#deltora au

[lindalofbroome]

modern au doodles because wanted to reiterate biker lindal and then it became a whole thing

[wickedcriminal]

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III: ...then I was suddenly grabbed by the ankle and pulled right under the sand! There was a monster living in the sand!!

Lief of Del, nodding sagely: The Bees.

Hiccup:

[goawaypopup]

Here's an AU I've had in my mind ever since reading the side books.

When he sets out into the continent in the original books, Lief is almost completely unprepared. The Shadow Lord's regime has cut off information flow between population centers, and Del's recorded history is almost all in the off-limits library, so there really wasn't a lot he could have done to avoid this. All he has is his memory of his father's copy of The Belt of Deltora, a vague little pamphlet that he keeps forgetting at bad times, and which helps not at all with dealing with the dangers of the continent itself.

Unless... Jarred chose a different book to steal from the palace library all those years ago.

Secrets of Deltora, an in-universe guide to Deltora's locales by Doran the Dragonlover, was also hidden away in that library. It was far more richly detailed and practical than The Belt of Deltora, and in its writing Doran expressed his distrust of the advisors and his fear that the Shadow Lord was preparing to strike - also containing a hint at the location of Withick's Belt of Deltora booklet in one of its illustrations. And it has a similar narrative recounting of Deltora's founding, the powers of the seven Belt gems, and their combined ability to ward the continent against the Shadow Lord. It would be an entirely plausible choice for Jarred if he had had some extra time to find and read it, and conceal it about his person (seeing as it was, in fact, extremely forbidden to touch).

If, growing up, Lief or his father managed to decode the secret message in Secrets, he would have lacked no information from not having The Belt, up to the urging to ignore the tradition of keeping the Belt locked up. Indeed, he would have a distinct advantage, knowing that the complete Belt was capable of waking and summoning the dragons, as well as all the travel advice and recorded dangers found elsewhere in the book.

What does this mean for him when he finally sets out to recover the gems?

This time, considering the question of which hotspot to visit first, Barda and, ahem, Lief's father are confronted with a very different picture. The elaborate, detailed descriptions of all the ways plants, bugs, snakes, and wild animals can kill you in the Forests of Silence, and the terrifying undead telekinetic armor guy, plus the sheer scale of how many places a gem could conceivably be in the three forests. Versus: nothing at all in the guide for the Valley of the Lost, which was the only site formed AFTER Doran's time. Just some rumours of a valley cloaked in mist. So it seems clear that Barda's bravado will not prevail with better information at hand - the entire journey is going to be in reverse.

Starting at the Valley may be for the best, as it is comparatively harmless for a party with their wits about them. Forewarned of the region's Grippers, they do not fall victim to any embarrassing incidents, though they might be shocked by the Jalis' absence.

Unfortunately for Lief and Barda, they will not have the aid of Jasmine or any mind-clearing gemstones this time. And god knows whether the Belt is still capable of burning the Guardian with 0 gems present - let's hope it doesn't come to that. But honestly, I think they could pull this off, with the assistance of their usual excellent luck. Especially if they manage to guess the name without completing the clues. This does mean... they're going to be thinking that Endon was a corrupted traitor the entire time. Oh boy! Time for Deltora to buck the bonds of monarchy entirely?

The diamond is an excellent first gem. Its courage will probably do at least as well as the topaz did at suppressing Lief's burgeoning PTSD, and its added physical strength will come in extremely handy for the fights ahead.

The Maze of the Beast will be much, much more straightforward with the Shadow Lord's forces not yet on alert. There will be far fewer Ols in the area and any that remain will be much less on guard against the duo. The whole ordeal with Tora and Dain and the Resistance and the pirates probably won't happen either, so rather than being shoved into the Maze, Lief and Barda can adequately prepare for it. They could ideally leave a rope ladder or something and avoid having to leave though the blowhole.

The Dreaming Spring is clearly described in the guidebook, along with its status as a much-needed source of scarce water in the north, so they're quite likely to visit it on the way to Dread Mountain. The incident that gained them the Kin's assistance, however, is unlikely to play out the same (the Rithmere Games have probably not occurred yet, Doom has not freed the Karn pod's captured finalists, and the Grey Guards do not pass this way for another while yet.) They might have to trudge through horrible cold woods for weeks instead of being carried by warm women.

Unless they had their own incidents with Doom, they won't glean anything in particular from the Kinrest and Dread Mountain writings. Despite Doom having been swept up in the changes in this timeline, it seems likely he's still in similar places at the same times. He could have been near Amethyst territory in books 1 and 2 prior to visiting Tom's shop.

Dread Mountain is where I'm going to leave it as having too many divergent possibilities to make a solid prediction. Jasmine and likely Prin are absent, the Lily nectar is absent, the Ruby is absent, there may or may not be Spring water for the using. If they happened to take the exact same path up the mountain, Lief is dead at the bottom of the very first gnome trap if nobody tripped him before he could step in it. There are roughly twelve hundred deadly poisonous arrows killing alternate timeline versions of them left and right. It's pretty rough.

From there, if they live, they're probably going all sorts of exciting directions away from canon. Perhaps the illustration of the Belt of Deltora in its proper order will clue Lief off that he's doing it wrong sooner. Perhaps Lief drops the book in Glus water, or didn't bring it with him, and has to start using his exceedingly unreliable memory for many more, more vital pieces of information. Perhaps the perceived perversion of the monarchy that Barda served so early on in the quest causes him to snap and throttle Lief with his bare hands. Perhaps, at some point, Doom will receive a smack upside the head and regain his memory, and remember about the kid he left in the deadly, deadly jungle over a decade ago.

But most importantly, this time they will have dragons at their disposal immediately if Lief manages to assemble the Belt correctly.

[cheeseandcake-from-ao3]

Had a Very Dumb AU idea for Deltora: An AU where all the Red Herrings aren’t. (I blame that one post that had a ‘Dain is the Heir but also Evil’ AU-)

To summarise: Lief’s parents are Jarred and Anna, The Guardian of The Valley is Endon, and Dain is the heir. Faith is also real but that’s for later.

[tumblezwei-art]

mindlessly doodling turned into a pretty decent concept for DQ!AU Weiss, so here's that

[tumblezwei]

Practicing some more detailed rendering stuff with Ruby

[hard-times-paramore]

The Deltora Quest gems but they're Houseki no Kuni.

I'm trusting those two fandoms overlap for someone else out there, after all we love rocks.

I like to think Diamond is the youngest and Amethyst is the oldest, and Opal does the winter patrols.

[im-a-ramblr]

Note to self, remember to actually flesh out the Real Dain & Faith/Jasmin leaves AU. Here are the bsse points so you don't forget them

Faith is real, alive only because she's was an experiment after Anna died

Half OL like thing

Dain is real and was replaced

Jasmine is faster and gets to Faith then gets out before the others catch up

A heartbroken Leif and Barad free everyone including Dain

Both of them, plus Doom put a lot of their energy into helping him as a way to cope with the lose of Jasmine

D3 plays out, with Dain filling in for Jasmin

After the grey tide Faith ends up getting captured by some guards who think she's an OL

Brings her to Leif, and Jasmine shows up to save her

Faith's background is revealed and Jasmine realized that none of the others knew she existed

Uhhh other stuff happens too

[deusvervewrites]

So, not an Au post, but something I've noticed in the back of my head. I'm binging a slightly older fic of Etheriell's, namely Overcharged, and was contemplating AfO and his raising of of Tomura as Tomura. I remember a post here by Deus about AfO and Tomura being similar in temperment, and I had the thought - was that that part of the plan? I mean, I know it's been said they needed Tomura filled with rage and such to make bodyjump easier, but did they also need Tomura and AfO to be similar?

I don't remember that post but I'm not sure that was intentional. Like AFO sees himself as the unstoppable greatest evil like the Deltora Quest Shadow Lord. He acts like a screaming toddler the moment his plans fall apart and there are parallels between his chuuni obsessions and Shigaraki speaking in game lingo but I doubt they're intended in-universe

[theoakleafpancake]

If I fight those monsters

Is it you I’ll find?

[Image ID: A depiction of Lief. He has brown skin, dark curly hair and hazel eyes, and he is wearing a dull, purplish tunic, cinched at the waist with a yellow belt. A green wrap is folded around his arms. One gold earring is visible on his right ear. /End ID]

Wisdom Saga has also brought back my EPIC the Musical AU of Deltora Quest. Sorta. But have a young Deltoran prince who dreams of his kingdom’s release from the Shadow Lord, and of his father’s return

[lindalofbroome]

some concept designs of Bess for my eldritch masked ones au at some arbitrary ages

if you missed it, i started writing some of my thoughts about the purebond root masks and it got out of hand lmao. you can see the full ramble in that link there but long story short: purebond root wants to grow, takes nutrients from the host and spreads. it interprets the dna of the host and the mask and grows. in Bess's case that means that the owl feathers are repeated down her back and arms etc, but also means that the person continues to grow bigger.

the mask/purebond root does take over eventually and is constantly starving, concerned only with growing and growing. most adults are not going to make it too far past Stage 1 (Bess ~24y/o). the inner circle would hang out in Stage 2 (Bess ~36 y/o). and The Elder (Ballum's descendant usually) is the only one in Stage 3 as they are the one who is prioritised for food, probably gets offerings, probably is like a god. anyway just wanted to indicate a steep growing curve.

roughly this is where i'm at with the purebond root progression:

Stage 0 (children) - nothing, clearly a man-made mask

Stage 1 (adult) - uncanny valley, realistic mask

Stage 2 (inner circle) - transition, person with animal traits

Stage 3 (elder) - unfathomable and compelling, you probably wouldn't believe this was once a person

pinterest board if you are interested in visuals for the stages (not sure if everything is categorised correctly)

___________

some sketches i did shortly after my rambles but not sure will be completed

bede walking away from the masked ones (and his big fucked up owl mum lol) he is like the scale for what an average person is in relation to adult masked folk since he never wore his

,,,and now i am remembering i wanted to give eldritch bess multiple eyes and i fORGOT </3

anyway lowkey obsessed with big fucked up bess and rust attending her. she's also hella tall and barely a person anymore in terms of body but arguably she is more a person because she is more alert and has more heart. she will throw hands with anyone threatening bess or any of the masked ones. she will care for bess through thick and thin, whether it is appreciated or not

and some sketches of bess, rust, quill, and plug hehe

[wickedcriminal]

I need Lief of Del and Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third to meet. I think they'd really hit it off

[goawaypopup]

Roddacember Day 18: Ripples

(A remastered rant from the depths of the Deltora Quest Discord server.)

There is a timeline out there where the quest failed because Queen Bee murdered the questers to death in her yard with her bees before they could explain.

She is a contact of the Resistance. Finding the Belt on Lief's body, complete with three gems in place, she'd pretty well know what was up. She doesn't strike me as the sort to cast off the task to anyone else, especially not with the burden of guilt for it.

The next-in-line is dead, but the resistance doesn't know that. The Belt has done what it never did in the series, swapping over to the next in line - Marilen? Or can it be anybody who shares Adin's line? Or does Marilen count as dead because she's currently a spooky ghost in the Valley of the Lost? Who knows. The resistance can figure that out and have their own Dain reveal on their own schedule after the Belt's complete.

The bees are very intelligent and very fast. They can follow directions and travel quickly and discreetly. Queen Bee may be more fragile than the previous heroes, but she doesn't even need to be there to get the last four gems. Luckily, Lief had a handy map to them too.

The Maze of the Beast would be pretty difficult to pull off, and might require some sort of human party. The hatch could be lifted by a human to let the bees in to search, and the Glus might not even sense them, let alone be able to take them out with its spit. If they could just have a way to actually locate the Amethyst, the stone is soft enough that they very well might be able to bore through it. There is a species of bee that does this with cliffsides!

The problem of finding it might call for some creative solutions. I guess there's no reason not to send a pack of bees down carrying the Belt? If they could lift Steven's cart they can certainly pull that off. Or, for a more fun route, capture a bunch of Grey Guards, tell them you'll pull them back up if they can find the Amethyst, and dump them in the Maze. Grey Guards are very self-serving, it'd work great. Probably fill the Glus up after a pod or two and leave the rest to tear the place up.

Gellick would probably require a strategy to actually kill him. The treasure cavern must have an opening to the air for him to breathe somewhere, and he probably can't spit poison quickly enough to take down an entire swarm of flying insects, but they couldn't really try to tear the gem from his forehead. He's probably at least somewhat poison-coated there, and no doubt he can reach there with his tongue.

Dreaming Spring water might work again here if Queen Bee learned of it, but my thought here is bees carrying Water Eaters - they're locally made, an easy size for a bee to carry, and will definitely cause immediate massive internal damage. And Lief could hold the emerald immediately after Gellick's death, suggesting bees could also.

The Shifting Sands are a bit of an unknown. They took a while to notice Lief, but the buzzing of a rival hive seems to me like something that would set them on guard immediately. And they're uniquely capable of wiping out swarms of small intruders.

I'm not entirely sure what would work best here - fortunately the bees are capable of trying multiple times. Perhaps the best strategy would simply be getting in and out as fast as possible, or doing a stealthy remove and replace like in the original, or something fun like dropping an entire carriage into the pyramid and escaping in the chaos.

There's also the opal's foresight to help out here, which I'm certain Queen Bee would be the sort to use frequently; being a Plains woman, and also just, the way she is.

I was going to delve into the plausibility of bees being able to open doors, but then I remembered the Valley of the Lost's animal-killing mist. That's pretty insurmountable. But this one is something that doesn't have an immediate physical risk.

We're finally going to have to send in the Resistance!

Doom did manage the test before, and even if he probably can't just play again, he can definitely tell others the answer. The question is whether he can be persuaded to help. To round off the theme, I'll propose bee torture for this.

And with that, we have a more or less clear path to Queen Bee of Deltora.

[cheeseandcake-from-ao3]

I need to know. How much of this was Dain’s ‘Heir’ mask and how much of this was Actual Dain. I need to know. I need to-

[pocketramblr]

AU where Izuku and Mirio grow up as siblings.

Krakenverse? You want krakenverse? Or the DC au? Or the various apprentice au spinoffs? Or the Deltora au? Or the- nevermind you get a new one here have a canon ish setting

1- Inko remarries Togatadad. Solid step up for both of them I'm sure. Izuku and Mirio are now step siblings and get along like a house on fire yay

2- Mirio is more than happy to let himself be a laughing stock but absolutely no one will bully his little brother. Bakugou learns his lesson and stays away. Izuku mainly hangs around with his older brother and his anxious friend.

3- Aldera's quirk training classes suck even more than Mirio's canon middle school, which is why he's very lucky to have Izuku make up the difference because they HAVE to be heroes together they just have to which means Mirio has to get into UA first! He does by the skin of his teeth. (Izuku's life at middle school after his brother is no longer there sucks and he tries, unsuccessfully, to hide this fact from his family. Before it seemed a given the brothers could be heroes together, but now Izuku has doubts)

4- oh yeah the family's last name is uh Michiya (通谷) now, fun little kanji combo. This is important because when All Might rescues Izuku from the sludge villain and Izuku introduces himself while asking if he can be hero, he says he's Michiya Izuku. And All Might recognizes that surname. It's the one of the kid Sir Nighteye keeps pushing on him. All Might asks if Izuku's got any family in the industry, Izuku says yeah his big brother is interning with- oh my god does Sir Nighteye talk to you?? And he mentioned my brother?? Mirio is doing to flip when he hears that!! All Might awkwardly says he has heard good things indeed but really must go. Ensue sludge villain 2.0, nevermind this is the perfect kid

5- Sir does not think so, and tells Toshinori this at great length over the phone. Toshi does not tell him who the quirkless middle schooler he is insulting is, because he has no idea how accepting of him Mirio is with no family around, and even if he is Toshi was once quirkless himself and doesn't out people like that. (Sir has no clue Mirio's little brother who helped him train is quirkless because Mirio also does not out people.) That all said, Toshi knows this could blow up in Izuku's face and he deserves to know how. He puts off telling Izuku for a week but then the kid says his brother wants to come help him train on Sunday, so Toshinori tells him Saturday that Nighteye knows about OfA and originally asked him to consider Mirio. Izuku says Mirio would be a great candidate on heroism alone... Toshi doesn't care because he picked Izuku, dang it, but Izuku does care. So they tell Mirio about OfA the next day and he says in no uncertain terms that he doesn't want it and is so so so excited for Izuku. Mirio expects Sir Nighteye to echo his excitement the next day at his internship.... Which ends up being Mirio's last day at his internship, ah.

[tumblezwei]

Finally got to making a reference sheet for DQ!Ruby!

I tried to move away from the Qrow-like palette from the last time I drew her, taking some inspiration from her Mistral outfit for the lighter color scheme. I also tried to make the design feel more like a mixture of their designs and not just a carbon copy of Lief's outfit. I debated whether the waist cape was too much, but I wanted her to still have a splash of red when she wasn't wearing her cape, and I think it turned out pretty good.

All is still subject to change as I develop the AU further, but I'm pretty satisfied with this.