❦

THE GRIMOIRE

Everything a spellwright needs to know. Almost everything.

The stones

The board is seven columns by nine rows of elemental stones. Drag a stone onto a neighbour to swap; the swap holds only if it lines up three or more of one element. Any other swap simply isn't allowed — the stones slide back, and none of your moves are used.

Each level gives you a move budget and a score target. Reach the target before the moves run out. Some stones carry a letter — roughly half the board — and letters are worth keeping an eye on.

Spell mode

Hold any lettered stone for a moment, without moving. Every lettered stone begins to tremble — you are in spell mode.
Trace a word by dragging through touching letters. Each letter must touch the one before it — sideways, up, down, or diagonally.
Release to speak the word. A real word of three or more letters clears its stones no matter their element, scores by the letters' worth, and costs one move. A word that isn't a word fizzles and costs nothing.
Tap anywhere to leave spell mode. You stay in it after a word, ready to speak another.

Rare letters are worth more, and longer words multiply. A seven-stone word is an event.

Shapes and their gifts

It isn't how many stones you match — it's the shape you match them in.

YOU MATCH	YOU RECEIVE
Four in a line	LEY LINE — fires the length of its row or column
A T or a plus	RUNEFONT — stamps new letters onto nearby stones
An L, at the corner	CORNERSTONE — blasts around itself and shatters stone
Five in a line	WILDRUNE — swap it into any stone to consume every stone of that element

Spoken words bring gifts of their own:

WORD LENGTH	YOU RECEIVE
Three letters	a Ley Line
Four	a Runefont
Five	a Geode — it bursts, and takes its neighbours with it
Six or seven	a Wildrune

Ice and stone

Ice seals a stone in place — it can't be swapped until the ice is broken by matching or blasting beside it. Thick ice takes two hits.
Stone is inert rock. Matches wash over it; only a blast — a Ley Line, a Cornerstone, a Geode — breaks it.
Deeper levels bring more of both, arranged less kindly.

Between chapters

Every twelfth level closes a chapter, and a different kind of round follows: search the wizard's workbench for what remains, or pick the one rune that differs from its brothers. These can't be failed and can always be skipped.

What you recover there matters twice: it fills a slot in the grimoire that words haven't reached, and it banks a bonus power stone — kept in the tray beneath the board, spendable on any level, at any moment, by tapping it and then tapping where it should go. Placing one costs no move. They never expire; when they're gone, they're gone.

The Waking

Twelve Powers sleep, one to a chapter. Each has a page in the grimoire — open it with the ❦ button beneath the board — and each page carries sigil slots asking for a certain kind of word: a length, a letter, a rare letter, a word drawn without turning, a word drawn across fire.

Speak a word that fits an empty slot and that word is inscribed, permanently. Fill the page and the Power wakes: its story completes, its verse joins the incantation, and something in the world between chapters changes.

The grimoire holds three ages. What comes after the twelfth Power wakes is the grimoire's own business, and it will show you when you get there.

What the grimoire keeps to itself

A book this old holds at least one thing it has never told anyone. The chapters know it. That is all that will be written here.