Some people win big in the gambling houses of Streamside... but a lot more people lose big. Some of the losers might get desperate and try to take their revenge on the gambling halls, or turn to theft or other desperate measures to cover their losses—and the PCs might be called upon to stop them. Or sometimes the bets may take strange forms, and people may wager away things more than money, with unusual results that may lead to adventure. Or sometimes the losers may want help proving that the game they lost was crooked... and sometimes they may even be right.
Example: A Streamside resident, Istorin Feddrin, recently played a game of cards against a visitng fey... and at one point put her firstborn child up as her wager. She felt safe doing this because she was confident she had a winning hand... but she ended up losing, and the fey took her child. Feddrin is begging the PCs to find the fey and persuade her to accept some other payment and return the child, but unfortunately she doesn't know the fey's name or where they came from, so even the first part is going to be very difficult... let alone the second.
Due to the old and expansive cemeteries in Streamside, undead are a common presence. Most of the time, the undead are relatively harmless, or at least easily avoided. Most of the time. Sometimes, there are exceptions...
Example: A careless contractor excavating a cellar for a new lathery in Streamside uncovered a bunch of old bones from a forgotten gravesite and dumped them into the lake. Unfortunately, the bones were already starting to animate, and the part of the lake they were dumped in was polluted with magical runoff from a nearby alchemist's shop, and the combination of these phenomena caused the bones to combine and animate into a huge gestalt bone creature that's now been terrorizing the lakeside. The PCs have to learn out what this creature is and how it came to be so they can figure out how to stop it.
The brothels and gentlemen's clubs and similar services in Streamside may sometimes operate in a legal gray area, but at least they're usually harmless and are no more than what they claim to be. Sometimes, however, people may use such establishments as cover for more nefarious activities, or may exploit their guests in some way. The Guild of Joy tries to police its own and put a stop to such practices, but it isn't immediately successful.
Example: Visitors to Streamside have been disappearing, and with a thorough investigation the PCs might be able to determine that they've all last been seen on a certain street. It turns out there's a massage parlor there that's more than it seems; the proprietress, one Iasti Ghianella, tempts and coaxes her patrons into acts that end up turning them into yielden, having given themselves up for physical pleasure—and she has a telesm that lets her put measures in place to put the yielden thus created under her control, letting her effectively build up an army of the self-abandoned.
Streamside lies between a mostly virgin forest and a large lake, and as lovely as these natural sights are, they also hide creatures and forces that can be sometimes pose threats. Certainly the forest near Streamside doesn't have the large fey presence that the one near Graypool does, but it has other denizens that can be just as dangerous, and that may occasionally emerge from their lairs to cause trouble in the city.
Example:Wood elementals have started emerging from the forest north of Streamside, lumbering through the neighborhood and causing significant damage. While they can be fought individually, to stop them for good someone's going to have to go into the forest and figure out where they're coming from—which turns out to be a new and unstable genius loci that formed deep in the forest. Destroying the genius loci would be very difficult, but maybe there's a better way of dealing with it, making it more stable and peaceful so it will stop generating these elementals.
