I like the way the focus has shifted back to the runes (or so it seems). The runes were always a feature, to me, of Glorantha rather than just a game mechanic. Of course, that's my opinion.
Does this mean a shift toward the MRQ vision of rune magic? I'm not saying that would be a bad thing. I know that in the MRQ canon, rune magic disappears at the end of the second age and by third age, only cults have access to rune magic but I'm curious.
There is one comment that struck me from Vingkot's live journal (as an aside, I'd love to read Orlanth's twitter: "Mood; embarrassed. Killed the sun today. Plunged world into darkness. Freed chaos. Going for coffee.") that, "In HQ most divine cults have only one or two runes, and a few great gods have three."
I always thought that the more powerful the god, the fewer runes (S)he was associated with, because (S)he was more closely attuned to the rune or was the source of the rune, frex Orenoar is the source of the Truth rune to the extent that the Truth rune could be called the Orenoar rune.
Conversely, the more runes a god possessed the weaker his/her connections and abilities. Frex, Lanbril has Mastery, Disorder and Illusion so his cult has access to magic from these runes but nothing really world-shaking.
Of course, this idea fails when you consider Orlanth has three runes and is, after the death of Umath, essentially the source of the air rune.
Oh well. Once again a simple, all encompassing theory of Glorantha fails.
Powered by hypermail