Ryl Rayan Kol

Ryl Rayan Kol (180-245AWR) was a Halumayan mariner and man of letters of note to thaumatologists as a prominent member of the Lunar Society of Pholyos. In that capacity Kol made important breakthroughs in the post-Wesmodian study of the cult of Ynglyas, some of which have only come fully to light after his death. He also collaborated with his colleagues on landmark scholarship about other gods and thaumaturges including Morogyad.

Biographical details

Ryl Rayan Kol was born in 180 AWR, the son of a low-level functionary in the Halumayan Commercial Guilds and a concubine he later asserted was an immigrant from Pholyos. Although illegitimate, Kol was indulged as a child and given an excellent education, in which he discovered an aptitude for languages. An adventurous streak, however, led to him stowing away on a merchantman at 17 and living for several years as a scapegrace, visiting most of the Eleven Cities and establishing contacts in Elpaloz, Dyqamay and Pholyos. This network made him an invaluable crew member for many ships and he was able to command high wages and amass considerable personal wealth, which he kept at the Commercial Guilds in Pholyos. By the age of 28 he was able to retire from active sailing and spend the second half of his life living in Pholyos and making his living as a broker and consultant. The Commercial Guilds made numerous attempts to recruit him as a full-time member, though he always politely declined.
It was during this period that Kol became closely associated with the Lunar Society, a group he claims to have been attracted to due to their association with the Star Tower, a building which he maintained left a deep and abiding aesthetic impression upon him when he first saw it at age 19. He developed close personal friendships with both Syaph Zelmuna and Holyam Taldume, and later with Taldume's daughter Selph Taldume. Those who study his works have often speculated on a romantic relationship between Kol and the younger Taldume, though if this was the case, it left none of the biographical traces it might have been expected to do. Kol's liiasons with the members of the Lunar Society were hugely productive but appear to have been entirely platonic.
Kol in fact never married. This has led to a competing school of thought suggesting he may have been homosexual; he is known to have retained uniformly male bodyguards in his house for a number of years and to have developed close working relationships with them. Some observe that, after the assassination of Holyam Taldume, this would be an understandable precaution, noting that these guards were also tasked with the safety of Taldume's adolescent daughter. Others note that Kol employed such bodyguards before the Taldume murder. Others still query how scholarly concern with the sexual orientation of a thaumatologist does justice to his work or advances his discipline.
Kol is known to have undertaken field work for his research, travelling to the Insular cities to investigate the history of alchemy there (he is known to have been granted access to the library of the Alchemist's Guild of Dypholyos, though only for a single day) while Selph Taldume visited Ramoros to study the subject there. This lends a degree of credibility to his work and marks him as one of the more important, as well as intellectually fecund, members of the Lunar Society.
Kol died of an apoplectic seizure in 245 AWR while boarding a ship to take him across the harbour of Pholyos to visit the Star Tower. Poetic tradition has it that after collapsing he was able to raise himself on his elbow to look at the tower and mumble a few words - unrecorded - before losing consciousness forever. He was interred in the Pholyos licyard with due ceremony by the local Brotherhood of Rooks, a group with whom he had previously had no known dealings.

Thaumatological significance

Kol was one of the most productive and important members of the Lunar Society, though also one of the less directed. Apparently approaching thaumatology as an ennobling hobby rather than a cause, Kol was something of a magpie of mystical knowledge, moving between projects as the mood struck him and leaving substantial bodies of unfinished and unpublished work. The precise whereabouts of those manuscripts are an interesting question as Kol's published work is renowned for its admirable combination of eloquenct, breadth of vision and specificity of detail. Given the promising titles of some of the unpublished work alluded to in some of the known Letters of the Lunar Society, the rediscovery of these essays could be significant advances in the study of magic in the Eleven Cities.

Established works

Five of Kol's books exist in their entirety:
* Mathematics and Sigils is a lengthy linking the known details of the practices of the pre-Wesmodian cult of Ynglyas with the various surviving codices of Ynglyan lore. Despite its length and complexity it is considered required reading for any scholar of that corpus of literature.
* Antique Codices is among the more comprehensive known manifests of books written in the Ynglyan Codes. Kol is known to have owned several of these books and to have examined larger collections owned by his colleagues in the Lunar Society.
* Degrees of Weather is an esoteric and at times self-indulgent tome offering a convoluted but credible theory as to how the priests of Yngylas may have been working on a method for manipulating - and possibly weaponising - the weather.
* Shadows of the Southern Cities is widely misinterpreted as a sincere history of the Shadow People in the cities of Pholyos, Chogyos and Loros. Kol in fact takes a rather non-committal approach to the question of whether the Shadow People exist; the book is a soberly open-minded meditation on how such an organisation might have worked.
* Written in collaboration with Selph Taldume, Footsteps of Morogyad advances the frankly ambitious notion that Morogyad was not a real person at all, but rather a composite character composed from reports of several different historical alchemists.

Lost works

The Letters of the Lunar Society reveal that Kol was well advanced on a number of other research projects, with apparent intention of publishing them as books:
* Shortly after the publication of Antique Codices Kol makes reference to having embarked upon a similar volume of sea shanties, which he claimed would "Do for Zargyod what my previous book did for Ynglyas. He refers to this work again over a year later, indicating it occupied him for some time, though no publication is known to have resulted from it.
* In another letter Kol claims to have been "halfway done" with a book entitled The Key to the Heavens, which would have functioned as a concordance of all the Lunar Society's work on the cult of Ynglyas. Nothing is known of what became of this work.
* Further letters make several references to research into the links between the Pholyan cults of Zargyod and Ajqyod. This extended to a planned trip to Chogyos to examine the former temples of the two gods there, though it is not known if Kol actually undertook this trip.
* Kol is also known to have published a book entitled Webs of Desire, a study of the pre-Wesmodian cult of Maryas in Pholyos. No copies are known to survive, and Kol and the other members of the Lunar Society discuss it very guardedly in their letters, for reasons not yet adequately explained.