Mainline from: 1.7.0
Created by: Josh Parsons (jp30) (original designer, responsible for first scenarios 2-10), Oto ‘tapik’ Buchta (first scenario), Spiros Alexiou (Santi/fnaek) (scenario 12 onwards), Eric S. Raymond (ESR) (prose and continuity)
Year of events: 470 and 496 YW
Created by: Josh Parsons (jp30) (original designer, responsible for first scenarios 2-10), Oto ‘tapik’ Buchta (first scenario), Spiros Alexiou (Santi/fnaek) (scenario 12 onwards), Eric S. Raymond (ESR) (prose and continuity)
Year of events: 470 and 496 YW
Before he is Konrad's mentor, Delfador is a young mage studying under the mage Methor. When orcs unexpectedly attacks in Wesnoth lands, Delfador is sent to the capital of Wesnoth, Weldyn, and works under King Garard II's council mage Leollyn. Leollyn then gives Delfador a mission which leads to him finding out a lot about the world of the dead.
This campaign provides examples of:
- The Ace: Delfador, as the main hero unit for most of the campaign (especially after the trip to the Land of the Dead), is pretty much good at everything: despite being based on a Red Mage/Archmage line, Delfador later gets his magic staff which gives him an incredibly powerful magic attack and a strong melee magic attack; he possesses Leadership (and if he gets to level 4, he can improve the performance of pretty much all your troops and can even heal nearby troops, though not as much as a Dryad or a White Mage). Unfortunately he loses most of these bonuses in the final two levels.
- Artifact of Doom: The Book of Crelanu is treated as such when introduced in the campaign: Kalenz is very wary of the tome and only agrees to lend it to Delfador for safekeeping after making sure that he was pure enough. When Sagus gets his hands on it, it isn't long before he succumbs to the darkness within and turns himself into a Lich, dwelling inside the dungeons of his own mansion.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Rather than have a fixed main villain for the plot, the campaign features three figure vying for the role:
- The Orcish leader who has united the tribes against Wesnoth is a serious threat and his orcs are a menace since the very first playable scenario. While dangerous, however, he's slain in battle by Delfador and Kalenz's forces, leaving the orcs scattered and disorganized once more, ending his threat before it can get too much to control.
- Iliah-Malal is an extremely dangerous evil necromancer who opened a hole between the Land of the Dead and the land of the living in order to form an endless army of undead and use them to take over Wesnoth and all the Northern Lands. He's the most powerful of the bad guys and the one who lasts for longer.
- Former Court Wizard Sagus, Asheviere's father, grew so jealous of Delfador's success that he stole the Book of Crelanu from him in order to learn his secrets, becoming a Lich. He also reveals that he murdered Leollyn, the other great wizard.
- Bullying a Dragon: In the second to last scenario, Prince Eldred will launch an unprovoked assault on Kalenz's domain... using an army mostly made of level 1 units against Kalenz's elite elven troops. To further rub salt in the wound, the majority of the battlefield is a large forest in which Elves have the advantage.
- Final Battle: "Showdown in the Northern Swamp" has the final battle between Delfador (leading pretty much everyone he's ever befriended) and Ilah-Malal, ending the undead conflict. Unlike in most campaigns, the final battle doesn't mark the end of the campaign.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: Starting from 1.16, during the final two levels (where Kalenz mentions that his elves are now armed with orcish weapons) the elven units will display the attack icons used by the orcs (so they'll have orcish bows and swords in lieu of elven weapons).
- Hold the Line: In "A Night in the Swamp", Delfador and Lionel's troops must defend themselves from skeletons magically appearing in a swamp until sunrise. Or destroy the generators using magical units to finish the scenario early.
- Leave No Witnesses: In the penultimate scenario, Delfador needs to take back the Book of Crelanu from Asheviere's family demesne. Since he can't get any support from the King, Delfador's solution is to raid the place with help from the elves using orcish weapons and kill everyone there so no one could tell the king about his involvement. Kalenz fears that this is an effect of the Book of Crelanu.
- The Magnificent: This is the story that also explains how Delfador came to be known as "Delfador the Great": while it started as a mocking epithet from a cornered Iliah-Malal, after he proved skilled enough to close the rift to the Land of the Dead and destroy Iliah-Malal, Kalenz suggests that he should really take the moniker for real, since it does suit him.
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: Downplayed. In the first scenario, you can let Delfador's mentor Methor die, and he will tell Delfador to go to Leollyn in Weldyn, which sets up the rest of the story. Or you can keep him alive, and he will tell Delfador to do the same thing anyway.
- Prequel: Set before and directly tied to Heir to the Throne, setting up many things in it (how Delfador met Kalenz and Chantal, who the general Lionel was and how he ended up in a cave, how Asheivere started her plot to become the queen), but created after Heir to the Throne.
- Schizophrenic Difficulty: Unlike virtually every other campaign, it is completely impossible to plan ahead in this campaign, because you have no way of knowing what units you play with on the next map, since the chaotic plot of the game arbitrarily gives and takes units that you have to assume you only get to play with for a single chapter before they might be removed from your unit list again, only to show up in your recall list a couple dozen chapters later.
- Time Skip: After Ilah-Malal is defeated, the story skips "a generation" (26 years) before continuing with the final three scenarios.
