“ With a huge number of sacrificial victims, another realm long ago secretly bound a Prince of the land spirits, Iorstonn by name, thus ensuring the fertility, and improving the magical defences, of their realm. But binding that Prince to one spot has disrupted the weather and magical patterns (ley lines?) over half the continent. Things have become bad enough that a coalition has been formed to rectify the situation, once divinations have established the cause.
Your party is one of the teams assembled to do the rectification: find the binding object and steal it ('so that we can destroy it here in our realm, of course'...*) or destroy it over there. Presumably the Prince will be grateful to his rescuers and angry at the binders, but with a greater spirit like Iorstonn one can never be sure: such beings are 'tricksy'.
* Of course, the rulers of our realm might want to control Iorstonn for their own ends...”
“ A corpse lays at the side of the road, or path. The man has been robbed of everything but a few tattered pieces of clothing. It looks like the scavengers have been working on him for a few days. The smell is ghastly. What dangers lay ahead?”
“ <br />
A plague has hit the local area.<br />
In humans it affects only the most vulnerable, the children and the very old, and even than it's little more than a summer cold. 24 hours of sniffles and then it's gone, barely noticeable really.<br />
To sheep however it is fatal and the whole economy of the area is in serious trouble. If this keeps up the area could well be facing famine.<br />
Somebody (enter the PCs) must find the rare herbs needed to make a cure.”