Quote Originally Posted by Textor44 View Post
You could also do a scenario where they arrive at the village, and all the people are acting very oddly... they seem overly calm about everything, nothing seems to get an arousal out of them (you accidentally killed my favorite pig? Meh.), local monsters are lulling around, not really doing their normal "raiding" schtick against the village.

As they investigate, the players start to feel the same sort of apathy setting in. Their quest doesn't seem all that important anymore, and wouldn't it just be easier to sit in the tavern than doing all that "adventuring" work?

They could have to make periodic will saves to guard against the apathy effects, but the longer they stay, the harder it is to resist. Baically: there's something here that is very, very wrong, and they either need to leave and find a new solution or fix it before they decide it's not really worth the effort to do anything anymore.
As an addition to this, since you wish to have a combat encounter, you could make the source of the problem something they would have to fight in order to "fix" the village. Or, if they fix the village, the monsters that were there suddenly remember, "Oh, right, I should be killing things" and have the players defend the villagers against the monsters that are now rampaging around the village.