Overview
The Fire and Water bathhouse is located near the center of the Ward, its entrance on the side of a busy main street. It is a one story building but far wider than other buildings in the city, essentially occupying almost an entire city block by itself. The sign over its entrance is hard to miss – Fire and Water is written with large, bold letters. Above the word fire, the sign is painted red, and similarly painted blue above the word water. The two colors meet in the middle of the sign. There, a chimney is installed, emitting constant steam from the inside of the bathhouse.
The Owners and Employees
The Fire and Water bathhouse is run by a husband and wife couple, the Agmonts. Lex Agmont is a Fire Genasi, while his wife Mira is a Water Genasi. The two grew up in the deserts of the south and met while still living there. As they tell the story, they both apprenticed under a Bathhouse Master in the fabled bathhouses of the south. This secretive master spent his days traveling from bathhouse to bathhouse, advising the owners on how to improve their establishments. Lex and Mira became the master’s apprentices, following him in his journeys and learning the best of the best techniques from him.
While many suspect this to be an exaggerated story told to enhance the Fire and Water Bathhouse’s reputation, nobody has raised this issue with the Agmonts themselves. After all, why complain? The bathhouse is, indeed, excellent.
This excellence is mostly thanks to Lex and Mira themselves. Apart from ensuring the bathhouse offers a clean, well-maintained and relaxing space, they have made use of their Genasi abilities to enhance the experience. Lex offers specialized massages, heating up his hands and applying both pressure and heat in all the correct spots. Mira can manipulate water in the pools, improving the guests’ experience with soft waves.
Lex and Mira have taught this art to their employees as well, all of whom are Genasi like them. The Bathhouse has fifteen workers, most of which Fire and Water Genasi. There are, however, a couple of Earth and Air Genasi employees as well. The Earth Genasi offer specialized massages and peeling sessions, using their bodies and weight. The Air Genasi conjure light breezes throughout the Bathhouse, rejuvenating the guests and spreading incense throughout the rooms.
The Rooms
Immediately upon entering the Fire and Water Bathhouse, one is greeted by a small reception area. Given that the Bathhouse is a very busy establishment, one needs to have made a reservation to enter. After confirming this reservation at the reception, the guests are led to the adjacent changing rooms. From there, equipped with free towels and slippers, they move through a different door to enter the baths.
The baths are where the guests clean themselves with cold water to ensure they do not contaminate the rest of the Bathhouse and that they are cleaned up before proceeding to the other rooms. From the baths, one has three options:
The most usual option is to proceed to the public heated pool. With steady high temperatures, the pool is a great place to enjoy oneself. What’s more, there is ample seating space as well, so people can simply relax and enjoy the steam. This is the Bathhouse’s cheaper option and the one most people go for, either alone or in groups.
The second option, one that is also quite common, is the massage rooms. Some of the greatest massage artists in the city can be found here practicing their craft, with prices ranging from affordable for middle-class folk to expensive even for affluent individuals. Generally, one can choose anything from a simple back massage to an hours-long full body massage with Genasi and southern massage artistry incorporated.
The final option to choose is the smaller, private rooms. These are meant for small groups of people, and are usually preferred by business folk, who use the privacy to have a talk with their business partners or even to forge new deals. These rooms are for up to ten people, and most are essentially miniature versions of the public heated pool, although a few are instead saunas. Such rooms are reserved by the hour for quite a lot of money, and it is a sign of prestige among businesspeople to rent them out for an entire day of meetings.
Problems
Generally, the Fire and Water Bathhouse has been running smoothly for more than twenty years, slowly expanding to incorporate the other buildings in its block until the establishment reached its current size. Recently, however, the regulars have begun to notice a growing issue: The water is becoming colder.
For now, this isn’t a problem. Newcomers and people who don’t come by that often haven’t really noticed at all, and the regulars who have are as of yet unbothered – the water, though colder, remains pleasant and does its job just fine, especially if a Fire Genasi is around to heat it up a little bit more.
Yet the problem is far more major than it seems. Essentially, the way the Bathhouse services its customers is via an expansive underground system of pipes, which take water from the city, heat it up in specialized furnaces, and distribute it through the establishment. Along the process, the water is manipulated by Genasi as well.
Lately, however, the water pressure has changed, which has, in turn, changed its temperature as well. At first, it was an issue with a couple of pipes, which had punctured. But even when they were replaced, the trouble continued.
In the past couple of months, Mira and Lex have determined that the cause of the problems is one of two things: Either someone is sabotaging the pipes – which only them and a handful of employees have access to – or something is eating them. Currently, they are busy trying to rule out option one, before turning to the authorities or adventurers to deal with option two.
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