Sunken Peristyle
A courtyard, roofed by the maze but built for the sky: a square of columns running all four sides, painted once, and a garden in the middle that is now eight feet of black water. The colonnade's tiled roof stands clear of it, dry, a walkway all the way round.
Two women are sitting on column capitals opposite each other, singing — not to you. They are singing to each other, taking it in turns, and it is the most beautiful thing you have heard in nine days underground. In the middle of the water something long moves under the surface without breaking it, and keeps moving, and keeps moving.
DM summary. A flooded courtyard with a dry road across the top of it. The sirens are not hunting; they are performing, and their song will still walk a charmed PC off the roof into eight feet of water where a scyllan horror is already holding something. Everything here is survivable from ten feet up.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: custom map. An 80 × 75 ft flooded peristyle — three nested rectangles (colonnade roof, water, the 20-ft garden basin) and twenty-four column dots; drawing it clean beats adapting any page. Browse the book if a page half fits your table better.
- Dimensions. 80 ft × 75 ft. The flooded court is 60 ft × 55 ft and 8 ft deep, deepening to 14 ft in the sunken garden basin, 20 ft across, at the exact centre. The 10-ft colonnade walk round all four sides is where the rest of each dimension goes. Ceiling 30 ft.
- Light. Four lamps still burning in wall niches under the colonnade, reflected in the water, which makes the surface impossible to see through: disadvantage on Perception to spot anything below it.
- The colonnade roof. A tiled ledge 4 ft wide and 10 ft above the water, running unbroken around all four sides, linking three of the room's four doorways. Some tiles are loose. Acrobatics DC 13 per side crossed; a failure means a slip and a Dexterity save DC 13 or a fall.
- The columns. Twenty-four of them, 12 ft apart, standing out of the water to the roof. A fallen one lies half submerged from the west side to the basin's rim — a wading route to the centre in chest-deep water, which is a terrible idea and a real option.
- The garden basin. The old planted centre, 20 ft across and 14 ft deep, with a stone plinth in it. On the plinth, a votive chest, its lid a hand's width under the surface. The fallen column stops at the basin's rim, so there is no line to the chest that is not over a swimmer's head for the last stretch of it.
- The drain channel. A vaulted channel runs under the colonnade's north side, waist deep, foul, and narrow. There is one grated opening into the court along its length. See the third bypass.
- The four figures standing on the courtyard floor, under eight feet of water, in armour, not moving. Perception DC 12 from the roof to notice them. They have been standing there since it flooded.
Bypass Options
The colonnade roof is dry, continuous, and links three of the four doorways. This is the intended route and it is not free.
- Crossing: Acrobatics DC 13 per side. Loose tiles; a failure is a slip and a Dexterity save DC 13 against a 10-ft fall into the water.
- The song: every PC on the roof makes a Wisdom save DC 14 at the start of each of their turns. A charmed PC spends all their movement getting to the deepest water they can see, which from the roof means stepping off it. They repeat the save immediately if they take damage, and a PC who saves is immune to that siren's song for 24 hours.
- Roping up: a party roped together at 10-ft intervals gets advantage on the Acrobatics checks, and a charmed PC who steps off is caught on the line — the two PCs either side make Athletics DC 13 to hold. Failing that, all three go in, which is worse, and which is the honest risk of a rope.
- Two PCs in the water at once and the scyllan stops waiting.
The oldest answer to this exact problem, and it works.
- What counts: wax, cloth and pitch, the silence spell, magical deafness, or being 60 ft away and behind stone. Any of them ends a siren's hold completely — she has no purchase on someone who cannot hear her.
- What it costs: a deafened party cannot talk to each other. Require the players to agree their signals before they plug their ears, and then hold them to it: no verbal coordination for the crossing, disadvantage on Perception relying on hearing, and no hearing the tile that cracks.
- Success: the roof crossing needs only the Acrobatics checks, and a siren who is being ignored will, sulkily, stop singing and sink. She does not fight for it.
- Failure — partial plugging: any PC who hears even one verse is on the saves as normal, and the party cannot warn them.
- Note for the DM: if a player produces wax for this, do not let it be Resolution wax. The wax and feathers of the Wings are Resolution-owned and are found where that Resolution says. Candle stubs, pitch, and cloth are all here for the taking.
Under the north colonnade, waist deep, foul, and out of earshot.
- Finding it: Investigation DC 13 at the north-west corner where the water is drawing.
- The crawl: 70 ft, single file, waist deep, bad air. Constitution save DC 13 on the way through or one level of exhaustion.
- The grate: halfway along, an opening into the court, barred but wide enough for something to reach through. The first PC to pass it makes a Dexterity save DC 15 or is grabbed — grappled, escape DC 15, and being pulled toward the bars. Two PCs pulling the other way is an Athletics DC 14 to break the hold; the horror will not tear the grate out and will let go rather than come into the channel.
- Success: the party comes out at the far side entirely unseen by the sirens, which means the sirens are still singing and will still be here later.
- Cost of withdrawing instead: back the way they came, no pursuit, no penalty except the clock and the room's rewards. Given what the water holds, that is frequently the right call and you should not signal disapproval.
Encounter
Two singers, one thing in the water, and two soldiers who never left it.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Siren of the Sunken Court | 1,800 |
| 1 | Scyllan Horror | 3,900 |
| 2 | Drowned Hoplite | 700 |
Base 8,900 XP; ×2 for five bodies = 17,800 adjusted, against the APL 9 Deadly budget of 14,400. A quarter over, in a room where two-thirds of the enemy force cannot be reached and the party's own charmed friends do the horror's work for it.
Why it is not attacking. The sirens are mid-performance and the Sunken Court does not damage its guests before they arrive — they will not strike a creature still under the song, because a charmed creature is already walking to them. The scyllan is holding something it caught before the party arrived and is waiting for it to stop struggling; it does not finish a kill in the open and it will not come more than 15 ft from water. The hoplites will not leave water at all. Nobody here has to move for the party to be in serious trouble.
What triggers it. Entering the water; attacking anything; or a charmed PC reaching the middle, which is not an attack so much as a delivery.
If the party fights anyway. From the roof, a party can plink at two sirens with total impunity — and the moment a PC is charmed, that party is fighting to stop their own friend drowning while a scyllan hauls him under a 14-ft basin. The horror can hold four creatures at once. A grappled PC dragged under has 1 + their Constitution modifier minutes and then starts making death saves, and healing does not help a creature that is still under; air does. Say all of that at the table before anyone gets wet. This encounter can kill two or three PCs in six rounds and every one of those deaths will have started with a failed Wisdom save on a dry roof.
Withdrawal. The doorway the party entered by is on the roof line. They can withdraw at any point, dragging charmed members with them — a charmed PC being carried away from water still resists, so it costs an Athletics DC 13 per carrier per round, and it works. Nothing here follows onto dry stone. The cost is the votive chest, the clue drip, and whatever the scyllan is holding.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
What the scyllan is holding. Perception DC 14 from the roof, watching the water: it has somebody. They are still moving. Insight or Medicine DC 13 on the movement: they have perhaps two minutes.
This is a real, optional, expensive rescue and the room does not require it. A party that goes for it needs to make the horror let go — 20 or more damage in one turn from something it is holding, or a genuine threat to its position, or a better catch offered — and then get a body 60 ft to dry stone. Whether they try is the most interesting decision in the room. If they succeed, the person they pull out is a living Knossian diver named Phaeso, who has been down here three days, knows nothing useful about the maze, and is enormously grateful; she will tell them which of the four doorways she came in by, and it is exit C.
The votive chest on the centre plinth: see Loot.
Exits
Conditional — one roll on the loot table. The votive chest on the plinth at the centre of the basin, its lid a hand's width under the water: everything thrown into this garden for luck, in a box, because someone tidied.
- Earned from the roof with a pole, a hook, a rope, or a spell — Athletics or Sleight of Hand DC 15, made from directly above at the roof's midpoint. This takes two rounds of standing still in the open while two sirens sing at you, which is the actual price.
- Earned by diving — 14 ft down, in the dark, in the basin, with the scyllan in the water. Automatic success on finding it and roughly automatic on regretting it.
- Not earned by draining the court, which tips the chest off the plinth and scatters it into the silt. If the party drains first and dives after, give them the roll anyway if they spend ten minutes searching; do not punish patience.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | One siren, no scyllan — the horror is a rumour and a moving shadow. Two hoplites. Song save DC 12, all DCs −2 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Three sirens, spaced so that no point on the roof is out of earshot of two of them, and four hoplites. DCs +1, song save DC 15 |
| 15 | As APL 12, plus a Kraken Spawn asleep in the garden basin under the silt, which the scyllan is careful not to disturb and the party will not be. DCs +3 |
- Pacing. Fifteen to twenty minutes. Behind schedule: cut to one siren and no rescue, run the roof crossing as two Acrobatics checks and two Wisdom saves, and be through in six minutes.
- Play the song as beautiful. Do not describe it as sinister. The single most effective thing you can do in this room is have a player want their character to keep listening, and then roll the save.
- Make the roof visible before the water. Read the geography in this order: the courtyard, the flooding, the dry walkway all the way round. A party that hears "there is a dry road across the top" in the first ten seconds will never feel cheated by what happens if they get off it.
- The rescue is optional and should stay optional. Do not have Phaeso scream for help; she cannot. Let the party notice, and let them decide, and if they leave, let them leave without a lecture.
- Clue drip. Two objects here take a clue well: the votive chest, full of things people threw in a garden and asked for, which suits X06 (The Oracle's Bargain); and the water level itself, which is fed and drained by something tidal — Nature DC 14 puts the cycle at twice a day — and suits X16 (The Salt Door) or X11 (The Undercroft River) at Sign tier or better.
- Table safety. Drowning, being held under, and a charm that makes a player's character walk into it. This is the most intense drowning content in the batch. Offer the softer framing openly: the charmed PC wades rather than submerges, the scyllan holds rather than drowns, and Phaeso can be already dead so nobody has to fail to save her.
- Warband callback. Deep Water Kin never leave the water and never have to. A party that has met them before will look for the dry road first, which is exactly the reward for having learned it somewhere worse.
Creature Cards
All three belong to Deep Water Kin (W14) and recur across the deck, so the numbers live in the bestiary. The tactics above are this room's and stay here.
Shared across rooms, so the full cards live in the bestiary: Siren of the Sunken Court, Scyllan Horror, Drowned Hoplite. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.