Twist on an old theme

Here's the general plot of an adventure I'm trying to write, however Im having a hard time resolving one aspect of the adventure.

The PCs are asked for their help by an NPC that has heard of their recent exploits. The NPCs town for generations has been plagued by a monster that if not placated attacks the town. The only thing that placates this beast is delivering young to its lair to devour.

Every month the townsfolk have a lottery that determines what children will be sacrificed to it during the year. The NPC's child has been chosen next.

There is a major twist concerning the monster, but my problem is this...

What would keep a population from just moving away?

Any thoughts?

What would keep a population from just moving away?

In ye olde days, people rarely left the town they were born in, and, in quite a few cases, died in the same house they were born in...

The idea of just packing up and moving would be a pretty rare concept, and if the local area is even remotely dangerous, particularly at night, the locals wouldn't be able to reliably make any journey of more than 30 miles or so (a days walk). If the nearest other community is 45 or more miles away, it could take two days or more for a family laden down with goods, helping children and elders, etc. to reach that neighboring town, and, if even something as 'deadly' to commoners as stirges or small monstrous spiders live in the wild places between towns and come out at night, all that's going to be left of them is blood-drained corpses for traveling merchants to find slumped around a cold campfire.

If the local village has no supplies of metal goods or coin, a family's 'wealth' might be in the form of cattle or lumber or other not-easily-portable goods, meaning that any villager family that ups and moves is pretty much losing everything for a *chance* to get to some neighboring community where they may or may not be beggars, pressed into slavery, forced into prostitution, etc. just to survive.

There might also be strong traditional reasons, such as a belief that the village boogeyman is a local fertility diety (which may never have been true, or may have been true once, but the local legend has been co-opted by some sinister force preying on old beliefs), and that the only reason this community thrives at all is because of the sacrifices. Legends would tell of years when the sacrifice was missed, or attempts were made to use cattle or something, and there were crop failures, droughts, early freezes, two-headed calf births, mysterious abductions and anal probings (okay, perhaps not) and various other signs of displeasure on the part of the 'old god' or 'crop spirits' or whatever. Variations on this theme could include a legend that when the villagers ancestors first came here, someone slew a legendary beast (unicorn?) that was a favored child of the local nature-spirits / diety, and that the villagers were allowed to settle only after swearing a pact to repay their misdeeds with blood for blood. It's been centuries, at least, and still the blood-debt exists.

So, various reasons. Too dangerous to travel that far for commoners. Not feasible to uproot and lose everything in a feudal society. Staying for reasons of tradition.

There could also be deception factoring in. If whatever is taking the sacrifices has a way to communicate with the villagers, it might have convinced them that it isn't the village that is cursed, it is them, and that leaving the town won't end their obligation / debt. False reports could come back about people who left having been found dead, in a manner similar to those sacrificed, less than a day's journey from the village, etc. (Or, very real reports, brought by visiting merchants or bards who find the bodies left to be discovered on the road, bodies that local scavengers seem to avoid...)

Another reason the town still exists may be that there is an unusually lucrative resource in the region. Perhaps it's a mithril vein in the mountains. Maybe you've got an oyster bed that yields plenty of pearls. Whatever it may be, the trade generated by the research keeps people there despite the monster's regular tithe of children and/or brings in new people regularly to offset the loss of children to the monster.

That reminds me: make sure your town is big enough to generate a number of children annually sufficient to offset the losses inflicted by your beasty. Just in case someone asks.

orrr ... provide no reason whatsoever. Sometimes those real oddball non sequiturs smack of real life, in which truth is often stranger than fiction.

I think we've all had an experience where a friend has told us about a third party who is either in the process of doing something incredibly stupid, or has gone through some horrific experience of their own doing, and when you try to apply logic to it, it just doesn't add up. You ask, 'How could someone be THAT STUPID?!' and the answer is a shrug ...

I think that, if asked, a simple shrug of complacency would add a whole new level of tension to the game.

That's not to say that every couple of generations someone didn't muster up the gumption to try to put a stop to it, but status quo is a very hard thing to offset if you are in the minority. It would also guarantee that no one from the town/village/hamlet/whatever will offer a helping hand, including the party's patron.

I DON'T like the concept of a valuable source of income keeping people rooted, because what would prevent them from simply hiring people that are far more capable than your party to do the job with less mess and greater efficiency?

I like the A-Team aspect of the idea a LOT. Go for it.

Just my 2 cents.

All of the above:

For some, yeah, they left already. They're gone. Good riddance.

For some, this place is Home; there's no other option in their minds; they have no tangible concept of what's out there. It's a nebulous, ineffable abyss -- "Where would we go?"

For some, this is the place where their ancestors are, spiritually. They can't leave and lose their spiritual connection with the land.

For some, they figure there's bad stuff everywhere. If they leave the hurricanes of FL they gotta deal with the earthquakes of CA. If they leave CA they gotta deal with the flooding and tornadoes of the MidWest. If they leave there they gotta deal with the religious nuts of the Dirty South. Or the valley with the old necromancer. Or the town that's always ravaged by gnolls. Or the big city where Pit Fiends and Erinyes are secretely running things. Our a place where, horror of horrors, people respect Rush Limbaugh. Nooooooooo!!!

For some, this place is where they make their profit (through whatever resources are there). They're the Republicans; only the poor people are gonna get picked in the lottery anyway. They've made sure of it.

For some, even if they'd like to leave, even if they "sorta" know where they could go, they don't have the money to just pick up and move. How would they have sustenance, not to mention protection, on the road? How would they have a place to live when they arrive to their destination, or find work?

For some, they can't answer the question because they've never asked it. It just never occured to them. And like the man says, that does "smack with reality."

But ultimately, if you're thinking about it, make sure you have a vehicle to give this info to the PCs. Maybe an NPC-nobody is trying to encourage people to leave and no one's listening. And the PCs get some of this info that way. Or something.

• In addition to all of the above, perhaps the monster also acts as a guardian for the village. Killing it leaves the village at the mercy of other creatures that might lair in the area.

• The village has the unusual statistic of having the least monster and violence related deaths in the entire nation.

• Essentially the beast scares off (or eats) lesser monsters that might make a home in the area.

• Furthermore some unusual twist of the geography means that fruits and vegetables grow to enormous sizes!