The Blue Trident

In the religious tradition of the Eleven Cities, the Blue Trident is a weapon forged by the pseudo-historical wizard Morogyad preparatory to his battle with the serpent Kotqophay.

Mythology

Morogyad arrived in the city of Oluz to find it harried by the serpent Kotqophay. He bargained with King Kepheran to rid the city of the menace in exchange for ongoing patronage (the precise terms of this agreement vary between the tellings).
Taking the threat of the monster seriously Morogyad communed with his uncle Ajqyod and received from him the means to create a special white fire which he could use to smelt a brass of surpassing purity and beauty. He then treated that metal with processes of his own devising which turned the metal a beautiful sky-blue colour and forged it into a robust barbed trident. Armed with this weapon Morogyad jumped into the sea to confront the monster and killed it with a frenzied stabbing attack. As Kotqophay died he sank, and the barbs in the trident caught in his flesh; the weight of the sinking monster jerked the trident from Morogyad's hands and carried it into the depths of the ocean, beyond the capacity of humanity to recover.

Description

Because the Trident has not been seen since the purported battle with Kotqophay - the precise historicity of which has been questioned - it is not clear exactly what it looked or looks like. Artistic depictions - common in Oluz and Halumay - show a weapon of roughly human scale, with a robust shaft and large, curved barbs on its points. These depictions uniformly show the weapon as being exclusively blue, suggesting that it was composed entirely of whatever metal it was made of.
Literary discussion of the Trident diverges sharply on its appearance. Typhan of Ramoros avers in his History of Morogyad that the weapon was smooth and polished, catching light in long uninterrupted reflections along its haft. The Ramoros Librram, by contrast, describes it as being speckled with small pits, craters and ridges, added to the design by Morogyad to aggravate Kotqophay's injuries and pain as the creature was stabbed. These two descriptions are obviously irreconcilable, but with the weapon having been lost for centuries it is hard to say which is accurate. Northern artistic depictions tend to side with Typhan, who is generally regarded as the more reliable biographer, though again, this is just speculation.

Commentary

The Blue Trident is one of the few elements that distinguishes the story of Morogyad's battle with Kotqophay from that of his father Zargyod's battle with the serpent Qotrophay. This was used by biographers Ryl Ryan Kol and Selph Taldume to query whether the battle with Kotqophay was, in fact, fought by Morogyad at all. They observe that although Morogyad had a long history of wondrous metal-working, the Blue Trident was the only instance in his career of him using that skill to create a weapon, or of needing a weapon, or of calling on the aid of Ajqyod, a figure with whom he has no other known connections. They therefore theorise that the battle was fought by some other thaumaturge, possibly someone versed in Morogyad's metal-working techniques, or that the story is a specifically Oluzian version of the earlier battle between Zargyod and Qotrophay (the similarities between the names of the two serpents back up this possibility). The first theory allows that the Trident existed; the second suggests it did not.