Lore · Cities & Peoples
Erudin, Paineel & the Hole
Erudites who jumped into the Hole to reach Paineel were jumping into an old battlefield. Here is how it got there.
Heretics
About two hundred years after Erud led his people to Odus, says the Heretics’ own “History of the Hole,” some Erudites grew in knowledge of the ancient dark arts. Their brothers criticised them, persecuted them and finally drove them from the city they had helped to found. Another book records that Erudin’s High Council banished Miragul for practising necromancy, cutting a whole sphere of knowledge out of Erudite learning.
Sources: Library of Erudin: Paineel (History of the Hole; Assistant Researcher’s Notes)
A war of magic
For the first time in centuries, the Erudites fought each other, in a civil war not unlike the one they had fled on the mainland, except that it was fought with magic instead of swords and bows. Hundreds died and great buildings fell. The heretics fled to the south of Odus, and in one final battle such energy was released that it tore an immense hole into the earth.
Sources: Library of Erudin: Paineel (The Age of Turmoil, manual text) · Library of Erudin: “The History of Norrath” (original EverQuest manual text)
A city in the pit
The heretics, who call themselves Cazicites, built Paineel into the sides of that chasm. Both sides still hate each other, but fear of what the last battle unleashed has kept the peace. Visitors must offer a sacrifice of blood to enter. The RPG adds that Paineel has almost no friends: the dark races dislike its people for being Erudites, and everyone else shuns them for necromancy and for worshipping Cazic-Thule.
Sources: Library of Erudin: Paineel (On the Town of: Paineel; EverQuest RPG)
Old Paineel and new
The first Paineel did not last. The city’s own history says the Cazicites were forced to flee it too, and rebuilt a new Paineel nearby in the image of the old, which in time outshone it. The ruins of Old Paineel are what you crawled through at the bottom of the Hole. There the gnome Ognit Eznertob, exploring with two friends, channelled a little energy into the Wall of Living Flesh. It shuddered and turned a sickly colour, a terrifying earthquake followed, and Al’Kabor was furious when he heard.
Sources: Library of Erudin: Paineel (History of Paineel; The Hole Uncovered; Ognit Arrested)
Entering Paineel
The official On the Town of: Paineel article says outsiders rarely visit. Most die on the way down, either attacked by mistrustful locals or by falling into the Hole, before they ever see the black stone spires that mark the city’s entrance. Strangers are never welcome unless they have something desirable to offer. Inside, a sloping grassy yard lets young pupils practise, with undead guardsmen at the outer gates so that students in trouble can flee back inside. Those ready for more enter the warrens wedged into the surrounding cliffs. A guild note sends new necromancers to Coriante Verisue, “perhaps the oldest ‘living’ resident of Paineel.”
Sources: Library of Erudin: Paineel (On the Town of: Paineel; Dark Truth Guild Note)
What came through the Wall
Ognit’s tinkering had consequences. The 2009 article Road to Underfoot: Breaking the Seal recalls that when Ognit breached the barrier in Old Paineel, an army of elemental beings poured out into Odus, and they were only turned back with great effort and at great risk. The Game Master’s Guide adds that Paineel was forged by Miragul’s followers, and that its people tend to be proud, aloof and driven to gain necromantic power, living with dangers welling up from the Hole and recurring tension with Erudin.
Where the sources disagree
- The RPG credits Miragul’s followers with founding Paineel, the manual credits the heretics in general, and the House of Thule preview says Miragul broke with “the rulers of Paineel.”
- One Verant story says the first Paineel “fell into rubble beneath the hands of Master Yael”; the Heretics’ own history only says they were forced to flee. We found no fuller account.
- The wall at the bottom of the Hole is called the Wall of Living Flesh in Ognit’s story and the Wall of Living Stone in the 2009 Underfoot event.
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.