In thrice tales it's mentioned that the anglo saxon rune magicians were exterminated by the Ordo Miscellanea after the spiders defeat. My question is why were the gruagachan also not wiped out? They were a sizable force in Damhan-Allaidh army and contributed just as much as the rune mages so why leave them alive? Why not fold the saxon mages into the new house Miscellanea?
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A bit of retroactive storytelling.
It had already been established in canon that there were gruagachan around, but no rune magicians in the lands where the Order of Hermes live.
The details of the Spider War were written later and had to confirm to those established facts
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"Guys I'll be real honest. I'm tired. I'm so tired. Can we NOT get into a war in Scotland? Please? Can we do anything else with our time? Can we have a quiet year of reading books?" - The Order of Hermes after the Spider War when they were talking about the Gruagachan, presumably.
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Besides, most of the Gruagachan had been rendered powerless by wiping their memory of the ability to speak Pictish, which they use to cast spells.
Well, for one, most gruagachan aren't Gifted so they'd be a lot harder to locate and destroy the entire tradition. By contrast all rune wizards are.
for another, it's entirely possible not all of the gruagachan fought alongside Davenallus - he was actually an infernalist, but Pralix thought Damhan Duidas was one of Allaidh's tradition (IIRC from TTT he was, sort of....)
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While the Gruagachan at the Battle of Blencathra were rendered powerless, a few 100 and their kin. (TTT p 138)
His gruagachan allies had gathered with hundreds of their kinfolk to perform some mighty ritual working, and it was the perfect time for what she had planned. Pralix reached into her pre-Hermetic training to summon and release Lethe, a mighty spirit of forgetfulness. Lethe plucked the memory of the Pictish language from Damhan-Allaidh’s gruagachan.
There is still a good collection of similar "mythic traditions" like the Gruagachan in Ireland, and Scandinavia.
Also the Gruagachan does suffer a little from the legacy of previous editions, and the idea "Hermetic" is the greatest magic etc.. etc...
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Beyond Anglo-Saxon Rune Wizards generally being in a far more accessible terrain, and far less numerous than Gruagachan, there is also the possibility that Pralix also simply saw them as a much greater threat to her new fledgling Ordo Miscellanea.
After all, Rune Magic, depending on how it is used, can completely circumvent Parma Magica, negating the "nuclear options" of both Order of Hermes and Ordo Miscellanea at the time.
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