Odus · EverQuest (original release)
Kerra Isle
The island home of the Kerrans, a cat-like people, a short swim off the west coast of Odus: quiet until you make enemies there, and then one of the most crowded fights in the old world.
The island of the cats
Kerra Isle is a small island just off the west coast of Odus. Its main inhabitants are the Kerrans, a race of cat-like people who are peaceful until you make enemies of them. The EQ Atlas warns that the island in Erud’s Crossing is often mistaken for Kerra Isle, but it is not.
The Project 1999 Wiki’s faction page adds that the Kerrans are indifferent to most people except Erudites and some evil races. The Erudites tend to treat them as animals and have stolen a number of Kerran artifacts, and no one knows which of the two races came to Odus first.
Sources: EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Kerra Isle · Project 1999 Wiki: Kerra Isle (faction)
Who lives here
The EQ Atlas lists every rank of Kerran: catfishers, ghulam, mamluk, amir, tseq, awrat, ispusar, pasdar, ghazi and their shamans, ademzada and theirs, puzhal, mujah and mujahed, and the Amira guardians. Beside them live wharf rats, Kerra lions and pumas, tigers, Kerran gorillas and their shamans and guards, and some kobold prisoners.
Among the named are Khonza Mitty of Kerra, Lord Gonga, Sharptooth, Jojo, Sha’rr, Roary Fishpouncer, Thalith Mamluk, Maugarim and Donla Starfire. The Atlas gives the island levels 15 to 35 and an experience bonus.
Sources: EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Kerra Isle
A dangerous welcome
The Kerrans are the island’s danger, and they will mostly leave you alone until you start killing their kin. Then the island becomes frightening. At low levels the front of the zone is much like the front of Crushbone, with separate spawns you can take one at a time. Around tenth level you have to move deeper in, and the open areas are full of roaming Kerrans standing close together: about twenty in sight around the docks alone.
The tunnels offer some separate pulls, but the large open areas are, in the Atlas’s word, scary. The upside is that few people hunt here, partly because it is out of the way and most Erudites are bound in Qeynos by the time they are ready for it. The author played an Erudite through most of the beta and never set foot on the island.
Sources: EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Kerra Isle
Getting there and after
The only way in or out is a tunnel on the east side of the bridge over the river. It leads to the narrow strip of water between the island and Toxxulia Forest, easy to swim, with only the odd giant piranha to worry low-level travellers.
Allakhazam records a revamped Kerra Isle released on April 10, 2000, and notes that the zone is no longer in the game: on February 13, 2007, with The Buried Sea, Kerra Isle and Toxxulia were remade and merged into one forest zone. The P99 Wiki tells how the Erudite civil war carried a tribe of Kerrans to the moon of Luclin; the moon’s cat-people are told of in the Vah Shir.
Sources: EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Kerra Isle · Allakhazam: Kerra Isle 2.0 (zone) · Project 1999 Wiki: Erudin
Lore tied to this zone
Sources: EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Kerra Isle · Allakhazam: Kerra Isle 2.0 (zone) · Project 1999 Wiki: Kerra Isle (faction)