The Mayor poured Nomis a glass and pushed it to the sharen, then put everything else away in a cabinet under his desk. Leaning above that hardwood surface, he studies the town map for a moment and sighs. "Thank you both for coming. I'll get right to it so that you can ask any questions you have and settle in: We've had a problem recently with a bandit calling himself the Red Fox. If you grew up near here, you might have grown up with stories of the original Red Fox and his exploits, but those happened decades ago, back when my parents were children. He became kind of a local legend after he disappeared, and there have been people every decade or so that try to emulate him, mostly kids that get caught, spend a night or two in jail and get released to their parent's custody without any real harm done. I'd almost call it an unofficial right of passage at this point, if I weren't the mayor and wasn't in charge of keeping and enforcing the law here." He smirked at that, took a sip of his brandy, and resumed frowning.

"This Red Fox is different. Unlike the others, he doesn't seem to be content to bloodlessly rob from the local nobles and their vaults, and he isn't working alone. He and his band have held people at knife point in the streets, robbed merchants on the road at the outskirts of Sheered Wood, and sometimes leave their victims dead." Another sip, an he sets his glass down. "Surviving witnesses have reported that this band's leader wears a red silk mask, a scarlet cape, and a red tricorn hat like the one you saw on the fox statue in the hall. His men also wear masks, though none of their attire is quite so colorful. My guards haven't had any success with tracking these bandits down, which is why I've posted the bounty and called for help from Longview. I'm hoping you'll be able to make some headway where my men did not."