Quote Originally Posted by yougi View Post
What kind of hints could there be? Here are some of my ideas:

- Tracks (obviously, with raided villages along the way)
- The journal of a previously deceased mook, saying that the Southerners had a safehouse somewhere else.
- A sea map (as the second hideout is on an island)

Should that be enough? Any other ideas?
I'd actually be hesitant to use any of those. Maps should be a definite NO outside the leadership (who wants a random mook to be able to betray you and give away your safe house?). Journals require literacy, which most mooks should lack, and the leaders who are alive wouldn't forget that. And Tracks(of I'm assuming 6 or so people) would be almost impossible to follow after a week (several days to town then back) - and Raided villages seem like a bad idea unless you want to be followed.

Instead, try to be a bit more subtle. A painting (in blood, since that is readily available) on the wall with a large tree sitting on a shoreline, a gem-shape off to sea - which tells survivors that they retreated to the island-base, and to wait by the old Oak on the shore for pick-up; maybe have a moon overhead to indicate "at night". If the players find the old oak, they will find a small boat coming every night to pick up stragglers (but where is this oak?).

Maybe a mook has a collection of seashells, or another has small wooden toys carved in the shape of boats - basically screaming "go to the ocean!" For this you can pay attention to characters that have Knowledge skills (Nature and Geography in particular), letting them narrow the search to "this one town which has this kind of clam".

Even if Literacy is rare (I obviously stray from the core DnD "everyone can read" conceit), you could have a couple scrunched up letters from the parents of one of the cultists, written in a style that Knowledge (Religion) people will call out as belonging to a particular church (its something about the prose) - there are a few such churches nearby, with a small shrine in a village near the sea.

I still suggest having a taunting note from the cult leader, maybe also a suspiciously untrapped book sitting out in the open that talks about a certain dangerous cave, and how to get there.