#vraal

[deschainartnerd]

Vraal

[missr3n3]

slowly figuring out cairyx's design, but at what cost

[goawaypopup]

Continuing on the subject of memory loss in Deltora, allow me to speculate much further off the rails.

Memory magic and especially amnesia are practically staples of the Roddaverse. The Zebak (from the Rowan of Rin books), seem to legitimately have no prior connection to Deltora or the Shadow Lord, and they've pretty much mastered it, brainwashing people to be spy-movie-style activateable secret agents and inducing total amnesia in an entire cultural group.

And we have two important and relevant examples of total amnesia from the other series as well, that I'd like to examine here: Doom, and Rye (The Three Doors).

You're probably quite familiar with Doom's case (unless you're someone who hasn't read the books at all, in which case I'm shocked you can understand any of this nonsense.) His wife was killed, and he was injured, fighting in the Shadow Arena. He escaped and adopted a new persona, his only memories beginning at some point after his injury. His memory was eventually restored when he dramatically fell down some stairs and hit his head at a convenient moment.

Rye interceded when a transformed Shadow Lord minion was about to attack a child:

He felt a great thud as the monster collided with him. He was blinded by a flash of white light... Then his head struck the ground, and there was only darkness.

...and wakes up with no memories of his identity or past.

Hey, you notice how whatever it was seemed to happen BEFORE his head hit the ground?

The rest of what happens to him is downright suspiciously similar to Doom. He keeps his skills and basic knowledge of the world. His memories immediately start to come back after he gets hit in the head.

What's more, the people he stays with in Dorne seem like they might have seen this before:

...'So what is your name? Can you tell me?' She put her head on one side, and waited. He thought. Nothing came to him. 'No,' he said bleakly. ... 'Never mind,' she said comfortably. 'It'll all come back to you soon enough, and in the meantime you can be Keelin.'

'At last your memory will return, Keelin, I an sure of it,' Janna said gently. 'It is best you do not strain yourself to remember.' 'Sometimes another shock or blow will do it,' said Petronelle, returning to Keelin's side.

And additionally, there have been other attacks by "creatures of sorcery", long enough to enter common knowledge:

'And she still refuses to believe the stories of beings that prowl at night, setting fires and attacking innocents. ... She calls them rumours and fishermen's tales, when we all know they're true.'

The beast that did this- it's unclear for exactly how long- is a Shadow Lord spy, one of the Dorne people (I shan't say who). They grow bark-like skin and claws when transforming, control a glowing bubble to lure the child to them, breathe white flames (the attack that hit Rye?) slay people in their beds without a scratch, and burn threatening messages into the local cornfields. It's a pretty impressive slate of powers for a saboteur.

The similarities between the two cases are enough to lead me to believe that they stem from the same cause.

The trope of total amnesia that only affects your personal identity, and the concept of a strike on the head being what cures it, is pretty much entirely relegated to fictional plot devices. It just isn't how amnesia, which already is very rare, works in real life.

This could just be a trope that Rodda is fond of, like rhyming prophecies... but I hate analyzing things like that! There must be a diegetic reason.

Whether there was another servant with this ability also in the arena with Doom alongside the Vraals (where the memory of its appearance would be particularly hard to retrieve even after recovery, going by what happened to Rye), or guarding the border to attack Doom, this could be another obscure tool at the disposal of the Shadow Lord, one whose nature is especially suited to keeping it unknown.

[deltoravivisection]

I love making up a cool idea and then the implications not actually hitting until I really start to expand on it lol. The party can get permanent upgrades by obtaining items from certain events. I decided Barda's would come in the form of inoculations (old-timey vaccines) and grant resistance to certain status effects. But like I wanted them to be rewards you get from minibosses and the only minibosses I have are the Vraal (already used for Lief's upgrades) and Ichabod. So like. The flavor of it all ended up being that you get tissue samples from Ichabod after defeating him and then take the various bits of gore over to Ava, who will make them into a salve type thing that Barda slathers over an open wound and absorbs into his blood. idk what's the matter with me idk why I'm doing this to him. Miles will see a normal nonmagical man and be like "is anyone going to subject him to the horrors" and not wait for an answer.

[goawaypopup]

Creature designs that are described this way are a staple of Deltora Quest, with a new instance appearing in just about every book. Exhibit A, the Wennbar from The Forests of Silence:

The bushes on the other side of the clearing thrashed and bent. The air thickened with a smell so vile that Lief choked and gagged. Then a huge, hideous creature, like nothing he had ever seen, crawled into view. Four stubby legs bent under the weight of a swollen body that was as round, blotched, and bloated as some gigantic rotten fruit. Vast, flat feet crushed the twigs beneath them to powder. Folds of wrinkled, green-grey flesh hung from the neck. The head was nothing but two tiny eyes set above long, wicked jaws. The jaws gaped open, showing rows of dripping black teeth and releasing gusts of foul air with every breath.

This is one of the ways Deltora Quest shows its more traditionally tropey side. Very frequently, evil is gross, pointy, slimy, and weird-smelling, and good is beautiful and shiny.

But for this series, at least, it's not quite as simple as associating weird animals with being scary and bad. I'd argue the creatures were a big part of the marketing and the appeal:

And within the books, it's not like spiders and snakes were the physical manifestation of evil. They were usually treated by the narrative just as the dangerous animals they were.

Think about the subplot with the pair of fighting spiders in the second series - they were described with "glistening spines" and all the usual ghastly imagery when they first appeared, but the two of them literally have character growth, losing their trained propensity to fight one another after surviving a greater conflict, and sleeping peacefully together. Adorable!

The reason the monsters are described this way, besides that they usually happen to be seconds away from creatively killing the POV character, is that, for a decent portion of them, they are literally describable as morally corrupt.

The Wennbar, our example, has a lifecycle that involves effectively parasitizing an unrelated, smaller species, the Wenn. It is worshipped and fed by them, and it eats them when displeased. It's honestly not clear what, if any, good it does for them, or if this arrangement is natural at all, but they're shown to be perfectly capable of hunting and feeding on their own.

Gellick, from cover 1, is a poisonous toad who somehow managed to grow exceptionally large, learn to speak, forge an alliance with the local dark lord, and become a murderous despot over a community. Despite being an animal, he could be tried and sentenced in a court of law.

The Glus, from cover 2, is actually a deliberate illustration of this point. It does kill people, horribly, but it's made clear that it is an animal going about its business.

And Vraals, from that last cover, are almost tragic. They're biological experiments produced by the aforementioned dark lord as weapons of war and arena fighters. They are driven to fight and kill anything that isn't of their own species that they perceive, and aren't really meant to be capable of survival on the outside. The few that have escaped live on through sheer bloodlust and unkillability.

And the magic weapon from this universe with the power to burn evil beings - the Belt of Deltora - explicitly does not work against most of these creatures, because they're just animals, natural to the land, trying to snag a meal.

Any *surrounding situation* can be written disturbing and frightening but it is absolutely impossible for me to find a *creature* on its own disturbing or creepy the less human it is. The uncanny valley may be a little bit played out but when a horror story starts describing a big giant arachnid or a deep sea serpent like it's horrible I'm just like sir that is an animal, you may as well try to spin a tortoise or a giraffe as revolting. What it does can still be frightening but when the description starts getting into like "an obscene unholy NUMBER of LEGS and TOO MANY glistening BLACK inhuman eyes" again that's just an animal, that's just a hungry guy

[stix-n-bread]

vraal and dardatos dex

i wish i could say that i was paid to do this but that would be a lie. except, well, all i recieved were very valuable tears

[thetopazowl]

Doodled some fanart for various series :3

Never really done any fanart so this was fun 💖

[shionshot]

Basic Vraal.I had some trouble drawing the eyes, so this Vraal looks a bit like it's smiling.

基本的なブラール（目を描くのが若干うまくいかなかったので、このブラールはちょっと笑ってるように見える）。

[pt-sink-foetus]

So was anyone going to tell me that the Vraal have more than one set of eyes or was I supposed to reread Dread Mountain myself?

[deltora-quest-art-by-me]

I don’t really picture Gorl with wings in the book, I just added them because it looked cool.

[raviniaraven]

I have a strong love of violent children's fantasy books. Shit like Deltora Quest that's an elementary reading level but people will fucking die and there's a monster that's just a massive pit of teeth, the queen pushes a man out of a tower window in chapter one and she's amazing for it

[ralad]

dm for the game i played earlier tonight based a creature we fought off a vraal

he was midway through the description when i picked up on it and was like “is this a vraal...?” before he revealed the token to literally be the art from the book cover :’)

i may not be as active in the fandom as i used to be but i KNOW my deltoran monsters 😎👍

[nyewclear]

more doodles of my babycore fantroll leumas!!!!!!!!! his strife specibus is skilletkind so yes that is a skillet with a very long handle and death spikes on the back yes thats exactly what it is

[kageyama-ritsu]

human-shaped "killing machines" are lame and out of date. gimme killing machines literally made to kill. give them knives for fingers and stakes for teeth. give them superior strength, speed and senses to all other living creatures. give them scales as hard as diamond and a presence evolved to instictively strike fear into its prey

[stix-n-bread]

did someone say more vraal?

no?

are you sure?

[theimaginatrix27]

I don’t think that was ever confirmed. But if that is the case, that is a horrible horrible thought.

I always thought they were created, though. Maybe mutated wildlife from the Shadowlands?

At the same moment there was a roar, and a huge, glistening man-shaped horror came leaping into view,

So there were the people we saw in the shadowlands who had their bodies modified to include claws etc, were vraals like successful experiments in that sense? Were they captured prisoners who had their bodies modified? Does anyone remember?