Lets start with the short version.
At level 1 the PC's met with an old man (his name escapes me at the moment) and his grandson who were the only living residents of Mirth island. A place utterly overrun with tribes of ghouls, festrogs, wandering zombies and skeletons, and also happens to boast a necropolis in its center.
The man and his grandson (who had his tongue cut out for reasons unknown)had survived their entire lives in the midst of all these undead without any assistance from the outside world. My players have theorized that the old man was a powerful mage
Now, six weeks (18 weeks in RL and 3 levels)later the party has returned to find only black scorched earth where his home once was. So tomorrow the PC's will begin the investigation, and as always I like curveballs-massive, highly improbable, complicated and absurd curveballs. So, what happened?
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The way I see it, there are two main branches it could go down:
1) The living dudes were somehow allied with the undead. Disguises, illusions, blackmail, whatever, but they were secretly trying to get close to the PCs to betray them or inform on them. They will show up later to ask the PCs for help "a necromancer fireballed my shed and killed my grandson!" then betray them later. (Make sure you have some very subtle clues so the PCs don't just call it an ass-pull.)
2) The living dudes are against the undead. This makes one wonder why the heck they live on an undead version of Jurassic Park - one option could be that the necromancers in the city somehow have the grandfather's or the grandson's soul hostage, binding them to the island. Maybe they're trapped here via a shipwreck or something - the old man could be a very skilled Fighter or some other class that would allow him to survive, but not give him the means to teleport or construct a ship sufficient to get away.
Recommended plot twists:
-the son is an illusion, the grandfather is secretly a lich king
-the grandfather is a powerful good mage, forced to do the bidding of a lich because the lich possesses his grandson's soul. If the PCs regain the soul he will help them.
-Both are undead - the son is an ageless vampire, the grandfather is his thrall. the vampire wants to use the PCs to upset the order in the necropolis so he can usurp the current ruler while he's distracted. the little kid they met at the start of the campaign ends up as the final BBEG.
-it was all a dream