Murk and Mire
What stagnant flux threatens: the mire threshold, how mire grows and recedes, its blocks and creatures, Roiled beasts, effects, and everything that clears murk.
Flux drawn roughly does not vanish — it stagnates into murk: in Crucible remelting, in a broken confluence, in a cheap lens. Murk does not seep to the neighbors but settles where it was spilled, and it takes the place of flux: a murky chunk refills only up to "riverbed minus murk". Settled murk above the threshold becomes mire — a living blight that creeps over the ground and breeds creatures. It is hard to stop and very easy to grow.
Entries: 
Murk and Mire in Basics, then the mire branch of the Stillness chapter: 
Mire,
Roiled Beasts, 
The Purifier, 
Murk Flask, 
Clearwort, 
Murk Druse.
The threshold
| A chunk's murk | What happens |
|---|---|
| below a third of the riverbed | no mire; if there was some, it recedes |
| from a third of the riverbed | mire grows, monsters may rise as Roiled beasts |
| from half the riverbed, while flux keeps being drawn | The Snarl may rise — a tear of a current in the air |
| equal to the riverbed | up to one monster in eight rises Roiled, geodes are black |
Murk shows by the Loupe's crosshair and without it: murk flakes in the air are dusty lilac, the murkier the surroundings, the thicker. A murkcap in caves is a sign the flux has stagnated there.
How mire grows
- Now and then a seed settles in a murky chunk — at the lowest spot: murk runs down and gathers in hollows. Even more rarely a Mire Hummock settles on the mire.
- Every mire block now and then turns a neighbor — downward and along water sooner than up: mire runs. Only an exposed block turns.
- Mire eats murk: every silted block eats a little of it. Mire crosses into a neighboring chunk only if that one is murky too.
- Mire does not touch lumenash, murkcaps, Clearwort, the Purifier or the grates.
| Was | Became |
|---|---|
| grass, dirt, mud | Silted Soil |
| stone |  Silted Stone |
| sand, gravel, clay, mushrooms |  Mire Crust |
| grasses and flowers |  Mire Threads |
| leaves | Mire Blister |
| trunks |  Mirebound Log — remembers its tree |
Mire Vents grow on silted soil and trunks: they breathe in four beats, and on the out-breath drive murk into the neighboring chunk and raise gnats. A blister ripens in three stages and bursts with silt or a leech — from a blow or an arrow too. Threads creep across faces and tangle the feet. Ooze runs down into hollows and dries; thick ooze in a murky chunk gathers into a Mire Clot.
Receding
Bring the murk below a third of the riverbed, and the mire recedes by itself: Silted Soil to mud, a Mirebound Log to its own log,
crust and blisters to ooze, threads to air, and Silted Stone to 
Pitted Stone. The place's current settles into the
pores of Pitted Stone: a pickaxe without Silk Touch crumbles it to gravel and one time in ten knocks out a shard of the place's
current (Fortune adds 5 % per level). Ooze dries into 
Silt. A hummock without murk withers on its own.
Mire creatures
Mire creatures are born only near a player. Silting heals them.
| Creature | From | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Mire Hummock | a seed in a murky chunk | the heart of the mire: throbs and smothers the ground within 4 blocks, raises sprouts and lashes; withers without murk, fire hurts it twice as much |
| Elder Hummock | Snarl events | the same, wider — 7 blocks — and more often |
| Mire Lash, Lash Sprout | a hummock | stand in place: lash, silt and push; wither off the mire |
| Mire Leech | a ripe blister | crawls, silts, leaves threads |
| Murk Gnats | a vent's out-breath | the swarm bites and lives a minute and a half |
| Mire Clot | thick ooze | spits lumps of ooze, shrinks and slumps into a puddle |
Effects
| Effect | What it does | From |
|---|---|---|
| Silting | 1 damage every 2 seconds (more often when stronger), −12 % speed per level | touching mire, lashes, leeches, gnats, clots, the Murk Flask |
| Clouding | flux crafting and Conduit casts cost 10 % more per level; murk with flakes before your eyes | touching a murkcap, a Murk Fumer's smoke |
| Spreading Clouding | the same, and every 2 seconds it passes to the living within 4 blocks a level lower | Snarl events |
Roiled beasts
Where the murk passes a third of the riverbed, a monster born on its own may rise as a Roiled beast: twice as hardy, hitting half again as hard, shedding murk flakes. The murkier the place, the more of them — up to one in eight. The murk stirs a sediment into each — Brisk, Barbed, Shelled, Mighty, Withering, Filmed, Dissonant, Tenacious, Scorching, Starving, Venomous, Draining, Leechy, Mired; the sediment's name shows above its head.
A slain Roiled beast drops a geode by the chunk's murk: a Murky Geode, from two thirds of the riverbed a
Deep Murky Geode, from the full riverbed a 
Black Murky Geode. Use it to crack it open: current
shards, opaline, vials, silt; the deep and black ones add quickdust, a Murk Flask, a Still Grain; the black one an emerald and,
rarely, a diamond.
What clears murk
| Remedy | How it works |
|---|---|
| a lumenash | 0.02 murk a second per trunk, up to three trunks per chunk — for free, while its leaves live |
| Clearwort Seeds | a blooming Clearwort drinks its chunk's murk — slowly, with no fuel; it grows on silted soil too |
| Purifier | turns the chunk's murk back into flux through Lumenash Grates; burns distillate |
| Murk Druse | a seed on any solid face drinks 9 murk over three stages; take it with a Pike Pole |
| Murk Flask | thrown, it carries up to 4 murk to where it shatters and silts whoever stands nearby |
| a lightning rod in a Murk Storm | catches the murky bolt: six tenths of the chunk's murk become flux |
The Purifier
Set a 
Lumenash Grate on top of the Purifier, or a cluster of them where each touches the next by a face, up to sixteen. Every
5 seconds it takes 0.5 murk for the first grate and a fifth less for each next one (three grates — about 1.2 a turn) and pours as
much flux back. Its fuel is distillate of any current but Murk: a vessel, an Alembic or a Gyre beside it or below, a siphon to its
side or a poured vial; it holds four parts, and one part lasts four turns.
- Now and then a grate clogs with silt. Throw a
Clogged Lumenash Grate into running water — in five seconds it
rinses clean. - The Loupe on the Purifier tells what it lacks: grates on top, fuel, or that the chunk is already clean.
- A broken Purifier loses what was poured into it: it goes into its chunk as murk.
The Murk Druse
2A druse grows in three stages, about six minutes each, and each stage drinks 3 murk from the chunk; with less murk it waits. Take it
with a 
Pike Pole: what it drank stays locked in, and a ripe one gives two druses — one to plant again, one to dissolve
in the Crucible. Broken any other way — by hand, pickaxe, explosion — it bursts, and everything it drank returns to the chunk as murk.
The Stagnant Backwater
There is a place where murk needs no workshop: in the Stagnant Backwater the water has not moved for years and the murk settles on its own — the land holds a little over a third of its riverbed from birth. Mire lives there through no one's fault, the trees stand as dead husks, gnats swarm over the water. A cleansed backwater silts up again within hours, and the mire does not spread past its edge: the neighbors have nothing to feed it. Nobody sets a workshop in a backwater.
The murky skein
A skein with a thread of Murk in it clouds its chunk and makes mire within 8 blocks grow 2.5 times as often, now and then releasing
Murky Glints. It brightens if you clean the chunk while it holds no Murk thread — faster with Halo forced into the skein, or with
a Purifier in its chunk. Details are in the entry 
Skeins.
What next
- Flux and Murk of the World — where murk comes from and where there is less of it.
- Dissonance and Visions — the second price of rough work.
- The Codex of Currents — the Purifier, Clearwort and the Flask are studied at the Desk.