Lore · Planes & Wars of the Gods
Underfoot & Brell’s Rest
Dwarves have always said they would go home to Brell. The 2009 Underfoot expansion showed you exactly what that home looks like.
The name
The dwarven Book of Bound Mithril says that Brell found Norrath’s caves, metals and bedrock so like his own plane that he gave them the same name: the Underfoot. Before he could fill it with thinking creatures, he first had to deal with the titans.
The workings of the plane
His own Underfoot is a working world, built around the Heart of the World, a vast ball of magma floating at the centre of a hollow sphere. It “works much like a massive factory,” every creature one moving part of a great machine. In the Foundation mountains are born, raised by stone giants called the Genari whom Brell made for that job. In the Underquarry his servitors mine the living rock. In the Cooling Chambers, water boiled by the lava pours in from a sinkhole in Brell’s Rest and is cooled until it freezes. And in Brell’s Temple is his workshop, where he creates new forms of life.
Brell’s Rest
Brell’s Rest is where the worthy among his worshippers go when their lives on Norrath end. A few are given work shaping the world, but few enjoy it; most spend eternity in a setting ideal for their race. Dwarves, gnomes, gnolls, kobolds and others live in or around the Rest, or in the Shining City on the sphere just above, though most of the Rest’s own residents are gnolls and kobolds.
The Shining City
Kernagir, the Shining City, is where Brell’s chosen live out eternity. The finest craftspeople of Norrath built it to glorify him, and while others are sometimes let in, it is mostly home to dwarves, Coldain and gnomes. The dwarves stay there brewing beer and working stone and metal, and the gnomes tinker, or wander off to see what is out there.
Boomerang Brawl
The gnolls and kobolds love a fight, which keeps them out of the Shining City, and they have clashed happily on the Rest’s battlefields for millennia. Brell’s Arena was built beside the Rest so they could “play” a vicious game called the Boomerang Brawl, run by Gilbot the Magnificent, one of Brell’s gnomework creations.
Trouble in paradise
Lately, though, the kobolds have been short of opponents. The gnolls are acting strangely, as if hiding something. Most say nothing at all, and those who do only whisper of “The Destroyer” or “The Undying One,” with fear and worship on their faces in equal measure. Every being of the Underfoot had been content with its task, “until Brell’s First Creation started spreading his heresy.”
The road there
The way in opened through the old ruins in the Hole. Long before, the gnome Ognit Eznertob had breached the Wall of Living Stone in the ruins of Old Paineel, and an army of elementals had poured out across Odus. In 2009 the event “Road to Underfoot: Breaking the Seal” went back to that wall.
Where the sources disagree
The Brell’s Rest article never says who “The Destroyer” is. We do not guess.
Sources
[1] Library of Erudin: The Book of Bound Mithril (EverQuest II book) · [2] EverQuest.com: Underfoot: Unfolding the Lore, Brell’s Rest (2009) · [3] Library of Erudin: The Coldain (Kernagir, The Shining City, official article) · [4] Library of Erudin: Paineel (Road to Underfoot: Breaking the Seal) · [5] Library of Erudin: Brell Serilis (Underfoot: Unfolding the Lore — Convorteum, Foundation, Underquarry, Cooling Chambers, Brell’s Temple)
Keep reading
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.