Commentary:
Meet
Dalris, Carr's crush. I don't love her name. I do love her character. We'll learn more about her via other paths in this book and in later books.
Speaking of names: Dalris's father, the archdruid
Perth, is the second character in
Sceptre of Power to be named after a recognizable Earth geographical feature (
Arno the river in Europe and
Perth the city in Australia).
---
But this section of the book raises so many questions.
As
@Jfdlsjfd wrote, how old is Dalris? Even if we are VERY generous with how young a student could be to start at the "College" of Arcane Sciences, Dalris would have to be 12-13 years older than Carr to have been taught magic by Landor himself. Which would make her 27-28 here.
MAYBE it's possible that Landor taught Dalris on the side in which case MAYBE she started at an even younger age. 10? 8? No matter what, she's as many years older than Carr as she was when Landor finished teaching her, given that Landor DIED "shortly after" Carr's birth. Which gives Dalris a highly theoretical stretching-the-plausible MINIMUM age of about 23 here (15+8). A 23-year-old Dalris and a 15-year-old Carr would put any budding romance firmly in the "that ain't right" category.
Or, the most likely explanation: it's just (another) bad timeline in the book. It must've seemed like a cool plot point to have Dalris be Landor's student, so she is, even though that makes very little sense.
Regardless of her age, Dalris is definitely more mature than Carr, as we shall see in later books; but that would be the case even if she were somehow also only 15, because Carr is a doofus.
---
Next let's talk about the fact that Dalris says she and her father have been searching "everywhere" for Carr.
They must be terrible at searching.
From 15 years ago until two years ago, Carr and Marla were in the town of Saven just across the water. Given that Landor was "Archmagus of Saven", maybe that would've been a good place to look?
But let's give Perth and Dalris the benefit of the doubt: they're native Kandians, so maybe they're not welcome in Saven. Thus they had to confine their searches to Seagate Island.
Where, for the last TWO YEARS, Carr and Marla were living WITHIN CART-DRAGGING DISTANCE of the village where Marla was BORN. Do you think maybe it would be worth searching that general area?
OK, fine. Maybe the shepherd's hut was super secret, to keep Carr and his mom safe from Ulrik et al. In that case, maybe Perth and Dalris could've asked around in Delmer (Marla's village) to find out if anyone knows her whereabouts? Wendel has this information. MAYBE he's sufficiently cautious not to give it up to a druid or the druid's daughter, but couldn't they prove they knew Landor to Wendel's satisfaction?
OK fine. Maybe for various reasons, after 15 years of Perth's and Dalris's extensive searching, including two while Carr was ON THE SAME ISLAND as them, they couldn't find him.
So one random day in year 15 of the Great Search (™), they wake up one morning and say, "Screw it. Search over. Today's the day we send Dalris to break into the college to steal the Sceptre."
(1) What an incredible coincidence that the very night that Dalris breaks in is also the night that Carr is taking a stroll on the grounds!
(2) What a well thought-out plan this is! We just need all of the following:
- a way to break in past the lethal fence -- pole-vault scene? check;
- get past the door that has killed MULTIPLE non-Landor people for the past DECADE AND A HALF and ALSO foiled the magic powers of Beldon and ALL of his adepts -- Dalris was trained by Landor himself… so that obviously means she can somehow handle the door… check;
- then go from Landor's quarters to the crypts that hold the Sceptre, which will kill anyone who's not… Landor…. Wait a minute!
AAAAARGH!!!!! On the list of stupid, nonsensical plans, Perth's and Dalris's break-in plan is second only to
re-assembling a giant that was already effortlessly defeated by powerful wizards so it can attempt exactly the same thing 1,000 years later.
In this gamebook, the plan only works if Dalris KNEW she was going to run into Carr. But how could she possibly know that?
(From one of the other paths through the book, there is a POSSIBLE explanation for how Dalris could know Carr is at the Academy, but that knowledge would then beg the question of why Dalris doesn't SHARE that information with Carr right here.)
So I say again, this plan only works if… wait.
What if Dalris DIDN'T know Carr was here, DIDN'T expect to run into him, and ISN'T suicidally stupid enough to try the murder door or the murder wand. Then the only reason she would be here is to stop the most likely non-Carr person to get through the door.
OHMYGOD, DALRIS IS HERE TO ASSASSINATE BELDON!!!!!
---
Next let's scrutinize Dalris's statement that "we are the Bhukodian empire" and that she is descended from royalty.
Dalris's boast must be metaphorical for the simple reason that the Bhukodians were elves, and Dalris is not. And she might be descended from Kandian royalty, but not from a Bhukodian.
You might say, maybe over the past five centuries the remnants of elven Bhukodian royalty intermarried with the native Kandians until their 500-year-later offspring were all human with just a drop of elven blood. Maybe. But that seems like a pretty big stretch to me.
Dalris also seems to want to have her cake and eat it too: she's BOTH "the Bhukodian empire" AND a noble savage "Kandian". The former an empire of super powerful sorcerers; the latter a (no doubt) communal utopia of druids.
Sorcerer had no specific meaning in AD&D (the sorcerer as a class didn't exist until 3rd edition), except as a synonym for magic-user. But druid
absolutely had a meaning in AD&D -- it was a subclass of cleric at the time, but essentially druid was the same "class" we know and love today.
The magic-user with his book-learning and scroll-carrying was ABSOLUTELY NOT the same as the druid with her nature-worshipping and mistletoe-carrying. To claim to be simultaneously the (metaphorical?) descendant of an ancient empire of magic-users and a still extant tribe of druids makes about as much sense as a real-world claim to be simultaneously the descendant of both ancient Greece and the Olmecs.
Also note the weird sentence about how the Bhukodian "sorcerers" needed their "wands" to protect against enemy "wizards". Who were these enemies? This is the first we've heard of them. Everything we knew up until now says the Bhukodians reigned supreme until they didn't, but we never heard about any rival "wizards".
---
Finally, I want you to remember that Dalris claims that her father Perth "thinks" that Landor's spellbooks are IN LANDOR'S QUARTERS. This is a very important truth-claim that we shall scrutinize later.
But for now, back to the story.
