sometimes when I think back on the Deltora Quest series I am struck by how mind-bogglingly PETTY the shadow lord is. He has basically infinite magical power and is immortal, and he spends his life
-infesting the city of Hira with giant rats and traumatising it's people so much they leave, build a new city, and form an entire RELIGION around avoiding rats, all because the city was the site of his first military defeat
-turning Withick Mire into a garbage dump to spite the artist and author Withick, despite the fact that Withick was long dead
-making Doran Dragonfriend immortal and trapping him on an island as the "guardian" of an object he was trying to destroy, fully conscious of his fate but unable to do anything about it and constantly in pain
-nearly exterminating the Jalis people completely, and keeping the dozen or so remaining tribesman as slave gladiators, because they were the only tribe to resist his second invasion with arms.
-nearly exterminating the dragons because an emerald one once breathed on him
-creating magical devices that slowly kill the crops of deltora so that even if the people throw of his chains they will still starve to death, and making it so that if the devices are destroyed it triggers a "grey goo" event that will wipe out ALL life in Deltora, starting with the cities of Hira and Noradz.
-deliberately starving the people of Del by cutting off their contact with the outside lands and branding all the fruit orchards and farms with his brand so that anyone who enters them will be executed
-enslaving the winners of the Rithmere Games and spreading the rumor that they abandoned their people the moment that they got the prize money so that all their friends and family will hate their memory
-weaving a magical illusion over the sun and moon in the shadowlands so that it looks like they are covered by his brand, so that none of his slaves can even look at the sky without seeing his mark
-turning his own homeland into a blasted heath devoid of most life except flesh-eating snails and forcing them to harvest mutagenic (and probably carcinogenic) clay or face death, all because they rejected him as king over a thousand years ago
-trying to send millions of giant flesh-eating bats to deltora to eat everyone alive for having the gall to resist his rule
he is the king of all haters, truly a miserable old cloud of soot and spite.
