Taverns obviously get a notable purpose once you reach Pirate Legend status, but until that point they're a little threadbare in what you can do, and the Tavern itself kind of just remains a door to reach Athena's Hideout, not really befitting of one of the pirate life's most important fixtures. So, two ideas:
First: A "Random Voyage" purchase option at the Tavern, maybe flavoured as "pick up rumor" or etc. Pretty much self-explanatory. The nature of the Voyages avaliable will be determined by your current promotion level with the Trading Companies, and Athena's Fortune Voyages would be excluded.
Second: A special, "ultra strong" grog the tavernkeep warns you against purchasing, because it's much too strong for most people to handle and unlike regular grog will cost you. (eg. ~500 gold) It can't be taken outside the Tavern and must be drank there, and Crews need to unanimously vote on it together in the Tavern.
This whole process should probably take a little time as well (~30 seconds), to avoid players just using it to instantly bail out of a fight. (eg. once you've voted on it, you start drinking and get increasingly drunk, trying to leave the tavern results in an invisible wall)
This will cause the drinkers to black out, the crew and their ship will vanish in a ghostly fog from other player's perspectives, while they wake up on a completely random island (with the only exceptions being islands other players are landed on/close to, it'd move you somewhere unoccupied) with their ship in the waters nearby, which akin to Maiden's Voyage will be mostly wrecked and in dire need of repairs.
Players don't keep their loot in this process, including Emissary Flags, it'll be dropped where their ship was left. However, as a form of compensation, they'll have some random loot items generated near them or on the ship to make up for the Gold cost of the grog, and make some extra money on the side. These loot items would probably exclude Gems, Ritual Skulls, Ashen stuff, and etc, they would consist of stuff for making simple Gold without people being incentivised to keep spamming this system in the hopes of getting a "good roll".
The first suggestion just adds a small utility to Taverns for players who don't feel like picking their own Voyage, the second one has a few more versatile purposes. It can act as an alternative to scuttling your ship if you don't like your spawn location or want to lose a Reaper that just won't let up and you don't care about leaving your loot. It can also act as a "start at a truly random island" option when you've just spawned in- Or, you and your buddies can goof off and make a little money going on a drunken adventure across the SoT.
Combined, these would essentially make the Tavern the "Go here if you want something completely random and unpredictable" location in Outposts, which I think would work nicely.
