im a blood death knight.
What even are these runes?
are they on me?
in me?
i know soul shards are seperate things entirely. like a crystal that we used to farm. mages have mana but also little balls they have to spend on there abilities ( fire )
is it in my weapon? i remmeber arthas having frostmourne with some etches on it when the snow flake fell. Is that what that is?
Miserable piles of secrets.
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Runes in WoW are… pretty vague I guess. We know there arcane runes, light runes, Death runes, etc. The Death ones are the most explored so far.
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so all classes could rune tap?
Idk but Mages used to have Rune of Power.
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WHY ARNT WE USING THAT ONE???
What makes you think we aren’t
This thread makes me think. I would like runes in WoW to come from a “primordial language,” that originates from the First Ones, one language for each cosmic force.
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i spend blood. unholy. and frost, atleast they also used to be called " death runes " which count for anything of the three mentioned above.
power rune just sounds like a super sayan majin symbol.
deathknights fight for the maw.
nipple man we serve theeeee
They’re symbols with power.
I don’t think Blizzard has really bothered to think beyond that. Plenty of different groups with wildly different backgrounds have all used them and invoked wildly different powers in doing so.
My own headcanon is that the actual form and shape of a rune doesn’t really matter that much - you just zip a spell up into a tight little package, and use the rune as a kind of “password” to deploy that spell. You can make the password whatever you want, as long as you remember what it is.
This makes more sense to me, personally, than the “underlying language of the universe” angle, because that version of things kinda suggests that literally any idiot could stumble into world-ending magic by randomly drawing with a crayon.
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With death knights in particular, the runes are sources of power etched into their weapons; gameplay lets you run around with any weapon/weapon appearance that drops and keep functioning per usual, but lorewise a death knight’s runeblade is an integral part of their power set.
Originally the Scourge - and thereby Ebon Blade - Death Knights were using demonic runes for their runeblades, but Shadowlands retconned Frostmourne into having Domination runes from the Maw, and left it a bit unclear if other Death Knights’ runeblades are meant to also be using Domination runes (albeit lesser ones) or if they’re derived from something else like Maldraxxian Death runes.
I’ve always kind of figured that runes are similar to the “Words of Power” concept. If spoken/written with no awareness or intent behind it, they’re nothing more than powerless sounds and shapes. They only have power if the speaker/writer is deliberately speaking/inscribing them to be so, meaning only someone who’s studied the nature of such things and deduced what power they have and why can actually utilize them in said fashion.
Otherwise one could argue that just seeing some runes or hearing a spoken spell is a form of your mind invoking them, even if you have no idea what you’re looking at, and that clearly isn’t the case.
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Runes should require reagents of places of power to enscribe
Runes are decorative fridge art that your mom has pinned to the fridge because you’re such an artistic and creative boy.
I think it’s never fully explain beyond the DK intro quest and maybe some Legion quest and Profession Quest with scriber… but like mention Runes have never been fully explored.
I think there are Cosmic or Universal Symbols of power or Symbols that draw power to them… It has never been stated but at least I kinda got the feeling the Primus with his runecarver knowledge might have invented it to create Domination Magic… SO if this speculation is true then that means depending on the symbols it draws from creation different kinds of effects…
I guess one could compare them with musical notes at a magic or cosmic scale that resonates at different frequencies and affect different things… just how music notes alter music, rhythm and its sounds. That compose sound itself leads people to feel differently when hearing it… affecting even their mood!
Er…sorry, I won’t get into music detail on that… but if you look it up you will see just by a glance what I mean lol… but the point is Rune look to have that same effect but at a more brother and larger scale depending on what type of magic it draws from or what combination use. (IMO)
Oh I should write this down, I’m just speculating but I like this comparison to music… I should totally use this in an RPG game! Definitely useful if someone wants to play a Bard in the WoW universe! Probably need to brainstorm and look up a few runes use in wow quest and its different effects so I can add them for them to use like that but with music…
Anyway you get the idea… at least that how understand them.
Also keep in mind there are many different types of runes. And Runes aren’t purely a source of magic, its also a type of alphabet. The Titan, Vrykul and Dwarven languages use Runic alphabets for example and all 3 also have their own forms of magic runes and rune-magic. Then you have the rune magic used by the Necrolords, you have Domination runes, you have demonic runes. The list goes on and on
But ya it explicitly stated exactly how they work in WoW. I imagine its not too dis-similar to the concept of Dwarf Rune-magic from Warhammer fantasy. The way that it works there, instead of a wizard using mana/arcane energies to say…conjure a fireball; instead you’d forge/write/inscribe a fire rune and imbue magic into that symbol, which then produces an effect based on what shape/type of rune it is, so in this case, fire.
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In Zereth Mortis I think they said Runes for domination magic were given to the Eternals by the first ones
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Wow leaves it up to you to decide. I always use a runesword transmog on my Death Knights so for me they are on my blade. And it’s justified by the unique class ability RuneForging.
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Well you do need a Deathforge for RuneForging, or at least you did… it’s been awhile.
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Runes are on your sword and the connection to your magic. Each rune is intune with a magical school. Death/unholy, blood and frost magic. You use on of the runes to use your powers and it increases your runic power on your blade to unleash.
A Runic weapon and a Death Knight are in a symbiotic relationship. Your runic weapon is your greatest treasure because without it, you can’t do half the magical stuff you can do.
Now Death Knights aren’t the only people that use runic weapons. Mages can use it, one of their artifacts is a Runic weapon from the Sunstrider family and you take it from a elf death knight.
Demon Hunters literally have Runic Arcane tattoos on their bodies to contain the demon within and to control the power.
Inscription and scribes use runic magic to make enchants.
It literally is just words of power etched on an object.
Only difference with a Death Knights Runic weapon compared to others that it is more linked to Death than lets say fire, or arcane. Also the death Knights runic weapons are vampiric in nature, with the blood runes on them. Very evil spooky blades.
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Also Lore wise, once you get a weapon, the Death Knight literally does up back to home base to etched the blade with runic words on it, hence the runic weapon forging thing. We know it is just free enchants gameplay wise, but lore wise, you are putting in the dark magic unto the blade to make it a vampiric runic wepaon.
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