Druzzil Ro, Matron of the Art

The Matron of the Art

Druzzil Ro is the daughter of Solusek Ro, and though she is powerful, “she is under the authority of her father as she acts as a steward over the ways of Magic.” Her Demi-Plane of Magic draws its power from his Plane of Sun. She is neutral, tall and youthful, often in the likeness of an Erudite, with white hair held back by a massive platinum crown set with a single white gem that blazes like a star.

A canvas for her art

In its natural state her plane is endless white marble beneath a grey sky, but almost no one sees it that way, for it takes on whatever shape reflects her mood. It is a canvas for her art.

Ayonae and the Plane of Music

From that art came another. The Plane of Music “sprang from the endless imagination” of Druzzil Ro. She created Ayonae Ro, the Maestra, to make music that soothes the soul, and gave up a small portion of her own realm as a home for her. Ayonae soon grew powers and a personality of her own.

Teacher and jailer

Her most famous pupil was a god. When Zebuxoruk, freed from his prison in the Plane of Time, sees her, he greets her as his teacher: “Druzzil, I have missed you.” Was it not she, he asks, who taught him in her own realm to seek knowledge and share it in all its forms?

Yet in his own account she then forbade him to share it. Another escape, she told him, would compromise the will and power of the gods. She said she was sorry, and she cast a spell to set things back as they had been.

Two scrolls of time

Zebuxoruk watched what that spell did. The fabric of time unrolled like a scroll and tore in two at her command, not into halves but into two complete copies, each unaware of the other. One curled back on itself for several hours before moving on; then the words on both began to change, a little at first and then more. It is the lore’s image of the two timelines of EverQuest and EverQuest II.

Consequences

The tear did not heal cleanly. Her reordering of the timeweave in the Plane of Time “created a small weakness in the flow of time,” and in The Tides of Anachronism three of her heralds arrive in the Plane of Knowledge warning of dangerous days: “Time is ticking and our doom may have arrived!” Later, in the Kytherea’s Keepsakes event, she opened a portal to her home plane inside Freeport’s Academy of Arcane Science. The city fell into chaos, and Rallos Zek, learning of it, resolved to lead Norrathians to the Plane of Rage.