Re: Runic powers

From: Donald R. Oddy <donald_at_grove.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 00:08:14 GMT

In message <Pine.GSO.4.58.0506012125410.14887_at_paju.oulu.fi> Mikko Rintasaari writes:
>
>Hello again people
>
>I'm still working on my Glorantha/Ars Magica crossover set in the Janube
>river city states.
>
>A few of the core (Godlearner) runes are not as clear cut as most.
>
>What kinds of assosiations (read magic, powers) would you think the
>following pair has:
>
>Law / Chaos
>
>I'm looking through the old RQ era chaos cults for inspiration of the
>sorts of magic messing with chaos makes possible. The primal "turn your
>target to gray slime" is of course the crudest one, but chaos used
>together with another rune (like the chaos cults do) should make possible
>a range of things impossible to normal runic sorcery.
>
>What about Law? As I understand it the Law rune is primarily the rune of
>Wizards and Makan the Creator, not so much sorcerers. Clearly holy and
>anti-chaos magic (for the Malkioni) stem from this rune.
>
>Can you think of something else?

I haven't seen much written about the Law rune but the way I tend to see it and the Chaos rune is like the Law/Chaos balance in the Elric and Eternal Champion books. Law then becomes associated with authority, stasis, tradition and predictability. So Mostali and Brithini are probably the people most connected to law.

>For those of you who aren't familiar with Ars magica the Runic Sorcery I'm
>putting together functions roughly like this.
>
>For a firebolt the sorcerer needs to invoke the rune of Change (motion)
>and the rune of Fire.
>
>For healing the sorcerer needs the runes of Man and Harmony or, for
>regeneration and the like, Man and Life.
>
>To mentally dominate somebody you need Man and Mastery, and so forth.
>
>
>Law and Chaos are still giving me trouble.

I'd involve Law with spell for making things, especially complex things where all the bits must work together correctly. Chaos is used where something should act contrary to its natual manner.

>I'm also wondering about vampirism and undeath. Do vampire like spells and
>mastery of undeath use the Death rune, or does one need an Undeath
>(Hunger) rune, as I've seen occasionally.

You could use Death and Chaos for this is you want to keep the number of runes down.

>I'd like to limit the runes for sorcery to the most common and primal
>ones. I'm not going to have an Ice rune, for instance. To create ice
>invoke Water and Darkness (for the cold).

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/


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