Romance of the Three Kingdoms Encyclopedia Introduction
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Welcome to our grand project, the Kongming’s Archives Three Kingdoms Officer Encyclopedia! Here you can review our database information on over one thousand Three Kingdoms officers and characters! Our database has been converted to an open project, and anyone is welcome to participate. For more information please read about the Kongming’s Archives Development Project at our forum, Scholars of Shen Zhou. We hope you enjoy this grand dream of ours.
KMA Public Development Project Page
This encyclopedia is part of the development project, which means you can
contribute updates and information. All information in this project comes
from the Kongming’s Archives Three Kingdoms officer database.
I would like to thank everyone who has participated in our ongoing Kongming’s Archives Development Project at Scholars of Shen Zhou. If it weren’t through you, this encyclopedia could never have been born. In particular I would like to thank Sun Gongli, SlickSlicer, Sam Wrest, and Zhai Rong, our team’s most active members, along with Dong Zhou, Douglas, JamesD, and Jeremy Young, early adopters and participants of this wonderful vision. Thank you so much for growing this beyond a dream!
Officer Search Form (Officer Encyclopedia)
Browse our Three Kingdoms database alphabetically, by kingdom, or with a custom search.
Welcome to the Three Kingdoms Encyclopedia
Welcome to the Kongming’s Archives Romance of the Three Kingdoms Encyclopedia. As explained in the title, this project is designed to present all the officer information we have stored in our Romance of the Three Kingdoms site database. In addition, it also provides you with links and information from other various projects in our Novel & History Section. Our hope is that you find this section so useful, it is the first place you turn to when you wish to learn more about an officer.
The Three Kingdoms Encyclopedia is a Public Project
That’s right, our site’s database is accessible to anyone who wishes to expand it. Soon we will launch a new section where interested viewers can submit their request to join. For the time being, though, I would recommend you read more about this project in the Development Project Discussion Thread at our forum, Scholars of Shen Zhou. If you are interested in joining, go ahead and join the discussion there, or send me an email and I will explain everything else. Check back soon for the official participation page.
Using the Three Kingdoms Encyclopedia
Most people will find our Three Kingdoms Encyclopedia fairly straight-forward and easy to use, but a few elements are worthy of discussion. First, it is recommended that you use Mozilla Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher to avoid bugs and experience everything the Encyclopedia has to offer. Older browsers simply do not support the standards necessary for this project to be presented properly.
Searching
You have several options for searching, all of which are accessible through the Search Utility. You can, of course, view officers in alphabetical categories using the left-hand drop-down menu. The center drop-down menu allows you to select special categories and kingdoms. Each category offers a unique service (such as displaying only Dynasty Warriors or Unaligned officers) and the kingdom searches allow you to quickly view all officers which have served a specific ruler. Finally, you can enter your own unique search in the right-most search field. Search for multiple officers at once by separating their name with a vertical bar ‘|’. For advanced searching, search fields in the Novel & History section use powerful Regular Expressions instead of standard boolean searches. If you want to take advantage of this, spend spend some time learning about them.
xian zhu|yunchang|yide|zhao yun|ma chao|huang zhong|zhuge (liang|jin[^g])
You can also search for some common terms and name variations.
five tigers|ssx|a-dou|a-man|lingdi
Results Index
After successfully completing a search, all located officers will be indexed in anywhere from one to three lists below the search tools. Results are displayed in alphabetical order, top down, left to right. You will notice that each officer’s name may be displayed in different colors. This is a representation of the various kingdoms they have served, and helps to provide quick recognition when viewing similar results once you are familiar with the colors. (Hint: displayed colors borrow from common game colors: Wei is blue, Shu is green, Wu is red, Yuan Shao is yellow, Yuan Shu is pink). These colors are also used in each Encyclopedia entry in an effort to further assist your experience.
Page Navigation
When you click an index entry it takes you down to the actual encyclopedia entry. Encyclopedia entries may be highly detailed and long, or they may be short. It depends on how much information has been entered for any given officer. Obviously, people like Cao Cao will have more detail than people like Chen Ji. If you received numerous search results, it can take quite a while to scroll up and down a page! For this reason, we have given you the ability to quickly jump back up to the search engine. Look for the fisherman sitting just above any given officer name in the encyclopedia. Click on him to be taken back up to the Search Utility and Search Results Index.
Hidden Content
In an effort to control several portions of encyclopedia entries that can become excessively long, some content may be hidden from your view by default. This can happen in long lists (such as forum search results), and introductory biographies (provided at the bottom of some profiles) will always be hidden by default. Hidden content in long lists is represented in orange text with a warning symbol. To display the additional fields, simply click on this warning text.
If an officer has a biography, you will find a ‘Biography’ heading at the bottom of their encyclopedia entry. Under that heading you will find large text that reads ‘View Biography?’—simply click and it will be replaced with the officer’s biography, which may range anywhere from one to five paragraphs or more.
That’s all, folks!
Nothing else in the encyclopedia should give you much trouble. If something doesn’t work properly, or if something isn’t displaying properly, please make sure you are using one of the supported browsers mentioned above. If you are, please send us an error report so we can fix the problem for you. And, if you happen to have any suggestions, please join our Development Project discussion in our forum, Scholars of Shen Zhou!
Encyclopedia Search Plugin
For your viewing (and browsing) pleasure, we have created a custom browser plugin for use with Mozilla [Gecko]-based browsers (e.g. Firefox). With this search engine plugin you can search through the Three Kingdoms Encyclopedia directly from your browser toolbar (and in newer version of these browsers, using keywords from the address bar). Use Firefox? Give it a shot! Don’t use Firefox? Download it now, and enjoy secure browsing with a feature rich browser.
Download the Mozilla Encyclopedia Search Plugin
Plans for the Future
The Encyclopedia will continue to grow on a daily basis as people update and expand content. The more people we have participating, the faster content will expand. In fact, some changes or additions may have likely taken place while you were reading this document. Furthermore, the encyclopedia will be expanded as new features and additions are made to the Kongming’s Archives Database, always seeking to provide you with more information on your favorite Three Kingdoms characters. Check back often!
Copyright © 2001–2023 James Peirce