Becoming the Ghost of Tsushima in Crusader Kings 3 didn’t quite go to plan

Crusader King 3’s latest DLC, the Asia-focused All Under Heaven, expands the map further than the series has ever dared before, all the way to Japan. There, players can find a land of unique government types, house bloc mechanics, and struggles between the rising prospective Shogun and the falling Chrysanthemum Throne. 

However, as a very specific kind of strategy games freak, I had a different goal in mind. What I wanted was to entirely do away with these trappings and instead focus on trying to recreate the events of Ghost of Tsushima. Buffeted by the divine wind of Crusader Kings 3’s random mechanics, however, I found out this was going to be a lot harder than I expected.

✓ VideoGamer Summary

• With the new DLC for Crusader Kings, All Under Heaven, I thought I’d try my hand at becoming the Ghost of Tsushima.
• Setting up for a Ghost of Tsushima playthrough requires a few steps, and the emergent storytelling of Crusader Kings 3 kept changing things up.
• Life as a Crusader Kings adventurer makes it quite hard to target a Mongol Khagan, especially if you get exiled from most of the  All Under Heaven map.
• It turns out it’s much easier to kill someone through Crusader Kings 3’s courtly intrigue than trying to track them down.
• In the end, I became the Ghost of Tsushima in Crusader Kings 3, though not quite in the way I expected.

Hit the road, Jin

Set in 1274, Ghost of Tsushima is set nearly 100 years after Crusader Kings 3’s latest start date of 1178; this gave me plenty of time to prepare to play one Jin Sakai. Playing as an adventurer, I was separated from the courtly comforts of a typical noble and ready to face down the might of the Mongol Empire. 

It was challenging to stay in the game long enough to meet the Mongols. Clan Sakai died in more realities than they survived. Plague, assassination, and being invaded by other ambitious families routinely stripped the leaves from the Sakai family tree. I found the best defence was a good offence. I also took the entire southern Japanese island of Kyushu, you know, just in case.

The second major problem was that Temujin, the future Genghis Khan, had to survive his quest to lead his hordes in conquering Japan. Several times around 1,200 AD, I’d zoom out from my personal works in Japan to find that he’d died of typhus, or fallen off his horse – that was the end of that timeline. 

Trickiest of all was that Yamato culture, the prominent culture of Japan at the time, as simulated by Crusader Kings 3, didn’t actually let you become an adventurer. That required a particular tradition that our culture didn’t start with. 

Like a true Sakai, I decided to take matters into my own hands. My first patriarch of the family, Kenta Sakai, got to be in charge of our culture long enough to decide that, actually, the Japanese really liked being Swords for Hire, meaning future generations could just pack up their things and go adventuring. When Genghis Khan attacked Japan, things were looking up for my quest. 

Bandit blues

The year is 1248, and the Mongols have ruled over Japan for a few decades. A young Jin Sakai has decided that this cannot stand, giving up the courtly lifestyle for one on the road as an adventurer. It turns out that his court doesn’t come with him, so Jin has gathered his sisters and his four wives to be his first followers. 

He founds a freebooter company called the ‘Ravens of Inari’, apparently unaware that Inari is normally associated with foxes, and heads out. The current Mongol leader, Khagan Yesugei “Silvertongue”, won’t know what hit him.

Unfortunately, adventurers need to be in the same location as their target to kill them, and when Jin became an adventurer, the astute Khagan exiled him from the Mongol Empire. Crusade Kings 3 really takes this seriously, and the Ravens were stuck terrorising the borderlands of the Mongol Empire, mostly being bandits around China and Korea.

Finally, in 1264, Yesugei dies of old age and is succeeded by Khagan Taghai, meaning Jin’s exile is over. It’s going to be a long trek, but two years later, the Ravens have finally arrived at the Mongol’s capital of Sığnaq. Sadly, not a week before their arrival, the Khagan had actually moved the capital halfway across the empire.

So, towards the end of 1267, Jin Sakai finally arrives at the new Mongol capital of Karakorum. Except the Khagan is always on campaign, and thus is never close enough for Jin to target for assassination. Two years later, the Khagan is betrothed to Jin’s niece, and the Ravens have grown tired of milling about. Clearly, we need a new plan.

We’ve got the Ghost of Tsushima at home

Jin’s return to Tsushima could have been heart-warming, but this is Crusader Kings 3, and we had work to do. He had to become landed again, and luckily Jin was fourth in line to inherit Tsushima from his half-brother, Yukimoto ‘the Jovial’. 

Unluckily for the Sakais, Jin had gotten quite practiced at murder. With his half-brother, nieces, and nephews out of the picture, Jin was once more ruling Tsushima and could target Khagan Taghai from anywhere.

It took a few years for this to happen, but Jin had been patient so far. On March 30, 1274, the same year that the Ghost of Tsushima took place, Jin Sakai invited the Khagan over for drinks, got him blind drunk, and then sealed him up in the Sakai manor basement. After wandering about Asia for nearly three decades, we finally killed a Khagan.

The next year, Jin had a pang of conscience and publicly admitted to his murders, making him a publicly known kin-slayer and king-slayer, but no one seemed to care that much because they still helped him successfully take out the next Mongol leader, unimaginatively called Khagan Taghai II. With this next Mongol generation cut short, the Mongol Empire, which stretched from the Black Sea to the Pacific, collapsed.

A new dawn for the land of the rising sun

After the empire broke up, Japan was still ruled over by a Mongol warlord, as the new Khagan Bulgunutei flew the banner of the Blue Horde over the islands. However, Jin’s role in all of this was done. He was now a venerable 44-year-old and had killed more of his own family than he had Khagans. Still, you can’t make tamagoyaki without breaking a few eggs.

In the end, it’s hard to say this campaign really resembled the Ghost of Tsushima. Our Jin Sakai wasn’t a complicated hero; he spent most of his life terrorising China with his gang of wives, before killing his own family to try his hand at courtly intrigue. However, while my campaign is probably best classified (at best) as ropey Ghost of Tsushima fanfiction, it sure was peak Crusader Kings 3.

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