Hexcrawl25 - Hex-filling by wandering around

I launched a short-run (six session) hex-crawl campaign to test-drive some old-school play styles and in parallel #hexcrawl25 crested the horizon - one stone, two birds!

With a session 0.5 and a first proper session under our belts ~ 8 hours play at table - the crew has poked about and found a couple of locations so I thought I would dump those up here.

Locations visited in session one:
The picturesque village of Ashley - mostly humans, all buttoned up by nightfall
The sky-burial grounds, sticking up from the forests. Has a tiny keepers cottage, who also has been found to keep the shrine of She Who Hides From Sight
The farm fields of Ashley
The great climb up to the Uruk high land
The panorama rock, claimed as territory by a cross naga
The standing stone (one large and eight smaller) where a message was left
The old lady of the swamps cottage - herb hung and filled with jarred things. Recently hosted the goblin market in the cave beneath
Dark pools - opaque waters, sticky mud and hard going generally. Used by the tree-whisperers as an ambush site for sacrificial victims
Lily ponds - pools with decent fishing, covered by giant lilies, home to territorial giant otters
The sacrificial rock - with burnt remnants of a tabernacle about it. Trees carved with strange symbols are found nearby

Locations seen
Fungal forest - seen but avoided so far
Dragonborn hamlet
Golian hamlet
Cult lair
Ruined tower

For session two they rounded up some henchlings for help and went back to the cult lair, spending the session dungeon diving.

In the interim between these campaign sessions I ran a pair of stand alone open tables - one doing the Waking of Willoughby Hall and the other doing Winters Daughter, both of which I located on the map. The party doing 'Winters Daughter' murdered some locals and chucked them off a cliff en route to their goal, significantly disturbing the local status quo for the campaign party when they restarted.

Session three they did another big wander - setting off on the journey documented in 'crawling with no notes' - wandering up to one settlement, interacting with the locals and bunking there then treking back down to investigate a missing person then turning around and trekking back again to another settlement and bunking there for the night. This was our most significant to-ing and fro-ing session so far - of course it happened when I did not have my notes in hand.

Locations visited in session three:
tall reed beds where they found a snakefolk patrol
deep marsh pools with a big crocodile
a mosquito filled wetland was one
boggy hills full of territorial but non-dangerous small lizards
ruins being excavated by snakefolk
dragonfolk hamlet in a vale with a shrine to a small god
snakefolk village in the exposed part of insectfolk ruins
barren tor that was found to be part of those same buried ruins but further away

Session four they delved into the depths of a giant ruin beneath that settlement; classic dungeoneering.

So far, half the sessions are spent actively 'hex crawling' exploring new parts of the map - we shall see how / if this pattern holds.

It has served its purpose of getting me way ahead of my #hexcrawl25 tempo with 105 hexes sketched in 61 days. Way ahead but still with the players champing at my heels.