Onitka looks empty. More than thirty people - adults all, but of every description, as far as is possible to get much variety of inhabitants in a smallish town - have gone missing. As the vanishing residents left with whatever valuables they had access to - the banker with half the contents of the bank vault; the blacksmith with a cache of weapons, including his stocked inventory and some items commissioned individually; the miscellaneous peasantry with what little savings or family heirlooms they could collect - the disappearances had first been dismissed as a rash of bizarre thefts, albeit by upstanding citizens no one would have suspected of such behavior. As the disappearances mounted, however, it seemed clear that something more sinister was afoot - what, of course, no one knows.
Only one person has actually been seen leaving town. A group of young teenagers spotted one of the many miners wandering dazedly south, but of course instead of notifying some authority figure, they took off after him, leaving only one of their twelve-year-old sisters to watch them leave, wringing her hands; hours later, when they - and the man they followed - still had not returned, she ran to her parents and described the whole event. Her description, inconclusive though it is, is now common knowledge throughout Onitka.
People have taken to traveling in groups, locking their doors at night, hiding their possessions, but none of these measures have stopped the trickle of villagers disappearing, typically in the middle of the night unwitnessed by the night watch - itself minimally staffed, and admittedly ill-equipped to catch anyone and solve the mystery. Talk of evacuation has been bandied about but thus far gone nowhere; the villagers, fearful though they are, are loath to leave their homes and work.
For whatever reason, you're on Main Street when the mayor, flanked by several loudly and stridently concerned citizens, finally agrees that he will divert some of the public funds to hire a group of mercenaries or adventurers to go south, the only known direction of the wayward townsfolk, and investigate, even though it's clear the mayor believes it to be a fool's errand.