1) I haven't ever seen anything about procing an OT hammer in sky, so can't comment on that.
2) I've heard of a bunch of people complain its hard to click the pads, but I've never once had an issue with it. Generally when someone can't click the pad I assume they are just ignorant to how keys work and expect to have a key ring or something.
3) this is tough...
http://www.angelfire.com/freak/eqjon...1/posguide.pdf
march, 2001, says PoS spawns from the last wandering azz to die...however it also says you get 24 key pieces here, which includes 4 from PoS, so that leaves 20 keys from the trash, which implies that there are likely 10 trash mobs dropping 2 keys each (there is no mention here of how many trash mobs there are). it also says that corpses rot in 6 minutes, when on p99 sub 55 corpses rot in 7min 40sec.
http://web.archive.org/web/200110291...r/EQ/skyguide/
nov, 2001, says PoS spawns from the only static azz who hits for 220 max, also says PoS spawns away from the port up, not where you kill the PH. no mention of number of keys
http://www.angelfire.com/freak/eqjon...laneofsky1.htm
late 2001 (see below), says there are 8 pathing azz and 1 static, each dropping 1-3 key pieces
http://mysite.verizon.net/drexxell/eq/planeofsky.html
2006, but a very complete guide. says 1-3 keys from the 9 trash, doesn't mention any being static. says that boss spawns from the last one killed, but that it used to be (or he heard rumors) that it was from the ph.
my best guess here is it went like this: started out as the static azz was the ph, but many people didn't notice one was static and it was easy to lose the PH in the shit show that was trying to cc that island. eventually someone complained about it, and in the carebare WoW style attitude, they changed it so that it wasn't possible to spawn sirran or the boss with azzeracks in camp still and wipe yourself, forcing the last azz to spawn the boss. i can't explain why the keys would go from 3 to 1-3, but maybe 1-3 was just classic and it was misreported in the one guide.
4) Guides I've read do talk about hailing to pull out gorg, but on p99 if he spam hails he just walks away.
5) never heard of this, but even if they path I can't imagine things ever getting out of control, the island is so big to start with. looking at it again drexxel does list them as roving mobs (2006). the march 2001 guide implies the griff/peg island is too small to fight on (even though its the largest island in the zone) which supports what you say, but this guide also makes no sense with the number of keys you get from that island (says 24 total, including 4 from the boss, and there are 6 trash mobs plus their splits (4 splits per trash) to kill, it claims each trash/split drops keys, but the math just isn't there). but the nov 2001 guide says to just go up and pull singles, easy as pie.
all in all, sky is a really hard zone to get info on. there were definately changes to the zone over time, and there is also just a lot of bad data out there. people generally didn't acurately time stuff like sirran's depop time, etc. I have found a few good guides, but they all disagree on trivial and non trivial points. the guides i posted are the best i've ever seen, and i've read them each a few times. there is so much from each guide that can be proven to be 100% dead wrong, that it makes it really hard to be confident in the unknown things the guides claim to be true.
edit: looks like the undated guide is late 2001 as per
http://web.archive.org/web/200112171...rdhong/sky.htm