Saryrn & Terris-Thule

Who Saryrn is

Saryrn is the Mistress of Torment and Pain. The official deity text says she was born a woman of striking beauty and now rules the Demi-Plane of Pain. The EverQuest RPG’s Game Master’s Guide spells her name Saryn and calls her orderly evil, which fits a goddess who runs her realm like a prison with a warden who never sleeps.

Her habit is personal. She spends time with those cursed to live in her realm, seizing them at random and tormenting them in mind and body. How long it lasts is just as random: a few moments, or months. Everyone in her plane lives knowing she may pick them next as her “partner.”

Sources: Allakhazam: Torment, the Plane of Pain (zone) · Library of Erudin: Saryrn · Library of Erudin: EverQuest RPG Game Master’s Guide: Saryn

The black cube

The Maps of Myrist describe the Plane of Torment as a huge black cube floating silently in the ether between the planes, shaped to reflect Saryrn’s cruelty. Its very matter is bound together by the suffering of the people inside it: the more pain the plane tastes, the stronger it grows.

Inside, many islands hang above a lake of blood, held up by barbed chains fastened to obsidian pillars and linked by suspension bridges. A fine mist of blood coats everything. Torture implements litter the islands, and the walls echo with moans, screams and rattling chains, with Saryrn sometimes heard giggling or singing along to her victims’ pleas. At the centre stands the Citadel of Pain, streaming blood down its sides, its big glass windows giving Saryrn a view of the whole plane from her private rooms.

Sources: Library of Erudin: The Maps of Myrist: Plane of Torment (SOE, 2002) · Allakhazam: Torment, the Plane of Pain (zone)

Why she does it

The sources give Saryrn a motive that is almost tragic. Myrist says the cube is as much a prison for her as for her victims, and that she enjoys it, in the way of someone who savours their own pain. Her anger and pain make up the fabric of the plane, and her hate-filled madness keeps her from wanting anything more.

The creatures in the cube are manifestations of her pain and rage, and she still hunts for new victims outside it. The pain she gives others feeds her own suffering, which drives her to lash out again. Myrist calls this cycle the emblem of torment itself.

Sources: Library of Erudin: The Maps of Myrist: Plane of Torment (SOE, 2002)

Tylis and the Plane of Tranquility

In the game, Saryrn reaches into the safest place in the Planes of Power. In the Plane of Tranquility sick bay, Fahlia Shadyglade tells how she found the young bard Tylis Newleaf moaning by the reflecting pool, under a small black cube that had appeared floating above it. The elders believe the cube is a portal to Torment, and that Saryrn means to breed her suffering even into Quellious’s protected plane. Tylis keeps crying one name in his agony: Maareq. Myrist mentions the same victim: “a young bard from the Plane of Tranquility.”

Sources: Allakhazam: Tylis’s Condition (Saryrn flag) · Library of Erudin: The Maps of Myrist: Plane of Torment (SOE, 2002) · Library of Erudin: Saryrn (Fahlia Shadyglade dialogue)

Climbing Saryrn’s tower

Allakhazam’s walkthrough of the Saryrn flag lays out the raid. You need flags from Bertoxxulous and Terris-Thule first, then you say “I will go” to Fahlia. The Tower of Saryrn takes one key for the whole raid, and each floor has a boss to clear: Salczek the Fleshgrinder, the Acolyte of Affliction, Ta`Grusch the Abomination, and on the fourth floor Maareq the Prophet.

When Maareq falls, Tylis appears in a hanging cage. Hail him and he offers to “channel you into my pain,” pulling the raid into his mind to face the Keeper of Sorrows. Then it is up to the fifth floor to kill Saryrn and hail the Planar Projection. Tylis’s parting words ask you to “offer the dark wench my best.” Torment requires level 55 to enter without a key on live servers, and Allakhazam lists it at levels 55 to 65.

Sources: Allakhazam: Tylis’s Condition (Saryrn flag) · Allakhazam: Torment, the Plane of Pain (zone) · Library of Erudin: Tylis Newleaf dialogue, Plane of Torment

Who Terris-Thule is

Terris-Thule, the Dream Scorcher or the Nightmare, rules the Demi-Plane of Nightmares and delights in tormenting the innocent as they sleep. She is Cazic-Thule’s daughter, and the RPG says she has an equal share of her father’s cruelty and is discordant evil. She is over six feet tall and skeletally thin, with grey-tinged skin and long black nails to match her slinky gown. Her face is smooth except for two empty black eye sockets, and long black hair flows back from two massive brass horns.

In “From Pond to Paladin,” her father sent her into the dreams of the captive Mithaniel Marr, first to steal the gift of life from his body, then to fill his sleep with horrors. Her brother Morell-Thule, the King of Dreams, noticed what she was doing, and the Library of Erudin lists the two as enemies.

Sources: Library of Erudin: Terris-Thule · Library of Erudin: RPG Game Master’s Guide: Terris-Thule · Library of Erudin: Morell-Thule (From Pond to Paladin)

The Plane of Nightmares

Myrist describes her domain. In the west is a dense forest of gnarled trees whose bark twists into foul faces. The trees are aware and malevolent, and they spring to life when trespassers come near. A river runs through the forest and the barrows beneath it, then falls into a lake. In the northwest stands a ruined cottage with a small graveyard for the realm’s mortal victims. Her favourite minions, terrifying goblins that infect every mind, lurk in the southwest caverns and live both in astral space and on the primal world.

In the far east rises a plateau with stones that look like a druid circle but pulse with life and death. Just looking at it has brought brave knights to their knees. That is her lair. New Tanaan regularly hears of the foolishly brave who go in and never come out.

Sources: Library of Erudin: The Maps of Myrist: Plane of Nightmares (SOE, 2002) · Library of Erudin: Terris-Thule (Fabled Planes of Power Lore, Part 8, 2008)

Thelin and the scattered dagger

The saddest story in her plane is Thelin Poxbourne’s. As a young man he studied the writings on fear that Zebuxoruk had translated for mortals from Cazic-Thule. Cazic-Thule invaded his mind, stripped him of everything, and cursed him to beg in East Freeport, unseen by every traveller. Years later a dwarf woman, in town to trade her family’s armor and weapons, took pity on him and pressed a jeweled dagger into his hand. It was the only gift he received under the curse, so he kept it.

In the game, NPCs in the Plane of Tranquility explain the rest. Adroha Jezith says Thelin spent all his mana opening a portal to the Plane of Nightmares and went to bed early. Veriok Dreik believes the dagger is the key to saving him, and says Terris-Thule broke it apart and scattered the pieces through a maze so Thelin could not use it to escape his nightmares. In the Plane of Nightmares, the scout Kelletia says Terris-Thule and her henchmen are hunting her because she collected those pieces. On the flag path you then kill the construct of nightmares at the hedge maze and Terris-Thule herself.

Sources: Library of Erudin: Thelin Poxbourne, The Cursed (in-game book) · Library of Erudin: Terris-Thule (Adroha Jezith, Veriok Dreik and Kelletia dialogue) · Allakhazam: Tylis’s Condition (Saryrn flag)

Legacy

Terris-Thule came back in House of Thule (2010). In the “Erudin Burning” nightmare she personally watches over the dream, and her minions give the trapped Erudites just enough hope to keep them dreaming but never let them win. Saryrn’s afterlife is a joke: in a 2006 developer post, Moorgard of the EverQuest II team claimed the vanished gods became menders, with “Saryn, formerly of Torment” working in Beggar’s Court.

Sources: Library of Erudin: Terris-Thule (House of Thule Preview: Erudin Burning, 2010) · Library of Erudin: Saryrn (Moorgard, 2006)