The Planes of Power & Zebuxoruk

The Forsaken

Zebuxoruk is neither good nor evil, depending on which legend you believe, and the other gods dislike him or do not care. After escaping the Plane of Justice or the Void he walked Norrath as a mortal man, and the pantheon calls him the Forsaken One and the Disgraced. A hidden city on Norrath is said to honour, not worship, this “Ungod,” and it is full of fallen priests, shadowknights and paladins who believe the gods are more mortal than they think.

His crime was knowledge. In his own words he wanted to share the gods’ knowledge with the people of Norrath, for he believed that if mortals stopped worshipping them, the gods themselves would fall and a new age of darkness would follow.

The prison in time

So the gods imprisoned him in the Plane of Time, wrapped in endless energy, where the gods of influence and nature meet, trapped in time and safe from attack. Creatures and mortals stuck there for ages were eager to help anyone who might free them.

His time bubble was bound to four spires, one for each element, and guarded by Quarm, a four-headed dragon the four elemental gods made of fire, earth, water and air. That is why every raid guild had to fight through the elemental planes, Fennin Ro’s Plane of Fire and the Reef of Coirnav among them, before it could open the door.

Coirnav

The Plane of Water’s defender was unusual. Most avatars are lesser copies of a single god, but Coirnav embodies the will of all three gods of the Triumvirate of Water at once, a massive chimera of sea creatures. When mortals invaded to free Zebuxoruk, the Triumvirate shaped the Reef of Coirnav as the battlefield, and Coirnav led its defence.

What the planes paid

The invasion cost the gods as well. As mortals pushed deeper, lesser planes began to blink out so that the greater ones could draw on their energy, and Quellious had to take back the demi-plane of Serenity to keep Tranquility alive.

Druzzil Ro rewrites time

Then, just as Zebuxoruk was about to share what he knew, his old teacher Druzzil Ro, the Matron of the Art, appeared and forbade it. Another escape, she said, would compromise the will of the gods. Apologising, she cast a spell to set things back as they had been.

He watched time tear in two, not into halves but into two whole copies that went on unaware of each other and slowly began to differ. Fans read it as the official bridge between EverQuest and EverQuest II, whose histories diverge.

The aftermath

Her reordering of the timeweave “created a small weakness in the flow of time,” and later expansions built on it. In the Plane of Tranquility, Zebuxoruk’s followers were allowed a permanent commune on one of Quellious’ island sanctuaries, with a fixed portal to the Plane of Knowledge. And the portal to Doomfire was sealed by Solusek Ro, unhappy, Miak the Searedsoul says, with how many mortals were entering his father’s plane.