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Emberwork
Ember dust laid down as emberwire carries warmth. Warmth runs along the wire, fading as it goes, and parts at either end do something with it: a lever or a plate gives it, a lamp lights with it, a chime sings when it comes. Put them together and you have machines: a doorbell, a blinking lamp, a lamp that lights when someone steps in, a bell that rings when a stranger walks into your Home, a tune, a furnace that feeds itself, a lamp that lights when the Grown come; and with the movers, a door that opens to a lever, a wall that slides aside, a floor that drops strangers into spikes, a lift down to a deep Home.
Logic and display: watchers that see a tile change, tally stones that count, ember scales, far-bells that call across your land, hold stones, dials, hourglasses, sun-and-moon stones, dice stones and hue lamps are on a page of their own: Emberwork: logic and display.
Machines that hunt, gather and mine: flame jets, snare stones, lure lanterns, belts, gleaners, sorters, bellows, harvesters and blast charges, and the rule they all keep, machines wound, people slay, are on a page of their own: Emberwork machines.
Ember dust
Ember seams run through the rock of The Ember Sea, the first band of the Deep (and the other fire bands of the Twenty: the Slag Galleries, the Magma Gardens and the Burning Stair): thin glowing lines of red in the deepstone. A buried seam looks like the deepstone around it until something opens next to it. Mine one with an iron pickaxe or better for 2 to 4 ember dust.
A Furnace also grinds an embersteel bar back into 4 ember dust. And Wick, Hild's apprentice on Aldhearth's crafters' lane, sells a little every day, a starter kit, and three lessons in using it: see Wick the Tinker and trial vaults.
How warmth works
- Warmth has a strength from 0 (cold) to 15. A part that gives warmth warms the wire beside it to 15, and each tile of wire after that is one less: fifteen tiles on, the wire is cold again.
- Wire joins whatever is beside it, on all four sides: up a wall, along the ceiling, through the air underground.
- Wire climbs steps. Wire on a floor joins the wire on top of a one-block step beside it, up or down, as long as nothing solid sits right over the lower wire: lay it up a staircase and the warmth follows, one less a tile as ever. Only wire climbs (not ember-veined stone, not the parts), and only on one ground. Machines built before wire climbed may find two of their lines one step apart joined now: their owner is told once, in the chat, and how many places it happened.
- Ember-veined stone is a solid block that carries warmth like wire: build it into a wall and the warmth goes through.
- A relay gives its warmth on at full strength again: put one in a long line to carry it farther.
- A lamp or a chime takes the warmest side it touches.
- Facing parts (the relay, the grey latch, the toggle stone) take warmth in at their back and give it out of their front: the arrow on them points out of the front. They point away from where you stand when you put them down. To turn one, hold a Hammer and right click it: a quarter turn clockwise each time.
- Every part that thinks takes at least a quarter of a second, so a loop of them never beats faster than twice a second.
- Hover a part to read it: what it is, how warm it is, its setting, where it points, and what a right click does.
The wire
| Part | What it does | Made in the crafting grid from |
|---|---|---|
| Emberwire | Carries warmth to every side it touches. It is ember dust, laid down. Underground the rock holds it anywhere; under the open sky it needs something beside it or a wall behind it. | Ember dust |
| Ember-veined stone | A solid block that carries warmth like wire. | 4 stone around 1 ember dust (makes 4) |
| Ward thread | Almost invisible. Warm while anyone or anything walks through it (people and Grown), and it carries warmth like wire: string a line of it across a passage. | Wheat, ember dust, wheat (makes 4) |
Parts that give warmth
| Part | What it does | Use it | Made from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lever | Warm while it is on. Remembers which way it is, through a restart too. It is wooden: fire burns it. | Pull it: on, off | Ember dust over a stick over a stone |
| Pull-cord | Warm for 1 second when pulled. It hangs from the block above it. | Pull it (again while it rings, and it rings on) | A stick over wheat over ember dust |
| Pressure plate | Warm while anyone stands on it: people or Grown. It lies on a floor. It is wooden: fire burns it. | Plank, ember dust, plank | |
| Home plate | On your Home's land it warms only under someone who is not of your Home: a stranger, or a Grown. On open ground it warms under anyone but you (and your other characters). | Home brick, ember dust, Home brick | |
| Heartbeat stone | Beats: warm for half a second every 1, 2, 3, 5 or 10 seconds. It beats as you put it down. | Its next beat (1, 2, 3, 5, 10 s, then 1 again) | Stone, dust, stone; dust, a crystal, dust; stone, dust, stone |
| Chest gauge | As warm as the chest or spout at its back is full, out of its front: 0 empty, 1 with anything in it, 15 full. A chest is full at 27 stacks of 64 (1,728 things), a spout at 64. Its needle shows it. Put down beside one chest or spout, it points away from it; the Hammer turns it. | Copper bar, glass, copper bar over stone, dust, stone | |
| Grown-sense stone | Warm while any Grown is within 6 tiles of it, through walls too; its eye opens and watches the nearest. It senses nothing while nobody is near it. | Stone, bone, stone; bone, dust, bone; stone, bone, stone | |
| The Home Stone | Your Home Stone is a part too: warm through a raid's warning and its fight, cold when the raid ends (held, lost or ended with no result). Lay wire beside it. |
Parts that think
All three are solid blocks with a facing: warmth in at the back, out of the front.
| Part | What it does | Use it | Made from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Relay | Its front follows its back, a little later: 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 or 1 second. Whatever came in, 15 goes out. A pulse goes through whole, only later. | Its next delay | Dust, a copper bar, dust over 3 stone |
| Grey latch | Warm out of its front while its back is cold, and cold while its back is warm, a quarter second later. Feed its front back to its back and it beats twice a second. | Dust, an iron bar, dust over 3 stone | |
| Toggle stone | Every warm pulse at its back turns it over: on, then off at the next pulse. It remembers which way up it is, through a restart too. | Dust, gap, dust over stone, a copper bar, stone |
Parts that do something
| Part | What it does | Use it | Made from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ember lamp | A solid block that lights up as bright as the warmth reaching it: dim at 1, bright at 15. It lights the cave around it like a torch when it is warm through, about half as far at 1. | Dust; glass, a torch, glass; dust | |
| Spout | A stone block with a mouth. It holds up to 64 of one kind. On each warm pulse it does one thing out of its mouth: a Water or Lava bucket pours into the tile it faces and the empty bucket stays in it, and an empty bucket scoops up the water or lava it faces where it stands still; a ballista bolt flies (it hurts only Grown, never a person, and never takes one below a tenth of its life); anything else is thrown out, one at a time, for anyone to pick up. It reads warmth on every side. | Put in what you hold; with anything else in hand, take it all back | 3 stone; stone, an iron bar, stone; stone, dust, stone |
| Item chute | Moves one thing every half second from the chest or spout behind it to the one in front, and into or out of your own furnace. Warm, it stops. | Copper bar, gap, copper bar over copper bar, dust, copper bar | |
| Chime | Sings one note on every warm pulse. 25 notes, from F#3 to F#5 (it starts on C4). The block under it gives it its voice: stone a bell, wood a marimba, metal (ore, an anvil, Ironbound) a chime, glass a flute. It stands on a block. | Its next note (and you hear it) | 4 copper bars over a plank, ember dust, a plank |
| Ram | A solid block that points, like a relay. Warm at its back or either side, it pushes the blocks in front of it one tile on (up to 8) and holds them there with its head; cold, it draws its head in and the blocks stay. See Movers below. | (a Hammer turns it while its head is in) | 3 planks over stone, an iron bar, stone over stone, ember dust, stone |
| Sticky ram | A ram that pulls back what it pushed: drawing in, it brings the block in front of its head back with it (that one only). | (a Hammer turns it) | A glowcap over a ram |
| Drop-floor | A trapdoor of planks: a floor while cold, open while warm, and whoever stands on it falls. It never shuts on anyone: it waits until they are out. It is wooden: fire burns it. | Plank, an iron bar, plank over plank, ember dust, plank (makes 2) | |
| Lift stone | Two of them, linked, carry whoever stands on one to the other when it is warmed: a pressure plate on the stone does it as you step on. See Movers below. | Link it: use one, then the other within a minute | Home brick, Wane-amber, Home brick; dust, a crystal, dust; Home brick, Wane-amber, Home brick (makes 2) |
Movers
Rams
- A ram pushes in a line: the blocks in front of it, one after another, up to the first tile a block can simply take the place of (air, a plant you could build over, fire, water or lava). Then each of them moves one tile on, and the ram's head takes the place of the first. Water or lava where the last block goes is pushed out of the way, as when you put a block into it; a plant there is crushed.
- At most 8 blocks. With 9 or more, nothing moves at all.
- What moves: solid blocks that can be dug (stone, dirt, ore, glass, planks, ember-veined stone, a lamp, a relay, a ram whose head is in...). An emberwork part keeps its owner, facing and setting when it is moved, and a block you built keeps its time: it fades on open ground when it would have.
- What never moves, and stops the push if it is in the line: doors and gates, Home brick and Ironbound, the Home Stone, a ram's head or a ram whose head is out, a lift stone, bedrock and other blocks that cannot be dug, soil with a crop on it; and everything that is not a solid block: a torch, wire, a lever, a plate, a chest, a station, furniture, a crop, a bed, a ladder, a Home's defences.
- Never across a rim. A ram on a Home's land never pushes anything off it, a ram outside never pushes anything onto it, and on open ground nothing is ever pushed onto held ground or into a town. Nothing is pushed into land nobody is near (it waits).
- Someone in the way (a player, a Grown) where the last block (or the head) goes is moved one tile on with it, the way the ram pushes: no harm, and the fall, if any, starts from there. If they would end up inside a wall, the ram does not push at all. A player standing on a block a ram lifts goes up with it.
- Away from a Home's land no machine harms another player: a ram does not shove a player of another account than its owner's into lava or fire, nor onto a tile with lava or fire under it (it does not push, and keeps trying). On a Home's land it does, as before: a guest who falls on someone else's land loses nothing.
- A ram that cannot push while it is warm keeps trying, twice a second, and pushes as soon as it can. You can see it straining.
- A ram's head cannot be dug. Dig the ram and the head goes with it. The Hammer turns a ram only while its head is in.
- A sticky ram drawing in pulls back the block in front of its head, if that block could be pushed; otherwise it only draws in.
The drop-floor
A floor while cold, open while warm. Whoever stands on it falls (and a long fall hurts, as any fall does). It never shuts on someone standing in it: it shuts the moment they are out. Away from a Home's land it does not open under a player of another account than its owner's either: it waits until they step off (on a Home's land it opens under guests as before). Water and lava rest on a drop-floor, open or shut: opening it lets bodies fall, never fluid (a flood or a lava trap is a spout's job).
The wire at doors, gates and a Home's defences
- A door or an iron gate with emberwire at it (or a part beside it that gives warmth toward it) opens while warm and shuts while cold, both halves at once. The wire is its key: whoever warms the wire opens it, locked or not. You can still open or shut it by hand between changes. It never shuts on someone in the doorway. A door with no wire at it is exactly as before.
- Home spikes with wire at them sink into the floor while the wire is cold, and spring up while it is warm. A ward lantern with wire at it is dark while the wire is cold, and lit while it is warm. A ballista with wire at it holds its bolts while the wire is cold. Take the wire away and they work as before; so do the ones with no wire at them.
- Only parts on the same ground reach them: a lever off your land never opens your door. A door is judged by the ground of its base, where its lock is: a door at the rim of your land with its upper half outside obeys only wire inside, at its base (wire on the open ground at its upper half does nothing). An iron gate goes down only wholly on a Home's land.
Lift stones
- Linking: use one lift stone, then another within a minute. Both must be on ground you may build on, at most 4000 rows apart and at most 16 columns to the side, and one of them on a lit Home's land you may build on. A stone links to one other; linking it again links it anew.
- Riding: warm a linked stone while someone stands on it (a pressure plate on the stone does it as you step on), and the lift carries them to the other stone after 3 seconds, as a waystone does: moving or being hurt in those seconds stops it. Nothing may have hurt you in the last 10 seconds, trade packs cannot ride, and a lift will not carry a murderer (a red name), as no waystone does: not at the start of the ride, nor if the name goes red before it ends. A Home's land at either end must let you in (open ground lets in anyone), and the lift sleeps while the Home Stone at its end is cold.
- If something stands on the other stone so that there is no room, the lift does not carry you. You arrive standing on the other stone, and it does not send you back until you have stepped off it.
- Hovering a lift stone says where it goes; a linked one glows.
Spouts and chutes
A spout points away from where you stand when you put it down (the Hammer turns it). Right click it with something in hand and as many as fit go in; right click it with anything else (or nothing) and you take all of it back.
- Buckets go together: full ones of one fluid, and the empty ones. A spout of Lava buckets pours one into the tile it faces on a warm pulse and keeps the empty bucket; the next pulse scoops that lava back up with it. Pulse it on and off and you have a door of lava, or a well that fills a pool tile by tile.
- A spout pours only where a bucket of yours could: never in a town, a dungeon or on ground you may not build on, no lava on the land a town grows back, and no lava within a tile of anyone. Lava it pours is marked as yours, as a bucket's is (the PvP rules decide what it does to others); on your own Home's land it carries no name and burns like the Deep's own lava: a visitor it gets loses nothing, and nobody is marked for it.
- Bolts fly 16 tiles, as hard as a ballista's. On a Home's land they hurt only Grown on that land; on open ground only Grown on open ground. They pass through people. Outside a raid on their own Home they only wound: they never take a Grown below a tenth of its life, and pass one held there by (see Emberwork machines).
- A spout acts at most twice a second. With a wall in front of it, or nothing in it, it only puffs.
- Broken (dug up, faded away on open ground, or anything else), what it held goes back to whoever filled it: into their bag if they are near, else by letter from the Warden House. Nothing is ever lost, or doubled. Nothing with upgrades, power or wear on it goes in, and nothing that stays with you (a quest's keepsakes).
An item chute points away from where you stand too: it takes from behind and gives in front.
- It moves one thing every half second, the lowest kind first, of what the one in front will take (a chest takes no 28th kind). It never touches gold, and never a chest nobody has opened yet (its loot is rolled when someone opens it).
- Furnaces are each player's own, so a chute works only your own furnace, and only while you are online: a chute pointing down into a furnace feeds it what smelts; one from the side or from below feeds it fuel; a chute that takes from a furnace takes only what it has made. (A Lava bucket's empty bucket comes back to you, as ever.)
- It moves only between things you may open: a chest of yours (or of your other characters, or nobody's), a spout of yours, or anything on a Home's land that lets you build. A stranger's chute takes nothing from your chest.
- Warm, it stops. Put a lever beside it as a tap.
Who may do what
- Anyone who can reach a lever or a pull-cord may pull it, on your land too. That is so a puzzle of yours can be tried by visitors; put the lever of your own door inside your walls. On ground you may not build on, a part is used only in plain sight: with nothing solid between you and it (as a pick digs only what it sees), so a lever sealed inside someone's walls is not pulled from outside them. Those who may build there reach their parts as ever, walls or not.
- A setting (a heartbeat's beat, a relay's delay, a chime's note) and turning a part with the Hammer: only those who may build there.
- A spout: on a Home's land, whoever may build there puts things in and takes them out; on open ground, only its owner (and their other characters).
- A chute works for its owner: what its owner may open, or anything on a Home's land that lets its owner build, also while they are offline (but a furnace only while they are online).
- One player uses (or turns) a part at most about seven times a second, and a chime sounds at most about eight notes a second, however many play it.
- Lift stones are linked only by someone who may build where both stand; anyone the Home lets in may ride. A wired door opens for whoever warms its wire.
- Parts connect only within one ground. On a Home's land, parts connect only with parts on the same land; on open ground only with parts on open ground; an old plot while it lapses is a ground of its own. Never across: a lever off your land never reaches a lamp on it, however close the wire runs. If a Home's land widens, or a Home is given up, its parts change ground with it.
Limits
- 400 parts on one Home's land, and 150 of your account's on open ground. Every tile of emberwork counts, wire too.
- On open ground emberwork fades after 2 hours like any build; on a Home's land it stays. Near towns and ports the land grows back, and takes emberwork with it.
- A machine far from everyone sleeps: its clocks stop and nothing in it changes until someone comes near again. Then it carries on. A chute moves nothing while it sleeps, and a Grown-sense stone senses nothing with nobody near it.
- A ram's push changes at most 9 tiles (8 blocks and its head), and every one counts against the world's 120 a signal tick: many rams at once take their turns. A ram (and a drop-floor, a door) changes tiles at most twice a second.
- A spout acts at most twice a second, a chute moves one thing every half second.
- Raiders never break emberwork.
- Fire burns the wooden parts, the lever, the pressure plate and the drop-floor (the lever and the plate burn with a wall or floor that burns under them); wire, thread, cords and the stone parts never burn, and nor does anything on held ground.
Controls
- Right click a part to use it (pull, set, next note). With a Hammer in hand, a right click turns a facing part.
- F uses the part under the pointer; otherwise the part nearest you, unless a chest, a station, a door, a bed or a gate is as near: then F opens that, as it always did.
- On a phone, tap a part to use it (a tap never digs it; with a Hammer in hand a tap turns any part that points: a relay, a latch, a toggle stone, a ram, a spout, an item chute, a chest gauge), or stand by it and press USE: it says PULL or SET, LINK by a lift stone, or TURN with a Hammer in hand. USE takes the part in front of you first. ACTION is for what you hold, never a part.
- Right click a lift stone to link it (then the other within a minute).
- A spout: right click (or F beside it, or a tap) puts in what you hold if it goes there, else takes it all back. On a phone USE says PUT IN or TAKE.
- Hover a spout to see what it holds, a gauge how warm it is, a chute whether it is moving.
- Holding a part, the place it would go shows under the pointer, with the way it would point.
A few machines to start with
- A doorbell. A pull-cord by your door, wire to a chime on a stone floor: a bell.
- A blinking lamp. A heartbeat stone, a line of wire, an ember lamp. Use the stone to slow it down.
- A welcome light. A pressure plate inside your door, wire to a lamp over it.
- A stranger's bell. A Home plate in front of your door, wire to a chime: it rings for anyone who is not of your Home, and for the Grown.
- A tune. A pull-cord at the start of a line of wire; along it a relay every few tiles, and beside the wire just past each relay a chime, each set to its own note. Pull once and the notes play one after another at the relays' pace.
- Light when nobody is there. A pressure plate, wire to the back of a grey latch, its front to a lamp: the lamp burns until someone steps on the plate.
- A light switch from two places. A toggle stone with a pull-cord at each end of the room wired to its back: either cord turns the light on, or off.
- A lever door. A lever inside your wall, wire to the door: on, it stands open; off, it shuts (and never on anyone).
- A hidden door. Beside a doorway two tiles high, two sticky rams in the wall, one over the other, facing the doorway, with a block in front of each: warm, they push the two blocks into the doorway and it is wall; cold, they pull them back out of it. (A grey latch in the wire, and the lever opens it instead.)
- A stranger's trap. A Home plate in front of your door, wire to a drop-floor over a pit with Home spikes at the bottom: the floor opens under strangers and Grown, never under you.
- Spikes that wait. Home spikes along a corridor, wired to a Home plate: sunk while nobody is there, they spring up under the raiders.
- A lift to a deep Home. A lift stone by your Home Stone with a pressure plate on it, the other far below (or above) with a plate too: step on, wait three seconds, step off at the other end.
- A piston elevator. A ram facing up in the floor under the block you stand on: warm it and you go up a tile with the block.
- A furnace that feeds itself. A chest of ore over a chute pointing down into your furnace, a chest of charcoal with a chute into its side, and a chute under it pointing down into a chest for the bars.
- A full chest's lamp. A chest gauge on the chest of bars, wire to a lamp a few tiles off: the lamp lights only once the chest is well filled.
- A raid alarm. Wire from your Home Stone to a chime (or a lamp): it rings as soon as the Grown are coming.
- Eyes in the dark. A Grown-sense stone by the way in, wire to a lamp in the house.
- A lava door. A spout of Lava buckets facing a doorway, wired to a pull-cord: one pull and the doorway is lava, the next pull scoops it away. (It pours nothing while anyone stands within a tile of the doorway.)
- A gift for visitors. A spout of bread by your door, wired from a pressure plate in front of it: each step onto the plate throws a loaf out.