Gukta, Outpost of Marr

In the world: a city left unguarded

The trouble began with the Grozmok Stone. The troll shamans of Grobb learned that the rival Broken Skull clan held the relic in the tomb of their shaman Nadox, and a raid took it back to Grobb. Then the Broken Skull trolls struck the city itself. With Luggalds granted by Innoruuk they broke in with few losses and carried the stone away to Broken Skull Rock.

The loss left Grobb in disarray. Most of its protectors marched off to win the stone back, and the swamp city sat weakened, its people mourning kin lost to the black waters of the sea. The frogloks of Guk watched all of it, and saw a chance to recover their dignity and their lands.

In the world: Marr’s blessing

The frogloks prayed to Mithaniel Marr, whom they hold to be their creator, and asked for his blessing. He gave it. Many were infused with greater strength and purity of heart, and a chosen few came up out of the waters of Innothule visibly transformed, an evolution of their kind rather than something alien to it.

Those chosen brought back more than a new shape. After days of prayer, fasting and planning in Guk they shared a clear vision of conquest: Grobb would fall. The force they raised became the Guktan army, called the Lance of Mithaniel.

In the world: the fall of Grobb and the troll exile

The assault came on a gloomy morning, and the battle lasted only hours. The trolls, seeing the transformed frogloks rise from the swamp, took it as a sign that they had angered their own god. Those who stood were broken, and the rest fled. Before the noon sun was at its height the frogloks had raised proof of their victory, and Grobb was no more. They called it Gukta, Outpost of Marr.

Where the trolls went depends on who tells it. The tale of the battle has the last of them scurrying into the Feerott and the sands of Ro. A froglok of the new city, Selephra Giztral, says the survivors went to live with the dark elves of Neriak, who let them stay because they wanted to learn about the Grozmok Stone and the Broken Skull clan. In the game itself the troll NPCs moved to the Foreign Quarter of Neriak.

In the world: the retaking of Grobb

The trolls did not forget. The war to take the city back drew in half of Norrath. Dark elves, ogres and adventurers stood with the displaced trolls. The gnomes of Ak’Anon sent a great mechanical rat to the trolls and a clockwork spider to the frogloks. Agents of the trolls revived the Nightterror from the Plane of Fear, and dark elves trapped the djinn Shanala the Storm to unleash him on Gukta. The barbarians of Halas attacked Neriak’s forces and failed. The ancient froglok hero Glikigup returned with the reforged sword Heartlight.

What decided it was a curse. The dark elves had found the essence of a curse laid on the frogloks in an earlier age and refined it for war. One telling credits it to Innoruuk, and the patch notes of the day to the Warlord Ykesha. Struck by it, froglok turned on froglok. Clan Ykesha and its allies destroyed Gukta, tore down what the frogloks had built, and raised Grobb again.

In the world: exile in the Rathe Mountains

The surviving Guktans fled to the Rathe Mountains and built a tent city they still called Gukta. The hill giants and cyclopses there pulled back to the northeast of the range rather than face the newcomers.

The exiles live with a wound. Many of their kin were turned by the curse from Mithaniel Marr to Innoruuk. They had killed Marr’s faithful and could not go back, and the trolls killed outright the few who sought shelter in Grobb. So the Guktans let their cursed cousins stay, an unhappy alliance in which one side hunts for a cure and the other for freedom. That curse is the in-world reason frogloks can be necromancers, shadow knights, rogues and Innoruuk’s clerics.

On live servers: the dates

In real time the takeover was a live event, not just a story. The frogloks took Grobb on February 24, 2003, alongside The Legacy of Ykesha. The trolls retook it on August 11, 2005, with the patch headline “Gukta is no more.” That update shipped in the Dragons of Norrath era, a year and a half after Gates of Discord. Running both cities in turn meant the starting city for trolls and frogloks changed twice.

Behind the scenes: how frogloks were made playable

This part is the developers’ story, not Norrath’s. Tom Tobey, an artist and animator on EverQuest and EverQuest II, told The EverQuest Show that the team had just finished Planes of Power when they were asked for a quick expansion with a new playable race. His answer was: what about these frogs?

Tobey wanted to take the race in a new direction, because he thought the old dungeon frogs looked terrible: low-polygon and stiff. The team assumed the new model would replace the old one, but both stayed, since removing a character always upsets someone who loved it. The blue frog exists because he kept singing Peter, Paul and Mary’s “I’m in Love with a Big Blue Frog.” Frogs also suited a team with no time to animate two genders. Male and female share one animation, and the females are only a little svelter.

The show dates the playable Guktans to February 2004, but the game’s own patch record and the zone histories put the Guktan takeover of Grobb in February 2003. Either way, they were the fifteenth race.

Legacy

Gukta shows something EverQuest rarely tried, a classic city that actually changed hands. A troll who logged in during 2003 found the froglok city on his home zone. A froglok who logged in during 2005 found herself a refugee in the mountains. Its legacy is the curse as well, which gave a race of paladins a dark side, and the split model that left old and new frogloks side by side.

For the ground the frogloks came from, read Guk and the Frogloks. For the trolls’ side and their god, read Ykesha and the fall of Grobb.