The rule of Form and the rule of Three are actually rules about runes work. And its Durin's consternation territory.
The rule of form is simply that some runes only work on specific kinds of object. And to some extent this makes sense, runes are probably interacting with some kind of platonic ideals in the warp so somethings aren't linkable in the way that a rune that makes a weapon hit harder put on a suit of armour would fail as you aren't meant to hit things with armour.
And the rule of three is that nobody has ever successfully put four items on an object without breaking it from the magical forces involved. There are exceptions in Lonely runes, which are so powerful they can't be shared with anything else. And related is that armour runes are too powerful to be placed on anything except Gromril. However its also not clear why arrays without master runes aren't able to stack more than three times or why there are no known combinations that only accept two runes (That one legendary Axe of Drago perhaps???). Or why combos so powerful they can only be fired off once a decade due to the recharge period don't break the materials they're inscribed on when they're fired. To link this back to the platonic rune theory, one possible explanation is in "Runespace" there's just a finite volume you can pack runes into and more powerful runes take up more space and exert more pressure on the volume.
There is active research into defeating the rule of three by the Brotherhood and others, mainly by trying to find a item capable of withstanding 4 runes.
The rule of pride is the only one that originated from Thungni and it came from observing and attempting to mimic his behaviour which is why its so much more variable than the other rules in terms of how people express it. Its possible this is unintended, Thungni just got bored if he had to make the same thing twice so he didn't. However theres a more compelling theory that relates to what the priestess of Valaya told us.
"Of course High Priestess, your wisdom would be most welcome."
"Hmph. Then listen well to what I have to tell you lad. In Her efforts to straighten out the flaws in our ways, Valaya snuffed out many of our worst traditions. Those borne from our inherent flaws that which, in our blindness, solidified into a calcareous muck that clogged and marred us. The Clan Wars, the Old Remits of Zorn, the Castes, the mistreatment and Binding Oaths of the Lower Clans, all done away with. Consigned to the pages of tomes never to be repeated. Yet. It was not without purpose, and what was destroyed she replaced with better, truer ways. Valaya understood our people better than even ourselves. You seem the type to try and change things for better or worse, can't say I had that much energy at your age but be aware of this moving forward. Things are done for reasons, they may not be good ones, but those reasons need to be addressed one way or another."
With her piece said the High Priestess nods a final time before she walks off back deeper into the temple, Valkyrie Guard following dutifully.
Dwarves have a natural tendancy towards conservatism and its entirely possible that without the Rule of Pride, dwarves would just keep a list of known combos Thungni used and if you ever attempted to make something that wasn't on that list, half of the Runelords would start screaming at you to justify why you think you knew better than Thungni did.
During the golden age, the rule of pride isn't really a restriction. Creating MRunes is so time comsuming and expensive that we would never have been able to spam them out even if the rule didn't exist so the only way we've actually been restricted is that its stopped us spamming out a smelter and a gronti every turn (thank god that would get boring quickly).
And when you look at people who have been genuinely impacted like Vragni who wants to be productive and stick tightly to a very conservative interpretation of the rule, look at the 'loopholes' it encouraged him to do:
- Research new variations of runes.
- Train many apprentices.
These are just good things. They push the field of runecrafting forward and expand it. So viewed from this angle the Rule of pride should be considered an attempt to reframe natural dwarvern conservatism into a more liberal and outword looking culture similar to what Thungni's brother is doing with the Engineers.
It didn't become a problem until the time of woes when many runes where lost, and when we look at the alternative where they're only building off of a list, well they still have a very similar problem where runes essential to the list have been lost.
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