The Emmerololth Baths

Appearance

The Emmerololth Bath House is an enormous building located in the middle ring of the city. It's architecture is reminiscent of an Art Deco cathedral. The roof is steep and it has several copelas and a single tower above the main entrance. The walls have no windows, but there are skylights that allow a degree of natural light to illuminate the long hall.

Entrance - the entrance is a foyer like area where there are several doors and posted staff to prevent casual entry, breaking and entering, or attempts at eavesdropping or assassination. Behind this foyer, there are several small rooms where guests can store their personal items, strip, and take a fast pre-bath rinse. There is also a modest refreshment service available so that bathers can take the edge off with a bit of wine or another stronger spirit.

The Baths are eight square pools that run the length of the main hall, four on each side. The first four are larger and are open in their layout. Twenty or so guests can relax in the naturally heated waters, while attendants on brief occasions will make passes to see if anything is needed. The upper class, the newly wealthy, and the high-ranking members of the city government attend these baths. They are co-ed, clothing is not allowed in the bath, rinsing before is required, and there are severe and strongly worded rules for behavior and decorum.

The other four baths are smaller and set to the rear of the hall. They also have a stone lip around them that blocks line of sight to the rest of the hall. They also have modesty curtains that can be pulled to close off each of the four. Each also has premade enchantment chains around it so that a magic user can invest a small amount of mana and create a Privacy spell around the pool, blocking sounds from entering or leaving the confines of the chain.

High-level private meetings and tense negotiations tend to happen in the private baths. With the combination of privacy and being completely disarmed, different parties have a stronger sense of safety and security. It is hard to hide a knife or equip magical items when only wearing a birthday suit. On the same level, the bathhouse has a rigorously enforced no-tattoo policy. Part is legacy of the house refusing to become a den for wealthy criminal organizations, many of whom required loyalty tattoos, scarring, or other body modification. The other part is the existence of magic body tattoos that give dangerous bonuses to the wearer and are not equipped. The last thing that baths would want would be a lunatic dungeon diver wrapped in Dungeon Skin art smashing up the place, harming or killing guests, and other collateral damage while trying to carry out a kill contract.

Guardians

The Baths have three different sets of guardians.

The Famfriti Guards are regular trained soldiers who are picked mostly for their charisma and appearance scores, and are specialized in unarmed combat, grappling, submission holds, and generally on how to handle people who are soapy, naked, and disorderly. They are mostly visible in the foyer and at the main entrance where they wear light leather armor dyed white and decorated with art deco patterns in gold and lapis lazul. They only have a truncheon for fights, as they are mostly ceremonial and for appearances.

Sometimes where there is a concern about elevated security needs, the Bathhouse has taken on short-term contracts for ranked adventurers to put on the garb of a Famfriti, or nothing but a loincloth as the guard wears in the baths.

Caryatids and Telemons line both sides of the baths, six on each side, and six of each. Caryatids are stone pillars carved in the likeness of women, while telemons are the male version. In extreme instances, these twelve can be activated with a fairly hefty amount of mana, becoming twelve golems under the command of the Mistress of the Baths.

The bath golems have been summoned dozens of times, and only twice has this been in anger. The main reason they are summoned to action is general for disaster relief where the golems use their massive strength to move debris, repair walls, shore up damaged buildings, and try to bring order back to the city. This is usually during a siege, war, or natural disaster. The two times they were summoned in anger both coincided with civil unrest in the city, once to defend the baths from the city guard who were intent on bringing the baths down as a center of resistance to the Council of Lords (lawful evil at the time) and the second time to reach Argha the Unclean, an orcish warboss and sorceress of pestilence. The golems left the city to smash through the orcish lines and then smashed the Unclean to a bloody paste in the mud.

The Famfrit

The Famfrit is a massive work of art that kneels at the back of the hall, a humanoid figure clad all in armor of lapis lazuli, serpentine, and gold, holding a massive ewer on his shoulder. Water pours from the ewer to keep all of the pools filled with hot clean water. While superficially part of the plumbing and architecture, the Famfrit is a Greater Composite Golem and is technically a water-type golem inside a flawless suit of giant-sized articulated plate armor.

Like the bath golems, the Famfrit is summoned to help restore the city in times of need. The main thing it does is bear its ewer and provide water where needed. This can be as simple as filling fountains and pools for the thirsty, using the ewer like a firehose to put out fires, or washing gore and debris out of streets. It has not been unleashed in anger, as there is a fear that if sent into combat, the bath mistress might not be able to control the legendary class golem and it might not come back to its venerable task.

Founding and Leadership

The Emmerololth Baths were conceived by the infamous and notorious hedonist, Nienne Emmerololth. A high-ranking member of the Guild of Adventurers-Upon-Return, she had a lofty career not just going to the Gyre, but other dungeons as well. She was by trade a healer, and by practice a dancer. This adventurer class dealt with mana manipulation, raising and lowering focus, courage, and morale, causing distraction, or creating eddies of mana currents to cause environmental effects. A low combat utility class, but combining Dancing debuffs on foes and healing, Nienna was a fairly solid heroine and successful.

She was also horrified by filth, mud, dirt, grime, slime, ooze, gore, and all the rest of the dungeon horrorshow, and her first order of business after finishing a dungeon dive was getting cleaned up. At that time, that meant a brass tub hand-filled by inn workers, usually cold to tepid water, and a cake of generic soap. Hardly the reward a statuesque Amazon healer-dancer heroine deserved.

After retiring from the dungeon game, Nienna tried her hand at running an inn with an emphasis on better bathing, which ended up being a disaster. The first inn turned into a watering hole for adventurers who didn't care about better bathtubs and better quality soap. She would sell the inn and try again, building the first real bathhouse in the city. There was only one large bath, and access was relatively easy, but keeping it running was a chore, keeping the water clean was a challenge, and many people would sneak in to bathe, and wash their laundry, and theft was rampant.

The next three incarnations of the bathhouse made steady improvements, but there wouldn't be a breakthrough until she managed to score the interest and backing of a senior all-female dungeoneering team from the Guild of Champions. These women were all powerfully built fighters, barbarians, gladiators, and duelists, and were enthralled with Neinne's vision of a grand bathhouse that was luxurious, opulent, and hedonistic WITHOUT becoming one of those pink perfume establishments that were barely concealed brothels. The construction of the modern version of the building began, and the Champion team brought in a dwarven work crew to raise the building in a rich dwarven style. A fortune was spent on the white marble, lapis lazuli inlays, gold trim, as well as the mosaics and art built into the walls and patterned out in the bottom of each of the baths. A team of artists and enchanters made the thirteen golems and were elated that their work was to be artistic first, and not crude crusher monsters.

Following the Success of the Emmerololth Bathhouse, the Guild of Taverners, Innkeepers, and Hostelliers were forced to add a new position for bathhouses. The alternative was that they would form their own guild, or that the Guild of the Lily (brothels and prostitution) would make a play for their membership. The Bathhouse members of the guild are by unwritten law and tradition expected to be women.

Resources

The Emmerololth Bathhouse is a wealth-generating business. Access to the lower pools is fairly pricey, and access to the upper restricted pools is very expensive. Some groups maintain a contract with the bathhouse, such as two of the adventurer's guilds, the Council of Lords, and several of the most influential guilds in the city, so that their members can enjoy access without coin out of purse, or have to worry about if the baths are at capacity.

The baths also have a lot of influence, as they host quite a few clandestine meetings, and can be privy to information, as well as being well connected in the city gossip department.

Many high ranking adventurers are regular guests at the baths. This is not just for the basic hygiene of bathing, or its collection of private cliques. The baths also have the best in soaps and after bathing it is routine for bathers to get proper massages and end up being rubbed down with aromatic oils. While this is just primping and preening for soft councilors and senior guild officers and the wealthy, it is health/sports medicine for the fighters, warriors, barbarians, and other martial adventurers who pit their bodies against the perils of the dungeon.

Symbols

The symbols of the Emmerololth Bathhouse include the Glyph of the Darkening Cloud, also known as the Sigil of Famfrit. This is the magical symbol that is used to empower both the Famfrit golem, and allow its massive ewer to produce a steady flow of water. This is complicated, so is generally reserved for official correspondences, tapestries for the outside of the building, and being worked into the mosaics and artwork of the building.

The colors are predominantly white with dark blue and gold accents.

The banners and flags of the bathhouse depict a stylized man holding an ewer on his shoulder.