Imagine for a moment a world where the runic magic is possible. It's a classic in fantasy, the kind of magic you have to write down and give a bit of magic to in order to make it work. Let's limit ourselves to four kinds of runes: illusory runes that produce phenomena like sights and sounds (to the point where it can cause harm), divination runes that can find out stuff by themselves, movement runes that can move objects and creatures around (or even teleport them), and runes that can hide information by covering it with ciphers.
Now, imagine that you'd discover new kinds of runes, ones that can send out magic by themselves upon receiving some stimulus. Like for example, seeing the red color, or hearing the sound of a ringing bell, or when the person who this rune is drawn on goes through an intense emotion.
Now, imagine that you could also combine multiple stimuli, and have multiple effects attached to them too. Maybe this rune activates only when you're touching it and when you say a command word, and it shoots a ray of light accompanied by the celestial choir.
And now, try to picture someone piecing these runes together in an intricate way to make... a calculator. However, due to this being the first magical calculator, the runes fill pages of books, that fill shelves of a bookshelves, and these bookshelves fill out a room. Where to next?
Well, someone else who's smart realizes something at that point. They realize that you can minimize the runes, and have them still keep their magical efficiency. You could make them smaller and smaller, reducing room into a bookshelf, a bookshelf into a shelf, a shelf into a book, a book into a single page, and a page into a single playing card that can fit into your pocket.
Meanwhile, someone else who's smart and somewhere else in the world wanted to connect two of these calculators together. Once they did, they tried to connect a third one. And a fourth one. They thought long and hard, and realized that maybe... they should come up with a network that could be joined by any of these elaborate calculators.
And once that happens, you have a fantasy setting, where people carry around books as computers and laptops, cards in their pockets like smartphones, and connect to the internet. This is a vision I had for the setting that I call Runehack. More details on that sometime in the future.
Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!
