the end of their sword. Not that
everyone fights against corruption and greed. But everyone is fighting for
something.
It takes a hundred days to master the saber, and a thousand days to
master the spear. If what Xiatian needed were mere ferocity or skill, they
would have fixed it by now. Xiatian has stood for longer than that and will
stand for longer still, and remain just as wretched and crushing as ever. But
hope is not lost. Even in the most desolate district, even to the most
despondent youxia, remember: It takes ten thousand days to master the
sword.
Here are seven aspects that underlie everything you do in Xiatian: Yin and
Yang, Wood and Water and Fire and Earth and Metal.
And here are your 師兄 shixiong and 師姐 shijie1 who will guide you
through Xiatian:
紅光紫霧 NICE DAY2, of the 修真門 Cultivation School,
expert on the subtleties and nuances of the law
曹攝 Cao She, of the 蝴蝶派 Butterfly Sect,

expert in the places those laws don't reach
and 孫赤松 Sun Chisong, of the 蓮花教 Lotus Church,

expert on kicking your shit in.
老天爺啊.
1
sect-older-brother and sect-older-sister, respectively.
2
just call him Hong
COMMON TERMS IN XIATIAN
● 游俠 youxia, a martial artist who cultivates righteousness in herself
and fights for it in the world around her.
● 江湖 jianghu, lit. rivers and lakes, the hidden underworld that youxia and
criminals (among others) move around in.
● 人界 renjie, lit. human world, innocent society
● 武林 wulin, the underworld of martial artists.
● 七宗 Seven Sects, major factions of the wulin.
○ 蓮花教, the Lotus Church
○ 修真門, the Cultivation School
○ 蝴蝶派, the Butterfly Sect
○ 丐幫, the Beggars' Group
○ 武聖團, the Martial Saint Formation
○ 鬼刀會, the Ghost Blade Society
○ 赤星宗, the Crimson Stars Fellowship
○ 萬物家, the Every Living Thing Clan
● 走狗 Running Dogs, officially the Xiatian Militia Enforcement Branch,
unofficially cops, bastards, etc
● 結金蘭, lit. tying the golden orchid, an oath of sworn siblinghood 3 to
die on the same day for the same cause4.
● 陰陽 yin and yang, complementary concepts of dark and bright that
form your Approaches; two of your Aspects
● 五行：火土金水木 are the Five Paths: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and
Wood. Your other five Aspects
● 面, reputation or face
● 功夫 gongfu, mastery through hard work. Previously transliterated as
kung fu
● 夏田城, Xiatian City
So here's the thing: this is a game about violence, but not like that.
Winning fights is important, but it's not the end goal. Getting wounded is
painful, but it's not a loss. Violence isn't only violence. It can be
communication, conversation, meditation, play. Ignoring all the training that
comes before the fight, and the philosophies and ideas that are talking to
each other in the fight, is a terribly common mistake.
And this game is about violence, like that.
Much as youxia fight for a better world, they fight, and the world fights
back. But violence cannot answer all Xiatian's problems: it can depose
tyrants, but can't build a city to succeed it. That's what you're for.
3
Though it really just means you're as close as family, and can also be romantic or parental.
4
Or, if you're not a coward, to be struck by lightning and leave your children a generation of poverty
should you break it.
CHAPTER 2: CHARACTER CREATION
You're about to create a character for this game, a youxia vigilante -- but
before you do that, you need to know what kind of game you're playing. Chat
with your table (including GM, if you have one) about which of Xiatian's
districts you're based out of, and what kind of characters and themes are
going to show up. You've sworn (or you're going to swear) to be like family
with these guys, so get to know them.
THE SWORD
At the top of your character sheet, write a partial sentence: The sword is
____________________. You don't need to fill it in yet, but you will eventually.
SECT AND STYLE

One of the biggest choices about your character is which of the Great Sects
they belong to... or, possibly, they're rogue heroes in and of themselves. You
should find a philosophy that you think, in some way, you can use to make
this world better. And your Sect will influence what styles you have access
to5, what kind of people you hang out with, and things like your aesthetic and
preferred weapons.6 Choose a Sect, and then check chapter 8 to see what else
it can offer you.
Once you've chosen a Sect, you can choose a signature style from that
sect. (You can pick a style from outside your sect, if you give a good reason for
it.) You have access to the forms of that style; if you want others, you'll have
to find a shifu.
● Lotus Church is the originator of Shaolin martial arts, devoted to charity
and integrity. Dragon Fist hits hard, Burning Jade Fist hits fast, Eagle
Claw hits deep, Compassion Palms breaks chains.
● Cultivation School is a sect of Taoist mystic nerds and priests. They're
annoying and confusing and they do weird shit all the time. Evil Sealing
Art causes problems, Diamond Meridian fixes them, Eight Trigrams
Palm controls the area and Weaver Fist controls the fight.
● Butterfly Sect is for socialites, musicians and liars. Nine Sounds Fist
uses the art of deadly music, Eight Strokes of Eternity is based on the
art of calligraphy, Empty Sleeves Fist uses all the arts of desire, and
Lake Mirror Fist is the art of lying.
● Beggars Group are for Anonymous-type anarchists. Dogbeater
Bludgeon gets down and dirty, Drunken Fist gets goofy, Iron Lead
5
But it's not an absolute limiter. Just, if you're in the Beggars Group, tell us how you got a shifu in hoity-
toity Empty Sleeves Fist.
6
Don't worry too much about overlap or non-overlap with your sworn siblings; two youxia can get very
different things out of their sects, and intra-sect conflicts are very classic.
alternates pistol and saber. Dragon-Subduing Palm is a stolen style of
extraordinary destruction.
● Martial Saint Formation is for vigilantes and detectives, who used to be
criminals or police. Upright Guest Sword is for a famous weapon,
Impermanence Chains is for restraining criminals, Heavenly Eye Ways
for interrogating them, Amputation Blade for chopping them up.
● Ghost Blade Society is blackpilled assassins for hire. Use Six Venoms to
poison, Inexplicable Fist to sneak, Eclipse Fist to overthrow. Heart Devil
Fist is berserk vengeance and Flying Puppet Fist is really freaky.
● Crimson Stars Fellowship is for materialistic communists. Lightning
Flash Sword holds back electric flurries, Gasoline Fist doesn't hold back
at all. Backbone Spear stands with comrades and Bulldozer Fist stands
like a machine.
● Every Living Thing Clan is for identity politics and finding someone like
you. It practices the animal styles of Snake, Tiger, White Crane, and
Latter Mantis (now with gun fu).
BTW: SHIFU AND SECT-FAMILY

A 師父 is your master, and in a very real sense, part of a new
family. So are all their disciples, who are now your siblings. They
are your third family, alongside your sworn siblings. You might even
decide that you all trained together so you're both sect- and sworn-
family. Sect-family and sworn-family aren't treated quite the same as
blood family, socially speaking; there's no taboo against marrying
them, or exceptions if you do something wretched for them. But
emotionally speaking, they are very real family.
You can have teachers in other subjects, but shifu is a special bond. It
enjoys all the benefits and all the risks of such a strongly authoritarial
relationship. Some sects care less, like Beggars, but everyone at least pays
respect to their shifu. Who was yours?
APPROACHES AND PATHS

Your two Approaches are Yin and Yang. They describe everything you do,
and suggest possible consequences or benefits whichever approach you take.
You may assign an even 2/2 split, or a 3/1 split between them.
Your five Paths are Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood. Likewise,
everything you do will be described by one of these, and each has specific
uses in conflict. We'll talk more about them later, but broadly: fire acts
explosively, earth acts solidly, metal acts piercingly, water acts fluidly, and
wood acts entangling...ly. You can assign a 3/3/2/1/1 split here... or a
3/2/2/1/1 split and take an extra Attainment (see below).
You'll advance either Paths or Approaches with a course (pg xx).
FORMS AND TECHNIQUES
You have two Technique slots as you start. Each Technique can contain up
to five Forms, drawn from all the Aspect or Style Forms you qualify for. You
should create your two Techniques now, unless you want to save one for
later. See the Techniques chapter for rules and advice, or see Appendix A for
some examples you can build on.
LESSON CARD
You're trying to do something with your life. Pick a course to be on (pg xx),
and write a lesson card of the corresponding aspect.
● Yang: A new job, Joining the ranks, or Training
● Yin: Caging a tiger, Keeping someone safe, or Study
● Earth: Building a home or Reclaiming your identity
● Metal: Fulfilling your destiny or Atonement
● Water: Running from trouble or Surviving a curse
● Wood: Your mysterious foil or A bad deal
● Fire: Your new powers or Journey to the quest
ATTAINMENTS
Pick 2 Attainments to flesh out your character's background, or 3 if you
chose a 3/2/2/1/1 Path split. Attainments can be physical Treasures,
intangible Skills, or personal Connections. At least one of your Attainments
should be a Connection, and you can take 1 personal Face with that
Connection.
FOCUS
Optionally, you can choose a particular focus. Xiatian's underworld is
woven through with three threads: the spiritual, the criminal, and the hi-tech.
You can choose a piece of gear that symbolizes one of these threads: a bell
for the spiritual, a mask for the criminal, or a gear for the hi-tech. The
specifics are up to your aesthetic, as informed by your sect.
Picking a focus means you expect your group to turn to you when that
focus comes up. It doesn't necessarily mean you're good at it, especially if you
want to highlight your struggles in that area. It does mean that when that
topic comes up, it's polite for the table and GM to turn to you and ask: so how
does this part work? A criminal can tell us about Xiatian's gangs, and a monk
can tell us about its ghost stories and history of martial arts 7.
7
sometimes you can't shut them up about it.
阿彌陀佛.
BTW: WHAT'S REAL?
This is a good time for your group to decide on what exists technologically,
supernaturally, and conspiratorially. Are there ghosts? Are there gods? Are
there artificial intelligences haunting the depths of the net?
I don't think so. The fall of the empire left a lot in doubt, though. The
Running Dogs have animal-smart drones, but no humanoid intelligence I
know of. Qi is very real and skill in its use can take you to legendary heights,
though Western-type science struggles to understand or use it. Every fighter
pays at least nominal respect to Guan Yu, but I don't think he's going to come
down and smite anyone for me. And there are secret societies in this world,
but I don't think they're an Illuminati-type conspiracy, they're just as effective
as regular societies but... secret.
Don't listen to a word I say, though. Your table, and whoever holds the
focus at your table, knows way more than I do.
FINISHING TOUCHES
Mark your Rejuvenation and Lightfoot Skills (pg xx), along with any other
you picked up.
Record your Face, which starts at 3. You can add 1 personal Face with a
faction of your choice, in addition to your one connection.
Record that your Qi pool has 10 Qi when full.
Your Rank is 1.
Record what the sword is, if you think you know. You can fill it in later, and
you'll probably change your mind anyways.
CHAPTER 3: WHO YOU ARE
RANK
Your Rank is an overall gauge of your martial arts skill, though it also
partly covers your face and your Qi cultivation and so on. Every youxia starts
at Rank 1. The biggest, baddest players in the wulin are at Rank 5. 8
APPROACHES
Your two Approaches, Yin and Yang, describe everything you do because
everything is one or the other: pushing or pulling, hard or soft 9. Yang is the
Approach of doing the absolute most as loud and hard and fast as possible.
Yin is about going slowly, quietly, carefully, and sometimes doing nothing at
all. Modern heroic stories focus on Yang a lot, but ideas about inner peace or
wisdom in restraint are Yin.
The Approach you take for a roll suggests the consequences of a
successful or failed roll. A successful Yang roll overwhelms obstacles, hits
fast or hard, or evokes joy. A failed Yang roll might overextend, hit too hard,
get you burned, or ask for more than you can give. On the other hand, a
successful Yin roll avoids threats, conserves energy, takes care with delicate
work, or brings peace.10 A failed Yin roll might not go far or fast enough, or
test your patience beyond what you can bear.
Yin also calculates how many Wounds you can take before giving up. Your
two Approaches are complementary, and their sum can never go above
(Rank+4).11
8
That we know of. You hear of these bigger, badder players in deeper underworlds out of sight...
9
These descriptions aren't absolute. What's yin in one context may be yang in another. It's relational.
10
But you'll have to ask Hong, I'm just trying to make this not sound boring.
11
We'll get to Rank later.
PATHS
Your five Paths of Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood describe the ways
things act on each other12, and the way you are acting with each roll. We'll talk
more later about the implications of each, but for now you can think about the
basic characteristics of what they're like: fire explodes, metal pierces, wood
grows around things.
QI
氣 Qi is a vital breath of life, motion, flowing in and out of
everything around you. Cultivating and aligning flows of qi in your
body is why you can do superhuman feats in the first place. But even
doctors outside the jianghu consider qi blockages and imbalances in
their approach, and geomancers advise on architecture that will let qi
(as well as air and traffic) flow harmoniously.
Youxia spend Qi to use their martial arts Techniques (pg xx). They can also
spend 1 Qi to roll an additional die at any time. Regaining Qi is the same
thing as catching your breath: ending an exchange in combat, or any other
time you can pause for a moment, lets you regain 3 Qi. Regaining more
requires prolonged rest or meditation. You have (Rank x3 + 7) Qi to spend.
Your highest aspects may flavor your qi, in a way. Sometimes a disease
only affects those with metal-forward qi, or a healer asks you to circulate
yang qi through a patient.
QI DEVIATION
Youxia who experience terrible spiritual upheaval from emotional
turmoil or physical affliction are at risk of 走火入魔 zouhuorumo, lit.
runaway fires and invading devils. This is also called qi deviation: imagine if
all your blood decided to flow backwards and pool in your heart. Youxia in qi
deviation cough up blood13, feel like they're alternately on fire and frozen, and
act like they're possessed.
Qi deviation is a special Wound that can be incurred any time you're hurt
while vulnerable, whether mentally or physically. It can also be inflicted by
using forbidden techniques. It's attached to one particular Aspect that was
the source of it. Whenever you roll any 1s using that Aspect, qi deviation
inflicts a new Wound on you, though it's only as bad as a for-honor Wound.
12
The five Paths follow two cycles, one generating and one restraining. In the generative, Fire bears
ashes in Earth which holds veins of Metal which collects dewy Water which feeds Wood which burns to
release Fire. In the restrictive, Fire melts Metal cuts Wood breaks Earth dams Water quenches Fire. You'll get
to know the generative cycle well.
13
Cao She coughs up blood whenever she gets mad enough, but I think she's just doing it for fun.
Still, youxia have the option of pushing their spirit past its limits, entering
qi deviation in exchange for immediately and completely refilling their Qi
pool. This deviation afflicts their highest Aspect.
CHAPTER 4: ACTION
This is the first of three strands we're going to tie together: uncertainty,
fear and excitement. When you act under pressure, or against opposition, or
to show off, you're going to roll some dice. A roll asks you to put together
(Approach+Path) 6-sided dice and roll them all at once, reading the highest
result. If you roll multiple 6s, each 6 past the first adds 1 to your result. 14
The default difficulty for a thing that people find impressive is 5, and for
less than that you rarely roll. Failing to meet a difficulty does not mean you
didn't do it: depending on your Approach, it might instead invite new
complications, or not give exactly what you wanted. On the other hand, extra
successes over the difficulty (or more than an opponent) might mean you do
better or get more. Remember you can always spend 1 Qi to roll an extra die if
you've rolled poorly!
BTW: PILES OF DICE

This way of rolling dice means you almost always roll 3 or more dice, and
almost always get somewhere between 5 and 7. Adding more dice is more
effective when you have few dice to start with 15, but it's always helpful. At
higher dice pools, you're more often trying to trigger effects that look for
multiple 6s among your dice.
Since Stance is the result of rolling dice, it's most usually somewhere
between 5-7.
YIN AND YANG EDGE

A level playing field holds one honorable fighter dueling another -- but
sometimes the field just isn't fair. Sometimes the defender is a legendary
ancient master, or the attacker has seven cybernetic arms. In this case we
add Yin or Yang Edge.
Edge raises the results of a roll or difficulty by 1 to 3 successes. When you
gain Yang Edge, you can add that directly to any roll to overcome a defender's
Stance, or to take other actions. Once you've benefited from that Yang Edge,
it's usually used up 16. On the other hand, Yin Edge protects you by raising your
Stance (see below) or by raising the difficulty of someone acting against you.
14
So if you roll 3 3 5 6 6 6, your highest result is 6, and the 2 extra 6s bump it up to an 8.
15
Aiming for a default difficulty of 5, going from 3 dice to 4 dice is almost a 10% increase in success rate,
but 4 to 5 dice is only a 6% increase.
16
unless it comes from i.e. a form that specifies it isn't used up immediately.
It lasts until your next turn if you're in combat, or until you finish the action
that's being protected.
Edge is not linear: pretty much any action that takes clever or sustained
effort can enjoy 1 Edge. 3 Edge is the limit of what humans can contend with.
Edge also doesn't stack linearly: an indestructible sword might grant 1 Edge,
but dual-wielding two of them doesn't give 2 Edge 17. Nor can you get 3 Edge
from just stacking 3 advantages to give you Edge 1 -- you've got to stack
enough of those to be properly overwhelming. In any case, it doesn't even
grant Edge unless you lean heavily on its indestructibility. Finding clever ways
to remove Edge from play is also encouraged.
FIGHTS
The most common, basic, fundamental conflict in this game is, obviously,
fighting. Everything else follows from this. A fight is one or more exchanges,
quick flurries of blows where you respond to them responding to you
responding to them etc. With every motion a fighter tries to overcome the
opponent's Stance so they can build up Momentum and eventually use it on a
finisher.
As a fight begins, fighters agree on stakes for the fight18. In order of
severity, these are
● for fun, like sparring
● for honor, a serious duel that might risk Face
● for blood, for when you really cannot let shit slide, or
● to the death.
Only an absolute villain would even consider the devastation of face from
escalating past agreed-on stakes. Stakes also limit the kinds of Wounds
anyone can take. If you can't agree on stakes, the fighter who wants lower
stakes surrenders to the one who wants higher, but takes Wounds and loses
face as if losing an honor duel. Most disagreements between youxia are
settled by honor duels. Corporate warlords and other ruthless fighters will
still respect an honor duel, though... for a time.
Once stakes are settled, you begin the fight.
BTW: NO RULES JUST RIGHT

The fighting rules that follow are meant to be fast and digestible, but there
are a lot of them. If you're not a huge fight nerd like Chisong, you can just drop
them. When you fight, all you have to do is take turns describing which of
your forms you're using or how you're using your Technique, then judge the
winner.
This is true of combat, it's true of the other two rulesets we're going to
introduce, and it's true of everything in the book. There's no Yihao-co DRM
17
Quadruple-wielding them like rope darts might, though. Fuck, that would rule.
18
Intuitively or out loud, but explicitly: you can't fight until everyone agrees.
keeping you from hacking together whatever cyborg monster you want of
this game, so go nuts.
Also, if you get a little lost in this chapter, there's a glossary of terms at the
end that you can reconstruct it from.
EXCHANGES
At the start of each exchange, a fighter declares the Technique they're using
and pays the Qi cost. They set their starting Stance equal to their Yin + 2. The
fighter with the highest Yang, favoring PCs, takes their first turn. Then they
nominate an enemy, who takes a turn then nominates a PC back 19. The
exception is that if your Yang at least matches the current actor, you can
interrupt their action (see below). An exchange ends when fighters pause the
flow of combat for a breath, usually because they're recovering from
finishers or can't reach each other. Other pauses like being forcibly separated
or meeting a new fighter also end an exchange. At the end of an exchange all
fighters reset their Stance and Momentum to 0. 20 Ending an exchange lets
everyone regain 3 Qi.
INTERRUPTS
You can interrupt an enemy's action to block them, or an ally's action to
help them, or at any time to fire off a comeback (see below). If you interrupt
an enemy, you roll at the same time they do, and only the winner's action
actually happens.21 Even if they win, you can act like you were the target of
their action instead of the real target. If you interrupt an ally, you can do that
too, but more often you can combine your Techniques on their motion.
Whatever you do, interrupting causes you to spend your next turn doing
nothing but recovering. You can only interrupt once per combat, so make it
count.
19
Or another enemy, if it's an enemy-of-an-enemy type thing, but not one of their own allies.
Optionally, if multiple PCs are fighting but each against their own enemies, they can go a full exchange
before turning the camera to someone else.
20
If any fighter didn't get to go in the last exchange, they go before the highest Yang fighter and other
fighters have to nominate them to go first, if possible.
21
Motion advantage is based on whatever they use for their interrupt -- if they last rolled a strike but
they're currently trying a grab, you would normally have gotten extra Momentum from a reach after a strike.
Instead you'll get extra Momentum if you try a rush and successfully interrupt their grab.
MOTIONS
On each fighter's turn, they describe what they're doing and roll, usually
making one of the five basic motions, sometimes enhanced by their
Technique. Each basic motion uses one of the five Paths, and grants an
additional Momentum if it followed the generative elemental cycle (see
below).
When rolling a motion, fighters roll the appropriate Approach+Path,
simultaneously setting their own Stance equal to the result and trying to roll
at least their opponent's Stance22. If successful, they bank 1 Momentum, plus
1 more for each extra 623.
● RUSH (Fire)
○ Rushing an enemy involves throwing yourself at them with leaps or other
acrobatics, allowing you to engage a disengaged enemy before you hit.
Rushes give 1 Yang Edge and can swing around grabs easily, gaining
additional Momentum.
● GRAB (Wood)
○ Grabs include joint locks, grapples, and other restraints. Successfully
grabbing an enemy prevents them from disengaging, and gives 1 Yin Edge
either way. They easily trip up footwork, gaining additional Momentum.
● FOOTWORK (Water)
○ Footwork evades a blow 24 or turns it aside to open them up for a
counterstrike. Footwork grants 1 Yin Edge, and a successful footwork lets
you disengage without being followed. Footwork finds cover from
reaches and gains additional Momentum.
● REACH (Metal)
○ Reaches use projectiles or long weapons to outrange an opponent. You
can use a reach while disengaged, if you're in the same field, or from a
different field if you've got a projectile. Reaches grant 1 Yang Edge. They
mock the short range of strikes and gain additional Momentum.
● STRIKE (Earth)
○ Strikes use the most natural array of punches and kicks. Strikes have no
movement option, but can grant either 1 Yin or Yang Edge every time you
use them. Strikes find easy openings in reckless rushes, gaining
additional Momentum against them.
22
If you hate numbers, set aside one or two dice set to your current Stance to keep track. That's what I
do.
23
meaning if you rolled three 6s, you have a result of 8, and you have two "extra 6s". Or is it 3? Dunno,
you decide.
24
though you can still describe dodging away from attacks with a different motion, footwork is the one
that focuses on it.
FINISHERS
Once a fighter has gained (7 + enemy's Rank) Momentum, they can attempt
a finisher. They roll a motion as usual, but they add Yang to their result and
can roll any extra Momentum over 10 as bonus dice. The defender adds their
Yin to their Stance. If augmented finisher beats augmented stance, the fighter
can inflict a Wound (see below). Every 2 extra 6s beyond augmented Stance
can inflict another Wound.
After a finisher, success or fail, the attacker sets Momentum to 0. Any ally
may also follow up with their own finisher if they have enough Momentum.
But if a finisher fails, watch out: their own Stance drops by 1 for each 1 on
their finisher roll, leaving them open. Any opponent may immediately make a
reversal, a counter-finisher against the original attacker, if they have enough
Momentum25. After that, or if nobody takes the opportunity, everyone resets
Stance and Momentum. The exchange ends as fighters step back for a breath,
then start a new exchange if they want.
Notice that even if you manage to scrape up enough Momentum, a patient
fighter will sometimes hold off for a round or two. You can catch your
opponent with an unlucky low Stance, or build up to try and roll extra
Wounds. Don't wait too long, though.
Once per fight, you can pull a comeback and gain (Yang) Momentum right
as you perform a finisher. This can be enough to bring you to the Momentum
threshold.
BTW: WEAPONS
Weapons aren't necessary for fighting, though they can contribute tags (pg
xx). If you want a weapon we assume you brought yours, or improvised one,
or changed your mind to fight unarmed.
The four major weapons are 棍 staff, 槍 spear, 刀 saber, and 劍
sword26. Other weapons include throwing darts, maces, whips, etc. These
days, they also include firearms, also called 槍27. Firearms are just a
reaching weapon like any other.28
OTHER MOTIONS
Actions that aren't one of the basic motions can still happen in combat,
usually at the same time as a basic motion if it's something small or taking a
whole turn if it's not. Using the scenery to make trouble for people is usually a
turn-long action, for example, though Drunken Master Techniques and stuff
25
again, if you have enough Momentum.
26
though, since the passage of the 日天無安 Article, many youxia use telescoping spears or
arcblades that can be more easily concealed.
27
The earliest firearms were basically spears packed with gunpowder and used as fire lances. I don't
actually know if that's why they're the same word, but it rules.
28
Some styles, like Lead Iron or Latter Mantis, even specialize in it.
can make it instant. Actions that are meant to help in combat but aren't part
of actual combat can be rolled against difficulty 5, and can either grant 1
Momentum or 1 Edge for anyone to exploit that action. You can grant
Momentum to allies as well.
You can roll a basic motion and split dice to do something else at the same
time, diverting as many dice as you like to roll for the side action. You can't
split dice between two basic motions.
MOVEMENT
Zoom out to imagine a wide setting: a giant banquet hall, an automotive
factory, a prison courtyard. These are the kinds of places you might have a
fight in. You'll divide each one up into fields, like the assembly line of the
factory or the weights corner of the prison yard. Inside each field, fighters are
either engaged at hand-to-hand range or they're not29.
Fighters can move around an arena freely30, for the most part, as they take
their motion. Some fields may require split dice to get in or out of, as you
scale a wall or bust down a door. But when a fighter moves to another field,
everyone in that field can decide to follow along at the same moment,
especially if they're engaged. A successful footwork lets you disengage and
move away without anyone following along. If you move far enough that
nobody can reach you, the exchange ends.
WOUNDS
When something bad happens, you take a Wound. This usually happens
when you lose an exchange, but you can also take a Wound anytime anything
else happens that you're unhappy about. The benefit of this is that unless
they have some kind of technique or power that forces your hand, you get to
decide how you respond. When someone punches you in the gut, you might
find yourself Exhausted of breath, or Shaken, or simply Enraged 31. You can
take a total number of Wounds up to your (Yin), and then you're simply unable
to carry on... at least, for a while. Here are some kinds of Wounds you're likely
to take, though you always have the option of more:
● Sickened ● Shaken
● Disarmed32 ● Lost34
29
If they're not, then they're probably either fighting at range with reaches or about to run up to each
other.
30
Especially with the Lightfoot Attainment of their Yin nature.
31
But it's usually polite to go with something close to what your enemy was thinking, and in return
they'll take Wounds close to what you were thinking.
32
Unable to continue as you were, possibly because a useful arm is injured or a Technique disabled.
34
Metaphorically or physically.
● Hobbled ● Obsessed
● Blinded33 ● Enraged
● Exhausted ● Afraid
The story of a Wound depends on the stakes of a fight (or situation,
outside a fight). If you're fighting for fun you might not take Wounds at all,
just concede the hit and move on. If you're fighting for honor, Wounds might
be emotional upset or surface injuries. Or they might be other ways to end a
fight, like disarmament or getting dropped onto a moving truck. Either way,
these Wounds clear once the scene is over. Mark these Wounds with a tick
next to the description.
Fighting for blood opens up the possibility of serious physical injury or
lasting emotional turmoil. Even then, it only takes a scene to heal these
Wounds, if you spend it highlighting (pg xx) your recovery and not doing
anything strenuous. If you fight for blood and reach your Wound cap, you're
probably unconscious or otherwise can't fight. Mark these Wounds with an X
mark next to the word.
If you fight to the death, your Wounds stick around until you finish a
sidequest (pg xx) to heal them. Mark these wounds by crossing them out. If
you fill your Wound capacity you die.
OTHER CONFLICTS
Even though martial arts fights are very specific kinds of conflict, it's a
philosopher's prerogative to see their ideal in everything 35. So we'll use these
same rules to describe other kinds of conflict too. Most importantly, this lets
you do things like hack a computer or perform an exorcism during a fight,
sharing Momentum and Stance and all that. 36 Different conflicts interpret
these things differently, though; inflicting knockback in long-distance
mechanical sabotage might instead eject the opponent from their system.
Here are some optional examples:
RACES
The actual distance you cover in a race doesn't matter. Only the relative
distance between racers does, and that's what Momentum models. A new
exchange breaks out into a new leg of the race, and a finisher is an attempt to
knock someone out of the chase. Ranges represent relative speed instead of
distance.
33
Or deprived of other fighting sense.
35
oh my godddd shut up
You are literally the poster child for projecting your ideal onto everything.
36
But... you should think about whether Techniques are applicable. This is a game about violence, and
you'll have to decide how much you really want to extend that outside actual violence. If nothing else, it
makes your youxia also an expert hacker and pilot and politician or whatever.
Rushes become ramming attempts, grabs are entangling attempts to trip
someone up, and dodges are maneuvers to evade obstacles or use easier
terrain. Reaches are harrying attempts to cut off avenues or slow them down
with the environment, and strikes are blockades that use yourself or
obstacles to block someone up.
POLITICS
Most of the time, getting someone to like you or do what you want is going
to be an expenditure of Face (pg xx). Sometimes, youxia have to behave
formally at society dances or banquets to get the chance for that negotiation
in the first place, or to infiltrate for an assassination 37. Taking a Wound at
these parties often results in a loss of Face, it's true, but so might losing
Stance. Range represents an emotional distance, and Momentum is a general
measure of advantage.
Rushes are outright demands that surprise with a show of force, even if
they're not demanding what you really want. Grabs are uses of leverage they
can't ignore, footwork is evasion that slides away concern, reaches are snipes
that take a low blow, and strikes are persuade attempts to bring someone
around.
HACKING
Electrical and electronic infrastructure run through Xiatian like veins, but
so do diesel-furnace steamworks and tower-sized gearshafts38. Some of it is
basic enough that any mechanically-minded youxia can access it. Some of it is
so byzantine even experts can only guess, and youxia need some kind of
Attainment (page xx) like a mechanical arm or skill in hacking to even touch it.
Machines fight back like characters, Momentum represents your hold, and
range represents whether you're in your home system or theirs.
Rush is an overload attempt that overwhelms a system with power or
information. Grab is a lockdown attempt on parts of a system's function, and
footwork is an erase attempt to cut off their hold on you. Reach uses decoy to
foul up a system with chaff or proxies, and strike is a kill attempt to shut
down systems.
37
Cao She says that's her specialty but I think she just likes the free food.
38
I'm not actually sure what the technological level of Xiatian is, and how inaccessible it is to a
layperson. This is a game about the future, and in the future a lot of people are locked out of the tech that
rules their own lives. But I don't know if you actually have the skills to deal with that, or if you need to. Every
game is about something different. So it's probably going to look very different from game to game.
Mostly I just kick whatever machine I see until NICE DAY says we're in. You know?
Yeah. You know.
GLOSSARY OF COMBAT MECHANICS
● Momentum: The advantageous position you need to really land a kill
blow on someone, built up by performg basic motions
● Stance: Your defense; how hard it is to touch you in a way that matters.
Set by the same roll as your basic motion
● Motion: Something you do. If it's something you do to an opponent, it'll
be one of the five basic motions: a strike, reach, footwork, grab, or rush.
● Form: Specific gongfu moves. Each form requires a certain level of a
specific Aspect, and most of them are specific to martial arts styles.
● Technique: A selection of forms you've learned to use together. You
can't use forms that aren't in your current Technique, and you have to
pay for all the forms in a Technique when you first declare-- so pick
ones you're gonna use.
● Finisher: A hit that doesn't just push your opponent off balance, it
actually wounds them. You need to build Momentum to land one.
● Exchange: A flurry of blows between fighters. Fights usually consist of
two to four exchanges39.
● Comeback: Second-wind infusion of Momentum. Use when you can
undercut your opponent to a finisher.
● Reversal: When your opponent swings a finisher and misses, they'll
leave themselves open for you to swing your own. That's a reversal.
● Interrupt: Jump the gun and act at the same time as someone else,
either helping a friend or clashing swords with an enemy. Once per
exchange.
● Forbidden Techniques: Yin and Yang are opposites, and Paths that aren't
next to each other on the cycle offend each other. If you use forms from
offending aspects, you'll go into qi deviation. These Techniques are
forbidden for a reason! But if you're using a style that uses those two
aspects, it'll harmonize them for you.
39
depending how fast you can put them down
INTERMISSION: IMAGINING FIGHTS
Stand up. Find a room where nobody is going to look at you. Move your
body around, and pay attention to how it feels.
If you have no mobility or flexibility disabilities, try and imagine how you
would move if you did. What if your arm was injured and rotating it hurt?
What if it was paralyzed? If you do have mobility or flexibility disabilities,
please be careful as you do these exercises. What might it feel like if one of
your limbs was robotic? What if it was possessed? What do you want to bring
to a fight?
Stand up straight. Breathe without moving your chest, only your belly.
Extend your arms out to your sides, then bring them up over your head, then
clasp your hands and bring them down in front of your chest. Do that again
and watch how your balance shifts. Some martial arts locate the center of
mass in the core, behind and below the navel. Try to imagine it as you move
around: does it stay still as your limbs move around it?
Brace to push yourself against a wall. Imagine yourself doing acrobatic
flips off it. How much speed or momentum would you need? Look around the
room. How could you climb, flip, or move around? If someone else was in
here, how would your two bodies fit?
Tap your knuckles against your jaw, gently. Hang on to the afterimage of
the bruise. Stub your toe. Imagine sharper pains across your body. Imagine
someone throwing a punch at you, then a kick, then a headbutt.
This game invites you to talk about bodies moving at high speed and
energy. Now you have sensory memories to draw on when you do. If you
happen to use that awareness in daily life, you'll really get what this game is
about.
And, at the same time, there are things you can't quite get a grasp on,
except by imagination.
Wuxia has long made use of flowery and abstract prose that compares a
motion to a river or a coiling dragon. The names of Techniques are meant to
evoke this, and each form usually includes some imagery to go with it. Your
lesson may also include some imagery you want to highlight. If you decline to
describe a lashing sword, and instead tell us only that lightning flashes in the
background, I think that kicks ass too 40. It's up to you how poetic or visceral
you want to be at any moment.
40
Hey, quit stealing my thing.
CHAPTER 5: COURSES AND LESSONS
This is the second of three strands we're weaving together: the story of
each character, and the conversation between the players and the GM and
the dice. For each PC at each moment, it's the story of what you're striving for:
mastering a new Technique, or assembling a new meal distribution network.
That striving will bring results, even if they're not the exact results you were
hoping for. And even doing nothing is an action; sometimes, the most difficult
of all41.
When you set out on a long-term plan, you'll choose a Course of action
based on one of your seven Aspects. Each Course is phrased intentionally
broadly; acting as Sect Leader might be a Metal Course to fulfill your destiny,
or an Earth Course to build up a home, or a Yang Course to try and fit in with
the other Sect leaders. A Course has four stages, describing the shape of your
progress, and each of those stages is a separate Lesson.
A Lesson card is a way to record the progress of your Course, the
experiences you've accumulated, and what you've learned. Each Lesson has
an experience, or XP, total. It has some spaces for you to fill in details about
the current circumstances of your Course. It also has a list of ways you can
gain XP by highlighting specific experiences.
Highlights are exactly what they sound like: moments in your story
important enough to zoom in on and keep the camera for a moment. Different
Lessons highlight different kinds of moments, from successes to failures42 to
little details. You can also give salutes43 to other players44 when they do
something funny or impressive or worth notice. Either a highlight or a salute
gives you 1 XP, and you can gain a total of 3 XP per scene 45. It is traditional
that when a worthy opponent loses a fight, they salute the winner.
Once you've filled out that total, the Lesson is finished and you gain some
rewards: 1 Face (pg xx), an Attainment (pg xx), or a new Technique (pg xx).
Narratively, you'll be in a good place to experience whatever the Course says
happens at the end of that stage46, and to move on to the next stage with a
new Lesson card. Finishing a four-Lesson chain finishes out a Course, raising
the relevant Approach or Path by 1 as well as your Rank and maximum Face
41
No, the most difficult of all is decapitating twenty drones at once, I can get 19 but the last guy is
always just out of reach
42
Highlights deliberately include times things go wrong, so don't be afraid to lean into them and grow. It
might feel like fucking up sucks, but nothing's so bad you can't learn from it.
43
The Chinese salute is the left hand over the right fist, held out at face height. You can salute in thanks,
recognition, or if you're being a bitch. Shake once for emphasis, shake thrice to salute a crowd.
44
And the GM is a player too, who can give and receive salutes. If you decide to have a GM.
45
If you have multiple lesson cards, salute XP can go to any one.
46
If you feel you aren't ready yet, you can delay a little longer and start banking XP for your next Lesson
instead. Or if you feel you're ready before the XP total is reached, you can borrow XP from your next Lesson
instead.
by 1.47
47
If you play 4 scenes per session, you should get a new Lesson card every other session. 2 months
playing weekly gets a Rank up.
YANG COURSES
A new job, joining an organization you're unworthy of, or training really
hard.
A NEW JOB
There's a new duty you've been given. Not a specific
event in the future -- something that's got to be done all
the time, probably every day but at least twice a week.
It's not really something you're good at, but you'd better
get good at it, and fast. There's a lot resting on your
shoulders.
What is your duty, and why were you chosen?
YANG CARD
Joy: Highlight the fruit of your labors
Energy: Highlight something bright, loud, or exciting in the world around you
Force: Highlight overwhelming an obstacle by force of will
Pain: Highlight hard, honest work
Flavor: There's a specific little chore or trick that's part of your duty, like
revving an engine or cleaning your sword: __________
Story: My job is to _______
XP: ___/21
A YANG STORY: SOMETHING TO DEAL WITH
1. There's something you have to do -- let's be clear.
There is something that needs to be done, and it's
just that you're the one to do it. So try to keep on
top of it...
i. ...until something new comes up, something a
little beyond you.
2. Your duty will grow a little beyond your control.
Well, if it didn't you wouldn't need to learn
anything, right? Reach out of your comfort zone,
try to keep up...
i. ...until you let something slip and it spirals xx it was one skyscraper
ruinouslyxx out of control, leaving you in the can you relax
The hypocrisy of you
wreckage. telling me to relax...
3. It's time to step back. Admit it: you weren't ready
for this. You've learned a lot, you've gained new
skills from this job, and situations are going to
keep coming up that need them, but refuse to get
involved...
i. ...until you have to. Sooner or later, it's not
the choosing that brings you in. It's the fact
that you can't leave a job unfinished.
4. New perspective gives you purpose. New purpose
gives you strength. Finish the job.
i. ...and walk away a master of it.
JOINING THE RANKS
There's some secretive, powerful, picky world -- elite
chess players, politicians, wizards -- and for some
reason, they've picked you. You don't think they should
have! You don't fit in, you don't know what's going on,
you've got to scramble to keep up. You aren't worthy of
the title. Yet.
What is this secret world, and how did you get in?
YANG CARD
Flavor: There's something that all the members of your secret world can do,
some little trick or Skill or way of doing things, and when you mimic them
you'll highlight: __________
Story: I am one of the _______
XP: ___/21
A YANG STORY: SOMEONE TO BE
1. You don't belong here. It's a little dangerous for
you to be here! Copy the others, try to fit in...
i. ...until you find something you're good at.
2. Now you stand out, but in a good way. Now your
peers will treat you like a peer. You'll know it when
someone depends on you, comes to you for help,
and you realize this is your real test...
i. ...will it work out okay?
3. If you succeed, you'll have a foundation for what to
do next. That problem exposed the vice or flaw at
the heart of the secret world. Put together a risky
plan that will either fix or destroy it...
i. ...until it's time to put your plan in motion.
or
3. In the unlikely event you fail to help them... well,
these things happen. No, the secret world isn't
going to kick you out -- why did you ever think
that? But recovering your position is going to drag
you deeper and deeper into its dark side, until you
expose the vice or flaw at its heart...
a. ...until you find yourself in position to strike.
4. You didn't belong in this world. Maybe that's why
you're the only one who's willing to do this. Make
your choice or gamble, fix the secret world or
destroy it...
a. ...most likely, both at once.
TRAINING
There's something you can't do, and need to. Win the
championship? Avenge your mother? Whatever it is, the xx If it's not the kind of
only way forward is beating your head against a brick problem that requires
this, and you'd rather
wall until you break through xx. Physically or mentally, learn how to do
you're going to train to within an inch of your life. Time is something totally new,
ticking down. consider a Yin Study
Course.
How are you training, and what happens if you're not
ready?
YANG CARD
Flavor: There's something gross or awful about your training. You go
everywhere sweaty, or you have to get up at 4am to run laps around the
district, or you have to drink these awful smoothies, and when it's a pain in
the ass you'll highlight: __________
Story: I'm training for _______
XP: ___/21
A YANG STORY: SOMETHING TO DEAL WITH
1. So you know what you need to do. You can already
do it, a little. You're not good enough yet. Start xx Unless you're in a
solo game, you'll
practicing.xx probably do a lot of this
i. ...until you hit the limits of what sensible in the background, or in
flashbacks, or as part of
training can do. daily life. Did you know
2. Harder. Race wild horses. Bench-press scrapped they sell those leg
motorbikes. If sensible wasn't enough, then fuck weights at ChengMART?
sensible. You're not doing it right until you're

exhausted and bloody and starving for more. Train
harder...
i. ...until you're put to the test, and fail.
3. Because the only weak link left is you. Not your
body, not your skills, but your resolve and purpose.
What are you fighting for? Spend this Lesson
soaking in your friends and family, or whatever
gives you purpose...
i. ...and willingly throw yourself into the xx You'll know you're
ready when you can say
gauntlet again, because now your heart is this sincerely.
strong tooxx.
4. Harder. Put it all on the line this time, because you
can't lose.
i. Win.
YIN COURSES
blah blah yin
CAGING A TIGER
You're responsible for something dangerous. A ward
you keep locked away: a demon, a wicked power, a
prisoner. You must keep it under control, or perish.
What are you trying to suppress?
YIN CARD
Care: Highlight something you put a lot of thought into
Quiet: Highlight something slow, quiet, or melancholy in the world around
you
Finesse: Highlight an obstacle you get around with skill
Restraint: Highlight holding back from temptation
Flavor: Your ward is something you can't let loose. You can't risk talking to
them, if they're sentient; you can't risk trying it, if it's a power. But... what
would it look like if you did? When you do that, highlight: letting the chain
slip
Story: I must control _______
XP: ___/21
A YIN STORY: SOMETHING DANGEROUS
1. Your job is to keep your ward contained. It doesn't
particularly want to be contained. You need to
explore how to cage it responsibly or safely...
i. ...until you've got it controlled enough that
you don't need to be so strict. It's not that
wicked, or it's a little human after all. You're
still in control.
2. You can explore your ward a little more now. Let
small things slide, experiment, discuss. What
happens when you let things go? What happens xx If it's a wicked power
when you don't? you're imprisoning, the
i. ...until it comes down to your real decision: do choice is often provoked
by a looming threat that
you release your ward or not?xx only your power could
3. There are two ways this can go. You can unleash answer. Sometimes this
also applies to, i.e.,
your ward, and spend this Lesson putting out the releasing a prisoner to
fires from doing so. People will be angry at you for help you commit crime.
forsaking your station, and your ward is going to
make a mess as the world adjusts to its presence...
i. ...until it gets too much for you, and at the
last minute your ward has to come back and
save your ass.
or
3. You can decide to keep it imprisoned, and solidify
your enmity. But that won't solidify your control.
Eventually, it's going to break out, or cause so
much damage from inside that it might as well
have...
a. ...and you'll have to let it go, for now, just to
have the space to pick up the pieces.
4. So now your doubt is put to rest: yes, it was worth
releasing. Now you're responsible not only for
freeing it, but keeping it free: fight off anyone else
who wants to imprison it, and your own old
impulses...
a. ...until you've negotiated a new equilibrium,
what life can be with your ward now out in
the open.
or
4. You realize you had it all wrong: you were never
jailer and jailed, only roommates. And now, as it
returns to your care, you're responsible for carving
your life into a new shape, one that makes space
for your ward...
a. ...until you settle out an alliance, a new life, a
friendship.
KEEPING SOMEONE SAFE
There's someone you're protecting: a child, a
bodyguardee, someone injured. It's frustrating and
scary. You'll need patience. You'll need to be careful.
You'll need to fight in a way your ward can't. And if you
aren't good at those things, you better learn fast.
Who are you protecting, and why?
YIN CARD
you
Flavor: You're a fighter, and your ward is not. They want to do things like go
dancing at unsecured parties and eat food when you haven't even finished
checking it for poison yet. But you can't just lock them up, much as you wish
you could. Instead you'll have to highlight: considering your ward's point of
view
Story: I must protect _______
XP: ___/21
A YIN STORY: SOMETHING PRECIOUS
1. Right now things aren't so bad. It's clear to you
they need your help, but it might not be clear to
them. Start building your protective routines, your
somewhat paranoid daily life...
i. ...until it becomes clear that yes, the threat is
that scary, and your routines aren't enough.
2. Fall back on plan B. Your ward feels lost and clings
tightly to you, or lashes out at you, or both. And
you begin to feel for them, beyond what's needed
professionally. Navigate that and the threat and
the way your ward still needs comforts...
i. ...until something goes wrong.
3. Listen: it's inevitable. You can't hold out forever.
Something will hurt your ward, or if you're really
unlucky something will take them.
What's the point of restraint if you can't even
protect them?
Lose control, or abandon it, and rampage through
the threat. You're looking to avenge your ward or
get them back...
i. ...until, at the last minute, your ward is there
to stay your hand.
4. Remember why you were doing this in the first
place. Fight your way back out, but this time you're
in control. This time you have a purpose: not only
safety but stability and happiness for your ward...
i. ...until they achieve it, with or without you.
STUDY
There's something you're trying to understand.
Something you already know a little bit about, but that's xx If it's not the kind of
not enough -- you have to shift your thinking, see things problem that requires a
totally new mindset, if
from a new point of view, become a scholar of this you just need more
thingxx. It's going to take a while. practice, consider a Yang
What are you studying? Training Course instead.
YIN CARD
you
Flavor: You may or may not be an academic, but there are experts on your
subject, or at least something like it. They've said a lot. They keep saying a
lot. And now that you're studying, you join their ranks, and you'll highlight:
reading or writing about your subjectxx
Story: I don't understand _______
XP: ___/21
A YIN STORY: SOMETHING MYSTERIOUS xx Doing so in a
flashback or
1. Where do you start your study? Catalogue. flashforward also
Calculate, inspect, dissect -- not only your subject, counts.
not even only the writings around your subject.

You must learn to see your subject in everything xx... xx Though how 10th
century cosmography
i. ...until you've looked everywhere, and you impacts Hong's cognitive
still don't get it. therapy is still beyond
2. You reach the limits of your abilities. There's no me...
way forward -- except to become someone you're

not. You can either grow frustrated at your
shortcomings and start acting recklessly...
2. Or settle, grow overconfident, and act recklessly...
i. ...until, either way, you overreach yourself
and get it catastrophically wrong.
i. ...or maybe you just run out of time.
3. No experiment is ever a failure, just an unwanted
result. Whatever you were doing, it didn't work. So
give it up, go drinking with your friends...
or
3. Lose yourself in your work, forsaking little things
like eating or sleeping...
i. ...until you lose yourself, let go of whatever
you were holding onto-- and once you do,
your error is clear.
4. There was a flaw in your solution, but you could
not see it because the flaw was in your own eyes.
Now you see clearly where you went wrong. Now
you can fix it.
i. Do.
EARTH COURSES
Earth is a path back to your center -- a story about being lost, and finding a
new identity. Earth is associated with humanity, with honesty that leads to
anxiety or joy.
BUILDING A HOME
There's a domain you're responsible for: a place xx, or a xx one sprawling estate
would suffice, or a
group of people. You may or may not actually be in neighborhood no larger
charge, you may not formally be involved, but for than half a district, but if
were one of Xiatian's
whatever reason you feel obligated to help when your dukes you might
domain is in trouble. It's where you feel safe. consider the whole city
Who or where is your responsibility? your domain
EARTH CARD
Explosion: Highlight kicking ass at something you're kickass at.
Pillar: Highlight standing firm and striking forwards.
Crack: Highlight getting blindsided by something unexpected.
Pressure: Highlight how you're cornered and outmatched.
Flavor: There's some physical symbol of your domain, a crown or house or
your missing finger, and when it shows up in your thoughts or flashback and
especially when you use it you'll highlight: ______
Story: I am in charge of _____
XP: ___/21
AN EARTH STORY: WHAT YOU CARE FOR
1. They do things differently in your domain. They
care differently here. And the outside world eats
away at that, at the integrity of your domain. Shore
it up, commit to a million little chores, maintain...
i. ...until one of those differences grows
irreconcilable, and urgent.
or
1. Your domain has just been born, or carved out. You
explore its tentative newness. You make decisions
on what it should be. Whatever it is, the wider
world disagrees...
i. ...until it cannot abide you anymore, and
collapses in on you.
2. The world pushes inwards, shrinking your domain.
It cuts off your options. It pressures you. Resist, to
the best of your ability, with all your domain
leaning on you too...
i. ...until the outside world shatters the order
of your domain.
3. Fire and flood! Your domain is in chaos. Invaded by
the outside world, overrun, colonized. Nowhere is
safe... nowhere except you. So gather up your
scattered flock, find a place to hold fast, even push
back...
i. ...and, miraculously, you do.
4. The soul of a place is in its people; all else lost, in
you. From that strength in your soul, rebuild your
domain...
i. ...stronger, safer, better.
RECLAIMING YOUR IDENTITY
For whatever reason you don't know who you are. You
lost your memory, or you just escaped the labs where
you were created. What's a person to do when they're
not sure they're a person? Find someone human to cling
to, a teacher, and emulate them.
What are you, before you're human?
EARTH CARD
Flavor: There's some physical symbol you have from before, a trinket for a
necklace or a bloodstained journal, and it holds the emotion you cannot
express yourself, and when you feel it you'll highlight: ______
Story: I am not, yet, _____
XP: ___/21
AN EARTH STORY: WHO YOU ARE
1. You're lost. You wander alleys alone, or remember
doing so. And you remember the one who finds
you: a teacher, who takes you in or at least doesn't
manage to shake you off. They'll set you a
challenge. They'll teach you what it means to be
you!
i. ... until they vanish, or disavow you, or die.
2. Lost again. Cling to your teacher's shadow. Keep
trying to beat that challenge. Uphold their legacy,
bow to their memory...
i. ...but, in the end, it's only a memory. And
something needs you in the here and now.
3. This is your opportunity to prove that the identity
you've rebuilt for yourself is correct. Are you doing
this right? Are you sure that's the real you? Too
bad, it's too late to stop now...
i. ... and then you pass the test, but not the way
you wanted to.
or
3. You find a hidden memory. A record left to you by
your teacher, or your makers, or your past self.
And it's completely wrong. No, you're completely
wrong. You can see who you were supposed to be,
and you aren't that at all. You are not the real you.
So erase yourself again, break off what doesn't fit,
dissolve...
i. ... but it's not so easy once you've become
someone, is it?
4. Here's the secret: there is no real you. You are
whatever you are, experience and emotion piled up
like pebbles until they form a vast and solid
mountain. So decide who you are now. Construct
an identity on purpose, honest and joyous and a
little anxious, human...
i. ... and do what your teacher could not.
METAL COURSES
Metal is the story of people who think they've got it figured out-- and about
what they've got coming to them. Metal is the hard and sharp point of logical
reasoning. It brings insight, courage, and grief.
FULFILLING YOUR DESTINY

You were born under a shooting star. Or you were
made for a purpose, or someone laid a doom upon you --
whatever it is, something great and terrible lies in your
future. You know what it will be. Everyone knows what it
will be. You just don't know how you're going to get
there.
What are you destined for?
METAL CARD
Point: Highlight how you're going to take care of something scary.
Brand: Highlight how you're sticking to a terrible plan.
Friction: Highlight how someone frustrates you, despite your efforts.
Flavor: There's something specific you don't understand, like love or loss or
hunger, and whenever you talk about your ideas and theories about it you'll
highlight _______
Story: This is my destiny: ______
XP: ___/21
A METAL STORY: WHAT'S COMING TO YOU
1. Destiny looms on the horizon. You... don't really
know what that means, yet. So make all the
preparations you can, plan for a dozen
contingencies because you don't know what's
important and what's not...
i. ...until only one big question remains.
2. There's some fundamental question you can't xx Is it a blessing or a
curse? Does it really
figure out about the meaning of your destiny, how flow from your father's
it's connected to your life and how to receive itxx. actions or your own?
That sort of thing.
You can't make headway without deciding, and you
can't decide carelessly, so test the waters
carefully both ways...
i. ...until your destiny is here, and you decide
what it is, and you get it wrong
or
i. ...until you've left it too long, and your destiny
is here, and you fumble it.
3. Congratulations: you've fucked it all up. Turns out xx Beating yourself up
over it is optional and
nobody can see the future, not perfectly. Lost and not recommended.
reeling, without the safety net of your destiny, run if i wanted a therapist i
would fucking kidnap
around and put out firesxx... one
i. ...until you realize that wasn't it. That wasn't
your destiny. The real moment's coming, and
there's still time to fix it.
4. Turns out nobody can see the future if that's all
they look at. Turning away from your destiny gave
you the perspective to realize what it really
needed. Now you have what's needed...
i. ...finish it.
ATONEMENT
You are dead to the world -- or, you should be. Your hands
are stained so red you cannot imagine their coming clean.
But you have to. Though the task of atonement is so
monumental you might as well be climbing mountains, you
have to climb. You'll concoct some labor that can redeem
you to the world or to the ones you hurt. You'll follow
through. The only other option is to curl up and die, and you
don't get off that easy.
What did you do, and who did it harm?
METAL CARD
Flavor: There's a physical thing that ails you, like a scar or a cough or a vice
you can't shake from the bad old days, and you'll highlight ______
Story: This is what I'm atoning for: ______
XP: ___/21
A METAL STORY: YOUR OWN FUNERAL
1. Keep it quiet. Your sin is so radioactive that you'd
better keep to the shadows rather than poison anyone
else. And, yes, you're ashamed too. You can watch the
surviving casualties of your sin from afar, you can
reminisce about your old life, but keep it quiet...
i. ...until one of them comes to you.
2. One of your casualties wants your help, and they must xx or, if they know,
they don't know
not know who you arexx, because they've provided you the true extent
a world-shattering opportunity: the chance to recoup
the damage you caused, or to prevent it from
happening again. Put your heart and body into the
work, throw yourself under the bus, anything to
repent...
i. ...until the truth comes out, and the casualty you
were helping leaves you in disgust.
3. Lost and alone and bleeding from reopened wounds,
you have but one thing left to cling to. Even without
the casualty you were helping, carry on the work. Not
for the hope of their forgiveness, just because it needs
xx or at least,
to be done. It's bigger than just you, now. Get almost they're willing to
all the way there, but realize: this is pointless unless work with you
you're doing it for your casualties...
i. ...good thing your friend from earlier shows up,
having forgiven youxx.
4. Working together, right your old wrong, or at least
prevent it from happening again...
i. ...and now you can be something more than a
sinner again.
WATER COURSES
Water is the story of something you're running from 1. A nemesis, your history,
or a metaphorical curse or flaw you're just refusing to acknowledge. It's the
story of how you can't run forever.
1 Water is one of the more maligned paths, a stigma it shares with yin. It is
fear and hunger, but also gentleness and peace as you learn to live with those
things.
RUNNING FROM TROUBLE

Something is coming for you. Its shadow hangs over
your head, threatening you haunting you. If it gets you,
right now, you'll die. You can't possibly hold it off
forever, but then again, maybe you can.
What are you so afraid of?
WATER CARD
Soothe: Highlight reassuring someone, or them reassuring you
Bite: Highlight something turning around to bite you in the ass.
Flavor: There's a thing that panics you. A sign of your shadow drawing near,
maybe, or just a trigger of the memories they already inflicted on you. When
that appears, you'll lose control for a brief moment, slip into nightmare, and
highlight: ______
Story: ________ is troubling me.
XP: ___/21
A WATER STORY: WHAT YOU'RE RUNNING FROM
1. Try to lead an ordinary life -- at least, as normal as
you can be with that shadow hanging over you.
Keep to yourself a little, maybe. Get in the habit of
paranoid little tricks. Whatever lets you sleep at
night...
i. ...you can't do so perfectly forever.
Someone's attention falls on you.
2. Whatever you're running from, it's getting too
close for comfort. Move to a different safe house,
change your name, scrub yourself raw -- do you
think any of that will save you? Maybe it does. Just
enough to keep your head above water...
i. ...until you go under.
3. It's got you. Chaos invades your ordinary life and
turns it upside down. You're going to have to face it
head on -- but this time you've got home
advantage. Bait it to your safe place, even though it
won't be safe after that...
i. ...and walk away beaten but unbowed.
4. Return to your ordinary life, changed...
i. ... and realize you don't need an "ordinary life"
buttressed with false routine, freeing you to
have a real life instead with past and present
integrated.
SURVIVING A CURSE
They got you. Yesterday or long ago, something Note: Though this
Course is often
scarred you -- injured you, poisoned you, wounded your undertaken by the newly
heart. You've been limping away from that day ever disabled, it isn't always.
Sometimes working to
since, but you've never really moved on. increase local
Of course you haven't. It's impossible. There is no accessibility is Great
moving on. You're taking up this Course just to figure out Work, and sometimes
negotiating a new self-
how to stay alive. image is Reclaiming Your
What happened to you? Identity, etc, killing the
guy who did this is
Journey to the Quest,
etc.
WATER CARD
Flavor: You remember exactly where it happened. It's not a place that's easy
to escape from. It appears in flashbacks and nightmares. The building on the
corner reminds you of it. Every building reminds you of it. And when you
remember, you'll highlight: _____
Story: I'm stuck on ______
XP: ___/21
A WATER STORY: WHAT'S HAUNTING YOU
1. So you've been cursed. The world hardly seems to
notice. Work out all the fiddly little details: how
you fight without an arm, when to take your meds,
how to make coffee for only one...
i. ... until you can't take it anymore.
2. Who can live like this? Take charge. Fight back.
Push yourself to overcome your curse, or fight
through its effects. Return to who you were before,
no matter the pain...
xx or head, depending on
i. ... until you don't feel at home in your own the curse
body
3. Your struggle forces you out of joint: neither fully
in the present nor the past. Cling to what you can
in this limbo, vulnerable and exposed. You'll have
xx you lost a limb, but
to find some way back to yourself... you can still act; your qi
i. ...until you find that you had it all along. You has drained away, but
lost something, but the part of you you can still meditate
enough to fight
underneath never went away xx.
4. There's no returning to who you were before.
Knowing that means you have no need to return to
who you were before. Let go of what you need to
let go...
i. ... and move forward.
WOOD COURSES
Wood is the story of life, and life entangled with life1. It is the story of
branches on a family tree, or some other relationship: someone who is a foil
to you in some way, and your relationship with someone fraught.
1 Wood is often least understood by foreigners. It is spontaneity and
energy and child's innocence. It is dandelion and ivy and red pine in winter.
YOUR MYSTERIOUS FOIL
Someone new and mysterious has appeared in your
life. Often they'll be a Connection. Despite the fact that
you've only just met them, something immediately xx per capita most
sparks between you: recognition, kinship... attraction xx? common source of
mysterious lovers
You'll try to feel out the shape of your relationship, but
be warned: it's going to get complicated.
Who are they to you?
WOOD CARD
Clinging: Highlight how you work well together with someone.
Flavor: There's something one of you said to the other when you first met,
something that seemed innocuous at the time -- or maybe it was dramatic
on purpose. As your relationship develops, that phrase takes on new
meaning, and you keep coming back to it, and when you do you'll highlight xx:
_____
Story: This is my relationship with _____
XP: ___/21
A WOOD STORY: WHO THEY ARE xx It's okay to leave this
blank for a couple
1. Your foil has appeared. Investigate them. Follow scenes to pick out a
them if you can, track them if you can't. They'll good phrase, and then
you can backclaim XP
show up to you too. Be a little careful, maybe, but after.
fall in with them...
i. ... until they start making it complicated. xx If you're enemies,
2. Few relationships in the jianghu are unfraught. they're often lieutenants
Strive against your foil now as rivals or enemies xx. to the true enemy
also you can keep being
But the more clearly opposed you should be, the lovers if you want
more you'll find those reasons you clicked so well
xx per capita most
in the first place... common source of lost
i. ... until they reveal something horrible xx. resentful sect-siblings
3. Unacceptable. Undeniable. The risk of getting close
to someone is that you can't open them up without
splitting yourself open, and now you're split. But
you can't run from this one. You have to try and
reconfigure your relationship...
i. ...decide: can you accept them or not?
4. Reach out. The similarities between you are
greater than the differences. You could unite
against a greater enemy, for the common good, if xx The outcome of this
Course depends not on
you reach out your hand... you, but on the grace of
i. ... and your foil takes it, both of you someone you can't
control. Learning to live
reconciling yourselves to what the other with that is Wood.
represents.
or xx
ii. ... your foil rejects you and damns themself,
taking your flaws with them -- you worked
out what they could not.
A BAD DEAL
They say you should read anything twice before you Bad deals like this often
com from the debts
sign. You didn't. Or you married into trouble, or you attached to Treasures,
inherited it, or you were in the wrong place at the wrong or from your
Connections.
time -- you're stuck with a deal you really don't want.
This is your Course to ride the tiger, make the best of a
bad situation, and hopefully make it through intact.
What did you agree to do, and how did they get you on
the hook?
WOOD CARD
Flavor: Whoever you made the deal with is still around, in your head if
nothing else. They've got a long reach, too -- they're associated with one of
the megacorps, or their name is a household word, or they keep texting you,
or you just keep seeing their face. Whoever they are, when you see them
you'll highlight: ____
Story: I made a deal to ____
XP: ___/21
A WOOD STORY: WHAT YOU'RE STUCK WITH
1. So you've made a shady deal. It's not that bad yet,
and you're a xia of your word. Let's give them the
benefit of the doubt, and carry out your end of the
deal as long as you can...
xx I'm not even going to
i. ...maybe they won't fuck you over? xx bother figuring what
i. ...no, they've fucked you over. happens if they're being
2. Demand answers. Ultimately, though, they had you clean... but i guess
anything's possible
over a barrel when they made this deal, and they
still do. The devil will ask more and more from you,
push you farther and farther...
i. ...until they go too far. xx There's a spectrum
3. Enough is enough. Burn this bridge. But do it fast -- here... enemies that have
carefully protected
the longer you take, the longer they have to fuck themselves will also
you over.xx The question is: how absolutely fucked take pull their strings
more carefully and take
do you need them to be? You probably won't get all longer to do so, so you
the way to the bottom of it your first time around. have some time.
i. ...but you'll get far enough.
4. A bad deal's still a deal, and you've broken it now.
You'll have to suffer those consequences later. But
right now, there's no deal in your way; just you, xx or at least a
your sword, and the guy who fucked you over.xx significant portion of
i. ...pull the weed out by the roots. their ability to fuck you
over
FIRE COURSES
Fire is passion, both love and hate. It is energy and force, but how to use
them and where they come from are outside fire's scope. Lots of decisions
seem to be outside fire's scope.
YOUR NEW POWERS

This is a story about playing with fire --
well, someone had to, or we'd still be huddling in the
cold and the dark.
You have a new Treasure, or Skill, or style, or toy. Open
up the throttle, see what it can do, and take it as far as
you can before you get irrevocably burned.
What new power do you have, and why is it
dangerous?
FIRE CARD
Flavor: There's something you're so excited about you see it everywhere,
and when you do you'll highlight your catchphrase: _____
Story: I'm learning to master _____
A FIRE STORY: WHAT YOU'RE TRYING OUT
1. You have a new power. It's cool! It's unruly.
Practice using it, both for its intended purpose and
not...
i. ...until it burns you badly for the first time.
2. Okay, perspective. Yeah, this thing has a serious
bite. It only shows you how cool and powerful it is.
Keep feeding yourself rope, try to take it farther
and farther...
i. ...until it burns someone else, or goes beyond
your reach, and you realize you couldn't have
stopped it if you tried.
3. Even flame casts a shadow. Run damage control
on your power, without using any more of what
got you in trouble in the first place, and you'll start
to see its dark side.
Explore the hell where it was born. Walk through
the graves it filled when it was first unleashed.
Quit closing your eyes to power's cost.
i. ...and, when you know that, you'll know when
your power is truly worth using.
4. Something comes up. It's worth using. Don't just
pour out the fire, don't suppress it, use and master
it...
i. ...until you know how to make it part of your
life.
JOURNEY TO THE QUEST
The Cintamani, or enough treasure to buy your
freedom, or the truth -- there's someone or something
you're looking for. A shroud of mystery surrounds it. A
road of trials lies before it. But what are you gonna do,
just give up?
What are you looking for?
FIRE CARD
Flavor: You're on a journey. Even if you don't go far, you'll go somewhere
new: hidden caves, secret labs, all Xiatian's underbelly, and when you see or
show someplace new: how amazing this place is
Story: I'm looking for _____
A FIRE STORY: WHAT YOU'RE SEEKING
1. You're looking for something, but there's a reason
you're looking for it. Bring our focus to that. Talk
about it. Think about it. Hype it up...
i. ...until you've had enough of talking, and you
xx 81 tribulations are
get a breakthrough traditional, but you'll
2. A direction! Charge forwards. Obstacles throw probably start counting
themselves in your pathxx. Lies and false leads bad traffic and stubbed
toes around tribulation
confound you. Wiser minds tell you to give up. 40
Keep going...
i. ...until you know you're on the right track,
because someone tries to kill you.
3. Their mistake! Now they've shown your hand.
Following their trail leads you into a labyrinth, real
or metaphorical, bombards you with illusions.
Admit it: you're lost...
i. until you remember what you're looking for,
and you call to it or it calls to you, and you
glimpse your quarry.
4. Just one problem. Mysticism alone won't be
enough -- there'll be one last barrier holding you xx traditionally climbing
back from your quarry, or keeping you from a mountain, especially if
escaping with itxx. Something that takes you for you fell into its depths
earlier.
everything you've got. One last trial...
i. ...but you're not going to let that stop you
either, are you?
BTW: NEW COURSES
These Courses are not all-encompassing. Two more got cut already. You
can bend it if you want:
The easiest way is to grab the shape of a Course from a different Aspect
and just slap a new Lesson card on it. What's it look like to play A Bad Deal as
a Water Course instead of a Wood one? Well, if you use the Water highlights,
it'll be a lot less about that one guy and more about keeping ahead of him, and
all the other trouble your deal causes. You'll learn how to use Water rather
than Wood as a result of it. You might rewrite some of the specifics, or you
might not. You want it to feel like you're immersing yourself in Water rather
than Wood.
If you want to write a whole new Course, that's an option too. These
Courses were built on the qichengzhuanhe structure: in the first Lesson, you
establish what you're doing. In the second, you develop it under pressure, and
at the end of the second it gets bad enough that you fuck up or get
overwhelmed. The third Lesson is spent recuperating, but that often gives
you the perspective for an epiphany to fix it in the fourth Lesson.
Not all the Courses follow that structure strictly. But broadly speaking,
that's what happens when you set out on a plan: it's easy, then it's hard, then
it's fucked, then it's finished.
SIDEQUESTS
Your main Lesson card at any time describes what's going on in your story
arc, but you can also use sidequest lesson cards to describe other projects
you have going on. To create a sidequest lesson card, you look through the
story arcs for an outcome you want, and write the according lesson card. For
example, trying to build a machine without accidentally using your illicit tech
credentials sounds like a Fire 3 story, so you might write a Fire lesson card
with the understanding you'll probably end up using those credentials at the
last minute.
A sidequest lesson takes around 32 xp48, and it's accessible to all players
at the table, including the GM. Even if it's your project, people can lend an ear
or a thought. Here are some possible uses for sidequests:
MYSTERIES
You don't need to create a lesson card for mysteries, you have the option
to just bumble through them, but a mystery card guarantees you'll make
progress and gives you an idea of what progress to expect. For example, a
Yang card focuses on upholding the law, while a Wood card points towards
an inevitable perpetrator. Finding a good clue is often both eligible for a
highlight and a salute, from separate players. Filling out a lesson card is a
guarantee that players have enough clues to put together a picture, and GMs
should feel free to drop enough hints or take player suggestions to piece
together a final picture -- even if it turns out wrong. There is no other reward
for a mystery lesson card.
INVENTION
Even youxia who adhere strictly to the teachings and tools of their
teachers find ways to refine and even invent new ones: mechanical marvels,
combinations of Forms, and so on 49. An invention lesson card can likewise be
of any aspect, though Metal and Fire fit easiest. Common highlights include
finding new components that fit, mapping your invention onto the world, or
having epiphanies from something that just happened. The reward for an
invention lesson card is usually the Attainment or Form invented. Invention is
also the only way to create a new style, usually based on combining two
existing styles.
HEISTS
[I haven't written this yet.]
48
If the lesson takes 2 xp per scene from 5 characters, it'll take around 3 scenes to finish a project.
49
Inventions can also be compressed into montages that focus on each player for the space of a single
highlight or salute-worthy moment. If you do, cut the xp total to 5 or 10.
CHAPTER 6: FACE
This is the last strand we're weaving in: if you can fight others, and know
yourself, you also have to make peace with others.
Face is a system of reputation and grace that scaffolds and shapes life in
Xiatian. It's a recognition of duty, generosity, and skill. For most people, the
basic etiquette of any citizen of society50. For youxia, that extends to clean
fighting, respect for other fighters, and the duty to wield the sword against
corruption and injustice. People recognize good face, and they'll go out on a
limb for those who deserve and need it -- and, in turn, you recognize their
doing so. Some youxia have day jobs, some are bounty hunters, some draw a
sect stipend, but everyone else literally finds their meals and housing by
trading on their face--
In the jianghu where sect politics and blood feuds can burn for decades,
Face is how people know that you have their backs when shit hits the fan.
Good Face means you're both willing and able, and it spreads quickly across
the wulin. You may not be on the same team as your enemy at the moment,
but you're playing the same game.
Your face, too, is a personal thing, and it depends on the person you're
talking to. Your reputation as an honorable sword-guest won't do shit at a
corner store that has no idea what that means, or for a warlord who thinks
he's above such things. And it won't do shit if you are, in fact, a ruthless
villain. You can have some amount of personal Face with specific characters
or factions. You start the game able to have a maximum of 3 Face plus that
much personal Face, but that number increases with your Rank. There's only
so much people can care about you at first.
The give and take of face is how people get each other to get things done in
Xiatian's jianghu. You gain it, lose it, give it, spend it, and others give or take
face from you. Each of your sects also has particular ways you can gain face
or spend it, just by being associated with them. The rules for gaining and
losing face have a lot of leeway, because in the end it's a human judgement:
you, watching, do you believe this is worth your respect?
HEROIC MOVES (earn 1 Face)

● Do someone a big favor51 (+1 Face reward if it's for an enemy)
● Win a fair fight for honor, and let your opponent off easy
● Suffer consequences or make a sacrifice, and keep going
● Get a salute from someone with a lot of Face
APOLOGETIC MOVES (prevent Face loss)

● Do it to save someone, especially family
50
though, obviously, "society" is a little different for youxia.
51
about a session's worth of effort, or comparable effort and skill
● Point out the perspective a Skill gives them
● Call in the debt a Treasure gives them
● Lean on one of their Connections
● Appeal to the sword
HUMBLING MOVES (spend 1 Face)

● Ask a reasonable favor from someone
● Deny a favor asked of you
● Lose a fair fight for honor
● Gain an advantage through treachery or underhanded means, unless
everyone already knows you do that
● Give credit to a character or faction (give them spent Face)
WRETCHED MOVES (spend 2 Face, can't appeal to Apologetic moves)

● Beg for mercy 52
● Escalate beyond agreed-upon stakes
● Betray your sect, shifu, or the wulin 53
FACTIONS
Xiatian is splintered into about a billion sects, gangs, corporations and
other organizations, in both its renjie and its jianghu. The wulin is dominated
by the Great Sects, but they are not the only factions in Xiatian, or even its
jianghu. Plus, smaller sects and clans dot the landscape, and any number of
supposedly legitimate organizations extend their reach into the jianghu. You'll
know one of these factions by its motto, which encapsulates its philosophy,
which encapsulates the way it wants the world to be. Members of a faction
don't necessarily live by its philosophy exactly, but it informs how they think
and what they want.
Factions are Ranked the same way youxia are, except that their Rank also
tracks their size. Rank 1 factions are maybe a dozen people, rank 5 factions
are on the level of megacorps or Great Sects. Factions also have their own
Face that a member can spend in lieu of their own if they're on faction
business, and that members can donate their own Face to.
Most importantly, factions have various Assets that are scaled-up
Attainments: they can have influential Connections with a megacorp, experts
who provide a particular Skill, or even stable income streams or headquarters
features as a Treasure. Optionally, if these are really big, they can be marked
with a (2) or even a (3).
52
since you're paying double beyond just a reasonable favor, it costs double to refuse this. but they get Face
for doing you a favor if they agree
53
Sometimes this is the objectively right thing to do. Sometimes people will even recognize your
righteousness for breaking free of a wicked sifu.
Still wretched.
FACTION ACTION
Factions take action during downtime, when a player (including the GM)
spotlights them. They can do one of the following:
● Spend 1 Face to refresh an Asset that's been used in a project (see
below), by renewing income or paying up experts, etc. They can refresh
up to 3 Assets per downtime turn, though bigger Assets can count for
multiple advances at once
● Support an ally, giving them up to 3 of their own Face
● Advance a long-term project.
Factions can't act quickly or directly, aside from the PCs, so they have to
commit to projects. Each project takes somewhere between 5-50 advances to
finish, and a faction can advance a project during downtime by allocating its
Assets to that project -- for example, by having an expert jeweler use her
skills to counterfeit diamonds, or using influence with a corporation to get a
meeting in a heavily guarded building. Every 5-10 advances, a project should
include a checkpoint of what progress looks like and what effects it's having
on the world.
A Faction can only use one of each kind of Asset per downtime, though big
Assets count as multiple advances. PCs can contribute their Skills and
Connections to this during downtime, and can go on missions that contribute
1-3 advances to a project. Alternately, a faction can use its advances to hinder
another faction's project, effectively giving them negative advances.
Finishing a project can grant one of the following outcomes:

● Cause an enemy faction to lose Face, taking 5 advances per 1 Face
● Gain a new Asset, taking 15 advances
● Increase Rank, taking 25 advances
● Inflict a Wound on another faction or heal one of their own, taking 15
advances
Like characters, factions can take Wounds when attacked, or can take
them to codify conflict into something that can be dealt with. They might take
Wounds when they lose morale or approach schism, when they're infected by
brain-eating fungus or evicted. Unlike characters, faction Wounds don't heal
on their own; each affects an Asset and makes it unusable while the Wound
remains.
Finally, factions can use courses to do whatever else they want to. They
have a geographic area they consider their home, and they have a focus on
economic, political, or other power.
CREATING A FACTION
[Gather enough people to outnumber you and spend a bunch of Face. You
have to not be the most important people in the faction -- this isn't about you.
It's Rank 1, with whatever assets you give it. You can start at a higher rank but
comes into play with a bunch of wounds. Can spin off a subfaction instead.]
CHAPTER 7: MARTIAL ARTS
TECHNIQUES
Each youxia wields the power of several Techniques, assembled from the
forms of their aspects and the styles they know.
1. A youxia pays the total Qi cost to activate a Technique, and then can use
each of its form's benefits as they like. If they want to reuse any of
those benefits, they must repay to reactivate the entire Technique.
2. Forms can be invoked at any time while the Technique is active 54,
though forms marked as Instant rather than Technique can only be
invoked once per exchange (tick them off when used).
3. If you declare a form and it doesn't get to go off because the motion
fails etc, it isn't used up and you can try it again. If it's specifically
broken or canceled, that counts as used up.
4. You can only invoke one form at a time.
5. A Technique's name is made of the words from its forms, or close
enough.55
For example, Black Moon Balances Stillness is the signature
Technique of 紅光紫雲56. Black and Moon are Yin forms, while Still is a
Yin form from Evil Sealing Art and Balance is a Water form from the
same. While Black Moon Balances Stillness is active, 紅光紫雲 can use
the Moon form to draw power from her opponent's strengths, the Balance
form to sap their Momentum, and the Still form to paralyze their
limbs. If she wants to use any of those benefits again she must
reactivate the Technique, even if she didn't use the Black form.
Each form has an Aspect requirement, a Qi cost, a duration, and an effect.
Formulating a new Technique requires a Lesson, but you can use any aspect
or style form you meet the requirements for. A Technique can't have more
than 5 forms in it, and you can't have more than (Rank x2) Techniques at a
time. The Qi cost of a Technique is the sum of all its forms. During an
exchange, you can pay 1 Qi to refresh any Instant form you've already used
and reuse it.
One challenge of building a Technique is combining their aspects. Opposing
forms suffer the risk of Qi deviation (pg xx) if they offend each other. Yin
forms offend Yang, and each Path offends the Path that defeats them in the
restraining cycle: water quenching fire melting metal carving wood breaching
54
It's polite for attackers to declare all their forms and then defenders to declare all their forms before
anyone rolls. But if you just forgot to declare something then your table can agree to let it slide
55
Not enough that you can 100% guess forms from the Technique, but maybe like 80%.
If you're having trouble, throwing a gratuitous Dragon in there usually works.
56
For good reason. I still have nightmares about the last time we sparred.
Don't be such a baby.
earth damming water57. Individual styles may allow exemptions: for example,
Flying Puppet has both Metal and Wood forms, so Metal Flying Puppet forms
don't offend Wood forms.
As a general rule, forms that have a requirement of 2 are a little tricks that
help encourage the style or approach's flavor, and cost 0-1 Qi. Requirement 3
forms are workhorse benefits that cost 1-2 Qi, and requirement 4-5 forms are
powerful effects that cost 2-3 Qi -- and occasionally something else. Forms
may allow you to highlight their use for extra oomph, or use up 6s.
ASPECT FORMS
These forms are accessible to any martial artist, and even some things
that aren't martial artists.
57
So, for example, a Technique with Yin and Water forms shouldn't also contain Yang, Fire or Earth
forms.
YANG FORMS
Yang forms hit hard and fast, especially against powerful enemies.
● SWIFT (Yang 2, 1 Qi, Instant)

Hit the ground running, or cut someone off. Roll (Yang) more dice on a motion
if you're against someone who hasn't acted yet in the exchange. If you beat
them, gain 1 Momentum.
● DEMAND (Yang 2, 0 Qi, Instant)
Even the wind of your whiffed blows is formidable. If you fail a motion by less
than your (Yang/2), gain 1 Momentum anyways.
● SUN (Yang 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Preempt your opponent's movements. Whenever an enemy rolls against you,
you gain dice to your next motion equal to the number of 6s they rolled.
● CORRECT (Yang 3 ,1 Qi, Sustained)
Apply force judiciously. When you hit someone who isn't a youxia, you can
knock them unconscious immediately. You can knock a youxia out when you
incapacitate them; if you knock someone out for honor, they wake up as soon
as it's too late to stop you.
● BRIGHT (Yang 3, 1 Qi, Instant)
Redouble force as you're about to fall short. As you're about to fail, roll (Yang)
more dice. If this causes you to succeed, gain 1 Momentum.
● NINE (Yang 3, 2 Qi, Sustained)
Lash out without hesitation. Always beat a Stance that is less than your Yang
+ 2, even if you rolled lower.
● WHITE (Yang 4, 1 Qi, Instant)
Move with utter certainty. You can hit anything, no matter how fast. Gain 2
Yang Edge on a finisher, and negate any Yin Edge that comes from speed or
finesse.
● LAUGH (Yang 4, 3 Qi, Sustained)
Smile at your troubles. When an enemy's Technique makes a motion succeed,
gain 1 Momentum.
● SHOUT (Yang 5, 3 Qi, Instant)
Exhale absolute deadly vitality. A finisher always inflicts at least one Wound,
even if it rolls for shit and Techniques intercede. You can cut or destroy
anything it's remotely imaginable to cut or destroy, even things like rivers or
buildings.
Further Yang forms might enhance your vitality, increase the number of
actions you can take, or otherwise get you out of hot water.
YIN FORMS
Yin forms offer powerful defensive and counter-offensive moves but
struggle to take the initiative.
● RETURN (Yin 2, 0 Qi, Instant)

Twist around to use an enemy's force against them. You can roll (Yin) more
dice on a reversal, and you can do it at 1 less Momentum than normal.
● PATIENT (Yin 2, 0 Qi, Instant)
Settle yourself and beckon an enemy forwards. Roll (Yin) more dice on a
motion if you let them come to you.58 If you beat them, gain 1 Momentum.
● YIELD (Yin 2, 0 Qi, Instant)
Allow an enemy to bat you away for little real gain. When an enemy beats
your Stance by less than (Yin/2), that motion gains 1 less Momentum.
● SHIFT (Yin 2, 0 Qi, Sustained)
Change your posture to blend into someone else. A disguise worn while using
this Technique gains 1 Yin Edge against any attempts to see through it.
● MOON (Yin 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Mirror your opponent's movements. Whenever an enemy rolls against you,
you gain dice to your next motion equal to the number of 1s they rolled.
● SHADOW (Yin 3, 1 Qi, Instant)
Flick out to intercept with an unexpected trick. As an enemy rolls against you,
roll (Rank + Yin) dice and remove any matches. If this causes their motion to
fail, gain 1 Momentum.
● SIX (Yin 3, 2 Qi, Sustained)
Regather your limbs and resettle your feet. Your Stance always resets to
(Yin+2) if it's ever lower.
● BLACK (Yin 4, 1 Qi, Instant)
Meet force with perfect poise. You can attempt to dodge or parry anything
aside, no matter how implausible. Gain 2 Yin Edge against a finisher, and
negate any Yang Edge it has from power or strength.
● WEEP (Yin 4, 3 Qi, Sustained)
Capitalize on tragedy, but solemnly so. When your Technique causes a motion
to fail, gain 1 Momentum.
● SILENCE (Yin 5, 3 Qi, Instant)
Take a deep breath and clear your mind. Something you don't want, physical
or not, has to roll against your Stance to land solidly on you. Inanimate things
usually roll 3-5 dice and add some Yang Edge. Outside combat, your Stance is
Yin+3. If they fail, you are miraculously behind cover, not the target, or
otherwise untouched.
58
This is intentionally vague.
EARTH FORMS
Earth forms stake a spot and stay there, beating back all comers.
● MOUNTAIN (Earth 2, 1 Qi, Sustained)

Set your stance firmly. You can't voluntarily move after invoking MOUNTAIN,
but you gain 2 Yin Edge against attempts to move you involuntarily. Roll
(Earth) more dice on your next motion against an enemy who tries to move
you.
● KICK (Earth 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
No need for trickery or powers when you have sheer determination. Roll
(Earth) more dice on a motion with no Yang Edge. If successful, gain an extra
Momentum.
● CENTER (Earth 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Stand tall like the axis of the earth. Roll (Earth) more dice on strikes if you are
standing on a chokepoint or other tactical spot.
● HAMMER (Earth 3, 1 Qi, Instant)
Hit like a truck. A successful motion knocks the enemy back to disengage. If
you highlight the blow, you can knock them into another field. Gain an extra
Momentum.
● SHAKE (Earth 3, 1 Qi, Instant)
Tremble the earth with your power. Your attack destroys anything that
doesn't have a Yin Edge of durability, and cracks even those things that do.
Gain 1 Momentum if you obliterate background scenery or furniture.
● LAUNCH (Earth 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Hurl boulders or rubble with cannon force. You can make strikes outside
engagement range. If you highlight, you can make a strike against someone in
another field.
● ANVIL (Earth 4, 1 Qi, Instant)
Set someone between a rock and a hard place, one of which is your fist. If you
knock someone into a hazard or wall as part of a finisher, it becomes vicious
(+1 Wound).
● RELY (Earth 4, 2 Qi, Instant)
Once grounded, surge forwards. When you make a strike with Yin Edge, you
can interrupt to follow it up with a strike that has Yang Edge. You don't need
to rest after this.
● REMAIN (Earth 5, 3 Qi)
Stand unflinching in front of an attack. A finisher deals 1 less Wound to you. If
you highlight your response, you can do things like grab the sword that's now
stuck in you, or shatter knucklebones against your abs.
METAL FORMS
Metal forms pivot on clarity, careful planning, and pinpoint precision. They
founder as the situation changes or in true chaos.
● CRYSTAL (Metal 2, 1 Qi, Instant)

Reveal that you foresaw something coming with crystal clarity. Pull out
something you brought along for this situation, or a preparation you made.
● FOUR (Metal 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
Point your weapons in every direction. You can interrupt even if you have no
way to be aware of an attack. If you successfully interrupt at range, you stop
them from coming closer that turn. An interrupt enhanced with this doesn't
count against the 1/exchange limit.
● SHINING (Metal 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
Cut to the heart. Ask what drives someone, and gain 1 Yang Edge to take
advantage of that. Alternately, highlight an ideal that drives yourself, and
gain 1 Yin Edge.
● NEEDLE (Metal 3, 1 Qi, Instant)
Stab or shoot with precision. Identify an enemy's weakness with a successful
reach and highlight it. Anyone gains 1 Yang Edge to take advantage of that
weakness unless it's covered or fixed.
● PIERCE (Metal 3, 2 Qi, Instant)
Cut through cover, defense and all other bullshit. A motion becomes immune
to Techniques that would stop it from succeeding.
● GOLD (Metal 3, 2 Qi, Instant)
Line up a window for a perfect shot and fire. You can make a reach from up to
a mile away, or through a tiny opening, with perfect precision. Gain 1
Momentum if it lands.
● THUNDER (Metal 4, 2 Qi, Instant)
Split the sky. If a finisher is successful, roll (Metal) more dice to inflict more
Wounds.
● CONTROL (Metal 4, 2 Qi, Sustained)
Lock everything down. When anyone in your field moves to engage,
disengage, or leave, you can interrupt with a reach, even if you already
interrupted. If you succeed, they can't move. This doesn't count against the
1/exchange limit.
● SHATTER (Metal 5, 3 Qi, Instant)
Fill the air with bullets and spearpoints. Highlight a reach to give it the Area
tag, or to roll twice and take the higher result against a single enemy.
WATER FORMS
Water forms help you evade attack by leading enemies away until you can
counterattack. Enemies who play smart and don't fall for that can keep Water
out.
● STEP (Water 2, 0 Qi, Instant)

Glide away with the correct sequence of steps. Roll (Water) more dice on a
footwork that will disengage.
● DEEP (Water 2, 0 Qi, Instant)
Sacrifice speed to draw from a deeper reservoir. Spend as much Momentum
as you want to increase your Stance by that much.
● FOLLOW (Water 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
Too far to do anything about, too close for comfort, never stopping. Ask what
someone fears most right now, and take 1 Yang Edge by exploiting it.
● TRICK (Water 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Smirk as your enemy follows you to their demise. When you reveal something
that gives you Edge, you can use that Edge up to (Water) times in a single
exchange. This lasts for the exchange, and can't be used again for the same
thing in subsequent exchanges.
● FEAR (Water 3, 1 Qi, Instant)
Slide a poison, curse, or affliction into your enemy's life. A successful finisher
inflicts a special Wound that inflicts a -1 penalty when using a specific Aspect.
However, this Wound can be negated for the length of a scene if its victim
highlights how bad that affliction is hurting them. Using this is a Humbling
Move, unless it's a Heroic Move.
● WISDOM (Water 3, 2 Qi, Instant)
Suffering yields wisdom to those who are open. When an enemy inflicts a
Wound on you, you can formulate a new Skill based on the Technique or other
methodology they employed against you. This Skill grants 1 Yin Edge against
that Technique, and it lasts as long as the Wound does. The perspective
granted is related to how you were Wounded.
● SWALLOW (Water 4, 2 Qi, Instant)
Accept misfortune as it comes to you. When you suffer a successful motion,
your next motion against that enemy automatically meets their Stance.
● FLOW (Water 4, 2 Qi, Sustained)
Float backward with the force of your enemy's blow, or somersault gracefully
back upright. When you employ footwork after a successful enemy motion, if
you beat their Stance by at least 2, you may steal back 1 Momentum 59.
● PEACE (Water 5, 4 Qi, Instant)
Shed your troubles like oil from water. When something would confine,
afflict, or otherwise bring you down, you can highlight how you actually left
the scene just a few moments before -- leaving your teacup still spinning, or
59
they lose and you gain
the ashes of your body double in your place. Returning to the scene is a
Humbling Move.
WOOD FORMS
Wood forms focus on locking down a single enemy, taking away options.
They have trouble with multiple opponents or victims who diversify.
● LASH (Wood 2, 1 Qi, Sustained)

Whip out with chains, long sleeves, or other appendages. You can make grabs
while disengaged, bringing them into engagement range if successful. A grab
that first brings someone into engagement range gains (Wood) more dice.
● INTERCEPT (Wood 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
Be where your enemy wants to be. You gain (Wood) more dice on an interrupt.
If you win, gain an extra Momentum. An interrupt enhanced by this doesn't
count against the 1/exchange limit.
● ROOT (Wood 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
Follow the hidden connections. Ask if someone's current motivation is driven
by a Connection. You gain 1 Yang Edge to take advantage of the answer, either
yes or no.
● BLOOM (Wood 3, 1 Qi, Instant)
Appear where you're unexpected and unwanted. If one of your Connections or
a character you're otherwise involved with is in a scene, you can arrive just in
time or reveal that you were already there. Optionally, you can appear next to
them, engaged if they're fighting.60 If you get the drop on them, gain 1
Momentum.
● LEAF (Wood 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Scramble someone like windswept leaves. While you have someone grabbed,
you can throw them away from yourself to disengage. If you highlight this,
you can throw them into another field.
● LOCK (Wood 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Grab those joints and don't let go. When you successfully grab someone, you
can pick a motion to deny them. You gain 1 Yin Edge against them if they try
that motion against you. This effect ends if you fail to continue grabbing
them.
● CLAW (Wood 3, 2 Qi, Instant)
Swipe with raking fingernails or knives. A grab gains an extra Momentum, or
gains 1 Yang Edge if it's a finisher.
● CLING (Wood 4, 2 Qi, Sustained)
Pick someone out and declare your beef with them. You gain 2 Yang Edge
against them, but everyone else gains 1 Yang Edge against you. Gain an extra
Momentum if they reciprocate.
● CLEAR (Wood 4, 2 Qi, Instant)
Wash the moment with azure clarity. On a successful motion, you can either
end any Technique-based effects they have on you or on themselves.
● STRANGLE (Wood 5, 3 Qi, Instant)
60
If you drop into a fight, you have to be in this form's Technique, because you already invoked this form.
Keep up the pressure and don't let go. Invoke this when you first successfully
grab an enemy. So long as you continue successfully grabbing them, each
grab gains an extra Momentum. If you make a finisher while this continues,
roll an extra die for every turn you spent strangling.
FIRE FORMS
Fire forms move fast and unpredictable, gathering Momentum quickly and
making things worse for everyone. A patient defense can wait them out and
let their own consequences catch up to them.
● STEP (Fire 2, 0 Qi, Instant)

Run to trouble. Roll (Fire) more dice on a rush that engages with an enemy,
even if it's a different enemy from the one you're currently engaging. If your
current enemy wants to keep you from disengaging with them, you still have
to beat their Stance.
● EXPLODE (Fire 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
Burst forth with unexpected energy. Gain (Fire) Momentum on a comeback
instead. Gain an extra Momentum if you currently have less than your highest
enemy, and another for each Wound you're suffering.
● BURN (Fire 3, 2 Qi, Instant)
Move hotter, more recklessly, faster. Immediately rush again after a failed
motion, but reduce your Stance by 3. Gain 1 Momentum if you're hit before
your next turn.
● FIERCE (Fire 3, 1 Qi, Instant)
Shoot like a bullet or a meteor across the field. You can rush an enemy from
long range, streaking across the arena with superhuman speed. You can also
bodyslam them, and yourself, into another field. They can't contest as long as
the new field is more dangerous.
● VERMILION (Fire 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Rise resplendent from defeat when someone has Yang Edge against you.
Negate that Edge, and roll (Edge) more dice against that enemy.
● HATE (Fire 4, 2 Qi, Sustained)
Draw strength from spite. Whenever you make a successful motion against
someone with more Momentum, gain an extra Momentum.
● RESOLVE (Fire 4, 3 Qi, Sustained)
Banked fires burn no less hot when released. When you make a successful
motion after a failed one, it gains an extra Momentum.
● SUMMER (Fire 5, 4 Qi, Sustained)
As the day grows long, so does your strength. Your Fire temporarily increases
by 1 whenever you roll 6+. If this raises it above 10, you immediately suffer Qi
deviation.
CREATING A STYLE: HIDDEN HOUR WAYS
[Worked example of how to combine Eight Trigrams and Inexplicable Fist
into a qimen dunjia style]
CHAPTER 8: THE GREAT SECTS
The jianghu is dominated by sects, both great and small. Smaller sects
bubble in and out of existence, splintering away from bigger factions or dying
out when no one remains to carry on their traditions. They orbit in the shadow
of the greater sects, of which usually we count eight: the Lotus Church, Unity
School, Butterfly Sect, Beggars' Group, Martial Saint Formation, Ghost
Blade Society, Crimson Stars Fellowship, and Every Living Thing Clan. If
there are other sects powerful enough to claim the title of Great Sect, they're
hiding too deep in the jianghu to be heard of. Likewise, some of the known
greater sects might be little more than rumor and hearsay. But I'll tell you
that practically every youxia has history with a sect, even breakaway rogues.
The great sects fight and ally and betray each other, but they all agree on
one thing: they can't let Xiatian continue on its miserable way. Every sect and
every youxia in every sect have hope and faith in a better world. There are
only three problems in their way. The first is that they can't actually agree on
what that better world is. The second is that while martial arts can cut a way
out of this world, it can't actually build the next one 61. The third is that a whole
bunch of people hate what you're doing and want to kick your ass. Which
brings us back to the gongfu.
61
That's why all that philosophizing and talking is important in the first place.
THE LOTUS CHURCH 蓮花教
Rank: 5
Face: 10, +3 with the faithful, +3 with charity benefactors
Assets: Church donations (3)
Rilin Temple, a sanctuary (2)
Abbess Ku, unflinching62
Brother Qu, quartermaster
Connections with the xia they've helped (2)
Motto: A lotus grows from mud but remains unstained.
HEROIC MOVE
● Turn down a tempting offer
HUMBLING MOVE
● Inject yourself into an unwholesome situation. Everyone will listen to
you.
The Lotus Church is renowned across Xiatian's renjie. It teaches ascetic

disciple and upright behavior, struggling free of worldly desires like money
and power. Its temples offer charity and clarity to any who need it. Its youxia
are renowned for their integrity and strength -- even to the point of refusing
to get involved in petty squabbles. The Lotus Church strives to be a shining
beacon to all, breaking free from the chains of desire to seek enlightenment
and to help those behind it on the path.
Martial arts of the Lotus Church focus on forceful, decisive movements.
Eagle Claw focuses on joint locks and vicious holds. Dragon Fist emulates the
winding, thrashing motions of a dragon. Burning Jade Fist rains down attacks
with inimitable speed. Compassion Palm, perhaps the most distinctive Lotus
style, lands similarly crushing blows but offers its victims mercy to the last.
To make a Lotus Church youxia, pick two:

● An iron-ringed huxi staff that rings to scare away beasts and keep
rhythm for chants
● A saffron bandanna or scarf for a mask
● A gear-shaped mandala
● A former beggar or orphan who owes you their life
● A teacher whose wisdom you have latched on to
● A specific ascetic practice like living off alms or sleeping without lying
down63
● A specific and over-the-top training regimen for your martial arts
62
Worse than you think.
63
Many Lotus Church adherents already practice vegetarianism, but you could go a step further and only
eat tofu or something.
COMPASSION PALM 慈悲掌
Something broken is something not destroyed. This is the mercy of
Compassion Palm: the removal of obstacles, the splintering of resistance, the
obliteration of ignorance. Something broken can be healed. So with open
hands to display their lack of killing intent, masters of Compassion Palms
rend chains, smash down walls, and cave their opponents' ribcages in --
nonlethally! Compassion Palm destroys all tools of violence and oppression
to force their wielders to move on.
Masters of Compassion Palms swear vows of pacifism, alongside Lotus
Church vegetarianism and asceticism. They fight only with empty hands,
though those with martial bents may wear armor. Their Yang forms empower
them in contests of force, and their Earth forms serve to break walls and
weapons, especially machines.
● MERIT (Earth 2, 1 Qi, Instant)

Winnow out what is correct and merits consideration, and let all else vanish.
Smash through an obstacle in your way, hitting or reaching something behind
it in the same motion.
● UNDERSTANDING (Yang 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
It is because you know your enemy that you wish to help them. Ask what has
a grip on someone, either figuratively or literally. Gain 1 Yang Edge to break
that grip.
● LIBERATE (Earth 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
They could have built paradise with these machines, but all they ever made
were shackles. Break a piece of electronics or machinery as if Wounding it, so
fixing it takes that long. Bigger or more durable machines are only partially
broken, and moving ones might have to be subdued in a fight first - but you
can always break something.
● BENEVOLENCE (Earth 3, 2 Qi, Instant)
A child whines without a toy, but it is time to put aside childish things. If you
can get a solid grip on someone's Treasure, you can break it. Fixing it takes as
long as healing a Wound would. You won't completely destroy a Treasure
unless its player wants you to, and they may still be able to get limited use
out of it -- but it will be undeniably broken.
● JOY (Yang 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
There is a sincere joy in seeing your opponent strive to do their best.
Whenever your opponent rolls with Yang or uses a Yang form, you gain 1 Yang
Edge to contest or respond.
● CALM (Earth 3, 1 Qi, Instant)
Let all things come to you, for they break upon your shore. Gain 1 Yin Edge
against any attack made with a weapon. If it fails to overcome your Stance,
you can shatter it with your defense. An Treasure weapon won't be
destroyed, only broken as per BENEVOLENCE.
● RELEASE (Earth 4, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Sometimes you must release an enemy from their rigidity. Crack armor or
bone with your blow, negating Yin Edge from a single source or form.
● EIGHTEEN (Yang 4, 2 Qi, Sustained)
Your prayer or mantra cuts through chaos and quiet. Whenever you apply
Yang Edge, your opponent's Yin Edge is negated. You can blow holes in walls
with the offblow from your strikes, or smash through small buildings.
● MERCY (Earth 5, 4 Qi, Instant)
Sometimes people need to die. With your mercy, they need not. You can break
an opponent's form as a Wound, leaving them unable to access it until they
heal that Wound.
● ENLIGHTEN (Yang 5, 2 Qi, Instant)
Compassion Palm has no enemies, only students -- and you must always
dream that someday they will come back to teach you what they've learned.
You can force a Wound with a finisher that compels an enemy to abandon
whatever's holding them back. Upon healing a to-death Wound, they can
immediately take a Skill reflecting what they've learned. Alternately, they can
gain access to Compassion Palm.
THE CULTIVATION SCHOOL 修真門
Rank: 5
Face: 10, +3 with philosophers, +3 with medics and healers
Assets: Jiu Qiji, ghost story expert (3)
Hua Quanbian, disreputable doctor (3)
Assorted Treasures of various invention
Zixing Temple, secluded library and symposium
Motto: He who cultivates himself finds virtue in truth; he who cultivates
the world finds virtue everywhere.
HEROIC MOVE
● Save a life
HUMBLING MOVE
● Speak a truth nobody wants to hear, though they won't ignore it
The Cultivation School wants us to move past all this, someday. It dreams
that we will outlive the corrupt, the hateful, the bitter. It dreams that we will
abandon these things within ourselves, the greed and weakness that we
thought was human nature, and discover what we were really meant to be:
something transcendent. Something divine. Something immortal. This is
humanity as we were meant to be.
Every member of the Cultivation School is thus a visionary, but everyone
has a different vision: a priest studies methods of spiritual projection. A
biohacker produces a serum to rejuvenate aging cells and lost limbs. A
mathematician intends to abandon flesh altogether for code and
circuitboard64. Each one brings that patient, almost alien focus to their
everyday fight against Xiatian's injustice; but all these paths lead to the same
destination.
The Cultivation School practices what are called internal styles, light and
precise and at times esoteric. Eight Trigrams Palm rearranges the space
around a youxia. Weaver Fist uses similar principles to redirect force and
energy between two fighters. Golden Elixir Art is practiced by healers and
alchemists to strengthen flows of Qi. Evil Sealing Art inverts those principles
to bind and stopper spiritual power.
To make a Cultivation School youxia, pick two:

● A spirit-clearing meditation punctuated by the ringing of a bell
● A program for navigating software as a VR avatar, commented with an
ASCII gear
● A pair of shades that serve to mask your emotions
● A formation or design that shouldn't be able to do what it does
● An idiot you've learned so much from
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not altogether, quit exaggerating
● A clock counting down to an impossibly distant date
● Pills of immortality that almost work
● A favorite proverb or koan
● An extremely niche specialty or piece of knowledge
● A garden
EVIL SEALING ART 封邪術
The Cultivation School's 方士 fangshi method-masters study ten
thousand apparently disparate theories under the umbrella of the Evil Sealing
Arts: celestial cosmographies, breath circulation, the exorcism rites of
demons and ghosts65. It all seems like abstract and arcane nonsense, but it
gets them some terrifying results. Masters of the Evil Sealing Art don't see
you -- they see the momentum and trajectory of your attacks, the leverages
of your joints, the flow of your Qi. With a touch they can block or bind all of
these. Supposedly, these are the powers with which the Cultivation School
polices evil sorcerers, ghosts66, and other such boogeymen. But they'll happily
use them on a wicked youxia.
Evil Sealing Art is practiced with fingertip or open palm, though some
fangshi use talisman-chains or welded coin swords alongside. It uses Water
forms to drain an opponent's Momentum and Yin forms to inflict bindings
when they can no longer resist. Any Evil Sealing Art form can be undone by
any other master who meets that form's requirements, as a miscellaneous
action.
● DENY (Water 2, Instant, 1 Qi)

Deny them all face or progress. An opponent loses 1 Momentum when they
fail to overcome your Stance.
● WORLD (Yin 2, Sustained, 0 Qi)
All the world is open for the fangshi to use. You can replace the Water
requirement for for forms with Wood if you use chains or talisman ribbons,
replacing footwork with grabs. Or you can replace it with Metal if you use
welded coin swords or lightning, replacing footwork with reaches.
● MASTER (Water 2, Instant, 1 Qi)
Your authority in this matter comes from expertise. If you're in the element of
your focus (fighting against machines for the gear, spooky things for the bell,
or criminals for the mask) or if you have Edge from exploiting an enemy's
style's weakness, they lose 1 Momentum when you make a successful motion.
● CONDEMN (Water 3, Sustained, 1 Qi)
Lack of restraint causes your enemies to overreach. Overreach places them
within your restraints. Ask what causes your enemy to lose control.
Whenever they fail a Yang roll, they lose 1 Momentum.
● BALANCE (Water 3, Sustained, 2 Qi)
Action flows from nature and nature accumulates from action. Whenever you
would gain Momentum, you can cause an enemy to lose Momentum instead.
Whenever you would cause an enemy to lose Momentum, you can gain that
much Momentum instead. You can't do both at once.
● STILL (Yin 3, Sustained, 2 Qi)
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which, you know, don't even exist
66
which, again, don't exist
All spasmic motion is ultimately futile. When you land a successful footwork,
pick a Path and ask them what limb they need to use that Path. You paralyze
that limb, preventing them from using their highest Path forms. They can
spend 1 Momentum to work around that limb, and once they've spent 5
Momentum they're free of the effect.
● WEAKNESS (Yin 3, Sustained, 2 Qi)
You see tiny flaws to capitalize on. When you land a successful footwork, ask
what their style's weakness is and negate your opponent's Technique. They
can pay 1 Momentum to use Aspect forms, or they can drop it to invoke
another one. Once they've spent 5 Momentum, they're immune to this form
for the rest of the fight.
● EMPTY (Water 4, Sustained, 2 Qi)
You await all futile struggle patiently. Any successful footwork causes them
to lose 1 Momentum.
● SUBDUE (Yin 4, Instant, 2 Qi)
Sealing devils under mountains and demons in chains, your work will endure
forever. Sustained Evil-Sealing effects can be applied as a Wound on a
finisher instead of being applied normally. It lasts as long as the Wound does
and can't be spent out.
● COMMAND (Yin 5, Sustained, 2 Qi)
You are in control. When you land a successful footwork, you can specify an
action they cannot take. This cannot be an action required to survive, nor can
it go against their deepest values. They find themselves unable to take that
action, unless they spend 1 Momentum or 1 Qi. Outside a fight, they must
highlight the fight to do so. This is always a valid Yin highlight. Once they've
done so 5 times, they can break free of the effect.
● SHIVER (Water 5, Sustained, 4 Qi)
Even after your touch fades, your victim feels the ripples remain. Upon a
successful highlighted footwork, your enemy suffers a phantom Wound that
doesn't count against their limit. Whenever they lose or spend Momentum
under this Wound, they spend twice as much. If they ever drop to 0
Momentum without landing a finisher on you, this turns into a regular Wound.
They can spend 1 Qi per turn to stave this off. Once they've spent 5 Qi, they're
free of the effect.
THE BUTTERFLY SECT 蝴蝶派
Rank: 5
Face: 9, +3 with rich people, +3 with artists
Assets: Artists and high society connections (3)
So much money (3)
Diemei Opera Hall, where you can stage anything... once
Plastic Lau, who can hijack you into any broadcast you need
Motto: Silk before steel, and a song before both.
HEROIC MOVE:
● Come out of a nasty situation untouched
HUMBLING MOVE:
● Ask for help with something shameful 67
The Butterfly Sect is the hottest 68, most exclusive, most deeply yearned-
for secret club in Xiatian. Everyone who's anyone dreams of namedropping a
friend in the Butterfly Sect -- let alone claiming one of the fabled butterfly
seals for themselves. Art with the butterfly stamp is absolutely irresistible to
bohemians and elites alike, and the Butterfly Sect uses this influence to
powerful effect. They fight power with power, bribing corrupt politicians back
to honesty or blackmailing them into it. Beauty is the Sect's weapon, and its
guiding star: it was founded to protect those who had nothing to their name
but beauty, and it upholds that mission to this day.
Martial arts of the Butterfly Sect are likewise beautiful to behold, utilizing
finesse over force. Nine Sounds Fist turns music into a deadly weapon, while
Empty Sleeves Fist strangles its opponents with a dancer's hair or beauty.
Lake Mirror Fist is a style of truth in lies, and Eight Principles of Eternity
wields the decisive strokes of calligraphy.
To make a Butterfly Sect youxia, pick two:

● A veil or hat to mask your radiant face
● A cute or realistic holographic avatar, crowned with a gear
● Theremin guQin, laser erhu, or other modified instrument
● A rich patron you're stringing along
● Hangers-on who love your work
● A lover or rival in your field, who brings out the best or worst in you
● Your masterpiece, almost complete
● A scandal in progress
● A mansion you're allowed to live in
● A butterfly stamp, irrevocable proof of elite membership
67
Since you're paying double Face for this, it costs someone double Face to turn you down.
68
In both senses of the word.
EMPTY SLEEVES FIST 空袖拳
Empty Sleeves Fist wants to give you what you want. Its masters are
alluring; untouchably beautiful, yet inviting you to reach out and touch them.
Their allure is that of the anglerfish. Then, once they have you hooked, they
reach out to you. They entangle. They enfold. They entrap. And then they
strangle. This is the nature of love, Empty Sleeves regrets to inform you:
desire is need, and the mastery of it is a weapon like any other. Ultimately, it
is the final weapon up their sleeves.
Empty Sleeves Fist is practiced most often with ribbons, or extensions of
clothes or hair69. Its weapons, though unlikely, are rendered flexible and
durable by the infusion of qi. It can also be used with bolas, rope darts, and
fans that snap shut to trap weapons. Empty Sleeves Fist uses Wood forms to
ensnare and entangle, and Yin forms to leverage that control.
● PAPER (Wood 2, 1 Qi, Instant)

Veils of paper hide dark trails: of ink, of money, of blood. Ask one of the
following questions as you investigate a scene or a person, and gain 1
Momentum when you capitalize on the answer 70:
- Who benefits from this?
- Where did the money come from?
- Where did the money go?
- What did they want most from this?
● ACCEPT (Wood 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
It is good to refuse a little before accepting a gift graciously. You can steal
something from anyone you can touch if they're not paying attention, or out
of their hands if they are. Treasures are too personal to keep, though -- if
they come at you next turn, you'll drop it back to them 71.
● INNOCENT (Yin 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
How could one so beautiful possibly bear any blame? When you fight, anyone
watching is under the impression that you're only acting in self-defense and
were attacked first, even if they know better. If they actually attack you first,
gain 1 Momentum.
● ELEGANT (Yin 2, 1 Qi, Sustained)
A well appointed lady 72 is never without her tools. Everyday items like
scarves, hair, or calligraphy scrolls become durable enough to use in a fight.
They also extend their range -- motions made using them can touch people
who are disengaged, or in another field if you already had that range.
● SLEEVES (Yin 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
69
Or I knew one guy who used chains, but we can't talk about that in an all-ages game.
70
You have permission to be loose with the timing on this one -- if you read a mark and don't start the fight
for a few minutes, you can go in with the Momentum.
71
fumble it if you don't let go gracefully, but you wouldn't be caught dead that clumsy, right?
72
or gentleman, or elsegendered dandy
Where do kings keep their armies73? You can pull anything out of your
sleeves, or vanish it into your sleeves, as long as you can hold it in one hand.
Empty Sleeves practitioners by tradition wear wide-sleeved hanfu, but
sometimes they instead stow things in their pockets or hoodies.
● HOLLOW (Wood 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Wail as their sword pierces your breast -- then twist to reveal it's only caught
in your grasp. When someone makes physical contact with you, including by
making any successful motion against you, you can grab them despite not
beating their Stance. You don't gain Momentum, but they can't move away
from you.
● LOVE (Wood 3, 2 Qi, Sustained)
Your face draws them in like moths to a flame. When you successfully grab
someone, you can ask their player if they fall in love with you. Romantically or
not, they become obsessively possessive of you, and you can write each other
down as Connections. They can cite a debt, perspective or Connection and
spend 2 Momentum to break this obsession. You're considered to be grabbing
them for Empty Sleeve forms so long as they're in love with you.
BTW: SAFETY CONSIDERATIONS
You talked those over before you started playing, right? Players should
check with everyone involved before making each other fall in love. If anyone
is uncomfortable, they can use the safety tools your table has agreed on. It's
also fine to revoke your comfort later on, rewind everything and play it out
differently or rewrite the context of everything in hindsight. No part of this
game comes above the safety of the players.
● HEART (Wood 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)

The way to a man's ribs is through his heart. You can roll (Wood) additional
dice on a motion when you leverage someone's debt, perspective, or a secret
you can blackmail them with. If you succeed, the effects of the grab continue
until they disavow their debt, expose their own blackmail, etc, usually as a
Wretched Move.
● CARE (Yin 3, 2 Qi, Sustained)
A wink, a sigh, and your friends fall over themselves to protect you -- isn't it
so nice to have people who care? When you're targeted by a motion while
engaged with someone you have grabbed, you gain 1 Yin Edge or 2 if your
shield has 6+ Stance. If it would beat your unmodified Stance but not your
boosted one, their motion hits your human shield instead; any adverse effects
affect them, and you gain Momentum instead of the attacker.
● MAD (Yin 3, 2 Qi, Sustained)
Occasionally desire drives us beyond the bounds of reason, and we call that
madness. You provoke that desire. Whenever someone you've got grabbed
makes a motion, you can interrupt to change the target of their motion to
73
I'm really sorry about this.
whoever you want. If your interrupt is successful, it doesn't count against the
1/exchange limit.
● SHINE (Wood 4, 2 Qi, Instant)
Pause for a moment so moonlight or neon shines on you, let the veils fall
away, and dazzle them with your beauty. Roll a single grab against everyone
who can see you, gaining successful Momentum if you beat any of them 74.
Anyone you get is mesmerized, forgetting their weapons for a moment. You
can decide whether they're rooted to the spot or instead shuffle towards you
mindlessly. Either way, they can't roll a motion against you while they're
grabbed unless they cite a debt, perspective, or Connection.
● BEAUTY (Yin 4, 2 Qi, Sustained)
Who could bring themselves to mar such beauty as yours? Bullets turn aside
and blades warp rather than break your skin. You can't be hurt by anyone you
haven't hurt; if you haven't rolled a motion against them, their motions
against you gain 1 less Momentum. This protection ends once you've taken a
Wound; bleed and the illusion shatters.
● TOUCH (Wood 5, 3 Qi, Instant)
People may resist your beauty from afar. But a touch breaks through all
abstract defenses and reminds them how human they are, and to be human is
to need you. If you can touch someone, you have them grabbed for the
purposes of Empty Sleeves or other Wood forms, even if you can't beat their
stance. You can use this form at the same time as other Empty Sleeves forms.
● DREAM (Yin 5, 3 Qi, Instant)
A dream in the heart never dies. When you have someone grabbed, you can
whisper in their ear and let go. They won't tell what you said, or won't
remember. At a time you set, or under a specific condition, they'll be activated
as a sleeper agent and follow a single sentence command of yours. You can
activate Empty Sleeves forms that you have in this Technique at that time, to
add on things you can make them do.
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you get extra Momentum for grab beating a footwork if you hit everyone and the highest was a footwork.
THE BEGGARS GROUP 丐幫
Rank: 5
Face: 9, +3 with poor people, +3 with spies
Assets: Dirty-clothes spy network (3)
Clean-clothes sanctuary network
Elder So, keeper of the sect's history
Uncle Mok, who can get you a menial job anywhere
the abandoned warehouse that's currently town hall and crash
pad
Motto: Uncountable; untraceable; unstoppable; and always watching.
HEROIC MOVE
● Act under a pseudonym, which gains Face instead of your legal name
HUMBLING MOVE
● Ask the Beggars as a whole for information 75. Someone's gonna know,
but they will all make fun of you for not knowing.
The Beggars Group squabble, gripe, and beg. They pickpocket, sell flesh or
vice, and do whatever it takes to make ends meet. And they form possibly the
greatest spy network Xiatian has ever seen. Dirty-clothes members are literal
beggars; clean-clothes members have found respectable jobs. Between the
two groups, Beggars might be anyone: steal a data stick or throw a pipe
bomb, then take a jacket off and blend into the crowd 76. The Beggars Group
will take anyone in, too, even if only for a day. This leads to fractious
infighting, sometimes over minute differences. As a result, the Beggars Group
are more of a loose alliance than a sect these days. It's true that some
whisper of a lost Jade Stick that would declare a leader worthy to reunify the
sect. It's also true that nobody cares about that, these days.
The martial arts of the Beggars Group arose from street brawling and
fending off pests. Its two ancient signatures are Dogbeater Bludgeon, which
can lay waste to whole armies77, and Dragon-Subduing Palms, a style of
destructive power stolen from heaven. It has also taken custodianship of
Drunken Master practitioners, who stumble around erratically, and has
invented Iron Lead Way, a flexible style of gun and saber.
To make a Beggars Group youxia, pick 2:

● A shirt worn over the mouth, obscuring both face and voice
● A fake beard glued to a mask
75
Since you're paying double Face, it costs them double Face to refuse.
76
Rank in the Beggars is indicated by zippers and pockets. The 日天無安 Article tried banning
zippers, which meant tons of zippered clothes were thrown away, which meant everyone started
scrounging them to wear, and now real Beggars are even harder to pick out.
77
But nobody has truly mastered Dog-Beating Staff since the Jade Stick was lost... unless you think you
could?
● A gear-shaped keyring of data sticks
● A friend who let you crash on their couch for a month once
● A friend who crashed on your couch for a month once
● The Jade Stick
● A Beggar of your acquaintance who is an expert
chef/plumber/lawyer/etc
● A hideout nobody else knows about, in the city's guts
● Several zippers across your clothing, indicating how cool a Beggar you
think you are
IRON LEAD WAY 鐵鉛道
Iron Lead Way was born from Xiatian's people, but it was not born in
Xiatian. This is the style of its wanderers and exiles, who braved the smog-
choked and poorly-terraformed wilderness outside its walls. Starving beasts
and bandits beset them. Old war-machines lurched to life at their approach.
They had to fend for themselves at any moment. Thus the watchwords of
Iron Lead are range and readiness. With saber in one hand and gun in the
other, Iron Lead masters can shootout duel from a distance or fend off jaws
from their throats. No one else is prepared like they are, so by switching
between ranges they can force opponents off their footing.
Iron Lead Way is traditionally practiced with revolver in right hand and
saber in left, though particular iconoclasts may use a shotgun or hook sword
instead. Its movements are lean, brutal, efficient, and spike unpredictably. It
uses Earth forms up close and Metal forms at range.
● LEATHER (Earth 2, Instant, 1 Qi)

What's the worst that could happen? A surprise loses all Yang Edge, since it's
no worse than the shit you're already in. You always have fifty wen, a drink
and a smoke.
● IRON (Earth 2, Instant, 1 Qi)
You've got them right where you want them. When someone newly engages
you78, you gain 1 Yin Edge.
● HOME (Metal 2, Instant, 1 Qi)
Home's a long reach away. You'll have to make do. Cobble some device or
construction together, and use it to negate Yang Edge if it catches someone
off guard. You can pretty much always build something serviceable with 15
minutes and a pile of scrap.
● LEAD (Metal 2, Instant, 1 Qi)
You've got them right where you want them. When someone leaves
engagement range79, gain 1 Yang Edge against them.
● DUST (Earth 3, Instant, 1 Qi)
Kick up a cloud with the force of your blow. When an enemy engages with
you, you can interrupt without counting against the 1/exchange limit.
Interrupt or not, a successful motion can knock your enemy back out of
engagement range.
● POWDER (Metal 3, Instant, 1 Qi)
The crack of your gun fills the air. When an enemy enters your field, you can
interrupt without counting against the 1/exchange limit. Interrupt or not, a
successful motion can stun them, allowing you to close the distance and be in
front of them when they clear their eyes.
● INSTINCT (Metal 3, Sustained, 1 Qi)
78
either because you moved to them, or they moved to you.
79
but it's gotta be able to reach them, so either it's a reach or you're doing something weird
Your plans and movements may look calculated, but only because you know
them so deeply they're reflexive. When you reach against someone who just
engaged, gain 1 Yin Edge. When you strike someone who's trying to disengage,
gain 1 Yang Edge.
● TRAIL (Earth 4, Sustained, 2 Qi)
Every step follows naturally from the last. Whenever you make a reach on the
turn after a strike, gain 1 Momentum, and vice versa.
● BULLET (Metal 4, Instant, 2 Qi)
If you meet God on the road, shoot him. Your bullet cuts through defensive
Techniques, as well as any Yin Edge from invincibility or regeneration.
Attainments that would defend may shatter or become unusable. A Wound
inflicted by this can't be healed any way except the slow way. It would be a
Humbling Move to use this in any fight that's not to the death.
● REVOLVE (Metal 5, Instant, 4 Qi)
Spin your chamber and laugh at God. You may lay out a sequence of up to
(Yang) actions, and then perform them all one after the other as interrupts.
You aren't limited by the normal interrupt rules, but if you fail any action or
motion, the sequence ends. After your interrupts, you only need to rest for
one turn, but during that turn your Stance drops by 1 for each action you took.
● COME (Earth 5, Sustained, 2 Qi)
All roads lead to you. Once you've made a successful motion against an
enemy, they can't move away from you voluntarily for the rest of the
exchange, even if they aren't engaged. When you use an Instant Earth form
against an enemy that's just become engaged, it isn't used up. When you
become engaged with someone new, gain 1 Momentum.
THE MARTIAL SAINT FORMATION 武聖團
Rank: 5
Face: 9, +2 with police, +2 with triads
Assets: Triad connections (2)
Police connections (2)
Arsenal stockpiles around the city (2)
Crazy Ng, habitual conman
Guanxing Martial Temple, only house of faith with built in cannons
Motto: Heaven is high and the emperor is far away -- but I'm right here.
HEROIC MOVE
● Betray a friend or yourself for justice
HUMBLING MOVE
● Shelter a loved one from justice. The Apologetic Move for family
exceptions won't save you here.
The Martial Saint Formation are traitors. For centuries they were dirty
lawmen or vigilante criminals. Both worshiped Emperor Guan Yu, who wields
his halberd on the left for triads and on the right for police.80. Both were torn
between comradeship and burning justice. In Guan Yu's name, the Saints
finally broke away, grasping his guandao with both hands and forming their
own sect. Now they lay down the law, exposing corruption and repaying evil
with evil. One corpse at a time, they're cleaning up Xiatian.
Now former gangsters fight side by side with the cops who pursued them.
They'll even go so far as to cooperate with Running Dogs (pg xx), earning
them the mistrust of other sects -- but that's fine by the Martial Saints, who
only need to work together long enough to solve a case. Even so, they eye
each other warily. Every Saint knows that if push came to shove, if it really
became a matter of honor and justice, that they would betray their sect-
siblings without a doubt.
The martial arts of the Martial Saints are overwhelming, uncompromising,
and bloody. Upright Guest Sword assures everyone you are worthy to wield
your famous weapon. Eclipse Fist overturns the mighty. Impermanence
Chains restrains criminals as easily as hell-guards restrain sinners. Heavenly
Eye Ways lets you pick people apart. Amputation Blade lets you chop people
the goddamn hell up.
To make a Martial Saint Formation youxia, pick 2:

● Body armor not worn since your right-handed days
● A mask not worn since your left-handed days
80
Saints still refer to themselves as "left-handed" if they came from crime, or "right-handed" if they
came from law enforcement.
● Your former service weapon 81
● A former partner you sold out
● A former partner you still love
● Access to police databases
● A tattoo on your face or other visible place 82
● A mob-front dim sum place where they still begrudgingly seat you
● A shrine to Guan Yu, also titled Emperor Guandi
● A widow you still support financially
● A debt of honor to someone awful
81
Running Dogs and triads alike favor the Houyi 1314 semiautomatic pistol, which chambers civilian-
illegally large rounds. Dual wield them if you're hard enough.
82
Traditionally a punishment to mark criminals. Particularly brazen Running Dogs keep kill counts on
their neck.
HEAVENLY EYE WAYS 天眼道
Named after Erlang Shen's truth-seeing third eye, the Heavenly Eye Way is
a style of seeking out some tiny flaw and hammering it until an enemy cracks.
It is not only a martial art, but a methodology of investigation and
interrogation. True masters pierce deception, holographic or spiritual veils,
and ignorance with ease. A flaw in a cover story is the same as a flaw in a
defense or a flaw in armor.
Heavenly Eye Way is practiced with cutting remarks, a piercing stare, and
occasionally pistols or darts. Alternately, its heavier forms are used with the
maces and scepters that symbolize a judge's authority. Masters of the
Heavenly Eye Way move unobtrusively, unhurriedly, stopping to dawdle at a
flowerbush that will prove to be crucial later. The Heavenly Eye Way uses
Metal forms to identify its weaknesses and Yang forms to hammer in on
them.
● BETRAYAL (Metal 2, 1 Qi, Instant)

Where three gather together, two may betray one. When you investigate a
relationship between two people, you can roll a reach. If successful, ask one
of the following questions, and gain 1 Momentum if the answer is yes:
- Is one of them lying about the other?
- Is one of them lying to the other?
- Will [this one] cave first?
● FILE (Metal 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
You never know what might end up coming in handy. Pull a trivia fact out of
your head as you make a reach. If you succeed, you reveal that you know
enough to match them at their own game, temporarily gaining a Skill you
need to interact with them. This only ever counts for one scene -- you can
make a wild play to reveal that you're actually a genius mahjong player, but
ah, ain't this embarrassing, only island mahjong, and these fine fellows are
playing continental, etc etc.
● FLAW (Yang 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
The souls of the guilty open themselves up even as they scrabble to cover
themselves. When you exploit someone's debt, perspective, or Connection,
gain 1 Yang Edge.
● FOLLOW (Yang 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
Sometimes investigation is nothing but good follow-through. When you beat
someone's Stance, gain 1 Yang Edge on your next motion against them.
● GUILTY (Metal 3, 1 Qi, Instant)
Their trembling hands -- their sweat, beading -- their flickering eyes tell you
exactly what they don't want you to see. You can ask one of the following
questions about someone as you roll a reach, and gain 1 Momentum if the
answer is yes:
- Are they afraid of me right now?
- Are they hiding something from me right now?
- Is their weakness in this room?
- Did they know what I just told them?
- Do they know I suspect them?
● KEY (Metal 3, 2 Qi, Instant)
For every shroud of secrecy, every defense, every locked gate there is one key
that will let you through. When you investigate a scene or a suspect as you
roll a reach, you can ask one of the following questions, and gain 1
Momentum when you capitalize on it 83. If nobody has a good answer in
mind84, you can suggest your own, but with an added obstacle or
consequence.
- What am I not seeing?
- What doesn't match or add up?
- Where has something been hidden?
- Where do I look to find the answer?
- Who or what is the weakest link?
● EVIDENCE (Metal 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Nothing happens without leaving a trace. When you examine a scene and roll
a reach, you can reconstruct a mental picture of what happened; alternately,
when you examine an object 85, you can reconstruct a mental picture of what's
happened to it recently. You may need to highlight your investigation multiple
times if there are multiple past events you're interested in 86. If you examine
someone you're fighting, you can set their Stance back to what it was on the
previous turn, as you catch a weakness they thought you'd overlooked.
● JUDGE (Yang 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
You are not a soldier. You are judge and executioner, and you can only touch
those who have been turned over to you. When you cite a Skill or Connection
that gives you insight into someone, or if you reveal evidence of their guilt,
you gain 1 Momentum.
● REVELATION (Yang 3, 1 Qi, Instant)
You cannot force someone to testify against themselves, but sometimes you
can hardly stop them. When you make a successful motion, you can forego 1
Momentum to get them to show their hand. They choose one of the following:
- Admit to a secret, though it'll end up being a Heroic Move if they get away
with it
- Drop an illusion or pretense
- Give up an opening, reducing their Stance by 1 until the end of their next
turn
● IMPOSSIBLE (Metal 4, 1 Qi, Instant)
83
You have permission to be loose with the timing on this one -- if you hit a suspect with an accusation and
don't start the fight for a few minutes, you can go in with the Momentum.
84
first consulting anyone who's running the game, then any youxia of the mask
85
and roll a reach
86
for example, how the crowbar was used to murder and then how it got to this incinerator
Eliminate all impossibility, and what remains must be the truth. Ask any
question about someone when you make a successful reach, and their
player87 writes out two truths and a lie88. Gain 1 Momentum if you capitalize
on the truth.
● SUBDUE (Yang 4, 2 Qi, Instant)
Sometimes it's necessary to relieve a lawbreaker of their ability to break law.
When you successfully interrupt someone you've exposed in this scene, you
can inflict a phantom Wound that damages the Treasure or Technique they
used to offend you -- by default, the one you interrupted. This Wound doesn't
count against their limit, but when they invoke that Treasure or forms from
that Technique, everyone gains 2 Yang Edge against them for the rest of the
exchange.
● METHODOLOGY (Metal 5, 2 Qi, Instant)
It may seem that you've exhausted all leads in dead ends and gained no
purchase, but ah, there's just one last thing... When you fail a reach, you can
highlight how you've left the real important question for now. If you used a
Metal Heavenly Eyes form earlier in the scene, you can use it again and ask a
different question. Reroll your failed reach.
● DAMN (Yang 5, 3 Qi, Instant)
When the Heavenly Eye looks on the unworthy, they are silenced forever. A
Wound inflicted on someone you've exposed the guilt of carries an additional
effect: they don't gain any Face from Heroic Moves and all their Humbling
Moves become Wretched instead. Word of their sin spreads across the
jianghu, and it's the first thing people think of when they look at the
lawbreaker.
87
or players, if they want to call on others for help
88
traditionally about motive, means, and opportunity
THE GHOST BLADE SOCIETY 鬼刀會
Rank: 5
Face: 9, +2 with killers, +2 with smugglers
Assets: Blood money89 (3)
Heijin Cave, the most tastefully gilded grotto
Ke Jia'e, who can declare you legally dead for a price
The Island Hotel chain, safe places for any Ghost Blade (2)
Gei, expert in a thousand different poisons
WASH, who'll have a crime scene clean within half an hour of your
call
Motto: Death will find you, but not before I get my finder's fee for helping.
APOLOGETIC MOVE:
● Keep it professional
HUMBLING MOVE:
● Protect something from doom because you care about it
The Ghost Blade Society are a well-dressed, well-heeled guild of

murderers. They're not heartless, just hopeless: they believe that Xiatian is
inherently doomed, a patient dying on the table... but that doesn't mean they
can't act now to cut out the worst of the sickness. And, in the meantime, they
take a drip of blood money. Every Ghost Blade uses their discretion in what
contracts they take, and if any other Ghost Blade disagrees it's their right to
duel about it.90 Still, to outsiders the Ghost Blade Society is cryptic, creepy,
and a little worrying.
Ghost Blade styles are either ferocious or uncanny, but alarming either
way. Five Venoms synthesizes poison beyond poison, in abstract and spiritual
forms. Falling Leaves renders one weightless and intangible as a ghost. Heart
Devil Fist empowers berserker vengeance. Eclipse Style is for hidden
revolutionaries and the Mardan people (pg xx). Flying Puppet uses drones
and marionettes as weapons. Bitter Gun Ways espouses detached and brutal
murder. Meanwhile, defectors from other sects also often mix in their native
styles.
To make a Ghost Blade Society youxia, pick two:

● A demonic facemask or gasmask
● A bell that does not ring to human hearing
● A feral or venomous pet that you love dearly
● A name to cross off
89
At least, I assume. They've got to do something with all those commissions aside from gilding their
guns.
90
Fortunately, Xiatian's dukes have as many sins as they have enemies, so there's always worthy
contracts.
● A neighbor auntie who thinks you work in a meat plant
● A dealer who sells you arms, cover identities, and weed
● Funeral clothes
● A Running Dog (pg xx) dead set on capturing you
● A neighbor auntie you're almost sure thinks you work in a meat plant
● A mummified corpse
HEART DEVIL FIST 心魔拳
Heart Devil Fist is not a good style. Heart Devil Fist is for youxia who have
set aside righteousness and skill and wisdom so they can kill a motherfucker.
They cultivate anger and terror and hate in their hearts, throwing themselves
headfirst into the qi deviation that they cause. The result is a youxia fighting
with deadly force and brutality, powering through injuries that should lay
them low, sometimes physically mutating from the heat of their hateful qi.
Sometimes they mutate into monsters as a result. Sometimes they die. As a
result, nobody studies Heart Devil Fist if they have much to live for. True
masters of Heart Devil Fist usually fight for bloodlust or vengeance, and don't
intend to long outlive their targets.
Heart Devil Fist is practiced with fists, sabers, shotguns, baseball bats, and
broken glass. Its masters are prone to forgetting their strength, or maybe
just not caring. Heart Devil Fist uses Metal forms to focus on a single target
and Fire forms to let loose. It often requires swearing vengeance on someone:
in general, vengeance for a slight lower than the stakes of the current fight 91
isn't worth caring about.
● HOWL (Fire 2, 1 Qi, Sustained)

Let everyone know exactly how pissed you are. If you've been Wounded this
scene, all your motions get extra (Wounds) dice.
● SIN (Metal 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
The weight of our karma tethers us all to earthly concerns like vengeance and
kicking in asses. Ask what would drive someone to attack you or lose control.
Gain 1 Momentum if you push them to it.
● KEEP (Metal 2, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Keep going. Qi deviation Wounds don't hurt you anymore, or count against
your limit. When you
● DEVIL (Fire 3, 1 Qi, Sustained 92)
The world condemns you to monstrosity. You might as well lean into it. Enter
qi deviation if you aren't already, and assume a monstrous form: gain up to
(Yang) different Treasures, each one reflecting a different mutation like nails
grown into claws or horns bursting through your skull. 93 You can gain a new
mutation when you take a Wound from qi deviation. Mutations can be
suppressed with a recovery scene of meditation, though traces may remain
while you deviate.
● PAIN (Fire 3, 1 Qi, Instant)
91
or the fight you'd declare over it right now, if you're not actively fighting
92
To be clear, Sustained gives you the mutations right away, and you can invoke them as Treasures during
that exchange. You can keep gaining mutations during that exchange. The mutations stick around after, but
you're not using them effectively unless you evoke this form again.
93
It's traditional to have one established monster-form to hulk into, but you can change them around if you
want.
In this world there's only one thing you can rely on. When someone rolls a
finisher against you, you can forego Stance and let them score a certain hit. If
you do, you can pull yourself down their blade to roll a reversal on them after.
● INVINCIBLE (Fire 3, 2 Qi, Instant)
Do they think you're going to be stopped by a little thing like "locked doors" or
"thirty guys"? You can interrupt yourself for up to (Yang) consecutive
motions, as long as they're all against different enemies or against a Mob.
Alternately, you can use one of these motions to destroy something that
doesn't have an Edge of durability. You only need to rest for one turn after,
but your Stance is 0 during that time.
● BLOOD (Metal 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Blood will out. You've sworn vengeance against someone who's Wounded
you, humiliated you or otherwise wronged you. You can always pick up the
trail of your quarry, though you might not be able to catch up to them, and
you gain 1 Momentum each exchange you start with them. Fighting them for
blood or to the death is a Heroic Move.
● EXECUTE (Metal 3, 1 Qi, Instant)
There's no justice in this world. There's just you. When you Wound someone
who's Wounded you or who you've otherwise sworn vengeance against, roll
an additional (Metal) dice to inflict Wounds.
● HELL (Fire 4, 2 Qi, Sustained)
No mere devil, you are the very visage of Hell. Enter qi deviation if you haven't
already, and assume a terribly monstrous form: gain up to 3 Edge, one for
each of the following questions you say yes to:
- Are you going to kill someone here?
- Do you intend to sacrifice yourself in this fight?
- Have you set the place on fire?
The Edge gained from this is counted as either a Crowd advantage or a Huge
advantage, as you either swell to enormous size or grow multiple arms to
thrash your enemies94. It lasts only for the exchange, though you remain
large/scary and can reinvoke the form next exchange to continue reaping the
benefits. You can activate this form at the same time as DEVIL.
● LAUGH (Metal 4, 2 Qi, Instant)
Laughter dribbles from your mouth like blood, the manic howl of the damned.
Enter qi deviation if you haven't already, and laugh off an attack -- negate a
motion or a finisher. In exchange, tell us who you're going to kill this scene. If
you fail to, take a qi deviation Wound at the end of the scene.
● HUNGRY (Fire 5, 2 Qi, Sustained)
Flames and blood spray from your path, as you roam the earth like a hungry
ghost. At the end of each turn, gain 1 Momentum, and knock out a Shrimp or
destroy a nearby object, so long as you've moved across the field. Every other
turn, take a qi deviation Wound.
94
or unfold robotic limbs, or project solid qi, or just move so fast your afterimage projects the shadow of six
arms
● SAMSARA (Metal 5, 3 Qi, Instant)
Sorry. You don't get to die yet. When defeated in a fight that's for blood or
death, you can use your dying breath to inflict a Wound on your enemy -- and
then you don't die, if you've sworn vengeance on someone who still survives.
In fact, while they live, you can't die. You'll always escape as a shadow, or a
hungry ghost, or a cybernetic imprint, and return to physical form after a
Lesson.
INEXPLICABLE FIST 無為拳
This is a school and style that does not exist -- a school and a philosophy,
in fact, of nonexistence. Since its students do not exist, they find little
obstacle in locked doors or solid walls. They do not have to explain how their
enemies drop dead, hours or days later, while the assassin's own hand
remains empty. Their motions seem disjoint and jarring. They slide across
distance in a blink of an eye, and seem to drift unfettered from their own
weight. Strike, and you strike at a shadow. Yet you cannot explain what it is
that struck you first. The masters of Inexplicable Fist are not human; they are
not solid; they are not real.
Inexplicable Fist is not practiced, or not-practiced, with empty hands -- it is
learned by forgetting what you know of fighting and regular human motion. It
uses Water forms for its movements and Yin forms for its causeless effects.
THE SPARKS FELLOWSHIP 火花宗
Rank: 5
Face: 9, +1 with engineers and mechanics, +1 with manual laborers
Assets: Qianyue Steelworks, a rare independent manufactory (2)
Xiao Dongbin, pretentious but premier expert on weapons
manufacture and history
Fenghuo Garage, who can make your vehicle anything except
street-legal
Arsenal of cheap weapons (2)
Connections with the CrazyMAX Gang
Government connections
Motto: The true iron bastion is the millions of people who are impossible
for any force to smash.
HEROIC MOVE:
● Give someone something you can't afford
HUMBLING MOVE:
● Requisition or commandeer something from a Fellowship associate
The Sparks Fellowship live in the here and now. They have little patience
for mystic or philosophical debates. They are building their future with their
own hands: with hammer and nail, wrench, riveter, hydraulic press. You can
find Sparks fighting alongside striking dockers, chatting with a welder about
this trouble her sword's been giving her, or teaching kiddie self-defense at a
daycare. What philosophy they have is simple. If there's no clothes on backs
or food on tables, there's no revolution -- and it must be revolution. Maybe
that's why the other sects are so wary of the Sparks Fellowship. After all, it
was one of their revolutions that put Xiatian's current regime in place.
In keeping with their materialism, Sparks martial arts are most conversant
with their weapons. Gasoline Fist takes place at high speed, on motorcycle or
horseback. Backbone Spear is for assuring your comrades you have their
back. Lightning Flash Sword is for striking fast as fucking lightning. Steel
Dragon Style emulates industrial machinery.
To make a Sparks Fellowship youxia, pick two:

● A gear on your business card
● A weapon you love like a pet
● A vehicle you helped build yourself
● A day job as a factory or construction worker
● A house you helped build yourself
● A book on military doctrine, filled with scribbles adapting it to urban
warfare
● A self-defense class you usually run
● A propane-fueled foundry on your roof
GASOLINE FIST 汽油拳
Gasoline Fist is a style practiced at the highest possible velocity. Its
practitioners sling themselves over railings and rooftops for high-speed
parkour getaways. They weave in and out of traffic on flashing motorcycles.
They whip around their opponents on hoverboards. They deliver dropkicks
from three stories up. Gasoline Fist is a study in motion: impossible to keep
out, impossible to catch, eternally living in the moments between the
explosion and hitting the water.
This style is practiced on all manner of vehicles, from hoverboard to flying
sword to genuine horse. Practiced on foot, it's an acrobatic parkour-based
wall-running and spin-kicking style. Its weapons depend on how fast you're
going: at racecar speeds, practitioners seem equally divided between the
shotgun, the lance, and the car itself. Gasoline Fist uses Fire stances to get
into trouble, and Water stances to get back out.
● RAM (Fire 2, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Your ride is tricked out, reinforced, and ready to rock. A vehicle or mount
that's a specific Connection or Treasure is extraordinarily durable -- it can't
be harmed except as a Wound on you 95. Roll (Fire) additional dice when you
use your ride as a weapon.
● LOTUS (Water 2, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Your ride is elegant, dear to your heart, and ready to roll. A vehicle or mount
that's a specific Connection or Asset benefits from your Lightfoot -- you can
ride up walls, across water, etc. Roll (Water) additional dice when riding to
flee a threat.
● EXPRESS (Fire 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
Drop everything to get in there. You can arrive in any troublesome situation
just too late to stop it, but not too late to do something about it. If the first
thing you do is rush, you roll (Fire) additional dice.
● BACKFIRE (Fire 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Sometimes things get out of hand. Turn that into a strength. As you leave a
field or disengage, create a scenery hazard where you were standing --
something blows up, falls apart, or the consequences of your action
otherwise come due.
● CHARGE (Fire 3, 2 Qi, Instant)
The higher you are, the harder you fall. When you rush someone, roll an
additional (Fire) dice and gain an extra Momentum if you're doing so from
disengaged. If you do so from another field, gain 2 Momentum. If you do so
from outside the fight, gain 3 Momentum. Any consequences of high-velocity
entry are shared with whoever you're hitting. You can also use this to move
even when you're being successfully grabbed, dragging your captor along
with you; if you ram yourself into a wall, it counts as rushing them.
95
It's already advice that Attainments don't get harmed and that harm focuses on the PCs, but now they
extra can't be harmed.
● DODGE (Water 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Cut it close, but cut it. You can roll (Water) dice to add to your Stance
whenever you have no Yin Edge. If they don't beat your Stance, you disengage.
When you disengage, you can give 1 Momentum from yourself to someone
else who remains engaged.
● WHEEL (Water 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Windmill your arms around that steering wheel, and give up control in
exchange for getting the hell out of there. You can roll an additional (Water)
dice to add to your Stance, and disengage if they don't beat your Stance, so
long as your enemy chooses one of the following:
- your enemy gains 1 Momentum, and the exchange doesn't end if it was a
finisher
- your enemy gets 3 dice to their next motion, and the exchange doesn't end
if it was a finisher
- create a new scenery hazard wherever you're at
- temporarily break or lose one of your Assets
● MUSTANG (Water 4, 2 Qi, Instant)
The chase is life, and there's no getting out. Upon a successful footwork, you
can force people in your field into a chase scene (pg xx) even if they have no
Skills that would enable it -- something tilts the arena so everyone slides
downwards, or you grab something important and run with it. Characters who
do have a Skill applicable to racing or chasing can apply it every round, and
Gasoline Fist forms can be reused even if they're Instant.
● FUEL (Fire 4, 1 Qi, Instant)
The traditional Chinese expression of encouragement is to "add oil": refill an
oil lamp, fill up the tank, buy more candle to burn. But metaphor is not your
strong suit. You can drink gasoline, nitrous oxide, or anything else that burns
to choose one of the following in a burst of supercharged speed:
- refresh all Fire and Water forms besides this one
- gain 2 Momentum
- refill Qi
You can also drink gasoline or anything else that burns as if it were alcohol,
and won't suffer serious medical consequences.
● JAGUAR (Fire 5, 3 Qi, Sustained)
Ride a jaguar straight to the end. Grab onto something huge, powerful, and
unsuited to be a vehicle, and ride it. You can ride the rubble of a toppling
building, rein in a fighter jet, or surf an advancing flood. It becomes a
temporary Treasure, and you gain an extra Momentum whenever you use it
with Gasoline Fist.
● DRIFT (Water 5, 2 Qi, Instant)
Drift out of the frying pan and into the fire. Whenever something you don't
like happens, you can choose one of the following instead:
- it's interrupted by a new enemy entering the scene
- something drags or knocks you out of the area
- one of your Assets goes wild
- you set the building on fire
LIGHTNING FLASH SWORD 閃電劍
Lightning Flash Sword is a style whose history is not entirely Xiatian's own.
It draws from the sword forms of Fusao across the sea, where swords are
drawn and sheathed with plasma-arc speed. A kenshi from there and a youxia
from here kissed96 and created Lightning Flash Sword, which capitalizes on
the perfect moment to strike with unhesitating speed. Any moment of
weakness can be a deadly opening for a Lightning Flash Sword master, and
once they start coming they don't stop coming until one of you is dead.
Lightning Flash Sword is sometimes practiced with the sword, sometimes
with the lighter forms of saber, and sometimes unarmed using only the first
two fingers as if they were a blade.
96
or some kind of really important historic and cultural exchange happened, but for some reason
nobody ever asks me about that
THE EVERY LIVING THING CLAN 萬物家
Rank: 5
Face: 9, +1 with people who know the Clan
Assets: Wa Ancestral Temple, where every Living Thing is recorded and
which is big enough to hold everyone for a full-Clan meeting
Connections with immigrant and minority enclaves (3)
Connections to renjie community organizations (3)
Dr. Cheow, head zookeeper at Xiatian Zoo and expert on rare
animals
Jialu, expert in translations including obscure coding languages
Motto: Anything for family.
HEROIC MOVE:
● Sacrifice yourself for family
HUMBLING MOVE:
● Adopt someone
The Every Living Thing Clan loves you. No matter who you are, there is
someone among them who will love you, because they are like you, and they
know what your life is like. They will protect you without second thought,
they will die for you, and they will expect you to do the same for them. Every
youxia is adopted into one of the Clan's many lineages, all shifting constantly
between family and feud. But the Clan is one of the most numerous, and the
most able to reach out beyond the jianghu, and when pressed Every Living
Thing unites into an unstoppable force.
The animal styles have been famous throughout history, though their
practitioners formerly belonged to the Lotus Church. Monkey Fist makes
trouble for everyone. Snake Fist excels at redirecting force and striking at
weak spots. Tiger Fist just goes ham fucking hog, ironically. White Crane Fist
comes at you from every angle. Mantis Fist went extinct a few decades after
the real praying mantis, but a reconstituted Latter Mantis Fist uses joint locks
to break both fist- and gun-based lines of attack.
To make an Every Living Thing Clan youxia, pick two:

● An animal-face mask
● A language aside from Mandarin 97
● A distinctive hairstyle or hat
● A group of adoptive extended family
● A cafe or bar where you and yours hang out
● Cat ears
● A crush on a civilian
97
The state language, but dialects and languages like Jyut or Hakwa are also considered Chinese. Some
other languages, like Tagalog and English, also appear here and there.
● A drone you treat like it's alive
● A pet you absolutely should not have
LATTER MANTIS FIST 後螳螂拳
Once, there were dozens of schools following the Mantis Fist styles, and
hundreds of species of praying mantis. One went extinct. The other followed
suit. Not until the past thirty years has the Latter Mantis Fist been
reconstituted from recovered manuals and new ideas. Mantis Fist broke an
opponent's lines of attack, hooking their joints and pulling them astray. Latter
Mantis Fist adds the use of the gun, breaking enemy gunmen's lines of fire
while opening their own, using pistols for the characteristic hook and as a
weapon of the pistol whip. The mantis is an ambush predator; Latter Mantis
Fist reappears unexpectedly, disrupts all your plans, and leaves you gasping
on the floor.
Latter Mantis Fist uses a characteristic fist with one to three fingers
sticking out angled in a "hook" gesture. A pistol or knife can also be held this
way, crooked down or back to provide a hook. Latter Mantis Fist uses Wood
forms to unseat people and Metal forms to end them.
They're still trying to bring the mantises back.
● HUNT (Wood 2, 0 Qi, Sustained)

Study your quarry with a mantis' bug-eyed gaze -- or hear their footsteps, or
smell them. If you've had the opportunity to study someone for a couple
seconds or if you've gained Momentum from them, you can track where they
are even if you can't see them.
● INTERLOCK (Wood 2, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Interrupt someone with a grab. This doesn't count against your interrupt limit.
If successful, you can pick a motion to deny them, and you gain 1 Yang Edge
against them whenever they use it. The effect ends if you stop successfully
grabbing them.
● AMBUSH (Metal 2, 1 Qi, Instant)
Create darkness or otherwise obscure the field. You might scope all the lights
and shoot them all out in an instant, or kick off the fire sprinklers and reveal
that you laced the tank with paint.98 People can't make motions against
anyone they're not engaged with.
● POUNCE (Metal 2, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Parry their arms or weapons aside, forcing an opening. A successful motion
reduces their Stance by 1. They can't reset their Stance if you keep
successfully grabbing them.
● STALK (Wood 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
You may never know a fly's horror at resting on a branch and having it snap at
you -- but your enemies will. When a character enters a room, you can reveal
that you are there as well, though not necessarily to them.
98
This lasts a couple moments longer than instant -- if someone pulls out a lighter after you've killed all
the lights, you can shoot that too.
● RAPTOR99 (Wood 3, 2 Qi, Sustained)
One sharp motion disarms, flips the gun around, and fires. When you
successfully grab someone, you can pay 1 Momentum to disarm them. If you
beat them by 3100 or more, you grab it and can immediately make another
motion to use it against a different target.
● SHRIKE (Wood 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)
Gun in one hand and motherfucker in the other. When you grab someone, you
can keep them grabbed -- they can't move away, even with a footwork, and
you can drag them around slowly. You can keep them grabbed as long as they
don't manage to land a successful motion on you 101, even if you're using other
motions against other people.
● JEWEL (Metal 3, 1 Qi, Instant)
Duck behind a column or their own limb. Break their line of sight with a
successful motion. They need to reposition to see you again -- if they're far
away, they just need to take a turn moving to another field, but if you're
currently engaged with them they need to take a miscellaneous action before
they can target you again.
● PREY (Metal 3, 2 Qi, Instant)
Latter Mantis Fist has gained a somewhat controversial reputation for
brutality. When you Wound someone, pick a Path and ask them what limb
they need to use it. Attack a joint on that limb, preventing them from using
their highest Path form while that Wound lasts.
● KEEP (Wood 4, 2 Qi, Sustained)
Pick up or impale a human shield. Whenever you have someone grabbed, if
someone rolls a motion against you they have to roll twice and take the
lower. If neither roll would have beat your Stance, their motion hits your
human shield instead, giving you Momentum or causing them to take the
Wound102.
● FLOWER (Wood 4, 1 Qi, Instant)
Zag on em. Switch out to another Technique that costs no more than your
current one.
● EXECUTE (Metal 4, 3 Qi, Instant)
Wound a helpless target without bothering to roll. This includes anyone who
can't see you, has a Stance of 4 or lower, or that you've had grabbed for 3+
rounds.
● EXCRUCIATE (Metal 5, 2 Qi, Instant)
99
Mantis claws are scientifically termed raptorial forelegs.
100
playtest this number
101
This also counts as "keeping them grabbed" for Wood forms that care about that.
102
if you're using a Shrimp as a shield, they get knocked out by any motion even though you would only have
been knocked out by finishers
Interrupt, and if you win you pull their joints so out of place that they lose
their current Technique. They can pay to go straight into another. 103
● PRAY (Wood 5, 3 Qi, Instant)
When someone Wounds you, you can play dead. As soon as they look away,
you can brush that Wound off, springing up and rolling a reversal. Alternately,
you can disappear from the scene. You can't use this Technique again until
you've had a recovery scene.
103
If for some godforsaken reason someone gets hit with this multiple times, they can't switch back to a
Technique they've been thrown out of.
CHAPTER 9: ATTAINMENTS
Attainments are the result of hard work, the passage of time, and the
recognition of others. They are anything attached to your character: people
they know, items they have, knowledge they've worked for. Attainments
usually grant 1 Edge in a common thing you do; 2-3 Edge in a narrow
specialty; or similar amounts of Face, when called on. Other Attainments just
open up new fictional possibilities, like the ability to interface with machines
or to hover midair.
You most often gain Attainments after a Lesson, but you can also have
people give you them, and you can give them away.
TREASURES
Treasures are specific item Attainments. There's no real magic that
protects them from being stolen or destroyed, but they usually won't be
unless it's a Big Deal -- an important part of a Lesson or highlight. Each
Treasure comes marked with a debt that you'll never pay off, but that might
come up every few sessions or so as someone tries to call it in. In a fight, a
Treasure can be invoked up to once per exchange for 1 Yang or Yin Edge.
Possible Treasures include
● your cybernetic third arm that grants 1 Edge on multitasking, leased
from Potsticker when you had a construction job
● the legendary lost Jade Stick that marks you as Chief Beggar, which
grants 2 personal Face with Beggars but also entitles them to call on
you for aid, and also Beggars don't give a shit about who's chief
● your apartment with a ganglord landlady who won't turn you in, but
blackmails you into doing her dirty work instead
● your cybernetic eye that lets you study an enemy's Techniques and copy
them, which you took from a dead comrade's body against his family's
wishes
● the indestructible Red Crescent Saber which grants 2 Edge when pitted
directly against other weapons, on loan from the Lotus Church
● your apartment leased from Qinglong, who won't turn you in but
blackmail you into doing their dirty work instead
● your cybernetic finger which plugs into computer systems to interface
with them, and will so long as Yihao can use you as a Trojan horse
● your manual detailing the Nine Yin White Bone Claw Technique, which
you must destroy before ever letting it fall into the wrong hands
MANUALS
The wulin is full of manuals floating around, books or datasticks where
masters have recorded their Techniques. A youxia can learn Techniques from
these manuals, but not as well as they could learning from a master. Still, it's
a way to learn martial arts you couldn't otherwise. You can only learn the
single Technique detailed in the book, but with a quest you might be able to
reconstruct the rest of the style from that Technique; furthermore, you don't
need to understand the rest of the style to use this Technique.
Manuals are a common Treasure, especially traded among sects as prizes
and rewards. The rarest of them, detailing the most secret styles, have been
cause for war. Conversely, in Xiatian's outskirts, manuals of varying efficacy
are so common that knocking out any three muggers reveals one of them to
be carrying a manual. Appendix C contains tables for rolling up random
manuals.
SKILLS
Skills are Attainments which represent things you've learned. Skills usually
open new fictional doors, allowing you to engage as a doctor or a barber.
They also include access to new martial arts styles, though you need a shifu
or manual to learn from104. When you learn a Skill, it gives you a new
perspective: a new habit, a taboo, something you love or hate. In a fight, you
can use a Skill up to once per exchange for 1 Yin or Yang Edge. Every youxia
has two innate Skills:
● Lightfoot, the mastery of Yin that allows them to balance on bamboo
poles or power cables; and your awareness of all the architecture above
and around you
● Rejuvenation, which heals lesser wounds in a single scene of recovery;
and your awareness of your own body's abilities and injuries
Other possible Skills include

● Hacking, and the many annoying habits you have to preserve online
anonymity
● Spiritual Insight, and the strange taboos you now keep
● Larceny, and the gambling habit you picked up
● the forbidden Nine Yin White Bone Claw technique, and how you can't
stand to let anyone laugh at you
● Medicine, and the pacifist oath you swore
● Mechanics, and your insistence on never replacing anything you can fix
● the secret Ghost Blade style your lover taught you, and how you swore
to avenge her
● Racing, and how you measure every situation by how hard it would be
to escape
● Necromancy105, and the way you try to overwhelm everything with
massive self-sacrifice
● Dronecraft, and how you treat enemy drones like misbehaving pets
104
but learning from a manual only gives you access to that one Technique's forms, not all the style's
forms, until you invent the rest as a style or go learn it from a shifu.
105
quit pretending like this is real, Hong
I don't pretend.
CONNECTIONS
Connections are Attainments that represent people you can expect to be in
your life. Some of them are even groups of people or small factions. Each one
is marked with a relationship, why they care about you. Friendly Connections
will help you out without demanding favors, or even without your asking or
wanting them to. They also come to you for help or get kidnapped sometimes.
Enemy Connections are those who respect you nevertheless, and you can be
sure they'll show up among your enemies often. 106 Possible Connections
include
● the couple who nursed you back to health that time you died
● Liu Wangyou, the beleaguered mortician you keep blackmailing into
sewing you up
● your sifu's heretic disciple, who wants you dead so he can reclaim your
place
● Qiu Boya, the venomous Running Dog who seems on the verge of
defecting
● your lover who is also your sect-sister's acrimonious ex
● Boss J (pg XX), who cheated you out of a million wen with his cyborg cat
ears and keeps menacing you to pay up
● your guild for popular MMORPG Dungeon Revolution
● Shuzi, clever street kid and pickpocket who's always getting herself into
trouble
● the 羊幫 Goat Group, a Beggars splinter who'll hack anything if
it's fun enough
● Bai Mu, the dispassionate Running Dog who wants your fucking guts
● your father
106
Every five sessions or so seems to be a good rate to suggest that your enemy suddenly appears.
CHAPTER 10: RUNS
[I haven't written this yet. Might merge with crime sidequests. Basic
concepts of possible gameplay loops based on cyberpunk and wuxia tropes.
Heist is almost definitely one of them, so is sect politics drama, so is
tournament arc. Focus episodes where you just knock out whatever's
appening in someone's Lesson.]
INTERMISSION: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST
According to Wikipedia, Edward Said's Orientalism
CHAPTER 11: THE CITY
Xiatian is the city we call home. It's what we're fighting over, and what
we're fighting for. You can weave through skyways and megatowers, clamber
over smog-choked factories, paddle across the marsh paddies, or spelunk the
blade-shaped megastructure locals call Big Horn. You can argue and fall in
love with people from around the world, brought here when Xiatian was
gateway to the now-disintegrated empire. You can eat the best congee in the
world here. And as you do, I'll tell you what the city's like:
Xiatian is old and new. The city is home to traditions that have continued
unbroken for millennia, but they mutate now to adapt to the times. Old
alliances are turned to new purposes, technology and spirituality clash and
combine, skyscrapers loom over ancient temples and are loomed over in turn
by Mt. Gongshan. Past and future are inextricable in Xiatian; ignore or dismiss
either at your own peril.
Xiatian is alive. Not literally, but every part of the city has a mind of its
own. Architecture is built to funnel you here or ward you off there. But also,
Xiatian's people fight back, squat in architecture designed to keep them out,
mutiny against politicians who thought they could control the rabble. You
can't control the city's intentions or desires -- you can work with them, or you
can break them.
Xiatian is on the edge. The empire kept it stable with a steady diet of
propaganda and crackdowns, but the empire is gone. Now protests break out
every few months, militia march the streets, and food prices are going up as
supplies go down. Refugees streaming in from the mainland without any
ability to move back out have turned the city into a pressure cooker. Shit is
going to hit the fan soon, and you need to decide which way it's blowing.
Xiatian is ruled by power. That seems like an oxymoron, but pretty words
and appeals to sentiment don't do anything. Xiatian is ruled by megacorp
money and Running Dog guns and even the shattered imperial propaganda
machine. And, if you manage, it's ruled by the sword.
And Xiatian is home. Even if it's not your home, if your home is elsewhere,
it's your home right now. You're not an occupying force or a vagrant hero who
can just vanish when you're done. The aunties at the market know your name,
there's something in this city that loves you, and that's worth fighting for.
DISTRICTS
Xiatian is divided into 13 administrative districts, though Youzhou and
Independence Bay are popularly treated as districts of their own. Each district
has a list of Intentions that guide you to how its citizens or landscape will act
on you, specific Heroic or Humbling moves they can make, some notes on
what it's like to be there, and a list of people and places you're likely to find
there.
YUANHAI
Salt and rust in the air. Patches of corrosion on the pipes overhead,
filtration plants belching smoke. Yuanhai stretches along the fume-polluted
coast, home to the Qinglong Corporation's desalination plants. Its citizens
provide Xiatian with more water than Guiyuchi Lake could ever hold, in
exchange for a trickle of water-scrip107 and a lungful of salt-sickness. Atop
the filtration plants, though, are the palatial glass apartments of the Ao clan
which runs Qinglong like a family business. Yuanhai's citizens have become
resourceful, cobbling together scavenged water condensers and filters to
alleviate the thirst. Still, every waterworker who coughs dry salt looks up at
those crystal towers and knows that the Ao princes lounge in baths of clear
water.
Intentions
● Drain you dry.
● Surround you with resources you can't touch, or can't use.
● Force you into desperation, especially with salt-sickness.
● Lock you down.
Moves
● Citizens invite you for hospitality, including clean water. Give them Face.
● Ao Qinming, patriarch of the Ao branch in Xiatian, offers you a
proposition you can't refuse. Lose Face for accepting. Or gain Face for
turning him down, and get ready to run.
● Machinery refuses to cooperate, breaks down, or blasts out something
deadly. Gain Face if you keep it from killing anyone.
● Hovels and hideouts sprout from every crevice of the water plants.
Spend Face to learn a secret way in or out.
● Black-suited Qinglong goons are menacing someone for stealing water.
Gain Face for running them off, and get ready for reinforcements.
Salt-sickness
The pollution from Qinglong's filtration plants is a cocktail of heavy
metals, toxic synthetics, and particulate salt. It mixes with the moisture in the
air to corrode metals, leaving characteristic streaks of rust on all the exposed
metal around Yuanhai108. The same pollution taints the district's water and
air; if you drink from improperly maintained filters 109 or breathe the air
without a mask, you'll find yourself tasting salt all the time. Your kidneys will
107
Why would Qinglong bother giving you water when they could sell it to the rest of the city at such a
markup?
108
Protective coatings exist, but salt-sickness is so corrosive it's usually cheaper to just patch over the
holes when needed.
109
like the ones most families use to supplement their Qinglong water ration
start to give out110, you'll find yourself making stupid little mistakes. You'll
cough up this horrible rusty phlegm. Eventually your organs will start
corroding from the inside out. And the whole damn time you'll still be deathly
thirsty, no matter how much you drink.
Pretty much everyone in Yuanhai has some measure of salt-sickness.
There are treatments to flush your system, and masks to mitigate it. Don't
worry, it won't kill you for a few years yet.
Ninggu Mushroom Farm

Mushrooms form a large part of the diet in Yuanhai. They don't need much
irrigation, and if you grow the right mushrooms they aren't much affected by
salt-sickness. Steamed fish with mushroom and ginger 111 is one of the staple
dishes here, and a good few of those fish owe their fragrance to Ninggu
Mushroom Farm -- not the biggest, nor the most famous, but one of the
oldest. Real ones know.
And mostly what you know is that Ninggu can get you what you need, far
beyond food. Their mushroom tunnels extend for miles, many of them
predating Yuanhai's development by Qinglong. That means many of them
extend under Qinglong filtration plants, across Running Dog barricades, even
almost to other districts. If you need to smuggle something through Yuanhai,
or if you want a discreet water tap or a way into the plants, the Ninggu
mushroom farmers are a good friend to have.
Prince Ao Qindian 敖欽點

The Ao Clan is not formal royalty, but try telling that to its heir.
Ao Qindian roams the streets with a trail of goons behind her. She is
her father's favored child and red right hand, styling herself 太子
crown prince as a half-joke. Ao Qindian and her gang enforce Ao's
interests on the streets, with characteristically brutal negotiation:
work for us and be set for life, oppose us and "for life" shortens
considerably. More than one youxia has thought to stop her by force,
but the Ao clan is no mere renjie triad. They practice the Ceaseless
Dragon Fist which replaces Fire with Water, and Ao Qindian is a master
of it112. Furthermore, some Attainment of hers grants her martial arts a
strangely primordial power, as it's rumored to do for the other Ao princes.
Thus with hired muscle, wealth like water, and her own fists Ao Qindian
continues to keep Yuanhai in merciless shape.
The Qin Prince's apartment sits atop the second largest filtration plant in
Yuanhai, jutting out over the southern sea. Here she plays political games
110
She's trying to say you start pissing blood.
111
Recipe available in Appendix D.
112
For Ao Qindian's stats, see pg XX.
with the rest of the Ao clan, basks in her enormous art collection, and works
on further refinement of the Ceaseless Dragon Fist. They whisper that she
entertains cousins from the Guang and Run branches, seeking to undercut her
Qin uncles.
CrazyMAX Gang 黐線MAX

Rank: 3
Face: 5, +1 with mechanics
Assets: Connections with the Sparks Fellowship (2)
Garages across Yuanhai (2)
Salvaged machinery (3)
Sean Kwok, not the fastest or loudest warlord but the canniest
Motto: Bigger! Faster! Louder! More!
The CrazyMAX Gang ride out of run-down garages and warehouses across
Xiatian, but they got their start in Yuanhai. They are scavenger warlords,
repurposing discarded forklifts into powerfists and turning dirt bikes into
siege machines. The CrazyMAX aesthetic is eclectic and varied, covered in
neon spraypaint and construction-machine yellow, unified only by their love
of rusty scrapmetal spikes. Many of their members are Sparks Fellowship
members, though it's considered gauche to talk politics when you could be
talking shop instead. CrazyMAX gangers use an eclectic mix of Bulldozer Fist,
stolen Iron Core exoskeletons, Gasoline Fist, and jerry-rigged shotguns.
Despite their nitrous-huffing hooliganry, the CrazyMAX Gang are
considered more or less benign as long as you stay out of their way. They
spend most of their time beefing up machines for their street races and
demolition derbies, making money off mechanical work in the jianghu or
robbing cash delivery trucks They barely even bother with the protection
racket -- they'll take a good bottle of booze or an old junker, most days. In
fact, the main thing keeping CrazyMAX relevant is a nose for opportunity --
they call it "the stink" -- that gets them crashing both jianghu plans and
Qinglong deals at just the right moment to make out like a bandit.
The CrazyMAX Gang are a great lot to know if you need someone to build a
horrible diesel-fueled contraption for you, if you need someone to make that
diesel-fueled contraption go very fast, or if you need something to be
smashed up loudly. They are likely to become a sudden complication if your
plan needs things to go quietly, smoothly, or with minimal explosions. If
you're in Yuanhai, it's occasionally a good idea to save time by just looping
them in from the start. They are very likely to be drunk.
Scenes
1 Pipes belching smoke into the air. Waste from the filtration and
synthesis plants, and god knows what else.
2 Maintenance crews at work on an overpass. Rust threatens to eat
through the supports.
3 One of the VR holocades that dot the district. Kids spill out into
the open plaza, out of wen for the arcade but not for their
imaginations.
4 Distant thunder, but no rain.
5 A shrine to Tu Di Gong, the god of this place. People leave pearls

to pray for rain, but it seems all they can afford today is
seashells.
6 Purple-red succulents carpeting the beach, one of the few plants
unwithered by salt-sickness.
People
1 Thugs in Qinglong's black-and-orange livery. The thug-rank livery,

that is.
2 Factory workers headed back or to a long shift. The pumps need

constant maintenance, and leak salt-sickening fumes all through
the buildings.
3 Families lining up for their water ration.
4 Fishermen hawking the day's catch. If they went out far enough it
might be edible.
5 A mahjong table of aunties, chugging beer and shouting riotously
in the night air.
6 Ao Qindian.
JIAOTOU
The district's official name is Fengsha Hui, but if you say that out loud
you'll be pinged as a mark and a tourist immediately. Everyone who lives
there calls it Jiaotou113, and the gargantuan sword-shaped megastructure
looming overhead is Big Horn 114. Technology and infrastructure here eschew
Yihao-style hologram slickness. Typhoons break on Xiatian's northern coast,
and in the days of the last empire its architecture was built thick and solid to
compensate. But even without Central's cutting-edge software, the trash
heaps of empire and the debris of Big Horn are plentiful material for Jiaotou's
gearheads. If you need to jailbreak a machine, make it do something not
intended by the manufacturer, or come up with something entirely new,
Jiaotou is your best bet.
[intentions and moves]
Big Horn 大角
The empire left many ruins in its fall. One of those was the
partially-constructed megastructure in Xiatian's skyline: a colossal
spike like an angular saber, with gargantuan cables and pipes dangling
from its unfinished backbone. Writing on the east face proclaims it 赤
霄 Crimson Sky, though government records refer to it as Project 597 and
locals just call it Big Horn. This is what keeps Xiatian standing.
For the past century or so, storms have more frequently grown into super-
typhoons that could level Xiatian's skyscrapers. Instead, Big Horn's edge
faces the northern sea, slicing into the prevailing winds of those storms and
stealing their energy. When the wind picks up, the outline of Big Horn's
bladelike shape glows red and begins to keen across the city. Most of that
energy is channeled into capacitors within the megastructure itself, but the
rest of it spills out into the city. Lights brighten and flicker, radios pick up
signals from across the globe or on channels that should be secure. Power
lines explode. And then the storm passes, and Crimson Sky's blade cools
down, and Xiatian remains safe in the shadow of the sword.
Everyone's got a story about Big Horn's unfinished construction. Word on
the street is that Running Dog drone networks are spliced into Big Horn's
power grid, letting them reach across the city. Superstition extends that Big
Horn's activation overloads them, making storms a blind spot for the Running
Dogs. Blueprints suggest that though Big Horn currently cuts thunderstorms,
it was designed for a sharper purpose: to blast lightning back into the sky,
lancing down wherever and whoever you want. It would have been
unstoppable.
113
roughly, "Horn-ways", but it also means corner
114
Dajiao
Dark faces mutter that this all sounds a lot like the Lightning Flash Sword
of the Sparks, and darken further as they murmur: even if Crimson Sky
remains unfinished, isn't it possible that it could still fire that shot?
Plastic Lau
Under Jiaotou's eastern edge, tunnels run huge cables into Caiwan's heart.
Those tunnels are where you can find Plastic Lau. You'll know you're near
when the cables start sprouting acupuncture needle antennae, bleeding
signal out to his rig; or by the LCD backlight off his dozens of monitors, each
displaying a different feed 24/7; or by the collection of little plastic figmas
that gave him his name, lining his shelves and occasionally lost in the tunnels.
Plastic Lau has a finger on Xiatian's pulse -- that is, the flow of media in
and around Xiatian. If you need to know where to find a piece of information,
he can ping out the physical location of its server. If you need to broadcast
your own information, he'll wire you into Xiatian's media feeds -- the more
you want, the less time you get, because he's gotta pack up and run when
you're done. If you're a Butterfly, he'll do it for free. Likewise if you can get
him a figma he doesn't have yet, especially one from Taichiu IMPACT115 -- he's
very nearly got the full set. Otherwise, Lau will talk your ear off about the
deep philosophy of some show you've never heard of and don't care about,
and then he'll do you whatever favor you're asking for. And in about a month,
he'll show up on your doorstep to hide out from the heat after doing the same
for someone else. And he will bring all his figurines.
Hua Qianbian
Doctor Hua doesn't practice Eastern or Western medicine. She can't, she's
legally disbarred from both associations. What she does do is save lives. You
go to Doctor Hua's clinic because you're desperate -- because the hospitals
would charge you an arm and a leg for your arm or your leg. Or because you
can't afford to have this injury on your records. The clinic stinks of cheap
cigars and Doctor Hua's hair is unevenly buzzed 116. She'll describe some
insane cure for your ailment: she doesn't have access to the drugs for your
liver condition, but maybe she can replace it with this dialytic box she got
cheap. Do you have a better choice? Whatever it is, Doctor Hua will do her
best. When youxia wake her up at 3am with lacerated stomachs and qi
deviation, Doctor Hua always does her best.
When Hua Qianbian is off the clock, she spends much of her time
formulating horrible new ways to brew coffee. She's the only one that can
stand it; if she offers you a cup, thank her and spill it as quickly as possible. If
she needs to hook you up to an IV for anything, check and make sure it's been
115
about escaped psychic experiments, but it's not really about the psychic explosions it's about love, but
it's a little bit about the psychic explosions
116
she'll tell you it burned off, but I think she just cut her own hair and panicked
washed first. Occasionally she'll abandon you because that girl she's chasing
texted her back, but she almost never lets you bleed out 117. If you're willing to
talk coffee or radical medicine, Hua Qianbian will rant at you for hours and
then get you sloshed. Otherwise, she'll finish the operation and then kick you
out. But she won't turn you away next time you come back.
Typhoon Gang
Rank: 2
Face: 4
Assets: Rappeling gear
Floors 70-72 of the Yunlun building
Moryo, who reads the weather like a book
Motto: First, wind and water -- then, the thunder.
These days, Xiatian sees a bad typhoon two or three times a season -- one
bad enough that even Big Horn can't bring it below gale force. Buildings roll
down their shutters, shantytowns evacuate, those who aren't overly jaded
shelter in place. That's when the Typhoon Gang comes out to play. Swinging
from bungee cords and ziplines, letting the winds fling them as they will, they
crash through the windows and make off with whatever they want. They
started out looting grocery stores and selling the goods at a premium, and
that's how they came to own their skyscraper; but these days they're better
known for their break-in acumen, hitting museums or tech companies at
random and selling the proceeds on the black market. The ringleaders are
playing the clock until their Running Dog bounty gets too big for even
Gasoline Fist and Tiger masters to outrun -- but until then, they'll get you in
somewhere fast if you don't mind the mess.
Scenes
1 Power lines blot out the sky overhead, hanging thick as cobwebs
between the megatowers.
2 A jailbroken holoavatar in the subway plaza that anyone can jack
into for five minutes at a time. Set up as an art project years ago,
now it's usually someone advertising dick pill elixirs or blaring
political screeds. Sometimes it sings.
3 One of the control rooms under Big Horn's base, repurposed.
Prewar panels with big chunky dials and decimeter-thick cables
cluster against concrete.
4 Waves smashing on the concrete breakwater caltrops. If you fall
117
all the way.
between them at high tide they'll pound you to pulp.
5 Rain pooling in a house-sized crevice on Big Horn after a storm.

Some wag brought fish up here a few years ago, and it's never
dried out enough to kill them.
6 Momang, a darkweb forum for hackers and disaffected IT

workers. Both server and password shift every week; you've got
to break into one or the other to regain access.
For Sale
1 Homemade shortwave antennae, about the size of a torso. Stick it

on your balcony to catch pirate radio or on your car to really
conspicuously triangulate signals.
2 An angularly chunky hovercycle, in almost-working condition.
Hovercraft cores were pioneered a couple decades ago but almost
universally discarded for their inefficiency and breakdown rate.
Now all they're good for is salvager home projects and youxia
who absolutely need to move through the sky.
3 A signal jammer the size and approximate shape of an ornate key,

good to scramble a scanner or reader for about thirty seconds.
4 A tube being generously advertised as a "wide-bore coilgun" --

jam metallic junk in the barrel, plug it into the backpack battery,
fire.
5 A patchwork exoskeleton rigged up from salvaged construction

equipment and medical waldoes.
6 A flying sword.
YOUZHOU
Youzhou doesn't exist. Xiatian is an island, separated from the east coast
by a narrow strait -- first bridged by subway, then landfilled and paved over
entirely. But when those tunnels were abandoned, they became the perfect
hideout for otaku, criminals, and youxia. Much of Xiatian has an undercity,
development having long since surged upwards and sunlight access with it,
and some people call all of that Youzhou. But the commune that has sprung
up under the paved-over sea is undoubtedly Youzhou's beating heart.
Even navigating the tunnels carries its own risks; many tunnels have
flooded or collapsed, and many more could follow them at any moment. On
the bright side, some of those collapses have opened new connections
between old tunnels, and even cavernous new sinkholes. On the dark side,
that makes it potentially deadly to get lost. Any dweller on the street will mug
you if you look soft enough, though seven times in ten a youxia is close
enough to mug them back. If you want something you can't get anywhere
else, or if you need to get away, you need to find Youzhou.
Night Market
The name is a joke. It's always night. Youzhou's Night Market occupies the
old railyard, where the subway trains would have been stored. It's totally
flooded, so you can either employ the rickety catwalks or pay a gondolier to
cart you to your stall of choice, mostly also on rickety boats 118. The premier
stalls are in the rescued subway trains themselves that form long arcades --
either up on supports between the pillars, or waterproofed and requiring you
to drop down into them from the roof hatches. It's never quiet, between the
haggling customers and the hum of generators that keep the place neon-lit.
The Night Market runs on an arcane barter economy. If all you want is
some smuggled mainland beef or pirate video, you can make do with cash --
and plenty of upright citizens do so, for what daylight markets can't get. But if
you want something harder, you'll have to come with something good. Drugs
and poisons are customarily traded for pearls119. Historical relics are bought
with blackmail. The flesh trade, either sex or violence, accepts stolen police
badges as a currency of high esteem. But rarest of all are the golden tokens
of the Ghost Blade Society, redeemable for a member's personal support.
Tunku's Theater
Maybe you've heard of a popup theater that moves around all the time.
You've got to be on the in to know when and where it's going to appear. It's
run by a guy named Tunku, who shows an eclectic lot: movies that haven't
been released yet, avant-garde theater, banned movies and propaganda,
sometimes he just throws raves. Tunku is a hard guy to get ahold of, but even
those who don't frequent the Theater like him; he puts a lot of effort into
creating a unified Youzhou culture, organizing mutual aid efforts and opening
dialogues between disparate parts of the community. Most people are pretty
sure he's a Beggar or Butterfly on the side; if not, he sure seems to be one of
their favored means of disseminating stolen blackmail.
118
In some places it's only ankle-deep, but if you step wrong you'll gouge yourself on rebar or sink into a
crevasse, so watch the fuck out.
119
Pearl vendors and other moneychangers set up shop around the edges of the Night Market, but they
charge exorbitant rates. Not worth it unless you're desperate and rich.
Faceless
It's hard to get signal, down in the tunnels. Techies and hackers run
physical connections down sometimes, and you'll see their bundled cables
stretching for miles, but signal comes and goes unexpectedly -- it's
unnerving, if you're used to 24/7 connection. Maybe that's why the Faceless
legend sprung up. Story goes, if you're in the tunnels too long, or if you take
the wrong tunnels at midnight, or if you piss off something in the dark, you'll
emerge into the daylight and find your digital presence gone: social media
erased, bank accounts closed, government ID returning no such person.
Faceless. Even the jianghu wouldn't recognize you.
In Xiatian, practically a death sentence. In Youzhou, a neat little capsule of
everything everyone feels about the eye of the Net: it's the panopticon, it's a
lifeline, it's where you keep all your stuff. Enterprising criminals have
occasionally tried to get Faceless on purpose, which is part of why the urban
legends about how to get cursed keep circulating so broadly. It's more of a
gallows humor ghost story in the dark: you've been down here too long, you'll
be Faceless when you go back.
Some stories go a step further. They say your accounts don't disappear,
you just get locked out of them. And they don't stop posting. Reviews of
restaurants you haven't been to, payments to people you don't know... cryptic
messages to your old friends and family. You could go for the rest of your life
without figuring out who the impersonator is. You could go for the rest of
your life without anyone realizing.
Heijin Cave
This is the official guild hall of the Ghost Blade Society. It was a natural
grotto, discovered during Youzhou's excavation. Now pale lights shine up
through pools of rippling water. Their shadows play across gilded black
pillars, lining a red-carpeted walkway down Heijin's main hall. The
atmosphere is deliberate, and effective; only the most confident jianghu
members or insanely cocky civilians come to make contracts in person. It is
customary, if you're a Ghost Blade and you're around when someone new
comes in, to get somewhere they can't see you and stare daggers into their
back120.
For the Ghost Blades themselves, this place is a tie to the Society. Every
member of the Ghost Blades has a mail cubicle, where they can receive
contracts and payment. More importantly, they receive two golden tokens,
one stamped with a horse and one with an ox. When the Society needs to
consider something like a controversial contract or impending threat, Heijin
Hall posts the matter in a coded mural on one of its pillars. Ghost Blade
members can drop their tokens into the pools at the base of those pillars to
express their support one way or another, silently and anonymously. Once
120
Mr. Fa says it really helps the haggling.
the matter is resolved, the token is returned to their inbox. Tokens can also be
traded for the support of other Ghost Blades, and even given to trusted
civilians as a badge of proxy.
The rest of Youzhou is warily warped by Heijin Cave's presence, like
squirrels nesting near a wolf. Triads set up shop nearby to sell the Ghost
Blades guns and underworld support, but remain aware that if they get too
red-handed they jump to the top of the Ghost Blades' list. More than a few
have taken the Ghost Blades' acquiescence to their presence as tacit
approval. They hatch larger and larger schemes, ready to make their mark on
the jianghu, never noticing that they have joined the murals in Heijin Cave.
Scenes
1 A desolate tunnel, graffiti adorning the walls. Some of it is Beggar

passphrases pointing to safehouses. Some of it is porn.
2 A crevice so tight you've got to turn sideways to squirm through.
Rusted rebar has been twisted out of the way.
3 A bandit checkpoint, barricaded with salvage and manned by

armed guards. Pay a toll or go the long way round.
4 A collapsed chamber, the size of a cathedral. Throbbing music
echoes off water and concrete.
5 A knockoff boutique, looking like it fell through the floor in

Caiwan. Faux marble, faux furs, the works. Considerably cheaper.
6 A flicker like firelight, two tunnels down.
People
1 Figure of indeterminate size and gender, wearing enough coats

and hoods that you can barely see them. Zippers sewn onto their
clothing apparently at random.
2 Kids following you at a distance, scheming about how to
pickpocket you best. Subtlety takes years to learn.
3 The most beautiful man you've ever seen in your life, carrying a DJ
soundboard. The riotous colors of his clothing look like they
belong on a Caiwan runway, not here in the concrete and the dark.
4 A beggar -- not the youxia kind, probably, but a grandma with a
rug and a bowl. If you stay near the daylight doors, you get the
most traffic but the Running Dogs won't see you.
5 A store cashier, as bored as any teen in a Gongshan stationery

store.
6 A woman in white hanfu. There's no hiding the blood spatters.

She's not even trying. A little bell at her waist tinkles with every
step.
GONGSHAN
Two and a half empires ago, Xiatian was a little fishing village in the middle
of nowhere. Its claim to fame was that it stood at the base of the Gongshan
hills, home to sages and priests. Those cliffs still stand today. The renjie faces
of the Lotus Church and Cultivation School both put their resources towards
resisting urban development in the district, as do old-money families and
even community organizations -- everybody wants to keep Gongshan
unrazed121. The old towns that spread up the hills like vines exhibit Xiatian's
oldest architecture and are home to its oldest traditions. Life passes slowly
here. But even in Gongshan, the future makes itself heard. Kids don't see the
point in preserving such relics, when there's money to be made in the Caiwan
skyscrapers and Digital City foundries. Businessmen manufacture
authenticity by stamping Gongshan's silhouette on beer bottles. The bamboo
and the mist have not changed across centuries, but the city they overlook
has.
Zixing and Rilin Temples

The Sun-and-Stars Temples are famous in both wulin and renjie. Rilin
Temple stands high on Gongshan's southern face; Zixing Temple a little
lower, on its north. They have been rivals since time immemorial; legend
holds that their sects actually fought battles for control of the area before
they agreed to settle in peace. The rivalry of the Lotus Church and Cultivation
School does not stem entirely from that fight, but it sure doesn't help. Even
so, Rilin and Zixing Temples make an effort to keep relations cordial, sending
each other envoys to debate and spar. In the face of threats from outside
Gongshan, each knows they will need the other.
Rilin Temple was the first temple established; the sheer white limestone
behind it reflects sunlight down and makes it unnaturally bright even in the
forest's shade. It's never quiet. The courtyards ring with the shouts of
acolytes practicing martial arts; the Lotus Church makes no secret of training
121
and, of course, the Great Sects are looking to maintain secrecy and sovereignty there, but also the
other thing
openly, though they claim it's only for health and tradition. They've become a
tourist destination for it, so there's also the shuffle of footsteps and the
babble of sightseers, in among petitioners and beggars 122 seeking the charity
of the Lotus Church. Abbess Ku is generous but naturally stern; occasionally
junior acolytes have to comfort petitioners who come away shaken. Rilin
itself is a compound of buildings within high walls; in ancient times it was a
fortress unto itself.
Zixing Temple was established less than a decade after Rilin Temple, but it
has ever carried the shoulder-chip of the younger sibling. It was an
astronomical observatory of some renown, in ancient days. Now it
crystallizes across the northern face of the mountain, each addition
meticulously arranged to squeeze into the geomantic harmony of the original.
Zixing hosts all manner of eclectic scholarship, from monks in secluded
meditation to neurology conferences to cross-disciplinary symposia. The
more eccentric debates consist of Cultivation youxia hurling wildly
heterogeneous theories at each other over chess or arcade games123. The
outer compounds include facilities for supercomputer clusters, genetic
sequencing, and alchemy. The central pagoda hosts both the oldest library in
Xiatian124 and the temple's original observatory. Zixing hosts frequent
retreats for academics from Xiatian university; but the most interesting parts
of the temple are off-limits unless you've got passcodes or lockpicks. If you
can get in, they figure, you deserve to know.
Guiyuchi Lake 桂玉池

Guiyuchi has long been a symbol of restraint and control. It smooths out
Xiatian's typhoon rainfalls into a steady stream for the Guanghe River, which
meanders through the island down to the marsh-farms in Buntin. The waters
of the lake stay calm even in rough storms, according to legend; people come
from all over the island to enjoy the tranquility and play music by its shores.
Bluebell Bridge spans its western finger. Romances conducted there are
considered sacred, and it's a popular wedding spot; likewise, a duel held on
the bridge must satisfy even the bitterest vendetta.
Rumor holds that a demon was subdued and sealed beneath the lake in
times long past -- though Guiyuchi's name means Osmanthus Jade Pool, it can
also be read as Ghost Prison Pool. Stories differ on whether the sages of
Zixing or Rilin Temple were responsible; both temples aver the claim. Still, the
lake monster is a popular ghost story and something of a mascot for the
district. Overly credulous claims are sometimes met with "and the ghost's
122
lowercase, and sometimes uppercase Beggars
123
it's considered courteous to talk business over a game, lest debates spill over into duels and ruin the
furniture. But sometimes you just can't help yourself. And Lao Xian would understand if he heard what that
idiot was saying --
124
junior Cultivationists are strongly suggested to take a shift hand-copying backups when they need to
learn patience or temper
coming out of the lake!" But surely that just makes it a great place to actually
do something unbelievable...
Swimming Shrimp Lounge 遊蝦酒樓

The Swimming Shrimp Lounge is one of the many restaurants and banquet
halls that keeps its pre-food seafood in glass tanks around the dining hall 125 -
- you can pick out the particular fish you want to eat, if you want. They're
never empty, but rarely full, and they open far later than any other banquet
hall, keeping the nightlife clubs and dessert bars company.
Maybe because it's open so late, and because Mr. Chiang doesn't seem to
mind your bleeding on the floor if you mop up after, that Swimming Shrimp
Lounge is a popular meeting spot for youxia. If you need a place to hash out
inter-Sect politics on neutral ground, or if you want to regroup somewhere
semi clandestine, Swimming Shrimp Lounge is a pretty good place to do it.
And if you want a civilian cover and stable income for a couple weeks, Mr.
Chiang doesn't mind hiring xia under the table for a couple months.
CAIWAN
Caiwan is not Xiatian's heart, but it may be its brain. This is Xiatian's
financial district, as well as the seat of its capitol. The empire renovated it by
force, cutting an 8km by 8km square out of Xiatian's old sprawl and raising
skyscrapers and megatowers and grand speaking halls --
You have to understand, Xiatian wasn't built for us. It was made to house
their dreams, their technologies and treasure vaults, and we grew over it like
moss. In Caiwan those dreams are still clear. You can still see the future they
blueprinted thirty years ago, sparkling and angular and clean. If you're willing
to live inside that dream, Caiwan is the place to be.
ULTRAMALL
In smaller cities ULTRAMALL would be a district in itself; in fact, some
places ULTRAMALL would be a small city. An entire megatower was dedicated
to ULTRAMALL from Caiwan's inception. Shopping centers and offices look
out over Caiwan, the tower's core bursting with all the infrastructure that
makes such a building work. Skyways wend around the building, connecting
to other buildings and even to the roads below; the thirtieth-floor parking
garage is always full and only occasionally host to drug exchanges.
125
These days, the fish in the harbour are too marked by salt-sickness to eat safely, and there's not
much in Guyuichi Lake. You can try the wet markets if you trust the fishermen not to have been running their
farms with harbour water. If you're reckless, or desperate, or can't afford the Swimming Shrimp.
Several banks operate out of the ground floor of ULTRAMALL; both to
facilitate all the spending on the upper floors, and also because their vaults
would be too heavy on the upper floors. Not too heavy to sit above the half
dozen maintenance subfloors, though. An indoor park occupies half of the
sixtieth floor; a row of helipads jutting from the north face signifies the
Running Dog precinct there. On floors 96 through 100, the megatower's
Mercury Core inertial dampener is the centerpiece of another indoor park and
observation deck. Though the building is widely known to have 108 floors,
none of the floors above 100 are publicly accessible or even show up on the
elevators.
The Palaces
Caiwan's skyline is filled with horizon-blotting skyscrapers, but in its
center there is a lacuna of conspicuous absence. The capitol building consists
of seven towers between seven and twelve stories tall, networked together
by skyways and monorails and collectively called the Palaces. They are both
governmental buildings and apartments for the highest level of civil servants;
ostensibly under the guise of security and privacy, but nepotism has always
been understood to be the order of the day. Each of Xiatian's warlords
occupies a Palace penthouse. You know they're warlords if they occupy a
Palace penthouse; the sixth Palace's penthouse is available to megacorp
executives who come to do business with Xiatian's government from
overseas, and the seventh stands empty still.
The Palaces are possibly the most tightly guarded buildings in Xiatian.
Lowly civil servants are allowed only in the southern Palace, where much of
the public governance takes place. Wandering around Roy Zhuqiao's tower
will probably get you arrested as a spy. Duke Lu's Palace is home to so many
commanders and mercenaries that suspicious intruders are occasionally
executed on the spot. Still, people live and work there, and that means they
can't actually hermetically seal the place. A government has to be open to its
people.
Boss J 老闆
So, yes, J-laoban has cybernetic cat ears. Yes, it makes him look ridiculous.
Yes, he'll threaten to cut your fingers off if you laugh. Yes, he will use the
parabolic microphones and built-in transceivers to fucking rinse you at
mahjong. More importantly, Boss J is part of the Every Living Thing Clan, and
though they consider him something of a wayward son they still consider him
a son. His Tiger Fist is formidable, but it's his wall-obliterating Compassion
Palm that catches people off guard. That said, Boss J rarely seems to go in for
anything harsher than strongarming salarymen into paying up, and he's been
known to let even them off if he's in a good mood. On the other hand, he
parlays that "heart of gold" card to keep on the wulin's good side; he's a
favorite source for criminal favors and a rare target of a real righteous
beatdown.
Boss J's mahjong parlor sits at the west end of Caiwan, right where the
street grid hops and jumps to match Yuanhai's coast-snarled alleys. Despite
the cheating and the threat of violence, it's not a bad place to burn some
money. Baijiu flows freely, they do a great poached chicken rice, and it's a
place to see and be seen by youxia with their hair down. Avoid J-laoban and
enjoy yourself.
For Boss J's writeup, see Chapter 12, pg xx.
CHAPTER 12: THE OPPOSITION
ANTAGONIST WRITEUPS
Antagonist writeups usually come with one, maybe two, sample
Techniques. They may have additional Tags to change up how they interact
with you.
TAGS
● Shrimp: This tag applies to anyone you could knock out in one hit,
including many cheap or untrained goons. A successful motion against
them defeats them, even if it isn't a finisher. 126
● Huge: This tag offers 1-3 Yin Edge against any attempt to move them by
force, as well as against finishers.
● Crowd: This tag automatically belongs to a group of people that are
acting together, and its benefits apply anytime it outnumbers the
opponent. Crowds apply the Area and Huge tag against anything
smaller, and can benefit from the Destructive tag. When a Crowd takes
an Injury they may instead reduce their Edge by 1 as members flee. This
doesn't count against the Injury cap.
○ Reinforcements: A Crowd can call for reinforcements when they
drop to no Edge, returning to their former level.
● Area: This tag negates the benefits of a Crowd tag, and can otherwise
splash over a wide area -- usually a field's worth.
● Boss: This tag applies to powerful combatants. They get the benefit of a
second phase, where they clear their wounds and refresh their Qi, but
they can't use Techniques that cost more than half their Qi before this.
○ Proud: On each of their turns, they can either refresh an Instant
form or regain 1 Qi. They can only do so as many times per round
as there are PCs.
● Armored
● Robot: Machines and other nonsentient entities don't care for Face and
can't use Heroic or Humbling Moves127.
● Trained
● Desperate
● Destructive
126
Rumors of Lobster or Crab-class goons are highly unsubstantiated.
127
Unless...?
RUNNING DOGS 走狗局
Once upon a time, the Imperial Hound Sect was a respected faction in the
jianghu. Upright, dedicated to the pursuit of law and justice above all --
though, they were among only a few in the jianghu who considered those
synonymous. They brooked no obstacle in their pursuit, they broke ancient
traditions, they made quite a few enemies, but everyone trusted them to
break the right way when the time came.
They didn't. When the empire fell, most of the Hounds chose law over
justice. They signed themselves over to Xiatian's warlords as law
enforcement, becoming the Xiatian Militia Enforcement Branch. Those that
didn't splintered off into what would eventually become the Martial Saint
Formation. For this they earned the enmity of much of Xiatian, and the fear of
the rest. The Running Dogs still stand for law. But few of them pretend
anymore that they can guarantee justice. Some of the honest cops maintain
jianghu connections to pass on information to those who can actually
persecute justice. Some of the more corrupt cops maintain jianghu
connections for money and power. They do not, by and large, affect the
running of the larger organization. The Running Dogs belong to their masters
now.
IRON CORE TECHNIQUE 鐵丹法

Once upon a time Iron Core Fist developed as an offshoot of Flying Puppet.
Where Flying Puppet aims to meld the artificial body with the human, Iron
Core sought to upgrade the human body and match the mechanical:
prosthetic limb, piloted robot, exoskeleton. But the Hounds went one step
further. A youxia of the gear distilled Iron Core's techniques into a physical
computronic implant -- an iron core instead of the golden core promised to
masters of martial cultivation. No skill required, no mastery, just plug and
play.
It caused an uproar in the jianghu, but even so, the Iron Core techniques
might have remained an upright style. The fall of the Imperial Hound Sect
tarnished it beyond salvage. Now every enforcement drone has a cheap Iron
Core processor for basic competence. Deputies often have either
programmed exoskeletons or Iron Core implants of their own if they expect to
confront youxia. Between Running Dog dogma and the wulin's own action, all
the other styles once practiced by the Imperial Hound Sect have gone extinct.
But the Iron Core is deniably gongfu; it is a weapon, and it makes it users
weapons, and that suits the Running Dogs just fine.
Iron Core users treat their bodies like machines and machines like their
bodies, drawing on mechanical strength and self-sacrificial fortitude. The
style is practiced with any kind of robotic or mechanical body, up to and
including the building-sized mecha supposedly being built under Xiatian
somewhere. It uses Earth forms to change or switch between bodies, and
Yang forms to utilize them.
DOG-EAR DRONES
Though the history of the Imperial Hound Sect and their general boot-
sniffing ways earned the Running Dogs their title, it is the look of their police
drones that made the nickname stick. Each drone is a vaguely skeletal
humanoid body with hydraulic muscles and a ribcage of cooling fins for the
computronic core within. But the androids are completely faceless: a boxy
CCTV camera, flanked by panel antenna flaps to receive their command
signal, give them the appearance of having dog-snouted heads. Drones have
enough basic processing power to walk around and shoot at moving objects;
the development of Iron Core movesets lets them act with passable combat
skills even on autopilot. But somewhere back at the precinct, Running Dog
operators man dozens of drones at a time, synthesizing their surveillance
feeds and hopping in and out of direct control as needed.
The drones are cheaply made, churned out by the truckful, and they need
to be to replace the rate at which they're destroyed or trashed. Drone limbs
make great prostheses, if you can salvage the Iron Core processor to
integrate with it, so the salvage or smash-and-grab looters both make their
work. The crappy hydraulics mean most moves that would disarm or knock
out a human take them out too. But a skilled operator can operate a handful
of drones as if they were an elite military fireteam. They can hop into direct
control of a drone, then over to another, then pull back to coordinate the
squad.
The police drones are harmless so long as you're beneath the operators'
notice. More than one youxia has overestimated that notice and
underestimated the drones, and paid the price.
QIU BOYA
Cyborg Detective
Rank 1
Qi: ___/10
Yin 1 Yang 3
Water 1 Metal 2 Earth 3 Fire 3 Wood 2
ATTAINMENTS
● Taser wires built into your prosthetic arm, and the badge it came with
● Investigation, and the awful things you've seen
● Connection: [any PC youxia of the mask]
Face: 3
Technique: Fist Demands the Hammer's Intercession Qi: 4
● Intercept (Instant): Gain 3 more dice on an interrupt. +1 Momentum if you

win. An interrupt enhanced by this doesn't count against the 1/exchange
limit.
● Hammer (Instant): Successful motion knocks enemy back to disengage,
or into another field if highlighted. +1 Momentum
● Demand (Instant): If a motion fails by less than 4, gain 1 Momentum
anyways
● Fist (Instant): If you invoke a Treasure on a finisher, roll 4 additional dice
to inflict Wounds.
Technique: Becoming the Nine-Hand Explosion Qi: 8
● Become (Sustained): Assume control over nearby machinery, up to the

size of a building, as a Treasure. Burn out a Treasure instead of taking a
single Wound.
● Nine (Instant): Beat a Stance that is less than 7, even if you rolled lower.
● Explode (Instant) Gain 2 Momentum on a comeback instead. Gain an
extra Momentum if you currently have less than your highest enemy,
and another for each Wound you're suffering.
● Hand (Instant): When you invoke your taser wires to entangle or stun
something, it can't be prevented or undone without a Technique to break
it -- just gaining Yin Edge won't do. It can be undone with time as if it
were a Wound.
Qiu Boya is less interested in efficiently destroying you than he is in taking
out his frustrations on you. Fist Demands Hammer's Intercession lets him
smack you around a while and punctuate his point with his taser. Becoming
the Nine-Hand Explosion is for when he's pressed hard enough to
absolutely break you down, though he'll also do it as a last resort when he's
got just enough Qi. It's also the Technique he uses to command drone
squads, though he only does so when commanded to.
CIVIL PEACE DRONE
Robot Shrimp
Rank 0
Qi: ___/7
Yin 1 Yang 2
ATTAINMENTS
● Chunky robot body
● Less-lethal 886-assault-rifle
Technique: Four Demands Become the Jackhammer Qi: 5
● Shake (Instant): Smash through walls and destroy things that aren't
durable. +1 Momentum.
● Center (Sustained): Roll 3 more dice on strikes if you are standing on a
chokepoint or other tactical spot.
● Four (Instant): Interrupt even if ambushed, without counting against
limit. If they're at range, they can't come closer.
● Demand (Instant): If you fail a motion by 1, gain 1 Momentum anyways.
● Become (Sustained): Assume control over nearby machinery, up to the
size of a building, as a Treasure. Burn out a Treasure instead of taking a
single Wound.
Street-patrol drones are usually only programmed with a single Technique,
but they don't use all of it at once. Center and Four get used when they're
defending or besieging a door. Shake and Demand give them a Terminator-
esque vibe. Become is an Iron Core form that commandeers Xiatian's
architecture; this city is not your friend.
Drone squads are Crowds with 1-2 Edge.
CORPORATIONS
In the dying days of the empire Xiatian was sold off like a butchered pig. Its
dukes and governors, and warlords who claimed its throne by fire and blood,
knew they could not hold the city safely. And Xiatian had always been a port
city, gateway from the empire to the world beyond. So they thrust open the
doors and sold us off:
A council of megacorporations, each of which now hands the law down to
us from above. They stormed the city with mercenary forces and liberated us
from imperial rule. They pumped us full of food and money and light
consumer goods. And now they wear the city like a shell, like hermit crabs.
Like leeches. The megacorps make up Xiatian as much as the concrete and
the steel do. Nobody likes it, but you can hate it or be resigned to it. And fact
is, when all you can get for work is a shitty Potsticker factory job, at the end
of the day you're pretty happy for cheap Douzhu freezer meals and a Yihao
stream.
Different megacorporations handle Xiatian differently. Potsticker, more
formally known as National Steel128, considers themselves the empire's last
grip on unity. Qinglong's been doing business in the city for centuries. Rasa
Pharmaceuticals has expanded here from South Asia, interested both in our
scientists and our huge guinea pig drug market. STERLING is a Western
banking conglomerate that treats Xiatian as just another conquest. Most of
them keep their own security personnel, but they all have the power to
demand Running Dog backup.
The megacorps are hardly happy with their situation in Xiatian; if they
were ambitious enough to sign the Sick Man Pact in the first place, they were
ambitious enough to have designs on outright rule. They jockey in the Palaces,
they sprout new horizontal integration divisions aimed at pushing each other
out of the Xiatian markets. Occasionally they'll try to proxy youxia into
exposing each other or disrupting something important. Every once in a while
armed skirmishes erupt when a couple of them play too dirty. All of them
consider youxia dangerous nuisances at best and enemies of humanity at
worst. Or let's say that backwards: we keep trying to make things difficult for
them, with various levels of success.
Getting one of the megacorporations to butt out of Xiatian, or elevating
your own faction to contend on their level, would be an epic task on its own. I
don't know how you could get them all out without burning the city down.
While we figure it out, they suck us dry.
128
pronounced guotie the same as potstickers, hence the nickname
HIRED GOONS
Poorly-Paid Shrimp Crowd
Rank 0
Qi: ___/7
Yin 2 Yang 1
ATTAINMENTS
● Hatchets, and the streets where they learned to use them
● Spray-and-pray SMGs, and the corporate armories that own them
● A manual with a secret technique, and the guy who sold it to them
Bandits, gang enforcers, and corporate henchmen are all the exact same
kind of guy; if violence is your only living, you'll take it wherever you find it.
They surrender quickly if you get them alone or if they otherwise realize
they're outmatched. Make it look good and they'll play dead happily.
If they've managed to obtain a manual, you can grab a handful of Aspect 2
forms and throw them together. They won't be assembled well or to avoid
qi deviation. Different megacorporations may train their goons separately;
Qinglong trains them with Water to complement Ceaseless Dragon, for
example.
AO QINDIAN
Cold Proud Trained Boss
Rank 2
Qi: ___/13
Yin 3 Yang 1
ATTAINMENTS
● Politics, and the omnipresent strings of power
● Steel-scaled dracoform (2), her father's legacy
● Swimming, and an affinity for the sea
● Connection: Ao Yecha, a useful traitor
Face: 5
● +1 Ao clan connections
Technique: Patient Dragon Flows and Recoils Like Tides Qi: 4

● Flow (Sustained): When you beat Stance by 2+ with a footwork after a
successful enemy motion, they lose 1 Momentum and you gain 1
● Moon (Sustained): Gain dice to next motion equal to 1s rolled against you
● Patient (Instant): If you let them come to you, roll 3 more dice and gain 1
extra Momentum from your next motion against them
● Recoil (Instant): After they fail to beat your Stance, interrupt to roll a
footwork with 4 extra dice. It gains 1 less Momentum.
Technique: Breakers Hammer, Coils Swallow Qi: 6
● Swallow (Sustained): When you suffer a successful motion, your next

motion against them automatically succeeds
● Hammer (Instant): Successful motion knocks them back to disengaged,
+1 Momentum
● Coil (Instant): 1 Yin Edge after 2 successful motions in a row, +1 after 3
successful motions in a row.
● Breaker (Sustained): When someone fails to beat your Stance set by a
footwork, gain 1 Momentum. This counts as a successful footwork.
Technique: Scales Break Waves, Riptides Swallow Qi: 8
● Swallow (Sustained): When you suffer a successful motion, your next

motion against them automatically succeeds
● Scale (Sustained): Gain 1 Huge Edge through sheer strength, +1 after 3
successful motions
● Wave (Sustained): On the turn after a failed motion, roll 4 additional dice
● Breaker (Sustained): When someone fails to beat your Stance set by a
footwork, gain 1 Momentum. This counts as a successful footwork.
● Riptide (Instant): You can pull people with you instead of disengaging
from them with a footwork. Everyone pulled this way loses 1 Momentum;
each Momentum killed this way counts as a successful footwork.
Ao Qindian is pretty sure she's better than you. Her first Technique is there
to draw you out, test you, see if she can trip you up or wait you out. Her
second Technique is reserved for those who provoke her or when she's
decided to cut someone down; she'll focus on the weakest link at all times
to build combos of successful motions.
Qin-taizi reserves her draconic form for the boss stage, along with her third
Technique. Is it a cyborg power armor, or a literal transformation? Whatever
it is, Ao Qindian considers it a last resort. She abandons humanity to turn
into a living force of nature. The dragon's style is to prey on the weakest to
continue building combo and maximize Scale. The Proud tag affords her the
ability to take down multiple people at once.
JIANG SHIZHAO
Calculating Proud Reinforced Boss
Rank 3
Qi: ___/16
Yin 3 Yang 3
ATTAINMENTS
● A stock portfolio to beggar God, so long as Douzhu's board approves it
(3)
● Agriculture, and a surprising appreciation for physical labor
● Laopo, his armored car, and his reliance on his chauffeur Waipo
● Soyclone soldiers, and the secrecy required to grow them
● The xianzu bean (3)
● Connection: anyone who's eaten Douzhu food in the past week
Face: 5
● +2 agriculture
● +2 food service
● +1 anyone else Douzhu works with
Technique: Black and White Clarity of Resolve Qi: 9

● Black (Instant): Block anything, gain 2 Yin Edge against a finisher, and
negate Yang Edge
● White (Instant): Hit anything, no matter how untouchable. Gain 2 Yang
Edge on a finisher, and negate Yin Edge
● Clear (Instant): End Technique-based effects on them, or on yourself
● Resolve (Sustained): +1 Momentum when you make a successful motion
after a failed one
Jiang Shizhao isn't formally trained in martial arts, but he fought a brawl or
two in his youth. These days he's more likely to be flanked by goons with
clammy white flesh, or by his assassin-trained chauffeur. His only
Technique is focused on bringing you down to his level.
Upon being forced to his boss phase, Shizhao swallows the experimental
xianzu bean, from a soy cultivar engineered to become an elixir. Soy protein
fills in wounds and bulks out his muscles. He gains five new Treasures
representing vines and soy-flesh that form new arms and limbs for him,
each specialized to a different purpose.
It's almost entirely conjecture that Douzhu foodstuffs contain trackers that
would let Jiang Shizhao trace you across Xiatian and hijack your muscles
with cordyceps. But true or not, you can't afford to eat entirely organic.
Technique: Love Blooms Mad In the Careful Mouth Qi: 8
● Love (Sustained): When you grab someone or if they've eaten
Douzhu food in the past week, gain them as a Connection. You have
them grabbed for this Technique while you have a Connection. They
can pay 2 Momentum and cite a perspective, debt, or other
Connection to break free.
● Heart (Sustained): You can roll 4 additional dice on a grab when you
leverage debt, perspective, Connection, or blackmail, and keep them
grabbed. They have to expose themselves as a Wretched Move to
break free.
● Care (Sustained): Human shields give you +1 Stance, or +2 if they've
got 6+. If that keeps it from hitting, it hits the human shield instead
and you gain the Momentum
● Mad (Sustained): Change the target of a motion from someone
you've got grabbed. Interrupt successfully to do so, and if
successful it doesn't count against limit
● Bloom (Instant): Appear near one of your Connections, optionally
engaged and fighting. +1 Momentum if you get the drop
Killing Jiang Shizhao would probably paralyze Douzhu Agri's operations in
Xiatian for nearly a month, maybe two. It might not resume full-scale
activity for a whole financial quarter.
YOUXIA
Probably one in three fights129 will be with other youxia. It's nothing
personal. You're both fighting for Xiatian. And youxia try to work it out
peacefully in recognition of that; to talk it out over tea, to call in favors or
trade on Face to get their support elsewhere in exchange for your support
right now. Sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes there's no way to come to
an agreement, except by the sword.
Youxia usually duel for honor among themselves. Only the worst
disagreements are for blood, and only when it's personal will they fight to the
death.
129
depending how often the cops catch you
ZHOU THE DRUMMER
A Ghost Blade who has personal beef with Tianbian Solutions. He seems
to be on a one-man terror campaign, blowing up Tianbian facilities and
beheading Tianbian executives. If you like that sort of thing, you might fight
alongside him. If you want him to not brutalize janitors and clerks as
collaborators, you might end up fighting him.
ABBESS KU
A Lotus Church bhikkuni in charge of Rilin Temple. She upholds the Church's
neutrality in Xiatian's jianghu. Abbess Ku considers any Lotus youxia in the
city under her wing, whether they like it or not. If she thinks you're getting
involved with things beneath you, or getting too uppity with things above
you, she will challenge you to prove to her that you are ready. She'll take it
seriously -- she'll hold back to what she judges your level to be. You need to
hit Abbess Ku with everything you've got for her to take you seriously.
Even then, it might not be enough.
INTERMISSION: WHERE'S EVERYONE ELSE?
Somewhere out there is everyone else. Somewhere there are warbands
hiding in the islands and what remains of the jungles, chopping the chains off
diwata and rebuilding their world outside the new colonies. Somewhere there
are witches with three Colors and four Elements to weave curses for shining
chromium knights. Somewhere there are ronin and water protectors and
bogatyrs and heroes --
Can't wait to see them! Really, genuinely can't. Just got to -- finish
beheading this goddamn robot first --
EPILOGUE
This gas station is pretty cheap. Out of the way enough that the lines aren't
too long. Your friend got his card hacked once and he swears it's because the
machines here stole his info but it hasn't happened to you yet and its really
cheap. So it's your favorite station.
Hers too, I guess. You pull up just as her horse finishes drinking. Dead of
night, coming off the graveyard shift on a Monday morning. Nobody in their
right mind should be out here.
The rider, who according to the news has a bounty of three million wen on
her head, pulls the nozzle from her horse's mouth, though the horse noses
after it. You kill your headlights. In the gas station floodlamp glare, you watch
her tilt her head back and dispense some gas right into her own mouth, like
she's drinking from a soda fountain. Her throat bobs. She takes a final
mouthful, swishes it around, and swallows, before getting back on the horse
and riding away.
You consider buying a headlamp, or something, and leaving it for her. The
horse is not really visible at night and that seems unsafe. You consider maybe
finding another gas station.
APPENDIX A: SAMPLE TECHNIQUES
Technique: Mountain Yields to the Moon's Depths Qi: 3
● Yield (Instant): When an enemy beats Stance by less than (Yin), they
gain 1 less Momentum.
● Moon (Sustained): Whenever enemy rolls 1s, you gain that many dice to
your next motion.
● Mountain (Sustained): Can't move, but gain 2 Edge against attempts to
move you, and +(Earth) dice to next motion against someone who tries to
move you
● Deep (Instant): Spend Momentum to increase Stance
Requires Yin 3, Earth 2, Water 2. Conservative Technique mostly focusing on
defense. Switch out Water or Earth forms if they conflict with something else.
This is a great form for playing around with people if you're not ready to pull
out your style's big guns yet.
Technique: Qi: 3
● Shadow (Instant): Roll 5 dice as an enemy rolls and cancel matches. If
they fail, gain 1 Momentum
OR
● Bright (Instant): When you fail, roll 5 more dice. If you succeed, +1
Momentum
● Center (Sustained): +(Earth) dice to strikes if you're standing somewhere
important or tactical
● Hammer (Instant): Knockback enemy to disengage, highlight to knock
them into another field. +1 Momentum
Requires Yin 3 or Yang 3, Earth 3. Workhorse Technique that offers a little
defense and a little offense, though you should probably drop either Shadow
or Bright, lest this become a forbidden Technique. Works fine with any Earth
style.
Technique: Patient Mountain's Black Stone Qi: 4
● Black (Instant): Block anything, gain 1 Edge against finisher, negate its
Edge from power or strength
● Patient (Instant): +(Yin) dice if you let them come to you, +1 Momentum if
you beat them
● Mountain (Sustained): Can't move, but gain 2 Edge against attempts to
move you, and +(Earth) dice to next motion against someone who tries to
move you
Requires Yin 3, Earth 2. A Technique for people who want to get hammered in
the gut and stay standing. Would go great with Lotus Church styles like
Diamond Vajra or Dragon Fist, though watch out: this Technique has Yin
forms, so it becomes a Forbidden Technique if you add Yang forms. Sparks
styles like Hydralic Fist or Backbone Spear also work. Find some fun offense
to add on.
Technique: Swift Demand Intercepts the Lock's Key Qi: 2
● Swift (Instant): +(Yang) dice against someone who hasn't acted yet, and
+1 Momentum if you beat them
● Demand (Instant): A motion that fails by less than (Yang) gains1
Momentum anyways
● Intercept (Instant): +(Wood) on an interrupt. +1 Momentum if you win
● Lock (Sustained): While you successfully grab someone, punish a motion
by gaining 1 Edge against it
Requires Yang 3, Wood 3. Here's a Technique for the fast and fancy talker.
Lake Mirror makes it go down smooth. Monkey Fist and Drunken Fist don't fit
quite as well, but they make it pretty funny. If you're not using this in a politics
scene, you can also use it to be fast and bewildering in a fight.
Technique: Crystal Needle's Returning Trick Qi: 3
● Crystal (Instant): Reveal you brought or prepared something
● Needle (Instant): Identify a weakness with a successful reach, and
highlight it. 1 Edge for anyone to take advantage until it's covered or
fixed
● Trick (Sustained): When you reveal something that gives you Edge, you
roll +(Water) dice when you have that Edge
● Return (Instant): Pull a reversal at 9 Momentum, and roll +(Yin) dice
Requires Water 3, Metal 3, Yin 2. A Technique for "eye in the sky" types who
like to direct action from afar. Goes great with some Butterfly Sect styles, but
some Ghost Blade styles like Flying Puppet or Inexplicable Fist would also
work. Add some defensive Forms so you can survive scoping out an enemy, or
load up on mobility and range.
Technique: Bright Sun's Burning Nova Explosion Qi: 6
● Bright (Instant): If you're about to fail, roll 5 more dice. +1 Momentum if
you succeed
● Sun (Sustained): When an enemy rolls 6s against you, gain that many
dice to your next motion
● Explode (Instant): Gain (Fire) Momentum on a comeback instead, +1
Momentum if you have less Momentum than your highest enemy, and +1
for each Wound you're suffering
● Burn (Instant): Immediately rush again after a failed motion, but reduce
Stance by 3. +1 Momentum whenever you're hit before your next turn
Requires Yang 3, Fire 3. A Technique for the guy who absolutely, positively,
has to blast one million sword strikes right now. Practically made for Burning
Forest or Heart Devil Fist, can be great with Lightning Flash Sword (though
watch out for Yin forms), Gasoline Fist, or Tiger Fist. But Dragon Fist will give
it some Earth survivability.
Technique: Deep Shadow's Yielding Step Qi: 1
● Step (Instant): +(Water) dice on a footwork to disengage

● Deep (Instant): Spend Momentum to increase Stance
● Yield (Instant): When an enemy beats your Stance by less than (Yin),
they gain -1 Momentum
● Shadow (Instant): As an enemy rolls, roll 5 dice and cancel matches. If
they fail, gain 1 Momentum
Requires Yin 3, Water 2. Ninja Technique. For that bitch that loves to land a hit
and disappear. Ghost Blades, you want Inexplicable Fist or Six Venoms.
Infuriating with Lake Mirror Fist. Hilarious with Gasoline Fist. Constellation
Palms masters like to use this to do that infuriating thing where they ask a
question in your ear and then vanish before you can hit them. Cheap and easy
to qualify for.
Technique: Bright Hammer's Demand Shakes the Sky Qi: 3
● Shake (Instant): Attack becomes destructive and +1 Momentum if you

obliterate scenery
● Hammer (Instant): Successful motion knocks enemy back to disengage,
or into another field if highlighted. +1 Momentum
● Demand (Instant): If a motion fails by less than (Yang), gain 1
Momentum anyways
● Bright (Instant): As you're about to fail, roll 5 more dice. +1 Momentum if
you succeed
Requires Yang 3, Earth 3. Technique for a big guy with a big weapon.
Amputation Blade and Upright Guest Sword would both go great here, though
I know a guy who worked a huge shotgun with Iron Lead Way -- but if you
wanna mow down thugs from across the room, you'll have to add that
yourself.
Technique: Vermilion Bloom's Fiercely Lashing Thorns Qi: 4
● Bloom (Instant): Appear near a Connection or other character, engaged

if they're fighting
● Lash (Sustained): Can make grabs while disengaged, bringing them into
engagement range
● Fierce (Instant): Rush an enemy from long range, optionally
bodyslamming both of you into another field. Theycan't contest if the
new field is worse
● Vermilion (Sustained): Negate a source of Edge, and roll (Edge) more
dice against that enemy
Requires Wood 3, Fire 3. Technique for a duelist who likes to lock down an
opponent and maybe wrestle them homoerotically a little bit. Well, mostly
the Wood forms are for turning their force against them, but it's not not
homoerotic. Eagle Claw, Tiger Fist, or Monkey Fist love this, but it could
accompany Lightning Flash Sword or Burning Jade Fist.
Technique: Wisdom's Needle Teaches Patience Qi: 4
● Patient (Instant): +(Yin) dice if you let them come to you, and +1
Momentum if you win
● Needle (Instant): Identify enemy's weakness with a reach and highlight
it, anyone gains 1 Edge to take advantage until it's covered or fixed
● Wisdom (Instant): Gain a new Skill when Wounded that grants 1 Edge vs
wounding Technique. Lasts as long as the Wound does
Requires Yin 2, Metal 3, Water 3 Technique for anyone who deals with hidden
things, especially the digital, spiritual, or larcenous worlds. It'll help you get a
read on things and bring them to your own terms. Great opener for Cultivation
School styles like Constellation Palms or Evil Sealing Art, or for the
trapmaster types of Flying Puppet or Bitter Way.
APPENDIX B: STYLE INVENTION ADVICE
APPENDIX C: RANDOM TABLES
APPENDIX D: STEAMED FISH RECIPE
You'll find this at wedding banquets and Friday night family dinners alike. In
Yuanhai they go heavy on the ginger out of a superstition that it neutralizes
salt-sickness; in Youzhou they sometimes substitute out shiitake for one of
the other mushrooms you can find growing down there. Theoretically eating
too much seafood increases your risk of salt-sickness, but everyone eats it
anyways.

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by Emily Zhu

with special thanks to

the citizens of Pocket Dimension,

曹攝 Cao She, of the 蝴蝶派 Butterfly Sect,

and 孫赤松 Sun Chisong, of the 蓮花教 Lotus Church,

SECT AND STYLE

BTW: SHIFU AND SECT-FAMILY

APPROACHES AND PATHS

BTW: PILES OF DICE

YIN AND YANG EDGE

BTW: NO RULES JUST RIGHT

sensible. You're not doing it right until you're

not even only the writings around your subject.

way forward -- except to become someone you're

FULFILLING YOUR DESTINY

RUNNING FROM TROUBLE

YOUR NEW POWERS

HEROIC MOVES (earn 1 Face)

APOLOGETIC MOVES (prevent Face loss)

HUMBLING MOVES (spend 1 Face)

WRETCHED MOVES (spend 2 Face, can't appeal to Apologetic moves)

Finishing a project can grant one of the following outcomes:

● SWIFT (Yang 2, 1 Qi, Instant)

● RETURN (Yin 2, 0 Qi, Instant)

● MOUNTAIN (Earth 2, 1 Qi, Sustained)

● CRYSTAL (Metal 2, 1 Qi, Instant)

● STEP (Water 2, 0 Qi, Instant)

● LASH (Wood 2, 1 Qi, Sustained)

● STEP (Fire 2, 0 Qi, Instant)

The Lotus Church is renowned across Xiatian's renjie. It teaches ascetic

To make a Lotus Church youxia, pick two:

● MERIT (Earth 2, 1 Qi, Instant)

To make a Cultivation School youxia, pick two:

● DENY (Water 2, Instant, 1 Qi)

To make a Butterfly Sect youxia, pick two:

● PAPER (Wood 2, 1 Qi, Instant)

● HEART (Wood 3, 1 Qi, Sustained)

To make a Beggars Group youxia, pick 2:

● LEATHER (Earth 2, Instant, 1 Qi)

To make a Martial Saint Formation youxia, pick 2:

● BETRAYAL (Metal 2, 1 Qi, Instant)

The Ghost Blade Society are a well-dressed, well-heeled guild of

To make a Ghost Blade Society youxia, pick two:

● HOWL (Fire 2, 1 Qi, Sustained)

To make a Sparks Fellowship youxia, pick two:

To make an Every Living Thing Clan youxia, pick two:

● HUNT (Wood 2, 0 Qi, Sustained)

Other possible Skills include

Ninggu Mushroom Farm

Prince Ao Qindian 敖欽點

CrazyMAX Gang 黐線MAX

4 Distant thunder, but no rain.

5 A shrine to Tu Di Gong, the god of this place. People leave pearls

1 Thugs in Qinglong's black-and-orange livery. The thug-rank livery,

2 Factory workers headed back or to a long shift. The pumps need

5 Rain pooling in a house-sized crevice on Big Horn after a storm.

6 Momang, a darkweb forum for hackers and disaffected IT

1 Homemade shortwave antennae, about the size of a torso. Stick it

3 A signal jammer the size and approximate shape of an ornate key,