[The Curious Orange]

I've been thinking about the Quest plotline myself, of late.

It's fairly common for the hero to undergo some sort of symbolic death and resurrection during these tales, so I can't see why you couldn't have him die. But I would comment, that if you were "passing the torch" on to the side-kick to finish the task, then what you have is a false protagonist tale, and the side-kick was the real hero all along.

As for failure... well, as the point of these stories is to find the elixir to save the tribe, I guess this needs to be done. When the hero finds out that the elixir doesn't work and he's been manipulated into doing the Dark Lord's work, well, that's the same sort of thing as the false protagonist - the false quest. The quest was merely a plot devise to move along the bigger story. This sort of thing would work as the finale to book 1 of a trilogy, but book 2 better be hot on it's heels.

The alternative is that the hero fails, the elixir is not found, and the tribe are not saved. This sort of story would be better served if you thought of it as a tragedy, and constructed it that way, rather than a failed quest.