After a brief wait, the door once again opens, this time with one of the town guards at the door.  "The Captain's ready to see you now," he says, motioning for you to follow him, though he doesn't indulge in much conversation.  After a short walk, he opens a door and motions you through.  The room is sparsely furnished, with a few simple chairs around a large table.  A map is spread out on the table, with several more rolled up in a barrel in the corner.  Several parchments are scattered haphazardly on the table as well, and it's clear that this room has seen a lot of activity lately.  Standing next to the table is a man that appears to be in his late forties, several scars on his face proof of his battle experience.  He is dressed in full armor, and it is clearly armor worn by someone of high rank.  He turns to you as you enter the room, gesturing for the guard to close the door once everyone's inside.<br/><br/>"Well, adventurers.  Here to answer the call to arms, I take it?" he says in a strong, commanding voice, the kind of voice used to ordering people on a battlefield.  "I'm Narien, Captain of the Town Guard, and I'm the one in charge of the investigation.  I'll fill you in on what we know... but right now, it's not much.  As you've probably heard, there's been a large number of disappearances lately."  He gestures to the map before continuing, and a closer inspection shows that it's a map of the town and the nearby area, stretching out about two day's travel in each direction.  About fifty pins are stuck into the map, most of them on the roads out of town, but otherwise with no obvious pattern.  "Each of those pins is about where someone went missing.  As you can see, there's no real pattern.  No one's vanished while within a mile or so of town, but aside from that it's happened everywhere.  The scenes of the disappearances are also varied.  Sometimes there's no trace of any sort of struggle or combat, just whatever carts they had were left on the road.  Sometimes it looks like a war happened, and whatever they had with was ransacked, likely for supplies.  Whether or not bodies are left behind, also varies, sometimes there are several corpses left behind, other times there's almost no sign at all of anyone being there in the first place.  Whoever's doing the attacks is careful to leave as few traces of themselves behind as well; we've never found a body of one of the attackers at any of the scenes.  The only real connection, aside from the frequency, is that every attack has at least one person missing.  We've never been able to account for all the bodies of any of the attacks.  Who goes missing doesn't seem to have any consistency behind it, however - male, female, human, elf, dwarf, old, young... nothing, except that they've never taken a child.  Anyone younger than fifteen has either managed to escape with little or no pursuit, or killed, but we've been able to account for all of them."<br/><br/>"There have been a few success stories of people fending off the attacks, however.  It seems this group is careful, deliberately picking targets they can overpower.  Those that did survive either ran while the attackers were busy with others, or managed to surprise the attackers somehow, either by being better prepared than they appeared or had help arrive.  However, the reports of how the attacks came are as varied as everything else.  Sometimes it's only humanoid attackers, sometimes they have other creatures helping them, but each time it's been different.  The only connection is that most of the attackers have something like this," he says as he picks up a medallion.  It appears to be a holy symbol of some sort, though you don't know what deity the symbol belongs to.<br/><br/>"Now, this last bit... this needs to be kept quiet.  There's rumors flying all over about people that have been abducted escaping somehow.  It's true, we've had half a dozen show up.  However, there's something not right about them.  Every single one has shown up completely naked, not a scrap of clothing on them.  They keep mumbling incoherently.  Some of the local mages and priests have tried to cure them, but there's been no success.  It seems there's something magical keeping them in a daze, but no one's been able to break it.  What's worse is that they sometimes get violent.  The first one killed two of the clerics watching her before being brought down.  The rest we've kept restrained, and their violence sometimes flares up for an hour or so before they calm down.  Obviously, we want to avoid a panic, so we need you to keep quiet about it."<br/><br/>"That's pretty much all we know.  Your mission is to come up with any information at all about the disappearances.  Unfortunately, the guard's stretched thin trying to protect our borders and keep the town from rioting, so we don't have any men to spare to help you outside the city.  Right now, I think our best bet is to have someone there when they attack.  There's a small caravan heading north tomorrow, around noon.  I want you to be there when it leaves.  You'll have to do your best to look as vulnerable as possible, to draw an attack.  If we can take one of them alive, we might be able to get some good information.  You have until tomorrow to investigate as much as possible.  Meet up at the north gate before noon.  If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them."