Lacking Natural Simplicity

Attending

• T.A. — GameMaster

• T.K.B. — Capt. Jack Savage, Rowena Blackwood

Actual Play

Heard rumors of Cutthroat Henry Hobbs' treasure; key under Santa Domingo's Lion's Gate (St. Leon's church). Go there. Try to climb down well in church. Rowena falls, but quietly. Find box with sand casting of key with the number 4 on the handle. Took it to a blacksmith, who recognizes it as a key from a gold collection site from mines of Santa Domingo — he warns us that the spirits of natives who died in the mines infest them to this day. 11$ to make the key. Can't find any way to protect us from the spirits. Bought Lantern and Bullseye Lantern and 6 pints of oil for 89$. Went to mines. 5 main passages. Some men came out of one of the other passages. Their leader is Catfish Carlos Peña, and they say they can't let us get away knowing about them. We fire and kill Peña and others flee. Number 4 area opens to our key. Only thing of interest is the Shipping Security Log. The 13th shipment lists Robyn H Besh (an anagram for Henry Hobbs) is in charge. He must have changed the log and took command of the ship to took it to Santiago (destination listed on the log).

Jack has a one-masted sloop with 4 crew. On the 3rd day one of the crew sees a ship; 2 days later another crew member sees it. We've also been having bad luck. We reach Santiago. Lots of taverns to investigate. We find an old man, Smiling Jack, who sells us for 5$ the information that William Wilks sailed with Besh, boasted of Spanish treasure, but lost money and couldn't pay. Smiling Jack leads us to the gambling house wher Wilks, known as Whistling Willy, is playing. He's about to be shot. Captain Jack Savage walks up to the shooter and shoots him first, killing him. His friends weren't happy. We kill 3 more, and 1 runs. Question Whistling Willy. Cutthroat double-crossed his crew. Willy had a pine box Besh gave him that turned out to have a false-bottomed, with a treasure map. It looks like Besh hid the treasure on the Isle of Pines. We head there. A day's trek inland. Come to the location where think Hobbs/Besh buried the treasure. Find large pine with H.H. and an arrow pointing down carved on it, but it's surrounded by fire ants! Drove the ants out with burning oil. Takes 3 hours to dig down to 6 large chests with 5000$ each. Took us several days to transfer the chests to the ship.

Aftermath

+5 XP.