Rallos Zek, the Warlord

The god who stood apart

When Brell Serilis gathered the gods to divide Norrath between them, Rallos Zek came, but he kept his distance. He trusted none of them and refused their alliance. Still, he made a people of his own: the giants, fierce beings meant to defend their lands, part of his monstrous army, fifteen to thirty feet tall and gifted with great magical capacity. Before Solusek Ro raised the Serpent Spine, those giants were already gaining a foothold in the northern timberlands, divided into many Houses.

The second pact

When Brell proposed a second pact, the Warlord agreed. This time he made the ogres and the orcs, bred for battle and conquest. The in-game Lineage of the Nokk Ogres says the ogres came “many years after he created his giants,” near the end of the Elder Age, shaped from sturdy bone and olive-coloured flesh and set down in the Serpent Spine Mountains of Tunaria. The ogres’ own book, The Ogres Come of Age, boasts that they embody “the best of all of his other races, including the giants, goblins, and orcs.”

The faith of the Warlord

He is the god of strength and victory, neutral evil, and his theology is simple. The universe was born in conflict and will end in it. Enlightenment comes only in battle, when a worshipper learns whether they are weak or strong, and weakness can be followed only by death. The dead deserve no respect, for if they had been worthy their hearts would still be pumping blood. No worshipper of his can ever be good. Innoruuk and Cazic-Thule are his allies; Quellious and Bertoxxulous are his enemies.

From the Plane of War he appears as a hulking humanoid in ornamental full plate with an enormous bastard sword, his race hidden behind a helm, “and it could well be that Rallos prefers to appear as a member of no one race.”

The war he lost

His ogres built the greatest empire of their age, and then they turned on the Plane of Earth. When they failed, Rallos Zek sent his sons Tallon and Vallon in a second assault. It ended in ruin: the Warlord scarred by the wards of the Rathe, his son Eriak stripped of the essence of war, and his children cursed across Norrath. He wears those scars still, beneath his blackened war armour.

Sons and fortress

His house did not end there. Eriak and Sullon Zek are counted among his children, and it was Eriak, in the age of the Seeds of Destruction, who pushed the ogre Murdunk to invade the Plane of Earth once more. Above the Field of Blood stands Drunder, the Fortress of Zek, also called the Plane of Tactics, a stronghold of stone built to the scale of its gods.

His last words in Time

Mortals finally faced the Warlord himself in the Plane of Time, after they had already beaten his generals. “Defeating my sons in battle is impressive,” he greets them, “but your legacy ends now.” When he falls his last words are short, and very like him: “My mantle shall never be passed on…”

Fallen Warlord

The ogres of a later age felt the fall. In EverQuest II’s Ollg’s Memoirs, an ogre in the Ethernere watches something streak across a cracking sky. While the others prepare to march, Ollg understands that the Warlord has not come to conquer: “The Warlord has been defeated.” In EverQuest Online Adventures his servants were still loud. An “agent of War” told the Norrathian Times that Rallos had not weakened the portal to the Zaoran Plateau, blamed “those darn Akessan,” and sent volunteers to Oggok for sparring.