Ancient Runes

The **Study of Ancient Runes** (commonly shortened to **Ancient Runes**) is an elective course at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry that can be taken by students third year and above. It is the study of runic scriptures, or Runology. Ancient Runes is a mostly theoretical subject that studies the ancient runic scripts of magic.

The class is taught by Evan Greywood.

## Mechanics

### Channeling Mechanics Overview:

For channeling, the complexity of a desired effect requires a larger or smaller number of runic connections in order to be produced. From these requirements, possible channeling effects are divided into five different tiers. These effects are further categorized into five different sections based on their relationship to a platonic element.

A channeler's skill in putting together runic connections is reflected by their learn investment in manipulus. A magical item is not restricted in the type categories it can use effects from, but the sum of the tiers of the effects used cannot surpss the skill limit. Eg - if your limit is 5, you can have one quinary effect (5 = 5), or one quaternary effect and one primary effect (4 +1), or one tertiary effect and two primary effects (3 + 1 + 1), etc. Please refer to the Skill Cap and Unlock chart, shown above, for more information on how manipulus unlocks more runes content.

There are two methods of 'combining effects:' simple combining and complex combining. They are named by the amount of effort you have to put in to be able to achieve them. In simple combining, you just pick all the effects you desire for your item from the list, make sure you're in your skill cap, and you're done.

Complex combining is the practice of combining two or more simple effects together into a single effect. The compound effect should be a reasonable match of both the effects used to produce it and the overall skill cost of the effect. This is regulated via the honor system for the most part - if you want any help or advice for balancing, though, please feel free to contact an Ancient Runes professor on the worldbuilding server.

### A note on numbers and connections:

Tier numbers do not reflect the number of runic connections or logographs required to produce an effect; this information is left largely as flavoring/fluff to channelers. However, please keep some degree of realism in mind - stacking three tier five effects onto one rune is a bit excessive.\* If you'd like some guidance on deciding the number of runes used, consider that:

1. Primary effects can all be individually channeled - ie, need only one rune
2. Higher tiers require more runes than lower tiers; more effects use more runes than fewer effects; more categories requires more runes than fewer categories
3. Complex combining requires far more connections and runes than simple combining

*\*Please don't abuse this. If you do, I'll have to make rules and you'll have to follow them, which only requires more effort from all of us.*

### Limitations & Clarifications:

There are four major limitations to channeling effects:

* Activation - Channeling, being a primitive process, requires anything used to activate a runestone to be built into the item, and can only be activated with intent. Some spells may have further restrictions.
* Affect - The effects of channeling only result on the object that is being channeled into, although other objects can be affect by those effects.
* Scale - The effects of channeling can only affect an object so large before requiring an internal resevoire of energy.
* Count - A prepared object can only channel the effects of one runestone at a time

Overcoming the first three limitations requires artificing, while the fourth cannot be avoided. Objects created using a Free Artificing Clause cannot overcome the affect limitation, but have a higher Scale limit. For scale, the general rule is that the higher the skill cost of a sequence, the smaller the object it can effect. This won't be explicitly regulated, but if it seems to be abused, this will change.

Please note the following addendums to channeled efffects:

1. "Resistance" is just that - not a complete immunity. With enough time and exposure to heat/wind/water/etc, the channeling effect will be overcome.
2. Movement effects are designed around wingardium leviosa in terms of limitations - ie, they can manage to move around a person, but anything beyond that requires artificing.
3. The shock is simply the effect of a shock - no electricity is produced.
4. Electrical interference cannot be tailored to cause a particular effect; think passing a magnet around old electronics.

### Trading:

Students that have not unlocked channeling (3rd year and below) cannot recieve channeled items that have a skillcap above 7.

Item Trading rules cover only channeled items and free artifice clause items; Please refer to item purchasing guidelines for other items.