As I was playing SII again I got to the shrine in Toto where Leknaat appears and says the True Runes Bright Shield and Black Sword have chosen Riou and Jowy.
EDIT: After double-checking some let's plays on Youtube I saw that Leknaat says "One of the '27 true runes' has recognized you."
So she didn't state that they were True Runes by themselves, my bad.
![Sad :(](./images/smilies/icon_sad.gif)
I was thinking along the lines of, “Hold on a sec. If those two are True Runes then does that mean that the Rune of Beginning is one level above the 27 True Runes? Since it after all is made of two True Runes rather than just being one of them.”
However, after some pondering I remembered that the Gate Rune also was split in two, yet both the Front and Back Gate Rune are still pretty much regarded as True Runes.
So my conclusion became that the Rune of Beginning is one of the original 27 True Runes which got split in two fragments that still count as True Runes.
So in a weird way there's actually at least 29 True Runes in the world.
This is only a guess but I think you probably could split every True Rune and get very unique runes in the process. Lets take the Rune of Beginning as our prime example first. I'm guessing the Rune of Beginning represents war/conflict and therefor governs Aggression (Black Sword) and Protectiveness (Bright Shield).
Now, lets instead look at the Blue Moon Rune. It governs Cruelty and Compassion. If it was split in two you'd probably get a Rune of Cruelty and a Rune of Compassion. They'd still be at the same level of power as the original True Rune, it's just that the power is limited to more specific concepts.
Please let me know if you think I'm on to something or if I'm just fooling myself.
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)