The Last Lighthouse

3-4 hours 3-5 players

The light has gone out. The ships are coming. Something is waiting.

The lighthouse has always been there. For a hundred years, it's guided ships safely past the rocks of Saltmorrow. But three nights ago, the beacon went dark. Now there's a storm coming, three merchant ships are on their way, and the keeper hasn't been seen in a week.

The truth is worse than you'd expect. Mordecai Thorne was a good man, a father who watched his daughter dying of a sickness no healer could cure. When something in the water offered him a bargain, he took it. Now his daughter is healthy, and he's a thrall of Grandmother Brine, an ancient sea hag who's been drowning sailors on this coast since before the village existed. The lighthouse was built to stop her. Now it serves her.

The Last Lighthouse is a 3-4 hour adventure of maritime horror and impossible choices. Players will climb a corrupted lighthouse, confront a father trapped between love and damnation, and race against time to light the beacon before three ships, and hundreds of lives, are lost. Multiple endings mean your players' choices shape the fate of everyone involved.

This adventure gives GMs everything they need: A vertical dungeon with escalating horror, a tragic antagonist players might save or destroy, a ticking clock that creates genuine tension, and an ancient monster who's been winning this game for centuries.

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What's Inside

### Scene-by-Scene Journey

• Storm Warning: Arrive in a village on the edge of panic, where an old woman remembers stories that shouldn't be real
• The Approach: Cross a beach where the dead don't stay down and the sea has claimed territory
• The Climb: Ascend a lighthouse that's drowning from the inside, finding journal entries that tell a father's tragic fall
• The Beacon: Face the keeper, the hag, and the choice, with ships' lights visible through the glass and the clock running out

### Key NPCs

• Mordecai Thorne: A lighthouse keeper who traded his soul for his daughter's life, now fighting against the hag's control
• Grandmother Brine: An ancient sea hag who's been waiting a century, patient as the tide, for this moment
• Lily Thorne: The daughter who doesn't know her miraculous recovery cost her father everything

### Features

• Ticking clock mechanic: ships crash in real-time if players take too long
• Optional "Heartstone" path that affects the final confrontation's difficulty
• Four distinct endings based on player choices
• A lighthouse as vertical dungeon, each floor more corrupted than the last

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Voices from the Dark

> "Leave this place. There's nothing here but duty and death. Please. Don't make me hurt you."

> Mordecai Thorne

> "More little lights, come to flicker and die. How kind of the land to send me such gifts."

> Grandmother Brine

> "My grandmother called her Grandmother Brine. Said the lighthouse wasn't built to show the way. It was built to keep her blind."

> Old Maren

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Content Advisory

This adventure explores themes of parental sacrifice, drowning imagery, and body horror (waterlogged undead). The tone is gothic horror with moments of genuine tragedy. Consider your table's comfort with maritime horror elements and impossible moral choices.

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Perfect For

• Players who love horror with emotional depth and tragic antagonists
• Groups who enjoy ticking-clock tension and meaningful choices
• GMs who want a complete, atmospheric adventure with multiple endings
• Tables who loved Curse of Strahd's moral complexity in a shorter format
• Anyone who finds lighthouses inherently creepy (you know who you are)