Create: Vis Machina

Magic as a force your machines can harness.

An addon for Create where small spirits called wisps gather magic, feed on flowers, and drive your machines.

Create: Vis Machina is a magic addon for Create. Small spirits called wisps gather vis - magic as a physical force - and your machines put them to work. Nothing here is a number in a menu: every machine has a wisp visibly living in it, every wisp visibly feeds on flowers, and the flowers visibly wilt and recover. Think of it as Create's "you can see the shaft turning", applied to magic.

Requires Create 6.0.10+ on NeoForge 1.21.1. Jade is supported if installed. Every block has a Ponder scene - hold W over it to watch how it works.

Getting started (andesite age)

1. Build a Wisp Pedestal. Iron bars around andesite alloy:

I . I
I A I     I = Iron Bars, A = Andesite Alloy
A A A

2. Weave a Wisp Charm. Nine small flowers of any kind in a 3×3.

3. Lay the charm on the pedestal (right-click). It floats and turns while it works; take it back empty-handed if you change your mind. After about half a minute, a wisp settles onto the pedestal - pale, curious, and unattuned.

4. Plant a garden and choose an element. Each element has its own flowers. Plant at least six of them within five blocks of the pedestal, weave an elemental charm (2×2 of those flowers), and offer it to the wisp. If the garden is big enough it accepts: it spins up, lifts, and takes on the element's colour over twenty seconds. Attunement is for life, so choose the garden before the charm.

If the garden is too small the wisp refuses, goes red-eyed and cross, and ignores you for half a minute. Pulling up flowers mid-attunement does the same, and the charm is lost.

In 0.0.1, Gale and Verdant have machines to work in; the other five can be attuned and will get their machines in later releases.

The Hazel Wand

A wisp charm on two sticks. Hold it and look at any wisp or machine for a read-out (what wisp is there, what it's doing, how its garden is looking). If you wear Engineer's Goggles as well, the wand's lines join the goggle box.

To move a wisp, right-click it with the wand, then right-click an empty machine within 16 blocks. A line of light previews the move - green if it can go there, red if the target is occupied or too far. Left-click, switch items, or click something occupied to cancel.

Wisps at work

A working wisp feeds. It locks onto one of its element's flowers within three blocks and grazes on it for five seconds - petals and light stream from flower to wisp the whole time - then the flower wilts and the wisp moves on to the next. With nothing fresh left to eat, the machine stops.

Wilted flowers droop and grey out. They recover on their own in a minute, or at once with bone meal, and they don't count as flowers until they do. Breaking one drops the flower.

Wisp Wheel - Gale

. S .
A P A     S = Shaft, A = Andesite Alloy, P = Wisp Pedestal, C = Cogwheel
. C .

A cogwheel with a half shaft on its face. Put a Gale wisp in it with the wand and plant daisies or white tulips around it, and it turns at 16 RPM - a kinetic source you can hang a whole factory from. It meshes with cogwheels beside it as well as driving the shaft on its face, and the wrench turns it to any facing.

Without help, a wheel needs about a dozen flowers to run without pause. Which brings us to…

Bloom Lantern - Verdant

. A .
G P G     A = Andesite Alloy, G = Glass, P = Wisp Pedestal
. A .

A glass lantern for a Verdant wisp. It feeds on dandelions, lilies of the valley or azure bluets like any working wisp, and while it does:

• wilted flowers within five blocks recover in two seconds - its own included, so two or three dandelions keep it going forever;
• crops, saplings, berries and stems in range grow noticeably faster, day or night.

A wheel and a lantern sharing one small garden of daisies and dandelions will run indefinitely. That's the intended first build.

Modpack makers: the lantern grows anything in the createvismachina:lantern_growable block tag (vanilla and common crop/sapling tags plus berries, cocoa, stems and cave vines). Add your own with a datapack.