Pool of the Sleeping Naiad
Cold comes off the water before you reach it. The pool fills most of the room, black and perfectly still, and the walls above it are green with the kind of moss that only grows where water has been for a very long time. A woman is lying on the bottom with her hands folded, twelve feet down, and she is plainly not drowned.
As your light touches her, the water shivers once, all across, like skin.
DM summary. A spring-spirit who is not hostile, is not friendly, and is extremely particular. She will ask the party for a favour before she asks them for a toll, and the favour is the actual test — everything about how this room ends is decided in the ninety seconds after she asks.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: The Spring Cave — page 21, 55 × 75 ft (one half of The Shrine Above the Hollow)
The spring cave is her pool room: the printed pool is hers (mark the 12-ft deep middle), the waterfall is the inflow spout, and the rock rim is the cave wall — read the grass as moss. Draw the spillway channel around the north side and the fouled grille south.
- Dimensions. 50 ft × 40 ft. The pool is 35 ft across and 12 ft deep at the middle, shelving from 2 ft at the edges. Ceiling 15 ft, dripping.
- Light. None. The water reflects everything the party brings and doubles it, which makes the room feel bright and makes it hard to see anything below the surface: disadvantage on Perception to see into the pool from more than 5 ft away while holding a light.
- The spillway. A cut channel, 3 ft wide and ankle deep, runs around the north side of the pool from the inflow to the outflow. Dry footing on either side of it. A party can cross this room without going more than shin-deep, and most parties will not notice that until you tell them.
- The outflow grille. Bronze bars in the south wall, 15 ft down, where the water leaves. It is fouled: a man's body is against it, held by a shield strap wound through the bars. The water is backing up an inch a week and she is furious about it in the way that very old things are furious, which is quietly.
- The inflow. A spout of genuinely cold, genuinely clean spring water. It is the best water in the maze. Drinking it is safe and she is not offended by it.
- Her court. Four shapes stand on the bottom at the pool's far edge, spears planted, silt to the knee. They have been standing there a long time. They do not move unless she is wronged.
Encounter
Only if the parley fails. She does not fight. Her court does.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | Drowned Hoplite | 700 |
| 1 | Siren of the Sunken Court | 1,800 |
Base 4,600 XP; ×2 for five bodies = 9,200 adjusted, against the APL 9 Hard budget of 9,600. It is on budget on paper and worse in practice, because the fight happens at the water's edge and every hoplite wants to grapple somebody into twelve feet of it.
What triggers it. Three things: blood, fire, or a spell in the water; taking the body out and leaving it in the pool-side muck rather than on stone; or refusing the toll and crossing anyway. Nothing else. Rudeness is free; she has met people before.
Round 1. The Siren surfaces at the middle of the pool and sings. The four hoplites walk — they do not swim — up the shelf toward whoever is standing closest to deep water. Kallirrhoë herself sinks to the bottom and watches, and she will not be attacked meaningfully; treat any attempt as striking water.
Tactics. The hoplites will not pursue more than 30 ft from water they can submerge in, so the dry two-thirds of this room is safe ground and the party can back into it. The Siren does not damage anyone still under her song — she is waiting for them to walk in. Silence, wax, deafness, or sixty feet of distance all end her contribution to this fight in one action, and any player who works that out has earned the room.
Ending it early. The court stops the instant the party puts the body on stone or leaves the water entirely. She is not trying to kill anyone. She is trying to get her drain unblocked and be treated properly, and she will take either.
Bypass Options
She is asleep when the party arrives and stays asleep unless someone speaks loudly, enters water above the knee, or puts a light directly over her.
- Spotting the dry route: Perception DC 12, or automatic for anyone who looks at where the water goes rather than at the woman on the bottom.
- Crossing: group Stealth DC 14, at advantage if the party shutters its lights and moves at half speed.
- One failure: she opens her eyes. No fight — the parley simply begins, with the party standing in her spillway, and she asks her favour with an edge on it: disadvantage on the first Charisma check of the negotiation.
- Two failures: as above, and one of the court has already come up the shelf and is standing between the party and the exit they were heading for. Still not a fight, yet.
- What it costs: the party never learns what she wanted, never gets the pledge-stone, and the body stays in the grille.
An old, correct way to deal with a spring: put something in the water and say what it is for.
- What she accepts: worked silver or bronze, a good blade, a full waterskin of wine, or a true name freely given. Not food, not copper, not anything the party found in this maze five minutes ago and does not care about.
- The check: none, if the offering is real. Religion or History DC 13 to do it in the correct form, which upgrades a mediocre offering into an acceptable one.
- Success: she does not wake. The water parts to knee-depth across the whole pool for one minute and the party walks over dry-shod, which is a lovely image and costs them a real item.
- Failure — an insulting offering: she wakes and is insulted. The parley begins at disadvantage and the toll doubles.
- Withdrawing instead: the party may leave the way they came at any point before the court rises. She does not follow water she cannot reach. They lose the pledge-stone and this room's clue drip, and the drain stays blocked, which she will remember if the maze ever brings them back.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
The favour, which is the room. She asks for the man to be taken out of her water and laid on dry stone. She asks once, plainly, in old Knossian, and she will not explain herself twice.
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| The dive | 15 ft down in cold water. Athletics DC 13 to swim down and hold position at the grille |
| The cold | Constitution save DC 12 on surfacing, or one level of exhaustion. Waive it for anyone with cold resistance or a sensible plan involving rope and a warm cloak |
| Freeing him | The shield strap is wound three times through the bars. Athletics DC 14 to tear it, Thieves' Tools or a blade DC 12 to cut it, or Investigation DC 13 to see that unbuckling the shield takes no check at all |
| The risk | He is a Drowned Hoplite and he has not woken up yet. Any attempt that takes more than one round, or that damages him, wakes him — one hoplite, in the water, alone. She will not help and she will not blame the party either |
| Laying him out | On the dry stone by the inflow. No check. Close his eyes or cover his face with anything and he stays down for good |
| Solved state | The grille clears with a sucking noise, the pool drops four inches, and the whole room's temperature changes. She sits up |
The toll, after the favour. She names a price and it is deliberately not a number: "Something you will miss." Three answers work, and you should let the players find the fourth.
- A name. A PC gives their true name freely. It costs nothing today. Once, at a moment of your choosing later in the session, she calls it, from any water within earshot, and that PC hears it wherever they are.
- A story nobody else has heard. Told properly, at the table, by the player. Charisma (Performance) DC 13 if you want a roll; you probably do not.
- Something worked. A magic item, a named weapon, a piece of armour with somebody's name on it. Not coin — she has coin, the whole floor is coin.
Refusing the toll entirely is allowed. She shrugs, sinks, and the party crosses unharmed and gets nothing: no pledge-stone, no blessing, no clue. That is not a failure state, it is a choice, and it should not be punished.
Exits
Room-specific: the Cold Pledge. If the party does the favour and pays the toll, Kallirrhoë picks a pebble off her own floor and puts it in one PC's hand. It is grey, ordinary, and cold, and it stays cold.
- One use, then it crumbles to wet grit. As a reaction, the holder automatically succeeds on one saving throw against being charmed, frightened, or moved against their will.
- While held in the mouth it stops the holder singing, screaming, or speaking a word they did not intend, which matters more in this maze than it sounds.
- It is hers, not the maze's. Anything that would try to take it from the holder by force finds it too cold to hold.
The coin on the pool floor is not loot. It is offerings, it belongs to her, and diving for it in front of her is exactly the kind of thing that starts the fight.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | Three hoplites, no Siren. The grille is fouled at 8 ft rather than 15. All DCs −2 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Five hoplites and two Sirens, and the drowned man in the grille wakes automatically the moment he is touched. DCs +1 |
| 15 | Add a Scyllan Horror in the outflow tunnel that has been the real reason the drain is blocked — she has not said so, because she was waiting to see whether the party was worth telling. DCs +3 |
- Pacing. Fifteen to twenty minutes played as a conversation and a dive. Six if the party takes the spillway. Behind schedule: she is already awake and sitting on the edge with her feet in the water when they walk in, and she asks the favour in the first sentence. That cuts the whole approach and loses nothing.
- Play her slow and short. She speaks in five- and six-word sentences, does not repeat herself, and is not impressed. She is not a quest-giver and should never sound like one. The most useful thing you can do with her is let silences sit.
- The favour is a decency test with a real cost, and it is the only place in the deck where being a good person is mechanically the correct play. Do not undercut it with a twist. The body is a body, he was somebody's, and taking him out is simply the right thing to do.
- If the party fights, remember the court stops the moment the water is left. A DM who runs this to a TPK has run it wrong; there are three off-ramps and she offers all of them.
- Clue drip. Two objects here take a clue well: the drowned man's shield, with a ship's name punched into the rim, which suits X16 (The Salt Door) or X11 (The Undercroft River); and the outflow itself, which is going somewhere and going there fast, which suits X11 at Path tier if the party are close.
- Table safety. Drowning imagery, a corpse handled on-screen, and a dive in cold black water. Offer the softer framing: the body can be old enough to be bones and cloth, and the dive can be a wade if anybody at the table is not enjoying it.
- Warband callback. Deep Water Kin always fight from water and never leave it. A party that has met them knows the shape of this — get onto dry stone and the encounter is negotiable again — and that knowledge is exactly the reward for having survived them somewhere else.
Creature Cards
Kallirrhoë has no stat block on purpose: she is a speaking spring, she does not fight, and a party that decides to attack the water is attacking water. Her court belongs to Deep Water Kin (W14) and recurs across the deck, so the numbers live in the bestiary.
Shared across rooms, so the full cards live in the bestiary: Drowned Hoplite, Siren of the Sunken Court. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.