> Someone said earlier that what MRQ calls 'Rune Magic' --the idea
> of doing magic by physically possessing and becoming attuned to
> Runes in order to produce particular magical effects-- stopped
> working at/near the end of the Second Age?
Not sure about that, really - IMO the God Learners managed to manipulate the runes without attuning to them, achieving magical closeness to the deitites without becoming like them, and _that_ method failed.
Without knowing the HQ2 rules, I still think that on a lower level sorcery users still ought to be able to manipulate their runic knowledge, but when it comes into the region of divine power, their opposition would be the appropriate divine power, and not at its weakest (as seems to have been the case in the God Learner magics where they did not send in huge waves of students on the basis that a few might make it (through) the experiments.
> Malkioinsm is affected by the fall of the Godlearners too,
> because the authority of the Abiding Book is diminished (although
> iirc earlier discussions about the fate of the Abiding Book after
> the fall of the Godlearners suggested that many churches still
> used many passages, rituals and spells from the Abiding Book, but
> called them something else).
The Abiding Book has become a distant and unknown ideal source already during the Imperial Age, allowing several different scriptures to coexist all claiming to be the closest to the original.
The original text had become the gnosis of a select group of monks (who then apparently made a habit of "we have it, but none of us has to know it as long as we have the ultimate doctrinal control").
> Secondly didn't Malkionism (Hrestoli or Rokari) often became
> more monotheistic after the fall of the Godlearners?
Not quite sure about that any more. The non-Tanisoran Genertelan Malkionism apparently was formed single-handedly by Halwal, a dissident abbott from Seshnela who reformed the Fronelan church and even managed to formulate a basic unified Arkati theology before abruptly leaving for Seshnela to violently end his personal dispute with the greatest local church authority there (a Pithdaran wizard).
The Rokari church then bundled up the remains of the God Learner era church (the mainstream Makanist, not the God Learner sect) and imposed an orthodoxy.
> Was this a reaction against Godlearnerism (that staying away
> from the visble gods removed some of the temptations to which the
> Godlearners had succumbed) or, more prosaically, a consequence of
> losing the Godlearners' 'road map' (which repackaged a necessity
> as a virtue)? Or a bit of both?
The God Learners were at best a Malkioni sect, never a mainstream religion in the Malkioni lands. Things may have been different in their experimental colonies.
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