Bath of the Cold Spring
A bath-house, or a third of one: a sunken basin eight feet across, a bench, two hooks for clothes, and a drain. The water in the basin is moving. It comes in at one end through the mouth of a limestone lion worn down to a suggestion of a lion, and it goes out at the other, and it is so cold that the air above it aches.
The walls are clean. Not swept — clean, the way a thing is clean when nothing has been able to grow on it for a very long time.
DM summary. A cold spring that will take one affliction off one person, once, and then cloud and refuse for the rest of the session. Safe, small, and a real decision: somebody has to be chosen.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: custom map. A 20 × 20 ft bath closet around an 8-ft basin — sketch the basin, bench, and drain. Browse the book if a page half fits your table better.
- Dimensions. 20 ft × 20 ft, ceiling 9 ft. Cramped: the basin takes up the middle, the bench takes the west wall, and three people is a crowd. The rest of the party stands in the corridor and talks through the doorway, which is the correct staging and makes the choosing feel like what it is.
- Light. None on arrival, and the room takes light well — white limestone, moving water, everything visible.
- The basin. 8 ft across, 4 ft deep, floored with pale gravel. The water is 1 °C above freezing: anyone fully immersed for more than a minute takes 1 point of exhaustion unless they succeed on a Constitution save DC 12, and the immersion the spring wants is ten minutes long. That cost is the whole price and you should let the players find it.
- The lion's mouth and the drain. Inflow and outflow, both a foot across. The drain is the room's second exit and it is a genuinely unpleasant one.
- The bench. Stone, dry, warm-ish, and long enough for two. Whatever else this room is, it is a place to sit down, and a party at 40% resources needs that more than they need the cure.
- What is not here. No offering box, no priest, no inscription, no bargain, no price beyond the cold. The spring is a natural thing that happens to be older than the maze around it. If your players spend ten minutes looking for the catch, let them find nothing, and let them notice that they went looking.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
The spring. Ten minutes of immersion, one creature, once per session.
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| Recognising what it is | Religion DC 12, Nature DC 13, or Medicine DC 13. On a failure, the water is still just very cold water and nothing is lost |
| The rite | None. Get in, stay in ten minutes, come out. No words, no components, no roll |
| The cost | Constitution save DC 12 or one level of exhaustion, and ten minutes of session clock |
| It will end | One disease, one curse (as remove curse), one poison, or one level of exhaustion — the bather's choice, declared before immersion |
| It will not end | Petrification, death, a missing limb, a charm effect, a Resolution's price, or anything a Final Encounter has done. Say so plainly if asked; the spring is kind, not a god |
| Solved state | The water clouds grey from the drain end outward and stays clouded. It will not do it again this session for anybody, and it is not sulking — it is spent |
| Short rest | One short rest is available here, and this is one of the rooms where the DM should offer it rather than wait to be asked |
If nobody in the party is afflicted, the spring still works, and the correct move is to tell them so: it is one cure, held, and it expires when they leave the room. A party who walks out of a free cure they did not need has still had the scene, which was the choosing.
Exits
None. There is nothing here to take. The hooks hold nobody's clothes, the gravel is gravel, and the water does not keep — a flask of it drawn from the basin is cold water in an hour and ordinary water in two. Say that before a player plans a business around it.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | Constitution save DC 10, and the spring will also close one open wound: the bather ends the immersion at full hit points |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Constitution save DC 13, and the choice narrows: disease or curse only |
| 15 | Constitution save DC 15, the immersion is twenty minutes, and the water has been used already this month — the cure works once and then the basin runs dry, which the party will discover only after somebody is wet |
- Pacing. Ten to fifteen minutes, and it is mostly conversation. If the session is running late, cut it to five: name what the spring does, let them choose, do the immersion in a sentence, take the short rest, go.
- Sanctuary rooms are a resource the DM spends. Per the attrition model, this is one of two short rests a party gets in a session. If the party is above 75% and nothing ails them, run the room in four minutes and move on. If they are under 40%, let them linger and stop rolling for a while.
- Make somebody choose out loud. One cure, six characters, and probably two candidates. Ask "who gets in", then be quiet. That is the entire room and it is better than any mechanism I could put in it.
- The cold is the tone. Two details do it: the ache in the air above the water, and the fact that the walls are too clean. Do not add mist, do not add echoes, do not add a voice.
- Clue drip. Two objects here carry a clue: the gravel in the basin, which is not local stone and is river-rounded — the spring comes from somewhere with a river (X11, Whisper or Trace tier) — and the lion's mouth itself, dressed in the same worn-down style as the older masonry in the seaward halls (X16, Trace).
- Table safety. Immersion in freezing water in a small stone room, with the party watching from a doorway. It is not a drowning scene and should not be played as one; if it starts to feel like one, put the bather's head above the rim and keep them talking through it.
- No callback, on purpose. This room names no warband and remembers nothing. In a hundred-room deck, one place that is simply kind and asks nothing is worth more than another mechanism.