The Quickstream

The Quickstream is the main channel of the flux. Under the flux of the world runs the main stream: all forty-two currents flow side by side in it as races — rivers of living flux in the air — and the riverbed of every chunk is one of its branches. You come here for what the world above lacks: by its races the riverbed is twice that of a river, the current of the place is any of the forty-two, quickwater fills the sea under the islands, and the way between two arches through the Quickstream is four times shorter. The Reckoners measured it with great locks; the Tollkeepers dammed it with barrages and drink it. The Codex entry is The Quickstream; it waits for your dive into the Lees.

The Sluice Arch and the tollCopy Anchor Link

The way in is the same Sluice Arch that leads to the Stillness: a 4 × 5 frame of Reckoner Stone, woken by a pinch of Quickdust. But the lock takes its toll in flux:

• toward the Quickstream the arch wakes if you know the entry "The Quickstream" and the flux of the chunk is at least 1.4 riverbeds; once awake, it drinks the flux of the chunk almost to the bottom;
• what the flux of the chunk lacks the lock takes from any Toll Reliquary in your inventory — the emptiest first; with them the arch wakes in a plain chunk too. A refusal spends nothing, and the mod tells you how much flux the chunk has, how much is needed and how much more the reliquaries hold;
• you can also raise the flux of the chunk under the arch with quickwater: three or four buckets at once (see "Quickwater" below).

With three Still Grains in your inventory the same arch leads to the Stillness: the toll decides the level — stillness leads to stillness, living flux to living flux (the guide The Stillness).

Awake, the arch fills with the Quickstream Veil. Stand in it for 4 seconds: the world speeds up and brightens, ribbons of currents run in from the edges, and the "Locking through to the Quickstream" screen — lock gates of speculum, the marks of the chamber and ribbons braiding into the Wheel — lets you out above.

• Coordinates ×4: your place in the Quickstream is the arch's x and z divided by four; on the way back, multiplied. The passage builds the arch on the far side itself — on top of the nearest isle within 14 blocks, or on the surface of the sea if there are no isles nearby.
• The arch on the far side leads back. A new arch woken in the Quickstream itself takes no toll and leads home four times farther from where it stands.
• Your first arrival is a reading for the Codex; there is no Dissonance: living flux is clear.

Rules of the worldCopy Anchor Link

• The isles hang high over a sea of quickwater: a Grapnel or a Vane Mantle comes in handy.
• You can live here: beds and spawn points work. The days are half as long, weight is 0.8. There is no weather and no clouds.
• The riverbed by a race is 200, between races 30, deep inside the isles 16.
• Murk cannot settle here: by a race the stream carries it away. Behind an unbroken barrage the flux stands, and murk gathers as it does above.
• Ripple fades twice as fast.

RacesCopy Anchor Link

Races are rivers of living flux in the air, 3–9 blocks across and 6–14 blocks per second; each has its own current and color.

• They carry you: step in and the race carries you along, faster than running. Jump into one even from an isle — it catches you and holds you. Inside you cannot fall: weight fades away.
• Steer with the keys: crouch and you go slowly; the movement keys steer across the flow — that is how you step out sideways, and jumping lifts you toward the edge.
• Races carry items, creatures and arrows too.
• Confluence: neighbors on the Wheel merge — races of Tide and Gale flow on below their confluence as one race of Drift. At a confluence the tributaries' threads braid and swirl into an eddy; you cannot go up a tributary — the stream brings you back.
• Clash: opposite Springs never merge. Where Tide and Ember, Strata and Gale, Lattice and Fray would meet, there is a rough ball that throws everything out and gives birth to Clashers.
• Fork: halfway along, a main race lets out an arm. As you come up to it, press the movement key toward the arm — a short press is enough — and the arm catches you; press nothing or the other way and the main race carries you on. At a fork the sideways keys only choose: they never throw you out of the race there.
• The current of the place is the race's current: within 12 blocks of a race its current is added to the currents of the place. By a race of Ember the Flux Workbench sees Ember, and Current Seeds grow by a race of their own current — any of the forty-two. The Loupe, looking into the air at a race, reads its current.
• Races rise from the sea of quickwater and fall back into it. In the Braids skeins wind themselves by the races every few minutes if there are few of them nearby.

QuickwaterCopy Anchor Link

The sea under the isles is flux in liquid form.

• Fall in and it brings you back up: quickwater carries a swimmer to the mouth of the nearest race rising from the sea; at the mouth the water wells up and hands you to the race, and the race lifts you to the isles — step off it sideways. No mouth nearby — an upwelling column rises by the nearest isle and sets you on its top. Items you dropped are carried onto an isle by the same column. Crouch to dive — then the water does not carry you. Falling into the sea does not hurt.
• It carries flux with you: a Bucket of Quickwater poured outside the Quickstream gives the chunk a quarter of its riverbed, but not above one and a half riverbeds, and lies as plain water. This is how the flux is raised under a Sluice Arch or in a dry workshop.
• Standing in it slowly heals. It does not multiply: two pools make no new source.
• A Crucible filled with quickwater while empty boils over without murk: the living flux carries the surplus away.
• In the Stillness a poured bucket thaws a circle of three blocks for a minute; it gives no flux there.

The skyCopy Anchor Link

There is no sun — the sky is the upper Quickstream itself: across deep turquoise run giant ribbons of currents with wavy veins and bright heads, and their light is the day. At night the ribbons dim, the turquoise turns blue and stars come out. Toward the horizon — a pale haze over the sea.

BiomesCopy Anchor Link

The Still Brink is where the Quickstream stops. Time moves in jerks here: in the pillars of stopped time (a circle of 7 blocks up the whole height, rime in rings at eye level) everything stops for 10 seconds every 30 — creatures, items and arrows stand where they were caught, but the player does not: an enemy's arrow hangs in the air, a beast freezes mid-leap. The Stillness is closest here — bent grass, Still Grains in drifts.

LifeCopy Anchor Link

• Racestriders are the herd beasts of the isles and food for whoever lives in the Quickstream: mutton, leather and, from one you slay, a pinch of Gale or Tide Grit. A frightened Racestrider leaps into the nearest race, and the race carries it to another isle. A running person scares them — come at a walk.
• Racefish are shoals of glassy fish swimming up the races, each with a light in the color of its race. The Loupe reads the race's current in them — a way to get rare currents.
• Clashers live in clashes: two halves of opposite Springs strike in turn, and each blow carries the Spring of its half. Hit a half with a weapon or lens of the opposite Spring and it cracks, its blows weaken; with both halves cracked the Clasher falls apart and drops shards of both Springs.
• Dustfins swim in the gray dust of the Drained Isles: only a fin shows above the ground, and whatever circles you is about to strike from below; the bite leaves you hungry. They cannot swim in stone, tuff or planks — stand on stone.
• Lock Tenders are Reckoner automatons at the locks and lodges: they set back whatever you turned. Struck, one answers with its gauge rod and calms down after ten seconds. The Tollkeepers are their enemies.

All of them are in the Bestiary.

PlacesCopy Anchor Link

• The Keeper's Lodge — a log house on a plinth of Reckoner stone on an isle of the Channel Reaches or the Quick Meadows: a copper tented roof, a gauge rod with a lantern. The keeper is long gone, his tender walks the porch; inside are a crate, a gauge jar and a log.

• The Still Outpost — a broken ring of still masonry on the Still Brink: a tower with an Hour Dial, a brazier with a stopped flame, two frozen guards and a Sentinel by the tower. The brink caught the watch mid-step; a barrel now and then holds the Rule of the Still Hour.

• The Toll Barrage — a Tollkeeper fortress across the main race of the Drained Isles: an old Reckoner lock on a captured isle, a copper shield in the gap, cisterns of reliquaries on the quays, a camp of Toll Collectors, a Bursar and a Bailiff. Below the gate the race stands gray and carries no one — that is how a barrage is found: follow the gray race upstream. Break the barrage — and the race flows again, and the Drained Isles around turn green, for everyone and for good.

• The Great Lock — on the main race of the Channel Reaches: the race runs straight and level through a stone chamber between two walls. Step into the race upstream — it carries you into the chamber — and step aside onto a quay. Then come two puzzles:

  • the vane hall in the west wall: a thread of the race bursts from an intake; a vane along the thread lets it pass, a vane across stops it, a vane aslant turns it aside. Turn the vanes with an empty hand until the thread reaches the gauge mark — the seals of the door in the east wall crumble;
  • the lock chamber behind the door: raise the water with the valves to the lit mark of the pit — and the gate of the vault in the lower head rises.

  The Lock Tenders set back every vane and valve until the puzzle is solved: be quick, lead them away or break them. A pickaxe takes the masonry of the walls, but the vault is cast on every side — only the gate leads in.

The guardianCopy Anchor Link

What nextCopy Anchor Link

• The Meanders — the Reckoners' labyrinth as a world of its own.
• The Stillness — where the same arch leads for three Still Grains.
• Worlds — the Quickstream and its biomes in the reference.