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Heart
of the
Jungle
Todd Stewart, Tim Hitchcock,
and Amber Scott
Heart
of the
Jungle
A
Pathfinder Chronicles
Supplement
This Pathfinder Chronicles book works best with the
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook
and the
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary.
Although it is suitable for play in any fantasy world,
it is optimized for use in the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Life in Mwangi
Mwangi Campaigns
Lost Kingdoms
Bestiary
Encounter Tables
2
4
20
48
58
62
Credits
Authors
•
Tim Hitchcock, Jason Nelson, Amber Scott,
Chris Self, and Todd Stewart
Cover Artist
•
Vinod Rams
Interior Artists
•
Alejandro Aguirre, Marko Luna,
Jorge Maese, and Diana Martinez
Cartography
• Tim Hitchcock and Rob Lazzaretti
Creative Director
•
James Jacobs
Senior Art Director
•
Sarah E. Robinson
Managing Editor
•
F. Wesley Schneider
Editing and Development
•
Judy Bauer, Christopher Carey,
Rob McCreary, Sean K Reynolds, and James L. Sutter
Editorial Assistance
•
Jason Bulmahn
Production Specialist
•
Crystal Frasier
Publisher
•
Erik Mona
Paizo CEO
•
Lisa Stevens
Vice President of Operations
•
Jeffrey Alvarez
Corporate Accountant
•
Dave Erickson
Director of Sales
•
Pierce Watters
Financial Analyst
•
Christopher Self
Technical Director
•
Vic Wertz
Events Manager
•
Joshua J. Frost
Special Thanks
The Paizo Customer Service, Website,
and Warehouse Teams
Paizo Publishing, LLC
7120 185th Ave NE, Ste 120
Redmond, WA 98052-0577
paizo.com
Product Identity:
The following items are hereby identified as Product Identity, as defined in the Open Game License version 1.0a, Section 1(e), and are not Open Content: All trademarks, registered trademarks,
proper names (characters, deities, etc.), dialogue, plots, storylines, locations, characters, artwork, and trade dress. (Elements that have previously been designated as Open Game Content or are in the public domain
are not included in this declaration.)
Open Content:
Except for material designated as Product Identity (see above), the game mechanics of this Paizo Publishing game product are Open Game Content, as defined in the Open Gaming License version
1.0a Section 1(d). No portion of this work other than the material designated as Open Game Content may be reproduced in any form without written permission.
Pathfinder Chronicles: Heart of the Jungle
is published by Paizo Publishing, LLC under the Open Game License version 1.0a Copyright 2000 Wizards of the Coast, Inc. Paizo Publishing, LLC, the Paizo golem logo,
Pathfinder, and GameMastery are registered trademarks of Paizo Publishing, LLC; Pathfinder Chronicles, Pathfinder Module, and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game are trademarks of Paizo Publishing, LLC. © 2010,
Paizo Publishing, LLC.
Printed in China.
Pathfinder Chronicles:
Heart of the Jungle
Lords
of the
Jungle
greatest frontiers. It is a land of deep, uncharted
wilds and endless exploration. Within its borders,
unforgiving jungles devour the unprepared, swallowing all
in the darkness of their dense foliage and sweltering heat.
Yet at the same time, broad and sweeping savannas offer
little shelter to those who live and hunt in their rolling
scrublands, chasing gazelles and farming f loodplains
along muddy river banks. The Expanse is a bountiful land,
but one where dangers lurk at every turn, whether they
be confrontations with duplicitous and cutthroat agents
of greedy trading companies or the snarling hunger of
prehistoric beasts, man-eating plants, and intelligent,
demon-worshiping apes. Those men and women called
Mwangi by outsiders grow up strong, hard, and proud, and
their cultures date back farther than citif ied northerners’
recorded history. The Expanse is the antithesis of modern
civilization—and an adventurer’s paradise.
The Mwangi Expanse stretches over much of the southern
continent of Garund, or at least its reliably charted reaches.
Vast beyond the scope of any single nation, the Expanse is not
a single political entity but a negatively defined geographical
region—any territory in the interior of Garund not actively
claimed by another nation is considered by most to be part of
the Expanse. Locals, of course, may claim acres of miles of this
wilderness as their own domain, but few in the Expanse bother
with the holding of large territories. In a land simultaneously
so lush and so impassable, empire-building is difficult, and
the heart of the Expanse is home to hundreds or thousands
of independent tribes and pocket communities, many with
territories no larger than a single vine-choked valley, and each
with its own unique culture and dialect.
The vast majority of the Mwangi Expanse’s inner territories
remain unmapped—dense virgin jungle unseen by so-called
“civilized” eyes for centuries. Historians often describe the
Mwangi Expanse as the womb of human civilization, for in
its most isolated reaches, rich black soil hides ancient ruins
whose structures dwarf those of present civilizations, and
appear to predate even the fall of the
Starstone.
The ruins of
these lost civilizations aren’t their only legacies, either—for
in many cases their descendents live on in scattered tribes,
united only by shared legends and vague oral histories of a
magnificence long since lost. These seemingly simple folk have
racial memories spanning thousands of years, and cultures as
vibrant and multifaceted as the jungle itself. With their lands
so isolated, many of the Mwangi Expanse’s people live much the
way their ancestors did in prehistory, completely unaffected by
those events that foreigners view as earthshaking.
T
he Mwangi Expanse stands as one of Golarion’s
Nowhere on Golarion is the biodiversity greater than the
Mwangi Expanse. Fierce competition ensures the evolution
of all manner of creatures within the region’s crudely
drawn boundaries, their features both terrifying and
beautiful. The Expanse’s organisms possess a wide variety
of adaptations to help them survive, and even the region’s
common animals, such as giraffes and rhinoceroses, appear
fantastic to those unfamiliar with them, while insects and
other vermin grow to monstrous proportions within the
heat of decomposing swamplands. The diversity of plant
life is no less fantastic: beneath the towering trees of the
darkest jungles grow rainbows of bright orchids and lotus,
stinking corpse f lowers, miles of vines, intelligent fungus,
and fruits of every shape and color. The hills and savannas
boast a wide range of shrubs, grasses, and trees capable of
surviving dramatic seasonal changes. Anyone who seeks
proof of nature’s resourcefulness and ingenuity need only
go as far as the jungles of the Expanse.
As a result, survival is perhaps the Mwangi Expanse’s only
unifying theme. From the smallest creatures to the largest
city, the f ight to stay alive is driven by f ierce competition.
Despite the diverse environmental differences, each region
answers to the so-called law of the jungle. For example, in
the twilit world of the inner jungles, stealth is a primary
factor in determining one’s ability to survive, and those
mouse-sized mammals that cannot hear and evade the silent
bats or blind birds that hunt those places through sound and
scent are quickly exterminated. Conversely, in the sweeping
savanna where shelter is scarce, those ill equipped to run or
f ight die young beneath the curving claws of predators, and
it’s here that Golarion f inds some of its most fascinating
megafauna, from the armored rhinoceros and tusked
elephant to prehistoric horrors long since gone extinct in
colder climes. In the Mwangi Expanse, both creatures and
civilizations instinctively root themselves in the principles
of survival, with dramatic results.
B
ook
o
verview
This book is designed to give you everything you need to
run or develop an adventure in the Mwangi Expanse—or
any other jungle setting. In addition to detailed overviews
of the dozens of cities, ruins, and other adventure locations
within the Expanse, it provides new rules and suggestions
for how to run a jungle campaign in general, regardless
of setting.
The f irst chapter, “Life in Mwangi,” explores a variety of
natural hazards with which every jungle explorer should
be familiar. Ranging from the inconvenient to the deadly,
2
Introduction
these hazards include everything from notorious diseases,
fungi, and poisons to insect swarms, quicksand, and f lash
f loods. Next, the chapter details the various sentient races
native to the Mwangi Expanse, from the diverse ethnicities
of indigenous human tribes (often lumped together as
“Mwangi” by ignorant colonists and prof iteers) to the
screaming beast-men of the Spawn of Angazhan. Lastly,
no discussion of life in the Mwangi Expanse would be
complete without a discussion of local religions and how
even the worship of familiar gods can vary wildly from
what northerners are used to. The Mwangi Expanse is
home to some of Golarion’s oldest religions, mysterious
lost faiths founded even before man’s awareness of the
gods. From totemism and ancestor worship to demon lords
and the impartial gods of nature, the faiths of the jungle’s
inhabitants take strange and powerful forms.
Chapter 2, “Mwangi Campaigns,” provides advice and
inspiration for Game Masters running an entire
campaign set in the Mwangi Expanse, and
particularly its jungles, as well as detailed
information on the region’s most prominent
natural features. In addition to generic information
and a sample map designed to help you create
a typical jungle village, this section provides
statistics, maps, and information for many
of the region’s most prominent settlements,
including the following:
Bloodcove,
the notorious and
foreign-run mangrove city on the
Fever Sea, one of the Expanse’s most
popular destinations, and the one
most firmly in the grasp of the
mercantile Aspis Consortium.
Elokolobha,
an isolated settlement
inhabited almost entirely by vicious
Mwangi spriggans.
Jaha,
a city of long-buried tombs
ruled by mad astrologers and their
lizardfolk slaves.
Kibwe,
a bastion of civilization
and trade perched at the jungle’s
farthest reaches.
Mzali,
a nationalistic
temple-city ruled by an
ancient, mummified
child-god.
Nantambu,
the
Song-Wind-City of ancient
magic and knowledge.
Osibu,
utopian city of gold, which few f ind
and even fewer leave.
Senghor,
a native-run port where overreaching
foreigners are rebuffed by piracy.
Usaro,
the legendary and blood-soaked jungle city of
demon-worshiping apes.
Chapter 3, “Lost Kingdoms,” discusses the ruins of
Mwangi’s ancient civilizations, places devoured by time and
the growth of the relentless jungle that still manage to lure
hordes of adventurers to the Expanse, hoping to f ind the
treasures and secrets of a world long since forgotten in vine-
covered stone towers.
The Mwangi bestiary, which begins on page 58, introduces
several new monsters crucial to running a jungle campaign,
such as the fearsome hippopotamus, swarms of nauseating
botf lies and their monstrously large cousins, massive jungle
treants who tend the deepest forests, and the cruelly intelligent
girallons known as angazhani.
Lastly, this book provides a set of
extensive encounter tables tailored
to each of Mwangi’s various terrains,
including hills, plains, rivers, and
ruins. The tables include not only
creatures, but also various events and
hazards one might encounter while
adventuring in the savage wilds of
the Expanse.
A N
ote oN
M
Aps
As any jungle explorer knows, a
good map is worth its weight in
gold, and often even more. When
headed off into the legendary and
largely uncharted wilds of the
Mwangi Expanse, such maps can be as
diff icult to f ind as an honest merchant—
everyone in the port cities along the
coast of the Fever Sea is happy to sell
explorers ancient maps to fabled cities of
gold or magic, and if the ink on some of
them is still wet, it must simply be due
to the humidity.
This book offers maps of every major
city in the Mwangi Expanse, including
several lost and ruined settlements,
each in one of two formats. Half of
the city maps are highly detailed and
professional maps made exclusively
for GM use, carefully labeled with
information useful in running
a game. The other half are pen-
and-ink renderings intended as
player handouts, unlabeled and
ready to be photocopied or shown
to players in-game as the stylized
renderings of local guides,
merchants, and hucksters.
3

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