Path to Power: Training

03:30 P.M.
Runes and Warding Classroom, Udagamandalam Academy of Magic (உதகமண்டலம் அகாடமி ஆஃப் மேஜிக்), Tamil Nadu, India
25th May, 1985.

Hadrian entered the classroom, took a seat and looked around. Guru Sethupathi was seated in his chair with certain objects on his table. There was a table on the board written. As one of one the students filtered in, Guru Sethupathi spoke up:

"Welcome to Runes and Warding. I am Guru Meyappan Sethupathi and I will be your instructor of the class. First we shall start with what runes and warding means. Runes are alphabets. German in origin, although we have seen variations in it. These alphabets carry a specific meaning. There are proper writing sequences of alphabets to form words and finally the words give rise to a runic sentence. Warding is the next step of runes. Combining runic sentences for a desired effect is called warding. Now then since runes are alphabets, they must be written on something. And for that exactly, we use surfaces. These surfaces include wood, bone, stone and metal. Now runes are written using a number of media. These include chalk, magic, blood and some specific powdered and liquid magical substances."

"In today's class, we shall be learning about various types of runes and their respective alphabets. Runes have been distinguished into several types based on the time they were invented. These are: Elder Futhark, in the 2nd to 8th centuries, Anglo Saxon, in the 5th to 11th centuries, Macromannic, a mixture of Elder Futhark and Anglo Saxon runes, in the 8th to 9th centuries, Younger Futhark, in the 9th to 11th centuries, Medieval Runes, in the 12th to 15th centuries and finally the Dalecarlian Runes, in the 16th to 19th centuries. In our curriculum, we have Elder Futhark, Anglo Saxon and Medieval runes, in which Elder Futhark shall be our primary focus."

"Now we shall discuss the Elder Futhark runes. Elder Futhark is used for writing Proto-Norse and is a set of 24 runic alphabets, that are arranged in three groups of eight, each group referred to as an ætt. Now the runic alphabets in order are these." Saying that, he pointed at the board. The table he was pointing to looked like this:

"I would request all of you to copy the table as shown. I will be giving you twenty minutes to do so. Then we shall start our discussion of the conjoining of alphabets to form words and finally conjoining of words to form sentences", saying that Guru Sethupathi retook his seat. The students scrambled to get their notebooks and started penning down the table. Quite the tedious task, Hadrian thought. After twenty minutes, Guru Sethupathi got back up.

"Let's start with my name. Meyappan Sethupathi. It would look like this ᛗᛖyᚨᛈᛈᚨᚾ ᛊᛖᛏᚢᛈᚨᚺᛏᛁ. Note that the letter 'y' is not translated because letter 'y' of the english alphabet has not been included in Elder Futhark. So leave it as it is. Those replacements will be included in Anglo Saxon and Medieval Runes. Now I would like all of you to write your name in Elder Furthak."

With this, the class started their work. Hadrian started writing his name. 'Hadrian...the required runic word would be uh..uh..yes..ᚺᚨᛞᚱᛁᚨᚾ', After two minutes, he got his complete name: "ᚺᚨᛞᚱᛁᚨᚾ ᛃᚨᛗᛖᛊ ᛈᛟᛏᛏᛖᚱ". After the whole class completed, Guru Sethupathi got up and said, "Well done all of you. Before we go into sentences, we shall learn how we represent numbers in Runes. Look at the board again, there is a table depicting the numbers and the reason behind each runic symbol." With that, the class again turned to the board and looked at the table. The table looked like this:

"Please note this down quickly", said Guru Setupathi. The class diligently took this down. "Now about runic sentences or runic sequences. You need to know that there are two types of sequences. Magical and Non-magical. Our focus will only be magical sequences. Magical sequences have been theorised to work under two ways:"

"First would be battery theory. Developed in the early 18th century by French and German wizards, this theory surmised that runes are like enchantments. That is, runes are imbued with magic at the time of spellcasting and once that store of magic is gone, the rune must either be “recharged” by a wizard or become a non-magical rune."

"The second theory is the self-renegenerating theory. After the discovery of large numbers of Late Neolithic Chinese runes that did not seem to lose their strength, a British alchemist named Benjamin Bellows posited in the mid-20th century that runes only needed the initial transformation into magical runes. Once imbued, properly set runes would automatically maintain their magic until a magic user transformed the rune again."

"Now we shall move on to activation and detection of runes. First is the detection of runes. The most important spell that every runologist should know is a general Enchantment Revealing Charm. The incantation for the same is Specialis Revelio. This spell with indicate the presence of magic in the area but is limited in that it will show you only the first layer of magic you come across. Specialis Revelio has four results when used on runes: No glow: The targets are non-magical runes, either because the magic was drained or it was not magical to begin with. Bronze or Amber glow: The rune is activated and functioning as expected.Bright Red glow: The rune is active and is not functioning as expected. Blue glow: The rune has a overlaying masking spell which conceals the true function of the rune."

"Now after detection is activation and deactivation of runes. Runes are activated by the spell Venenate and deactivated by the spell Devenenate. Venenate is performed by a clockwise swirl around the rune with the wand before tapping the central rune while Devenenate is performed by a counter clockwise swirl around the rune with the wand before tapping the central rune. Wizards should confirm whether the spell has worked by casting Specialis Revelio after any attempt with Venenate or Devenenate. The most common reason the Enchantment-Revealing Charm produces a bright red light is because a wizard has activated or deactivated only a portion of the rune structure. That is, if a wizard has drawn a circle around or touched the wrong rune in casting the spell, the magic cannot suffuse through the design, rendering the magical energy unbalanced."

"Now it is important to note that geometry of runes should be kept in mind when writing runes. Each Elder Futhark rune when rotated at an angle of 180º produces an inverse rune called merkstave rune. The original rune is called upright rune. This becomes even more complex as there are 8 Elder Futhark runic alphabets which have rotational symmetry and the merkstave rune looks the same as upright rune. You should properly decipher the intent for such types of runes."

"For any functional rune design, we must follow the Central Rune Principle. This law states that for any runic design to function, it must contain a subject or target, which is indicated through the choice of the central rune. It is essentially no different than the central card in a tarot spread or the Sun sign in astrology. The secondary runes that surround the central rune support, modify, or limit it. It is important to clarify that “central” does not necessarily entail “placed in the center,” but typically, it will be called out or marked somehow. Often it is simply drawn bigger than other runes in the design, or touches all of the supporting runes.  It is not uncommon to place a non-runic symbol in the center such as a religious icon such as cross, star or sun, or even an animal or plant image. This is particularly common when the central rune is not upright."

"Well then, this concludes the minimum basic for runes. This will be more than enough for today. I want all of you to go through the Elder Futhark runic alphabets and the number systems. Memorising them will give you advantages in subsequent classes. Thank you for your attention. Good day to you all."

With that, the students walked out steadily, their brains overloaded with such staggering amounts of information. Hadrian's head was reeling. The break in the schedule was aplty placed. He would need to recuperate if he wants to understand Arithmancy at all.

06:00 P.M.
Arithmancy Classroom, Udagamandalam Academy of Magic (உதகமண்டலம் அகாடமி ஆஃப் மேஜிக்), Tamil Nadu, India
25th May, 1985.

Hadrian walked into the Arithmancy classroom, taking a seat and looking at Gurvi Nambiar, who was seated with closed eyes. The board behind had a ridiculous number of charts put up. Hadrian took a big gulp. 'Oh boy, this is gonna take a long time.' As the final student entered, Gurvi Nambiar got up and started speaking:

"Welcome to Arithmancy class. I am Gurvi Sulekha Nambiar and I shall be your Arithmancy instructor. So what is arithmancy? Arithmancy is the process of expressing words with numbers. The origins of arithmancy is in Hebrew Gematria, an age old, famous and convenient method to assign numbers to letters. The ones we are going to study in our Arithmancy classes are Mispar Hechrachi, Mispar Gadol, Mispar Siduri, Mispar Katan, Mispar Perati and Mispar Meshulash."

"Mispar Hechrachi is the most common gematria method to deduce numbers from letters. It is called the absolute or normative value. It has 27 numbers, starting from 1 to 10, followed by 20,30,40 till 100, then starting with 100 again to go till 900. After 900, it returns back to 1. Mispar Siduri is the ordinal value of letters, which are numbers from 1 to 27. Mispar Katan is the reduced value of a letter, where each letter is reduced to one digit. The formula for deducing Mispar Gadol value, the large value of a letter, by using Mispar Siduri value is: 10 to the power of floor function of (x - 1)/9 multiplied by ((x - 1) |9| + 1), where x is the corresponding Mispar Siduri value of the letter. Mispar Perati is the square of the Mispar Hechrachi numbers and finally Mispar Meshulash is the cube of the Mispar Hechrachi numbers. I want all of you to note down the top chart on the board." With this, she pointed to a large chart in the top middle. The chart looked like this:

The class progressed through on and on, as Gurvi Nambiar went through charts after charts. Finally, she said, "Okay, this will be enough for today. Next we shall discuss the arithmancy of our names and then finally, we shall move on to spells. Thank you class and have a good night ahead."

Hadrian walked with a headache after the class. Still three classes left, he must recover his energy in dinner, or else, he will fall asleep on Astronomy. He dragged his feet to Healing Arts class.