Lore · Cities & Peoples
Crushbone & the Faydark Orcs
Nearly every elf, gnome and dwarf of 1999 got their first levels killing Crushbone orcs. The orcs tell the story very differently.
The walking trees
The Crushbone shamans, as the 2004 Forests of Faydark sourcebook tells it, say the forest once covered all of Faydwer and was guarded by walking trees. When the orcs, ogres and trolls arrived and began felling trees and building keeps, the trees rose up and drove them back, then raised a steep mountain range to cut them off from the woods to the north.
Sources: Library of Erudin: Crushbone (Realms of Norrath: Forests of Faydark)
One forest becomes two
Centuries later the Crushbone clan decided to head north for more room and more prey, and talked other clans into joining them. They hacked straight north through the forest where it was thinnest and reached the northern shore before the trees could stop them. And so one forest became two.
Sources: Library of Erudin: Crushbone (Realms of Norrath: Forests of Faydark)
A home with walls
The other clans settled on the coast, but Crushbone would not be cowed by trees twice. Its leader killed whoever objected too loudly and led the clan into the woods. After weeks of slaughter, scouts found a broad hill inside a shallow bowl with a natural wall around it and a river running through. That would be home. The wood elves’ Shadow-Wood Keep was just to the north, so the orcs marched that same night, took it by surprise and burned it.
Sources: Library of Erudin: Crushbone (Realms of Norrath: Forests of Faydark)
Emperor Crush and the dark elves
The Maps of Myrist describe the citadel off the cliffs of the Greater Faydark: a mine that feeds their dreaded war wagons, raids that carry off elf and dwarf children to raise as slaves and miners, and a temple to Bertoxxulous with a blood-filled Bleeding Stone Altar. Crushbone had recently signed a treaty with the Teir’Dal of Neriak. In EverQuest II, an orc named Vergeth Jawcrush writes a frantic journal accusing the Teir’Dal ambassador D’Vinn of whispering in Emperor Crush’s ear, and a later book of decrees is signed “Emperor D’Vinn.”
Inside the walls
The Maps of Myrist describe Crushbone as a walled complex carved from the mountains, with a granite castle at its centre and lookouts posted for elf armies. Around the grounds are a refinery, a tannery, metalworking shops and other workshops that process the ore the orcs mine from the hills. The RPG’s Forests of Faydark adds that the name Crushbone means the clan, the city and the keep at once, and that canals divide the city into seven districts. Crushbone Citadel, home of Emperor Crush and his three wardens, has three towers, each three storeys tall and joined to the top floor by bridges.
War in Faydark
Norrath’s in-game newspapers covered the orcs’ great sortie. While the elves trained troops to send to Antonica against the dark elves, the orcs, believing Crushbone was the target, attacked first. Neriak’s Signal gloated that the elves’ war preparations were “convincingly destroyed.” The troll-written Foreign Quarterly put it more simply: “Dey comes out of da Crushplace an kills da happy elfs.” A sealed letter to King Naythox Thex records that Emperor Crush agreed to aid Neriak’s wars in return for the Indigo Brotherhood’s help against the Deathfist orcs.
Where the sources disagree
- An EverQuest in-game book, “The Founding of Crushbone,” tells a different origin: freed orc slaves left homeless after betraying someone named Dagnor. Another, “The Story of Edril,” says the elven hero Edril was involved in Crushbone’s founding. The RPG legend above mentions neither.
Keep reading
Retold in our own words from the sources linked under each chapter; short quotes are marked and sourced. The illustration is an original AI-generated painting made for this page alone, not from the game.