This is the online version of the Hexical documentation.

Hexical Changes

I feel strangely more in tune with the ambient media around me. It feels friendlier somehow... I can even feel it rippling around me, responding to my actions, as if suggesting new spells to me. The media itself also feels more malleable, more workable, allowing me to manipulate it into precise specialized effects.

I also find my tools more familar. I notice I require less concentration with my staff and can move around while using it, handy for chasing down targets that get out of my line of sight before I can finish my raycast. I shouldn't become too relaxed though, Nature has not become more forgiving of my mistakes. I can also write directly into my abacus with Scribe's Gambit.

Grimoires

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Grimoire

By encrusting an enchanted book with charged amethyst and edified wood, it traps media within the pages like an echo chamber. I can then introduce a pattern-to-pattern-list binding for the grimoire to keep bouncing endlessly inside.

When I then cast the pattern associated with a pattern list with my staff and the grimoire in my inventory, the pattern breaks free with a faint sound of a Hex being cast. I create shortcuts for tedious tasks, like the raycast mantra or large patterns. The grimoire can even hijack Nature's patterns, to overwrite or add extra functionality.

If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

While stable with only a few strands of media wizzing around inside, a single grimoire can not hold more than sixteen pattern bindings. When attempting to introduce more, the grimoire simply rejects it and throws itself onto the ground with a shower of blue sparks.

I can also restrict a pattern inside the grimoire so it destroys itself after a certain number of uses. I shall find this aspect of the grimoire quite useful if I ever need to lend out my true name. I can simply give them a grimoire a set number of references to my name.

Mysterious Lamp

At last I've obtained the subject of a thousand years of rumor! To think a mere wandering trader was in possession of such a strong artifact. The oil lamp emanates a vague residue of media, vacuous in feeling... it reminds me of the hollow media structure of a focus that allows it to store iota. There is also a presence inside with casting capabilities similar to my own.

New Possibilities

It casts EVERY INSTANT. After writing a spell into it, I was treated to a splendid unceasing gush of media. I estimate the casting speed must be around twenty times every second. The presence inside the lamp performs the casting with extraordinary efficiency, not producing most of the sound and particles that accompany other casting methods.

I have developed some useful patterns for use with the lamp, documented on the next few pages. These patterns should only be cast by the genie within the lamp, lest I succumb to the Impersonate Genie mishap, which emits red sparks and yanks my casting item from my hand.

Yeah, but your hexcasters were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

Replacement Mind

Hex casting burns out the mind from the energy of thought, flooding the consciousness, inundating every neuron... it's euphoric. For staffs, casting devices, and spell circles, the rate of casting is slow enough that a mind can recuperate; I will never need to replace an impetus. With the speeds lamps operates at, though, even an optimized mind can only bear the burden for so long.

Luckily, the lamp somehow sustains the mind until its media battery runs out. When the genie finally perishes, the lamp must be... reloaded.

I am a great soft jelly thing. Smoothly rounded, with no mouth, with pulsing white holes filled by fog where my eyes used to be. Rubbery appendages that were once my arms; bulks rounding down into legless humps of soft slippery matter.

The stress of nonstop casting requires highly trained minds, I estimate of Journeyman-grade or greater. Highly trained villagers should become better genies. I doubt the difference between a Journeyman and an Expert would survive the optimization, but the difference between an Expert and a Master is magnitudes greater. Perhaps great enough to make a meaningful difference in the quality of casting.

Arch Lamps

Because a separate mind casts my spells, a lamp should be able to cast even without me holding it. I estimate any villager short of a complete master of its field would be unable to cast so often unassisted though. These arch lamps are activated and deactivated rather than used and while active in my inventory, they cast every moment even without my input.

The output of an arch lamp is so grand that it saturates the air around me with media... it's incredible. Unfortunately, if two lamps are active at once within my inventory, the resonances clash and deactivate both lamps, as well as rendering every arch lamp in my inventory useless for a few seconds. I should only have one archgenie lamp active at once, although I can still simutaneously use a regular lamp.

Arch Lamp Memory

An archgenie can remember an iota, persisting between casts. If I need to save an iota between casts of the lamp, I can stash it in its memory. The two patterns responsible for interacting with the memory can also be cast by a staff or casting device if an arch lamp is active.

Identifiers

My hexes has so far been quite blind to the world. I can get a creature's height, velocity, whether it's burning, etc... but I can't directly identify that entity. Nature's solution to the problem is the identifier iota. Every entity, block, status effect, enchantment, sound, etc... has a unique identifier that my hexes can identify. Once I have two identifiers, I can compare them with each other.

I notice that if I were to use Detective's Purification on an item, it returns that it's an item entity, but if I were to use Recognizer's Purification on that same entity, it would return the type of item. This type of item matches with a block identifier returned by Detective's Purification. I can imagine Recognizer's as returning additional if possible.

Telepathy

Media is the energy of thought and consequently, it can interact with thoughts as well. Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately for me, the minds of players are too resistant to be swayed by hexes and even the minds of villagers resist tampering. There is a notable exception though: my own mind is open to my own media, allowing me to read and write thoughts.

World Scrying

I have discovered some additional patterns to scry information about the world. These are highly specialized for specific tasks, like checking the weather and block hardness.

Nephthys' Gambit

It's extremely versatile and I can mend almost any error in my stack using Bookkeeper's Gambit, pushing iota after a dive, and transforming surfaced iota. It was named after a goddess of mourning and rivers, lending to how it buries/dives down into the stack.

... the unknowns of time travel... is akin to descending blindly into the depths of the freezing water and reappearing as an acorn.

Mage Blocks

The blocks from Conjure Block last forever, are consequently a pain to clean up, and are not too versatile. Luckily, Nature offers an elegant and flexible alternative. These mage blocks come with a suite of modifiers. I could even stack multiple modifiers on one block.

Chorus Blink

It consumes a chorus fruit from my inventory and teleports me up to 16 blocks using an offset vector. The cost is a single dust whether I teleport the full 16 blocks or less, and has no penalty for multiple casts in one hex. Ambit works strangely with repeated casts of this spell because each blink shifts my ambit to my new position.

I could be there in a heartbeat.

Conjure Staff

Conjured staves are not unlike cyphers. They have a media battery for casting and when they run out, unable to consume my health or my inventory's stash for media. They are not rechargable or reprogrammable, and using Erase Item on it simply destroys it. However, its true power is input interception.

When I use my primary or secondary use keys while holding a conjured staff, it intercepts my click. After a number of clicks corresponding to the rank I assigned at conjuration, it will cast the hex I gave it, starting the stack with false and true, corresponding to the left and right clicks respectively. If I pause for too long between clicks, it simply cancels the current "cast".

The spell is not too expensive, requiring only an amethyst shard, an amethyst dust for every rank, and the media for the battery. The result is a speedy and versatile casting device, with infinitely more possibilities and no cooldown compared to other casting devices.

Specks

I can conjure an image of an iota into the world, called a speck. Nature allows me to customize them quite extensively, altering their size, thickness of stroke, and more. They also take on my pigment color. Once they are in the world, I can move, rotate, and otherwise alter them for free.