I got a world from RashGoneWrong, and his settlement was located very close to a Maskling camp. Masklings loitering around the camp kept the villagers scared, and not building roads or cutting down trees.
I'll examine the behavior tomorrow and see about making things a bit more manageable. In the mean time a workaround is to train up a bunch of troops and go hunting. You can disband the troops (when garrisoned) after you're done to turn them back into workers.