What Are the 27 True Runes in Suikoden?

Twenty-seven gods in the shape of jewels, and every war in the series is an argument over one.

The 27 True Runes are the foundation of Suikoden's world: sources of all magic and primal force, sentient, possessed of their own wills, and treated by the setting as the equivalent of gods. Lesser runes are their fragments and children. Nearly every conflict in the five main games is, underneath the politics, a True Rune being sought, inherited, misused, or refused.

THE CREATION MYTH

From the Old Books in the games

The games carry their own scripture, found in the Old Books scattered through the world. In the beginning there was Darkness, alone in a rift in time, which at last shed a Tear. From the Tear came two brothers, Sword and Shield, who boasted and fought for seven days and seven nights until each shattered the other. The fragments of Sword became the sky, the fragments of Shield the earth, the sparks became the stars, and the 27 jewels that had adorned the brothers became the 27 True Runes, and the world went into motion.

THE RULES

What bearing one means

Agelessness

A True Rune's bearer stops aging and becomes immune to disease and every natural cause of death. Bearers can still be killed: by wounds, by violence, by accident. Immortality, in this world, has a body count.

A will of their own

The runes are not tools. They choose, refuse, and sometimes act: wars have been instigated by the will of the runes themselves, and at least one rune has incarnated unattached and fed of its own hunger.

Objects and beasts

A True Rune can live in a thing: the Night Rune is the Star Dragon Sword, a talking blade. It can also take bestial form, as the Beast Rune did in the Dunan war.

The price

Power over an aspect of the world, priced in the bearer's humanity in the worst cases: the Moon Rune's bearer became a vampire; the Rune of Punishment simply eats its bearers one after another.

THE IDENTIFIED RUNES

Eighteen of twenty-seven

Gate Rune

The rune of passages between worlds, split between the sisters Windy and Leknaat, whose long game runs under the whole first trilogy.

Rune of Life and Death

The Soul Eater: the first game's prize, which feeds on the souls around its bearer, beginning with the people he loves.

Rune of Beginning

Born split in two: the Bright Shield and Black Sword, given to two boys on opposite sides of Suikoden II's war.

Rune of Punishment

Atonement and forgiveness, paid for in the bearer's life: the engine of Suikoden IV.

The five True Elementals

True Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, and Lightning: the greater forms of the runes ordinary mages carry, fought over across III and V.

Sun Rune

Falena's royal treasure in Suikoden V: a blessing that behaves like a curse on the queens who bear it.

Sovereign, Circle, Change

Barbarossa's Sovereign Rune; the Circle Rune of Harmonia's Hikusaak, the series' great unseen power; the Rune of Change, carried by the Sindar's wandering leader.

Moon, Night, Beast, Dragon, Eightfold

The vampiric Moon; the Night Rune in its sword; the Beast Rune sealed in Muse; the Dragon Rune that binds its knights to their dragons; Yuber's Eightfold Rune, the least explained of all.

THE UNWRITTEN NINE

The series' built-in unfinished business

Of the 27, the games have identified eighteen. The rest are named nowhere on screen: a reserve of gods the series created and, in its long silence, never spent. It is the clearest measure of how much world Murayama built beyond the five games' borders, and why the fan base treats the series as interrupted rather than finished.

The History of Suikoden The History of Suikoden IV The Suikoden games, in order

What Are the 27 True Runes in Suikoden?

THE CREATION MYTH

THE RULES

THE IDENTIFIED RUNES

THE UNWRITTEN NINE

THE FIRST WORD