Gesturing to My Father

Gesturing to My Father is a fragmentary book of magic speculatively attributed to the pseudohistorical wizard Morogyad. It is written in the Ramoran Dialect and appears to be a practicum drawn from some of Morogyad's more reliably-attributed books on the practice of achieving magical effects via physical gestures, specifically those of the left hand, and may thus be an incisive research aid for those attempting to develop magical techniques. The book's authenticity is disputed, however, as it exists only in three separate fragments owned by three different institutions in three different cities, making the study and correlation of its contents very difficult.

Content

Even if they are not written by Morogyad, the three gobbets that exist of this book are obviously composed with clear reference to his other works. At times the prose actually directly refers to Phardys Horodyas Karanrad while one of the gobbets contains three diagrams of a consistent style to those found in Sinister Mathematics. Even if the author of this book is not Morogyad, he or she is clearly working in the 'Morogyad tradition.'
The first and largest gobbet consists of a substantial philosophical introduction in which Morogyad discusses the consequences of being the son of a god, the most important of which is the degree of control one can exercise over one's fortunes 'with one's own person.' He may, he said, gesture to his father in order to influence what is going on around him. The gobbet continues with a first-hand discussion of his encounter with Pholdons, describing his ability to threaten the ogre, then drag him to the bottom of the river and drown him, then escape by turning himself into an octopus.
The second surviving section is a defective prose passage of several pages in which the author makes a number of references to Phardys Horodyas Karanrad, specifically describing how the finger associated with transmutation must be curled around that responsible for liquid in order to produce relevant effects, while that responsible for kinesis must be placed firmly against that associated with the solid state in order to do the same. The Discus of Morogyad is discussed in this context, being activated by the fingers associated with kinesis and the solid state.
The third and shortest gobbet is a set of four diagrams of a very similar sort to those contained in Sinister Mathematics. The arcs and ovular figures contained in these diagrams are of the same type, although the annotated points indicated on them use an entirely different notation to those in the better-attested book. The third and fourth of these diagrams are each accompanied by a quartet of smaller, contingent diagrams, though how these smaller figures relate to the larger is not made clear in the surviving material.

Commentary

Examination of the three separate fragments of Gesturing to My Father will quickly demonstrate that they are components of the same original manuscript. The penmanship in all three displays various identical features, demonstrating that they were written by the same scribe, using the same ink on pages cut to a uniform size. The exact age of the book is difficult to assess, and no convincing theories have been advanced as to why the book was mutilated or how the three sections came to be carefully preserved in three different libraries in three widely-scattered cities. Precisely what the book is supposed to be is not clear either; the polemic introduction is vague on the point, and the generally-agreed title is inferred primarily from a recurring phrase used in the first two gobbets.
The issue of authorship naturally arises. The vagueness of the introduction has actually been used to attribute the book to Morogyad, on the grounds that the Tyros canon of the Esoterica is often similarly vague; it may be that the wizard's various talents did not include concise or effective prose composition. The use of first-person pronouns throughout is another point in its favour, although notably the text never mentions Morogyad's purported father, Zargyod, by name. The argument against this is that the writing of the Oluz canon is fairly precise, whereas this one, written as a refinement and application of the ideas in that corpus, displays no such skill. As such, some suggest, the book was probably written by someone else. In their book Footsteps of Morogyad Pholyan thaumatologists Ryl Rayan Kol and Selph Taldume used this controversy as evidence for their contention that the Esoterica of Morogyad was in fact composed by a series of at best loosely-associated thaumaturges, extrapolating the broader point - frankly controversial in itself - that Morgyad himself did not exist.
Whatever the authorship of the book, it is of abiding interest to scholars of the Morogyad tradition and those few who have had a chance to examine it claim to provides a great deal of material for interpretation and experimentation.

Availability

No part of Gesturing to My Father has been copied by any modern scribe or circulated in the modern book trade; the only copies known to exist are the original pre-Wesmodian fragments, which are, frustratingly for scholars, kept in three separate libraries in three separate cities.
The first gobbet is owned by the Commercial Guilds, specifically Chogyos Customhouse, who are believed to have acquired it at ruinous expense from their counterparts in Oluz. It can be consulted, by appointment, for a hefty fee.
The second gobbet is owned by the Alchemist's Guild of Dypholyos who, as is their wont, do not allow it to be viewed by outsiders. Rumours persist that they can have their minds changed by appropriately large sums of money, though even broaching this subject is an awkward business.
The final gobbet is owned by the Andymalon chapter of the Brotherhood of Rooks, who allow supervised access to it for free, but only after the prospective scholar has submitted to a lengthy process of liaison and interview in which they convince the members of the Brotherhood that their motives are honest and productive of the public good. This process typically takes multiple moons.