Right, I haven't participated much recently in thread discussion but I've been following somewhat on the subject of further enhancing Primordial World Set Combo and I have some thoughts. Specifically in regards to including Oceans/Water themes.
I went back to the visions Snorri saw during the creation of Barak Azamar to get some sense of the actual place water had in the visions themselves and I noted some things, here I've basically pulled out the vision centric stuff and highlighted the stuff having to do with water;
Power Flows
The amulet hums inside the vault, Grungni's Rune shimmering with light.
You are underwater. The surface still, but underneath your eyes pierce the hundreds of meters of sapphire blue water to see the rocky floor. There in the center of your field of view a great crack in the earth, a ravine some thirty meters deep. The scene is frozen in time, perfectly still.
Will guides it
The stillness breaks. It begins slowly but soon the earth shakes with enough force to crack open the ravine, a dull orange light peers out from the new opening before it is subsumed in a great cloud of steam, vapour and dust. Your vision obstructed and shook as badly as the surrounding environment.
Let song remind you.
Grimnir's Rune begins to glow.
You are pulled from the scene, upwards and upwards until you see that you were inside a lake in the center of a verdant island. You also see the land crack and break itself apart as the titanic energy of the earth in motion sends it all back under the sea, great waves emanating from the epicentre of the cataclysmic destruction.
The scene shifts and you know you are somewhere else entirely. A different island, as black as coal, with a series of fuming Volcanoes at its heart. Around it, a ring of steam is constantly rising. Whatever force brought you here brings you right to the edge, close enough to see the source of it.
Let mind shape it
Lava.
Burning molten rock spews out from channels and holes in the rock, surging periodically like blood being pumped by a heart. It flows over the rocks in great flows, creating great steam curtains as it falls into the sea. Time passes faster and you see the rock build up as more and more lava cools or falls into the water.
The Island grows. Storms wrack its surface, carrying seeds of new life. Ages pass, the volcanoes cool and lichens eat away at the volcanic stone, shrubs can take root, followed by grasses, trees, then insects and the animals that ate them and each other.
Sing the song of creation
The Rune of Valaya flares then settles into a gentle glow.
Again and again, you are taken from place to place. Forced to see the power of the world at work. Scenes of such cataclysmic power that life is scoured for miles around, all done in the span of seconds. Acts that take so long to complete that it feels like entire civilizations could rise and fall, entirely unaware of the ancient processes acting around them.
The work of eternity
Mogrim's rune shimmers, sputtering before steadying out.
You see waterdrops fall on bare stone, carving away at it like a mason with a chisel over millennia. Caverns so large that they boggle the mind formed over eons, seen happening over the course of seconds.
To a being who could live through such a process, to one who would live forever, what difference was there between a moment and forever?
Wrought onto mortal plane
The water continues carving even as it forms stalactites and stalagmites in seconds, fusing into pillars that grow large enough to dwarf even the oldest Wutroth. Rock is worn away to reveal great seams of metal that glint in the light. Gems and crystals are exposed to or form in the darkness. Regardless of the method, all are the product of a massive span of time.
Legend and Myth
Thungni's Rune burns, his symbol outshining the other four trinkets on the necklace.
It is the work of countless processes, all happening independently of each other and on timescales that make even the seeming agelessness of the Ancestors seem so...mortal.
All of it is like walking back and finally seeing the full mural. The forest coming into view after spending so long staring at, not even the trees, but at a single leaf. The whole of the earth is moving; displaying constant acts of destruction and creation done thousands of times in thousands of places, all without yours or anyone's notice. This was true agelessness, true eternity. It is not static, unmoving stone, it is the beating heart of something so large that you are but a speck of a speck.
Not dead at all.
But so clearly, so painfully, obviously Alive.
The work of the Smith
The bust of Thungni, unseen by you, glitters like a multihued gem. His eyes blazing stronger than they ever have before.
No there are a few things that emerge that we might to be able to use in order to bring in Water to the set without actually having a rune directly connected to water. First off water is positioned as 'still' and 'frozen' (though the second might be a bit of a stretch); there are a few runes dealing with both concepts, but that's the weakest potential avenues. Stronger, I think, would be something connected to the imagery of water carving stone but that's also something ore of a stretch to do with what runes we have access too, not impossible though I think.
So onto some possible combos;
Carving
- Master Rune of Passage/Wandering
- Rune of Grungni (he's the Ancestor of mining and Stoneworking, though his rune itself might not be all that applicable)
- Rune of Cleaving/Striking
Stillness/Cold
Not many good applicable Master Runes for this theme, so maybe just something with regular runes? If we get lucky and the Storm of Magic lasts past a turn or two or we get another sometime soon it should still be possible to craft something more than worthy.
- Master Rune of Dismay (fear is sort of like stillness?) or Rune of Cold
- Rune of Silence/Lightstep
- Rune of Slowness
None of this is very developed, it was just a thought that struck me this morning and some potential combinations that I put together after trawling through the rune list, more to put it out there into the thread rather than convince anyone of these specific combinations.
