Chapter
Item categories
(Idea) Four categories. Each item belongs to exactly one.
| Category | What it is | Stacks | Sell? | Trade on the Market Board? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Consumables | Tonics, food, chalk, sand: used up when used | Up to 10 per item | Yes | Yes |
| Gear | Worn on a wrist, the neck or the body | Up to 9 per item | Yes | Yes |
| Materials | Things to sell, hand in for quests, or pay into commissions; includes valuables | Up to 99 per item | Yes | Yes |
| Key items | Letters, glyph fragments, seals and passes | One of each, no count | No | No |
Consumables: when they can be used
- On the belt, in battle. The player picks up to three consumables for the belt before a battle. The belt sits along the top edge of the battle screen, in the upper middle where the thumbs never are (AGENTS.md, game rules). Tapping a slot uses one. A belt item can't be used while either thumb is down, and only one item every 4 s, so items support casting rather than replace it.
- Before a battle. Food and ward chalk are eaten or applied in the field. The player can have one meal and one ward prepared at a time. They last until the end of the next battle, then they are spent.
- At a fragment. Still water is poured over a glyph fragment before tracing it (section 3).
Battle HP starts full in every battle today, so food doesn't heal: it raises max HP for the next battle instead. If HP ever carries over between battles, food becomes healing (open question).
Gear and two-thumb casting
Casting takes both hands, so gear is about the hands and the breath. There are four slots:
| Slot | Holds | What it mostly does |
|---|---|---|
| Left band | One band or cuff | Power for a drawing style, thumb sync, shields, heals |
| Right band | One band or cuff | The same |
| Charm | One amulet, collar, pendant or stone | Breath and learning |
| Coat | One coat, robe or tunic | Guard (less damage per hit) |
Bands are per wrist, because each thumb is one hand. The Evane wear a glyph band on each wrist (Story Bible section 2); Aske still wears hers, inside out. What the two wrists wear together matters:
- Matched pair: the same band on both wrists. Evane bands give a pair bonus, like a mirrored cast: the hands agree.
- Odd pair: two different bands. Facet cuffs reward this, like an asymmetric cast: each hand its own.
- Even-handed: one Evane band and one Facet band. Threads (composites) get 8% more breath. This is the gear form of the unaligned path (Codex section 4: master techniques from both sides).
A matched pair needs two copies of the band, one per wrist.
Gear stats. Every stat maps onto something the scorer or the battle already has, so each one is a single number to apply:
| Stat | What it changes | Today's value | Cap from all gear |
|---|---|---|---|
| Breath (ms or %) | The spell's breath window, threads included (Codex section 6) | 600 ms default; per spell | +50% of the spell's window |
| Sync grace (ms) | How far apart the thumbs may start and end before timing costs | 80 ms | +60 ms |
| Power (%) | Effect size of spells of one drawing style (symmetry in the spell data: mirrored, parallel, independent) or all spells | 0.6x to 1.5x by quality | +25% |
| Shield (%) / Heal (%) | Shield and heal amounts | Per spell | +25% each |
| Stagger (s) | Stagger a spell applies | Per spell | +1.5 s |
| Guard | Damage taken per enemy hit, flat; a hit always does at least 1 | 0 | 6 |
| Learning bar (%) | The score a trace needs to count while learning | 55% | Down to 45% |
Bonuses from all slots add up, then the cap applies. Breath bonuses add to the breath that player level grants later (Codex section 6). No stat changes the fizzle line, the shape floor or the scorer's error curve.
Tiers. Every item has a tier, shown as its frame colour: common (unaligned, plain), fine (better unaligned work), faction (an Evane faction's or the Facets' own, framed in that colour) and unique (one in the world). For now every item has fixed stats. Diablo-style random rolls would come later and need their own save shape (open question).
Materials
Materials are dropped by enemies, gathered in the world and sold to the Halfway weigh-house or any shop that buys them. They are handed in for quest orders ("bring Tobin five river reeds") and paid into commissions. There is no crafting system; commissions are the one place materials buy something. Valuables (silver measures, glass tokens) are materials with no use except their sale price.
Key items: letters, fragments, seals
Key items are held or not held; they have no count, can't be sold, dropped or traded, and the story decides when they come and go. Their state lives in story flags, which the dialogue already sets (<<set_flag letter.twinhold 1>> in the send-off), so a key item is "held" when its flag says so (section 7).
- Letters. Aske's two letters are the first. A letter is carried (sealed), opened (seal broken) or delivered. Aske says "Don't read them". The letters viewer lets the player break a seal anyway, after a warning, and the recipient notices. Letters the player receives later (replies, the Still Choir's letters to the Facets) are open and readable.
- Glyph fragments. One key item per fragment: the stone, shard or tile the glyph is on. Tracing it is how a spell is learned (the learning code that exists). A split glyph is two items, one per half, and the spell can be traced only once both are held. A taught glyph has no item: the teacher is the fragment. The one exception is a stolen copy (the Undermere fence, section 4), which an outlaw cut from a taught or warp-born glyph and which traces like a whole one. After the spell is learned, the fragment stays in the glyph case as a record, and can be traced again to relearn a spell after an un-teaching.
- Seals and passes. Tokens that open a place or a service, or change its price: the Halfway truce token, the Waymaker caravan seal, Rook's sigil chit.