Lore · Gods of the Pantheon
Drinal & Ehayae, the Spirit Gods
Not every god in Norrath had a city and a priesthood. Two of the oldest were known only to tribes of beast-folk, and between them they hold the whole cycle of life.
The Silver Reaper
Very few know of Drinal, the spirit god of night, destruction and death. Long before there were great cities a tribe of nomads named the grey moon after him. He is neutral, not cruel: he “does not maintain his watch over death out of malevolence, but out of the necessity for it to occur in order to fulfill the cycle of life.” His Lujien worshippers picture him as an upright white wolf with midnight-black paws, tail and jaws, carrying a silver sickle shaped like the crescent moon, the sign most sacred to him and his bestial faithful.
Matron of the Dawn
Ehayae is his other half. She keeps the cycle of birth, rebirth and creation, and dawn and twilight are her holy hours. Many races would call what she does good, but she too is neutral, doing it because it must be done rather than out of kindness. Her Gihjna followers show her as a golden-skinned woman with an ivory-beaked hawk’s head and golden wings for arms, holding a half-circle between her wingtips for the rising and setting sun.
Wegadas and the pact
Their mortal story runs through the Unkempt Woods. EverQuest Online Adventures tells of Wegadas, bound to Tunare and to the spirits, who made a pact with the Lujien and Gihjna before the fall of Takish-Hiz, when humans were still barbaric tribes. His firstborn, Levandius, was handed to the Lujien and gifted by Drinal’s spirit to take a Lujien’s shape at will. His werewolves, the Night Reapers, carry Drinal’s standard, a silver crescent on a black circle. When the moon of Drinal is full, the mindless wolfweres take Lujien form and hunt from dusk until dawn.
The Wards of Dawn
The second son, Dorandas, went to the Gihjna and was gifted by Ehayae. He learned her sacred rites and passed them to the Unkempt shamans, who count him their eldest. His werebears, the Wards of Dawn, fly a golden half-circle on black for the rising and setting sun, and serve mostly as healers and guides. As Wegadas fades, they call his passing the death of one age and the dawn of another, and guard him against the day the Night Reapers try to seize the tribes.
A prayer to the sky
Drinal’s name was also spoken in the sky. The in-game book Immortals ends with a prayer to the heavens by name, Trorsmang, Anbeal, Drinal and Cordan, and finally to Norrath itself, and asks Drinal to be the people’s stability, the ground where they can take root. In a 2008 note on Norrathian astronomy, Drinal is “A solid body with a solid core, frozen water, minimal atmosphere and a desolate climate.” When Luclin shattered around 3711, EverQuest II’s history records simply that Norrath’s second moon, Drinal, survived.
Lord of Graves
In that later age Drinal grew darker. He is the Lord of Graves, ruler of Ethernere, the realm of the dead, who sends his Harrowing Horde after souls that refuse to accept their deaths.
Harrow’s End
One of those who accepted him wrote My Journey to Harrow’s End from Ethernere, “forever under the shade of the Lord of Graves.” The narrator mocks Wegadas, now leading the Wayward souls of Cardin Ward, and argues that if the dead would only accept Drinal he “would embrace them, and call back the Horde.” The Horde passes the zealot by. He meets the Gehein, “those who volunteered their souls for the Horde,” and an Augur who claims to have seen Drinal himself: “One-for-one… A deal for a deal,” and those who bargain for nothing are chained in Harrow’s End forever. At last he settles in the Whittled Woodlot, by the dock that once ferried souls to their gods, in the shadow of the Silver Reaper’s home.
Where the sources disagree
The RPG says Drinal is the name of Norrath’s grey moon; a 2008 developer post on Norrathian astronomy lists Drinal as a solid body with frozen water, alongside Anbeal and Cordan. A fan claim that the name is an anagram of Aldrin is not repeated here as fact.
The RPG’s Drinal is a neutral keeper of the cycle; EverQuest II’s Drinal commands a horde that hunts the dead. The two portraits are hard to fully reconcile.
The Wegadas story comes from EverQuest Online Adventures (2004); we have not found an EverQuest text that tells it.
Sources
[1] Library of Erudin: Drinal (EverQuest RPG Game Master’s Guide) · [2] Library of Erudin: Ehayae (EverQuest RPG Game Master’s Guide) · [3] EQOA Lore, Chapter 4 (official site, 2004) · [4] My Journey to Harrow’s End (EQ2 book) · [5] The Shattering (EQ2)
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Retold in our own words from the sources listed on this page; short quotes are marked and sourced. The illustration is an original AI-generated painting made for this page alone, not from the game.