You know what’s great? Theft. Well not actual theft, but idea theft. I think most people call it “inspiration”, but that doesn’t make me feel like a daring thief, planning the heist of the century, taking someone’s most valued asset from right under their nose, then disguising and concealing it to the point that they don’t even realise they’ve been stolen from.
One of my favourite places to pilfer ideas from is the mind of Emily Rodda, the author of the Deltora Quest series. If you were an Australian child in the 2000s there’s a decent chance you’ve either vaguely heard of Deltora Quest, or have intense nostalgia for it. This post’s existence should give you an idea of which group I fall into. I’m not sure if Deltora was very popular outside of Australia. There’s very little info about its worldwide reception on the internet. It was at least successful enough to get a lackluster anime adaptation though, so there’s that.
But What is Deltora Quest?
I’m so glad you asked, Subheader. Deltora Quest is a series of kids’ fantasy books about Lief, the teenaged son of a blacksmith, and his quest to restore the Belt of Deltora and defeat the evil Shadow Lord (spooky!). To be honest, the story is nothing groundbreaking, it’s the worldbuilding we’re here for.
This isn’t your typical kitchen sink fantasy world with elves and orcs and dwarves. It does have a couple of typical fantasy species, but it’s also full of really imaginative creatures. Each book has the protagonists travel to a new location to face a new threat and find another jewel for the Belt of Deltora (each one a different real gem, to trick kids into learning about geology in their cool fantasy books). The cover of each book is wonderfully illustrated by Marc Mcbride, a man who, when you google him, the first image result is probably one of the most powerful images in human history.
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| This man was born to appeal to children. |
McBride’s covers alone were enough to get child me’s imagination running wild. Just look at these beauties.
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| These are my family’s copies of Deltora from my childhood. Don’t ask why we have two copies of the same book with slightly different cover designs; I don’t know either. |
But he didn’t just illustrate the book covers, because what marketable children’s entertainment would be complete without supplementary material? I have three such books from my childhood: Secrets of Deltora, Tales of Deltora, and The Deltora Book of Monsters. Secrets has some cool background info on various worldbuildy things, while Tales is more narrative and explains the origins of many parts of the world (and it makes a wonderful use of Papyrus as a header font). All three books also exist as in universe artefacts, which is always a fun gimmick. The Book of Monster has always been my favourite though, since it’s entirely double page spreads of artwork with lore text layered on top.
Let’s Get Pilfering
Now I’ll show some of my favourite illustrations from the main series covers and the supplementary books with summarised lore descriptions, and you can steal away. Use this stuff to inspire your RPG sessions or that fantasy novel you’re definitely gonna finish some day.
Gorl
Gorl is sort of the poster child of Deltora, being featured front and centre on the first book. His lore isn’t too remarkable, but I had to include him for his design. His goldy-bronze armour and Greek style muscle cuirass give such a striking look to what could have been just a generic knight. Lore wise, he’s the immortal guardian of the Lilies of Life, which he’s contained in an enclosure of vines. Interestingly, the lillies aren’t the source of his immortality. He’s guarding them while waiting for them to bloom, and has somehow stayed alive past the point of his body completely decaying by sheer force of will. What a guy.
Wennbar and the Wenn
These creatures truly show how unique Deltora can be. The Wennbar is a gigantic beast that sort of looks like a stubby sauropod with a retractable neck. It rules over the Wenn, cold blooded creatures that can rub their legs together to produce a high pitched ringing that disables their prey before they sting and paralyse them. The Wenn hunt purely to provide food for the Wennbar, which often eats Wenn if they provide no other sacrifice. There is only one Wennbar, and when it dies it gives birth to several babies, which promptly fight to the death until there is once again only a single Wennbar.
Theagan’s Children
The sorceress Theagan’s 13 monstrous children, Hot, Tot, Jin, Jod, Fie, Fly, Zan, Zod, Pik, Snik, Lun, Lod, and Ichabod are truly strange beings. No one really knows what they are or how they came to be, only that they are immensely cruel. Many of them are rather stupid, and infighting is a common occurrance among them. Their abilities are left vague, other than being able to shape shift.
The Ak-Baba
I read Deltora before I watched or read Lord of the Rings, so the Ak-Baba was my first introduction to one of my favourite fantasy tropes, the ‘protagonists have to hide from a giant winged beast’ trope. To me, this is the original Fel Beast. A giant bird with teeth and a mental connection to the Shadow Lord. They stuck in my mind so deeply that I ended up subconsciously referencing it when I named the giant birds in one of my settings Akvelars.
The Nine Ra-Kacharz
The Ra-Kacharz are the immortal rulers of the city of Noradz, where they enforce the strange laws of the city with punishments going as far as torture or death. They forbid wasting food or bringing any sort of furry creature within the city’s walls. Apart from their eyes, they keep their entire bodies concealed in skintight wraps and they wield leather whips. When seen on the road, they completely ignore any passers-by, not even glancing at them. Smart travellers know to do the same.
Muddlets
Muddlets are animals used as beasts of burden or steeds. Their most notable feature is that they have only three legs, two in the back, one in the front, making Muddlet rides into a bumpy experience on even the smoothest roads. They can be fiercely independent and unreliable, going where they please and doing whatever they wish. So they’re pretty much cats that can be ridden.
Sand Beasts
This is another image that really stuck with me. Sand Beasts are gigantic bugs, as tall as three men, that lie beneath the dunes of the Shifting Sands, waiting for their unsuspecting prey. They have multiple exterior stomachs hanging off them. Once they fill a stomach, it drops to the floor for them to lay their eggs inside of it.
Gellick
Okay, so this guy is basically just Jabba the Hutt. BUT! He’s a frog. So that makes his inclusion here worthy. Gellick tyrannically rules over the Dread Gnomes (a combination of words that works far better than it has any right to) from atop his pile of treasures. His skin secretes a venomous slime that kills anything it touches. The Gnomes use this slime to poison their weapons. This fellow directly inspired a giant toad that was going to be the final boss of an RPG campaign I was running. Unfortunately it fizzled out before the party reached him. I’ll reuse that giant toad someday. He’s just hibernating, for now.
The Glus
The Glus is a giant slug that patrols a partially flooded coastal cavern, known as the Maze of the Beast. Local pirates throw any who cross them into these caverns to die a brutal death. The Glus spits a white glue-like substance whenever it detects movement, entrapping its prey. This substance then hardens into a rock-like state to completely trap its victim until they are consumed. Due to this hunting method, the Maze of the Beast is covered in rocks that resemble terrified, helpless people. This substance also acts similar to a spider web, allowing the glus to feel vibrations from anywhere in the Maze through the fine hairs on its underbelly.
Vraals
These beasts need very little info. They were created by the Shadow Lord specifically for fighting, and so they know nothing but fighting. You can see pretty much everything else you need to know.
The End?
There’s a lot more cool stuff in Deltora. All of this is only from the first series, and even then I haven’t covered everything. There are two more series after that, and then a couple of spinoff series. I haven’t read all of those though, and for the ones I have read my memories are vague. The world itself is also really interesting, being a sort of dystopia that the Shadow Lord has infiltrated every corner of, as he keeps the nobility corrupt or distracted to prevent any real change.
This series really means a lot to me, and I think it deserves a lot more recognition for just how unique it is in places. If you want to see more of it, let me know and I might make another post on the things that I missed, but I’ll never be able to cover every interesting thing without summarising the whole series, so I’d recommend you try to get your hands on The Deltora Book of Monster or Tales or Secrets of Deltora at least. Maybe even pick up the actual books. I can’t vouch for if they stand up as an adult, since I last read them when I was really young, but I can certainly say the lore holds up.
So, thank you to Emily Rodda and Marc McBride, for sparking my imagination and introducing me to the fantasy genre. Who knows where I’d be if not for them.
I will leave you with this:
Every person named James is actually two people named Jame, pretending to be a single James. I see through their plural gambit.
