Water weirds were Elemental guardians bound to a specific body of water, most often a pool, cistern, fountain, or magically sustained basin. While fully immersed, they were indistinguishable from the water that housed them. Only when their domain was disturbed did they reveal themselves, rising in a coiling spout with a serpentine outline, sometimes suggesting the head of a snake or dragon formed from spray and current.
They existed to defend their bound site and obeyed the one who summoned them, sparing any creature their summoner named as protected. All others were met with force. A water weird fought by wrapping its fluid coils around a target and crushing the breath from it, dragging victims beneath the surface where possible. When destroyed, the creature collapsed into nothing more than an ordinary pool of water.
Though mindless in the way of most elementals, water weirds could persist for generations and absorbed much from what they observed. Some became fixtures of local legend, regarded as oracles by those who addressed them in Primordial. They did not speak, but could answer through controlled currents, sudden jets of water, or by shifting submerged objects into meaningful arrangements.
A water weird had no innate sense of good or evil. However, one bound to a sacred spring or Consecrated font reflected that nature and acted with restraint, seeking to frighten or drive off intruders rather than kill them. A weird tied to tainted or Desecrated waters grew cruel and took pleasure in drowning victims, sometimes even turning on its summoner. If such a corrupted source was cleansed with appropriate magic, the creature’s malign nature faded with the impurity.