--- number: 20 title: The Graph of Changes — every element one flip from six others date: 2026-07-18 summary: The sixty-four elements as a graph — each joined to the six it becomes when one of its lines flips — drawn live in the browser and arrangeable by dimension, by drive, or by line. A picture of what transmutation would mean before any of it was built. A backdated entry, added 2026-09-13. epic: element-table status: delivered artifacts: ["docs/historic/lor-graph-of-changes.html"] cta: [object Object] ---
*Interactive. Three arrangements of the same sixty-four nodes; in drive mode, direction is the combined push across the four axes and distance is stretched for legibility, so read it as an ordering, not a measurement. Backdated: added to the log on 2026-09-13 for a thing made on 2026-07-18. The original is `docs/historic/lor-graph-of-changes.html`; what is embedded is a verbatim copy.* ## What it was A hexagram has six lines, and changing any one of them gives a different hexagram, so every element sits one flip away from exactly six others. This page drew that: the whole space of sixty-four as a graph, with the changing lines as its edges, and three ways to arrange it — by the dimension a line belongs to, by the direction a change pushes across the four axes, and line by line. It was made the same day as the periodic table, as the other half of the same question: if the elements are hexagrams, what does it mean to move between them? ## What carried through Changing lines are still in the design doc as the verbs of the world — transmutation, discovery, the tech tree, latent from day one — and the graph is the shape any of that would walk. Nothing in the game moves along it yet. The repo's own notes on the historic tools say it plainly: shelved as mechanics, may return as an authoring canvas. If spells ever grow from a fixed list into something a player composes, this is the map they would compose on. ## What did not The four axes the drive mode is built on are the doubtful part of the current design, so the "by drive" arrangement is a picture of an idea rather than of the game. The "by line" one is just the I Ching, and that part is not going anywhere.