The Bower

Your own workshop wherever it suits you. A dense skein is opened with an Embroidery Hoop — inside it is a Bower, a small world to build in. Its ground, sky and flux are the threads of the skein: a skein of Ember gives warm ground and Ember of the place, a skein of Tide gives water and drizzle. Wind more — the Bower grows; carry the skein on a Spindle — the whole workshop goes with it. The Codex entry is The Bower, in the Artifice chapter, after the Spindle.

The Embroidery HoopCopy Anchor Link

The Embroidery Hoop is two lumenash rings on a brass screw with a thread stretched between them. It is made at the Flux Workbench: 32 flux, with Lattice and Gale of the place.

Flux Workbench

flux 32

Place currents:LatticeGale

Opening a skeinCopy Anchor Link

• The threshold is density. A skein opens once it holds 96 shares or more (all threads together): a medium one three quarters full, or a large one. A small skein (64 shares) never opens. How threads are wound and tied on — the entry Skeins.
• These do not open: a greedy skein (it tears the hoop), a turbulent one (the threads would burst — bring in Lattice first), a still one (it does not stretch). A murky skein opens — but its Bower is murky too.
• The rite: hold the hoop on the skein for 3 seconds. The threads stretch onto the ring and the skein goes still; look away and the rite breaks off, the skein unharmed. When it is done, the hoop goes into the skein and becomes its ring: that is the key of the Bower. Whoever opened it is the owner.
• A skein with a Bower shows from afar: the hoop's ring around its equator, and in it a window with slow ribbons of thread. A sleeping Bower's window is dark. The Loupe writes the Bower's line: whether it is open, its size and owner — and for a sleeping one, how many shares it lacks.

Entering and leavingCopy Anchor Link

• To enter, hold the open skein with an empty hand for 2 seconds — the threads wrap around you, the edges of your view close in ribbons of the threads' colors, and the "Into the Skein" screen draws you in. Let go early and the count starts over.
• To leave, find the Loose End hanging from the sky of the Bower. Hold it for 1.5 seconds — the "Out of the Skein" screen brings you out where the skein hangs: to the nearest spot where you can stand, under it and around it.
• A skein over water: if there is nowhere to step nearby, you come out on the nearest shore within 32 blocks, a little more readily on the side you entered from. Open sea all around — onto the surface right under the skein; swim from there.
• The owner moves the Loose End with the hoop on a face of the ground inside the Bower.
• Leave the game inside and you come back in the same spot. Dying inside means an ordinary respawn; the items stay in the Bower.
• There is no night inside a skein: you cannot sleep or set your spawn here.

Owner and guestsCopy Anchor Link

The owner invites guests: the hoop on a player — "Became a guest" or "No longer a guest". A guest enters all of the owner's Bowers while the owner is inside, builds and breaks like the owner, and may wind and open a skein with a Bower. Only the owner can unravel a Bower or call it back by the rite. A stranger without an invitation hears "Someone else's Bower: the owner has not invited you" and cannot carry it off on a Spindle.

SizeCopy Anchor Link

The side of the Bower follows the greatest winding since it was opened:

A medium skein grows to 24 × 24, a large one to 48 × 48 — and one merged into a large skein by a Swift too (the entry ). A Bower grows but never shrinks: draw the threads off and the side stays, what you built stays. It grows while someone is inside: a new band of ground rises around the old one, the sky flares and a wave of threads runs along the edge.

The edge of the Bower is the Winding: a wall of wound thread around it, under the ground and above the sky. Nothing passes through it — no player, water, lava or dragon; no pickaxe, blast or wither breaks it. Come within seven blocks and the threads show as a mesh of slanting strands. You can build only inside the Winding.

Nature from the threadsCopy Anchor Link

Every current of the skein is one of eleven kinds of nature. The leading thread (the fullest) gives the ground, the second gives an admixture (about a quarter of the cells), and if the leading and second threads combine on the Wheel, the admixture is their compound: Tide and Ember make Bloom — flowers. Ground is laid once, as a band is built: a band grown later takes the nature of the threads at that time — the Bower changes ring by ring. The sky, light, fog and drizzle always follow the threads.

Kind	Currents	Ground	Air
Water	Tide Drift Brew Echo Shift	grass, patches of clay, sand at the edge, a pond near the middle	drizzle, blue fog
Stone	Strata Alloy Prism Edge Cog Craft	stone, tuff, gravel paths, mossy cobblestone	settling dust
Heat	Ember Spark Blast Fang	red sand, terracotta, sandstone	embers rising, warm light
Air	Gale Wing	short, sparse grass	wisps of wind, a light haze
Order	Lattice Ward Tempo Balance Bind	calcite, smooth stone, veins of quartz	cross-shaped sparks
Decay	Fray Ash Grave Bane Venom	coarse dirt, podzol, gravel	flakes of ash
Green	Root Bloom Kin	grass, ferns, flowers, moss	pollen
Cold	Rime Still	snow, packed ice, ice instead of a pond	snow
Dark	Hollow Gloom Want	deepslate, blackstone	dark motes, dimmer light
Light	Gleam Halo Mind Sense Soul Weave	calcite, glow lichen	glints, brighter light
Murk	Murk	silted soil, a pool of mire ooze	flakes of murk

The sky is the inside of the skein: overhead, all around and under the ground lie the dense windings of the skein itself, as if seen from inside a ball of yarn, in the colors of its threads. The leading thread gets more windings. The sky drifts slowly: the skein turns, and beads of flux run along the strands. A steady skein winds evenly, a murky one sags, wanders and darkens, a lucent one winds thinner, with a gleam. Time stands still in a Bower: it is always day; with Dark the sky and light are dimmer, with Light brighter. There is no weather — only the drizzle and motes of its kind.

Flux insideCopy Anchor Link

• The riverbed of every chunk of the Bower comes from the threads: 24 plus a third of all the shares of the skein (96 shares give 56, 128 give 67, 256 give 109 — almost a river). Draw threads off and the riverbed drops; tie more on and it rises. Beyond the Winding there is no riverbed: flux never leaves a Bower.
• The currents of the place are the threads of the skein holding 8 shares or more: the Flux Workbench, the Crucible, the Brimming Jug, Current Seeds and the Loupe all see them. A skein of Ember makes Ember of the place in its Bower: Ember recipes without shards.
• Devices spend flux as anywhere, and the chunk refills up to its riverbed. The threads themselves are not spent inside: only outside — by siphons, flasks, the Conduit and rewinding.
• Murk settles as anywhere: a careless Bower grows murky, mire takes root and Snarls are born. Murk above a third of the riverbed for five minutes straight turns the skein itself murky. The cure is the same as outside: a Purifier inside, Halo tied on the skein; a lucent skein cleans its Bower's murk by itself.
• While nobody is inside, the Bower is not loaded: its flux and murk stand still.

Moving the skeinCopy Anchor Link

• Carry it on a Spindle: everyone inside is gently set out where the skein hung. Unwind the Spindle somewhere else — the same Bower, everything in place, and the way in is there now. Rewinding costs an eighth of the threads, as always.
• Threads below the threshold (96) — the Bower sleeps: the way in is closed, anyone inside leaves as usual. Tie threads back on and it opens.
• Neighbors: a skein with a Bower shares threads with its neighbors like any other but never merges by itself — only the Swift of the owner or a guest merges it, and it is always the one that draws the other in. Two skeins with Bowers never merge: a Bower has one door.

Your workshop will not be lostCopy Anchor Link

• The skein is destroyed — by any means — and it furls into a Furled Skein holding its threads (less an eighth) and the key. Fire, lava and blasts do not take it, it never vanishes from the ground, and it does not stack. Unwind it on a block face like a Spindle — and the Bower is back, everything as it was. Whoever was inside comes out where the skein hung.
• Lost it entirely (fell into the void, burned in a chest) — the owner calls the Bower back by the rite: the hoop with Shift on a fresh dense skein without a Bower, of the same leading thread. The old skein, if it turns up, becomes a plain skein: there are never two doors.
• Only the owner can erase a Bower: inside, the hoop with Shift on the Loose End opens the "Unravel the Bower?" window; the button is held for 3 seconds. Everything inside is gone for good, the skein stays a skein without a Bower, and the hoop goes back to the owner.

Bowers never reach each otherCopy Anchor Link

Every Bower is a plot of its own, far from its neighbors. Sound and events from one Bower reach neither another one nor the outside: a blast, thunder, a summoned wither or a dragon's death in yours is heard by you alone. Ender pearls, chorus fruit, Through-Circles and mirrors never lead into someone else's Bower, and creatures — even a dragon — never get past the Winding. You can always leave a Bower: by the Loose End, by a Nether portal or by dying.

What nextCopy Anchor Link

• The Lees — the bottom of the flux, where murk settles; a Sounding Lead leads there.
• Worlds — the Bower and the other worlds in the reference.
• — how skeins grow, merge and share threads.