A vast sytem of interconnected braided rivers meander through chasms, jungles, volcanic cones, and a myriad of dangers and rapids. Along its shores is the labyrinth city of Qor. A city where the denizens built walls instead of roads so that the living spaces became passages from one to another until after not long the entire city was just a maze of walls and fell into relative ruin overgrown by the forest.

These inhabitants seem primitive but have a powerful legacy of magic.

One of their wonders is the jewels of Juk'Thali. Finding this section of the river is itself like navigating a maze. Flying over the canopy masks the rivers from being seen, and the muddy water of the various branches means that the practical way to explore is by boat up each river braid.

All the river stones along the bed are comprised of gold, silver, and various jewels. It is said that a person can clutch 100gp with just one hand.

Inhabitants of the area are seen playing with the river stones with no I'll effects and seem to disregard them as common.

But, unsuspecting adventurers seem to die gruesome deaths within a phase of the moon if they take even one gold flake.

The adventurers can drink the water even with the gold flakes just fine. An oddity that may dawn on a band of adventurers if they consider it.

There is no known way to break the curse. The curse exact mechanics is not known, but for DM purposes what is happening is that should anyone take the treasure from Juk'Thali for any purpose with the intended purpose of what treasure is used for, then that person is cursed with no known cure.

So for instance if the person takes the gold to spend it, they are cursed.

If they take the gold to throw it like a river stone, then they may take the gold.

The only time the curse does not apply is when the user will never use the gold, silver or jewels for any of their normal purposes.

Because the  natives have no need for such treasure, taking from the river is not life threatening. Gods help them should the inhabitants of Qor discover banking and trade.

There is no way to trick the river. If the adventurer would take the gold unintentionally and use it later intentionally, the river will have known this at the time it was taken and the adventurer would be cursed the moment they took it.

I'm a sucker for river settings through thick humid jungles. I could absolutely run an adventure in this setting.

Quote from TexasDevin >>

I'm a sucker for river settings through thick humid jungles. I could absolutely run an adventure in this setting.

 Thanks, I have a whole world in my mind I haven't given it a full name yet: "Uncharted Continent".

It actually plays into a fantasy book idea I have where a group of adventurers (fantasy characters that fit my own world view of magic/races etc.) fight a dragon, only to learn that the real enemy was another entity all along...but i won't give that away, because after my Sci-Fi thriller gets published, I'm pretty sure I'm going to write this Fantasy next....

Back to the point.

This Uncharted Continent is savage, so much so that the last vestiges of civilization have literally been pushed into the sea. Players find themselves at level 1 on a wrecked ship at a beach head of a massive exploration group...

Level 1 players start in a makeshift camp with walls/ramparts thrown up on a beach (and has amenities like taverns, blacksmithy, enchanting shops, wizard's library, guard towers), outside in the dark forests are known bands of Gnolls seeking for their next food, they've already attacked the beachhead once, (which was established earlier by another ship), and this ship was wrecked in harbor.

The first task given to the level 1 players is to go out into the relatively shallow/calm harbor, and salvage equipment from the wreck under water.

There they can see, distant in the murk to the sea as the shelf drifts off, an apparent temple. If they explorer the temple they deduce its an aquatic Elven temple, it appears abandoned.

The island-continent is filled with Orcs, Gnolls, Hobgoblins, Kobolds. The ship is discovered to have been wrecked by the magics of a Sea Hag living not far up the coast from the camp. The island-continent has all sorts of environments, the legendary River of Juk'Thali is just one of them:

Like so many braids of waving-maiden's hair, the river is a maze of estuaries, meanders, bayous and ox-bows, and rapids as it ropes its way to the heart of this "Uncharted Continent".

Along its banks are the massive but apparently ruined city of Qor, a labyrinth in its own right, the fabled jewels of Juk'Thali, abandoned temple/dungeons found deep in the jungles along some side-river feeding the larger "Braids of the maiden".

The temples/dungeons, now long abandoned by the Qorians, are occupied by a strong civilization of Yutani, and not the humaniod kind either, the snake kind. Slithering and commanding the powers of the jungle to hide their race from the rest of the dangers of the island.

The ocean is moderately more favorable to habitation, if explorers search there, they will find allies in the Aquatic Elves, but those elves are also hard pressed by Sahuagin who constantly attack the Aquatic Elve's reef-built homes.

Deep in the heart of the Uncharted Continent is the volcanic centers, which extend like spines of a Sea Star down the island-continent's main mountain ranges, which include the volcanoes that make characterize the Juk'Thali river banks.

Here the cave systems become complex, intertwined, lava tunnels cutting into limestone caverns, dripping swamp caves with the large mangrove roots extending deep into the earth, strangling the tunnels.

Here is the underdark which gives the subteranean races access to the surface in ways safe to them from the ravaging Gnolls, and the organized Hobgoblin/Goblin war camps, and the bands of Orcs and their Ogre allies.

Ancient civilizations on the island-continent, not just the Qor, used powerful magics, and one such empire used the undead as slaves, their massive skull-racks (like those of the Aztec on another world), held thousands if not tens of thousands of sacrificial victims ready to be used by powerful Necromancers in the case of if their cities were attacked. They could command the bones from the racks to assemble into skeletal hoards.

Long over-run by Orcs, these Jungle-swallowed pyramid cities have long since lost their skeletal arsenal, which have disappeared like a plague into the surrounding countryside, forever defending an Empire that died long ago.

"To be Continued"...

More about Juk'Thali:

It's known as the "Braids of the Maiden", it's more than a river, it's a maze of water, its walls are the jungle, its heat is oppressive.

The adventurers would most likely discover Juk'Thali from the coast, finding its many braids kissing the sea. Aquatic Elves might mention its existence and tell its lore. The Mangroves in twilight and midnight are seen like a second heaven of stars with all the fireflies that light its dark interior. Exploring this area requires great effort on the explorer's part to keep track of where they are. In most parts of the Braids, the river is so sluggish that it may take a week to travel a mile, allowing the many braids to loop back around on themselves, or to loop backwards and flow into another braid entirely.

The seasonal monsoons or rainstorms off the coast might even reverse the flow of the Juk'Thali as the storm surge rises feet higher than the river itself, or as the rains flood the delta of the river system, creating backflow.

If Adventurers are not aware of these seasonal and storm-event changes, they may not even realize that the flow of the river has reversed and they are now headed "up river" to the interior of the continent, rather than back to the sea.

Thus it is very easy for explorers to get lost in the maze, unable to easily return to the sea, or make progress up the river.