Lore · Continents & Moons
Katta Castellum & the Loyalists
Shadows of Luclin’s good-aligned city was a piece of the old Combine Empire, rebuilt on a moon by people who had mostly never seen Norrath.
The first Combine city
Katta Castellum was the first Combine city on Luclin, founded when Combine citizens loyal to Tsaph Katta fled Norrath. It stands on the cliffs of the Tenebrous Peaks above the Twilight Sea, guarded on one side by a great stone wall and towers and on the other by the cliffs and the sea.
Sources: Library of Erudin: Katta Castellum (Maps of Myrist)
Ruled in Katta’s name
Its government was meant to be temporary. An elected council of nine, the Concilium Universus, rules according to its reading of the will of the Great Emperor Tsaph Katta, with eighteen governors under it. The city militia, the Validus Custodus, answers to the Concilium, and every able young man serves in it for a time. Like the old Combine, the city tolerates every race and culture, except those who follow darker ways.
A long-lived resident, Dralin K’Vekn, says only a handful of the city’s people have ever seen Norrath. To most of its humans and demihumans, Luclin and Katta Castellum are the only home they know.
Sources: Library of Erudin: Katta Castellum (Maps of Myrist; Dralin K’Vekn dialogue)
Vampyres in the dark
Vampyres live secret, frightened lives inside the walls. Most flee as soon as they are made; a few hide successfully, helped by the endless night, though older ones are easier to spot. None is expected to last, because the Custodus hunt the undead relentlessly. Outside, the Coterie of the Eternal Night, an alliance of vampyres led by Valdanov Zevfeer, holds the Tenebrous Mountains and parts of the Umbral Plains.
Sources: Library of Erudin: Katta Castellum (Maps of Myrist; Luclin RPG factions)
Old enemies, old emperor
The Concilium is devoted to Tsaph Katta’s teachings and set against Seru and his followers in Sanctus Seru, as well as the vampyres. Its unofficial leader in the RPG is Lcea Katta. And in Empires of Kunark (2016), Tsaph Katta himself came back from a long stasis after being poisoned, rebuilt the Combine Empire over its old ruins in Kunark, and invited every race to join him.
Sources: Library of Erudin: Katta Castellum (Luclin RPG factions) · EverQuest.com: Empires of Kunark Preview, Lore (2016)
The rival factions
The RPG sourcebook Luclin lists the city’s enemies. Across the moon, the Citizens of Seru name Katta Castellum’s citizens as their foes. The vampyres of the Coterie of the Eternal Night discovered what they were at about the time the Combine refugees arrived. Rumour says vampyres are made by infusing mortals with Akheva blood, but the sourcebook calls the research inconclusive. The book also notes that several members of the Concilium came over with the Loyalists in the first Exodus, and its bestiary names Magistrate Nathyn Illuminious, a reclusive man guarded in his dark stone mansion by veteran Custodus and two sonic wolves, Tero and Basirus.
Grieg and the moon’s ores
Not every Combine exile was welcome. The sourcebook says the Loyalists of Katta Castellum did not want the geomancer Grieg back. He wandered Luclin and built the fortress of Grieg’s End in the mountains north of the Scarlet Desert, still looking for a way back to Norrath. Inside the city, the in-game book Liberus Acrylia Arma records the Combine’s fascination with the moon’s minerals, above all acrylia, an ore that seems to carry an innate enchantment, “perhaps the handiwork of the mysterious Goddess Luclin herself.”
Sources: Library of Erudin: Katta Castellum (Luclin — Grieg’s End; Liberus Acrylia Arma)
Where the sources disagree
- Rumour says vampyres are made by mixing Akheva blood with ordinary mortals; the RPG says research into it was inconclusive, so we treat it as rumour.
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.