Your party wanders into a medium sized town of less than only 100, looking for shelter for the night.
The townspeople are friendly enough but tend to keep to themselves and avoid talking to the party spellcasters as much as possible.
The town elder offers you all a night in his home explaining his family used to be larger but is no longer with him.
Upon prodding he reveals that the town was populated 5 fold at one time but a small group of them left to get supplies from a larger city as they usually do but upon returning everyone was gone without a trace.
There's no secret, paladins came around to kill all sorcerers, that's it.
Easton Kelly
The aliens that run the planet as flesh/labour farm came by and harvested them.
Anthony Sanchez
A large slave raid. Some wealthy group needed a large supply of human sacrifices
Carter Young
The mayor's family has been in league with a race of tyrannical molemen who live in subterranean caverns beneath the town going back generations. Every few decades these molepeople harvest the entire town's population sans the mayor's family, to be used as slaves/food/fuel/whatever devious purposes. After each cycle the mayor's family is tasked with covering it all up, and attracting new settlers to the town so the cycle can repeat. The current mayor massively fucked up by accidentally sending a group out on a supply run right before a harvest was supposed to happen.
Cameron Russell
The town was built over one of the mouths of The Tempter, a beast associated with the apocalypse like the biblical leviathan. She whispers into the minds of the people and over generations they have completely fallen under her thrall to the point where they are now mere extensions of her will so long as they remain within the town and surrounding area. Periodically she will urge individuals out of their homes at night and into tunnels that take them to the realm in which she is imprisoned to work out the rest of their lives trying to break her bonds. They avoid magicians because they are never quite sure if an individual's spellcraft is innate or empowered by the gods, and she would like to avoid drawing divine attention.
Xavier Butler
Went crazy from an unearthed artifact. Mass suicide. Bodies taken by ethereal forces for unknown reasons. They'll return soon.
Ian Ramirez
The group came back to a ghost town they thought was their home town. The real town they're from tells the story of how a group of townsfolk went to the city for vital supplies and never returned, causing a period of strife.
Nathaniel Lewis
White Fright. They all left after the niggers moved in.
Hunter Sullivan
Then that small group returned, they found out the town was attacked by human-eating giants. They were able to convince the giants to not attack the town anymore on one condition: they must regularly sacrifice people to feed them.
While the elder is telling them this, a mob of locals try capturing the party
Hudson Torres
turned into turtles
Benjamin Brown
The town are all disguised mind flayers. They invaded this town and slowly are taking over the minds of everyone that used to live in the town by the use of an elder brain hidden under the town. Only spellcasters can detect their psionics so they try to keep from even being near them.
Jason Russell
Every so often, the great King of the forests, a powerful lord of the fae, spends a night hunting whatever happens to be in his path.
This town and all the people who were in it, through no fault of it's own but simply as a matter of poor luck, was in the wrong place during one of these great hunts.
Logan Phillips
I like this. I think I'll steal it.
Brody Powell
>Upon prodding he reveals that the town was populated 5 fold at one time but a small group of them left to get supplies from a larger city as they usually do but upon returning everyone was gone without a trace. The group was really bad at reading maps. The original town is wondering what happened to their supply caravan.
Christopher White
The whole town was invited to the fairy party. They are drinking and dancing in the Otherworld and new people arrive constantly (that's new settlers who were invited too on the same day years after them). When this repeats seven times people will be returned to human world thinking it was one long day.
Cameron Carter
Na people put too much gay shit in renditions of the Hunt
Luke Morris
best in thread
why even post
Ryan Diaz
Thank gods we have vertical maneuver gear.
Carter Brown
Best explanation. Fae would leave the town intact but take all the people. Could also leave a few changelings behind.
Hunter Myers
It all started on 2-for-1 wing night in the next town over. Now the missing townsfolk have seized control after days of bloody conflict and are demanding that the wings never stop flowing.
Dominic Jenkins
> What is this town's secret? It misplaces living being on the realms of existence. Basically, consider ghosts and imagine that ghosts are actually real people who separated from their living plane of existence.
Gabriel Carter
The real question is why the fuck they remember the town being bigger, when there are no buildings for all those extra people.
Someone or something has been fucking with their memory and their awareness.
Luis Murphy
A False Hydra has taken up residence in the town
Juan Anderson
>medium sized >less than only 100
Anthony Hughes
The single greatest game of hide and seek
Eli Morris
The town is medium sized. The population is small. Alluding that it was made for more people but something happened. Pay attention.
Joseph Robinson
Slightly off topic, but I've been thinking about having the party encounter a False Hydra. What're the odds that they absolutely hate it?
Christian Phillips
A terrible magical plague afflicted the town. It was highly contagious, but only in its final stage. Before that a person would exhibit a series of unmistakable symptoms. The uninfected townsfolk quarantined then killed all those infected out of fear of the plague spreading. The bodies were buried in a mass grave outside of town.
Aiden Jackson
Depends if they like mystery, ivestigating and aren't hardcore metagamers.
Christopher Jones
4 out of 5 villager volunteered to be shipped to not-Australia to colonise it, while being fully aware of what it will be like. When the remaining villagers told the mayor, he didn't believe his villagers would be insane enough to volunteer and therefore assumed nefarious and mysterious causes.
Blake Peterson
Case 1 The group that left sold the town to some demon/devil/old one for le profits, returned afterwards.
Case 2 The group was supposed to leave, but some great disaster wiped out all of the population, the group is ghosts now.
Case 3 The group that left died in an ambush, the remaining people are delusional and have inserted themselves as the group that left in order to wash away the guilt of sending the others on a dangerous journey.
Cameron King
I did. I like my version better.
>our town is missing its people! >but you're living in a tinyass village...