Blackburrow and the Sabertooths

A dwarven dig

Blackburrow lies between the Qeynos Hills and the peaks of Everfrost. More than five hundred years ago a group of dwarves, long since forgotten, dug its deepest level. Their fine stonework can still be found in parts of the complex, but nobody knows what they were doing there or what became of them.

The Sabertooth clan

The Sabertooth gnolls came from the Jaggedpine Forest. As the then-nomadic humans of Jaggedpine drove them out of the woods, they found the abandoned dig and made it their stronghold.

They were one of several gnoll clans in the hills when the coastal settlement of Oceangreen was founded, and the largest. They were also the only clan that was violent toward the human settlers. Their raids did not stop Antonius Bayle from uniting Oceangreen with the clans of the Karanas and Jaggedpine and building Qeynos.

The severed hand

The war became eternal a generation later. Antonius Bayle II appointed Gynok Moltar Captain of the Tower Guard, and Gynok hated gnolls, who had killed his parents. He sent small units to kill gnolls in the hills without his commander’s knowledge.

When the elder High Shaman Opalla came to make a treaty of peace with the humans, Gynok cut off his hand. From then on, the Sabertooths and Qeynos were at war for good.

The gnolls’ own story

The gnolls tell it differently. EverQuest II’s Sabertooth mining guides, sponsored by the Sabertooth Gnoll Miner’s Guild, say their sense of smell led them to the ore of Blackburrow and that a Great Sage, who travelled among humans and learned their language, taught them to mine. They mined to support the clan and chased intruders out for sport.

The EverQuest RPG adds that Blackburrow is the command centre of the Sabertooths, as it once was for the Splitpaw clan, and that the gnoll lord Elgnub led them for a decade before Tranixx Darkpaw. In Halas, Johma sends heroes to bring back Tranixx’s heart.

In the game

For players starting in Qeynos or Halas, Blackburrow was the first dungeon and the tunnel between the two cities. It was full of gnolls, snakes and razorgill fish, and its guards carried rumours of a pact between a Qeynos merchant and the dogs.

Gnoll paws and heads kept Qeynos quest-givers busy, and the warren was the reason a whole generation of humans learned to hate gnolls on sight.

Legacy

In the Rise of the Orcs books the gnoll war leaves Blackburrow with only women and children before an orc invasion falls on Qeynos, a sign of how long the feud runs. It all goes back to one captain and one hand.

Read it with Antonius Bayle and Qeynos, and with Kane Bayle, another officer of the city who did it harm.