Shadow Lord (Deltora Quest)

The Shadow Lord is the primary villain of the book series Deltora Quest and its anime TV show adaption.

He is the evil ruler of the Shadowlands beyond the Barrier Mountains, north of Delotra and the supreme leader of the Shadow Army. He is the main antagonist of the Deltora Quest series and is shown to be a very powerful sorcerer. He resided in the Shadowlands and made attempts to rule Deltora throughout the series. He is shown to be a very clever planner and creates many plans to foil even those who appear to defeat him at first. His most loyal servants are the seven Ak-Baba, huge, monstrous vulture-like birds that are very strong, and lives a thousand years. He is, in short, a megalomaniac, being convinced that all creatures should obey him. The Shadow Lord apparently goes by a policy that if he can't have something, he will simply destroy it, evident by deciding to just destroy Deltora with the Grey Tide when the Four Sisters failed. He is also seems to be very sadistic, deriving pleasure from tormenting Lief mentally. The Shadow Lord cares nothing about his subordinates, viewing them as simple pawns. An exception to this may be the Ak-Baba, if for their strength and loyalty if no other reason.

Characteristics
The Shadow Lord is very powerful dark sorcerer, who rules beyond the Barrier Mountains to the north of Deltora, in the Shadowlands, which were formerly the land of Pirra. He's cruel and hates everything good and beautiful. He's jealous of the people of Deltora, and the king, because his plans to takeover the land have failed again and again.

His strength has grown over the thousand years he has been in the Shadowlands, and his hatred upon the Royal Family of Deltora has as well.

The Shadow Lord was once a human being, with dark skin and a long black beard but over the years of his life anger and hatred compleatly consumed his physical body. He had a large cloak, reffered to his cloak of shadows in Tales of Deltora, and a magic staff made of a wooden branch, curled up on top, just like the one of the Maia Gandalf the Maia in film adaptations of the works by J.R.R. Tolkien.

While the Shadow Lord is never explicitly seen in the books, the anime depicts the Shadow Lord as a satanic monster made out of pure darkness, with glowing red eyes, and a deep, sinister voice.

In the beginning
The Shadow Lord was once a sorcerer of unknown origins, who repeatedly suffered defeat will sailing alone on his ship, looking for a place to rule. At this time, he was powerful, but not nearly as powerful as he would one day become.

In his search, he chanced upon a beautiful island that was home to four sisters: Flora, Viva, Aqua, and Terra. They were all beautiful singers, but the Shadow Lord, hating beautiful things, imprisoned each on a separate corner of the island. However, the sisters still sang to one another and the Shadow Lord still was not rid of the singing. Enraged, he killed the sisters one by one.

However, their singing had soothed and sealed a great beast in the center of the land; by killing them and silencing their singing, the Shadow Lord had enraged and released the beast. Angered, it rose, crushing the beasts, smashing the mountains, and cracker the rock that the island rested on, so it began to sink. The Shadow Lord, not yet powerful enough to face the beast, fled out in the Silver Sea, conjuring up a small wooden boat with a grey sail, marked with red.

Arrival at Deltora
One day, he washed ashore on Deltora, then known as the Land of Dragons. He landed on the northwest side, in the territory of the Emerald. He immediately decided that this was the land that he wanted to rule. However, he was soon attacked and burned by an Emerald Dragon and fled to the mountain range, now known as the Barrier Mountains, separating Deltora and Pirra. He hid there for many years, gathering followers in the many bandits and killers also living in the mountains.

The birth of the Ak-Baba
One day, on a snowy peak, he found what he thought at the time was a dragon egg. He was very pleased with his discovery, thinking that he could raise his own army of dragons to conquer Deltora. When he brought it to his cave and the egg hatched, however, he realized that this was not a dragon; it was a kind of bird. Though disappointed, he soon realized that this bird could be useful in its own way, and he presumably found 6 more eggs, resulting in what would eventually become his loyal group of Ak-Baba.

The Shadowlands
Later, when he was more powerful, the Shadow Lord went to Pirra. He tricked the Pirrans into splitting both their people and, more importantly, the Pirran Pipe, into three parts. Without the Pirran Pipe, the land of Pirra lost its power and the Pirrans fled to the underground ocean below Deltora. The Shadow Lord ruled the now-vacant Pirra, which became the Shadowlands.

The Battle for Deltora
He then attempted to take over Deltora. However, a blacksmith, Adin, during the Battle for Deltora, united the tribes of Deltora with the Belt of Deltora and drove the Shadow Lord's armies back to the Shadowlands. It became the custom for the heir of Deltora to always wear the Belt of Deltora; however, the royal family's advisors were slowly replaced with the Shadow Lord's servants, and it became the custom to wear the Belt of Deltora only on the day that the heir became king or queen. Eventually, the Shadow Lord succeeded in stealing the gems of the Belt of Deltora and scattering them throughout the land, and with the help of his Ak-Baka he killed all but seven of Deltora's dragons.

The Stolen Gems
Later, Lief and his companions collected the 7 gems from the most feared places in the Land, the Forests of Silence, The Lake of Tears, Hira, The Shifting Sands, Dread Mountian, The Maze of the Beast and The Valley of the Lost. He then expelled the Shadow Lord from Deltora when he rearranged the Belt so the first letters of each Gem spelt out "Deltora" and put the belt on, as he was the last in Adin's Line.

The Pirran Pipe
After that Lief and his friends set off on a quest for the Pirrian Pipe. Once they got all three pieces of it they went into the shadowlands and played it there sending the Shadow Lord in exile and freeing all his slaves.

The Four Sisters
Lief then learned of the Four Sisters in Deltora and awoke dragons to strike them down one by one. The Shadow Lord had a plan with the sisters if they would not be destroyed they would starve Deltora's people, but if they were, the Beast, a giant mass of Gray Slime, in the center of the land (Hira) would rise up and cover Deltora in a Hardening Gray Slime. Lief silenced the sister's and the beast rose however with the help of Deltora's last Dragons, Veritas, Hopian, Fortuna, Fidelis, Forta, Honoura and Joyeau, they destroyed the beast. And so the Shadow Lord's plans were ended, but to this day Lief still doesn't remove the Belt.

While the Shadow Lord appears human in the books, as in the illustration drawn and painted by Marc McBride in Tales of Deltora (in the three series he is, however, mentioned repeatedly, and during the last battle in Return to Del, he appears, but floating in the air, surrounded by dark red clouds), the anime depicts him as a massive, demonic entity with glowing red eyes, and a body made out of darkness.