> Picking up your idea with the runic associations, this is where the Mastery Rune resides...
Picking up on the great Jorganos, all these years and I never considered whether the old "condition runes" (Mastery, Magic, arguably Communication and Infinity) might have originated in the Western caste system or even back to the vanished tribes of Danmalastan.
Mastery and Magic are easy. Of course, for all I know, Mastery is pronounced "dar" and Magic "godi" and the provenance of these strange runes has been solved, but MGMV.
The Horals could easily have had a "Western death rune" subsumed into HUMCT during the Autarchy reforms and surviving in other forms the Carmanian warrior cults -- yet another reason why Humakt is always a stranger god, but far be it from me to antagonize the Swords on the list.
Going the other way, the problem of a Western communication rune points us back to who the God with the Silver Feet really might have been before he was "killed" in the Snodal Conspiracy.
One could even resurrect the old triangular "Law" rune and give to the Dronars to give them an esoteric function in caste magic misunderstood by unlettered heathens who saw triangles painted everywhere on Western peasant gear.
The inner secret of the Hrestoli overmen might well have been mistranslated in the theist belt as the Infinity rune and reserved for the Invisible God in strict four-caste cultures. This might make every "knight" a Hero in Fronela (and old Carmania?) and every Hero a "knight."
Since I could never shake the vibe that much of Arcane Lore was actually a mess of surviving Autarchy / God Learner material collected from old Carmania and Carmania-dominated Peloria by foreign occultists, we could say that these runes originally promulgated in much the same way.
And one of the great things about having Middle Sea Empire on the table is that we can now posit an alternative: Gloranthan documents in Arcane Lore could just as easily have come across Slontos to inform the esoteric background for the system Belintar built.
So much we still don't know!
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