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Grianne Ohmsford, also known as the Ilse Witch, is a character in The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara trilogy, the High Druid of Shannara trilogy, The Dark Legacy of Shannara trilogy, and The Fall of Shannara tetralogy. She goes through many difficulties and extreme situations throughout her life, starting with the death of her parents at the hands of the Morgawr and moving on to her time as the Ilse Witch, her career as Ard Rhys of the third Druid Order, and her times spent trapped in the Forbidding.

Grianne's appearance in multiple Shannara trilogies and tetralogies that are set decades or centuries apart from each other makes her one of the longest-lived human beings in the Shannara novels, second to Cogline.

Biography[]

Early Life[]

Grianne was born to Araden and Biornlief Ohmsford in the farming community of Jentsen Close. She was abducted from her burning home when she was six years old by a powerful and evil warlock called the Morgawr, who knew that the power of the wishsong held by the Ohmsford family had the potential to destroy him. He brainwashed Grianne into believing that it was the Druid Walker Boh who had destroyed her home and killed her family. Taking her as his pupil, he taught her the dark arts, which along with the power of the wishsong made her a very powerful witch. Taking on the name of the Ilse Witch, she constantly sought to find and destroy Walker Boh for bringing such pain to her life. She also secretly plotted for the day she would destroy the Morgawr.

Journey to Parkasia[]

When Walker Boh mounted an expedition to Parkasia to investigate what happened to Kael Elessedil and to find a powerful magic that might enable him to finally rebuild the Druid Order, the Ilse Witch pursued him and his party. She followed Walker all the way to Castledown in Parkasia, but there she met her brother Bek Ohmsford, whom she had believed dead since having hidden him in a cellar while their home was being attacked and their parents were killed. Bek used the power of the Sword of Shannara to reveal the truth about her past to Grianne. Later, when Walker was mortally injured destroying the malicious artificial intelligence called Antrax, he named Grianne as his successor as last of the Druids before dying, and on her return to the Four Lands she established the third Druid Order, becoming its Ard Rhys.

Third Druid Order[]

Twenty years later, Grianne would again find herself menaced, this time by treacherous Druids within the order. She ends up trapped inside the Forbidding and at the mercy of the Demons trapped within. It would be up to her nephew, Pen Ohmsford, to save her from the Forbidding and the Straken Lord Tael Riverine.

After returning from the Forbidding and helping Pen send a Demon called the Moric back into the Forbidding, Grianne retires as Ard Rhys, knowing the Druid Order cannot survive with a person as divisive as her at its head. Despite the troubled nature of Grianne's term as Ard Rhys, she had managed to forge an alliance between the Druids and the Trolls, and in her final act as Ard Rhys, she negotiates a treaty that forbids the use of diapson crystal weapons in the Four Lands.

After retiring, Grianne traveled with Pen to try to save Pen's girlfriend Cinnaminson, who was transformed into an aeriad spirit in service to the Tanequil, a magical tree. Grianne is able to free Cinnaminson, but only by taking the Rover girl's place as an aeriad. As a spirit, she lives unfettered by both her guilt over her history as the Ilse Witch and her fear of the evil reawakening in her, and she finds freedom.

Return to the Forbidding[]

However, over a century later Railing Ohmsford, a descendant of the Ohmsford family, sets out to find and release Grianne from the Tanequil so that she might save his twin brother Redden, who had become lost in the Forbidding and captured by Tael Riverine. After Pen had rescued Grianne from the Forbidding over a century earlier, Tael Riverine had become obsessed with the idea of finding Grianne again and making her his wife, and Railing was hoping the Straken Lord's obsession meant that Grianne's return would prove to be key to saving his brother.

Railing eventually succeeds in reaching the Tanequil, where Grianne's aeriad spirit greets him and tells him she cannot help. Unwilling to give up, Railing speaks to the Tanequil instead, and at his insistence the tree eventually releases Grianne. However, she is not returned whole, but as the malevolent Ilse Witch.

The Ilse Witch, while resentful of what Railing has done to her, has no desire to return to the Tanequil. She forces Railing and the crew of Rovers piloting his airship to take her to where the Straken Lord's army, freed from the Forbidding by the dying of the Ellcrys, have begun their invasion of the Elven nation in the Westland. Along the way, she reveals to Railing that she intends to take Tael Riverine's place as ruler of the Demons, horrifying him.

When the airship reaches the armies, the Ilse Witch confronts the Straken Lord and proceeds to do battle with him while Railing, Mirai Leah, the Demons, and the Elven army watch. She easily tricks the Straken Lord and traps him with his own conjure collar, and having rendered him helpless, she kills him with his own scepter. With her victory, the Demons acknowledge her as their new leader.


Witch wraith

Demons roar with approval after the Ilse Witch kills the Straken Lord Tael Riverine by stabbing him twice with his own scepter. Illustration by Todd Lockwood for an insert in the original edition of Witch Wraith.


With the Straken Lord defeated, the Ilse Witch turns on Railing. However, Redden Ohmsford, who had managed to free himself from the Forbidding and reunite with Railing during the Ilse Witch's duel, uses a combination of the wishsong and the crimson Elfstones, which he had brought out of the Forbidding, in a desperate attempt to stop her. Although the magic of the wishsong and the Elfstones initially overpowers her, she recovers and begins to fight back.

The twin brothers are in imminent danger of being killed by the witch when Arlingfant Elessedil restores the Ellcrys and the Forbidding. Because the Ilse Witch had made herself one of the Demons, she disappears with all the other Demons when they are banished back into the Forbidding.

Renewed Contact[]

Centuries later, the Ilse Witch, still alive, manages to break through the barrier of the Forbidding to communicate with Drisker Arc, a former Ard Rhys, when he comes to the Hadeshorn seeking advice from the dead. Her massive expenditure of magic during her first stint in the Forbidding and battle against the mutinous faction within the Third Druid Order had amplified her precognitive abilities, and she provides Drisker with direction on his quest to save the Four Lands from the Skaar, on the condition that he find a way to release her from the Forbidding and restore her body to the state it was at just before she went to serve the Tanequil as an aeriad many centuries ago. The price of failure would be Drisker's life.

Drisker agrees to these terms, and under direction of the Ilse Witch goes in search of Shea Ohmsford, the street boy whose help he once sought in Varfleet. Upon finding Shea Ohmsford and learning that the Rover Rocan Arneas and the scientist Tindall possess a machine called Annabelle that could potentially alter entire weather patterns, he sends them along with Dar Leah, Ajin, and Brecon Elessedil to Skaarsland in the hope that Annabelle might end that country's perpetual winter and by doing so end the need for the Skaar to find a new home.

However, when Drisker returns to the Hadeshorn to confirm with the Ilse Witch that he is making the right decisions, he is met by the shade of Allanon instead, who informs Drisker that he has blocked the Ilse Witch from using the Hadeshorn to bypass the Forbidding. Later, when Drisker pursues the rogue Druid Clizia Porse to Cleeg Hold in the Westland, Clizia manages to entrap Drisker with triagenel magic and send him into the Forbidding in exchange for a Jachyra. Drisker is found by Grianne's lackey, Weka Dart, and taken to her stronghold in Kraal Reach. While there, Drisker manages to communicate with Tarsha Kaynin in her dreams and learns from her that the darkwand, which has the power to transport people into and out of the Forbidding, still lies somewhere in the Forbidding and could be found and used by Grianne.

Grianne had already searched for the darkwand in years long past to no avail, but when Drisker relays his information to her, she takes it as a sign to try again. Accompanied by Drisker and Weka Dart, she travels to the stronghold of the Chule to confront Vendra Trax, a descendant of a Chule ruler who had taken possession of the darkwand. Vendra Trax is killed in the confrontation, but the trio are unable to find the talisman and leave.

Drisker realizes after recalling some of Weka Dart's mutterings that he had already known that they would not find the darkwand with Vendra Trax, and guesses correctly that Weka himself must know where the darkwand is and has been hiding it from Grianne. The Ilse Witch is furious, and when she demands the darkwand from Weka Dart he retrieves it from an unspecified hiding place in her own stronghold and brings it to her.

Grianne activates the darkwand while Drisker and Weka Dart are also holding it, intending to try and bring them both into the Four Lands with her. However, when the darkwand flares to life, it burns Weka Dart and he is forced to release the wand. Enraged at the thought of being abandoned by Grianne again, and blaming Drisker for his loss, Weka stabs Drisker multiple times. Drisker, who has both his hands on the talisman, is unable to remove them and defend himself, while Grianne is similarly in the middle of activating the darkwand's magic and is unable to help him. By the time the darkwand transports Grianne and Drisker out of the Forbidding, Drisker is dead and unable to be saved by Grianne's wishsong magic.

When Grianne and Drisker's body reappear in the Four Lands, Grianne finds herself near Tarsha Kaynin, who is in the middle of a showdown against Clizia Porse and the Jachyra Clizia had summoned. Clizia sends the Jachyra after Grianne, who kills it swiftly with the wishsong. However, that expenditure of magic plus the magic she expended to activate the darkwand leaves her weak. Tarsha, forced to face Clizia on her own, does so and comes out the victor. After the battle, Grianne reveals Drisker's body to Tarsha, explaining that Drisker had been returned to the Four Lands but was killed in the process.

Grianne asks Tarsha to take her back home to the tanequil, and Tarsha agrees. Together they fly a small airship to the Inkrim, where Stridegate and the tanequil await. On the long journey to Stridegate, they talk and bond over their shared experiences as heirs to the Ohmsford legacy of magic.

Before leaving Tarsha for the tanequil, Grianne gives her two of Drisker's effects which she had held on to for safekeeping. The first was the Black Elfstone, and the second was a letter Drisker had written to Tarsha, to be given to her if he was unable to reach her alive. Grianne then leaves, and some time later Tarsha hears Grianne's disembodied aeriad voice telling her that she is perfectly fine and back where she wants to be. After the aeriad departs, Tarsha leaves Stridegate and returns home.

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