Zanna Fireflower – Xena the Warrior Princess, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, and Deborah
https://wiki.wizard101central.com/wiki/NPC:Zanna_Fireflower
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xena
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyudmila_Pavlichenko
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah
Thank you to Brenda J. G. for helping with this one.
Needing a Portal Stone, your wizard is sent to by Milos Bookwyrm to get one from Laszlo Starblade. Laszlo won’t just give you a Portal Stone. You must first impress Zanna Fireflower.
She once led Dragonspyre’s forces as a General, and now her spirit cannot rest until their base is retaken. She sends you to fight Sysiphan, a foul and powerful creature.
Xena is a fictional character from Robert Tapert’s Xena: Warrior Princess franchise, portrayed by New Zealand actress Lucy Lawless and co-created by Tapert and John Schulian. She first appeared as a villain in the 1995–1999 television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys before joining forces with Hercules. Xena was popular with fans, so the producers decided to create a spin-off with the character in the starring role. She later appeared in the subsequent comic book of the same name, as well as the spin-off animated film The Battle for Mount Olympus, and non-canon expanded universe material, such as books and video games.
Xena is the protagonist of the story, and the series depicts her on a quest to redeem herself from her dark past by using her formidable fighting skills to help people. She is joined by the bard Gabrielle, and together they go up against ruthless warlords and gods in the ancient mythological world. Xena was raised as the daughter of Cyrene and Atrius in Amphipolis.
Xena originally appears as a villain in the Hercules episode “The Warrior Princess”; about ten years into her career of pillaging and marauding, Xena meets Hercules. Initially, she sets out to kill him. In “The Gauntlet”, her army turns against her, believing that she has become weak after she stops her lieutenant, Darphus, from killing a child in a sacked village. Xena runs a gauntlet, and survives, becoming the only person ever to survive the gauntlet. She then fights Hercules, in the hope that she will regain her army if she can bring back his head. Xena seems to be getting the upper hand until Hercules’ cousin intervenes, making no real difference himself but inadvertently giving Hercules his sword, which allows him to fight Xena on equal ground and defeat her. However, Hercules refuses to kill Xena, telling her, “Killing isn’t the only way of proving you’re a warrior”. Touched and inspired by Hercules’ integrity, and by the fact that he too suffered the loss of blood kin as she did and yet chooses to fight in honor of them, she decides to join him and defeat her old army.
Brenda points out that two other examples of hardcore female soldiers are Lyudmila Pavlichenko and Deborah the Judge.
Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko née Belova; (12 July [O.S. 29 June] 1916 – 10 October 1974) was a Soviet sniper in the Red Army during World War II. She is credited with killing 309 enemy combatants. She served in the Red Army during the siege of Odessa and the siege of Sevastopol, during the early stages of the fighting on the Eastern Front. Her score of 309 kills likely places her within the top five snipers of all time, but her kills are likely much more numerous, as a confirmed kill has to be witnessed by a third party.
After she was injured in battle by a mortar shell, she was evacuated to Moscow. After she recovered from her injuries, she trained other Red Army snipers and was a public spokeswoman for the Red Army. In 1942, she toured the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. After the war ended in 1945, she was reassigned as a senior researcher for the Soviet Navy. She died of a stroke at the age of 58.
According to the Book of Judges, Deborah was a prophetess of God, the fourth Judge of pre-monarchic Israel and the only female judge mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Many scholars contend that the phrase, “a woman of Lappidoth”, as translated from biblical Hebrew in Judges 4:4 denotes her marital status as the wife of Lapidoth. Alternatively, “lappid” translates as “torch” or “lightning”, therefore the phrase, “woman of Lappidoth” could be referencing Deborah as a “fiery woman.” Deborah told Barak, an Israelite general from Kedesh in Naphtali, that God commanded him to lead an attack against the forces of Jabin king of Canaan and his military commander Sisera (Judges 4:6–7); the entire narrative is recounted in chapter 4.
Judges 5 gives the same story in poetic form. This northern Cisjordanian passage, often called The Song of Deborah, may date to as early as the twelfth century BC, and is perhaps the earliest sample of Hebrew poetry.
The current list of all the (known) Dragonspyre references are located here.
Although I am well versed in Pop Culture references but I do not claim to have caught them all. Let me know your favorites in the comments and if I’ve missed one you caught, let me know so I can add it to the list.
Text for this article is excerpted from the linked wiki pages
Zanna Fireflower image is from Wizard101, and is copyright of KingsIsle Entertainment.
Xena the Warrior Princess image is copyright Universal Television
Lyudmila Pavlichenko and Deborah images are borrowed from Wikipedia and are in the public domain
Image usage qualifies as fair use under US copyright law.
Vulcan Stev's Database 