Factions in the Jianghu
The world of The Bustling World contains a range of organizations that operate across the Jianghu. These include martial arts schools with formal hierarchies and training programs, underground gambling dens run by criminal networks, secret banks that handle illicit funds outside government oversight, outlaw strongholds in remote territory, secluded sects practicing forbidden or unorthodox arts, and beggar gangs that survive on the margins of respectable society.
These factions are not static quest-givers or backdrop decoration. Each one is a living organization with its own goals, resources, territory, membership, and relationships to other factions. They can grow in power, lose territory, engage in internal conflicts, forge alliances, go to war, or be destroyed entirely. The state of every faction changes over the course of a playthrough based on both NPC decisions and player actions.
The player's relationship with any faction is shaped by direct action. You can trade with them, learn their fighting techniques, uncover their secrets, manipulate their leadership, join their ranks, eliminate them by force, or rebuild them from nothing after they have been destroyed. Each approach has consequences that ripple through the world.
Named Factions
Beggar Gang
The Beggar Gang is a large, loosely organized faction of beggars and outcasts. Despite their low social standing, they control a wide information network and possess their own martial arts traditions. In classical wuxia fiction, the Beggar Gang is traditionally one of the largest and most widespread organizations in the Jianghu, with members in every city and town who relay information through the network. The Bustling World appears to follow this convention.
The Beggar Gang's martial arts are distinct from those taught in formal schools. Their techniques were developed by people fighting with whatever they had available, which means their fighting styles tend to be practical and unconventional rather than elegant. Players who join or ally with the Beggar Gang gain access to these techniques and to the gang's information network, which can provide intelligence about events happening across the map.
Opposing the Beggar Gang means cutting off a major source of world information. Because their members are everywhere, the Beggar Gang knows things that other factions do not. Making enemies of them has practical consequences beyond just losing access to their fighting styles.
Sunflower Sect
The Sunflower Sect is a secretive organization with its own martial arts traditions. The name carries specific connotations in Chinese martial arts fiction, often associated with unorthodox, forbidden, or deeply guarded techniques that come with unusual requirements or side effects. In many wuxia stories, the Sunflower Manual contains techniques of great power that demand extreme personal sacrifice to learn.
Details about the Sunflower Sect's specific role in The Bustling World's faction dynamics are limited. What is known is that they are one of the more powerful and mysterious groups operating in the world, and their techniques are among those that players can seek out. Whether learning their martial arts comes with the same kinds of trade-offs as in traditional wuxia fiction remains to be seen.
Red Clothes Sect
The Red Clothes Sect is another named faction with its own territory, membership, and martial arts traditions. Less information is publicly available about their specific characteristics, goals, and internal politics compared to the Beggar Gang or Sunflower Sect. Their name suggests a distinctive visual identity, which likely carries symbolic meaning within the game's cultural framework.
Like other sects, the Red Clothes Sect controls territory and possesses unique martial arts knowledge that players can attempt to learn through joining, trading, or other means. Their position in the factional power structure and their relationships to the other named groups will shape how players interact with them.
The Poison Sect
An unnamed sect specializes in the development and use of different poisons. This faction connects directly to the crafting system since their knowledge includes recipes for various toxic substances that can be applied to weapons, added to food and drink, or deployed as traps. Players who align with this group gain access to poison-crafting techniques unavailable elsewhere.
Opposing the poison sect means potentially dealing with their chemical warfare without understanding how it works. Players who know nothing about poisons will have a harder time recognizing when they have been poisoned and finding countermeasures. The poison sect's knowledge is both a weapon and a defense, making them a faction where neutrality may not be a comfortable position.
How Faction Interaction Works
The game offers several approaches to any faction, and these are not just dialogue options. They are full gameplay paths with different requirements and results.
Players can use a faction's services without joining, building a transactional relationship. You trade with their merchants, hire their fighters, or buy their information without committing to membership. This keeps your options open but limits access to their deeper resources.
Players can join a faction, gaining deeper access to its resources, techniques, internal politics, and leadership structure. Membership brings obligations. The faction may ask things of you, and your actions reflect on the group. Other factions adjust their stance toward you based on which group you belong to.
Players can eliminate a faction by attacking its members and destroying its infrastructure. This is the most destructive option and creates a power vacuum. Neighboring factions rush to fill the gap, potentially creating new conflicts. The martial arts knowledge held by a destroyed faction may be lost permanently unless the player acquired it first.
Players can rebuild a destroyed faction from scratch. This requires significant resources, recruiting new members, establishing territory, and defining the rebuilt faction's new direction. The player effectively becomes the founder of a reborn organization, with the freedom to shape its goals and methods differently from the original.
Diplomacy Between Political Factions
Beyond the martial arts sects, the game includes NPC regime factions that represent larger political entities. These are not individual sects but governing bodies that control cities, provinces, and regions. They make decisions based on the overall state of relations between their territories, taking into account geography, military strength, population, and economic conditions.
The diplomacy system includes eight known interaction types between political entities:
Peace talks to end active conflicts and establish ceasefires between warring factions
Tribute payments from weaker factions to stronger ones, exchanging wealth for protection or non-aggression
Trade agreements that create ongoing economic relationships between regions, benefiting both parties
Condemnation of another faction's actions, which damages their reputation and relationships with neutral parties
Threats backed by military force, designed to coerce concessions without actual warfare
War declarations that initiate open military conflict, with all the destruction and displacement that follows
Military alliance pacts where factions agree to defend each other and coordinate against outside threats
Separation of existing alliances or the dissolution of diplomatic ties, freeing both parties from obligations
How Geography Shapes Politics
Geography is not just visual variety. It directly affects factional power dynamics. Mountain ranges create natural borders that are easy to defend but hard to project power across. River systems provide trade routes that make neighboring factions economically interdependent, giving them reasons to maintain peace. Coastal regions have access to maritime trade but are vulnerable to naval threats.
Factions with large populations can field bigger armies but need more food, making them dependent on agricultural regions. Factions controlling mining areas have access to metals for weapons and tools. Factions sitting on trade crossroads collect tariffs and grow wealthy. These material factors mean that diplomacy is about real strategic considerations, not just dialogue choices. Players who control key resources or strategic locations have natural diplomatic leverage.
Player-Controlled Territory
When players take control of territory through conquest, political maneuvering, or building from scratch, they enter the diplomatic system as a faction themselves. Managing policy across military, culture, economy, and research affects how neighboring factions perceive and interact with the player's holdings. A well-defended territory with a strong economy and growing population attracts NPC settlers and trading partners. A poorly managed territory bleeds population and invites invasion.
Multi-city coordination becomes relevant for players who expand their territory. Each city under the player's control can be specialized: one as a military stronghold, another as a trade hub, a third as an agricultural center. How these cities support each other, with food flowing from farms to military garrisons and trade revenue funding cultural development, determines the overall strength of the player's faction in the broader political landscape.
Territory management ties together many of the game's systems. Building uses the construction system. Defense requires the military layer. Population depends on NPC satisfaction. Economics require understanding the world's trade networks. Faction management is where all these systems converge.