Lore · Gods of the Pantheon
The Rathe, Council of Earth
Every time you ran through the Rathe Mountains to Lake Rathetear, you were crossing a grave. The mountains rose where one of the gods of earth was killed.
A god in many bodies
The Rathe are not one god but a council. The almanac describes the Plane of Earth as a single living thing of soil and plants, with the Rathe Council as an extension of the plane itself. Cut one councilor down and another soon rises to take its place. The plane’s creatures, mostly earth elementals and thinking plants, are part of it too, and the planes of Growth and Underfoot draw their power from it.
The Maps of Myrist add the scenery: jungles, caverns, muddy lakes and burrows, jewels formed by the earth’s own power, and temples far too large for any mortal to have built.
Sources: Library of Erudin: First Almanac of EverQuest · Library of Erudin: Plane of Earth
The first invasion
In the Elder Age, an ogre named Murdunk led the first Rallosian army into the Plane of Earth. Rallos Zek’s son Eriak had urged him on, and Murdunk wanted to prove he was fit to lead the Warlord’s forces. Many guardians of earth died, and so did many of Murdunk’s soldiers, but the Rathe could not stay dead. Every slain councilor was replaced, and the surviving invaders were hurled out of the plane by its wards.
Sources: EverQuest.com: Seeds of Destruction, Unfolding the Lore Part 5 (2008)
The death that stuck
Rallos Zek sent a second, larger army under the tacticians Tallon and Vallon, with the scarred Murdunk along for what he knew. This time they captured the Rathe Council and dragged its members to Norrath, where one of them was executed. On Norrath, that death was permanent. Where the councilor fell, the Rathe Mountains rose and Lake Rathetear formed.
The reborn Rathe took their revenge on the army’s leaders, and Murdunk was killed.
Sources: EverQuest.com: Seeds of Destruction, Unfolding the Lore Part 5 (2008)
The curse
To make sure no one tried again, the Rathe, helped by several other gods, cursed every creature of Zek. The curse froze the giants’ green homeland into what is now Everfrost and left Zek’s children lesser in mind and body. Rallos Zek pulled Tallon and Vallon to safety in his own plane. He then tore the essence of war out of Eriak, whom he blamed for not warning him about the wards, and gave the pieces to Tallon and Vallon. Eriak was sent to forge weapons in the depths of Drunder, and the Warlord still bears the wards’ scars under his armour.
Sources: EverQuest.com: Seeds of Destruction, Unfolding the Lore Part 5 (2008)
Their servants
Some of Murdunk’s ogres never left. Planar scholars say the vegorogs, hulking ogre-shaped things made of rotting plants, moss and fungus, are those soldiers, twisted by the Rathe into servants with hearts of stone.
Sources: Library of Erudin: Plane of Earth
Where the sources disagree
- The First Almanac says the Rathe Council has twelve members; the 2008 Seeds of Destruction lore calls it the Council of Thirteen and speaks of mourning the thirteenth. One reading is that twelve remain after the execution, but no source we found says so outright.
Keep reading
Retold in our own words from the sources linked under each chapter; short quotes are marked and sourced. The illustration is an original AI-generated painting made for this page alone, not from the game.