Truls Rohk

Truls Rohk is a character from the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara fantasy trilogy by Terry Brooks.

He is a shapeshifter from the Eastland who accompanies the Jerle Shannara to Parkasia, and he possesses great agility, a formidable handle on magic, and, most distinguishingly, superior instincts and survival skills. He is logical and matter-of-fact.

Biography
Truls Rohk is a hybrid, half-man, half-spirit creature. His father was a Borderman who learned the paths of the Wolfsktaag and was more at home in the wilderness than in civilization. During a trip in the Wolfsktaag, he encountered Truls Rohk's mother, a shapeshifter who at the time felt the irresistible urge to mate. The Borderman was caught up in her passion, and their forbidden courtship resulted in the birth of Truls Rohk. After the Borderman awoke from a deep sleep, the shapeshifter and Truls were gone. However, the Borderman was overcome with his lust for his mate and extensively searched the Wolfsktaag for her. When he finally found them by a lake, the shapeshifter seemed disinterested in the Borderman, and told him to forget her and Truls, her memory of him already fading. In a rage, the Borderman killed her, and set out to kill the boy as well. However, after hours of searching, he fell asleep from exhaustion, and Truls Rohk snuck up and cut his throat with his father's own dagger.

It was only afterwards that Truls realized that he was alone. He could never fit in with humans, and the spirit-creatures rejected him, for they rejected the cross-mating of his parents. The giant, misshapen Truls lived alone in the Wolfsktaag, meeting only two beings he might count as friends: the Druid Walker Boh and the Dwarf Panax. He accompanied Walker on several quests.

When Truls Rohk was older, Bek Ohmsford and his cousin Quentin Leah came with their Wolfsktaag guide Panax to Truls Rohk, seeking to gain his participation in Walker's quest to the land of Parkasia. Rohk agreed, for reasons of his own. He had rescued Bek as a boy, and agreed to accompany the quest, both to watch over Bek and to educate the boy on the use of the Wishsong. The Jerle Shannara was the airship that took Walker and his company to Parkasia, and none on the crew even knew that Truls was aboard, aside from Walker, Bek, Quentin and Panax, for Truls preferred darkness and solitude. After Truls agreed to go, he did not appear again in the story until Walker summoned him to search for and report to him the general location of a key on the island of Shatterstone. Rohk found its location and reported it to Walker, and also warned him of a presence he had felt in the vicinity of the key.

Walker later called on Truls again to recover the key on the island of Mephitic. Truls secretly acquired the services of Bek Ohmsford, revealing to him his true identity and then teaching him a little of the use of his magic. Truls and Bek recovered the key, and Walker was outraged at the fact Bek had gone, because he had not wanted Bek to learn about his magic and heritage until the time was ripe.

Truls Rohk later boarded Black Moclips, the airship under the command of Grianne Ohmsford, the Ilse Witch. He did so when the two ships accidentally collided in the heavy fog, and the Ilse Witch nearly detected his presence. He hid on the ship, however, in concealment for the remainder of the journey of the Black Moclips. The next time he appeared was to rescue Bek from the Ilse Witch in Parkasia, and the two attempted to escape the Witch and her Jachyra creature. In the final night of the chase, Truls backtracked to see how far ahead he and Bek were from their pursuers. He spotted her far away repeatedly walking in and out of the trees, as if in a trance. He realized too late that this was really an illusion set up by the Witch, and when he returned to Bek, he found him gone and the Jachyra creature waiting for him. However, shapeshifters in the trees saved Truls from the beast by seizing the creature, and they did this despite their rejection of half-breeds such as Truls. The reason for this was that Bek had told these woodland shapeshifters earlier that he would give up his life for Truls; they acted out of respect for this statement.

When Truls did not immediately return, Bek assumed he was dead, but in fact the shapeshifters had put Truls to sleep, and so he was delayed. After the Ilse Witch confined Bek to Black Moclips under the watch of her Mwellret and Federation crew, Truls, characteristically, singlehandedly boarded the airship and saved Bek. The two narrowly escaped, and proceeded to head towards Castledown, the home of Antrax, in order to help their travel companions. When they reached the heart of Castledown, they found the Ilse Witch, Sword of Shannara in hand, bending over a bloody and dying Walker. Truls attacked the Ilse Witch, but Bek blunted his effort with the wishsong.

The Ilse Witch was now paralyzed, and Bek convinced a reluctant Truls to bring her along. Now, the Morgawr was pursuing them for the purpose of finding the Ilse Witch. Bek, the Ilse Witch, and Truls were pursued, enduring harsh conditions, until they ran into the Jachyra creature that the Ilse Witch had summoned earlier. It solely wanted revenge on the Ilse Witch, and Truls' logic and survival instinct told him to leave the witch. However, Bek, who was the Ilse Witch's brother, refused. Bek told Truls that he could leave them if he wished, and Truls consented. As he was leaving, Bek was attacked with great speed by the creature, but Truls returned and intercepted it with even greater rapidity. After they battled, Truls killed it but was poisoned; he was mortally wounded.

The three then went to the shapeshifters once again, and their community asked Bek if he would allow them to destroy the human side of Truls so he could survive and join them. Bek agreed, and Truls Rohk ceased to exist.

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