"Good man!" Jormungand smiles, and claps Willhelm on the back. "All right then. Ah'm going to be lifting you into the air. When ye've gotten high enough, drop this, and when you're seen enough, drop that." The items handed are random items that are just heavy enough to fall down, like a sack of marbles, or anything else easily portable and replacable.
And, when he's ready, Lifting the Dangling Puppet! Lvl 15, Re 7 + Co 26 + Sta 2 + 1d10.extra(10)=7 = 42
Wilhelm carefully puts his bow and his arrows aside, someplace safe and dry, then takes the items from Jormungand. When he's ready, he will nod to the magus and steel his nerves...climbing high in the trees is one thing, but to be up in the air with nothing to support him is another.
Once he gets up high enough that he has a decent view, he will drop Thing 1.
His Per roll is: Per 2 + Awareness (in the forest) 4 + Keen Vision bonus 3 + Ways of the Forest bonus 3 + die roll of 2 = 14.
There's a depression in the ground from that, Willhelm can spy that several trees that originally appeared dormant are actually dead, this is on the edge of a forest, and the trees are thinned out, but the direction they generally take is directly towards the town. This particular stream takes a more northeasterly course and would normally join the river past the town.
For some reason I'm having a hard time understanding. To recap, to see if i got it:
The depression is where the spring that feeds the now dry creek is, or was. Around the depression are trees that appeared dormant, as trees are wont to do in late autumn when the leaves fall. However, they are actually dead. Along the creek bed, the trees are thinner than they are further back. The dried-up stream heads northeast-ish etc etc.
Is that about right?
And can Wilhelm tell anything from the depression, or its shape or orientation from above, or is it simply a matter of "Yep, that's a dried-up spring, all right."?
Yes. You deciphered my clue!
smart-aleck 
Wilhelm will drop Thing 2, and when he gets to the ground will pass along what he saw to Jormungand.
Jormungand slaps himself in the forehead with his palm. "Oh! Of course this creek would dry up if the stream feeding it had been cut off. Ah thought we had already found the source of the water - we just found the first split. Silly me." He cocks his head to the side and seems to be pondering something. "It sort of makes sense. If this stream's source, and several others, were all blocked up by the main river, then the water would all flow down the only remaining path - excess water flow down the only remaining channel would also cause flooding that wouldn't lessen. It behooves us to backtrack farther then until we find the item or items forcing all of the water down one egress. Allons y!"
And with that, let's pack up camp, leave the dry creekbed, and proceed further up the dry stream bed then.
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...