Jaled Dar and the Field of Bone

A grassland in the heart of an empire

The Field of Bone was not always a wasteland. It was once lush, fertile grassland in the heart of the Sebilisian Empire of the iksar. Now a great crater scars its centre, left by a cataclysmic clash of magic. Old ruins of a once grand city crack and crumble in the heat. The bones of every race on Kunark lie among the sparse plants, the remnant of the war the iksar fought on this open plain when their empire was at its height.

Today the field sits in the northeast of Kunark. The Swamp of No Hope lies to the south, thick forest to the east and west, and cliffs on its northern edge drop to the coast of Timorous Deep. Undead wander among the bones.

The eldest of the Ring

Jaled Dar was the eldest and most powerful dragon of the Ring of Scale. When the dragons split over free will, he led those who left the Claws of Veeshan and settled on Kunark, Trakanon among them. In the game his shade remembers Veeshan’s Peak as his old domain.

The Ring is remembered as wanting to dominate the iksar, not to destroy them, and Jaled Dar wanted that dominance asserted. He was not the dragon who started the war, though.

The squall that started a war

Under Rile Sathir, son of Venril Sathir, the iksar left the dragon lands alone. But their growing empire was an obvious threat, and the dragon lords met as the Ring of Scale to decide what to do. Trakanon, the poison dragon, urged swift intervention on behalf of all races. The Ring voted him down and chose to act only indirectly.

Trakanon and several younger dragons acted anyway. They conjured a squall at sea that sank Rile’s warship with the king aboard. That single blow began a war between dragonkind and the iksar’s airborne army that lasted almost half a century.

Ganak, the last emperor

Rile’s son Atrebe took the throne and later died in one of his own necromantic experiments. General Ganak then moved fast, assassinating his brothers and taking the throne of Sebilis as emperor. He drew much of his power from Cazic-Thule. After two generations of war he wanted vengeance for his bloodline and for the iksar legions the dragons had killed.

His own camp was divided. Warmaster Kurn, who commanded the legions from a watchtower stronghold outside the city, stayed loyal but thought Ganak not aggressive enough, and Ganak did not trust him. The rift made the dragons’ war easier than they had expected. Jaled Dar could not explain why the resistance was so weak, so he stayed cautious.

The duel in the sky

The dragons chose the open plain for their attack on the iksar. The war ended inconclusively in the air above it. Ganak rode his sokokar mount against Jaled Dar, and the two were “mutually incinerated by magic and fire.” The blast that killed them both carved the sunken crater in the middle of the field. The dragon’s bones are said to lie in those ruins still.

Before they withdrew, the dragons destroyed Ganak’s palace in Kaesora and every hatchling inside it, ending the royal line. The duel had no clear winner, but it finished the dynasty that began with Venril Sathir.

The shade in the Necropolis

Jaled Dar has no rest. In the Dragon Necropolis on Velious his shade waits in a sealed lair, wailing so constantly that the dragon Zlandicar complains it scares other dragons away. Zlandicar also claims to have feasted on Jaled Dar’s remains long ago, which sits awkwardly beside the bones in the Field of Bone. The game never explains how the two fit.

The shade wants “my revenge, and my rest,” and has changed its mind about the past. It calls Kerafyrm, the Sleeper, “the best of us” and says imprisoning him was a terrible mistake born of jealousy. Adventurers who bring it a talisman from one of the dragons who sealed the tomb get the key to the Sleeper’s Tomb.

Time and the Field of Scale

The war came back with Seeds of Destruction in 2008. A rift in the Plane of Time opened onto the Field of Scale, the battlefield as it was during the war. There the forces of Discord sent an enchanter to tempt Ganak with a dragonbane shield and to teach Kurn’s necromancers draconic sacrifices that enchant weapons against dragons, hoping to turn the iksar into shock troops for their own invasion. Adventurers had to repair that corruption of time before it tipped the war against the Ring.

Legacy

Jaled Dar’s death shaped three continents. It ended the iksar emperors, left Kunark a starting zone full of the old war’s bones, and left a ghost on Velious whose regret opened the way to the Sleeper. Few EverQuest figures can be followed so closely, from the plain where he died to the tomb where he still asks for help.

Read it alongside the Ring of Scale, Trakanon, the rise of the iksar, Venril Sathir and Kerafyrm.