The Ramoros Libram

The Ramoros Libram is an anonymous, fragmentary set of books that purport to record the legendary origins and early, highly magical history of the city of Ramoros. Although problematic in a number of respects the book has become accepted as one of the few records of pre-Wesmodian affairs in the city, and its focus on magical dealings make it of abiding interest to thaumatologists.

Contents

The preamble to The Ramoros Libram states that the history of the city will require sixteen books to tell. Eleven of those books currently exist - books 3-4, 7-8 and 13 having evidently been lost to time.
Volume 1 contains the lengthy preamble and the canonical tale of the birth of Erqyos from the belly of a seasnake who swallowed a peach stone.
Volume 2 relates the stories of the sons of Erqyos.
Volume 5-6 tell of the Siege of Ramoros by the Dead.
Volume 9 tells the story of Sapyanan and the Shadows.
Volume 10-11 relate relationships between Ramoros and the Chogyan Hegemony, peculiarly told mostly from the point of view of the god Dahan.
Volume 12 is an in-depth biography of the pseudo-historical wizard Morogyad.
Volumes 14-15 relate the Northern Strait Conspiracy in exhaustive detail. The discussion clearly began in the missing thirteenth book, however, making the canonical literary discussion of the event incomplete.
Volume 16 is an exhaustive description of the harbour district of Ramoros during the council of Kaspern Taragyos, with an interesting focus on the several shrines to the gods Maryas and Zargyod that existed in the area.

Commentary

Although the Libram never explicitly identifies itself as a book of magic, it would be hard to imagine a book better suited for piquing the interest of thaumatologists. In addition to an extensive biography of one of the central figures in the alchemy of the eleven cities, the book features extensive discussion of the mythical origins of the city and lengthy essays on matters of interest to those studying the pre-Wesmodian cults of Dahan, Hayan, Maryas and Zargyod. As such the book is frequently consulted by those looking into the history of magic as well as being a rare and crucial source of information on some of the most colourful and frightening incidents in pre-Wesmodian history.
The awkward point about this is that the book is notorious for its lack of provenance. Although clearly pre-Wesmodian in manufacture - a point discernible in light of the language used - nothing is known of the book's author, manufacture or intent. The parts of the book dealing with history are written in a polite, erudite style demonstrating a sincere attempt at honest history but they describe no sources or empirical methodology, often coming across as more of an attempt at dramatic prose. The magpie-like meandering between topics and between hard history supported by other unrelated sources and pseudo-history is also peculiar and may be taken as a point against the text's authority. The missing volumes similarly do not help matters. There are no noteworthy theories about where the 'rest' of this book may have gone and, with the exception of volume thirteen, no indication of what they might have contained. All of this combines to put a significant question mark over the reliability of this text.
All this being said, however, the Libram his hard for researchers on the history of the southern cities to overlook. It contains important information about history and is of especial interest to researchers on magic.

Availability

The original pre-Wesmodian copy is owned by the Ramoran branch of the Commercial Guilds. Although they guard this particular copy oddly jealously, copies of individual volumes in a variety of languages can be found in libraries in various of the Eleven Cities. Well-resourced researchers may even be able to afford to commission their own copies from some of the better-equipped scribes in the southern cities.