User blog:Grimreaper2219/PE Proposal: The Shadow Lord (Deltora Quest)

Since this whole Pure Evil proposal shtick seems to be blowing up in popularity, I’ve decided to hop on the bandwagon and propose a villain worthy of being branded as Pure Evil (or labelled a Complete Monster, according to our friends at TV Tropes). The candidate in question hails from a series very near and dear to my heart, as it inspired my love of reading and fiction in general.

So with that said,  buckle up, because this one is a doozy!

What Is The Work?
Deltora Quest is a best-selling series of fantasy novels penned by Australian author Jennifer Rowe under the pseudonym of Emily Rodda. Most of the series takes place in the titular Deltora, a sprawling kingdom of magic overpopulated by all manner of deadly, kill-happy fauna and flora. While Deltora Quest’s narrative spans across multiple media including, an anime adaption, a manga series and supplementary materials, this proposal focuses on the first three series of books which chronicle the quests of three companions — Leif, Barda and Jasmine — to defend their homeland from the powerful, corrupting evil of the Shadow Lord.

Who Is The Shadow Lord?
The Shadow Lord, once known as Malverlain, is a malevolent and scheming Fellan sorcerer desiring to conquer the World of Deltora via a combination of magic, treachery and military might.

What Are His Crimes?
The second child of a Fellan chieftain, Malverlain’s villainy begins when his father dies and his first son, Annoltis, becomes the appointed heir. Malverlain flies into a fit of jealous rage and challenges Annoltis for the right of chiefdom, only to be overcome by the combined might of his brothers. The brothers waste no time in casting a spell on Malverlain preventing him from ever returning to his homeland of Dorne, forcing him into exile.

With no other options, Malverlain flees westward but not before he swears revenge on his brothers. After drifting across the Sea of Serpents in a small boat for a while, Malverlain disembarks upon a lush isle inhabited by the Four Sisters, humans renown for their soothing singing voices. Being the spiteful and petty person he is, Malverlain separates the Sisters by imprisoning them to stop their singing and failing that; he murders them one by one in cold blood.

However, this act has the unfortunate consequence of awakening a massive, destructive creature kept asleep by the Sisters’ singing, who proceeds to sink the entire island. Malverlain manages to avoid the behemoth’s wrath by escaping in his boat and ends up setting foot in a prehistoric Deltora (then known as the Land of Dragons). Following that, he proceeds sets up shop in a mountain barrier between Land of Dragons and the neighbouring nation of Pirra while using an extensive spy network to monitor both kingdoms.

Malverlain spends several years or decades plotting and honing his abilities, before making his first major step towards building an empire. He conquers Pirra, deeming it easier to subject than the Land of Dragons by disguising himself as a Pirran to convince Pirra’s bickering inhabits to dismantle Pirra’s strongest defence, a magical evil-repelling flute called the Pirran Pipe. Thanks to this deception, the Pirrans have to flee underground as Malverlain’s forces invade Pirra and Malverlain turns Pirra’s idyllic landscape into a desolate, inhospitable wasteland overrun with horrific mutant animals dubbed the “Shadowlands”.

After establishing a base of operations in the Shadowlands and becoming so powerful that his body gets destroyed from being unable to contain his full power, Malverlain renames himself the “Shadow Lord” and wages war upon the Land of Dragons. Despite leading two unsuccessful campaigns against a united Land of Dragons (now rechristened as Deltora), his troops manage to cut a destructive swath through Deltora, slaughtering and pillaging their way through entire villages while inflicting heavy casualties on the defenders.

The Shadow Lord then resorts to subtlety by sending spies to infiltrate Deltora’s court, preventing the royal family from interacting with commoners and destroying letters of complaints or pleas for help to brew feelings of hopelessness amongst the Deltorians. The logic behind such actions is that Deltora’s kings wear the Belt of Deltora whose power to stop evil from entering Deltora comes from the Deltorian’s faith in their ruler. By sowing despair and resentment, the Shadow Lord weakens the Belt’s capabilities, allowing minions to enter Deltora and letting him kill all but seven of the dragons acting as Deltora’s guardians via vulturish monsters called Ak-Baba.

Upon support for the monarchy reaching an all-time low, the Shadow Lord orders Ak-Baba to hide the mystic gems apart of the Belt in Deltora’s most hostile regions and his spies to depose the current king, forcing him into hiding. With no one left to oppose him, the Shadow Lord rules Deltora with an iron fist through loyal servants such as the sorceress Thaegan and her man-eating children, the Ra-Kacharz who use fanatical religious dogma to keep their subjects docile, and the sociopathic loan shark named Laughing Jack. The Shadow Lord doesn’t rely only on said followers to exercise domain as terrifying monsters like the sadistic Grey Guards, and shapeshifting Ols help keep citizens in line.

Mentioned citizens live in absolute misery under the Shadow Lord’s reign, as the lucky ones dwell in outright poverty day after day. The unlucky get dragged off to the Shadowlands to serve as test subjects in gruesome experiments or fight for their lives in vicious gladiatorial games against bloodthirsty war-beasts called Vraal for the amusement of the Shadow Lord and his underlings. Anyone brave and dumb enough to oppose the Shadow Lord become flat-out annihilated while the survivors find themselves forced into long lives of slavery.

When the trio finishes reassembling the Belt, the Shadow Lord has Dain, an Ol masquerading as Deltora’s long-lost heir lure Deltora’s resistance movement into a trap by having Dain fake his kidnapping. When the Resistance launches a rescue mission to free Dain from Deltora’s capital of Del, they fall for trap and Grey Guards round them up for public execution. Thanks to the sudden arrival of Lief, the rebel’s executions get delayed when he dons the Belt and reveals himself to be the throne’s true heir.

Unable to remain in Deltora any longer, the Shadow Lord’s forces retreat into his domain along with thousands of enslaved Deltorans. These slaves act as guinea pigs for the Shadow Lord’s Conversion Project intending to replace Ols with Deltorans infected by mind-controlling worms, and the Shadow Lord sends several parasitised Deltorans to assassinate Lief, who is now Deltora’s king. These assassination attempts fail and motivate Lief along with his friends to travel through an extensive underground network of caverns under Deltora, where the Pirrans now live to rebuild the Pirran Pipe, the only object that can free the slaves from the worms infesting their brains.

To prevent the Pipe’s reconstruction, the Shadow Lord lures Lief into his hands by exploiting Lief’s love for Jasmine and coaxing her into the Shadowlands via an apparition of her non-existent kidnapped sister. Jasmine runs off to the Shadowlands to save her fictitious sibling, forcing Lief and Barda to run after her. Grey Guards capture the heroes after they sneak into the Shadowlands and force them to witness a convocation, where the Shadow Lord unveils the Conversion Project and intends to demonstrate its effects on the trio alongside several prisoners.

Upon discovering the group’s presence, the Shadow Lord kills everyone around him, save for the prisoners and 3-19, an Ol tasked with administering the worms. Lief warns 3-19 not to infect the prisoners because he’ll end up signing his death warrant, making him hesitate before the Shadow Lord offs him too. With no other options left, Lief plays the rebuilt Pirran Pipe to stall the Shadow Lord while buying time for the Pirrans to rescue the Deltorans, before he, Barda and Jasmine make their escape.

Unfazed by such a setback, the Shadow Lord enacts his wickedest and devastating plan yet. Drawing inspiration from his encounter with the Four Sisters, he hides a kaiju-sized mass of grey liquid in the abandoned city of Hira and places the homonymous Four Sisters around Deltora. These sorcerous creations keep the Grey Tide in a state of deep slumber while draining the land of its fertility and inducing a severe nationwide famine.

Should all of the Four Sisters get destroyed, the Grey Tide will awaken and consume everything in its path, transforming Deltora into an uninhabitable desert. When our protagonists succeed in reawakening the last seven dragons and have them kill the Sisters, the Grey Tide wakes up and starts wreaking havoc. At this point, Lief realises that right from the very start they were in a lose-lose situation, where they could defeat the Sisters and avoid playing into the Shadow Lord’s gambit, or accept that Deltora will never be free of famine but prevent the ultimate end.

But, when all hope seems to be lost, the Belt-empowered dragons arrive to fight off the Ak-Baba defending the Grey Tide and make short work of the sludge by vaporising it into ashes. The surviving Ak-Baba cut their losses and return to the Shadowlands, as the dragons finish off the Grey Tide, saving the day. Although the trilogy ends on a high note with Deltora restored to the way it once was, the narrative presents the troubling implication that the Shadow Lord is still at large and waiting for the perfect chance to re-conquer Deltora.

Does He Have Any Mitigating Factors Or A Freudian Excuse?
None. The Shadow Lord is an arrogant, heartless and cruel bastard who shows little to no redeeming qualities. He’s a textbook sociopath who commits various crimes ranging from attempted murder to outright ecocide without so much as blinking an eye or displaying the slightest hint of remorse. The Three Doors trilogy (which shares the same universe as Deltora Quest) implies that even before he became his universe’s equivalent of Sauron, Malverlain was always a horrible person and would’ve become evil sooner or later, making the whole affair not a matter of “if”, only “when.”

How Vile Is He?
The Shadow Lord is a nasty piece of work who sets Deltora Quest’s standards for heinousness pretty high, thanks to having countless atrocities to his name including attempted omnicide, genocide, totalitarianism, slavery and mass murder. There’s also the fact that most of the Deltoraverse’s significant villains serve him, making him responsible for almost every bad thing that happens in the series. However, while said followers are nothing to laugh at in evilness, they’re eclipsed by the Shadow Lord when it comes to resources, cruelty, body count, and sphere of influence.

Oh, and by the way. Did I mention that Deltora Quest’s target audience consists of readers in the 8-12 age range?

Yeah, it’s that kind of series.

Final Verdict?
A rock-solid keeper. The Shadow Lord has plenty of personality alongside well-explored and explicit motives. He’s cruel, vicious, tyrannical and came very close to turning the nation he wanted to rule into a graveyard.