LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Runes
built 154 days ago
Runes are ancient characters used in Teutonic, Anglo-Saxon, and Scandinavian inscriptions, probably first used by the early German group called Ostrogoths. They may have gotten them from Hellenic-Italian writing. Adapted to carving,they consisted of perpendicular, oblique, and a few curved lines. They were used extensively in Northern Europe, Iceland, and the British Isles before Christianity. Runes were used consistently in Scandinavia and well into the Middle Ages.
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By 800 AD the Runes were in use throughout much of western, central, and northern Europe. The Vikings carried the Runes west with them to Iceland and Greenland. Trade in eastern Europe spread the Runes into Hungary, Rumania, Poland, and parts of Russia. In the centuries that followed, as most of Europe adopted the Christian faith, the Runes slowly fell out of favor, replaced by variations of the Roman/Latin alphabet. One version of the Roman/Latin alphabet used in Anglo-Saxon England during the days before the Norman conquest contained some Runic letters, such as "þ" (thorn), based on the third letter of the Runic alphabet. During the Middle-ages, as Christianity came to dominate Europe, fewer and fewer people were able to understood the Runes.
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Runes could be found engraved on coins, amulets, drinking cups, battle spears, coffins, the lintels of dwellings and the prows of ships. They were even sanctioned by the Church in some places. But in 1639, when the Church sought to drive the "evil" practices out of Europe, the runes, because of their connection to magic, were officially banned. It was not until the mid nineteen eighties, thanks to the growing interest in "New Age" philosophies, that the richly symbolic script of the runes became known once more.
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Runes that are close together or even touching often compliment each other, or may even represent a single thing, while runes which fall on opposite sides of the pattern frequently represent opposing influences. Occasionally, a rune will land completely off the cloth or fall off the table. Some people consider such runes to be particularly significant, while others ignore them completely.
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The Oracle of the Runes is based on interpretations of three of a series of ancient alphabetic token stones as messengers from Within. It's an interesting way to aid you in thinking differently about your life and surroundings, and begin to ask some useful probing questions.
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[One] property of such runes is that they can only be applied to armor pieces of that profession. In other words, a character can only use runes of their primary profession, since they can only wear the armor of their primary profession. Runes for one profession cannot be applied on another profession's armor piece.
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Runes