Fountain of Two Mouths
Someone built a nymphaeum down here. A half-round of fluted stone, a shell hood, a basin of clean water a foot deep spilling over its lip and running away down a channel in the floor.
Two bronze mouths pour into it, side by side. The left one is a boy's face, plain and worn smooth, with a fig root come through the stonework beside it and moss on the lip. The right one is a lion, crisp and bright, with nothing growing near it at all, and above the lion somebody has carved four words in good clean letters:
DRINK AND BE WELL.
DM summary. One mouth heals and the other is a purgative, and the labelled one is the liar. A safe room with a single decision in it, and the decision is whether the party trusts a sign or trusts the moss.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: custom map. A 25 × 25 ft fountain room — sketch the basin, the apse, and the two mouths; laying a page for it is more work. Browse the book if a page half fits your table better.
- Dimensions. 25 ft × 25 ft, ceiling 14 ft, half of it taken by the basin and its apse. There is dry floor enough for six people to sit down.
- Light. Two shell-lamps in the apse, burning low on a reservoir that is clearly topped up by someone. They have not gone out in a very long time.
- The basin. A foot deep, twelve feet across, clean-swept. Both mouths pour into the same water and the mix is inert — the basin water is drinkable and does nothing at all. Only water taken directly from a mouth does anything.
- The left mouth (the boy). Worn smooth by hands and lips. Moss on the lip. A fig root through the joint beside it. Small tracks in the lime dust approach it and only it — something with paws drinks here every day.
- The right mouth (the lion). Crisp, unworn, bright. Nothing grows within three feet of it. The stone below it is bleached.
- The inscription. Above the lion, four words, cut deep and cut well by someone with time and good tools. It is the most legible thing in the room.
- The votive niche. Behind the apse's left column, a shelf of small offerings: clay feet, clay hands, clay eyes — the things people leave when a cure works. Among them, one stoppered ampulla that is not clay.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
Telling the mouths apart. Any one of these settles it. They do not stack and the party does not need more than one.
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| Nature DC 13 | Moss and a fig root live on the left. Nothing lives on the right, and the stone under the lion is bleached the way stone goes under something caustic |
| Medicine DC 14 | The left water smells faintly of iron and turns a linen strip rust-coloured. The right smells of nothing whatsoever, which is not what a spring does |
| Survival DC 12 | The tracks. Something small and sensible has been drinking from the left mouth daily and has never once approached the right |
| Perception DC 15 | The chisel work. The inscription is two centuries newer than the fountain and it was cut by someone standing on a box |
| Purify Food and Drink, detect poison, or any similar effect | Automatic and unambiguous. Let it be |
| Reading the inscription | DC 10 to read Linear B, or free with any relevant language. Reading it is not the same as believing it |
The left mouth — the true one. Drinking is an action. Regain 2d8 + 4 hit points and end one disease or poison affecting you. Three drinks in total, ever, and then the flow thins to a trickle for the rest of the session. Say the number out loud when the party finds out what it does; three is a resource and a resource that nobody knows the size of is not a resource.
The right mouth — the liar. Drinking is an action. Constitution save DC 14: on a failure, 3d6 poison damage and poisoned for one hour; on a success, half and no condition. It is a purgative, not an assassin — a character reduced to 0 hit points by the lion's water is stable automatically and comes round in a minute feeling wretched. Nobody dies in a sanctuary.
A character who drinks from the lion and then the boy is cured by the second drink, which costs one of the three. That is the room's mercy and it is worth knowing.
Exits
Room-specific: The Second Draught. A stoppered clay ampulla in the votive niche, sealed with wax and a thumbprint, holding one dose of the boy's water from the day it was collected.
- Action to drink or to feed to a creature within 5 ft. The drinker regains 4d8 + 4 hit points and ends one disease or poison.
- One dose. The ampulla is then an empty clay bottle and worth nothing.
- It cannot be refilled. Water taken from the mouth by hand goes flat within the hour and is plain water thereafter — the seal and the wax are the trick, and nobody in the party knows how to do it. Tell a player this the first time they reach for a waterskin, or you will spend the rest of the session adjudicating buckets.
Off-table. It consumes no d100 slot, and it is the only thing in this room worth carrying away.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | Four drinks rather than three, and the lion's water is 2d6 with a DC 12 save. All DCs to identify −2 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Two drinks. The lion's water is 4d6, DC 15, and the poisoned condition lasts until a short rest. DCs to identify +1 — the moss has been scraped off the boy's lip by someone who wanted the trick to keep working |
| 15 | Two drinks, and the mouths have been swapped — the fountain was re-plumbed and the moss is on the wrong side now. Every identifying check is +3 and each gives a conflicting answer; only the tracks and purify food and drink are still reliable, because animals and magic do not read signs |
- Pacing: 8–10 minutes, and the whole room is one decision. Do not stretch it. Present the two mouths, let them investigate, let somebody drink.
- If you are behind schedule, run it as read-aloud plus one check plus three drinks. Four minutes, and the party leaves healthier than they arrived, which is the room's actual job.
- Let somebody get it wrong. If a player says "well, it says drink and be well" and drinks, do not save them with a passive Perception. The room is fair, the tell is a fig root, and the punishment is a bad twenty minutes rather than a death. This is the safest place in the deck to learn that the Labyrinth writes signs.
- A short rest is available here and does not cost the drinks. If the party is under 40% resources and no Sanctuary has come up in five rooms, this is the one to hand them.
- Do not make the fountain a monster. No naiad, no guardian, no price. There are eight Sanctuaries in a hundred rooms and their credibility is a shared resource — spend it here and the party will not trust R019 or R084 either.
- Clue drip. Two hooks: the fig root through the joint, which came from soil and daylight and is a Whisper-tier pointer for X17 and X16, and the votive niche, where two hundred years of people have left clay body parts for cures — including, near the back, one small clay bird with its wings out (X17, X20). If your Resolution is X06 or X05, the person who tops up the lamps is the hook: someone maintains this room, and they are close.
- Who cut the inscription. Never answer this. The best table moment this room produces is six players arguing about whether the maze is malicious or whether some idiot two hundred years ago just carved it over the wrong mouth.