Footsteps of Morogyad

Footsteps of Morogyad is a book of thaumatological research co-authored by Selph Taldume and Ryl Rayan Kol in their shared capacity as members of the Lunar Society of Pholyos. The book presents an audacious but convincing argument that the famed demigod and thaumaturge Morogyad, rather than being a single person, was actually a composite character who combined elements of two to three pre-Wesmodian alchemists working in the context of the contemporary sea-borne cult of the god Zargyod.

Content

The book opens with the observation that Morogyad evinces three entirely separate personalities in the three cities he is most associated with. In Ramoros his primary concern is for the wellbeing of his mother, yet no further mention of her is made in his subsequent career in Tyros, where he abandons his family when they become an impediment to his research. In Tyros, furthermore, he conducts his work essentially pro bono, whereas on arrival in Oluz he demands payment for his services at a time of municipal crisis. This disparity may be explained by shifting personal priorities over the course of Morogyad's life, the authors allow. Given the steady increase in his reported magical power, owever, and the difficulty of the research that would require, it seems more likely that he was always primarily dedicated to his craft. The logical explanation, the introduction concludes, is that the modern understanding of the career of Morogyad arose from a post-Wesmodian conflation of the exploits of three different wizards.
The Ramoran Morogyad, Taldume and Kol argue, was probably the 'original,' being the demigod springing organically from the pre-Wesmodian religious tradition of the city. They point to the antiquity of the worship of Zargyod in Ramoros as evidence for this, as well as the fact that his story tends to follow the pattern of other demigods very closely before hiving off into entirely different concerns in the other cities. The Tyrosian Morogyad, they observe, seems to be much more of a thaumatologist, actively researching and practising skills that a man capable of transforming himself into an octopus would probably be able to master very quickly. Contemporary reports of his activities, such as those of Hephryan of Tyros, write him up as an inspired credit to his adopted community rather than a numinous figure, making scant reference, in some cases none at all, to his supposed divine ancestry. The Morogyad known in Oluz is charcterised as a progression from this, a man making cultural capital out of his expertise. Taldume and Kol observe that the Tyrosian and Oluzian perceptions of Morogyad seem almost to be disciples of the Ramoran original rather than portraits of the same person at later stages in his career.
Their explanation is that the later versions of Morogyad were, in fact, disciples of the Ramoran original. Their argument for this is rooted in observations of the differences in the worship of Morogyad's purported father, Zargyod, in various cities. Kol and Taldume were the first to observe that Zargyod was known primarily as a god of fortune in the southern cities, as a god of metalworking in the insular cities, and as a god of the sea in the north. This is the earliest known post-Wesmodian observation of the mutlifaceted nature of Zargyod's pre-Wesmodian worship.
From this observation the authors note that early literary depictions of Zargyod seldom refer to his famed capacity as a god of commerce or fortune. In The Spring of Many Waters, for example, he is very much a god of the sea. Given the importance of sea trade throughout the history of the Eleven Cities, however the sea would become quickly with the concept of fortune and, since money took metallic form, with metals. Their argument, therefore, is that the modern perception of Zargyod as the god of luck and commerce in fact refers only to the latter stages of the pre-Wesmodian worship of a god of the sea. They pause here to observe that they have investigated the notion that this sea god subsumed or absorbed the identity of local gods of metal or luck in other cities, and found it to be without merit. Indeed, they observe, this would make little sense given that the southern cities Jalens of the South may have visited are those where Zargyod was worshipped in ways furthest removed from his original sea-focused nature. Rather, the reverse seems to be true; the different regional (which is to say, urban) cults of Zargyod evolved in different directions in line with local conditions. These regional cults were linked by the cult of Zargyod among the Sailors on the Sea of Jars, which would have emerged organically around a sea deity.
No special conditions would have been required for the story of Zargyod's son to have emerged in Ramoros, a city as dependent on sea trade as any other. Kol and Taldume belabour the point that they have no particularly strong opinions about whether or not this original Morogyad was, in fact, a demigod and are willing to take the story of his birth and early career protecting his mother entirely at face value. It would make sense, furthermore, for such a figure to end his career as a monster-slaying trickster by rejoining his defored twin brother in the sea. As news of the son of Zargyod reached other cities, however, he would be received in terms of the concepts with which Zargyod was most closely associated in the local community, which in Tyros has always been metallurgy and craftsmanship. It would therefore make perfect sense for a local metallurgist or alchemist to begin haunting the waterfront asking for stories of Morogyad and piecing together practicums on these topics. In the confusion of unsystematic, pre-Wesmodian historiography, it is entirely possible that this person may have come to be equated with Morogyad. The story of Morogyad swimming to Tyros was, Kol and Taldume suggest, an explanation for his supposed presence in the city cooked up by biographers long after the matter had passed into folk memory. The authors admit they heve no hard evidence for the theory but observe that it makes more sense than a demigod, a figure of such gnosis he could transform himself into an octopus with a wave of his hand, 'researching' and 'experimenting' rather like a modern thaumatologist.
The phase of Morogyad's career in Oluz can, Taldume and Kol argue, be explained in similar terms, as the Oluzian picture of Morogyad seems to have been an altogeter more choleric and demanding character than either the Ramoran or Tyrosian iterations of the supposed historical personage. He also arrived in Oluz travelling on the Discus of Morogyad, but this artefact (which neither author ever saw, they admit) is made of a coloured metal rather than the stone pieces which famously compose The Ramoros Fragments (which are described here in some detail). The shift from a natural substance to an artificial one, they state, bespeaks an artefact born of technique rather than gnosis, and a researcher rather than a demigod. The authors also observe that the Oluzian Morogyad came out of The Empty Quarter, where a skilled thaumatologist might well be researching. They therefore propose that this person was another thaumatologist, possibly of Tyrosian origin, who appeared in Oluz in order to monestise his skills.
While agreeing wholeheartedly with the historical fact of Morogyad the demigod, therefore, Taldume and Kol argue that much of the tradition around him stems from various, probably unrelated attempts to combine the gesture-based gnostic techniques with local ideas about the purview of his divine father into an esoteric tradition. This, they argue, is clear evidence for a pre-Wesmodian tradition of thaumatology which has potentially far-reaching consequences for the study of the religious tradition, by both thaumatologists and general researchers.

Commentary

Footsteps of Morogyad is a controversial text among the modern thaumatological community. Many scholars, particularly those actively involved in alchemy and the study of the Esoterica of Morogyad, regard it as an attack on the validity of their work, since it seems to severely downgrade the gnosis of their texts by arguing that they are not the work of a demigod but rather his dicciples. As such they reject the book firmly. Others, including some with similar research interests, argue the contrary, suggesting that Kol and Taldume have provided a valuable insight into the history of their sub-discipline. They argue that re-interpretation of the Esoterica as a set of commentaries on Morogyad by enthused disciples, rather than the work of the man himself, makes it possible to relate the contents of those books to those by other alchemists, both pre- and post-Wesmodian. This effect extends to making the Esoterica more 'compatible' with other areas of magic such as those more typically related to the cult of Ynglyas. Those who see the book as valuable have been in the ascendency for some years, though there are others who see these ideas as diluting the effectiveness of Morogyad's work as well as the hisotrical significance of its author. Kol and Taldume's book is notably unpopular in the northern cities.
The book is also seen as a valuable contribution to the study of the ship-borne cult of Zargyod, and the establishment of Morogyad as an intercessory figure therein. Much of the study of the magical signifciance of sea shanties and other seagoing traditions eventually refers back to this book. There is also psuh-back within that field, however, as it substantially muddies the waters in terms of interpreting the artefacts this cult left behind.

Availability

Although Kol and Taldume state on two occasions in the text that they expect difficulty disseminating the book due to likely resistance from the Commercial Guilds, there is no historical evidence that any such problems emerged. What really limits the availability of the book in the contemporary era is the tiny number of copies produced at the time of its publication; given the inevitable march of attrition, it has been estimated that no more than a dozen survive. One of these is owned by the Alchemist's Guild of Dypholyos. Yalten Myqolt, the fraudulent author of The Ramoros Canon, appears to have owned a copy; the contents of his work reveal interestingly mixed signals about whether he subscribed to the author's idiosyncratic but intriguing take on this central issue in modern alchemy.
The book is sought-after by scribes, who know they could charge high prices for copies. The office of such scribes obviously quickly becomes a target for thieves, however, and the very finite number of such copies change hands and move about frequently, with violence to the volumes contributing to the ongoing attrition rate. The book is therefore one of the rarest and most hard to obtain of post-Wesmodian thaumatological texts.