Brell Serilis, Duke of Below

Before the dwarves

Long before the first dwarf, a tale engraved on mithril remembers, the behemoths of land, sea and air made war on Veeshan’s dragons. The dragons won, at a terrible cost. Brell loved this world’s caverns, its gems and its rivers of metal so much that he named it the Underfoot, after his own plane. But before he could make thinking creatures to share it, the threats had to be cleared away, for great titans of the elements and of arcane might were loose, shaking the world’s foundations and warring on the dragons. That tale, The Duke of Below and The Lord of Light’s Battle, is handed to dwarves in one of their own quests.

The secret portal

When Veeshan had claimed Norrath, Brell Serilis moved next, and quietly. From his Plane of Underfoot he opened a magical portal into a cavern deep in the world and filled the depths with creatures of every kind. Then he sealed the portal inside a labyrinth of living stone.

The pacts

Only then did he go to the other gods and talk them into meeting. Without ever saying how he knew, he told them of Veeshan’s new world and, with words worthy of a king of thieves, proposed an alliance to divide it and keep the dragons in check. All but Rallos Zek agreed, and none suspected that Brell had already loosed his own creations.

They met in a corner of Faydwer. Prexus preferred the sea, Tunare the forest and Brell the mountains, so Brell dug a great bowl into the cliffs and filled it with water. Prexus sat in the water, Tunare on the shore, Brell in the western cliffs, and Rallos Zek “deigned to crouch among the rocks to the north.” That bowl is Dagnor’s Cauldron. Afterward Brell took the depths as his share and formed the dwarves, who settled in the mountains around the pool. The kobolds tell the same pact from their own side in a scroll called KobScr3, dating it to the reign of King Gkar.

When Bristlebane and Cazic-Thule arrived later, Brell arranged a second pact so that he could make still more peoples, and from it came the gnomes, the wiry, tinkering cousins of the dwarves.

Everyone’s father

He is neutral, the god of the Underfoot of Norrath, the Duke of Below, and cavern dwellers on every continent call him father, from dwarves to goblins to gnolls. The goblins of Runnyeye claim him, to the disgust of the dwarves of Kaladim, and the gnolls of Splitpaw say he sculpted them from the sacred Clay of Cosgrove. Mortal enemies deny that they share a god, but “there is more truth there than anyone would care to admit.” Some form of his worship can be found almost anywhere underground. Bristlebane is his ally; Veeshan is his enemy.

The wall of living stone

His touch lingers in the deep places. Pages from an in-game history of the Hole record a researcher who concluded that “the wall placed deep in our home was brought to life by the touch of Brell” and was “the door to the Underfoot,” and who then lost control of its power: “Now every piece of stone I see talks to me.”

Into the Underfoot

In November 2009 the sixteenth expansion, Underfoot, finally opened his realm. At its centre hangs the Heart of the World, a vast ball of magma floating in the middle of a hollow sphere. The Underfoot works “much like a massive factory,” every creature a part of one great machine, until Brell’s First Creation began spreading heresy. There stands Brell’s Temple, with the workshop where he labours to make new life, and Kernagir, the Shining City, where his chosen spend eternity. His worthy dead go to Brell’s Rest, and in Brell’s Arena the gnolls and kobolds fight the Boomerang Brawl, run by the gnomework Gilbot the Magnificent.