well let's see...you could run into any number of random quest-giving npcs on the road...a band of traveling cultists, good, evil, or neutral who are trying to find their messiah says that one of the party members is said person, leading to all kinds of trouble. a wizard randomly falls out of the sky (a la morrowind)...if the shadowdragon was old, you find out it had a hidden rookery with eggs or hatchlings with no parent....what do you do? uhm...what else... while camping on the road, it starts to snow, though it's not the season for it...what is happening with the weather? you have to seek out a druid to find out if they know anything, or ignore it and find out something sinister is afoot...

the possibilities are endless, that's the point of the game.