Jungles of Delthrak: Lore

A note on sources: the quest book sketches this story only briefly, so this page mixes the official names with fan elaboration, and the elaborated parts are marked as such.

A Homecoming and a Theft

Mentor greets the heroes as seasoned travelers, then gives them grim news. Zargon has sent his minions to steal an ancient dwarven relic from the heart of the jungle: the Emberwrought Diadem, a crown of legendary power forged by a revered dwarven smith, who used it to unite his people and drive off their enemies.

The theft matters to the dwarves who escaped Kellar's Keep. They have been sheltering in Delthrak, which was their people's ancestral home, among old strongholds and ruins that the jungle has long since reclaimed. Since the Diadem was taken, a strange bioluminescent blight has been spreading through the jungle: lichen-like crystals glowing from teal to deep violet, which infest living things and warp their nature. The Loretome links the blight to the theft, and Mentor warns that the longer the heroes wait, the deeper it roots.

The People of the Jungle

• The dwarves of Durlan's Outpost live in the ruins of an ancient civilization, worn out after losing one homeland and now at risk of losing another. Their scout Tharn is the heroes' first contact, and he keeps turning up with new requests.
• The goblins are outlaws in the jungle. Their leader has struck a deal with Zargon: the goblins guard the source of the blight, and Zargon will see to the removal of the dwarves. The crystals harm the goblins too, growing spurs out of their very bones and driving them half mad with pain.
• The plantfolk are a peaceful tribe of small plant creatures. One of them, rescued from the blight, tells the heroes its name by miming a dance and pointing at a root: Revelroot.
• The Witch of the Wyrd lives in a moss-covered hut on stilts. Mentor describes her as an old and fearsomely powerful being who answers only to the elements and to herself, and has long been one of Zargon's most formidable foes.

The Road Through the Jungle

The campaign branches, but every run follows the same broad arc:

1. The heroes enter the glowing jungle and save Tharn from Skullblights, the undead animated by the blight. Then they either return with him to Durlan's Outpost, which they find under attack, or fall into a sinkhole into a lattice of roots and the lair of Deathspinner the Blightqueen.
2. Both routes lead to the goblins' fort among ancient tombs, the Blighted Barrows, where a crystal cluster pulses with Dread energy and the corrupted hero Voldrung lies entombed. At the center of the blight the heroes recover the Emberwrought Diadem.
3. In a temple ruin they rescue Revelroot. Then they choose: help Tharn search the Vaults of Kadum-Thrak, the legendary forge where the Diadem itself was made and which is still guarded by a malfunctioning Forgeheart Golem; or follow Revelroot to defeat Cadmila the Serpent at a sacred wellspring, and then storm the ruined temple of Aa Thalore to face Gruulob, the Blighted Goblin Warlock, and take the Sapphire Skull.
4. In the Necropolis beneath the temple, an enchanted tome shows the heroes a picture of themselves approaching a mystic's hut, and Mentor, speaking through the Far Voice spell, recognizes it.

The Witch's Three Cards

At her hut, the Witch of the Wyrd deals cards to show the heroes the futures in front of them. The choice decides how the campaign ends.

• Path A, the jagged crown. Throw the Diadem into the planar rift that feeds the blight. It stops the blight for good but won't heal the damage already done. The heroes pass the Cavern of Glimmering Skulls and its sacred pool, then face Zargon's servant Gretzl the Blightspeaker at the rift behind a waterfall. The dwarves reward them, but the jungle stays scarred and dangerous.
• Path B, the thorned flower. Take the witch's netherbloom lily, a flower not seen in the realm "in a dragon's lifespan", cross a corrupted burial ground, and touch the lily to the heartseed of the Bloomrot Scion, a huge crystal-crusted beast. The blight melts away and the jungle heals, but the dwarves must stay watchful at the site of the rift.
• Path C, the skull and crown. Offered only to heroes who helped Revelroot's people. Sacrifice both the Sapphire Skull and the Emberwrought Diadem. The heroes cross a chasm past Bakabri the Cruel, and at the rift Revelroot arrives with the whole plantfolk tribe to hold back Zargon's forces while the heroes crown the Skull with the Diadem and hurl both into the rift. The rift is sealed, the blight is cured, and the dwarves and plantfolk become friends and trading partners.

Every ending closes the same way: Zargon seethes and plots, "like the many-headed serpent of legend", and the heroes are told to stay vigilant.

Fan Elaboration: Questions the Book Leaves Open

• Who built the ruins? The book says the dwarves' shelters were once the hub of an ancient civilization and that the temple pillars show "long-forgotten dwarven elders". A Zargon player could make the old dwarves of Delthrak a lost branch of the same people, with more vaults still unfound.
• What does the witch want? She helps the heroes, then vanishes. Is she paying back a debt to Mentor, or keeping Zargon weak for her own reasons? A later custom quest could send her to collect a favor.
• Path A's leftovers. Path A ends with "strange monsters" still lurking in the jungle. That is a ready-made reason for short follow-up quests clearing out blighted beasts for the dwarves.
• Tharn's future. The book drops him after the middle of the campaign. He would make a good quest-giver for a custom quest back at Kellar's Keep.

Where Next

• Playing Zargon: tips for running quest packs like this one.
• Kellar's Keep: Lore: where the dwarven refugees came from.
• Jungles of Delthrak: the rules side of this pack.