The Snaglings

The Snaglings trade with those they have taken in as kin — Bolas, Catch Bundles, concentrates and opaline, Reckoner Records and Flux Pebbles — and let their kin at the Catch Heap in the middle of the camp. They pay and take not emeralds but craving: every band craves one Spring, and only things carrying that Spring are worth anything to it. They are a small, quick folk of the places where the flux of the world runs thick and wild; you hear the dry rustle of their sedge cloaks before you see them. Codex entry — The Snaglings: reading a Snagling with the Loupe opens it. Trades of every kin are in the folk reference.

Where to lookCopy Anchor Link

• The folk's home is the Rustling Fens (places of the world): most of them live there, in stiltholds — wicker huts under reed thatch on bog-oak stilts above the channels.
• Wandering bands of two to four roam by day through the Weeping Floodplain, jungles, swamps and mushroom fields. There are no Snaglings in murky chunks: to them murk is catch gone rotten.
• A Snagling Camp is a clearing with three shelters, a catch pole with lanterns and a fire pit, and in the middle the Catch Heap, the band's hoard. Camp dwellers do not wander far from it and sit by it at night.

HabitsCopy Anchor Link

"What flows belongs to no one," the Snaglings say: a thing on the ground is catch to them.

• A Snagling picks up whatever lies within 12 blocks (a Gleaner) or 6 (the others) and tosses it into its creel; a Gleaner with a full creel carries it to the Heap. An item in a hand, in a frame or on a stand is not catch. So don't litter near a camp.
• It keeps 4 blocks away from a stranger and hides behind its creel; to kin it comes up and looks.
• Hold a thing with the band's craved Spring in your hand — a Snagling comes up and sniffs: you can see the gift is right without the Loupe.
• The beads on its ears and the Charmer's pod glow in the band's craving color, and the Loupe writes "The band craves …" under the name — even before it is read.

Becoming kinCopy Anchor Link

Every band craves one Spring — the one weakest in the currents of the place it was born.

1. See the craving: the bead color or the Loupe line.
2. Bring gifts to the craving. A gift is worth the amount of the craved Spring in the item's currents, as the Loupe reads them, for the whole stack: cod has Tide 2, coal Ember 3, cobblestone Strata 2, bamboo Gale 1. Compound currents do not count — look at the Spring's own rune.
3. Drop the item nearby — it gets picked up and counts for you. Or hand a stack over with a right-click: from your hands a Snagling takes only what carries the craving, anything else it sniffs and turns away from. From the ground it takes everything — without craving, silently, with a snort.
4. The measure is 32 craving per band: 16 cobblestone for a Strata band, 11 coal for an Ember band, 32 bamboo for a Gale band. Until it is full, a mod line tells you how much you have brought.

When you are accepted, the band calls you kin: everyone within 32 blocks jumps and claps, knots of the craving color tie above you, and everything the Snaglings took from you and still carry spills at your feet. The first time, the band gives you a Kin Knot: while you carry it, new bands need half the gifts. Kin is for good — until you hit a Snagling of that band yourself.

GrudgeCopy Anchor Link

Hit a Snagling (by hand, projectile, lens), kill one, or open or break the Catch Heap as a stranger — and the whole band within 32 blocks holds a grudge: for 10 minutes, for a kill 20, and the gift measure doubles. The grudge survives leaving and restarting; gifts lift it — a band accepts them even while it holds a grudge. A band never touches its kin.

Kin fightsCopy Anchor Link

A band with a grudge attacks, and each kin has its own move — and its own answer:

A killed Snagling drops its whole creel and cord, a Gleaner sometimes a Catch Bundle, a Charmer a Knotted Cord, a Snarer Bolas. But Snaglings are rare and a kill is a 20-minute grudge: a band is no farm.

Trading and the Catch HeapCopy Anchor Link

For kin a right-click opens trading; a stranger gets the line "bring a gift to their craving". There are no levels: each Snagling has 4–5 trades, small stock that refills by dawn — "the river brought it". Every trade asks for things with the band's craved Spring (a Tide band — fish, kelp; an Ember band — coal; a Strata band — cobblestone, deepslate; a Gale band — feathers, bamboo) and gives the wares of its kin:

• Gleaner — the river's catch: Silt, concentrates, Opaline, glint wisps, Catch Bundle, Reckoner Records, the Flux Pebble;
• Charmer — knots and brews: the Knotted Cord, Current Seeds, Bloom Tonic, glow ink;
• Snarer — gear and game: Bolas, the Ford Wolf Tuft, a rabbit's foot, arrows, the Pike Pole.

A ware worth more than half its price in the band's craving is never sold to that band — you can't hand it back as a gift for more than you paid.

The Catch Heap opens like a chest for kin: "what flows belongs to no one", take what you like. For a stranger the first click says "The band is watching you", the second, 3 seconds later, opens it — and the band holds a grudge. A Catch Bundle is untied by using it — one thing the river brought falls out. Bolas can be thrown by players too: 4 seconds on a monster.

The PeddlerCopy Anchor Link

The Snagling Peddler is the only one of the folk who trades with strangers, with no gifts needed. He walks upstream from camp to camp under a creel taller than himself, in a wide straw hat, with a staff, and behind him on a lead comes a laden Driftback.

• When: the Peddler's Visit event — for those who have studied The Flux of the World: the first one in a day or two, then every 3–5 days, by day. He comes out 18–32 blocks from a player near the surface (no deeper than 8 blocks underground and not into a murky chunk), bows with his hat and stands as a stall by where he came out for one game day, then shoulders his creel and slips away into the reeds. Turning off the game's wandering traders with the world rule turns him off too.
• Payment — things with his craved Spring (the weakest Spring of the place where he came out; the Loupe writes it under his name). With a Kin Knot in your inventory — half price. He takes no emeralds.
• Wares — per visit: one map with a red cross to a ruin (a Snagling Camp, a Reckoner Lock or a Fallen Gauge Stone — untouched), one rare find (a Current Hank, Glowsilk or two Catch Bundles) and four wares — saplings and herbs of faraway places. The stock does not refill.
• Hit him and he takes offense, closes the trade and vanishes. He drops only cord: no wares are carried on his body.

What nextCopy Anchor Link

• World events — the Peddler's Visit and other Omens, cult raids.
• The Bower — the world inside a skein, the first of the worlds on a fluxionist's path.
• Folk reference — every trade of the kins and the Peddler.