- "When you go back, things will seem confused. You will question what is, and what is not. But just remember our saying here: 'The unity of all is all that is'."
- ―Salandra[src]
Salandra was the princess of Pincoya, an interior world island nation. She was Pincoya's primary agent in the outer world, and became an investigator to track down Indiana Jones. She was the daughter of the Pincoyan king, Vicard, and a Wayuan ambassador. As a sorceror, Salandra possessed several magical abilities including the ability to heal persons close to death, and the ability to shapeshift, becoming another person or an animal, and she frequently chose the form of a falcon to travel. She could also reach into the minds of animals to calm them. Long-limbed with smooth, nearly-translucent skin, Salandra had prominent cheekbones, an aquiline nose, green eyes, and copper-colored hair. She could speak Pincoyan, Wayuan, Spanish, and English.[1]
Biography[]
As a young woman, Salandra attended the Tepui of Learning in Roraima alongside Maleiwa. Since they were both outsiders, they became close friends. When he expressed his desire to manipulate events and people and gain power using shadow-thaum, she saw that it would upset the balance and she stopped their closeness.[1]
In September 1928, she was dispatched by her father to follow Maleiwa to the Channels of Paradise. She witnessed him pass through to the outside world, and then return with a mysterious staff before the portal was caved in by an explosion.[1]
Returning home, Salandra reported her findings to Vicard, and went back to her teachers in Roraima to seek additional guidance. They believed her to possess all the knowledge they could provide, and she went to the top of the tepui. Salandra received a vision of Great Mother Rhea, who told her that the staff was the alicorn and must be taken away from Maleiwa. She traveled in her dream to Maleiwa's castle, and discovered that she could not pick up the alicorn, and that only a person who had possessed it before could be the one to separate it from Maleiwa.[1]
Salandra became an investigator as she spent the next few months tracking down Indiana Jones and learning more about the man who had given up the alicorn. She also kept tabs on Hans Beitelheimer. In the spring of 1929, she followed Jones from his college to Easter Island and eventually to Chiloé Island. There, Salandra managed the Pincoyan team aboard the Caleucha to obtain the fish eggs required for making nalca. Sacho and his men captured Jones and brought him aboard the ship, and Salandra used her healing magic to restore him from his near-drowning. As he faded in and out of consciousness, she slowly revealed her identity to him. Sacho tried to attack Jones again, in the guise of Jones' father, but was stunned by a dart from Salandra's crossbow.[1]
Arriving in Pincoya, she and Jones learned that her father had been deposed by Maleiwa, and they were captured and imprisoned. Days later, Jones was later brought to her cell as Maleiwa had deprived him of nalca and wanted her to watch Jones slowly die. Salandra explained Jones' role in her mission to stop the Wayuan leader, who arrived to explain his plot to ally with Adolf Hitler on the outer world. When a loyal guard helped the pair escape, they ran through the city and were forced to jump into a waterfall. Landing in an underground pool, the two avoided a large octopus creature before hitting shore. After peeling leeches off of each other, Salandra realized that she and Jones were now inside Minhocoa, the Land of the Lost.[1]
Trying to reach the labyrinth that was Minhocoa's stomach, the two climbed a mountain, but were pursued by Roraima mountain dogs. Salandra used her Wayuan ability to calm animals to get them to back off for a few minutes. Inside the maze, she and Jones climbed over walls to escape the dogs, which were then gruesomely killed off by something unknown. Then the pair saw a fearsome monster, with Salandra seeing it in the form of a silver bear with three eyes that told her in Wayuan that her father was dead. Realizing that it was just the creature scaring them, the two settled down for the night with the aphrodisiac powers of nalca. Salandra awoke to find Jones had wandered off. Eventually finding him, they encountered the creature again, and it made a deal with her: it would let them leave if they brought it Maleiwa, or it would destroy them. They exited into the surface world.[1]
They arrived in the mountains near San Andrés de Pisimbala. During a meal with a coffee farmer, Mariano, she learned it was the third of September. Salandra explained to Jones how much time had passed for him, and how time passed differently between worlds. On the road to Popoyan, she explained that there were many gates between worlds, and they should seek the Gatekeepers up in Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta. Arriving by train in Santa Marta, Salandra fell ill from transit to the real world, requiring nalca and rest. After resting for two days, they set off with Ricardo, a guide boy who helped them re-supply and had enlisted Jones to find the missing Father James. They followed the coast before heading into the foothills and then into the mountains.[1]
After Ricardo departed, Salandra and Jones spent days going up the mountain, scaring some huaqueros before finding the Gatekeepers - the Kogis. Mama Juan led them to a Kogi outpost, where they dined, and found Ricardo among them. Ricardo revealed that the missing Father James was a ruse to keep Jones on the mission. As she was about to kiss Jones, sentries announced that Maleiwa and his warriors had breached the gate from the interior world.[1]
In the form of a falcon, Salandra flew through the gate past the Wayuans, and over Roraima until she reached her father and Jones on a barren tepui near Wayua. After Jones recovered from the transit, the three traveled down the tepui, met up with several of Vicard's loyal guards and began to head out across the Wayua plain. Wayuan horsemen attacked, and the party were forced to escape through Swampland. Between the Wayan attack and the attacked by a dragon and a giant, all the guards were killed. Salandra and Jones stayed back while Vicard went out to search for any surviving guards. With Jones distracting the giant who had her father trapped, Salandra and Vicard transformed and fled. They later caught up with Jones on a beach.[1]
Jones used his recent dream of Maleiwa on the march to the Unicorn's Gate to help guide them through the foggy hills toward Maleiwa's army. The Wayuan forces trapped the three and when Maleiwa ordered Jones' death, Vicard jumped in the way of Wayuan darts. Unicorns arrived to fight against Maleiwa's forces, and Salandra stayed with her injured father to help keep him alive with her healing abilities. Before Jones left to follow Maleiwa, she whispered to him a message about his experience.[1]
After Jones had returned to the outer world, he saw a glimpse of a woman that vaguely reminded him of Salandra, and realized that Salandra's and Vicard's doubles in his world could be him and Marcus Brody.[1]