AN: Already put this into the update, but for those who wanted to see it specifically! Here's Karaz-Kazak-Rhun. Had to rewrite since that part didn't save because of the power outage I dealt with on Thursday.
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You do
not let Svina hold Karaz-Kazak-Rhun.
But she does get to
see it.
What? Trusting a
child to walk around
your Workshop unsupervised? Ridiculous. Foolish! Besides, you were planning to do this before she showed up anyway. Thungni taught
His apprentices while using it, so clearly it was safe enough.
And, the petty part of you cackles, the idea that a child of thirteen got to see Karaz-Kazak-Rhun before those stuffy shirts calling themselves
Runelords down south in Izril was
incredibly funny.
It was also a research opportunity,
and more importantly, the chance for some peace and quiet. Watching as Svina's developing Stilling Field comes into range with Thungni's Hammer.
Nothing of note. Touch contact? Bah. Not in a million years.
"It's got more than
three!" Svina murmurs obviously, eyes wide.
"Aye," you agree, chuffing internally as childish comprehension.
"Da always said Three was where a Runesmith had to stop…" she mutters.
"Aye,"
For now, "But not Thungni."
"Is 'why' a Runesmith secret?"
"Aye."
Even from us.
Svina settles into silence.
You finally get to examining the hammer in peace, Windsight eye glowing as you stare at Karaz-Kazak-Rhun.
Perfection.
There's nothing quite so beautiful as a well made Rune in your opinion, and Thungni's craftsmanship is matched only by His Father's.
Plucking secrets from
Karaz-Kazak-Rhun isn't going to be quite so simple as
looking, but there's not much else you can do besides using it can you? While the foundational assumptions of what Runecraft could do feel like they were in flux these past few decades it remained an indisputable fact that what made Runecraft better than all other forms of magic was in its stability and replicability. Know the striking, know the reagents and do it right, you'll get the same Rune every time.
That was the rub though wasn't it.
Know the striking, know the reagents. Without either, you were in the dark. There were some workarounds to that of course; a large enough repertoire of similar Runes, knowing a variant or derivative, those could help bridge the gap to find the "original" as it were but that didn't help
here.
The Rhuns of Karaz-Kazak-Rhun were an enigma. Oh you all knew the name, and could guess to which parts did what, but that was all.
A guess.
So you don't bother.
Instead you look at it on a more fundamental level; trying to see how Thungni made them, and if that held the answer to how He could break past the one hurdle no Runesmith has been able to overcome. Easier said than done of course. There was a plaitling sitting next to you and your tools were limited. Not like you could hit Thungni's hammer with itself to start understanding its properties, nor could the Eye of the Ancestors help obviously. What flaw did the work of Thungni have? None. Foolish.
The name of the seven Runes on Karaz-Kazak-Rhun were known at the very least. The Master Runes of Precision, Grounding, and Craftsmanship and the Runes of Flamecraft, Metalcraft, Forgecraft and Breaking.
You know how to make 1 of those,
maybe, if the Rune of Breaking that Thungni used wasn't some variant He didn't feel the need to name. The Windsight Eye lets you
see how the Winds blow in and around the Hammer, how Magic,
Chamon especially, is corralled and controlled by the Runes into seamless, well-ordered flows. But that's no different from how any of the arrays you've made work either. There is something else beyond Thungni simply being
better at crafting Runes (which He most assuredly is mind,), but you can't see it.
The order? Possible. The variants themselves? Equally likely with how obtuse the entire thing is.
"Gruncle, I'm going to go to the Trogg-khaz now. Can you loan me some Brass?"
You absentmindedly pass a few coins to Svina, the pitter patter of her boots fading as you continue to stare.
What is different?
The Runes continue to withhold an answer and you sigh. Skaudardrengi would be less frustrating, making
that would just be hours of endless hammering, shaping with the aid of Karaz-Kazak-Rhun—
Roll, Gnolgrund: 3, Direction
A pulse. Blood, flowing. There is instinct a—
—You blink. What was that?
Why was that?
Doesn't matter, you can't lose whatever it is you were seeing. You look at the hammer again, thinking about creating Skaudardrengi, trying to recreate the moment—
A pulse. Blood, flowing. There is instinct and there is intent.
Mind controls the body. Thought leads to motion. Past leads to the future.
Direction.
Humming, you contemplate the implications.
They are...disquieting.
You were taught that a Rune was an
individual existence. A surface level reading, like that of your Apprentices when you first teach them about the concept, of that statement would make one point to things like Rune arrays, and something like the Rune of Direction that seemingly flew in the face of such a position.
The truth was more complicated—and if you were fair the term could use some work—than that.
By
individual existence you meant that while a Rune may need another to
work it did not need another Rune to
function in the first place. Put it another way, there was no ambiguity about where one Rune ended and where another began, they were bricks stacked atop each other, not pigment mixed for paint or a dye.
A Rune of Direction was effectively useless without another Rune for the wearer to point to aye, but it
didn't stop functioning ya see. It just had no output for its effect to visibly manifest. An array in that same vein, was held to the understanding that its greater effect was a positive
byproduct of three Runes acting in concert.
Quibbling,
aye, and why several others didn't hold that stance. After all, Thungni made no word confirming either way, and if by the eldest theories there was a theoretically infinite amount of Runes that could be devised, why
wouldn't there be a Rune that
required another Rune to actually function.
Yet no such Rune has ever appeared, to your knowledge at least.
Aye, there are folk like Vragni who can discover variants so specific and niche that they'd be useless without two other variant Runes to shore up their deficiencies, but they would still
work if they didn't have those Runes there. It would just be that the effect was, again, piss poor.
Had Thungni discovered differently though? More to the point, would
Windsight prove you wrong and them correct? It wasn't even a consideration before...
…but now it may very well
be.
Bah.
Figures Thungni's hammer would do this.
Even gone He uses what He left behind to
teach His descendants, even if you'd prefer He'd be a bit more direct about it.
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Research
- Examine Karaz-Kazak-Rhun complete!
-- Questioning the very fundamental pillars of your belief is becoming an annoyingly more frequent occurrence. Can't have anything be simple.
Bah!
-- +1 Progress to Diction Direction Pt. 2, new totals: [Cost: (7 -6) =1 actions]
Research tree altered.
-- +2 Progress to The Mind of Things Pt. 6: [Cost: (8 -6) =2 actions]
-- +1 Progress to The Happening of Things, new totals: [Cost: (7 -4) = 3 actions]
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