Frequently Asked Questions

There is an immediate explanation regarding Rune. Academy’s creation that can be found in the About Us section of the site.

The additional backstory to this unnecessarily complicated world-building exercise is more complex. To sum up, when I was very young, I was allowed to fly across some oceans and continents to visit my extended family for the first time in a multitude of years. I became incredibly close with an incredible familial role model at that time. She and many other newly rediscovered family members and friends taught me all about the stranger side of the world that I’d inevitably been missing out on while living at home. Among the many ancestral mythologies and legends they’d all introduced me to, one memory has always stood out as having made the most impact on my youth. 

During my stay, I’d handcrafted a set of Casting Runes with the help of my newly rediscovered role model. She’d taken me under her wing, and, among the many lessons she’d taught me that trip, one of the most important was that I could make my own fortune and my own future with my own hands. Often literally. It was the first time I was ever really exposed to ideas, customs, and beliefs that were so ancient, fascinating, and full of “unconventional thinking” by modern westernized standards. All I wanted was to live in a world that abided by and honored the old spirits and gods, full of magic, mystery, and rich lore. But I understood it was very unlikely to achieve outside of a strictly fantasy setting.

It planted a seed that finally took hold in my mind later years- after I’ve already had plenty of time to grow and develop the hobbies, skills, and interests necessary to make everything I’m working on here a reality.

For some time, I, unfortunately, thought this meant following a trend for creating magical schools that seemed to be popping up left and right, fueled by pop culture fantasy crazes. I thought it might be a good idea at the time, especially since everywhere I looked prior, it seemed the specific kind of magic and practice and culture I was exposed to as a child was not well enough represented in any of them. So I set out to create the school I wished I could have always come across myself but never found. Only after having made significant progress had I realized that it was the worst possible medium for me to achieve my goals – with not enough interactivity, engagement, and not enough creative and storytelling flexibility.

Therefore, after some time, I decided to cut my losses instead of continuing to dump time, effort, and energy into something that wasn’t going to pan out ultimately. I got some second and third opinions and reassessed exactly what medium would be best for what I’m ultimately driven to achieve. Some very personally influential people weighed in their opinions, warned me that it wouldn’t be easy, and wished me luck. I never expected anything to come easy. I accepted the challenge with open arms and came to terms with the fact that this would be an extensively long-term project that would probably take a significant portion of my life to achieve and require a lot of help… but boy, would it be worth it in the end!

Naming Rune Academy (Rune.Academy) after one of my favorite moments growing up felt like an excellent way to honor my great role model’s memory and make a permanent home for the things she’d inspired me to pursue.

I hope you enjoy the project!

Unfortunately, there is no physical location that can be visited as of yet. However, we do have a roaming cart that occasionally pops up and sells tantalizing, hand-crafted (by yours truly) wares at craft fairs for some extra spending money. And there are plans in the future to make an official physical headquartes for the project (and likely where I’ll also permanently live).

The plans involve purchasing land somewhere remote and in nature, making friends with local dumps and landfills (how shocking!), and building a gorgeous, fully off-grid creative haven known as an Earthship from entirely recycled materials. The building will be entirely self powering and self regulating, as well as have some other features you can learn about here.

I’m currently at the stage where I’ve already taken all courses necessary to build the structure (with money from my own pocket) and I’ve already saved up for and obtained its costly blueprints (one of their two-story split-level designs -again, with money from my own pocket). I’m now on the land-scouting stage, as well as the saving stage for the hauling/work vehicle!

If you’d like to donate,

you can send money here:

The maps are a teaser of things to come! You can always see a full gallery of maps by visiting our art gallery page.

A more recent update: There is now a MapMaking Roadmap you can check out for more details and hints for what’s to come!

The short answer to this question is, “Nope! They’re a secret!” The long answer is as follows:

This project site is currently run by me, K.Forte, as mostly a passion project. Occasionally, there are eternally loved and appreciated volunteers who come on board to help. But usually, it’s a one-woman run operation. This means all coding, artwork, research, writing, developing, and major decision and mistake making is done by predominantly one person. If anything goes wrong, you can rest assured that all fingers point at me. This also means that nearly everything having to do with this massive world-building exercise is a learning experience.

Because of this, there are a multitude of projects open all at the same time (which you can observe in the RoadMaps Hub).

When “we” (meaning I and any volunteers I may have in the moment) encounter problems with one project, we move on to another. This is all while hoping that working on the second will allow us to learn something new or gain some sort of insight that will end up helping resolve issues with the first. You can imagine how many projects that leaves us with as “in the works”. If all working projects were to be made public at once, we’d be unfairly getting our selected niche audience excited… only to have them become aggravated as to how long the updates were taking a short time later. Progress is only updated once something passes a reasonable stage of completion and we’re more or less certain no more heavy experimentation or deletion will be happening.

Rest assured, however, that the people who work on Rune.Academy are all incredibly wonderful and driven members of society. Anything we learn in the real world, we try to bring back here and make fit into this little pocket one. Perhaps someday, in the near or far future, someone will get a little joy out of exploring it.

Donating money or digital currencies can be done on our Donation Page.

You can also choose to buy something from the shops, once they are set up, to receive something in return for your donation. All profits earned from items sold in the shops will go right back into the development of Rune.Academy.

Donating your time and services as well as resources works slightly differently. Such donations have to be handled more individually depending on what you’re willing to bring to the table. If you’d like to join and help, you can contact me, K.Forte, on any of my social media handles (although discord is probably preferred). We’ll discuss your strengths and I’ll give you a copy of projects I currently need help with. From there, you can either claim a brand new project or select from a number of unfinished projects you’d like to contribute to. Anything you complete and return will earn you a spot in the Official Cumulative Credits of the Project on the About Page (which will also make it into the final product). I try to keep things as organized as possible. Anything from coding, to marketing, to artwork, to research –any and all help is greatly appreciated!

We are already far from where we’ve begun, but we still have a long way to go. All help is gladly received help!!