FactionsReport
English：Factions · Factions
Kenshi has no faction-select screen, just dozens of organisations grinding against each other and a single relations value from -100 to +100 — where you stand is decided by who you have fought, sold and saved.
Kenshi never shows you a "pick a side" screen. Dozens of organisations are scattered across the world, from a religious state ruling half a continent down to a tower gang of about a dozen, all existing at once and all holding an opinion about you. Your relationship with each of them is a continuous value: drop below -30 and they attack on sight; climb above +50 and you are an ally. The large grey band in between is where most players actually live.
How Relations Work
A few rules have to be straight before the faction system makes sense:
- Allying with one side does not make you an enemy of its rival. This is the most commonly misunderstood point. Allying with the Shek Kingdom does not automatically make the Holy Nation hate you; you only take collateral damage when the joining process itself involves an oath or an action explicitly aimed at a third party. Swearing to Moll to join the Flotsam Ninjas, for instance, includes a promise to kill Holy Nation people, and therefore comes with -75 Holy Nation relations.
- Turning in bounties cuts both ways. Handing over a faction's boss as a bounty is effectively a declaration of war on that faction.
- Healing repairs relations, but there is a ceiling. Bandaging or repairing a faction's wounded gains points, and you do not need to be seen doing it; the higher the character's standing, the bigger the effect, and saving a faction leader can snap you from -100 back to +5. But this method tops out at +5 — enough to stop them attacking on sight, not enough to ally.
- Pacifiers make the problem go away for money. Pacifiers in bars around the world take payment to smooth over bad blood, up to 100,000 Cats per session for the major factions and around 50,000 Cats for smaller ones. But if you have killed or imprisoned their leader, the Pacifier will not deal with you at all.
The Major Powers
Multiple cities, large populations, and effectively unavoidable for any player.
| Faction | Heartland | In one line |
|---|---|---|
| The Holy Nation | Around Okran's Pride | A Greenlander theocracy of fanatics; Shek, Hivers and Skeletons are killed on sight |
| United Cities | The south-east half of the map, the largest by area | A plutocratic empire run by the Noble Circle and powered by slavery |
| Western Hive | The Vain valleys and the offshore islands | The Hive proper, though most of the population actually lives dispersed across the mainland |
Mid-Sized Powers
Less influential than the big three, but hardly small.
| Faction | Base | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Shek Kingdom | Admag | A purely Shek martial culture with a tiny population, being driven toward extinction by its own tradition of honourable death |
| Traders Guild | Trader's Edge | The economic backbone of the United Cities, and the de facto administrator of the slave camps |
| Rebel Farmers | Fort Simion | Imperial farmers taxed off their own land, now raiding across Imperial territory |
| Swampers | Shark | A criminal settlement made up of five gangs, with the Hounds at the top |
| Kral's Chosen | Around the Shek Kingdom | The Shek faction that split off when Esata took power, with a population nearly equal to the kingdom itself |
Minor Powers
One or two holdings and very few people, yet often the factions players work with most.
- Tech Hunters and the Machinists — a partnership excavating ancient ruins and organising history, with holdings including World's End, Black Scratch, Flats Lagoon and Mourn
- Flotsam Ninjas — a resistance movement of women and slaves who escaped the Holy Nation
- Anti-Slavers — the abolitionist militia led by Tinfist, classed as a terrorist organisation by the slave trade
- Mongrel — the independent city at the centre of the Fog Islands, whose ninja guards hold off the Fogmen day and night
- Deadcat — a nation that briefly took shape in the north, reduced to coastal fishing villages after the Cannibals took its capital
- Border Zone factions — Holy Nation outlaws in The Hub, the Trade Ninjas, the Black Dragon Ninjas and others
- Skeletons — the remnants of several ancient civilisations inside Black Desert City
- Others: Bounty Hunters, the Mercenary Guild, Shinobi Thieves, Nomads, Free Traders, Manhunters, Slave Traders, Empire Peasants, the United Heroes League and more
Where Some of the Small Factions Came From
Several names on that list have almost no explanatory text in game; their history has to be pieced together from dialogue, books and scattered records. What they have in common is that each is small, and each demonstrates one specific rule about how this world works.
Deadcat was a human power in the far north of the continent, possibly founded during the Second Empire era, and even its name is thought to be an insult aimed at Cat-Lon[V1 0:00:53]. Its social foundation was fugitives — rebels and the descendants of rebels running as far north as they could get, wanting only distance from the wars and politics of the south[V1 0:00:53]. It survived the collapse of the Second Empire and the wars that followed, but not the Cannibals: once its capital fell it was converted into an enemy stronghold outright, and the survivors retreated south-east into a string of fishing villages deeply suspicious of outsiders[V2 0:00:53].
The Trade Ninjas took the commercial route, running bars and shops in independent Mourn, the ruins of The Hub and the northern Border Zone. Ostensibly neutral and interested only in business, they are nonetheless rumoured to have intervened covertly in the war between the Holy Nation and the Shek Kingdom for their own benefit[V1 0:04:28].
The Shrieking Bandits haunt the Shrieking Forest, the Purple Sands and the Cannibal Plains — humans so malnourished that they have degenerated and lost the ability to speak normally, communicating only by screaming. They attack travellers, yet get along well enough with the Nomads, who say they are simply misunderstood; there is even a rumour that talking to them properly avoids a fight[V1 0:05:37].
The Nomads stay neutral toward every power and make their living herding and selling animals: goats, bonedogs, pack bulls and garru. Most live in temporary camps that can be struck at any time, though a few have built semi-permanent villages with shops in Shem and Dreg[V1 0:07:27].
The Sand Ninjas are based in the cactus nests of the Spine canyons, patrolling The Eye and the Great Desert under the leadership of the Sand Ninja Ghost, and divided into ordinary Sand Ninjas and elite Jonin. They take training seriously — promotion is assessed by dumping a member alone in the wastes to fend for themselves[V3 0:03:50].
The United Heroes League is the least likeable entry on the list: a band of vigilantes who believe themselves called by Imperial order, who have formed an unsanctioned paramilitary to "enforce the law", and who in practice spend the overwhelming majority of their energy harassing and attacking non-human races[V4 0:02:44]. The Empire does not endorse them officially, but the society around them does circulate claims that Hivers are like animals and drive up poverty and crime, and that the Shek are "Kral extremists" who perform honour executions, eat babies and raid caravans — and those rumours are what feeds this militia[V5 0:05:45].
Hostile Factions
Factions that fight on sight. Most have no route to reconciliation, and the bounty system does not work on them.
| Type | Examples |
|---|---|
| Cannibalism and sacrifice | Cannibals, Preacher Cult, Fogmen |
| Skeleton-related threats | Skin Bandits, Skeleton Bandits, Skeleton Legion, Old Machines |
| Ordinary bandits | Dust Bandits, Starving Bandits, Sand Ninjas, Red Sabres, Scavengers, Grass Pirates |
| Shek dissidents | Berserkers, Band of Bones |
| Others | Crab Raiders, Reavers, Southern Hive, Swamp Ninjas, Shrieking Bandits |
Non-Factions and Beasts
There is also a set of "factions" that never appear on the relations list and whose standing cannot be adjusted at all. They exist to tag unorganised populations, ruins and wildlife:
- Unorganised populations — Drifters, Vagrants, slaves, Rebirth slaves
- Location tags — Ancient Ruins, ruined cities, Floodland Ruins, Second Empire
- Animal factions — crabs, spiders, wolves, raptors, landbats, beak things, swamp creatures, herbivores, gorillos
Beast factions do not do politics, but in practical survival terms they are deadlier than most bandits: they never accept surrender, never retreat, and will drag an unconscious character away to eat.
A Few Rivalries Worth Remembering
Kenshi's faction network is dense, but only a handful of conflicts actually drive the world:
- Holy Nation vs Shek Kingdom — a war of many years, with the Shek beaten to the edge of extinction
- Holy Nation vs United Cities — religious purity against plutocratic pragmatism; mutually hostile states
- The slave trade vs the Anti-Slavers — Traders Guild, Slave Traders, Manhunters and the United Cities on one side, Tinfist on the other; the single most world-state-altering thread in the game
- Holy Nation vs Flotsam Ninjas — orthodoxy against heresy, at a power ratio approaching 50:1
- Cannibals vs everyone in the north — Deadcat, the Flotsam Ninjas and the Cannibal Hunters are all tied to the same front
Factions You Can Ally With
The following can be formally allied through dialogue, and most will affect how other factions see you:
Anti-Slavers, Crab Raiders, Flotsam Ninjas, Hounds, Rebel Farmers, Shek Kingdom, Shinobi Thieves, Skeleton Bandits, Skin Bandits, Holy Nation, Traders Guild, United Cities.
A Yardstick for "Who Can Actually Last"
Discussion of Kenshi's factions slides easily into moral scoring, but some people have tried asking a different question. One channel proposes six criteria for whether a faction can survive long term: economic growth, political stability, national security, freedom of movement for persons and property, functioning infrastructure, and the happiness of the population. He stresses that this is not a question of who is morally correct but purely of whose system can hold up[V6 0:01:38].
Applied to the contents of this article, that yardstick is quite productive. The three major powers are clearly ahead on "security" and "infrastructure", yet each loses points structurally on one specific criterion — the Holy Nation's doctrine comes with ethnic cleansing built in, the United Cities locks down freedom of movement with debt and slavery, and the Shek Kingdom burns its population on honourable death. Conversely, an organisation with no polity at all, like the Tech Hunters, cannot post a score in most columns — and for exactly that reason has nothing that can be overthrown.
Further Readings and Open Questions
The following are all inferences or thought experiments from commentary channels. The game has never said anything corresponding to them, so keep them separate from the factual body of the article.
The Gorillo Bandits and an exiled Shek general. The Gorillo Bandits are a band of unarmoured, bare-handed martial artists based in an old prison in the Bonefields, whose leader Gorrillo carries a 50,000-Cat bounty. One channel noticed that he possesses an Exile Plank, a weapon reserved for Shek warriors, and inferred from this that he may once have defeated the famous general "Sujon the Ghost", causing Sujon to be de-horned and exiled and thus to found the Berserker rebellion[V2 0:18:03]. The entire chain of reasoning rests on that one weapon's provenance; the rest is patchwork.
What a Holy Nation–Shek alliance would look like. Another video ran the thought experiment and concluded the two could never merge into one state, at most forming a kind of symbiotic confederation: each retaining its own laws and faith, operating through a deliberative body called the Chitrin Council, with deployments, troop movements and major resource transfers all requiring unanimous consent so that each side could veto the other[V7 0:14:28]. This is a purely hypothetical structure; no such mechanism exists in the game.
"They're just evil" is the easiest and laziest reading. After discussing the Holy Nation's treatment of women, one commentator argued that slapping a villain label on the Holy Nation, the United Cities and the Shek Kingdom is the least effortful option, but that Kenshi's factions are deliberately written with context — "evil for evil's sake" is genuinely rare in this world, and every side has reasons, they are just bad ones[V8 0:10:28]. That view belongs at the end of any faction list: the relations number tells you who wants to kill you, but never why.
See Also
Video citations
- History of Kenshi: Minor Powers | Factions (Deadcat, Mega City, Mongrel, Shinobi Thieves...)CivilizationEx
- History of Kenshi: Minor Powers | DocumentaryCivilizationEx
- History of Kenshi: Minor Powers | Gangs and Bandit CrewsCivilizationEx
- History of Kenshi: Major Powers | DocumentaryCivilizationEx
- Kenshi: History of the United CitiesCivilizationEx
- Which Faction Can Succeed on Kenshi?HeroInHisHead
- What If The Shek And Holy Nation Were Allies? (ft. Muffintop)HeroInHisHead
- Why Does The Holy Nation Oppress Women?HeroInHisHead