Runesmiths in Dwarves' history

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skeptical_troll
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Runesmiths in Dwarves' history

Post by skeptical_troll »

Just reporting an issue raised by Konrad2 in a conversation we had today (see also: https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/issues/5447) .

According to wesnoth's timeline
40YW
With the death of Thursagan, the Runemaster, all runemasters are killed and runesmithing is lost for several centuries.
and
550 YW
Dwarves at Knalga and elsewhere begin to reclaim the lost art of runesmithing.
This implies that runesmiths should be available to dwarves out of this time range, bur mainline campaigns are not always consistent with that (see the GH issue for details). The question is, should we expect runesmiths to be standard fighter advancements in late history as the timeline suggests? Shall we instead believe that they would appear only sporadically? And what happens after the Fall? In general, what's going on with dwarvish runesmithing, since it must be a pretty important component of their civilization?
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Lord-Knightmare
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Re: Runesmiths in Dwarves' history

Post by Lord-Knightmare »

I have commented on the issue on Github and I am just copy-pasting what I have remarked there to here.

According to the timeline, they have just begun reclaiming their lost knowledge of Runesmithing by using the Hammer of Thursagan and his notes (the manual of how to use Runecrafting without becoming corrupted) near the beginning of 550 YW. So, any campaigns taking place between 40-550 YW should not have Dwarven Runesmiths as enabled advancement to Dwarven Fighters (lorewise).
  • HttT (517-518 YW),
  • DiD (389 YW),
  • NR (534 YW),
  • THoT (550 YW)
These campaigns all take place between the specified period and so, it is justifiable why Dwarven Runesmiths were not enabled.
One curious case is the THoT. It takes place between 550-551YW and Hamel's clan has just found out that their brethren at Kal Kartha have begun rediscovering the secrets of Runecrafting. One case can be made that the Kal Kartha dwarves be allowed to have Dwarven Runesmiths in their ranks but they might be nerfed a bit since well, they have just begun on (re)learning their lost knowledge.

One argument I would make is that Dwarven Fighters be allowed to advance to Dwarven Runesmiths and the Runesmith-line be included in scenarios of the campaigns SotBE and UtBS. SotBE takes place in **842 YW** (nearly three centuries have passed since the reclamation of the knowledge and thus, runesmithing should be more common among the Dwarven clans).
The exact time of UtBS is not specified in the official timeline but it does take place several centuries in the future and should have Dwarven Runesmiths as an enabled advancements (and maybe rune shops too?)
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lhybrideur
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Re: Runesmiths in Dwarves' history

Post by lhybrideur »

Maybe they lost it again ?
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egallager
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Re: Runesmiths in Dwarves' history

Post by egallager »

Well I'll consider enabling Runesmiths in my fork of SotBE at least...

Edit: apparently ENABLE_DWARVISH_RUNESMITH and ENABLE_DWARVISH_ARCANISTER are separate defines... does it make sense to enable both of them? Or just the first one?
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