The Desk and the Riverbed

The Reckoning Desk is how you study entries that ask for a riverbed puzzle: without it they stay closed. A lectern woken by quickdust becomes a Reckoning Desk, the fluxionist's worktable. Lay the Codex on it, and such entries unroll a board. The puzzle is yours, not the Desk's: two can work at one Desk, each with a board of their own.

+Reckoning Desk

Channels are drawn with the Ruling Pen: one segment takes one division of ink, and a full pen holds ninety-six. The first pen rises from the vortex together with the Desk; a dry one is refilled with an ink sac and any current shard.

The board is a map of a riverbed. Along the edge are springs, each pouring the current of its rune, and outlets, each waiting for its own. A channel is led from a spring across neighboring cells, only downhill or level: the number in the corner of a cell is its height. Stone blocks a channel, and a channel that runs into a pit cannot climb out.

Two channels that meet in a cell merge by the Wheel: Gale and Tide give Drift, Ember and Gale give Spark. The opposite Springs, Tide and Ember, merge only in a basin, and Bloom comes out. A Pole sign pulls a current passing through it: Ember through a Lattice sign comes out as Gleam, while to a current with no combination with that Pole the sign is stone.

TideEmberBloom

A fork splits a channel in two, an aqueduct carries it across another, a lock lifts it one cell higher — each mark costs a note of the entry's chapter. Techniques in your hand are played once each; neighbors within four steps of the Desk lend their own: a bookshelf gives Reference, an enchanting table Table Lore, a Crucible a basin, a Flux Workbench a lock.

Opening a puzzle costs the entry's notes, and the solved puzzle is the study itself. A solution no longer than the board's measure is a clean riverbed: a third of the price comes back. Start Over gives the same board on a clean sheet for half the price. Every fluxionist has the same boards, so solutions can be discussed. Out of notes? Table Lore at the Desk: five experience levels become six notes of the puzzle's chapter, again in every new hand after Start Over.