Need help! How would YOU find an invisible tower?

[Piratecat]

Okay, posit this:

You're in a 500 by 500 mile wasteland, approximately 250,000 square miles of uninhabited terrain. You have a 12th lvl party with no druids and no local support from villages nearby. Somewhere in all that space, there is an invisible tower of evil clerics and wizards that has shielded itself from divination for hundreds of years. And you need to find it as quickly as possible.

So how do you do it?

 

[Dragongirl]

hmmmmm Summon a snow storm and hope some of the snow sticks to the top of the tower?

 

[Nifft]

1) Polymorph everyone into dragons, spread out and search with Blindsight.

2) Ask (beg? bargain with?) the local dragon about the location -- not much gets by local dragons.

3) Create rain somehow, and search for dry land.

4) Cleric asks for Divine help -- Lesser Planar Ally or some such spell.

-- Nifft

 

[Viking Bastard]

A wasteland eh? How many obstacles are there? Is it fairly flat?

If it is, I'd make the party members divide themselves into groups
of two and make them get the largest rops/string you can find,
each take one end and run/walk systemically over the whole area
until the rope impacts into something.

It's time consuming, yes, but I'd expect it'd work.

If the land is not flat, it should still work, but would require more
work.

.

Or if the wasteland consists in some part of dry dead grass, I'd
simply set it one fire and look for spots that didn't burn.

 

[SamuraiY]

I would run around until I walked into it

More seriously, depending on how frequented the area is, I might scry for the nearest humanoid footprints, do a commune or augery to find out if these tracks lead to the tower, and then have my ranger track them.

This whole thing depends on the mages coming out every now and then though. And that I have a person with track. And that it is not a frequented area (although if it's a wasteland its probably not).

 

[Viking Bastard]

You could also try walking arund and cast dispel magic like crazy.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Start yelling insults at the top of your lungs and see where the attack comes from...

 

[Oni]

Well control weather only has a radius of a couple of miles. In a 250,000 square mile area it's still going to be pretty much a needle in a haystack. (What the heck, why in the world is this a lower level spell for wizards than druids )


Well depending on how much information they have, scry + teleport might put them close. Of course you said the tower was shielded against divination so it depends on how strong this shielding is. However if they know of an individual they could catch outside the tower that does know it's location then that might work. But I wouldn't have high hopes for this, again the chance of doing the right thing at the right time seems really slim.

A legend lore might provide some useful info, since that doesn't really target the tower. Though I doubt it would yeild anything useful enough to get them where they want to be in any decent amount of time.

They could always research a spell specificly for this task, since it looks like finding it any other way would be incredibly time consuming anyway.

Another thought, if there is a cleric that can cast commune, you might be able to greatly narrow down the search area. Take a map of the area, doesn't have to be detailed, or exact, just basically correct. Draw a line down the center, point to one side, "is the tower we seek in this area?" If the answer is no draw a line dividing the other half in half again the other way (if yes, the same half) and ask again. then divide that sector down and ask again. If I haven't completely screwed up my math this would narrow the search area down to approximately 32 sq miles. In an area that small, a few control weather spells would do the trick. And of course a second casting of commune would pretty much put you on top of it, though I wouldn't bug my diety twice in one day, but thats just me.

 

[Ravellion]

I would cast Geas/Quest on some creature that can see invisibility. Actually make that several creatures. Just find a clever way to say "find the tower and report". A metamagic rod of extension would help.

After that is done, kick back and relax

 

[DM with a vengence]

I'd use Lesser Planar Binding to bring in some Avorals. They have fly speed, True Seeing, and +18 spot checks. In the flavor text it states they can see detail on objects up to 10 miles, so I think they could spot a large tower pretty easily. I imagine that one could Dimension Door up to 30,000 feet and them just zip around checking everything. At CL 8, the Avoral can DD 720 feet a round, or around 80 MPH. This gives him more than enough speed to check the area in a week, and if you summon more Avorals, or narrow down the area like Oni suggested, you could find the tower in a matter of hours.