Clan Rising

Play As Your Clan · Free beta

Adventure with your ancestors.

Hold a real castle against anything you care to name. Command a ship inside her own service years. Stand at the shoulder of someone history remembers and try to talk them into something else. Every adventure opens from a real record, and one click starts it.

Begin the adventure →First chapter free · sign in with Google

A taste of play

Caerlaverock, midsummer 1300.

The chronicler's voice · The Siege · Caerlaverock

Midsummer, 1300

The tide is out and the mud of the Solway shines like pewter all the way to the English shore, which is how you see them coming a full day before they arrive: carts, and the long shapes of engines under canvas, and more men on the road than this corner of Nithsdale has fed in a generation. You hold a triangular castle with a double moat, and the roll credits you with sixty men.

The steward wants to know about the water. There is a good well and a wet ditch, and no rain since Whitsun, and he has already worked out how long both last if the ditch has to be kept full. He is waiting for you to say it out loud.

Send a man up the tower to count their enginesPut the garrison on half water from tonightRide out to the Solway shore while there is still time

Take a path, or write your own move. The chronicler answers either way.

How it plays

  1. 1

    Pick a real record

    Any castle, ship or life in the atlas, drawn from the same catalogue as the 497 documented families. Every page that can be played carries the button that opens it.

  2. 2

    Answer what it asks

    A siege asks two things: who is coming, and in what year. A ship and a life ask nothing at all, because their own record already sets the year.

  3. 3

    Read the opening scene

    The chronicler writes you into the place as it stood, with what the walls hold, what the hold carries, or who is in the room.

  4. 4

    Type anything you like

    Three suggestions sit under every scene, but they are only suggestions. Write your own move instead and the world answers that.

Ways to play

Most adventures are simply this: you, the land, and the year.

Every adventure opens from something real in the catalogue: a castle to hold, a ship to command, a life to advise. Pick the kind of story you want and the chronicler takes it from there.

The Siege

Hold the walls

Name what is coming, and hold the gate.

Pick any real castle, choose the year and choose the enemy. We give you the walls, the ground and how many men it could plausibly hold. Everything after that is arithmetic and nerve.

Tracks · garrison · provisions · water · the breaches

The Voyage

Command a real ship in her own years.

Her record is ahead of you and the age she sailed in holds you to it. Weather, water, sickness and the state of her hull will cost you more than any enemy.

Tracks · hull · crew · provisions · her station

The Story

Advise someone history remembers.

You are at their shoulder through the days the record covers. They lead, they speak, and they can refuse you. Turning the record aside has to be earned.

Tracks · standing · the record · what you changed

The Climb

Counsel them from nobody to command.

Start years before they matter, in a post where nobody listens to either of you, and advise them up every rung to whatever command history finally gave them.

Tracks · rank · renown · armies · the record

Step through somewhere real

Every door opens on true ground.

These are real records from the Clan Rising atlas, each one carrying the button that opens it. Every castle, ship and life in the catalogue has one.

Or browse them all from the adventure picker.

Questions

What can I play?
Four ways in, and each opens from a real record rather than a set of dropdowns. Hold a castle through a siege you name yourself. Command a ship inside her own service years. Stand at the shoulder of someone history remembers through the days the record covers, or counsel them from an unimportant post all the way up to the command they finally held.
How do I begin one?
From the record itself. Every castle, ship, life and story page that can be played carries a button that opens it in one click, and the chronicler writes the opening scene for you. If you would rather browse, the adventure picker lists a shortlist of each and the whole catalogue behind it.
Can I choose the year?
For a siege, yes: you name what is coming and the year it arrives, anywhere from 500 to 1945, and the year is absolute about what the defenders have and what they have never heard of. A ship or a life sets its own year, because the record already knows when she sailed and when he lived.
Can I go where I like once I am in?
Within reason, and the reason is the story you opened. A siege holds you to the walls and the ground around them; a voyage goes wherever she can plausibly be sailed; a life follows the roads that life actually took. Inside that frame you can go and do anything you can write.
Why doesn't every castle, ship or life have a button?
Because we only open the ones we hold the records for. Every castle in the atlas can be defended and every ship can be taken out, but a life needs a documented arc to advise, so people still living or recently died are not offered, and a story needs a single figure at its centre before anyone can stand at their shoulder.
Is every playthrough different?
Yes. The chronicler writes each turn fresh around your deeds. Two players can hold the same castle against the same army in the same year and lose it, or keep it, entirely differently.
What does it cost?
Your opening chapter and your first two moves are free in the beta. After that the chronicle pauses, full access is US$9.99 a month (500 Clan Coins to spend on adventures), or a one-time US$4.99 pack of 200 coins. All prices are in US dollars.
Is it suitable for younger readers?
The world carries the weight of its history, raids, wars and hard winters, but it is written as family adventure: no gore, no romance, and the darkest chapters of the record are history to be walked through, never deeds to perform.

Somewhere, in some year, a road is waiting.

Begin the adventure →