It's such an absurd mentality that I can't help but get a headache trying to make sense of it. It's one thing where you can't realistically teach everything you know to your apprentice due to lack of time or difficulties of translating your knowledge across different forms of Magesight, but to deliberately refuse to teach your own chosen apprentices as much as opportunity allows out of sheer perfectionism and what I can only call sheer selfish pride is just unbelievably petty and stupid.
There isn't even the excuse that learning magic too advanced or powerful before you're strong enough to handle it is extremely dangerous--runecraft lacks that kind of risk. And in the worst case, you can always teach the more advanced stuff you know to non-apprentices.
Thorek at least teaches an entire herd of apprentices to at least provide respectable quantity to the profession, but Kragg making little time for apprentices despite being one of the best of his craft seems so wasteful.
I'm not sure I agree with the conclusions here or premises here.
Is Kragg teaching less than Thorek? Is Thorek more willing to pass on as much of
his responsibilities and powers and knowledge, as Kragg is wiling to pass on his knowledge and responsibility? Thorek might simply be more of a politician than Kragg, and thus simply have less or different things to pass on; and Thorek might be more reluctant to pass on or relinquish
different things in different circumstances than Kragg would be. It's not necessarily a one-to-one match on everything.
And the mindset makes a lot more sense if you look at it from the perspective of "Who can be trusted with secrets like the Liber Mortis, or who actually killed the Empress and the Tsar of Kislev?" and "Are you prepared to teach
all your Masteries to your student?"
Because to a Dwarf, "teaching everything you know" means
everything you learned and were capable of. It means passing on Warrior of Fog as a magical trait and your unique Masteries; because that is a thing-you-learned, an advancement of magic. Or if you aren't willing -- or capable -- of passing it on to a student, then you have to Codify it. Yes, codify your Magical Trait. Not your Masteries, your magical trait -- because the point isn't just to pass on your unique spell twists, it's to pass on your magical perspective too, so that your magical perspective can be perpetually dug into in the future and harvested for
all its benefits.
And also it presumably implies that
you would have been learning
your master's Masteries and Magical Trait, too. Because it would have been his responsibility to teach everything he had, and your responsibility to learn it.
And yet, Mathilde
didn't learn Regiman's masteries or magical trait. Nor can she pass it on.
That would be what a comparison and contrast between the Dwarf and human system would look like. That is what it would mean to pass everything on. It doesn't just mean passing on the juicy secrets like the Liber Mortis, which some people advocate for talking about (sometimes with total strangers we don't know, on the basis of "Well, this guy probably won't misuse it because they have no reason to, right?") and others advocated against even learning in the first place, and others advocate various other stuff.
Given that, is the Dwarf method of "Kragg only teaches
some of what he knows and only trusts people to carry on
some of his responsibilities, not all of them; he'd love to find a worthy apprentice one day, but..." really all that different from the human method in terms of outcomes?
We don't even know what our master's Magical Trait was or Masteries. Nor our master's master, or his before him. Some of them might not even have had a proper master as such, and learned more from the school and then developed things on their own. Some might have had multiple masters due to death or whatever. A Dwarf system or ideal, would have been one that tried to keep a chain going as far back as possible.
By Dwarf standards, we aren't measuring up to
that standard. We aren't teaching
our apprentice(s) everything we, and our master, know. We'd object and say that we're teaching them everything we know about magic, and that stuff like Masteries or magical traits probably don't really count or are tricky to teach, and who knows if a magical trait can be outright
copied like that that's absurd? But, well... that'd be us failing a standard. =/
To a Dwarf, I presume a true apprentice(TM) would be somebody you trusted with
all those secrets and responsibilities. They'd be somebody who you'd expect to do as good a job as you yourself did and would trust to be faced with the same kinds of challenges and questions as you yourself were, and to make the correct decisions despite the challenges or issues. That's a hard ask! Finding somebody of unimpeachable character, or raising and training somebody to be like that, is hard.
That doesn't mean that Dwarfs won't call somebody a true apprentice, but yet not teach them everything and leave no stone untouched. They might decide to leave some things out anyway. They'd just feel shame for doing so. After all, if I truly believed that my apprentice was worthy, then I'd have trusted them with
all my deeds and knowledge that I did, right? And yet I didn't teach them everything. I'm a failure. -- I'm sure some things have happened too. Probably less commonly than Dwarfs deciding to not teach everything and not call them a true apprentice.
But the
ideal for a Dwarf, is to have a successor that
could be trusted with all of that stuff. With
all that you did and learned and knew of. Because that's how you pass on things for eternity and keep things going for eternity. The problem is that to successfully pass on the secrets of, say, the assassinations of rulers or the Liber Mortis... means, well, successfully being able to trust at every step of the chain in the future. And this is rule-breaking stuff and ruler-blackmailing secrets here, and you'd be trusting every future apprentice with that.
Dwarfs are expected to be able to do that. Not all Dwarfs are capable of doing that. Either they tell their apprentices anyway, while praying their apprentices are up for the job anyway and that this doesn't all turn out ill... Or they don't tell their apprentices everything, and pray it all doesn't turn out ill. And the masters and the apprentices all live with the shame or with the pressure of living up to that responsibility or those choices or that knowledge. And with the knowledge that they'll have to pass all that on to somebody, and that somebody will also have to be capable of bearing those secrets
and being of good enough judgment to pick a good successor
and for that successor to do the same... Is it any wonder that at some point, some Dwarfs decide "Yeah, okay, no, this information is too hot too handle; I can't in good consciousness pass it on. This secret has to die with me. And if I feel shame that I am unable to be a good enough teacher to find or teach a student that can bear this perpetually, then that shame is on me."
The old Dwarf is jealous of his lore and protective of his reputation and so far he has not shared the secret of his master rune with any of his apprentices, so only he may use it. Perhaps some day the master will teach it to his successor, but so far he has not found a Runesmith worthy enough to inherit his knowledge.
When a Runesmith judges the time is right, he chooses a young relative to be his apprentice and reticently teaches him, for an apprentice has to prove his worthiness to wring out even the most basic steps of the craft from his Master. Many powerful runes have been lost over time simply because a Runesmith could find no one he considered worthy enough to gain his innermost knowledge.
Look at what that says -- Kragg does teach some of his stuff, he just doesn't teach
all of it. And he is
waiting and hoping for an apprentice that he
could teach it all to one day, it's just... the responsibility is a big one to pass on. His responsibilities probably
don't just include "Being a Runelord and crafting runes" by the way -- it's for being responsible for stuff we probably can't imagine, and for ensuring quality of
character to entrust guild and religious secrets too.
It's easy to compare this to the collegiate system and throw criticism, but... if you compare it to
just the magic spells that the mages learn or invent, it's not quite the same is it? Because some magic spells can be more easily shared than others. And even then, the Colleges
don't share it all with the other Colleges -- we were given a direct example of this, with how the Jades/Ambers/Golds keep very quiet about how Gehenna's Golden Hounds/Crows/etc work, because they're spirit-binding.
Granted, the Colleges
do pass things on. They pass on the spirit-binding and the secrets and myths too. And sometimes those secrets are betrayed, and the College or the Empire has to hunt down the renegade -- but for a Dwarf, this would be unacceptable. The Empire of Man
can accept traitors and heretics; to the Dwarfs, that would be far more unacceptable.
Or for another example... think about how reluctant Mathilde would be to pass on the
full Liber Mortis to any apprentice. We might do it. We might give it back to Roswita instead. We might not pass it on at all. We're not sure yet. We might get killed before we decide to pass it on or not, and so the decision would be made by our Final Will. There's certainly parties with strong opinions on the matter; those who want to share the knowledge, or to hide the knowledge, and advocate for it. We'll see how it turns out in the end.
And then there was the stuff I mentioned in the upper half, about passing on Masteries and stuff. What if by Dwarf standards, you'd be expected to be capable of passing on
that stuff too? That the expectation wouldn't be a laissez-faire "Some masters try to teach their students their specific ways; some just teach the basics and intermediates and let the student reach for grandmastery on their own" but instead an expectation that you pass on your magical perspective so that the pov can be mined for
all the minerals available.
((And if you want variety? If you want students who do their own thing, rather than students that will carry on the mindset perpetually just in case the mindset comes in useful? Well, then you have to teach
multiple sets of students! An apprentice that will carry everything you have; and an apprentice that you hope will have their
own Magical Trait and their own Masteries, and will in turn teach his own Full Apprentice and Not-Full-Apprentice. But that seems like a huge expectation to have. How easy is it to continuously in every generation make sure you teach at least one person -- because if you only taught
one Full Apprentice, then if they died, oh well, your whole line might be ended -- everything, and also make sure you have at least one spare that is expected to go their own way?))
*Kragg
is teaching stuff to people. Not everything, but something.
*Thorek is
also teaching stuff to people. However,
he is too busy to teach everything and instead teaches a smattering of things instead.
What is the
outcome of both approaches? And what are the probable mindsets and motives of both Runelords? Because I'm willing to bet that
both approaches
and mindsets are actually a lot more similar than you'd expect, and also result in a more similar outcome than you'd expect, too.
The same thing, I'm willing to bet; both Kragg
and Thorek
don't pass on all that they know and/or all their responsibilities. And it's not
just because Thorek is too busy I wager. I think Thorek
also goes "Well, I'm teaching a
bunch of people to a 'good enough' standard... but nobody
really meets my 'Can be my Full Replacement'-level standards. Nobody here strikes me as a replacement for Thorek. So until that happens, I won't pass on
all my knowledge -- and accompanying responsibilities -- to a student."
Granted though, I'll bet that Thorek is more likely to pass on all the stuff he knows... ... because he probably knows less valuable secrets and responsibilities than Kragg.
Is Thorek teaching a
political heir though? Thorek is as much a politician as he is a Runelord (a criticism labeled at him by Kragg; that he wears too many hats). Is he raising a political heir?
And if he
is raising a political heir, is that because he trusts somebody to be as good as him at Runesmithing and politics, or is it because he wants somebody to continue on his mindset -- that he wants to perpetuate his
ideals and ideas? That's neither bad nor good, it just is what it is. Though such circumstances
can result in controlling or overbearing masters. Or students and inheritors left feeling overshadowed. Basically what I'm saying is, Thorek and Kragg might have different expectations and goals in mind and different thoughts about what ought to be passed on and how. And that this would be not just about knowledge, but also about politics too.
