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The sustainability of Runelord magic
- Sooo... this has been nagging at me for a while now. How, exactly, is Runelord magic sustainable on the large scale? Several Endowments (notably Brawn, Stamina, Metabolism, Grace, and Sight) leave the person who gives them unable to work. How can a feudal society support so many disabled people? A few Runelords with, say, a dozen Endowments each would be believable, but there seems to be a lot of people with Endowments in the series, and some of them have quite a few; hell, Raj Ahten alone should have ruined the economy of a few small kingdoms by destroying their workforce! Has this been addressed anywhere?
- They may not be entirely unable to work. Dedicates tend to live together in well-fortified Dedicate Towers, where those who give lesser endowments can help take care of those who give greater ones. Those who give brawn are weak, stamina are sickly, and sight are blind, but they can still do some jobs. The only ones who are truly incapable of any work at all are those who give grace, since their muscles become basically useless, and those who give metabolism, since they are slowed down into a sort of coma.
- The attributes bounce back a little after the initial faciliatation, discussed in the first book after King Sylvarresta is forced to give up his wit. Dedicates are most disabled immediately after giving an endowment, and since the main characters are actively preparing for battle, most of the dedicates we see are in this early phase.
- The fourth book also explains in one of the epigraphs, in a quote from an In-universe text, that endowments given by particularly skilled facilitators and with a good match between the dedicate and the Runelord can take a lesser toll on the dedicate while still offering the full enhancement to the lord.
