"While Joe may be right, Mittens still wishes she knew the flesh to puppet spell.  Transform abusive face's right hand and forearm into a big silly floppy puppet, with the solemn warning, 'When we return, if you've been using your left arm for abuse, that one too will become a silly puppet.'  Even if this means he starts resorting to kicks, Mittens would at least have the satisfaction of seeing a mean guy reduced to having two silly puppet arms."

Mits opens up the map of the area and points at the nearest looking place.  "I vote for there.  We should hit every location eventually, so order should be based on maximum convenience."
This message was last edited by the GM at 07:38, Mon 04 Jan 2021.

  "Brightwood does seem like it wins the 'it is closer' lazy shrug award, and as much as anything it would be more informative than the places where we actually know what people are about already." Even if Joe's player is very for who he thinks is the dragon slaying kobold. Alas, in character logic.

Liberty and Timothius both giggle from the Flesh to Puppet comment.

Tam blinks in shock at the thought and seems to be trying to process the idea. She is thankful that the group votes for Bright Wood.

Timothius looks up at Rocky. "Fair points about the dragon. But don't be worried about being biased for the forest... we did recently do things in a city, didn't we?"

Soon, the group is underway to Bright Wood!
(Fast Forward)

As the group approaches Bright Wood, there is a vast empty space where a forest should be. Even the dirt seems to be missing to where there is a slope all along the edges that lead down about 45 feet down.

Rocky looks at the area where the forest should be and asks, "What happened here? I know people can misplace things but an entire forest? We are in the right location for a forest and not a strip mine quarry. It almost looks as if the forest was shunted someplace else... but what magic could do that?"

Rocky really has no clue how the forest and the ground it was growing out of has vanished. Buzz, Adrian, and Doc remain silent as they don't even know what to say as they are literally speechless at seeing a 'forest gone missing'.

Mittens stares in awe.

"I've heard of missing persons, but missing place is a new one.  Let's see what happens when ye olde pebble is tossed in there."

She tosses a pebble into the empty place.

The pebble falls and bounces off the slope a few times before finally coming to a natural stop at the bottom. In other words, the pebble acted normal. As did the empty space.

  Joe's feelings about this are going to be skewed by if the fate of the forest (and... really everything in the general area) was taken for practical use, or something as lazy as they are powerful deciding it was simply convenient.

  "I think the more nitpicky question is 'what could do this quickly'.  Because even a bunch of peasants with shovels could have done this eventually, but I somehow doubt mass haste on a labor gang is how this went down"

  ...Joe double checks for any out of place tracks anyways.

The children are as slackjawed as Mittens. Tam is... horrified and cuddles Doc.

Joe is unable to see any tracks in the immediate area aside from the normal tracks one would expect to be on the road.

The group can see a person off in the distance who is on the road and headed towards the group in a jog. He looks human.

When he gets within hearing distance, he calls out, "Hail! Hail! I am Jordon! Who goes there?!"

Rocky turns to Jordan after the human introduces himself. The warforged druid then replies with quick introductions for himself and the group before asking, "Do you know what happened to the forest that should be here?"

Jordan answers, "...sort of? It was the darndest thing you ever saw. The whole forest began to glow brightly and then it vanished! Then a strong wind blew towards where the forest once was! After that, well... I saw the crater you now see, but there was a young lady in the middle of it. She was human, had white hair, and some kind of cyan-blue clothes. I wasn't about to go greet her, given what happened, but I saw her head east." he points eastward.

Okay, so Joe's assumptions right now are a coinflip for if some kind of nature princess got missed in an elaborate kidnapping attempt, or very violently declared they were going on vacation.

"Right, given you were close enough to see it happen at the time. How many people and towns around here relied on this forest for their livelihoods?"

Jordan says, "Rely on it? None. The woods were protected by the elves or some such, so the woods was mostly just used as a vacation resort on occasion? But I know there is a settlement on the other side of the crater..."

Rocky looks at Jordan and then at the crater and says, "I suspect we'll have to travel to the settlement Jordan spoke of to try to get more information, assuming someone there knows something about what has transpired." Rocky doesn't bother to voice the two crazy theories he has since neither seems plausible to him. These two theories are one, that the elves who guard this forest moved it to another location to protect it from something... And the second is that someone else moved the forest to displace the elves for some reason. Possibly to banish them, or imprison them. But neither situation makes any sense to the warforged druid. For the first, what could threaten a forest to the point that beings powerful enough to move the forest would, instead of dealing with the threat. And for the second, why move the entire forest just to get at some of its inhabitants if your strong enough to do that then you could just displace the people and not let them roam around that forest since they would likely be content in there so that wouldn't make for much of a prison.

"Sounds like the incarnation of a star," Mittens muses, "Only, it went East instead of directly to the nearest settlement to wreak indiscriminate destruction, so...  Maybe not.  Maybe more like the arrival of an Archfey.  You saw it happen?  What date did it happen on?  What time of night was it?  Clear skies?  No moon?  Any soothsayers grumbling about ill omens or weird stuff happening with the fauna in the area like sheep randomly attacking dogs?"

Jordan says, "Woah... one question at a time! I'm sure you adventuring folk are sharp enough to remember a dozen questions thrown at you and then answer them all somehow, but I'm not. I saw it happen a couple days ago. Mid-day. I don't remember anything about clouds, skies, or... sheep attacking dogs? What?"

"Priorities over what seems important at the time often gets skewed the longer you are out adventuring, this is true. That said, what brings you back to this big hole days later, Jodran? Hoping you'll figure out something new, or just that hard to avoid walking past a hole the size of a forest when you live around here."

Jordan says, "...there is still a very viable vacation spot over that way. So my folks and I are camping there." he points at some other nearby woods.

Rocky asks, "Is there anyone else staying at this vacation spot other than your folks and yourself? We might need to talk with them to learn what they saw, or if they have heard anything about what happened, or why it happened."

Rocky tries to ignore Mittens' 'ramblings and rapid questions' since while the druid suspects she is trying to help and gather information quickly, now is not really the time for such antics since they seem to be overwhelming Jordan.

"Mits is stumped.  Mid day?  Hrm.  Starting to think that maybe this was some sort of magical accident.  All the forest related cataclysms happen at night with clear omens in the stars or moon."

An elf puppet appears on her hand.  "I'm the elf archmage's apprentice and I want to impress her with how smart I am!  Knock spell!  Oh lookie!  It opened the door to the forbidden ritual chamber.  Wow.  What a neat looking ritual circle!  Looks nearly complete.  Teacher will be super proud of me when I simply connect these lines to finish the ritual for her...  Summonentireforestintochamber!"

"Come to think of it, this may be why archmages like to locate their magical towers in remote places."

  Even though he is traveling with several people a lot more excited about rolling around in nature than he ever was, Joe is somehow surprised anyone would consider camping out in the woods in medieval fantasy land a vacation instead of work.

  "Well, as long as you are sure your family is safe." There, now Joe doesn't have to feel guilty if the SECOND forest gets sucked into the sky... Okay so he'd still feel bad about it.

Jordan says to Joe, "Well the person I described went the opposite direction, so... I'd rather not go back to town for now anyway, since that is the direction she went."

He points in the eastern direction he indicated earlier. "You are welcome to question my family if you like, but you'll only get the same answers."

Rocky figures the group has two options now, track down the female human with white hair and cyan-colored clothes to the east, or question Jordan's family and get the same answers over again by traveling to the west... "It is probably better if we head east after the female human that Jordan described, as she might have headed to the nearby town. If she isn't there then we could search for more clues, but it seems that she is our only lead on what happened to the forest right now."

Mits gazes in the direction of the town.  "No sign of the town burning down.  Or people fleeing.  So, here's hoping that's a good sign and not an indicator that we'll arrive on a scene of an empty town populated by empty sets of clothes.  Here's hoping she's not something that slurps up people like drinks.  Thanks for the info, sir!"

She begins heading in the direction that the mystery girl went.  "Onward to adventure!"

  "We should probably not bother your family with questions too, unless you wanted us to I guess." Jordan is not the first, and will not be the last to have to put up with a wandering horde of eccentric people.

  Joe follows after adventure kitty.

With that, the group is able to get to the town to the East. The people there don't seem to be in a panic and are going about their daily business. But there is a small crowd gathered at the front of the constabulary.

Timothius asks a nearby kid, "What's going on over there?"

The kid answers, "The constable is talking with the white-haired lady and those people wanna watch."