The Stream Wheel

The Stream Wheel is a Create rotation source where there is neither water nor wind: flux rises in the flume on the frame and falls as a stream onto the opaline paddles. 16 RPM, clockwise for whoever placed it; the shaft leaves the hub both ways. Place it facing you where flux runs full — by a river, by a Gauge Stone, among willows.

Its capacity follows the chunk's free flux (above the riverbed floor): 256 units when there is 32 or more, in eighths; drained to a third — half; at the floor — nothing, the wheel stands. The step changes no more than once in 5 seconds. It costs flux only while the network carries a load: half a flux a second for the full load of a full wheel. An idle wheel drinks nothing.

At the very floor (free flux below a third of the bed) the wheel stirs up murk: every unit it drinks leaves a quarter of murk, and dark flakes run in the stream. The Loupe on the wheel shows its capacity and flux, engineer's goggles — the capacity in Create terms, a Display Board — the chunk's flux, bed and murk.

Where flux runs faster — in a Gauge Stone's chunk, by your own Gauge Post, on a Reckoners' roll — the wheel turns twice as fast, 32 RPM, with the same capacity: Create machines on its shaft work twice as often, and the shaft carries half as many consumers. Set the wheel by a post when your press and millstones need the pace.