Add your own information to the Encyclopedia! After a lot of my friends started giving me cool ideas for my NaNoWriMo, I decided to put it on GitHub, where everyone can write their own version, and we can combine as we want.
The concept is pretty basic: Like how antennas can absorb electrical energy if they are shaped right and oriented correctly, in this alternate version of Earth contiguous patterns of material in a specific shape can have certain effects. For example, if you draw a certain shape in graphite on a piece of paper, the graphite will get hot. The energy it puts out per unit area is defined by the level of detail put into the rune: in reality the designs are fractally complext, and the more precise a rune is, the more efficiently it can interact with the "rune" field.
In my "story" the world is on the cusp of the industrial revolution, where mechanics has gotten to the level where society can pump out a large number of small, detailed runes very fast. It follows a librarian from France as he travels around the world, trying to amass data for the first Runal Encyclopedia. Really it's just an excuse to have a massive world-building appendix in the back, but my file should have some sort of pretense for existing.
Anyway, look at the example I put up, and put up your own ideas of what the world would look like! Biologically could animals develop structures to produce heat and gain energy for nearly free? If so, would the arctic have its own ecosystem? How would different cultures use or develop runes? What runes are there, and how do they work? I hope to see your ideas!