Don’t make the same mistakes I made when running a hexcrawl adventure as a one-shot!
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Yeah, for a one-shot, a clear objective is necessary, in my opinion. Rumors in those games should serve more of an informational role and be related to the objective. For a normal game, rumors can be hooks or quest with impunity.
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My Original Prologue
I rescued it from my email storage., from June 12, 2015:
The first thing you feel, before you open your eyes, is the searing heat, the white glare against your closed eye-lids, the sensation of being baked alive. Then comes the taste of grit, and salt, the touch of sand cupping your body where you lay. Finally, like a whisper waking you from a dream, you hear the rhythmic pulse of the surf as it rises and falls against the beach. But this was no dream.
You had been aboard the whaling ship, Lady of the Deep, when you left Cowherd Island for the whaling grounds. But her destination was never those hunting grounds and, last night, the Lady dimmed her lights and slipped off in search of her true quarry: Salvation Island.
Ironically it was named Salvation because, despite the sailor’s tales and port rumors, nothing good came of anyone foolish enough to step foot on the place. Besides, it didn’t even exist-- it was a fraud, a figment of fevered imaginations, or long since drowned beneath the waves. So it was just a tall tale, a mariner’s myth spun in smokey taverns. Except there was a map.
Mares Crowl, captain of the Lady of the Deep, had it. You were only allowed a glimpse but that brief glance revealed the unmistakable outline and position of an island that the captain claimed was Salvation. After few fair meads and fairer talk, you were welcomed aboard the ship, bound for an island claimed to hold a mountain of treasure. And death.
Where Crowl had gotten the map he wouldn’t say but it didn’t take a fortune reader to guess it wasn’t willed to him by a long lost uncle. Crowl himself had said that he was being followed, pursued from port to port. But they would be too late. He was too close.
It was an easy decision to leave the next day, follow the well-known whaling course for ten days, until, on the tenth night, you dimmed the lights on the Lady, turned her aside from the sea lane, and led her away into the night.
Everything went precisely as planned. The ship’s crew, under Crowl’s ever watchful eye and guided by his careful navigation, moved expertly. Every hour brought you closer to Salvation.
On the eleventh night, lookouts were posted along the deck-- it was said by some that faerie lights would flicker on the island shore. You were close. Everyone felt it. Then the seas went [strange].
Wind buffeted the Lady from nowhere and everywhere. Waves hammered her from all sides until she quivered and groaned on the cusp of breaking. How many men were lost then, flung from the decks, you can’t say. But it was just the start.
Blue-black thunderheads piled over the horizon, blotted out the stars, and unleashed a rage of thunder, lightning, and lashing rains.
In a lightning flash you saw her-- just a blacker shadow suspended between the roiling sea and sky, but there none the less-- Salvation.
The last you saw of the captain, he was yelling orders from the helm. Then
the Lady struck something, or something struck the Lady, and, with a shriek and a groan, she began to come apart.Timbers shattered, screams and cries pierced the air, the deck fragmented and gave way. Water rose up, or you fell, or both, hurled by the boat’s death spasms until the last thing you saw was the rush of dark water rising up to engulf you. Then everything had gone dark.
My post-game annotated map:
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Classic ship wreck scenario. Those are always fun.
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