Odus · EverQuest (original release)
Paineel
The hidden city of the Heretics in the hills on the southern edge of Odus: Erudites who broke with Erud’s council, practise necromancy, serve the god of fear, and live among their own animated dead.
The secret city
Paineel is the secret city of the Erudites who did not agree with Erud’s vision. They fled the council and built on the remains of an ancient city of the same name, taking its name for their own. The EQ Atlas places it in the hills on the southern edge of Odus.
Its guilds are cleric, necromancer and shadow knight; Allakhazam names them the Tabernacle of Terror, the Abattoir and the Fell Blade. The Tabernacle serves Cazic-Thule. The city also holds the Athenaeum Necromantia, a library of the dark arts, and has a brew barrel, forge, kiln, pottery wheel and oven.
Sources: EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Paineel · Allakhazam: Paineel (zone)
Miragul’s heresy
The P99 Wiki tells the history. Miragul, an Erudite who chafed at the High Council’s rules on magic, gathered followers in secret meetings to study forbidden tomes. Some of them travelled to Neriak and came back with necromancy and the dark gods, and the group came to believe Cazic-Thule the most powerful of all gods and necromancy the best way to serve him.
When the council found them out and named them Heretics, Miragul began a civil war. His followers fought a guerrilla war from camps in the south, and the council drove them further south until one concentrated blast of magic, some say with a double agent’s help, threw a great piece of Odus out into space. The Heretics scattered, and the Erudites, thinking they had won, went home.
Sources: Project 1999 Wiki: Paineel
A city over the Hole
Miragul’s people then built a great city deep in the chasm the blast had made: the Hole. In building it they opened a way to the plane of the Underfoot without knowing it, and elementals flooded in and nearly wiped them out before they sealed it off and built again closer to the surface. From the city you can still look down at the remains of Old Paineel.
The EQ Atlas describes today’s city as oddly designed, with separate areas joined by portals that move people between them instantly. It points out the Pit and a nearby Observatory, whose purpose is unclear. The citizens walk casually among the skeletons they have raised to guard the city inside and out: hunted always, but at home in their city of the dead.
Sources: Project 1999 Wiki: Paineel · EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Paineel
Getting there
Paineel’s entrance is on the southern edge of Toxxulia Forest. The P99 Wiki notes that at launch the entrance was buried in rubble and only mined open in a February 2000 patch, so evil Erudites began in Erudin and bought from class vendors in huts in Toxxulia until then; Allakhazam dates the zone’s release to February 17, 2000. Entry needs a Bone Crafted Key, which works the rock elevator down.
To reach Antonica, Paineel’s people must pass through Erudin, where its citizens hunt them. Tunnels from the newbie area lead to two entrances to the Hole and to the kobold Warrens.
Sources: Project 1999 Wiki: Paineel · Allakhazam: Paineel (zone) · EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Paineel
Lore tied to this zone
Sources: EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Paineel · Allakhazam: Paineel (zone) · Project 1999 Wiki: Paineel