Runes in the West

I've mentioned the way that Malkioni interact with runes from a rules perspective in an earlier post. To illustrate further, here is the list of cults from Heroes of Malkion, with their runes. Note that some of these cults may have been moved to later books during the editing process, or had other minor changes - this is just the latest information I have. Furthermore, I won't be describing the cults themselves here; you'll have to buy the book if you want that! Instead, it just shows the range of cults in the book, and perhaps illustrates a little bit of how runes work for Malkioni.

Saints

Althens	Artifice
Anazieta	Harmony
Burning Arrow	Death
Drezedan	Death
Elleish	Man
Falerine	Fertility
Gerlant	Fire
Hasterax	Death
Iames	Harmony OR Light
Josselyne	Strength
Mistandar	Trade
Ongaring	Motion
Padelnik	Strength
Palenna	Fertility
Rendoir	Hunting
Xemela	Harmony
Zemuron	Law
Zmes	Artifice

Wizardry Schools

Areeshka	Luck, Fate
Avlor	Man, Victory, Stasis
Conwy	Trade, Truth
Defences of God	Law, Defence, Force
Hecretes	Illusion, Magic
Herigian	Law, Truth, Mastery
Inner Temple	Literacy, Light, Truth
Iron Blood	Law, Death, Harmony
Jenerin	Law, Trade
Kipperly	Harmony, Illusion
Kyria	Harmony, Motion, Protection
Lenderyn	Motion, Death, Magic
Nerivon	Motion, Destruction
Octahedral	Earth, Mineral
Ouxey	Perception, Stasis
Pure Waves	Water
Querto	Law, Motion, Mineral
Raceen	Law, Artifice
Rose Nuns	Law, Harmony
Siglat	Harmony, Perception, Mastery
Talara Ignia	Fire, Essence
Ulfrathgar	Chaos, Undeath
Urestes	Truth, Matter
Vonerin	Death, Spirit
Yarilia	Storm, Protection, Cold

Some additional things you might notice from this list:

• Not all wizardry schools necessarily have three runes; it depends on the range and scope of their magic.
• Saints grimoires, in particular, may focus on particular aspects of their rune; for example, Althens' Artifice rune/grimoire does not include metalwork, because he's a shipwright.
• Some grimoires, again especially amongst saints, mediate the power of their main rune through another rune; for example the Order of the Burning Arrow's rune is Death, but it's largely (though not entirely) through the medium of fire.
• Iames has two different runes, just to be awkward - but individual members only ever have access to one.
  
• Pastors of the main Malkioni prophets, such as Rokar and Hrestol, use the Law rune in almost all cases, and are therefore too repetitive to list here. Their grimoire is usually The Abiding Book, or some variant thereof.
• Talor simply used his own rune, in the last version I saw.
• There are additional cults, such as the Order of Shining Steel, in LotW2 and LotW3!
  

Weird Science

As some of you will have noticed, my usual e-mail sig includes the description "Gamer and Skeptic". This blog has been largely about gaming until now, because, let's face it, to the extent hat anyone is interested in what I'm doing, its probably because of my gaming books. (Well, aside from my relatives, presumably...) But, for today, let's talk about the second half of that, and the wonderful world of Doubt!

Of course, what I mean by this isn't the extreme philosophical skepticism of doubting everything. Granted, I can't prove (by the nature of the claim) that I don't live in The Matrix, with everything I'm experiencing being an illusion, but it seems pretty freaking unlikely. Skepticism is really about testing claims to see whether they stand up to scrutiny, and changing ideas as available evidence comes in - which is pretty much the basis of science. Or, at least, it is in an ideal world, because scientists are as fallible as anyone else.

At any rate, I mention this because of the Centre for Inquiry, a skeptical think tank which opened its London branch early last year. I was able to attend the opening event, which was quite interesting, but was followed by what was pretty much silence. Well, they finally got around to organising their first proper post-opening event on Saturday, and I went along. This was an all-day event, with four speakers holding forth on the general topic of "Weird Science", and very enjoyable it was, too.

First we had Richard Wiseman, describing his work in the weirder realms of psychology, performing simple magic tricks to illustrate perceptual illusions and so on. It's pretty much the same talk he always give at these sort of events, and its probably as well that it has been several years since I last saw it (since it has evolved in that time, as he's done more new things), but it is very well presented. And, of course, it included the Colour Changing Card Trick - and, if you haven't seen this, you really should.

Next up, Chris French, talking about his work at the Anomalous Psychology Research Unit. Unfortunately, there were a number of technical hiccups during this presentation, but as always, it was interesting and informative. Who would have thought Haunted Homes would present a mysterious sound as being unexplained (and implying it was made by a ghost) when they knew perfectly well what it actually was? It's almost enough to make you distrust what you see on TV...

After lunch, we had philosopher Stephen Law on the verifiability of Creation Science. I've only seen him once before, but he was an effective speaker on that occasion, too, and certainly somewhat provocative! And, lastly, Ben Goldacre gave a talk called (and I'm paraphrasing from memory) something like "The Lies That the Media Tell About Science and Which are So Fucking Incredibly Wrong that they Just Make Me Want to Slam My Cock in the Door and Revolving Especially Around Instances When They Had an Opportunity to Teach Something About Real Science But Didn't Because They Would Rather Just Tell Lies I Mean Why Would Anyone Want to Do That, Why?". Which was pretty much what it sounds like, and both passionate and entertaining.

After which, we all went down the pub, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Skeptics in the Pub. I attended the very first of these, way back when they were on Fridays, making returning home after 1 am not so unreasonable. I haven't been for a long time, and this was just a pub meeting, rather than including a talk as they usually are (which would have been a bit redundant on this occasion, obviously...) A good evening, giving me the opportunity to talk a bit about evolutionary theory, as well as lots of other things, and to meet (albeit briefly) Rebecca Watson, one of the presenters of The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, the only weekly podcast that I never miss.

All of which goes to show that Doubting Stuff can be fun! Especially when there's beer involved.

HarnMaster Barbarians

One of my earlier books (on which I worked with a number of other writers), HarnMaster Barbarians, has recently been released as a PDF on DriveThruRPG. The original was a loose-leaf product, not a bound book, so, with some decent quality paper, the PDF really isn't that different from the original hardcopy - and it's cheaper, too.

I have updated the Writing Credits page of my website with the direct link to the purchase site, and with similar details for any other books I've contributed to that remain available.