Gauge Stones

A Gauge Stone helps a workshop: near it, flux seeps back from the neighbors twice as fast, and an attuned stone draws flux toward itself. The first reading of a stone with the Loupe gives a Channel Record. The Reckoners left such pillars across the world: they stand by old beds, on mountain passes, at the sources of rivers. It is said that a stone remembers every drop that has passed it and beats time to it like a metronome.

LatticeTempo

The stones can be seen from afar: a pale pillar on a hill or by a river, its head girded with a bronze band and a scale. The Loupe reads the head of a stone, and the stone gives up a Channel Record — once to every fluxionist. In the nine chunks around a stone flux flows twice as fast: what a workshop draws seeps back from its neighbors twice as quickly.

A stone can be attuned. There is a socket in the bronze band: set a Spring shard in it and wake the stone with quickdust. An attuned stone draws the flux of the neighboring chunks toward its own, and its chunk holds more than its own bed — that is how flux is led to a workshop. Another shard in the socket breaks the attunement.

A Gauge Post is a small stone a fluxionist builds from the ruins' masonry and a Marked Tile. Flux in its own chunk flows half again as fast and draws toward the post. A second post in the same chunk adds nothing.

Now and then six stones stand in a ring around a spring — a Gauge Ring. Its stones stay silent until a fluxionist has revealed the four Springs and the two Poles; the Codex remembers a ring once read. It is said the bed of the world is thinnest at the heart of a ring.