Barris
The following is for my own information.Why does a runepriest have to be strong and use a weapon?
Divine runes are not like any normal writing or alphabet. Each stroke of each character is a step toward a change in the world itself, and the world resists that change. The gods, so it is implied in the ancient texts, inscribed the first runes with their own hands, using styli capable of etching not just any substance but any concept. How else to imbue shadow with the Rune of Impending Terror? Or the seasons with the Word of Cyclic Joy?
The other issue is the power of the runes themselves. Whereas the world resists being written upon, the runes want to be written. A rune, once begun, once even recalled in one's mind, will burst forth from the inscriber, driving hand and pen to the point of breaking both, unless significant physical control is exerted. It is like taking hold of a tremendous weight, from which the supports are suddenly removed; without preparation and strength, it will crash down uselessly (at best) or dangerously (at worst).
A runepriest who dabbles with the syllabaries of Protection and Destruction is inscribing runes on enemies, allies and the struggle itself. Some runes, like the Rune of Mending flow fairly easily, though they still take something out of the runepriest, requiring rest after only a few inscriptions.
More offensive runes must be forced into even the temporary existence a runepriest can muster. Tracing, say, the Word of Binding into mid air would be difficult enough, but bringing it forth and then imposing it on the body of a foe, often through armor or shield, takes significant control and significant force. Sometimes a desired effect can be brought forth even when injury is not, but when injury is the intent, a bigger, heavier weapon can stamp it more effectively.
Divine runes are rarely found intact, at least in the world or its mirror planes, simply because most mundane materials can't hold them for long without the material or the rune, or both, being destroyed.
Instead, they must be passed down or tracked down. Priests and other divine workers can carry the tradition of a rune or even an entire word and train others in the scribing of it. Most such rune holders rarely express what they know, except in dire need, because the knowledge is secret and sacred, and because the scribing is physically and psychically demanding.
Runepriests can obtain runes from such people, but doing so tends to involve those people being in badly compromised situations. A good runepriest would avoid doing that to someone deliberately, but unfortunately it's not uncommon (relatively speaking) for those with such knowledge to be put in dire straits by the nature of the world. While a devoted holy man might not care for a runepriest's less-than-devout outlook, it might be better to entrust a rune to such a one than to let the knowledge be lost entirely. A good runepriest might commit to passing on the knowledge to others of the same or a similar religion.
More often, though, runepriests must seek runic knowledge from ancient sources, piecing together fragments of runes that made enough of an impression on people in the world for them to remark on in writings and incorporate it into their iconography in a permanent enough way that a careful and daring runepriest can later find them.