Runes
Runes channel essence into a certain form. That is, at the base level, what runes are. There are multiple different types, and I will do my best to go over all of them under this header.
Runes must be engraved into the material with a chisel, or more generically, an etching tool. Runes must be on a single face on the glyph base.
Intake Rune
The Intake Rune takes ambient essence and channels it. To allow it to take in ambient essence, the essence worker (esser) must complete the intake rune. In the image to the right, you can see the upside-down tripod with an arrow to where it should be positioned.
When that is drawn in the correct place, the vertical line going off the bottom must be drawn to the last two lines coming off the side. The act of drawing that line is what allows the material to channel essence.
Different materials have amounts of essence they can take in per second. Generally, the denser a material, the more essence they can withstand per second. This makes paper, chalkboards, and others poor choices, while metals are a better choice. Essence stone is the best choice.
Refinement Runes
Refinement runes are runes that manipulate the essence flowing through the glyph without emitting it to a physical form. The types used in the story will likely be the following:
- Filtering runes, to get one or more of the six alignments of essence and use them.
- Capacitance runes, to store essence and release it in a burst to the next rune. The deeper the well for the rune, the more essence can be stored. If the well isn't deep enough, it may be ignored entirely due to the rate of essence flow.
- Balancing runes. When a glyph is using multiple essence alignments (that don't destructively interfere with each other), it can be important to make sure both alignments are emitted at the proper time. This waits until all inputs have the same maximum amount of essence before letting all through. This can be harmful to the glyph if essence is left to sit in it.
- Frequency runes, for adjusting luminous or acoustic aligned essence. These allow for specific tones or light frequencies to be emitted from the glyph.
Emission Runes
Emission Runes are runes that emit essence in a physical form. Emission runes can vary a lot.
- "Bubble" emission runes let essence seep out into a sphere around the glyph. Useful for saturating an area in essence. Impeded by solid material, but dissipates rather than inject itself into the material.
- "Touch" emission runes require the face of the glyph to be positioned against an object. When it is, it sends the essence directly into whatever it's touching. Can be dangerous, as if it is not touching something the essence will continue to pool up in the glyph, but very useful for Torrid, Gelid, and Kinetic glyphs.
- "Directed" emission runes shoot out the alignment in a specific direction, ideal for precision-based uses. Ex. focusing a beam of Luminous essence or a burst of Kinetic force.
- "Spray" emission runes send the essence in a cone from the face of the glyph. Wider area of effect than directed emission runes.
- "Waste" emission runes don't form the essence into anything physical, and simply dump it back out into the area. Useful for discarding alignments of essence that are not being used by the glyph. Normally would create an imbalance for alignments, but with the amount of essence around, it's practically impossible for that to occur.
Glyphs
Glyphs are a collection of runes, beginning with an intake rune, a series of refinement runes, and one or more emission rune. Well, technically, a glyph can just be a single intake rune, but that's not useful.
An example glyph would be an intake rune, followed by a filtering rune for acoustic essence. That acoustic essence flows into a capacitance rune; this stores it up for a large burst. Then, it is led straight into a bubble emission rune, tuned to be the maximum size while still being audible.
A glyph's runes are connected by channels across the glyph. Channels can connect across faces of the glyph's base.
Runes and Channels cut into the surface of a material, usually a brick or thin rectangular prism. Different materials have different efficiencies for essence flow rate, as well as being able to handle the flow-rate of essence better. This is the only consideration for glyph base material.
Glyphs are also incapable of being disabled once they begin channeling essence. The only thing that can temporarily suppress output of a glyph is an annihilative stealing essence in the surrounding area.
This means that all magic done in this world must be prepared in advance. This is the main restriction of the magic system, along with needing to finish glyphs to activate them; you can only use the magic as long as you've prepared it in advance.
Finally, glyphs have a finite lifespan; essence is inherently corrosive to physical materials. Essence flow of any alignment(s) through a glyph results in the channels wearing away, the glyph base cracking, and eventually, structural issues so large the glyph cannot effectively channel essence anymore. An essence worker can determine how close a glyph is to rupturing through if the glyph is shaking and if there are any cracks appearing in the material.
When that occurs, the glyph stops channeling essence. Depending on the alignment(s) of essence flowing through the glyph, different things can happen. A sudden burst of heat/cold, a mute void around the glyph, pieces of the glyph fracturing and flying away due to kinetic forces, sound emitting, etcetera.
Most effects essence has through a glyph are completely opaque; an experienced esser can know what to look for, but in general, specific knowledge about essence work must be passed down from person to person.
Essence
Imagine an ocean.
The surface is placid, but its depths are mountainous. Valleys sink to depths, fighting for every inch of depth past the surface. There is no wildlife, no aquatic flora or fauna, as this is imagination, not an actual ocean.
In the crushing depths at the bottom of the ocean, the essence presses against a seal holding it out of the physical world. The lower the depth, the harder it presses.
In the matching physical location, an essence manipulator etches a line into a luminous-aligned glyph to light up the street during the night.
The ocean shifts as the seal suddenly weakens, then loosens entirely; a circle has been cut out of the seal, and the pressure forces the essence through. It rockets into the intake rune on the glyph the essence manipulator lit, having its other alignments stripped through the luminous filtering glyph. It is then pushed out, effusing a warm glow from the safety of the lamp-post.
The essence manipulator pushes her cart down the sidewalk to the next lamp.
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As described above, essence exists around the surface of Earth.
Essence is pure in its ambient form, and can be filtered to one of the following alignments:
- Gelid - Extracts heat from its area of effect. Forces cold and frost on whatever it is near. Cancels out Torrid if paired with it.
- Torrid - Injects heat into the air and objects in its area of effect. The more essence through it, the higher the temperature. Cancels out Gelid.
- Luminous - Creates light. The frequency of light varies depending on the emission rune used.
- Acoustic - Creates sound waves. The frequency of these waves is dependent on the emission rune. Replications of natural sound is poorly understood. Mostly used for pure frequencies.
- Kinetic - Creates force along a given vector, depending on emission rune. Harder on the rune base than other alignments, due to the forces involved.
- Annihilative - Reduces most forms of energy to nothing, excluding temperature. Sound is quieted, light is dimmed, and essence is drawn in. Hardest of all alignments on the glyph base. Useful for suppressing the effects of other alignments.
- Additionally, there is unaligned essence. Unaligned essence is functionally useless for most practical applications, as all alignments balance each other. Each alignment cancels out the others; Annihilative cancels out Kinetic, Acoustic, and Luminous, while Gelid and Torrid cancel each other out.
Alignments can be paired with other ones. When this is done, glyphs become much more complicated; they must route, convert, and emit each alignment separately.
The only alignments that don't play nicely with others are as follows:
- Gelid and Torrid - Cancels each other out. No visible effect, other than draining essence for nothing.
- Annihilative and Anything - Annihilative suppresses the other alignment, making it, effectively, an Annihilative-only glyph
The behavior of essence can be divided into two sections.
Before the Crisis
Essence drifted out of the ground at varying rates across the globe, forming a variety of essence dense areas across the United States. Glyphs (described later in detail) could be used to take in essence, converting it to physical effects on the world.
Larger cities, generally, were more reliant on advances in technology rather than glyphwork. Even in areas where essence density was relatively high, it could be drained extremely quickly if glyphs were used in large force. The exception to the rule was coastal cities; essence permeated water a lot easier than solid ground, and so glyphs could be used much more before exhausting the essence saturating the area.
Sankhurst, the only city the story of Runic will be focusing on, was a hotspot for glyphwork. Located on a peninsula and having groundwater under its soil, it became a prime place for glyph education, production, and selling.
Because the replenishment of essence was at such a low rate, glyphs were less commonly used than regular technology due to reliability. However, they were still a prominent field of study and engineering.
The crisis
The essence crisis is an event of unknown cause that had a single, devastating result: flooding the air with a high amount of essence, relentlessly.
Unbeknownst to the world before this, essence can impact the world physically. It just requires a high amount of essence density.
Essence, at high density levels, punctures the layer preventing interaction between the physical world and the essence plane. This allows unaligned essence to torrent through to the physical plane. Without a material to course through, the unaligned essence loses all cohesion. It splits into each alignment, and each alignment hits the physical plane.
Wild temperature variations, blinding light and radiation that kills long after you've passed through it, zones of complete sensory deprivation, concussive explosives from nothing, and discordant sounds all come from zones where essence is in high density.
As well, high-density essence zones can form chunks of stone called essence stone. These have an abnormally high rate of essence, and last very long in comparison to other materials. This makes them highly prioritized.
This is what killed most populated areas. Their essence usage wasn't able to prevent this. The only cities that survived are the ones who already used glyphs to a high degree.
Further details are restricted for spoiler reasons.
After the crisis
Post-crisis, Sankhurst focused on using essence in lieu of other solutions. This kept essence at a low density.
People view essence work as a valuable job; it's why training for that is so highly prioritized. More details are available in the Sankhurst document.
For any human population to survive effectively, they must draw on the essence to avoid living in an essence-ridden hellscape. Glyphs must constantly be used to avoid this; it's better to have individuals use their glyphs to help with the effort, rather than wasting precious resources on glyph structures to draw in essence and do nothing with it.
In remote outposts, such as mining areas, they must stay indoors and draw on essence as much as possible to lessen the impacts. There's no real way to avoid it in an area out there; you just have to live with it.
In this new post-essence density world, technology has taken a back-burner to glyph advancement. There's still some technological advancement, but due to the level of technology society is at after the crisis, it's very difficult to make progress on that. Most advanced tools are made using glyphs.