I've been reading up on RUNE and Thorchain for a few months and you're absolutely correct that RUNE is something special. Shapeshift has integrated Thorchain on the backend to connect their users with DEXs, it's amazing to swap native to native tokens on a DEX.

I hear you on the difficulties getting your hands on native RUNE, it takes some experimentation and creativity, lol.

So the last time I tried to get LTC into RUNE it took quite a bit of crypto gymnastics.

I used Huobi to send LTC to Binance Bridge.
This gave me pegged LTC on BSC.
Then I dumped that LTC for BNB (BEP20).
Then I transferred the BNB BEP20 (Smart Chain) to Trust Wallet.
Then I had to unwrap BEP20 into BEP2 Binance Chain.

Only then was I able to fully turn the LTC into RUNE.
Then I had @nealmcspadden transfer me RUNE gas. By selling the BEP2 BNB into RUNE on https://app.thorswap.finance/

The way I went about it is by first downloading ASGARDEX desktop, send some tokens to SimpleSwap for LTC and deposit the LTC in ASGARDEX LTC wallet. From there, you can execute swaps with the 27 tokens you mention. LTC -> RUNE. Voilà, you got yourself some RUNE.