Baghar Testaments

The Baghar Testaments are the holy works of the church of the orcish god of magic, Gul Spell-Speaker. Arcane and difficult to study, they require understanding of the traditions of Orcish Shamanism to parse. They lay out no moral edicts, and are said to be the result of Gul's dealings with outsiders of all kinds, for good or ill. They are perhaps the seminal work on the arcane elements of orcish shamanism and contain alchemical formulae beyond what even some masters of Ars Magica are capable of producing.

Named for the city of Baghar, in which they were originally found, well after Gul's apparent death and ascendency to the divine, the Baghar Testaments are of questionable authenticity. The work, if scribed exactingly from the original, comprises 42 volumes of arcane formulae, essays, commentaries on the teachings of the Fire-Keeper, observations of various outsiders and aberrations, communicated findings supposedly from the Confederacy of Sages, astrological and astronomical observations, and other trivia.

There is no rhyme or reason to the order in which material is presented in these 42 volumes, and in many cases the same observation exists in multiple volumes or writings on a given topic can be found in all 42, each a separate piece of a collective whole. It is believed that these books were originally Gul's working notes, and that he either was never able to curate them, or else never intended to. They are written in orc pictograms as much as possible though some passages are written in various elemental scripts. In order to fully consume all 42 volumes, you would require fluency in orcish, ignan, aquan, celestial, terran, and infernal. Why the language of the wind is not represented in the writing is unclear.