Confluence

Confluence gives things what neither the Crucible nor a workbench can: weavings in tools and armor, exact enchantments, the power of trinkets and the strongest things of fluxion. The Crucible dissolves things, the Workbench puts them together, and the Confluence pours currents into the thing itself. The Confluence Heart hangs two blocks above the central plinth; the thing on the central plinth is the one that changes.

Side plinths stand around it, up to sixteen within eight blocks: one thing on each, to flow into the central one. Set them in an even ring — two rings of eight, near and far: streams heaped on one side churn, and so do streams that cross from above.

Four columns stand two blocks from the central plinth on each side — by them the Heart knows its altar. Once it is built, throw a pinch of quickdust on the Heart: it wakes, and golden veins run along the floor from the columns and plinths to the center.

The whole altar is on the diagram: drag it with the mouse and look at it layer by layer. "Place ghost" sets it in the world where you look — build along it.

confluence_altar

Lay out the things and look at the Heart with the Loupe or the Diviner's Spectacles: it tells you what will come out, how much distillate it needs and whether there is enough calm. The Confluence draws distillate from vessels within twelve blocks, two parts a second; touch the Heart with the Conduit, and the things leave for it one by one.

HaloWeave

Calm is the Heart's store of steadiness: once awake, it gathers up to thirty. During a Confluence the streams take it away — rough ones more (Fray, Murk, Blast), quiet ones less (Lattice, Still). Below zero come eddies: a thing is knocked off, a stream lashes out, distillate flows back. The Heart shows how much calm the Confluence needs and how much the altar gives.

FrayMurkLatticeStill

Confluences are simple, mid or great. A bare altar holds a simple one with room to spare. A mid one takes eight calm to begin and weighs more with every part — it needs weirs or calm stones. A great one takes twenty-four and churns — it needs a well-built altar. Every weaving on top of earlier ones is a tier higher.

A Confluence always ends. You can stop it yourself: sneak and press the Heart twice with an empty hand. If the Heart waits a minute for distillate or for a knocked-off thing, the Confluence fades; if calm falls to minus forty, it collapses. However it ends, the gathered distillate spills as murk and the things already taken are lost. Make an inscription your first Confluence (the entry "Inscription"): Sharpness on a sword from two flints and an iron ingot is simple, and a bare altar holds it any day or night; it takes two parts each of Bane, Edge and Lattice distillate.