Well, like I said: they were all stranded in the absolutely cheapest inn in all of Riversend - with no job, no money, and no idea how to get through the coming winter. Then those peasants witnessed the group fight half-a-dozen drunk and raging highlander barbarians...
Why they ended up in Riversend in the first place? Because all of them had a good reason to leave home: the night elf wanted to escape a civil war and a cult that he didn't like, the tiefling wizard had "difficulties" with his teacher, the sorceress fled from an arranged marriage "to strengthen the bloodline", the lowlander just wanted to flee from life as a farmer and develop his own strange gifts, the yuan-ti just fled from her low-caste fate in the homeland, the ogre didn't want to end his life as a retainer of the giants, the gnome was just curious about all those unknown lands out there in the west - and the minotaur never had a home anyway...
BTW: one of the PCs is a doppleganger - but no other player knows about this...