Fantasy RPG Plot Hooks/Wilderness/Bountiful Wolves

From Create Your Own Story

Bountiful Wolves

Urban, Wilderness, Low-Magic

The player's characters hear reliable rumors that wolves are prolific and are causing problems for farmers in a town well out of their way. While that alone isn't very enticing, they also hear about a large bounty on those wolves. Not quite too good to be true, but well worth making a trip.

As the characters approach the town they are attacked by a pack of the wolves they've heard about. Nothing that they can't handle, but it might be a tough fight. The wolves don't intend to fight to the death, but they show no fear of the characters.

If the characters bring in the wolf corpses to receive their bounty they learn from the town sheriff that the Treasury is severely depleted. The bounty was canceled after about a year. A large number of wolves were being brought in with no apparent reduction in the wolf population. After the bounty was cancelled though, the wolf problem got drastically worse almost overnight.

So now the players are well out of their way, in a poor village, surrounded by vicious wolves. With some investigation the players can learn almost all of the wolves were brought in by one trapper/fur merchant. At first a wolf would be brought in only once every few months or so, during the last month of the bounty the trapper was bringing in wolves almost every day. He was secretly breeding wolves and bringing in his fresh grown wolf pups for the bounty. When the bounty was cancelled he let most of the now worthless wolves loose in the woods, hoping the worsening wolf problem would get the bounty reinstated. He has a sizable chunk of money in a locked chest in his basement, near his wolf breeding pen.

Do the heroes deal with the wolves and/or bring the scam artist to justice? Or will they just cut their losses and get out of town while the getting is good?