The Reckoners
vanished people
The Reckoners left you most of what is worth seeking in the world: Gauge Stones that speed the flux, locks and archives with hoards, Records that bring knowledge. They were an ancient order, the first to measure the currents of the world: they wanted to reckon every current and know in advance where any drop would flow. They left behind stones, locks, weirs on old beds and scraps of notes — not unlike this notebook.
Hosts and guardians of their places
Spoiler: this describes a guardian and its moves.
What they left
Their ruins
Clockmakers' ObservatoryThe ruin of a round tower where the Reckoners' clockmakers measured Tempo under a copper dome. They slowed it to count it, and the grove never caught up: here it is always the last hour of autumn.
Fallen Gauge StoneA Gauge Stone without its head lies broken in the grass. It holds no bed any more, and its stone is no longer cast: the pickaxe takes it, and the Marked Tiles with it.
Flooded ArchiveThe Reckoners kept their ledgers under the river bed. When the river was dammed in the Great Stilling, the water went into the archive and stands there still; its gates are held by sluice valves, and the deepest vault keeps the stone they checked all their rings against.
Gauge RingSix Gauge Stones stand in a ring around a spring. They stay silent until a fluxionist knows the four Springs and the two Poles. By the water lies a broken frame of Reckoner stone — something once stood here.
Gauge StoneA pillar of the Reckoners. It still measures the flux around it: in the chunks nearby the current runs twice as fast. Read its head with the Loupe, and the stone gives up a Channel Record.
Great LockThe Reckoners led the main race of the Quickstream through a lock to measure it. Its tenders still turn back every leaf and wheel a visitor moves; behind two puzzles the lower head keeps the hub of the Wheel.
Keeper's LodgeThe lodge of a Reckoner lock keeper on a small island of the Channel Reaches. The keeper is long gone; his tender still walks the porch and shuts what others open.
Sunken BargeA Reckoner measuring barge that sank with the murk and settled into the silt of the Lees. Its hold still keeps their crates, and its log still counts the knots of the last sounding.
Reckoner LockA Reckoner lock on a river bank: a chamber between two gates and a keeper's hut. The keepers took a share of every current that passed. Their storeroom opens when the water in the chamber stands at the lit mark.
Reckoner ScriptoriumA library of the Reckoners in the Inkpine Forest: here their scribes copied Records in inkpine resin on scrollbark. When the Stilling came they sealed the reading room with their best copies.
Reckoners' WellThe Reckoners sank this well where the flux comes up to the stone, to gauge it at the source. The shaft is marked every two stones; the stone has flowed over the pump since.
The Reckoners