A small object in the woods.

[ManInOrange]

So, I'm in a campaign, and there's a small object lost in some woods... It's a sphere about the size of a soft ball, and we think it's floating 25 feet in the air.
The problem is that the stretch of woods that this object is lost in is a circle about 100 miles across.... about a quarter of that circle is over a bay, and the object might be floating over that instead. The last problem is that burning the woods to ash and looking for the only floating object is not an option because there are people in the woods, and most of us are good.

...locate object only works out to a couple hundred feet...
...and we really can't think of anything else.

Any ideas on what effects/spells in 3.5 we might be able to use to our advantage here?

[asnys]

So, I'm in a campaign, and there's a small object lost in some woods... It's a sphere about the size of a soft ball, and we think it's floating 25 feet in the air.
The problem is that the stretch of woods that this object is lost in is a circle about 100 miles across.... about a quarter of that circle is over a bay, and the object might be floating over that instead. The last problem is that burning the woods to ash and looking for the only floating object is not an option because there are people in the woods, and most of us are good.

...locate object only works out to a couple hundred feet...
...and we really can't think of anything else.

Any ideas on what effects/spells in 3.5 we might be able to use to our advantage here?

What level are you and how fast do you need to find this thing? If all else fails, my rough estimate is that you could do it with overland flight and locate object in a bit more than two years if you work on Sundays.

If you've touched this thing before and you've got the cash, you could buy a scroll of discern location.

If the forest is densely populated enough, how about putting out a bounty for it? Spread the word amongst the peasants and sailors that if they bring you this thing or tell you where it is you'll pay 1,000 gp. A floating softball shouldn't be too hard to recognize. A wizard might be able to fake something like that, but that shouldn't be too hard to foil, since a wizard who can make something convincing enough to foil divination magic like identify probably has better things to do.

[Fouredged Sword]

Locate object works for 1min/level and covers a 1000ft wide area.

This means that it covers a 1/5th of a mile per mile traveled.

What you want to do is move as quickly as possible to sweep the forest. An effigy flying mount can take the run action to cover 100s of feet a round (120*4*10rounds per Min * Cl min), and you should be able to cover many miles before the spell duration ends. That works out to something like 9600 square miles a casting of searched area.

Scrying could also work. Also Find the Path would take you directly to it's location, but not to it. Just target "The location of the sphere, not the sphere itself.

[asnys]

Locate object works for 1min/level and covers a 1000ft wide area.

This means that it covers a 1/5th of a mile per mile traveled.

What you want to do is move as quickly as possible to sweep the forest. An effigy flying mount can take the run action to cover 100s of feet a round (120*4*10rounds per Min * Cl min), and you should be able to cover many miles before the spell duration ends. That works out to something like 9600 square miles a casting of searched area.

Are you sure of your math there? An effigy flying mount has a speed of 120 ft. That gives us 480 ft of travel per round. If he's a fifth level caster that gives us five minutes per casting, or 50 rounds, or 24,000 ft = 4.55 mi. His box is 1,200 ft = 0.23 mi wide, giving us 1.05 mi2 area searched per casting. And the circle is about 7,850 mi2 in area...

[Chronos]

Commune with Nature might also be able to help. And Contact Other Plane and/or Commune wouldn't be able to locate it directly, but would be able to narrow it down considerably ("Is it in the western half of the forest?" and "Is it in the northern half of the forest?" would between them cut the search space to a quarter, and you can get over a dozen such questions).

If any of you speak Silvan, you might also try using the Gather Information skill.

[Fouredged Sword]

My math may be very wrong there. I think I forgot to change from feet to miles in the last equation and counted a CL of 10.

[KillianHawkeye]

Circle dance?