Motivating player initiative

[Asteron]

My group is just about to start the 3rd adventure in the Scales of War (https://www.wizards.com/dnd/Archive.aspx?category=all&subcategory=adventurepath)adventure path (backported, of course.) The campaign starts off with a skill challenge to uncover the identity of the behind the scenes bad guy from #2. My problem is that none of my players seem to want to do anything unless I lead them by the nose. How do I get them to investigate this on their own?

[VoxRationis]

Take something of theirs. Players get very attached to their loot. You might even do well kidnapping a PC, though that has a lot of problems attached to it you might not want to step in.

[Kazudo]

As always, open discussion with your players where you voice your concerns directly to them is the best first option.

Secondarily, I find burning a village with sentimental value to the players tends to work. Especially if they realize that they totally could have seen it coming and prevented it easily.

[Crake]

You might just want to inform them that from this point onward the campaign is entirely in their hands and that where they go is entirely up to them. It's possible they aren't taking initiative because they aren't entirely aware that they're able/allowed to.

[Kazudo]

And they might not want to continue in the module, really. At least not as it's presented now. You could always let them run the game for a bit, then when a good hook digs in make it about the module again if you're really attached to running it.