Need help protecting a Decanter of Endless Water used as a fountain in my town!

[GreyShadow]

Have the decanter of endless water be the fountain. Want to steal it? Fine, how do you remove a 15' tall fountain from the centre of town without being seen or heard?

It's faulty. It only works in geyser mode. It can be deactivated for short periods of time before it randomly starts spraying water everywhere.

 

[Gez]

Another thing: It is actually not a decanter, but a fountain of endless water. It don't costs more to create than a decanter and a fountain separately.

If people try to steal it, more power to them, but they'll have to bother with the transport a one-ton stone monument.

If people think there's a decanter they can steal, and break through the fountain, then they'll destroy the magic item, and thus, the magic.


Similarly, it could be actually an enchantment (yeah, I know, a conjuration-creation) keyed to the place. If they break everything, they'll find a freaky geyser that starts out of thin air, 1 foot above the heap of rubble they've made.


A last option would be to have the stopper lost. It seems nothing, but try putting a mundane stopper on a geyser -- it'll pop out far away fast. The hassle of walking around with a unstopperable geyser is probably more than it's worth. Not to say how easy it would be to track the thief, leaving a wet trail behind them (they could fled through the river, though). And the incredible stealth they would have...

What if they find a convincing way to stopper the decanter ? Well, it's not the magic stopper, so it don't stop the water generation... And water don't like to be compressed. One of the thing, stopper or decanter, is going to burst and be ruined.

 

[Gez]

Damn, if I had been less wordy, Greyshadow would not have beaten me to the punch.

 

[Hypersmurf]

It's faulty. It only works in geyser mode. It can be deactivated for short periods of time before it randomly starts spraying water everywhere.

Heh.

Reminds me of a magic item I once placed in the kitchen of a long-abandoned underground temple.

It was a Murlynd's Spoon... but it was malfunctioning. Once every 24 hours (at 5:17pm each day, from memory), it produced enough oatmeal to fill a large pot. No matter what.

And it had been down in this underground temple for something like a century.

The PCs found a corridor completely blocked off by a wall of decades-old stale oatmeal, infested with monstrous centipedes...

-Hyp.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Damn, if I had been less wordy, Greyshadow would not have beaten me to the punch.

You still have a chance to yell "Snap!" before he does...

-Hyp.

 

[GreyShadow]

Perhaps the only person who can turn the fountain off is the Offical Fountain Cleaner. He has this nifty magic ring that he waves at the fountain and it shuts down. Only it's not the ring that shuts down the fountain, but his title as Offical Fountain Cleaner, which is given in a official ceremony once a year by the local priestess of the water goddess.

 

[MaxKaladin]

In my pseudo-Roman world, things like this are used to help keep cities supplied with clean water. I do something similar to what the Romans did with their water supply. They built pipes (out of lead, but fired clay will work just as well) from cisterns filled by the aquaducts that came into the city. These pipes led to fountains on street corners and in squares. In my world, where items like decanters are used to supply water, an item like this would not be in the fountain, but rather in a secure and guarded location. Pipes would be used to carry the water to locations like the fountain for public consumption.

 

[MaxKaladin]

Sorry for the doublepost.

 

[DaveStebbins]

You could always cast one or more Magic Mouth spells on the fountain's statue to raise an alarm if someone tries to take the Decanter. Sir Whiskers' idea of the statue being a construct is a good one also.

 

[The Lone Badger]

The Fountain of Endless Water idea is good but then it is completely impossible to steal, removing a possible plot hook. Knowledge of how the fountain works should certainly not be spread around, but a few select people would have to know about the Decanter.