The Snarl

A Snarl is the bane of a rough workshop: it drinks murk and tightens, and left alone it tears open into a Breach down to the Stillness itself. Untangle it with a Pike Pole and it gives up what it caught, still grains, Snarl Thread and shards of the currents of its place — and a tightly twisted one, now and then, a rare Snarl Core. Where murk settles and the flux is drawn and drawn again, the current has nowhere to go: it twists like wet linen in a washerwoman's hands and tears along the fold. Through the tear you see the underside of the flux — a dark depth where threads of current drain away.

MurkBind

A Snarl drinks the murk of its patch of land and with each sip twists one turn tighter — and longer. It drags loose things toward the seam: dropped items, sand, gravel, leaves; everything snags in the fold and shows in it. Whoever touches the seam gets squeezed. Without murk a Snarl dries up and crumbles into silt.

A Snarl's tension rises on its own; a Weir nearby calms it. The Loupe shows tension and twists. A taut seam gapes wider, thrashes and burns crimson; it lets out Murky Glints and clouds the air around, and at the limit, left for more than a minute, it breaks through — down to the very bottom, where the Stillness lies. Do not wait.

A living Snarl gets in the way of work long before it breaks through. Within eight blocks of the seam devices falter: the Flux Workbench, the Crucible and the Conduit pay more flux — up to a quarter more, the tauter the tension, the more — and now and then misfire. The flux of this patch of land and its neighbors flickers, so thresholds like "no lower than three quarters of the riverbed" turn unreliable; whoever stands by the seam catches a Ripple. A taut one — 60 and up — drinks the flux of its patch of land into its twist: the workshop dries before any Breach opens. The Loupe writes this under the tension, and a Snarl untangled with a Pike Pole gives the flux it drank back.