Flow Bullshit
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Flow is the fundamental essence emitted by all living things. It's a metaphysical byproduct of life itself. Every organism, from a single-celled microbe to the most complex divine beings, sheds Flow continuously over the course of its existence. It's an energy of living presence, ubiquitous and ever-renewing. This emission is not harmful or finite; it is a natural, ongoing process, like breathing or cell regeneration.
As it accumulates, Flow diffuses into the world around it, forming a sort of ambient current. Upon death, a creature's remaining Flow is released entirely, dissolving back into this greater whole. Many cultures liken this process to a droplet of water returning to the sea: individuality lost, but essence retained.
Nature and Mechanics
Flow is invisible to the untrained eye. With some practice, resonances and signatures that can be perceived, tracked, and manipulated by those attuned to it. Each being’s Flow carries a unique frequency or pattern, which makes it possible (with skill and the right tools) to track a specific individual through their residual Flow.
When Flow becomes too concentrated, it can become volatile. The death of a Greater God may release an overwhelming flood of raw essence into the environment. In these rare but devastating cases, the aftermath may resemble a never-ending storm of spiritual force that tears at reality itself, warping the terrain, unraveling nearby structures, and affecting minds and matter unpredictably. This is known as a Godfall.
Likewise, the catastrophic failure of a highly complex runework, particularly those designed to channel or store vast quantities of Flow, can result in explosive discharge events. These outbursts are chaotic, often interacting with the environment in strange or destructive ways depending on surrounding elements, emotional residue, or nearby lifeforms. No two Flow storms are identical. Their behavior is shaped by what they pass through, what they consumed and are consuming, and what remains in their wake.
It takes great preparation and skill to ever approach these events without being torn to pieces or turned into something unrecognizable.
Utility and Everyday Use
Thanks to advances in rune-working, Flow has become a cornerstone of modern utility in many regions. Runes and enchanted devices are designed to harness the ambient Flow shed by all life - especially dense in cities or forests- and convert it into practical energy sources. This has revolutionized lighting, sanitation, transport, medicine, and even agriculture.
These runic systems are self-sustaining as long as they remain in an environment with sufficient ambient life. As such, cities and settlements rarely lack for energy, though Flow-thin places (such as lifeless wastelands or magically sterilized zones) are harder to power and larger settlements are often avoided.
Flow Manipulation
While everyday appliances draw upon ambient Flow passively, and their repair and upkeep is largely left to professionals, true manipulation of Flow - through spells, custom runes, or ritual workings - requires rigorous training. Practitioners learn not only to sense and shape Flow, but to draw upon their own personal stream of it, using it as a medium for will, intent, and change.
Most beginners rely almost exclusively on personal Flow, as it is naturally attuned to the self and easier to direct. However, personal Flow is finite in the short term and requires rest and nourishment to replenish. Overdrawing from one’s own Flow too rapidly can lead to fatigue and sickness.
Advanced users learn to tap into the ambient Flow. Doing so is significantly more difficult and dangerous. Ambient Flow is not neutral - it carries the lingering imprints of the lives that produced it. Drawing it in too recklessly, especially through one’s own body, risks Self-Other mixing. This is a phenomenon where foreign will, emotion, or even fragmented memories may temporarily imprint on the practitioner. In extreme cases, this can lead to disorientation, delusions, or permanent contamination.
For this reason, cleansing rituals are essential when channeling ambient Flow directly. Skilled practitioners develop techniques to filter or redirect Flow without letting it pass through their perceptions of "self", often using intermediary tools such as wands, staffs, or talismans, to avoid contamination. Those who neglect proper separation risk not only personal harm but corrupting the spellwork itself with unintended influence.
Mastery of ambient Flow is therefore considered a mark of high discipline and refinement.
Runes
Runes are the written language of Flow - symbols and structures that shape how this life-essence moves and behaves. When placed correctly, runes act like instructions to the world itself, telling Flow where to go, what to do, or how to transform. They’re the bridge between thought and function, making everything from glowing lamps to self-cleaning public baths possible.
Runes can be used for practically anything. They’re etched into walls, welded into appliances, embroidered onto medical wraps, floated in water systems, or inked into tools. If a thing needs to channel Flow to do its job, chances are there's a rune behind it.
Stoves heat because of a rune, clean drinking water flows because of a sanitation sigil carved into a pipe junction. The cooling and heating in homes are etched into a stone vent or painted in a utility basin somewhere in the city.
Medium Matters
Runes can be made with nearly any medium - chalk, charcoal, paint, etching, gold, even a finger dragged through dust. However, some materials resonate more strongly with Flow than others. Blood, in particular, adds intensity and focus, especially in runes for healing, injury management, or other deeply biological effects. It’s powerful, but biodegradable and easily washed away, therefore unstable.
Who Uses Runes?
Runeworkers are the backbone of society. They maintain public rune systems, repair household appliances, and set up functional sigils for everyday life.
Runemasters are the elite. They're the engineers and scholars of rune design. They create new rune constructs, optimize systems, or specialize in extremely advanced applications like stabilization sigils, protection wards, or medicinal sequences.
Everyday people can learn basic runes, the same way someone might learn to unclog their sink or maintain their furance. It's useful, encouraged, and often a part of household education. But deeper runework is a full craft and careless mistakes can lead to ineffective, messy, or even dangerous results.
Summoning Runes
With enough training, skilled individuals can project runes directly into the world without physically drawing them. It’s like projecting a perfect stencil. It's etched temporarily into the air, ground, or object. These summoned runes still need Flow to function and often draw it from the ambient Flow or the user themselves.
This form of "freehand casting" is incredibly difficult. Tools like staffs can help focus and shape the projection, but true masters can use only their bare hands and willpower.
Why They Work
Runes don’t force Flow. They guide it - like grooves in a streambed. Flow seems to recognize certain patterns as meaningful, responding almost instinctively. Whether that’s a result of ancient truth, collective subconscious, or some deeper world-intelligence is a matter of debate. But it works. And when done right, it works beautifully for a long, long time.
The Limits of Mortality
While anyone with time and discipline can learn the basics of runework, true mastery is rare - not just because of the learning curve but because of time. The complexity of higher-order runes, the intuition needed to safely manipulate ambient Flow, and the sheer amount of world variables involved all mean that most mortals simply don’t live long enough to grasp it all.
The few who do achieve the title of Runemaster often share a common trait: they are descendants of the divine. Whether through direct ancestry or inheritance through god-touched blood, these individuals possess an extended perception. There is an intuitive affinity with Flow and its patterns that cannot be easily taught. It allows them to grasp runes not just as symbols but as part of a genetically learned language (Godspeak) and the living instructions woven into the world’s foundation.
Without this edge, mortal scholars may still become experts in very narrow aspects of runecraft, but wider spectrum instinctive mastery belongs to Descendants with very few and far in between exceptions.
Godspeak
The Language of the Gods
At the root of all runes lies an ancient force known as Godspeak. It's the innate language of gods, their descendants, and arguably even the god-touched. It is not spoken aloud with breath but instead emitted through micro-adjustments in reality in the form of tiny, imperceptible shifts in pressure, space, emotion, or energy. Where mortals use words to move air, the divine use intention to move the world.
Godspeak is not transmitted through soundwaves. It moves through intent-waves - the abstract concepts and meaning made manifest. Those who can perceive it don’t “hear” it so much as they feel it resonate in their bones, emotions, and surroundings. It’s a language that’s less about vocabulary and more about what the speaker means.
Runes as Written Godspeak
Runes are the written attempt to capture Godspeak. They are symbols that mimic those divine manipulations, shaped into stable, repeatable forms that the world itself seems to understand. When a rune is activated with Flow, it doesn’t just cause an effect. It's asking the world to change in a very specific way, echoing how a divine being might shape reality through speech alone.
But just like writing down a moving speech can’t fully capture a live performance, runes are best approximations.
Who Understands Godspeak?
Godspeak is not something most mortals can learn in full. With minimal effort, individuals - especially those with divine ancestry - can begin to recognize fragments of Divinespeak, much like catching a familiar word in an unfamiliar language. Comprehension depends largely on one’s genetic proximity to divinity. While it’s possible to train oneself to interpret Godspeak by attuning to its underlying intentions, speaking it is another matter entirely. It's an immensely more difficult feat, requiring both inherent resonance and extraordinary mastery.
A Godling (a Greater God's child) or a Demigod (God/Godling and Mortal/Descendant's child) might understand Godspeak fluently, if not effortlessly.
A close Descendant may feel it intuitively, similar to a native speaker who’s forgotten how to speak the language, but picks up on familiar words now and then.
A more distant Descendant might understand the emotional pressure or ambient intent of a divine statement, but not its detail.
For the average mortal or an otherwise distantly god-touched individual, it’s like hearing bass that occasionally sounds almost meaningful. It might feel like awe, a primal fear, the warmth of a kind stranger, but not the words themselves.
Importantly, Godspeak isn’t always a passing experience. When used in conflict, like in the frequently occuring divine arguments, or threats, or otherwise verbal combat between Gods and/or Godlings, the force of intent alone can become physically harmful. Those nearby, especially mortals or those with more sensitive dispositions, may experience nausea, burns, lacerations, auditory hallucinations, emotional breakdowns, or even structural damage to their surroundings. It is not the volume that wounds but the raw pressure of will made manifest.
Winning an argument against a God can mean physically bolstering yourself against the insults from your opponent. With this in mind, Greater Gods need to choose even their most mundane words carefully when near those smaller than themselves.
The language is alive, intimate, and mostly inaccessible, but the innately immense power means everyone feels it somehow.