The War for the Plane of Earth

Murdunk’s invasion

In the Elder Age the ogre empire wanted more than Norrath. Egged on by Rallos Zek’s son Eriak, the great ogre Murdunk led the first Rallosian army into the Plane of Earth, home of the Rathe, the Council of Thirteen, hoping to prove himself worthy to lead all the forces of Zek.

It was doomed from the start. Whenever a member of the Council fell, another took its place. Many guardians of earth died, but the Rathe won, and the surviving Rallosians were hurled out of the plane by the Council’s wards.

The Warlord’s second assault

Furious, Rallos Zek raised a second invasion under two proven war heroes, Tallon and Vallon, and brought the scarred Murdunk along for what he knew of the plane. This time the members of the Rathe Council were captured and dragged to Norrath, and there one of them was executed. On Norrath, that death was permanent. Where the councillor fell, the Rathe Mountains rose and Lake Rathetear formed.

But the Warlord knew little of how the Planes of Power worked. He was scarred and disfigured by the same wards that had thrown Eriak out, and he lay regenerating in the Plane of War while the reborn Rathe took their revenge. Murdunk was killed.

The curse

To end the invasions for good, the Rathe Council, aided by several other gods, cursed every creature of Zek. The curse swept through the giants’ lush homelands and froze them into what is now Everfrost, and it made Zek’s followers everywhere lesser in mind and body. Thousands of ogres died, their empire fell, the giants were scattered, and the goblins were cursed so thoroughly that nothing of their history survives.

Tallon and Vallon begged their god to save them, and Rallos Zek pulled them into his plane in time. He could save no one else. Then the gods raised a barrier around the Planes of Power, shutting out mortals and lesser gods alike.

Eriak’s punishment

Rallos Zek decided Eriak must have known about the wards and kept quiet. He tore the essence of warfare out of his son, split it, and gave it to Tallon and Vallon, the two mortals who had succeeded where Eriak had failed. Eriak, crippled and disfigured, was banished to the lower levels of Drunder to forge weapons for his father’s armies. If you raided Drunder, you met him there as Eriak the Oblique.

Remembered by the victors

So that the war would not be lost to time, High Lorekeeper Baeldon kept a diary of “the war that has ended the greatest empire in the history of Norrath,” and it survives as the in-game series War for Earth: The Passing of an Empire. The Rathe Council have been counted among Rallos Zek’s enemies ever since, and in Fall From Grace the other greater gods agree that the Rathe’s curse was a fair punishment.

How the ogres remember it

The descendants of the defeated tell it differently. In the Chronicle of Gromok Hergom, the twelve rulers of the Plane of Earth were captured and dragged to Norrath, “where they were being executed by Murdunk and his Generals”; mountains burst up where the gods fell, and their dying tears formed a cold, deep lake between the peaks. Centuries later, in the Feerrott, a waterfall called Murdunk’s Fall runs green, and ogre myth calls that water the blood of Murdunk, “the destroyer of the Rathe Council.”

An echo in time

The moment was never quite safe. In Seeds of Destruction in 2008, the forces of Discord tried to strike at this exact point in history, for a Rallosian victory would have meant endless war on Norrath.