My Hexcrawl or Wilderness clues, and dungeon clues

• Tracks in the morning dew. (spiderwebs in grass with dew)
• Disturbed spiderwebs.
• Crunched up leaves from likely large feet or many boots.
• An odd vine that turns out to be a rope or snare on closer inspection.
• Mismatching leaf patterns of the ground (covering a pit trap).
• Bushes or brambles recently cut out of an older path.
• A hack mark on a tree indicating someone wants to remember it (something hidden near?) or use it as a trail blazing guide.
• The lack of birds in the area.
• Startled birds from a distance.
• Missing sounds (no birds or angry squirrels in the day, or no crickets at night).
• A swarm of flies and a smell of rot (dead game, corpse, or undead?).
• Bones, cloth, burnt out campfires. …
• And some advice from earlier tonight I was a player, don’t send the whole party to investigate a distant out of place green “grassy?” mound in the distance when there are rumors of a lazy green dragon in the area, heh.

I replied to a guy here, one of Tenkar's, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2hgtCsc6s

And Tenkar has great dungeon examples halfway thru. 

Results so far - hexcrawl / pt. crawl, kinda oneshot

 Sunday night

• Alligator. Druid used animal spells to calm it, it left. 
• Giant Crawfish at night, distant but dangerous, avoided.
• pixies stole a potion
• More lost travelers to send home. 
• A day of no problems.
• While resting at night, a shaking ground. What the. Another thud and ground shakes, it's coming closer!  An unnatural fear. Something huge (the green dragon)! Get the heck out of there. We walked faster ... looking back our campfire went out. OMG we were just there! and finally started running as the fear took hold. Our campfire attracting its attention apparently.  :P Got out OK. Lost a tent and some minor supplies, but that's ok. 
• As we ran 30 minutes away, slowed to find a new campsite. Saw a light in the distance. Investigated.
• More Cultists!
• Spotted them in the dark. Snuck up on them, 3... one with red robes, other two normal black robes. Greenish and reddish fire again. Swamp area. Attacked with Moonbeam first, they were confused. 
• 
  
• Chromatic Orb, attacked from dark, so rolled with advantage. Hit, did a little dmg. 
• Main bad cast a bonfire type fire near us to spot us. 
• Fighters ran in. One of the cultist pulled a sword and swung through the fire, it gave something to the sword in the attack. 
• 
  
• Later main baddie jumped in fire... heals and extra spells. 
• Druid moved moonbeam in there, but he stayed in the fire anyway (healing him some). 
• Main baddie, used fire to do a small AOE, hit both fighters (10 and 5 dmg with dex save). 
• Big Flame, demonic face appeared, 3d10 firey spell, hit the druid pretty hard (12 dmg)!
• Finally we eliminated 2 minor cultists, 2 handed fighter ran up to main cultist (who had been hit a little from moonbeam and Magic Missile) and critted him for big dmg, took him out. 
• 2 trogs
• short rest
• 7 undead trogs (harder than normal). Something sent them on us. 

Results So Far -Point Crawl One Shot, kid as DM

Been a blast. First time (in a "real TTRPG game") playing a straight up Wizard and not a Sorcerer. I'm manning four level 3 characters:

• wizard
• druid
• fighter
• fighter

Previous nights: 

Forest, mixed forest, then caves.

Teenaged big brown bear, no conflict. 

Ran into 4 guardsmen from town... they helped us fight some of the 5 goblins + adept. Ended up getting hurt as they went in first (and were fired on first) when we found a couple of huts. 

Sent a lost traveler back to the village. 

Avoided two owlbears (2d6 roll attitude and another roll for distance, both pretty heavy in our favor, meaning they almost attacked anyway). 

Found the 2 strange cave fairies/pixies... they were helpful, had some +1 arrows. 

A brownie. Told me about the hut (with the centipedes). 

Stayed in an abandoned hut, two giant centipedes. 

Two Worgs attacked. Spike growth to deter, but they kept at it. One finally ran, one died. 

Found a crumbling tower of sorts, had steps up to a high pine tree. Saw gnoll writing (goblin = enemy).  Wildshape as cat to get up there easily. Found a longbow. 

Fought goblin ambush and 2 bugbears. Web spell saved the day, was fun. Wizard's Web + druid's bonfire spell was a nice combo. Bugbears hit HARD at this level, was scary, one fighter was down to 1/5 of his HP... half a hit away from 0.

Tonight:

Found a halfling who had been changed into a skunk (he could still talk) by goblins with experimental potions. How are they getting or making these potions?

70% swamp, 30% forest area. Witnessed the often foreshadowed goblin clan vs. goblin clan fighting each other. Could have went in for a fight, but instead snuck in as a robin with wildshape. Found some potions, changed to a hawk to carry out a couple. Was able to sneak out. Cured the halfling. Let the goblins kill each other, slipped away quietly. 

Full Swamp area.

4 Stirges came at us. 

Negotiated with suspicious but 3 non hostile lizardmen. Went fine. 

The Cultists = *the highlight of the night. 

From DeviantArt, name indicates Dravek's work. 

Via Blakmoor.

Via Barrowmaze.

The Cultists! Dark hooded figures, black ripped robes, briars around their shoulders, faces hidden in darkness the entire time. Four of them, we had spotted a fire as it got darker outside. Tried to sneak in for a closer look, startled a crow which alerted them to us. Decided to announce our presence and appear non hostile. Fire was unnatural, some ritual.  They asked about their "god". We tried to part ways, they spoke to their fire, which had been rising higher before we disturbed them. A weird fire of red and green. And now a mouth appeared above the fire, ordering them to not let us go (apparently, couldn't understand). They got hostile... roll init! 

My guys got some lucky rolls. Trapped them with spike growth, Chromatic orb level 2 hit for big dmg twice. Got two crits. When the first one died, the fire "swallowed him". When another died further from the fire, we saw a slight ember of flame in the would as he died. Another died close to the fire and the wound's ember went to to the fire. Etc.  

Are the cultists in cahoots with someone in the swamp?