Deltora Quest 2
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Deltora Quest 2 (also known as Deltora Shadowlands) is a series of children’s fantasy books, written by Australian author Emily Rodda. It follows the adventures of three companions as they journey outside the magical land of Deltora to rescue the many prisoners held captive by the evil Shadow Lord. It is comprised of three books which were first published in Australia in 2002 by Scholastic. The Deltora Shadowlands series is associated with two other series that take place in the same fictional world and feature the same characters. These series are Deltora Quest, which precedes Deltora Quest 2, and Deltora Quest 3 (also known as Dragons of Deltora) which follows it. Collectively, these three series are known as the Deltora series.
Contents |
[edit] Major characters
[edit] Lief
Lief, now king of Deltora, faces greater danger than ever before. Now plagued by assassin attempts on his life, he is also afflicted by the sound of a mysterious musical instrument. In addition, he hears the voice of the Shadow Lord in his mind, and the people cry out to him to march against the Shadow Lord. Seeking to preserve his line and protect Deltora, Lief and Doom have spent much time researching the line of Adin, first King of Deltora, and creating a false Belt of Deltora. Lief later pursues Jasmine underground, and the company sets out to find the Pirran Pipe. After succeeding, Lief attempts to use the Pipe against the Shadow Lord, but only succeeds with the help of Emlis. Lief later returns to Del with the freed hostages, and begins to show romantic feelings towards Jasmine.
[edit] Jasmine
A changed girl now. Jasmine is now searching for Liefs attention, while remaining loyal to her previous ways of life. When she hears of Marilen, she assumes (thanks to the slandermouthed jester Jinks) that Lief seeks to get married. Later, Jasmine discovers the Shadow Lord's scrying crystal, with which she sees a being that she assumes is her sister. Seeking to rescue the being from the Shadowlands, Jasmine discovers the underground sanctuaries of the last Pirrans.
[edit] Barda
Barda returns in Deltora Quest 2, now reinstated as the Captain of the Palace guards. Barda's skill in swordsmanship is second to none. His courage and wits have seen his companions and himself through several tight places. He holds a genuine affection for Lief and, to a lesser degree, Jasmine and his loyalty to his king makes him a good friend. When Jasmine and Glock journey to the Shadow Lands, Barda accompanies Lief to find them.
[edit] Shadow Lord
The Shadow lord is the tyrant ruler of Deltora, who ousted the rightful rulers years ago, having done the same to the tribes of Pirra. He had been planning to take over for several centuries, and it is revealed in The Forests of Silence that the ruler's Chief Advisors have long been His creations. He is known to keep slaves in the Shadowlands which border Deltora, of whom only one has ever escaped alive. He was overthrown by Lief, and later challenged in his own ground by the Pirran Pipe. The Shadowlord is known to control many fearsome creatures, including the Grey Guards and at least seven Ak-Baba. He has never openly appeared, only as a shadowy form staring down from a window. However he appears to have a limited ability to shapeshift, for he twice appeared in the form of a storm cloud.
[edit] Jarred/Doom
Jarred was a noble of Deltora. He has joined the new royal court as one of Lief's advisors. When the people of Deltora began requesting that King Lief lead a rescue mission into the Shadow Lands to free the prisoners and slaves, Doom and Lief began scheming a way to do so, unbeknownst to even their closest friends and allies. Together they researched ways to find relatives of Lief if he were to fail in his quest to save the prisoners and forged a fake Belt of Deltora. While Lief and Barda journeyed into the underground in search of Jasmine, Doom stayed behind to watch over Lief's distant cousin Marilen as well as operations in the castle.
[edit] Josef
A librarian that preserved in secret the Deltora Annals, which contained the whole human history of that land. He was the palace librarian some time before Lief's father, Endon, became the King of Deltora. He was ordered to burn the Deltora Annals but disagreed and made it seem that he had died in the same fire that burned the Annals, but in truth, he faked his death and took the Annals to safety, waiting for the time when they could be used again. It was he who revealed the story of the Pirran Pipe to King Lief.
[edit] Marilen
A distant cousin of Lief's. She is a descendant of Adin through her dead mother. Thus Marilen is Lief's heir to the throne of Deltora, until later when Lief marries Jasmine and his own children are born. Lief entrusted the Belt of Deltora to her just in case he did not succeed in returning from his quest into the Shadow Lands to rescue the prisoners and slaves.
[edit] Ranesh
A orphan from childhood. Ranesh was forced to live the life of a thief but was found by Josef and taken in as his adoptive son. At the end of Shadowlands he leaves Josef and marries Marilen. They have borne a child, named Josef after Ranesh's foster-father.
[edit] Minor characters
[edit] Sharn
Mother of King Lief. She is from Tora tribe, albeit many generations removed.
[edit] Penn
Penn is the history keeper of the Aurons. It is her responsibility to record all that occurs on the rafts where the Auron's live. She became Lief, Barda and Jasmine's guide and explained to them about the Isle of Illusion as well as the history of the Aurons. Like the rest of her race, she detests lying but was forced to not tell the whole truth about her race's history on orders of the Aurons' Piper. When Lief and his companions left the Auron, they left Flash and Fury under Penn's care.
[edit] Emlis
A young Pirran that helps Lief in the Shadowlands.
[edit] Claw
A man from Del who was captured in the raids. He escaped from the Shadow Lord after being mutated into a fighting beast with talons, hence he name Claw. His real name is Mikal. He was a resistance fighter in the Shadowlands, along with former Rithmere champions Helene and Brianne.
[edit] Gers
The brother of Glock, Gers became one of the many Deltorans held prisoner in the Shadowlands. He escaped the Shadow Arena and made it to a branch of the Deltoran Resistance, led by Claw. He became the leader of the remaining Jalis after being entrusted with the Goblin ( Pirran ) talisman.
[edit] Glock
Glock was supposedly, the last of the Jalis, a warrior tribe that was destroyed by the Shadow Lord in the dark ages. It is later found out that Glock is not the last of the warrior tribe-there are some in the Shadowlands. He died while battling The Fear.
[edit] Jinks
A acrobat that was in the Resistance group. He knew Barda as a boy and lusts for riches. He died when he ate a poisoned cake meant for Marilen while stealing treasures.
[edit] The Monsters of Deltora
Deltora is well-known as the land of Magic and Monsters. These are just some of the many fantastic creatures that inhabit it.
[edit] Topaz Dragon
A dragon that kidnapped the lady Alyss, but only for her hair for to line its nest. When Alyss willingly cut off her own hair to give to it, the dragon let her go in peace. The last of the Topaz Dragons, it was persuaded by Dragonfriend(Doran) to go into a profound sleep, so that only if the Belt of Deltora, worn by Adin's heir, came near its lair it would wake up. The Topaz dragon guards the way into the underground caverns and Lief and Barda encountered it while following Jasmine and Glock into the underground caverns.
[edit] Granous
The Granous are evil creatures who appear only in the second and third Deltora quest series. They resemble beastial humanoids (similar to yeti) with dog-like noses and long, clawed fingers. They inhabit the Os-mine hills, a series of old, unknown, ill-trodden hills to the northwest of the Forest of Silence. Granous are sadistic creatures who delight in the torture and grief of others. They roam around their territory in tribes of 10 or so individuals and capture whoever they find. The Granuous are carnivores and their favorite food are the fingers and toes of their prey, saying that they are the sweetest tasting parts. Once they have secured a victim, they play a game with it called 20 Questions. In this game, a series of 20 riddles is asked to the victim, and they have 20 seconds to solve it. If they cannot solve the riddle in time, the leader Granous bites off one of the victim's fingers. If all fingers are gone, they start on toes. The penalty for cheating is 5 fingers. This method of their game probably stemmed from how they favor the taste of fingers and toes. Granous are cowardly creatures, however, and with a bit of oppression and intimidation, they can easily be driven off. They seem to be the natural prey of the Topaz Dragons.
[edit] The Fear
The Fear is an underground/aquatic beast which presumably became entrapped within the secret caverns beneath Deltora during the cataclysm of the continents of Pira and Deltora coming together to form a single land. The creature is a hybrid of a mollusk and a cephalapod and resembles a gigantic snail crossed with an octopus. It has a mass of hundreds of thread-tipped tentacles ringed around a beaked mouth growing out of the shell. Though the shell of the creature has became stuck with the roof of its cavern and it is now part of the cave, its tentacles allow it to reach any part of its domain without it having to move and since it lives in the caverns deep beneath the earth with very little light, it relies more on touch than sight. It's tentacles are incredible hard and durable, even when Glock attempted to slice one with his sword, his weapon broke in half. The Fear features as the key monster in the first book of the second series, The Cavern of the Fear. In it, it terrorizes the Pirran faction who live in the ruby caverns, the Plumes. It demands a living sacrifice each year, or it creates great waves which destroy the Plume village. Lief, Barda, Jasmine and Glock are captured by the Plumes to be sacrificed to the Fear, but a deal is struck up that the companions can slay the beast. They eventually manage to do so, at the price of Glock's life, and the Plumes give them the mouthpiece of the Piran pipe in return. The Plumes originally believed that The Fear was a monster that was bred by the Aurons to terrorize them although later on this was proven to be untrue.
[edit] Arach
Obviously their name is derived from arachnid. The Arach are giant Spider-like creatures who appear in the second book of the Deltora Shadowlands series: The Isle of Illusion. Arach have huge, bloated bodies, and are purplish-black in color with eight blood red eyes. They have 8 spindly legs which bear spikes and are clawed at the end. They are both venomous and have the ability to spin webs. They are highly vicious creatures whose first motive when they spot a living thing is to tear it to shreds and feast upon it. In The Isle of Illusion, in which a group of the Pirran faction known as the Aurons has broken off from the others to try to establish a magically simulated recreation of their former homeland of Pira, the separated faction apparently bred Arach to act as guards preventing intruders (such as those of the faction they broke off from) from encroaching on the island they did this on. Lief, Barda and Jasmine are forced to contend with several of them before getting into the dome in which the simulated Pira is located. When they destroy the simulation spell, and the light which was held within the dome escapes into the caverns, the Arach (who apparently hate light) attempt to take refuge in the darkened dome. While the three heroes escape, the leader of the separated Auron group, in a desperate attempt to preserve the spell which fueled the simulated Pira, is killed by the creatures.
[edit] Flash and Fury
Flash and Fury are two fighting spiders, spiders that are gambled on depending on how they fight (similar to a Cockfight). Each spider as large as a plate and have an obssession for fighting and if a spider loses in battle it will hold a grudge and track down the spider that defeated it and seek vengeance in battle. Flash belonged to Glock and is male and Fury belonged to Jinks and is female. The two of them are rivals and when Flash defeated Fury when their owners bet on them, Fury became enraged and desperately wanted to fight Flash to settle the score. When Jasmine and Glock went missing, Lief and Barda used Fury to track them (since Jinks told them that Glock had taken Flash with him). Even after Glock had died and Jinks had abandoned Lief and Barda to the Granduous, Lief and his comrades took the two fighting spiders with them and wouldn't allow them to be harmed. Eventually when they reached the Island of Auron (otherwise known as the Isle of Illusion), the group was attacked by Arachs and that was when the two spiders finally realized that they had an even greater enemy and the two of them put aside their differences and only wrestled each other out of fun. When Lief, Barda and Jasmine got the second piece of the Pirran Pipe, they left the two spiders under the care of the Aurons.
[edit] Conversion Project Slugs
Pink worm-analogues, the result of the Shadow Lord's genetic technology, that dig into the brain and allow the Shadow Lord to gain control. Their method of controlling their hosts is very similar to the Yeerks from Animorphs. They are the latest and so far most perfect of his creations. The Shadow Lord planned to implant these worms in the brains of his slaves and then return them to Deltora to act as spies to fool their family and friends.
[edit] Ol
Shapeshifters from the shadowlands, they come in three levels. Ols are shape shifters, however there are ways to tell them apart from what they are trying to look like. They usually wear lots of clothing because most of them don't produce body heat (they are cold at the touch), they usually come in pairs, they do not eat/drink, and they have the Shadow Lords mark (black hand surrounded by a black ring) on its core (where ever it may be) in whatever form it takes. Ols can hold a shape for three days, then their image briefly but unmistakingly falter, this is called a "Tremor". There "true" form is a white, shapeless being. Ols seen to have superhuman strength The only way to kill an Ol is to stab in the heart, which is on the right side of the chest.
The three varieties of Ols are Level One, Level Two, and Level Three. Level One Ols are everything described. Level Two Ols are more cunning than Level Ones, and are more difficult to recognize. They don't have to go out in pairs, mimic body heat, and even pretend to eat. Level Three Ols have abilities surpassing even the Level Two Ols. They can become inanimate objects and mimic almost anything perfectly.
[edit] Forbidden Passage Leeches
Leeches with wings that live in the Forbidden Passage. The Kerons use them for fish bait. They die if exposed to light. The Kerons did not light the Forbidden Passage because they believed that if they killed all the leeches, their defense against the Aurons would be gone.
[edit] External links
- Australian Deltora Quest website
- US Deltora website
- Emily Rodda's offical website
- Deltora Quest anime website
| The Deltora series by Emily Rodda | |
| Deltora Quest: |
The Forests of Silence - The Lake of Tears - The City of the Rats - The Shifting Sands - |
|---|---|
| Deltora Quest 2: (Deltora Shadowlands) |
The Cavern of the Fear - The Isle of Illusion - The Shadowlands |
| Deltora Quest 3: (Dragons of Deltora) |
Dragon's Nest - Shadowgate - Isle of the Dead - The Sister of the South |
| Other books: |
The Deltora Book of Monsters - How to Draw Deltora Monsters |
| Adaptations: | |
