Runes

Legend

“Mana leaked and fell onto his illuminated initial, as if it sought just that letter – which became an animated letter pulsing eagerly as it awaited his command.”

“He saw it land and cover the illumination – bringing it alive.”

–Skjald Valgrif

Description

Runes are enhanced raw materials inscribed with Vornirian letters and truename glyphs, enabling them to channel raw energies. Their power stems from their origin in the astral, where the divine acts of truenaming and purpose labelling defined each rune. They channel raw magical energies from various sources: the mana sea, the void, world ley lines, and mentalist minds. Runes can provide a variety of effects, such as enhancing abilities, items, and spells, and can act as currency or crafting components.They can greatly improve a character’s actions and grant new skills.

Their original design is sacred and precise — as even minor deviations cause changes.Runes reconcile the fluid nature of magical manipulation with the strict, unyielding laws that govern magical outcomes. They serve as structured conduits — mutable in form, yet bound by cosmic logic. Runes are not static programs with a relatively thin layer of magic origin but dynamic keys able to directly tamper with mana threads. Though not wilful, they might be communicated with or even altered so as to learn new symbols and instructions.

With the flow and function of magic depending on the curvature of the astral wheel, like its spin, its fluxions, and more. The artificial phenomena affect runes to a certain extent. So to reconcile the mutability of the artificiality of runes and their effects, one has to look at when and how those symbols gained their power and universality – a question already answered.

Studying runes, especially when more or longer ones are used, where removing parts of a rune chain alters the effects, is one of the key elements studied. This has raised some interesting restrictions and possibilities on runic magic, especially tampering with ancient longer runechains containing longer truenames.

“The elderly woman grinned, then threw a rain of shards at the god – and it shrieked.”

Skjald Sejrik

History

Runes first appeared when the divines Vornir and Boriac began to label things discovered in the void. It is stated that truename marking with runes permitted both parties to pile up items for evaluations or bearing-backs without having to debate them. The written element of Vornirian came up as a result of this runic labelling. However, encoding truenames into runes triggered the runes into being, and vice versa.

Their shapes were initially primitive and seemed arbitrary, but as time progressed, runes became increasingly complicated. A pattern that gradually developed two disparities between rune chains: short chains generally contained complicated runes, while lengthy chains often had simpler runes. The divines liked rapidity; therefore, they condensed long, repetitive chains into new, somewhat more intricate runes.

In the beginning it was only the divine ones that utilised and mastered runes. But as the Mana Wheel turned and time passed, they began to teach older races, like Archaic humans, Jotunn, Drakk and Ljost Alfar, Fautyr, Kobold, and Dwarves. Many millennia later their entire vocabulary of runes and rites had been taught to as good as all races. Only one master rune, or rune chain if you like, did they never teach. But somehow the humans of the Vular race managed to discover its secrets – and raise some of their comrades and ancestors. It’s said that this was whispered by gods and became the real reason why the 3rd age ended in the cataclysmic Deep Blue Tsunami.

“None the favoured, but Vular learnt to animate – their lost.”

Skjald Kazumix