Automatons

Automatons work for you: they gather and carry, reap and fell, quarry, stoke furnaces and guard the yard — by sigils painted on blocks. An automaton is not a game golem but a fluxionist's handiwork: a hull, a head with a mind, arms, legs and, if you like, an attachment. It is launched from a Slipway like a boat: the parts go on the cradle, the Slipway takes Cog distillate, and the finished automaton slides off down the runners.

CogCraft

The Slipway is woken with quickdust: set a piston, an anvil beside it, a chain above the anvil and a siphon above the piston — and sprinkle the anvil. Leave room in front of the anvil: the runners go down there.

slipway

The siphon above the frame pours only Cog into the oiler — up to 64 parts. An assembly costs 6 parts plus the price of the parts; a part goes every five ticks, and the parts show up on the cradle one by one. If the Cog runs out, the assembly waits.

Cog

Every part gives traits. Incompatible ones — Fine and Coarse, Buoyant and Ballasted, Brittle and Plated, Waterborne and Ballasted — the Slipway will not assemble, and it says why.

A roller is faster than legs but cannot jump: a one-block step is fine, anything higher is not.

An automaton works within 24 blocks of its home — at first, home is by the runners. It knows only the sigils it has seen, within eight blocks around: set them in a chain, closer than eight blocks to each other — that is its path. With nothing to do, it walks to the next sigil it knows and looks around. Sigils are painted with the Sigil Brush — the next entry, "Sigils".

A boundary keeps an automaton in its yard: two Boundary Stones stretch a veil of Ward that people and animals walk through, but automatons and monsters do not. An automaton goes around it like a wall.