Current Guises
A Spring tincture is a current's guise for three minutes: four Spring guises and three compound ones, weaknesses, kindred and foreign places, price and end.
A Spring tincture makes you its current for three minutes: Gale leaps and glides, Ember does not burn and swims in lava, Strata
cannot be moved, Tide swims and breathes under water. Each guise has two or three clear advantages and one honest weakness. The entry
is 
Current Guises in the Alchemy chapter, after Unheard-of Potions: 5 notes of Alchemy and a reading of a glint, a blaze or
a breeze.
Tinctures
The Crucible brews a tincture over gentle heat: Brew 2, a Spring 4 and Soul 2, the bottle last. Without the studied entry a tincture does not brew, and it leaves no murk: this is craft, not a rare potion.
2
4
2
4
4
4Drink it like a potion; the bottle stays. A guise lasts 3 minutes in an ordinary place and survives leaving the game; it ends with death. The same tincture over its own guise gives full time again (it does not stack beyond three minutes). Milk does not lift a guise.
Spring guises
| Guise | Advantages | Weakness |
|---|---|---|
| Gale | weight −45 %: a jump of two blocks, twice as far with a run-up; gliding — you fall softly and take no damage (sneak to drop fast); a blow knocks the foe further back | Blown away — you yourself are knocked back 1.75 times harder |
| Ember | fire and lava do not hurt, burning goes out by itself, you can see in lava; swims in lava as in water; a blow sets the foe alight for 4 s | Water quenches — 1 damage a second in water and rain |
| Strata | cannot be moved by a blow or a blast; digs 1.5 times faster; +4 armor | Heavy — 15 % slower, sinks in water: you walk out along the bottom and up the bank |
| Tide | swims like a dolphin; breathes under water, the water does not blur sight; digs under water unhindered | Slower on land — by 25 %, unless in water or rain |
Compound guises
Drink a tincture while a guise lasts, and the currents meet by the Wheel:
| Guise | Of | Advantages | Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drift | Gale + Tide | 25 % faster, steps up a block without jumping; swims like a dolphin and breathes under water | Slides — the ground is like ice |
| Alloy | Strata + Ember | +8 armor, +3 toughness; does not burn (but does not swim in lava); cannot be moved | Heavy — 20 % slower, sinks in both water and lava |
| Spark | Ember + Gale | +3 attack, strikes 20 % more often, a burning touch, runs 20 % faster | Burns out — the time runs twice as fast |
- Tide and Strata are neighbors without a compound current: the guise simply changes to the new one.
- Opposites — Tide and Ember, Strata and Gale — clash, as in the Crucible: the guise tears apart in a cloud of steam or dust, the tincture is lost, murk goes into the chunk and Ripple into your eyes. Settling begins.
- A compound guise keeps only its own two tinctures (they renew its time): any third Spring is the opposite of one of its parents.
The Poles — Lattice and Fray — give no guises: they are directions, not elements, and there is nothing to embody.
The place decides the strength
A guise grows stronger where its current is the place's current, and wanes where its opposite is. The place is what the Loupe reads in the air plus what you stand in: water and rain are Tide, lava and fire are Ember, stone overhead deep underground is Strata, height under the open sky is Gale.
| Place | What it gives |
|---|---|
| kindred | numbers ×1.5, the time runs half as fast |
| ordinary | as in the tables above |
| foreign — or chunk flux below a quarter of the riverbed | numbers ×0.6, the time runs twice as fast |
Tide is kindred by rivers and seas, in water and rain, foreign in deserts and the Nether. Ember is kindred in the Nether, deserts and lava, foreign in rain. Strata is kindred in caves, mountains and underground, foreign high in the sky. Gale is kindred on peaks, foreign underground. The Stillness is foreign to all: no flux flows there. Fire immunity, breathing, "cannot be moved" and the weaknesses do not depend on the place.
The medallion and the look
In the lower left corner is the guise medallion: the current's rune, a time arc around the rim and three place notches (all lit — kindred, one — ordinary, dimly flickering — foreign); below it, the time and a word for the place. A change of place brings a short mod line: "grows stronger: its current is here" or "wanes: a foreign place". A shell of the guise flows over the body — wind streams, cracks of heat, malachite veins, rippling water — and everyone nearby sees it. The first guise of your life is a small celebration: the current's rune rises over your head.
Price and end
- While a guise lasts, it takes 0.1 flux a second from the chunk beneath you (about 18 over three minutes). Where the flux is below a quarter of the riverbed, the guise has nothing to breathe — it wanes.
- Settling: after any guise ends, no new tincture can be drunk for 30 seconds — "the current in you has not settled yet".
- A chain: tincture after tincture for more than 6 minutes in a row — Ripple 1 for every minute beyond. Settling breaks the chain.
- A guise leaves by itself, through another tincture, or with the Shed Guise key —
;by default.
What next
- Currents and the Wheel — neighbors and opposites.
- Dissonance and Visions — what to do about Ripple.
- Gear and Gear Charge — the strength of things rather than the body.
- Potion Brewing — tinctures follow the same rule as every potion.