Question about True Runes, can they be taken off safely?

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Millia
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Question about True Runes, can they be taken off safely?

Post by Millia »

Hello,
I have a few questions about the True Runes, but I couldn’t find the answer in any wiki or guide, so I was hoping somebody in this forum could help.

I know from Suikoden III that taking off a True Rune will cause the owner to die a few years later. But the only person who did that is the Flame Champion, isn’t it? Ted lost his True Rune once in SIV, but got it back a few years later, so we don’t know for sure that he would have died, right? Is it possible that Ted would have been able to keep living a healthy life if he hadn't been able to get his True Rune back? Couldn’t it be that taking off a True Rune doesn’t necessarily cause the owner to die, that the Flame Champion was just unlucky?

My second question is whether fragments of True Runes have the same “take it off and die” effect. At the end of Suikoden V, the Prince and Lyon take off the Dawn Rune and the Twilight Rune. Could that cause them to die in a few years? Or, since the Dawn Rune and the Twilight Rune are just “children” of True Runes, it’s safe to take them off?

If you know the answer to those questions, please let me know, I’d really appreciate it!
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Pyriel
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Re: Question about True Runes, can they be taken off safely?

Post by Pyriel »

I don't remember it saying anywhere that removing a True Rune necessarily causes a person to die. Sierra placed the Blue Moon Rune in the center of a village where it could be stolen. She's a vampire, though, so maybe that's a special case. Genkaku and Han sealed their pieces of the Rune of the Beginning in that little shed in Toto, so that's at least a similar situation to the Prince and Lyon. No reason to assume they were under a death sentence, even if rejecting an actual True Rune would ordinarily earn you one.
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Re: Question about True Runes, can they be taken off safely?

Post by Aerolithe Lion »

I think Luc just meant the eternal life power would eventually wear off, and Geddoe would age and die normally
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Raww Le Klueze
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Re: Question about True Runes, can they be taken off safely?

Post by Raww Le Klueze »

Anyone who exceeds their natural life-span and removes the rune will die as a result of old age once the ageless effect wears off. The Flame Champion dies as a result of the technique he used.

Sierra is still considered the master of the Blue Moon Rune even though Neclord stole it and has it's protection.
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Re: Question about True Runes, can they be taken off safely?

Post by Antimatzist »

Iirc the thing with Ted was that when he gave his rune he started travelling the dimensions with the fog ship captain and thus didn't age beause the flow of time didn't work for him correctly? I don't think it's known when he gave up his rune, but I guess it was some time before the game.
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Re: Question about True Runes, can they be taken off safely?

Post by Pyriel »

Raww Le Klueze wrote:Sierra is still considered the master of the Blue Moon Rune even though Neclord stole it and has it's protection.
Well, yeah, but she still took it off. I guess there's a distinction between giving it up and merely storing it outside yourself, though. It seems like the only rule is that whatever the writers decide to do is how it works. And that's kind of viable, since the True Runes are supposed to have free will anyway.
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Re: Question about True Runes, can they be taken off safely?

Post by Raww Le Klueze »

Well, so does Wyatt. He removes the True Water Rune and still keeps the ageless effect so it's not like it's a one-off thing.
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Re: Question about True Runes, can they be taken off safely?

Post by Pyriel »

I forgot about him. I wasn't just talking about the ageless-at-a-distance thing, though. In general, the True Runes having free will allows the writers to have general rules for how they behave, but a writer can break the rules any time they want to.

The Blue Moon Rune gets taken for a ride for at least decades (maybe centuries; I forget). As far as I can tell, there's no indication that it resisted for most of that time, but it still considered Sierra its true master. The True Water Rune apparently didn't care about being removed and sealed in a ruin; several of the True Elemental Runes were cool with being traded like playing cards by their "chosen" bearers (well, maybe not in the canon version of events); and the Gate Rune let itself be split in half. One of its halves has been missing for 30 years or so now, along with the Sovereign Rune that didn't mind being shoved into a sword. Then you have the parts of the Rune of Beginning that are so determined to fight that they'll drag their bearers into war with one another, even against the bearers' wills, but they were both fine being shut up in a cave when their bearers developed man-crushes for each other. The Soul Eater rejects Windy, ostensibly because Tir is more worthy and can feed it better, but it was fine being attached to Ted for 300 years while he primarily hid.

It just falls in with "magic" being mysterious enough that you can have something be omnipotent and incompetent in turns, depending on what your story calls for. There's nothing to stop the writers from fast-forwarding 200 years from Suikoden III, and Luc is still alive because the True Wind Rune willed it so at the last moment, and kept him ageless despite Hikusaak placing it in the body of a clone he made from Yuber.

A couple of questions, though. What's different about what the Flame Champion did and what Wyatt did? I have a vague recollection that Wyatt was somehow unable to give up agelessness and renounce the Rune entirely, while the Flame Champion was ready to die, and wanted to pass on the Rune to another, but my memory's fuzzy. And are vampire's ageless in Suikoden? I tried to look it up, but couldn't find anything. I'm just wondering if the Blue Moon Rune was doing the ageless-at-a-distance trick, or if it didn't have to.
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Re: Question about True Runes, can they be taken off safely?

Post by Raww Le Klueze »

The Flame Champion used some Sindar technique that let him seal the True Fire Rune in that place, for whatever reason this also took a lot out of him, probably it has to be considered that he forced the True Fire Rune as it couldn't do what True Runes normally do when losing a bearer, instead he sealed it in a place of his choosing. It's mere conjecture to try and figure out exactly why it killed him, but I'd guess that it's a result of forcing the rune rather than just releasing it.

What Wyatt did is an utter mystery. As far as any official explanation goes he only sealed half of it, whatever that means, but he appears to have done it intentionally. He said he was too weak to do what the Flame Champion did so he more just hid the rune and kept the agelessness.

Last I heard vampires are not immortal in Suikoden, they just live an absurdly long time. Though Rean certainly seems to think he's immortal in Suikogaiden, but I guess it would be a bit contrived for him to constantly refer to himself as "almost immortal". Though without the protection of the Moon Rune vampires need to feed on human blood to sustain themselves, if they don't they experience "perishing" which appears to be just what it sounds like. According to Sierra most villagers in the Blue Moon Village chose to perish rather than feed on humans.
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Re: Question about True Runes, can they be taken off safely?

Post by Pyriel »

I remember all that stuff about perishing and needing to be near to Rune to avoid having to feed on humans. I just don't remember any mention of their lifespans without it. If both Neclord and Sierra were simultaneously kept ageless by the Rune, that's kind of weird. That or it implies that any vampire in close enough proximity to it is ageless.

Maybe vampires in Suikoden are like some of the old folktales about witches, where they just live for a few hundred years without ever really changing, and finally turn to dust and blow away in an instant.
Millia
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Re: Question about True Runes, can they be taken off safely?

Post by Millia »

Thanks for your replies, guys. When I got the good ending of Suikoden V and saw that the Prince and Lyon had taken off their related-to-True-Rune runes, I was so worried. It would have been incredibly depressing to think "and then they died a couple of years later" >_>

I'm glad to hear that they are safe. After all the rouble I went through to get a happy ending, I certainly didn't want to get cheated out of it :P
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Re: Question about True Runes, can they be taken off safely?

Post by LanceHeart »

True Runes don't really have consistent rules when it comes to the "take it off and die" stuff. It just happens that most bearers die of extraordinary causes during the games.

When you look at the Dawn and Dusk runes, they could be considered equivalent to the two halves of the Rune of Beginning: They can easily be transferred, but they don't actually follow the rules from the get-go. Their bearers aren't ageless and previous bearers have managed to shelve them with relative ease.
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Re: Question about True Runes, can they be taken off safely?

Post by sticky-runes »

Antimatzist wrote:Iirc the thing with Ted was that when he gave his rune he started travelling the dimensions with the fog ship captain and thus didn't age beause the flow of time didn't work for him correctly? I don't think it's known when he gave up his rune, but I guess it was some time before the game.
Yeah, something like that. The fog ship guide invites Lazlo to live on board his vessel "Where time governs us not" so both he and Ted could have lived forever on the ship without their runes attached, and without succumbing to old age like everyone else in the outside world.

When Ted gave up the Soul Eater in suikoden 1, he was in the normal world and so I think he was dying from the moment he handed it over to Tir, but Windy used her magic to keep his body alive so she could use him to reclaim the rune, and after defying her in Seek Valley, he commanded the rune to take his own soul.
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Re: Question about True Runes, can they be taken off safely?

Post by freshmetal »

I guess the way I've always looked at it is wrong. I've always assumed that when a true rune bearer has a true rune removed, either forcibly or voluntarily, the bearer would resume normal aging until their eventual natural death rather than dying from a sudden rush of "missed aging". There have been plenty of true rune bearers that survived long after removing their runes.

Like others have stated, Ted lived after giving Tir the Soul Eater. Was that a result of Windy's magic, or was he simply aging and living normally until commanding the rune to take his soul?

In the case of the Flame Champion, I thought that he removed his rune and lived out the rest of live with his wife during the span of the 50 years between the two wars. After all, we don't have a date that he died. He could have died right after removing the rune or more much later as an old man in his hideaway. The game is very vague about this. Plus, he didn't have the True Fire Rune for that long. Why would it kill him to remove it after a relatively short period.

Not to mention Geddoe. When his rune was removed by Luc, Luc mentions something to the effect that Geddoe would die without it. Did he mean that Geddoe would die soon from his immortality catching up to him, or simply grow old and die like a normal person. I recall Kid's investigation mentioning that Geddoe was approximately a century old. You would think that if removal of a true run meant missed time catching up on the bearer, Geddoe's death would have happened very shortly after the rune was taken.

Then there's Graham Cray, who had the Rune of Punishment removed from his body by severing his arm. The loss of the rune didn't kill him.

Arshtat Falenas was advised to remove the Sun Rune in order to avoid losing her sanity. Surely she wouldn't have been advised to do something that would ultimately mean her death.

Is there an official source that clearly states what happens "post true rune" to bearers, or is all just speculation and interpretation?
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Re: Question about True Runes, can they be taken off safely?

Post by sticky-runes »

Lets not forget Ted's grandad - he had just handed the soul eater over to Ted, and was immediately able to run off sending Windy and her friends on a wild goose chase. Pretty spry for an old man who had just given up his immortality. So perhaps the bearer still has some strength left after giving up the rune and feels normal, but then gradually succumbs to their mortality? I think it's confusing with Ted because he was injured during his confrontation with Windy, so he seems weak during the event where Tir receives the Soul Eater. Before Ted dies, he says "who needs a body that can't be controlled anyway?" so she must have been doing nasty things to him. Maybe if he had not been in Windy's clutches after giving up the rune, Ted might have been able to live on like Geddoe did after losing his True Lightning...

As for the Rune of Punishment, none of it's bearers except Lazlo (after achieving the atonement phase) would have really had the chance to live hundreds of years since it sucks it's hosts life out. You'd be lucky to live a few days, let alone a century. But I do think Graham craved it's power after losing it, a bit like Gollum craving the One Ring. I don't know if that was purely because he wanted to experience his son's memories, or if the rune does have some kind of seductive/addictive effect on it's bearers.

But with most true runes, I think if you've only had it for a short while before getting it removed, then you're pretty safe, but if you've had it for hundreds of years, then you're more likely to be in trouble. I think the host may form an emotional as well as physical relationship with the rune.
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