Esoterica of Morogyad

The Esoterica of Morogyad is a broad tradition of magical writings that circulate in the form of full and fragmentary manuscripts throughout the Eleven Cities and somewhat beyond. Written in a variety of dialects of Old Zolian, the literature is attributed to the pseudohistorical Ramoran magician Morogyad, though it is unclear how many of the various titles in the tradition - if any - were actually written by him. The books certainly tend to cover magical issues - metamorphosis, telekinesis and enchantment - that align with the feats Morogyad is recorded or said to have performed, and privilege the use of ritual gestures using the left hand, one of Morogyad's signal attributes.
Those who have studied the Esoterica of Morogyad with sufficient diligence have reported scattered but significant success replicating the techniques they describe, demonstrating that these are genuine books of magic. The main difficulty involved in the development of left-handed magic, therefore, is resolving the difficulties of provenance, reliability and corruption surrounding the Esoterica of Morogyad and isolating genuine examples of the tradition. This effort is one of the cornerstones of thaumatology in the Eleven Cities and somewhat beyond.

Provenance

Though information about precise titles is hard to come by the biographical tradition surrounding Morogyad contains a credible weight of opinion that he was an author who devoted considerable energy to recording his magical experiments and experiences. Much of his time during his sojourns in Tyros and Oluz appear to have been given over to compiling notes on his magic, apparently in the languages spoken in the city he was working in at the time. The chapter on Morogyad in Hephryan of Tyros's Worthies of Tyros describes him engaged in a very methodical process, exploring aspects of his magic before recording them precisely. The Ramoros Libram and Orrdelph's Lives of the Wizards describe a more artistic, impressionistic process in which Morogyad recorded his emotional responses to particularly moving or powerful magical experiences.
Morogyad is generally held to have conducted further such research during his semi-retirement in Oluz, though the biographical tradition is rather spottier on this point. Typhan of Ramoros asserts that this research took place in his History of Morogyad, but goes into no great detail on the point. The notion that this research took place rests chiefly on the fact that a substantial minority of the texts known or suspected to belong to the Esoterica are written in Oluzpek and can be found in the northern cities - a trend for which Morogyad's links to the southerly cities of Tyros and Ramoros would not account.
Ryl Rayan Kol and Selph Taldume propose an alternative explanation in their book Footsteps of Morogyad. They argue that Morogyad is in fact a conflation of two or more historical thaumaturges and that the Oluzian components of the Esoterica are in fact of an entirely separate authorship from those evidently written in Tyros. They explain the methodological similarities between the two branches of the Esoterica by suggesting that the Oluzian practitioner(s) was building on the ideas promulgated in the books evidently authored in Tyros.
Alongside the books generally regarded as having been written by Morogyad (or the 'pseudo-Morogyad' proposed by Kol and Taldume) the Esoterica of Morogyad includes a substantial number of books clearly written by other authors influenced by Morogyad's ideas. Some of these are probably genuine books of magic, while others are probably exercises in charlatanry or outright forgeries. Between these two poles are other books that provide commentaries and expansions of given ideas from the central Esoterica that individual thaumatologists may or may not find helpful. The precise utility of these books is an ultimately subjective issue, but one that occupies much of the thaumatological writing in the Eleven Cities.

Known works

The Tyros canon

The following works are written in a pre-Wesmodian form of the Insular dialect and are generally accepted as having been written by Morogyad himself.
* Phardys Horodyas Karanrad, the "Book of Miracles of the Hand," a lengthy treatise on the use of the fingers to produce magical effects.
* Zarph Mograyn is a book whose title is difficult to translate into any modern languages, and could mean "The Elucidation of Metals," "The Ennoblement of Metals" or any of several other renderings. It is an ornately-written treatise on the philosophical implications of metalworking as both a craft and an art.
* Gon Desryem, or "The Placement of Things" is a discussion of the concept of kinesis, reckoned as changes in the relative positioning of objects, and the ways in which that process can be effected.
* Horod pal Terenys or "Hands and Waters" discusses transfiguration in complex and lyrical terms, describing all things as being akin to water and capable of being shaped by the hands. Like Zaryph Mograyn it is written in a highly ornate style which leaves its contents very much open to interpretation.
The works in the Tyros canon are noted for the skill evident in their composition. They are widely held as historical masterpieces of the Insular dialect and many of the existing copies of the books are owned and studied by linguists and linguaphiles.

The Oluz canon

The Oluz canon is generally accepted to be written by Morogyad (or possibly pseudo-Morogyad) in a pre-Wesmodian form of Oluzpek.
* The Blue Metal is a lengthy discussion of a nameless metal Morogyad claims to be able to formulate from other metals, to which he attributes great properties. It contains no precise formula for the metal, though some readers clam to be able to deduce a great deal about it from the contents of the book.
* Upon Returning to the Ocean is a memoir of Morogyad's experiences living as various species fish, most of which are not discussed or alluded to in the existing biographical tradition. Scholars speculate that the book contains hints as to how he effected these transformations.
* The Ennoblement of Fluid is a treatise on alchemy, specifically its medical applications, considered fundamental to this discipline by modern practitioners - a reputation that keeps the cost of the book high despite the relative commonality of reliable cpoies.
* Sinister Mathematics is a book of rituals for courting good fortune which appears to function as something of a sequel to Phardys Horodras Karanrad but contains almost no direct cross-references to that book, and indeed seems to contradict it in some places.

Suspected and problematic works

Alongside the eight titles cited above there exists a secondary collection of esoterica which have been used to some effect by some scholars but are rejected by others as forgeries or ephemera.
* The Ramoros Fragments are purported to be fragments of the stone disc upon which Morogyad flew home to Ramoros after his tutelage with his father on Kobolon. They are embedded in a cliff-face to the north of Ramoros and are clearly engraved with symbols which some scholars maintain are of thaumaturgical importance.
* The Morogyad Libram is purported to be a catalogue Morogyad wrote of all his writings at a late stage in his career. It lists all eight titles of the established Esoterica as well as several other works, not all of which have come to light. The authorship of this book is widely disputed.
* Gesturing to My Father is a practical epitome of Phardys Horodras Karanrad and Sinister Mathematics, mentioned in The Morogyad Libram and itself written in the Ramoran dialect, supposedly in deference to Morogyad's home town. Its attribution to Morogyad is disputed and, into the bargain, it exists only in several large fragments.
* On Eternal Well-Being is a treatise about courting various forms of good fortune, including wealth and physical health, which draws extensively on the Tyros canon. It is considered problematic in that its oldest known copies are written in the Chogyan dialect, a language Morogyad is not otherwise known to have spoken.
* Opsen Passen Yellebroas, or I Want to be a Fish, is a long narrative poem written in the same form of the Insular Dialect as the Tyros canon and is attributed to Morogyad on the basis that several recurring poetic motifs found in Zaryph Mograyn and Horod pal Terenys. Some scholars claim that careful correlation of the poem to those texts can reveal important hints about Morogyad's habit of transmogrification.
* Articles of Alchemy is an Oluzpek book containing recipes for several potions and elixirs. It is mentioned in The Morogyad Libram but does not seem to follow any of the precepts laid down in Morogyad's other works of alchemy.

Availability
Those who own copies or translations of the Esoterica rarely sell them, trust others to make copies, or are willing to spend the time required to do so themselves. As such most known copies of the books are either in institutional libraries or very secure, often intergenerational private collections. Having said this, such copies are not terribly rare by the standards of thaumatological works, having clearly been subject to substantial programs of copying in the pre-Wesmodian era. The Commercial Guilds in particular, being descended from the clerics of Morogyad's divine father Zargyod, make no secret of their possession of a fine collection of the Esoterica, although this is scattered across their various customhouses and offices throughout the Cities. As would be expected of such an organization the Guilds are well aware of the value of these holdings and, although access can sometimes be gained, the price is typically very high.
The Alchemist's Guild of Dypholyos is widely believed to possess a complete set of the Esoterica along with a collection of incisive commentaries thereupon acquired over the course of the institution's lifetime. The organization has a long-standing reputation as the workplace of the most skilled alchemists in the Cities and it would be strange to think that these rumours are not at least substantially accurate.
Copies of various books in the Esoterica do also circulate among the reading public of the Cities. Many of these are translations, which is problematic in that Morogyad tended to favour a flowery, convoluted writing style, which is particularly evident the Tyros canon. This is difficult to replicate in translation and many scholars opine that an immensely gifted translator to maintain his shades of meaning in any other language. This is not to say that such translation is an inherently pointless exercise - some thaumatologists report having worked very effectively from such texts - but it tends to be inefficient and time-consuming, requiring guesswork that can be avoided by working from texts in the Insular Dialect. Given the mathematical and somatic precision required of these texts, these are important considerations.
Since the Esoterica is mostly written in extinct dialects, the copies of the books that can be found tend to be fairly old; few modern scribes possess the combination of skills and patience to manufacture new copies in the original languages. Since the collapse of the cults of Zargyod and Morogyad during the Wesmodian Reformation led to a decline in popular interest in such works, furthermore, many copies of the books not held by institutions fell into states of sustained neglect, often mouldering in inappropriate conditions for a century or more. As a result many of them are fragile and some have disintegrated into mere fragments. Most thaumatologists seek whatever they can get, however, and substantial prices have been paid to book dealers for even a handful of pages of a text from the Esoterica.
Given that value, forgeries inevitably circulate; a large number, it seems, originate from Morogyad's home town of Ramoros. In the early fourth century AWR in particular a collection of works latterly known as "The Ramoros Canon" began to circulate in various cities, the work of an industrious scribe known as Yalten Myqolt, who claimed to be copying from a trove of manuscripts Morogyad sent home to his mother for safekeeping. These works were widely debated and experimented with before Elpalozian thaumatologist Symoth Sharm isolated linguistic evidence proving the books must have been substantially post-Wesmodian and possibly even contemporary. Myqolt himself disappeared in the resulting controversy and was never seen again but, a few subtle flaws notwithstanding, his work is impressive enough to convince unwarily eager scholars of the Esoterica. There are even those who have taken to employing his ideas as commentaries on the actual Esoterica, sometimes to oddly good effect. Other forgers and forgeries also exist, however, and constitute something of a thorn in the side of the large thaumatological tradition surrounding Morogyad.