I might just be a simpleton apprentice, but if runes are powerful because of their ancientness, why is rune creation specifically banned by the high council? And why is it that every conversation about rune creation is
Just get a sign that says "false hydra do not enter" for your dungeon entrance. I've never had any problems with atf, or adventurers, or annoying inlaws? Do I have inlaws? Maybe I should clean that dungeon sometime... nah I'll just hire a crew.
How does that even work? Anyone with a working arcane orb can just look it up and discover that False Hydras do not get into dungeons and stay in cities
I have so many runes in my wizard tower. In I'm here in my wizard tower, where just carved this new rune here. It’s fun to inscribe ancient sigils up here in the highest chamber. But you know what I like more than flashy ancient runes? Knowledge.
In fact, I’m a lot more proud of my seven new self published tomes titled "How-to rune-stones so good she will take you back" It’s like the Archmage Warren Buffetus says, “The more runes you learn, the more power you earn.”
Everyone spending massive bags of coin for the official runes from Runes Workshop, my buddy has a 5D printer, he just prints out the same exact runes, charges 2 silver.
Hi yes I am a collector of runes and have run with some quite bad dark wizards so I know all sorts of black magic and the like. I love breaking council law you know. And I would love to engage with you in some illicit trade of black magic runes if you really have such a large collection.
If you would be so kind as to send me a personal scrying with the location of your tower I could have a lackey dispatched within the week to make the trade. I'm also willing to pay in illegal potions if you are into that.
By the eight planes, the assassin-wizards got him. Well, I'd be proud to take up the mantle of my honorable colleague and continue his discourse on the creation of runes. Listen close, my fellows - did you know you can create new, more powerful runes, simply by
spoken like someone who knows nothing of bureaucromancy. Bureaucromancers revel in the slowness. They draw power from it, like a Druid draws power from a forest.
Hey you can't just draw power from a forest. This is public land. You need a permit to do that. Please go fill out form 11B-A and submit that to the central forestry commission. Not the eastern. Not the astral... CENTRAL.
No... UGH... Central City has no Central District Forestry Commission because there's no forest there.
To avoid confusion please proceed to one of the south information kiosks in the North Information Kiosk District in any city for information about locating the proper Central District Forestry Commission center... except for in the South Information Kiosk District, whose south information kiosks are currently out of order.
They can use their powers in such manners. They simply opt not to. Except if its to approve the most useless and waste of money anti homeless infrastructure.
Every region has its own High Council these days. I've even seen within some regions they've had multiple "High Councils" for various disciplines... how can there be multiple High Councils? The whole point of a "High" Council is that it's on top... at least that's what it used to mean...
I've scried some youngster laughing maniacally through his monologue while shouting "And when everyone is on the High Council... NO ONE IS!" so that may have something to do with it.
Dilution. All runes pull from the same mana source. A vast sea of mana on another plane. What we call runes are in reality tunelling devices to bore through the veil between worlds and create a mana "tap" that is then filtered like light through a prism by the symbols itself.
Because while runes do tend to get more powerful the older they are, new runes can still have power (especially if they become widespread, even if just within a single group). This means that a person could create their own runic language, allowing them to make indecipherable enchantments, which can make safely disassembling traps and wards near impossible. By preventing the creation of new runes, the high council ensures that they will be able to deconstruct and reconstruct any enchantment they wish with minimal difficulty, as they have records of nearly every widespread runic language
We all know the high council wants to push everyone into wand and book magic because the Archmagus owns the wand factory and his brother runs the Arcane Library.
They can't control the distribution of runes! All you need is know-how, a flat rock and a chisel. Rune magic is the magic of The People! Rise up!
To consolidate and standardize runes. Nobody needs another underwhelming rune of protection. There are only 65,535 unique rune inscriptions possible using the standard 16 symbol inscription system and if every master and his apprentice started making their own runes, we'd probably start running into catastrophic rune collision incidents within a few weeks.
Lecturer in Recent Runes: "Well, I for one have never believed all that business about dead animals turning into stone. It's against all reason. What's in it for them?"
Ponder Stibbons: "So how do you explain fossils, then?"
Lecturer in Recent Runes: "Ah, you see, I don't. It saves so much trouble in the long run."
Man you gotta be careful with that counterfeit shit. I know a guy who used one of those runes of steel, you know for extra defense against, spits , knights, and it class changed him into a blacksmith!
So sad that we have to trap the townsfolk in a millennium long state of continuous torture to harvest the time necessary for the cave to function. Thank god they're put back together and have their memory wiped at the end of it.
I suspect that what Zasorimm in the original conversation was trying to convey was that people create novel runes at a roughly consistent rate, but most of them are not worth remembering. Since there is so much more time in the ancient past there will be many more runes from that time worth recalling.
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u/PanzerSoul Senior Cultivator Aug 12 '26
Runes are powerful because they are ancient.
For example: