Ask questions

If you're establishing the site during play, and the PCs might know about it, defer to them. Has a PC been here before? Ask what it's like! Would a PC have heard of it? Ask what they've heard.

As always, incorporate the players' answers into the fiction but feel free to put a twist on it. Sure, that barrow was full of bones and swarming mice when the Fox explored it, but that was years ago and the mice could be gone. Sure, everyone knows the ruin is haunted, but perhaps it's a grumpy Fae who dwells there rather than a ghost.

For our first adventure, the main threat (Sajra the swyn, a monkey-headed snake beast) dwells in a Green Lord tomb. The crinwin are dragging Pryder (one of the village youths) back there, and the PCs are in pursuit. I've already Charted a Course and prepped the journey, and I expect the PCs to arrive next session.

Earlier, we established that Rhianna thinks the crinwin are headed to a big Maker-ruin. She and her pa followed a rabid wolf there in her youth. They found it near the ruin, but got spooked. "What spooked you off?" I asked. This was before the Forest Folk left, and she said they'd found the wolf 's burnt bones near the entrance, like an offering, and they wanted nothing to do with that!