Exotic runes from beyond the great steppe

Let's look at another tension in Arcana Unearthed / Diamond Throne. Let's look at runes.

Monte Cook rather notoriously likes magic. The 3.5 edition, to which AU reacts, did magic bad. Cook made sure to make Hasbro feel bad. Cook unleased... several alternatives, in AU.

The superhero with innate ability is here the "Witch". Those who do magic and wield a sword: "Mage Blade". Nature-magic is the "Greenbond". There's an "Akashic" whose job is to divulge backstory - I'd call this a NPC class, but I do not dispute its right to exist. The mage who goes to academy is the "Magister". You'd think that would cover it all but, "Totem Warrior" for shamanism. That might be okay because shamans live in the wilderness. Oh look: "Runethane". GAAAHHH

I applaud these alternatives, in AU. I assume Monte and friends balanced them all, adequately-enough, in AU. I am less sold on their presence in DT. It's Too Many Cooks. Before considering or deleting a theme from a setting, some justification should be offered - for or against.

So: runes.

The Runethane exists alongside Rune Lords and Runechildren (including a Rune Messiah), and a Rune Sea, and runic weapons, and various runic monsters, and whatever Mike Mearls was doing with Mystic Secrets and Transcendence. Taken together we cannot exile it all to a small island with the bullywugs. The rune theme keeps getting raised, to such an extent and with such consistency, that it just isn't easy to extricate it.

At base magic is science-and-the-humanities. It's lore. Old lore is shamanic and akashic. The past is passed through sentient intermediaries. Runes might come next: the Shang were our very own Rune Lords, casting their oracle-bones. Those "magisters" come in the final stage, with true literacy. (Mesoamerica like Egypt never went to the rune stage.)

I suspect dragons and I know dramojh were not teachers of true literacy. (Weird-science / alchemy seem more a Verrik thing. I got no problem with Verrik.) By the Shang analogy I do catch a draconic whiff from that preliteracy which is runes.

I rule that all this rune stuff belongs to the ultramontaine fringe, outside the Diamond Throne lands. More: so far, that all of it is for NPCs only. There practice no native runethanes among Terrakal's major races. As for Runechildren, they're legends of the past to keep in the past (or to the far west). So there's that other Malhavoc short-story collection to treat as fan fiction . . .

Unlike "the Dragons Return!", I'd not rule the runes wholly off-map. Foreigners doing a strange and archaic form of magic is exactly the sensawonda we came to the table to game out. So: make it exotic. I see their place in the west, where Monte put Pallembor.