New Year's Random Encounters

Still working on the second part of the Age of Eight Plagues. But I was struck with inspiration for some random encounters while watching The Twilight Zone, and I want to take it as far as I can.

Goals for this: create a world that feels interconnected, experiment with random encounters that revolve more around roleplay/exploration than just combat

1. While walking along a trail, you come over a ridge and notice a wispy smoke coming from a bit further along the trail. Keep walking and you start to smell burnt flesh and hair. Eventually, the party comes along a broken bridge, 1d8 mangled corpses, and 1d4 mangled (but alive) soldiers. If asked, they will explain that they were going to hang a local criminal when they heard her watch ticking. Upon the captain pulling it out and putting it in his pocket, the damn thing exploded and took out half the bridge and most of the company. The criminal is nowhere to be found. 50% chance one of the remaining soldiers knows her name. At the very least, the party needs to find another way across the river. But there's also sidequest potential here.
2. Immediately after coming into a clearing, an arrow/bolt/bullet whizzes past the party leader's head. The party then takes notice of the 2d6 bandits taking cover behind rocks and fallen trees in the clearing, and has ten seconds to declare they hop into cover before they get shot at another 3d4 times (one for each bandit on the other side of the clearing). They've walked right into a shootout between two gangs. The enemy bandit leader has a gun, if you're running a time period when they're rare-but-existent. Give them one bandit taking cover behind the same rock as them to talk to, but otherwise just see what they do.
3. An abandoned farmstead. There are unharvested pumpkins in the field, watched over by three stoic scarecrows. The house stands with its door open, creaking in the wind. On the porch is the corpse of a boy, no older than ten. Inside there's a kitchen, a big bedroom, and two smaller bedrooms. The big bedroom has the corpses of the parents, and in one of the bedrooms is the corpse of another farmer and a scarred, passed out girl of no more than sixteen. Her name is Magpie, and she fought off the rival farmer - but not before he slaughtered her family. If you help her, give the parents proper burials, or take the rival farmer's body off of the property and burn it, you can sleep in the house and even take some of the food. If you hurt Magpie or take any of the food without helping her, the scarecrows will come alive and attack you (possessed by the spirits of her family, of course).
4. A druid and 2d3 coyotes that have ransacked a camp of 1d6 sleeping soldiers. The coyotes are eating their entrails while the druid melts all of their possessions, wood cracking in the flame and coinage melting into slag. The druid knows the party is there, and will let them walk away.  But if they come too close, he will order the wolves to attack. He wants nothing to do with you, steeped as you are in filthy civilization. If you do fight him, the fire will burn all of the treasure here into worthlessness within three combat rounds. (I'd probably say it's worth 3d10x10 GP in 5e, scale up/down as needed).
5. While crossing a bridge, you see a girl missing an arm floating down the river, left side of her face burned and stump dyeing the water around her crimson. She's unconscious, but alive. This in the criminal from entry one, named Kudzu. She's an anarchist, potential companion, and party-level rogue with an affinity for explosives. She'll propose that she go with the party if nobody else does, without mentioning that the law is after her. 25% chance of her having connections with local anarchists in any town you visit from now on. Within the largest nearby city, authorities will pay 250 GP for her alive, and 100 GP for her dead (adjust as necessary).
6. Poorly built wooden tower belonging to a local gang that's busy with a shootout right now. There's only 1d6 bandits guarding it right now (50% chance each is asleep) but the real danger is the traps present. A tripwire in the front door activates three crossbows, a bucket with a hornet's nest in it set on top of a door left ajar, ceramic pots with slimes in them (painted with red stripes). Not a lot of gold or practical items to be looted, but the bandit leader's room has a lot of expensive antiques in it (200 GP total to be looted if they all make it to the city).

Druids and their wolves. Image source: Riot Games