It could. I sort of have this idea of whispers of words of arcane power from the fey-folk in the ears of dwarves, allowing them to inscribe a strange, incomprehensible and nearly unrememberable runespell on a blade sculpted like clay using magic then "quenched" in magma. It would serve the fey's mysterious purposes in due time, perhaps good, perhaps evil, but in the mean time it would function with powers for the wielder.
Unless they were possessed, they might retain a few of the words in memory, depending on how smart they were, which would simulate the current skill gain with something much more mystical. If they retained the necessary words to change metal so that it hardened like clay (with heat), they could produce metal items without a forge so long as they had magma, and with the much more precise tools of a potter instead of a metalworker.
A dwarf with this sort of power would not want to share; dwarves are too fame and legend oriented. Any dwarf worth its beard would defend that secret to his grave, only muttering the words under his breath while none else are near. In addition, the fey could threaten him or his bloodline with a curse in order to convince the dwarf not to part with his words.
There are other types of artifacts, but you get the idea. Something like this could also explain how elves can make their weapons out of wood so easily, and in such profusion. This kind of gives me the idea that certain words might be much weaker when spoken by non-sphere-aligned races.
And speaking of muttering words under breath, I wonder how well that would work. It might be a little bit distorted, just by the virtue of not quite being enunciated properly. It could alter or weaken, even pervert its power - a truth spell muttered in secret might not be so reliable. There could be a certain random chance that the word you chose might instead take on the effects of another word with the same sphere(s).
Because the magic here would be spoken, certain spells might only function if the target can actually -hear- them. Specifically I'm thinking spells that affect the mental state or general internal constitution of the target; these are more like curses than not. Shouted spells might suffer similar issues as whispered ones - it's hard to yell certain sounds of speech louder than when they're spoken normally.
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Topic: Language magic, or Yet Another Long Magic Rant (Read 9209 times)