The Grand Ashwater
The Grand Ashwater is the largest bathhouse in the city, a sprawling retreat where merchants, nobles, adventurers, and soldiers come to recover from travel and excess. Its central hall surrounds a vast heated pool beneath a painted dome. Smaller pools branch into treatment rooms, steam chambers, private suites, kitchens, gardens, and servant corridors. The spa was built over a natural mineral spring said to restore vigor and ease old injuries. For the past year, guests have complained of whispered names, wet footprints, sudden chills, and dreams of drowning. Several visitors have disappeared, though the owners insist they simply left without settling their accounts.
The Grand Ashwater
At first, the Grand Ashwater feels luxurious and peaceful. Water trickles through carved channels, servants speak in hushed tones, and the air smells of lavender, rosemary, and wet stone. The illusion of comfort breaks in small ways. A pool ripples when no one is near it. A vacant room carries the sound of quiet sobbing. A mirror reflects a figure who is not present. At night, the spa becomes oppressively humid, with cold drafts moving against the steam and distant footsteps pacing across the roof.
The Grand Ashwater is the largest bathhouse in the city, a sprawling retreat where merchants, nobles, adventurers, and soldiers come to recover from travel and excess. Its central hall surrounds a vast heated pool beneath a painted dome. Smaller pools branch into treatment rooms, steam chambers, private suites, kitchens, gardens, and servant corridors. The spa was built over a natural mineral spring said to restore vigor and ease old injuries. For the past year, guests have complained of whispered names, wet footprints, sudden chills, and dreams of drowning. Several visitors have disappeared, though the owners insist they simply left without settling their accounts.
Reserved, observant, and fiercely protective of the spa's staff. Elira dislikes superstition but has become too practical to deny what she has seen. She negotiates calmly, rewards discretion, and becomes uncompromising when guests are endangered.
History
Bathing Facilities and Services
The Grand Ashwater offers three main bathing tiers. The public hall contains marble pools, steam rooms, cold plunges, and curtained treatment alcoves. The private gallery has six mineral baths reserved for wealthy guests and visiting officials. Beneath the main floor lies the Old Spring, a circular chamber reached by a locked stair. Its black water is unnaturally warm, and pale handprints sometimes appear on the surrounding stone. Guests who soak there report vivid dreams, missing time, or the sensation of someone standing behind them.
Services and Guest Customs
The spa employs bath attendants, masseurs, herbalists, laundresses, and musicians. Most are ordinary workers who have learned to ignore the building's strange behavior. Services include therapeutic mineral baths, herbal wraps, bloodletting, scented steam treatments, hair and beard trimming, private dining, and overnight rooms. A full treatment costs 5 gp, while a private suite costs 25 gp per night. The attendants quietly refuse to prepare the Old Spring for guests, claiming that the water is reserved for the original owner.
Adventure Use
At party level 5, the haunted bathhouse can serve as a social investigation site that becomes a confined supernatural dungeon. The party may question staff, protect trapped guests, search the owner's records, or descend beneath the pools. Suitable encounters include animated bath fixtures, drowned spirits, steam mephits, swarms of spectral towels, and a hostile ghost or wraith bound to the Old Spring. The haunting is best resolved through roleplay and investigation, but combat may erupt when the characters destroy the sealed spring gate or uncover the owner's death.
Rules for Staff and Guests
The spa's current staff maintain several rules that seem eccentric but are actually practical. Never drain a pool after midnight. Never answer a voice calling from an empty treatment room. Never leave a guest's personal effects beside the Old Spring. Never allow a mirror to face the eastern corridor. These rules have prevented several deaths, though no one knows who first established them.
Denizens
Reserved, observant, and fiercely protective of the spa's staff. Elira dislikes superstition but has become too practical to deny what she has seen. She negotiates calmly, rewards discretion, and becomes uncompromising when guests are endangered.
A broad-shouldered woman in her late fifties with silver-streaked hair and a habit of counting every door before sunset. She is practical, courteous, and exhausted from hiding the haunting. Elira wants the Grand Ashwater to survive, but she will not knowingly sacrifice a guest to do so. She can provide floor plans, staff keys, and the names of previous victims if the party earns her trust.
A young herbalist with tired eyes, ink-stained fingers, and an impressive knowledge of medicinal plants. Tomas has discovered that certain herbs repel the spirits, especially bitterroot, juniper, and dried ash leaves. He suspects the haunting is tied to the Old Spring but is afraid to investigate alone.
A former city guard who now oversees security for the spa. Branik is skeptical of ghosts, despite having been thrown into an empty pool by an unseen force. He carries a silvered cudgel and keeps a ledger of every strange incident, including several disappearances the owners tried to dismiss.
A pale, soft-spoken apparition who appears in the steam above the oldest pool. In life, Mara Ash was a brilliant physician who believed death could be treated like any other disease. She is not wholly evil, but her grief and obsession have made her dangerous. She seeks a living body capable of carrying the memories trapped in the spring.
A traveling noble who arrived for a private treatment and has been trapped in Suite Nine by the haunting. Lord Perrin is vain, frightened, and willing to pay generously for rescue. He has overheard the ghost speaking the names of the dead and may know which guest disappeared most recently.
Rumors & Plot Hooks
- 1.A guest who falls asleep in the central pool wakes with water in their lungs and a memory that belongs to someone else.
- 2.The eastern corridor is longer at night than it is during the day.
- 3.The spa's original founder still accepts appointments, but only from people who have already died.
- 4.A fortune teller drowned in a dry bath three months ago, leaving no water on the floor.
- 5.One of the private pools grants perfect health for a day, followed by a year of nightmares.
- 6.A hidden room beneath the winter garden contains the names of every person who has died in the bathhouse.
- 7.The city magistrate knows about the disappearances and continues sending important visitors to the Grand Ashwater.
Classified Entry
Mara Ash's ghost is not the sole source of the haunting. During her failed ritual, Mara bound the memories of the dead into the mineral spring, creating a collective presence known as the Deep Choir. Mara controls the ghostly manifestations near the upper pools, but the Deep Choir controls the flooded foundations and wants to escape through the city's waterworks. Destroying Mara alone will only make the haunting more violent. The party must either cleanse the spring with a difficult ritual using the founder's surgical instruments and ashes, bargain with the Deep Choir, or permanently collapse the Old Spring while trapped spirits are still within it.
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