OK, maybe this will help. In my first adventure, the players were in their hometown which was at war with the goblins that lived in the forest outside. Thanks to druidic magic (and underground caverns with a subterranean river full of fish) the town was self-sufficient and grew all their food on rooftop gardens.
It was a week before the mayoral election, and players had just been hired by a local wizard who was into property speculation. The wizard had given the players a shard of mirrorcrystal which - if you'll remember from earlier editions - was a terrain feature that let characters fire or cast spells from one mirrorcrystal into another as if they had direct line of effect through it. The wizard had hired them to walk around town with the mirrorcrystal shard, looking into it with a light spell. When the mirrorcrystal shard connected to another nearby mirrorcrystal, the view would change to show dirt. That way the wizard would know there was a mirrorcrystal deposit in that area and could buy the property it was on, paying less money than it was worth because the owner wasn't aware of the valuable mirrorcrystals on their land.
Anyway, as the players were walking around carrying out this fairly mundane contract, the mirrorcrystal "connected" to another mirrorcrystal and they saw - not dirt, but one of the mayoral candidates having sex with a harpy. A harpy that had been seen working with the goblins. Apparently the politician's antique mirror had been made of mirrorcrystal, and nobody knew.
The politician was alerted immediately because the light from the player's light spell shone through the mirrorcrystal on his end. He spun around, looked at the PCs faces as if memorizing them, and then tossed a curtain over the crystal. The players knew this was serious trouble. This mayoral candidate was the front runner in the election, and if he was secretly working with the goblins, then their town was in serious danger if he won. They had to find a way to discredit him which would be more than just their word against his.