“ The PCs see a large collection of urns in a pool of swamp water. All the urns are lidded and seem very old, what do they contain?”
“ The PCs are sent with a diplomat to another country to protect him and do his bidding. There may be some espionage, rescuing, downright bullying, etc. Could make a nice medieval, special operations background.”
“ What if you send the players in a dungeon that was already raided? Maybe you could have traps that are already set off, or the corpses of monsters etc.”