“ Young kid from last town has been following the PCs and doing a rather good job at it. PCs weren't expecting to be followed so weren't worried and the boy/girl was careful. Notice the follower a couple days out of town, kid ran out of food and started getting careless. Followed the 'mighty adventurers' to see if he could join them. Father is a wealthy merchant. Bring him home, bring him with, send him off? What do you do with an unwelcomed guest.”
“ The accepted mode of getting otherwise unobtainable information is to go visit the cranky old hermit living in the mountains. It's just the sensible thing to do. So, naturally, everyone takes their monthly excursion to the hermit's hovel to consult him on everything, from lock-jaw to lovesickness, necromancers to nasal viruses.
Now, if everyone's always visiting the poor old hermit, there's going to be an enormous queue... 'Wellcome to the Hermitt's Hovele, Please Take Ye a Number and Have Ye a Seate' reads the sign outside the packed dwelling.
Imagine the poor hermit, having retreated into the mountains to escape this precise situation...”
“ Dust Elemental
https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=1594
At the corner of air and earth elemental planes resides the dust Elemental, a growing threat to Parisia. With it's powerful choking attack, this creature is a threat to the city. More and more of them are appearing in town, spawned from the many dust devils, a frequent foe of the party, they come in size from 3 HD to 20 HD. Why are there so many? Why in the city?”