Najena

Who she was

Najena was a Teir’Dal magician, and rumour made her the niece of Queen Cristanos Thex of Neriak. That rumour alone would have made her a person of consequence in the dark elf city. She chose instead to disappear.

The first death

A 2006 developer post tells how. Najena faked her death in a shipwreck on the Ocean of Tears and slipped away with a caste of ogres from the Foreign District of Neriak.

She had planned it for years. While still a prominent mage of Neriak she made secret trips into the Lavastorm Mountains to create the minions who would excavate a subterranean citadel for her research, a sprawling laboratory she named after herself. The ogres came because she had once saved their caste leader from death, and they became fiercely loyal; one helped move her last belongings below Lavastorm.

Neriak mourned her. A small band of followers later journeyed to Lavastorm to study with her and swore off allegiance to the city’s ruling house, and for the next decade only her loyal cohorts knew her true fate.

The experiments

Her work was elemental, and it was violent. Her experiments blew the doors of her citadel off their hinges. A magician who had spent her life summoning elementals had found somewhere with all the fire she could want.

Some of what she made, or bound, still lives there. Tentacle Terrors fill the halls, and players remember them as the reason a short dungeon took so long.

The second death

Najena’s hiding place was eventually found, and a powerful force was sent to destroy her and her minions. A great ally repaid an old favour by warning her it was coming. As the enemy was about to enter the tunnels, the volcanic forces of Lavastorm seemed to erupt and fill the citadel with magma, and most believe that was the end of Najena, her laboratory and the legendary mage.

Belief is all there is. The story stops at the magma, with no body found and no tomb named, and for a woman who had already faked one death that silence is not proof.

The people left behind

Her halls did not empty. Behind a false wall waits Bonecracker, an undead froglok necromancer, one of the stranger things a young adventurer could find in the Lavastorm range. Archpriest Del’Maque boasts of having betrayed her, so at least one of her followers chose another side.

In EverQuest II’s later history, Najena’s guardians are still active: they wounded one of the dragons who attacked Lord Nagafen in his lair.

In the game

Najena was one of the dungeons of the Lavastorm Mountains, alongside Solusek’s Eye and Nagafen’s Lair. It was small and dark, and its false walls rewarded anyone who searched them, Bonecracker’s hidden room above all. The dark elf who built it is never seen there, which suits her story perfectly.

Her story ties the Thex dynasty of Neriak to the fires of Solusek Ro, and her neighbours are the dragon Nagafen and the god of fire himself.