In a small, calm, deep pool in a ruins or woods, a smart fish will try to attract the heroes’ attention by bringing up a random item from the bottom and setting it on the edge. The item will be… (1d6: 1-2=copper piece; 3-5=silver piece; 6=gold piece).

The fish (its head about 6 inches in diameter; its body about 3 feet long) will continue bobbing at the top of the water, mouth agape, for some time, trying to get the heroes to offer it food. If the heroes offer it a chunk of food worth 1 cp, the fish will eat it and return with another item from the table below.

1d20	Item
1-3	A round, shiny stone
4-10	A copper piece
11-16	A silver piece
17-19	A gold piece
20	A fine gold ring worth 1d10x10 gp (only one)

The fish like meat more than vegetables and don’t like cloth, leather, leaves, grass, moss, etc. at all. They like livestock (or human/demi-human) meat more than monster meat and will quickly stop retrieving things if fed more than a few morsels of most monster meat.

At the most, they’ll retrieve 20 things before being satiated and stop retrieving things. Any attempt to capture or attack the fish will cause them to flee to the bottom of the pool and stay there.

Variations

There might be several fish or just one. You might allow it to talk a little, but it probably shouldn’t be very sharp. The point here is guessing what the fish want and the fish guessing what you want.

You may have to decide exactly how much treasure is at the bottom of the pool and whether the fish will try to eat a hero who dives in to find out–the fish may be quippers or piranha. There probably should not be a way for the heroes to drain the pool.