Crew
HM: Snake/Armando/Hawkwood
Locations
Isla de Luna (No LK Entry)
NPCs
Javier de los Perros (No LK Entry)
Maria Diego (No LK Entry)
Guardsman Marcos (No LK Entry)
Don Diego (No LK Entry)
Brother Hector (No LK Entry)
Don Carlos (No LK Entry)
Plot Hook: Armando Quito received a small chest containing a shriveled human heart, which began beating when submerged in water. He recruited a crew to pursue leads and discover more about this mystery.
Locations: San Juan Puerto Rico, Culebra Island (off coast of PR)
Summary: PCs arrived in San Juan and disguised themselves as Spanish Navy sailors. After a night of carousing at the Obstreperous Goat Tavern, the party learned that a wise man / local "street wizard" named Javier de los Perros had a solid line on relevant information.
Tracking down Javier, the PCs convinced him to share his visions of a haunting tale from 200 years ago. (See images tab on right.)
Backstory: Don Diego ruled the Isla de los Dos Torres (old fictional name for Culebra), and he wanted to keep his beautiful daughter away from local suitors, so that he could marry her to a Spanish noble. Guardsman Marcos won her heart, and Don Diego sent him to find a jade jaguar idol from the Yucatan as a quest, knowing the young soldier would not return. In her grief, Maria was an easy target for Brother Hector, of the Order of the Illuminated Heart, a heretical cabal of monks that worked in secret to promote the rise of the Old Ones. Hector convinced Maria to have her heart ritually removed and preserved; in exchange, she would grow old very slowly, so that perhaps Marcos might return to her. Don Diego held a funeral for Maria, but to everyone's surprise the corpse reanimated before the burial. Locked in her Torre de Luna, Maria pined for her lost love, and ached for her lost heart.
The PCs purchased some salt pork as cargo (given the food shortage across the land) and set out for Culebra, a short trip which became a 3-day ordeal due to a vicious storm. Party managed to snag some valuable flotsam from the storm wreckage. Eventually they landed in Culebra, where they met the doddering Don Carlos, "lord" of the desolate island, and his ghoul friends who attacked the party. PCs looted manor and found live chickens, a valuable commodity.
After breaking a path overland to the location of the old Isla de Luna, the party confronted the ghost of Marcos, who begged the PCs to let him destroy the heart rather than return it to Maria. If reunited, he believed the power of the deferred sacrifice and all the suffering of the past 200 years would speed the coming apocalypse.
Maria pleaded for the heart, so as to reclaim her youth and beauty.
A scuffle ensued, during which Marcos managed to wrest the heart from the chest and dive out the window, destroying himself with the last bit of his spectral power -- and also obliterating the heart.
All PCs survived to tell the tale of the Mysteries of the Heart.