Nothing. Nothing happens. Again, assuming we sat down at a session 0 and talked about how this was a sandbox game where the PCs were going to drive the campaign, I am not going to undermine that in the first session by throwing a handful of potential plots at you. That is a perfectly fine way to play but it is NOT the (hypothetical) game we agreed upon. The game we agreed upon depended on active PCs seeking their won goals and adventures.
see there we go... that is not any sandbox but something that you agreed would be 0 DM plot, and even then I don't get it.. like would a PC say "My character heard about orcs amassing in the woods" and then you make up an orc encounter?
NO. There is no pixel. I am not asking you to hunt anything. There isn't a hidden adventure. YOU tell ME what you are doing. That's all.
No, you didn't. You showed how YOU need some plots thrown at you in order to play. Other players who agreed with the starting premise likely wouldn't, otherwise they would not have signed up in the first place.
except YOUR rumors are the same ones I prep and give out... so what is the diffrence...
for point of clairity here is what I would have done (assuming a sesson 0 happened and I know what everyones motives were)
I would tell kari that she has heard of the wizard that made kurt... infact she trained under someone who trained under him... he had many dark scary stories of the man. One included a weird test in a cave full of necrotic energy,
I would tell Ken of a battle he fought in the war near old ruins
I would tell me about goblins thhat have hit the farms in this area
I would tell Kurt about a mystic convergence he knows about,, but it is in the underdark and hard to get to.
I would tell matt 'daddy wants you to grow up and do something with your life...' with daddy then being up to him if he thinks his father by birth or the patron of his hexblade powers...
I would THEN let them pick. If 10 to 15 minutes pass and nothing grabs any of them I would have an injured man come in from a caravan that was attacked by kobolds.
if none of that grabed them the next morning I would have a stranger come into town on a weird mechanical horse...
they get to do what ever they want, and the more inovative the more pushing forward they are with there ploot the better, but I know the world... I made the world (normally with there help) so I tell them what is of intrest