Runes represent things. Combine them to do stuff. If it's in italics, I thought of it and the Maali didn't. More complicated stuff is possible with BP projects to work out wtf2do and study/deduce more runes. Whatever. (V) runes can vary in power level from Minor to Significant to Major to Over 9000/GM. Each rune/power level/whatever has a quantitative testament cost, currently not specified, and writing takes a small amount of AP. Plus they need to know the runes in the first place. Temples or something… If they're not experienced, they might start writing only to run out of testament. Then hilarious things happen. Or they might not quite know how the things work regarding targeting and so on.
Elements of Essence:
Storm
Mist
Land
Air
Life (Spirit)
Soul (Passion)
Pure (Testament)
Time
Elements of Land:
Leaf → Wood
Soil → Stone
Blood → Flesh
Glass
Iron
Copper
Silver
Gold
Bronze
Platinum
The Other One
Custard
Corn
Bacon
Mercury
Elements of Storm:
Lightning
Water
Fire
Ice
Light
Darkness
Acid
Radiation
Chaos
Earth
Fire
Wind
Water
Heart
Captain Planet
Attributes:
Imbue (V)
Shield (V)
Power over <thing> (V)
Stats (V) - Body (CON), Power (STR), Will (WIS), Intelligence (DUH), Speed (DEX), Bacon(NOM)
Knowledge
Gender (M/F/A/H)
Age (younger/older/set)
Actions:
Create
Destroy
Alter
Commend
Release
Repair
Break
Modifiers:
Target
Mass (V)
Direction Runes
Size (V)
Numbers
Forms:
Tool
Body
Mechanism (Input, Output)
Special:
Negate
Overburn
Guard
Debug
**** Nobody Cares About:
Linking
SPAG
Other Stuff
Anybody with basic rune knowledge knows the linking rune. It's practically just a hyphen. Runic phrases written in testament will affect the nearest relevant thing which matches its target specifiers which are linked to the Target rune. Otherwise they affect the nearest thing outright or the immediate area as appropriate, unless it's a Create action.
Interesting Combinations:
[Power over (Significant)]-[Storm]
Level 2 Storm magic. Mist, Passion and Spirit work too. Spirit gives levels 1, 3, 5. Spirit, Mist and Passion apply to all schools unless limited with runes I can't be bothered to come up with. Because let's face it, who's ever going to do that?
[Power over (Major)]-[Air]
Can freely fly through runic means. Minor would give gliding/unpowered flight, Significant some kind of powered flight (link more runes to specify the nature of the source), Major free unlimited flight.
[Break]-[Size (Minor)]
More powerful break with higher Size power. On a human, Break will break a minor bone or something insignificant. With Minor Size, it will break an arm or leg or something important. Significant will break their neck or spine or something causing lasting, probably crippling damage. Major will kill, although this differs from Destroy which removes them from existence outright.
[Power over (Minor)]-[Pure]
One of the few combinations involving Pure that doesn't cause the universe to catch in an infinite loop. This combination when applied to tools will create a rune-writer capable of working runes of the Power over level. Applied to creatures allows them to write in runes WITH THEIR MINDS.
Examples:
[Commend]-[Bacon] [Target]-[Body]-[Flesh] [Guard]
Nearest living creature is commended to bacon. Guard basically stops the caster being included in the definition of “nearest living creature”.
[Create] [Tool] [Iron] [Size (Major)] [Power over (Significant)]-[Air]
Something like this may well have made the Leviathan.
[Target]-[Tool] [Imbue (Significant)]-[Ice]
Use next to a sword to perform the equivalent of a level 2 imbue with an ice alignment.
[Create] [Body]-[Stone]-[Size (Minor)] [Power over (Major)]-[Storm]-[Overburn] [Stats (Intelligence, Major)] [Stats (Body, Major)] [Shield (Major)]-[Soul]
At a vast Testament cost (mostly for the storm what with Overburn), create a super-intelligent, extremely long-lasting stone golem about the size of a human with Storm magic of a power akin to Raziel's and immunity to just about all Passion magic. The kicker is that the caster didn't think this through or realise how storm works, and for all that storm power it doesn't have any Storm or even storm elements imbued into it, so it doesn't actually accrue charges.
[Release] [Lightning] [Size (Major)] [Mass (Major)] [Guard]
MASS QUAD STRIKEDOWN