The party is at the source. The spring is no longer feeding the stream. There isn't anything further upstream. At least, not here.
After an hour of scrambling around trying to follow a non-existent spring bed, Jormungand screams a bit in frustration. The water must have run from underground, and the "depression" was the collapsed underground source.
"This isn't working, and Ah feel we've wasted enough time with mah ineptitude. If we can't find the reason for the extra water from the surrounding water, then the only other option be to trace the river upstream. Let's go towards the river." He shakes his head in disgust.
Wilhelm watches Jormungand scramble around for a while, trying to figure out what he's looking fore, before he finally says something. [color=green]"Excuse me, magus," he says in French. [color=green]"But this is where the spring feeds the stream. If the water is not here, where did it go?"
[OOC:chicoazian, by tracing the river upstream, do you mean the dry stream bed, or what Willhelm saw?]
[[OOC: Honestly, a bit confused and not picturing it very well in my head. Just to clarify, we've already traced the dry stream bed as far as it will go. I thought we could trace the spring that fed the stream, but it's apparently underground which is why we can't follow it. There is a depression where the underground spring used to be that Wilhelm identified. If the depression/underground spring/path of dead trees leads "upstream", then yes, that's what I'm trying to follow.
When I said follow the river upstream, Jormungand was giving up in frustration about following this particular point, and was talking about backtracking to the town itself and skirting the flooded edge untli we got back to the river proper, and follow the river up to see if all its tributaries were blocked to send a larger amount of water down the main waterpath.]]
To clear it up...stream bed is completely dry. It appears that the spring is now in an underground channel, heading in a slightly different direction, but towards the river, still. The dead trees on are a result of their root systems becoming flooded, killing the tree.
Following the path of the dead trees toward the river leads you to a point where the stream comes out, and it is gushing into the river. I may have mucked up my description and said things incorrectly, trying to be subtly descriptive, and turned myself around in the process. The stream is now coming out before it reaches the town, whereas previously the stream bed came out downstream from the town. The river channel is too small to hold the contents of the stream at this point, causing the town to become flooded. Is that clearer?
Much clearer, and the confusion was on my part - which we can play off in character to make sense, since Jormungand has no geographic ability. I think it reasonable that Jormungand kept trying to search upstream because he was thinking of a water blockage until Willhelm points out, "But sir... the problem is that way."
Ok, so what is to be done now that it's understood the stream has been redirected?
Jormungand stares at the stream that gushes out of the rocks and into the river. "Hmm, Ah could try collapsing the rocks around here, but the water would just try to find another way out. Our best bet is to find where it redirects and either collapse it there or a dig a new channel back to the old streambed, Ah think." He captures some of the water as an arcane connection, just in case.
Climbing back to the top of the dry stream bed, is there a close point between the old dry source and new depression? The depression has to be where its closest to the surface. The idea is to collapse a portion to make the water redivert to the old stream bed - I'm also going to try and dig a new path from the point of collapse to the streambed if the water doesn't back up and instead comes out of the ground right there.
The water counts as moving water, and therefore has a duration of hours, since it is undefined by the MRB, I'll say 12 hours. To save some time, it appears to have been diverted at the source.
Well, if I can see it, then Jormungand'll just make sure everyone's out of the stream bed and then fatiguing Spont ReTe (7Re + 5Te + 2Sta= (14 + Die)/2 ) the underground path closed (Lvl 2, Control or move dirt in an unnatural fashion, level 4 if stone) the underground water path closed. If he has to he'll ReAq the water first for a Diam duration, wait 2 minutes, and then move the earth.
If he can't see the point of diversion and needs to dig the original spring hole larger he has a plan for that too.
For spontaneous magic, you have to declare the effect, but it could be open ended, such as move as much dirt as possible in a diameter, or move as much rock as possible. Since rock and dirt are different guidelines they are different effects. Further, in this instance, Jormungand cannot see the dirt underground, so he has no way to fill the path of underground stream, and then there's the size (which is where the open ended thing could come into play). Also, I'm unclear as to where Jormungand is attempting to work this magic.
So the effect that is generated digs out the stream bed until it hits rock. As it stands now Jormungand is close to the mouth of the stream, so blocking it here is almost useless.
darn post timed out on me - and I had written a lot too. Place holder for my plan, need to paste in the rolls I already made on Invisible Castle so I don't lose them.
Jormungand tells the grogs to set up camp a little away from the streambed because this will either take all afternoon, or Jormungand will be too tired to return after he does his thing. And he's not going to have the grogs participate in the digging.
Fatigue-Sponting a set of 10 stone shovels and picks. Unless I explode I unfortunately have to do them one at a time. I will rest the requisite 2 or 3 minutes between castings, so this should take about 30 minutes. CrTe Base 3 (Create Stone) + 1 Elaborate Shape +1 Touch +2 Sun = 15, Cr26+Te5+2Sta= 33/2, rolling die for botch.
No botchy goodness... and several 1s in a row. So either I do it much faster than expected, or I have to make some more rolls, which just means I didn't botch, which is good enough for me. Using the heel of his boot/sandal, he's drawing a line in the ground from the stream bedrock he exposed and the closest "depression" point that shows where the water is probably flowing now. He lays out the tools along that line.
He casts the Temporary Undead Army, then spont-fatigues a group Charm Against Putrefaction = Lvl 20, Cr26 + Co26, checking for botch - 1d10=6
Okay, using Awaken the Slumbering Army to give the corpses a single simple command to follow until sundown, "Use tools to dig along the line." While pointing at the line he drew in the ground.
Okay, so finally, they're either going to pierce through to the water and get washed away, or they're going to hit bedrock that the water is flowing under. Either way, they'll clear me a channel down to the underlying rock. At that point Jormungand will slowly ReTe with 2 minute rest breaks to move as much stone as possible to basically slightly deepen the artificial channel and move the rock away until he can finally see the underground channel the water is running along, and when he finally hits water and can see the channel its running in, to move the rock to block that channel so it runs along the one created. (7Re + 5Te + 2Sta= (14 + Die)/2 )
Hmm... so if it's more than nineteen rock shifts, then I got probs...
previous post editted, actions added.
Uhh, I must've missed this...
The Undead Army. You made the spell? I didn't really want self-made spells by charcters starting play, I allowed all the original characters lab texts, if they so desired, but my main concern was missing something. However, in this case, there's a complication that is even worse, or funnier.
Charm of Putrifaction fails.
Awaken the Slumbering Army fails.
It is quite likely when all is said and done here the grogs, and Willhelm (Peregrine's choice) flee back to Mons Electi.
((OOC: Crap - I created the character, had one thing posted, and actually went back and edited him a bit to move him a little closer to the necromancer path (because, really, with that great a Creo Corpus, what else are you going to do but play with corpses) and completely forgot to look for spells thru the online compendium that you had set up in your House Rules. That's completely my fault, and I can change/edit it later.))
Well, can't tell Charm failed for another hour or so. When none of the corpses move, Jormungand frowns and tries again. When the spell fails again he looks around in confusion and then tries to cast it again on just one body, which will fail. "What is this, Church Lands?"
Grumbling to himself, and reluctant to call the Grogs back over, he'll start trying to do all of the Channel digging and bedrock shifting thru ReTe fatiguing spont spells. Which means rolling the exploders and definitely botching on that nineteenth roll.
6th roll exploder = 1d10=1, 3rd roll 1d10=8, 822 = (32 +14)/2 = 23, I just moved a shit-ton of dirt. (Lvl 2 Move dirt in slightly unnatural fashion +1 Touch +1 Conc +4 Size).
By the time Jormungand is shifting rock to form a channel, the repetition finally gets to him and the Grogs hear a very loud BOOM at the campsite. Instead of a nice shallow channel, Jormungand has instead fallen into a 9 foot crack in the ground and struck his head (possibly unconscious). One of his legs is half buried/stuck in the stone, and there are naked, rotting bodies scattered all over the place. Definitely not one of his better days.
Well the spell is interesting. However, in Jormungand's case he has to do something to the bodies to allow his spells to affect them. They are created bodies and have never done something before...
And no, he hasn't fallen into a crack, but he has broken through and now water is geysering out.
"Bah! Nothing's going right today!" He's going to try to immediately spont-fatigue cast a Giant Wall of Clay (as big as possible) to block the geysering water and make it splash back into the original channel. He's hoping with the little dirt/stone shifting he got done, and the flow of water will naturally erode out a channel for the water to follow after his wall disappears. It would have been better to have gotten a channel carved out completely before breaking through to the water but oh well.
Cr26 + Te5 +2Sta + 2Yelling and Wild Gestures -1Fatigue + 1d10.extra(10)=9 = 43/2 = 21.5, 22.
(1 Create Clay, +2 Voice, +2 Sun, +3 Size)
That does divert water for a few hours, however that isn't long enough to divert the water back to the old channel.
Um...yeah...when Wilhelm sees Jormungand creating a bunch of corpses ("Oh, Rocky!") he's hightailing it out of there. And he will probably steer clear of Jormungand for a long time to come.