Broken Skull Rock

The Legacy of Ykesha

The Legacy of Ykesha was EverQuest’s fifth expansion, released in 2003. It was smaller than the four before it. It is best known for making the frogloks a playable race, and it added five zones, armour dyes and a charm slot. The frogloks’ story, from New Guk to the Rathe Mountains, is told in Ykesha and the fall of Grobb and Gukta, outpost of Marr.

All five new zones are on this one island.

Sources: EverQuest.com: Progression Primer: The Legacy of Ykesha

Getting there

Travel to the island is hard on purpose. Adventurers set out from the coast of the Stonebrunt Mountains on Odus. Our map draws that crossing as a sea route off the north-east, where the zone-line files put it, and the Odus map has the matching route.

The crossing ends in the Gulf of Gunthak, the harbour where new recruits live and where the lighthouse stands. The trolls destroy every accurate map of their base, which is why the cartographer’s quest in the Gulf starts from a ruined one.

Sources: EverQuest.com: Progression Primer: The Legacy of Ykesha · Brewall’s EverQuest Maps: map files (zone lines) · Library of Erudin: Gulf of Gunthak

The Broken Skull Clan

The island belongs to the Broken Skull Clan, troll pirates and marauders. Passing through, you decide whether to have them on your side, a choice that often follows how you feel about the frogloks. Allies find a rough but useful home port; everyone else finds enemies.

The clan’s leaders are worshippers of Innoruuk. The deeper you go, the more of the island is given over to his temples.

Sources: EverQuest.com: Progression Primer: The Legacy of Ykesha

Five zones, one descent

The island is a descent. Dulak’s Harbor is the pirate town in a cavern under the island’s edge, with taverns, docks and shipyards, and a luggald temple no one should approach. Rails run from the town to the Torgiran Mines, where slaves dig metal and gems below sea level, kept from flooding by luggald runes.

The Crypt of Nadox is the tomb of the shaman Nadox in the deepest part of the island, guarded by the clan’s most powerful members. In a hidden lagoon beneath it lies Hate’s Fury, the Scorned Maiden, the pirate ship most sailors think is only a story.

Dulak’s Harbor is the busiest of them: a rough troll town of taverns, crew quarters, docks and shipyards, rebuilt from whatever is at hand. Rails run from the mines to the refinery and the smiths, and Luggalds guard a temple whose fear and hate can be felt from the street.

Sources: EverQuest.com: Progression Primer: The Legacy of Ykesha · Allakhazam: Dulak's Harbor

Nadox and the black ore

The official history of the crypt explains how faith became control. As the clan recovered and rose, Nadox turned from his people to Innoruuk, using his hatred for the land-bound trolls to draw close to the Prince of Hate. Captives built his temples and died in his ceremonies.

Slaves tunnelling for more altars struck black ore that resonates with hate. The first miners to touch it killed each other. Nadox’s priests learned to brew a suspension from it that guards the mind and, in larger doses, takes away the will to resist. Over time, with the temple’s teaching, it leaves people with no will of their own. That is the hold the clan’s leaders have on the island, and why its temples are so closely guarded.

Sources: Library of Erudin: Crypt of Nadox

How our map is drawn

The island map follows the zone-line files for every link. The Gulf takes the south, with Dulak’s Harbor directly north of it, because the two zones’ exits point at each other along that line. The mines, the crypt and the ship are drawn as icons: the mines north-west of the town, the crypt south-west of the Gulf, and the ship off the south-west coast, by the crypt.

The Gulf’s pack file also marks a link to the Plane of Knowledge, which we leave off, as we do on every map. Dulak’s Harbor has an unlabelled exit that belongs to a later expansion, so that is left off too.

Sources: Brewall’s EverQuest Maps: map files (zone lines)

Where it fits in the story

Broken Skull Rock is the troll side of the froglok war. While the frogloks of Gukta took back their swamp with the help of Mithaniel Marr, the trolls who lost Grobb and the pirates of the Broken Skull Clan kept to their gods of hate. See the Marr twins for the frogloks’ patron, and Guk and the frogloks for the older story.

Sources: EverQuest.com: Progression Primer: The Legacy of Ykesha