LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Runes: Characters
built 661 days ago
Runes are a Norse alphabet developed around 200 BCE, from characters used for magical purposes. It was believed to have been discovered by Odin as he hung upside down and wounded for nine days on the World Tree Yggdrasil. There are three commonly known runic alphabets: the 'elder' and 'younger' Futhark (futhark being the transliteration of the first few letters of that alphabet), the Anglo-Saxon futhork, and the Danish 'short twig' or script alphabet. The word 'rune' literally means a 'whisper' or 'secret.'
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Runes: The runes are a set of symbols of Germanic/Scandinavian origin that concisely embody the most potent magical system of the ancient world. Runic characters are letters that can be used for writing, but each rune is ... a vessel of natural potency. There is a rune for water and a rune for earth, a rune for hail and a rune for ice, a rune for horse and a rune for man. There are also runes that name some of the Teutonic gods.
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Runes, the old Germanic writing, are found chiseled in rocks dating from as back as the Neolithic period. The runic alphabet,one of the oldest writings known, is graphically very simple. It consists of 24 characters . The whole alphabet - futhark -is organized in three groups
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Runes (with one exception) are suffix upgrade components which can be used to upgrade armor, to provide a passive benefit to the character wearing the armor. Some of the more powerful runes ... possess a downside - they reduce a character's maximum health.
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The runes originated around 200 B.C.E., as magical symbols engraved in stone; they were developed into the first Rune alphabet, the "elder" Futhark ('futhark' being a transliteration of the first six letters), an alphabet of twenty four characters. Many permutations and revisions over the years produced several variants, including the 'elder' and 'younger' futhark, and the Danish "short twig" script. Eventually, the sixteen character alphabet became the most commonly used.
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Runes are not like gems, they are not dropped in equal amounts. They are more like items, there are common runes, and there are runes that you'll find once in your character's life, if that often. Runes drop pretty regularly, you'll often find several a game, but only the common ones. The less common runes are very hard to find, and the rarest of them all are virtually imaginary.
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