Continent · The Scars of Velious, 2000
Velious
Velious is the frozen continent at the top of Norrath, added by The Scars of Velious in 2000: a land of ice and giants, Coldain dwarves and dragons, split by mountains and scarred by the claws of Veeshan.
All 21 connections as a list
- Iceclad Ocean ↔ North Ro (ship route)
- The Eastern Wastes ↔ Iceclad Ocean (zone line)
- Iceclad Ocean ↔ Tower of Frozen Shadow (zone line)
- The Eastern Wastes ↔ The Great Divide (zone line)
- The Eastern Wastes ↔ Kael Drakkel (zone line)
- Crystal Caverns ↔ The Eastern Wastes (zone line)
- The Eastern Wastes ↔ Sleeper’s Tomb (zone line)
- The Great Divide ↔ Thurgadin (zone line)
- The Great Divide ↔ Velketor’s Labyrinth (zone line)
- Icewell Keep ↔ Thurgadin (zone line)
- Kael Drakkel ↔ The Wakening Land (zone line)
- Skyshrine ↔ The Wakening Land (zone line)
- Plane of Growth ↔ The Wakening Land (zone line)
- Cobalt Scar ↔ Skyshrine (zone line)
- Cobalt Scar ↔ Siren’s Grotto (zone line)
- Siren’s Grotto ↔ The Western Wastes (zone line)
- Dragon Necropolis ↔ The Western Wastes (zone line)
- Temple of Veeshan ↔ The Western Wastes (zone line)
- Dragon Necropolis ↔ Sleeper’s Tomb (zone line)
- The Great Divide ↔ Icewell Keep (zone line)
- Plane of Mischief ↔ Temple of Veeshan (zone line)
Zones by region
The north and east
- Iceclad Ocean · levels 28–40
- Tower of Frozen Shadow · levels 28–56
- The Eastern Wastes · levels 30–50
- Crystal Caverns · levels 30–45
- Sleeper’s Tomb coming
The Great Divide
- The Great Divide · levels 29–45
- Thurgadin · levels 30–45
- Icewell Keep coming
- Velketor’s Labyrinth coming
The heart of the continent
- Kael Drakkel · levels 40+
- The Wakening Land · levels 40–50, 60+
- Plane of Growth coming
- Skyshrine · levels 35–60
The dragon lands
- Cobalt Scar · levels 35–60
- Siren’s Grotto coming
- The Western Wastes · levels 50–60+
- Dragon Necropolis · levels 45–60
- Temple of Veeshan coming
- Plane of Mischief coming
The ice continent
Velious arrived with EverQuest’s second expansion, The Scars of Velious, in 2000. It lies north of the old world across the Iceclad Ocean, which a classic zone atlas describes as open sea plus the Icy Fingers, a chain of islands leading to the mainland. A boat from North Ro lands travellers there, and a great bridge, the Great Span, carries them onto the continent.
a player guide records cover the frozen zones one by one, and the picture they draw is a cold land shared out among three great powers: the giants, the Coldain and the dragons. Most of the continent was built for players in the thirties and above, rising to the sixties in the dragon lands.
Sources: EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Iceclad Ocean · Allakhazam: Iceclad Ocean (zone)
Three powers
The giants hold Kael Drakkel, home of the Kromzek storm giants and the Kromrif frost giants under King Tormax; see Kael Drakkel and the Kromzek. They serve Rallos Zek, whose temple in the city even they may not enter.
The Coldain dwarves, driven long ago from Froststone in what are now the Crystal Caverns, hide in Thurgadin; see the Coldain of Thurgadin. The dragons of the Claws of Veeshan rule from Skyshrine under Lord Yelinak and roam the Western Wastes. Every visitor has to decide which of them to befriend, because the factions are bound together: help one, and another turns on you.
Sources: Allakhazam: Kael Drakkel (zone) · EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Thurgadin · EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Skyshrine · EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Western Wastes
The east
The Eastern Wastes cover the northeast: frozen tundra full of mammoths, rhinos and griffins, Coldain huts, a giant fort and the orc stronghold of Ry’Gorr Keep, whose back hut hides the teleporter to the Crystal Caverns. A player guide places Kael Drakkel in the southwest of the wastes and a dragonhead portal to Sleeper’s Tomb in the south, the prison of Kerafyrm; see Sleeper’s Tomb.
Off the Icy Fingers stands the Tower of Frozen Shadow, a cursed school of the dead ruled by Tserrina; see Tserrina and the Tower of Frozen Shadow.
Sources: EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Eastern Wastes · Allakhazam: Eastern Wastes (zone) · Allakhazam: Tower of Frozen Shadow (zone)
The Great Divide
West of the wastes the Great Divide cuts Velious in two, a range of severe mountains reached through a narrow pass. Thurgadin hides in its peaks behind a waterfall, with Icewell Keep, the home of the Coldain king, beyond it. The range also holds the tunnel to Velketor’s Labyrinth, the Tizmak caverns and a nest of shardwurms.
a classic zone atlas warns that the broken ground hides monsters until the last moment, and that the wolves here belong to one faction or another, so even a simple hunt shifts the balance between dwarves and giants.
Sources: EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): The Great Divide · Allakhazam: Great Divide (zone) · EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Thurgadin
The heart and the south
In the middle of the continent lies the Wakening Land, a forested valley kept alive by Tunare. The giants of Kael press against it from the east, and a player guide says Tunare’s court and the dragons have formed a wary alliance against them. A tree atop a tower on its central island leads to the Plane of Growth, and Skyshrine rises toward its west.
From Skyshrine a statue and the Shrine Key lead to Cobalt Scar on the southern coast, a flooded gouge where Veeshan tore the land, now full of sirens and drakes with an Othmir village on the beach.
Sources: EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Wakening Land · Allakhazam: Wakening Land (zone) · EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Cobalt Scar · Allakhazam: Cobalt Scar (zone)
The dragon lands
From an underwater cave in the Scar’s northwest corner, Siren’s Grotto leads to the Western Wastes, the last great home of Norrath’s dragons and one of its deadliest zones. Their named dragons drop prized talismans, and many Velious spells are found nowhere else.
The wastes open onto the Dragon Necropolis, the dragons’ burial ground hidden in the western mountains, and, by a one-way entrance, the Temple of Veeshan.
Sources: EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Cobalt Scar · EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Western Wastes · Allakhazam: The Western Wastes (zone) · EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Dragon Necropolis
About the map
The map is an original illustration drawn from the zones’ written directions, with relative placement checked against the game’s maps. The Iceclad Ocean’s islands run in a chain along the north, from the raft dock in the east to the Tower of Frozen Shadow on the last island in the west, and the largest island meets the Eastern Wastes, which cover the northeast, at the Great Span. The Great Divide joins the Eastern Wastes in the middle of the north. The Western Wastes hold the western edge, cut off from the Divide by a wall of glaciers, because no zone line joins them.
Below the Divide, behind more ice, the Wakening Land fills the centre of the continent; Kael Drakkel sits in the ice between it and the Eastern Wastes, and Skyshrine in the crevasses between it and Cobalt Scar. Cobalt Scar holds the southern coast, and Siren’s Grotto sits on its shared edge with the Western Wastes, the passage between the two, where the Dragon Necropolis hides in the western mountains. Dungeons, cities and planes reached from a zone are drawn as icons inside it.
Sources: EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Iceclad Ocean · EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Eastern Wastes · EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): The Great Divide · Allakhazam: The Western Wastes (zone) · EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Wakening Land · EQ Atlas (eqatlas.ca): Cobalt Scar