[No-Artpunk] #9 Perlammo Salt Mines

Perlammo Salt Mines
Trent Foster
AD&D 1e (w. UA, Monsters of Myth and Heroic Legendarium add-ons)
Lvl ??? (2-4 is probably a good sweet spot to star with)
48 pages

Once upon a time a man named Prince hosted the world’s best dog show. It was such a good show that people from all over the world would bring their dogs and compete in all the different divisions. They would play fetch, they would sit up, they would roll around and they would deliver the best hugs. Among the contestants was farmer Trent, and he brought along his giant hog Bessie. The people mocked him and laughed, but farmer Trent said, ‘just wait.’ And lo, Bessie would play fetch better then the best of them, and it would sit up straighter then a flagpole, it would roll around like a boulder and it would deliver the sweetest hugs a man ever did see. The people were stunned to silence. ‘What did you think?,’ asked Trent of Prince. ‘Trent it’s a Pig. This is a dogshow.’

With that parable I enter into this behemoth of an entry by previous year’s runner up Trent Foster. It breaks literally every rule and contest stipulation laid out, with one exception. It is, most certainly, fantastic, magical and fun. It is also the world’s best Gygax impression between the years of 1976-1980, and employs a level of detail, Gygaxian naturalism and versimilitude that I had considered extinct. Even the style is similar, to the point where the verbosity and density might scare off younger (or perhaps not so younger) readers. Yet it never falls to the level of slavish imitation or adherence to form. Somehow, through a combination of decades long obsession and divine inspiration, Trent has captured an echo of the style of those golden years of the creator of DnD in the form of a low-level Kilodungeon.

Short Evocative Description Be Gone!

The work is a bit rough, as the introduction, any sort of rumors, hooks and whatnot have been excised from this mighty work, probably to get the old girl into some semblance of fighting weight. However, none of the essential components have been cut, this is a fully functional work, with strangely inspired keying. The division between monster lairs and regular rooms for example, seems quintessentially TSR-ian and very useful but I cannot recall having seen it in any published work. Was this an extrapolation? Consider minor details like the keying. Weird but room 124 being room 24 on floor 1 is somewhat easier.

Enough layout kvetching, we are here to discuss the bulk of the work. Perlammo Salt mines describes an open ended location, long abandoned Salt Mines, now home to all manner of beasts, and serving as the hideout for a gang of Lotus Smugglers among other things. Presumably the PCs have been sent down here to bust the gang, in true western fashion. As the PCs descend, the gygaxian naturalism, this weirdly believable eco-system of bands of humanoids, giant vermin, oozes and criminals living together in abandoned tunnels is gradually intruded upon by the TRV supernatural, and soon you are wandering the fetid corridors of a temple to The Demon Lord of Slime, you are fighting the hideous clockwork Janusarians in some runaway exercise in automation, or you thread in abandoned tunnels where the Plane of Shadow is intruding on the waking world.

If Melonath Falls is an echo of B2 on steroids, a humanoid lair taken to its Gygaxian apex, then Perlammo Salt Mines is a spiritual hybrid of Tsojcanth and G2, an intricate, multi-layered labyrinth, with its intelligent inhabitants using a fraction of the place and living in uneasy peace (and sometimes war), and gatherings and packs of monsters lairing on the periphery. Into this comes the slow intrusion, in some cases literally, of the true supernatural world, of the likes of G3 and WG4. There is even the intimation of something unfathomably greater, a whole world awaiting to be explored. When I compared Melonath falls with true Gygax to a fellow fantasy adventure gamer, all the points of deviation that I noted between it and something of the true Gygax of that era, they are herein made manifest.

This Gygaxian style, it has a certain ponderous weight, a density and granularity to it that modern convention is deeply hostile too. The result is an improvement in utility but with it comes the sacrifice of depth. The glut of material that is easy to use but shallow, forgettable, this is the inevitable result, and only a virtuoso could combine the depth of the first with the new utilitarian standards of the second. With the rest, the Standard is kept, so depth is always sacrificed. Consider a simple pier.

The northern jetty is in disrepair and any attempt to moor a boat larger than a canoe to it has a 1-in-6
chance (check each day) that the rotten wood will break loose and the boat will drift away. Likewise any
weight over 250# on the jetty has a 5% chance (+5% per additional 100#) of breaking through the rotten
wood and falling into the water below (no damage, but the water is 10-20’ deep so characters in armor or
who aren’t able to swim risk drowning).

The southern jetty looks superficially the same as the northern one, but has had some discreet repairs and
reinforcements made (more obviously visible from beneath) and no chance of collapsing. No boats are
ever moored here during daylight, but at night there is a 1-in-8 chance for a boat to be moored here loading or unloading a load of lotus blossoms. If so there will be four guards on or near the jetty keeping watch, and a 2-in-6 chance each turn for another 1d4+4 to arrive from inside the mine tunnel. See chamber 3-G for more details.

Why all this superfluous detail you ask? But therein lies the key. The detail is not superfluous. The area has been made and described so that there is indeed a certain amount of gp’s worth of Pollen that is going out on a certain day (procedure included to do so randomly if not set), and before you know it, you are awaiting a shipment, or ambushing one and returning on that day to infiltrate into the dungeon, and the dungeon has been made with such versimilitude in mind, like it is a real (but fantastical place), that such tactics actually work and make sense. Consider a game where you can look at the minor repairs on a pier and infer from that the existence of intelligent inhabitants and when questioning the GM will never get the ‘it’s just a game lol’ from the GM, but only an inscrutable stare.

There are mine carts that can be manipulated, integrating with the granular ability score system of AD&D, and before the adventure starts properly it covers conditions throughout the mine, namely random noises, the effects of trying to collapse tunnels and elaborate random encounter tables. Every level has a helpful overview with particular conditions covered but also what is happening or going on on the level. Who is in power, is there any information that makes the entire section easier to run etc. This concession to utility is vey much necessary, as Perlammo can be somewhat dense and would require careful reading and even note-taking before running it.

It is almost insulting to go over basic mapping techniques, but yes, there are multiple entrances and exits from this complex pseudo-megadungeon, there is adequate, some would say subtle use of secret doors, there are plentiful natural hazards that one would find in a mine, that is to say, crumbling ceilings, flooding, gas, vicious mould and deep shafts (with an excellently placed nest of winged vipers halfway down!). The first level eases you into it, with groups of thieves inhabiting sections near the elevator (yes there is one!), and a tribe of goblins (and another tribe of goblin deserters) living on the same level with a sort of quiet animosity.

Now is probably as good a moment as any to discuss the use of intelligent creatures. Trent captures the concept of Intelligent creatures in a way that is also highly rare in this fallen age. Intelligent creatures set ambushes, barricades, means to prevent being blindsided. They have goals. They domesticate other creatures (say, the goblins hold kennels of wolves, and yes, yes you can let those out), or they feed them and figure out how to use them to their own best interest, like the Formorian in level 3B using some of the monsters to guard treasure. It goes beyond simple tactics, into a level of detail that is wonderful to see. What if you charm the Formorian? Well now you can bypass all of those dangerous guardian monsters!

I am sometimes compelled to niggle at the a certain monotony of some of the monster lairs but whenever I am tempted to do so, Trent throws a minor wrench into the workings, or adds some tiny detail that shakes things up. It’s like there are two or three major population centres or features of a level, and these are surrounded by disparate monster layers with occasional relations to the central feature or to eachother. There is an underlying logic, the iron arithmetic of risk and reward, but then there are deviations or elaborations from that formula of such richness that I struggle to follow. The result is a density and a granularity to the world that is almost tangible. Things have a weight, and thus an order to them, yet you have an impression of vast possibility, to which the humble entries in the MM and the DMG are but a doorway. With well in excess of 100 rooms, a formula is absolutely neccessary.

Intelligent monsters can be bargained with but this module never falls to Halls of the Blood King syndrome. There is a lingering uncertainty, and as often as not, inhabitants cannot be trusted, and will only feign friendliness. My point of criticism was going to be that Gygax would not hesitate to occasionally throw a mean left hook, but Trent, while more merciful, has his share of dirty tricks up his sleeve. Winged vipers in a deep shaft, poisonous monsters attacking from ambush, fox men that appear friendly and offer you wine but its drugged and they will just rob you, fucked up poison gas traps, new weirdo monsters or trap doors that will propel you to a lower level etc. etc. I think for a lower level module this thing is no slouch.

Besides there are two sub levels on the second floor, away from smugglers, one leading into a den of iniquity inhabited by belligerent slave-keeping fox people on the one hand and another sub-level, the site of runaway alchemical experimentation, now a horror show populated by self-replicating automatons, powered by a human heart, endlessly carving out tunnels at the behest of their new master, a crysmal from the plane of earth and turning all those living men they capture into their own. Janussaries, with two faces, which Foster notes are based on the ‘scoodlers’ from the Road to Oz but will come across as Cyber-men to anyone who is familiar with Doctor Who.

This is the great thing about Perlammo Salt Mines. The style is good enough so that just making it 7 levels of Humanoids, criminals and mine monsters would be enjoyable in play but it would suffer from a certain monotony, a stuntedness. There is herein an ambition to reach higher. Level 3A, cut off from other levels, not easily accessible. A faded place, inhabited by a lone priest, once a follower of a good god, now corrupted by the chaotic Staff of Slimy Dominion, with a convent of slimes, oozes and puddings. And then it goes into the possibility of restoring him in the town, one of many hooks leading out of the dungeon and into the surrounding world. Threads of consequence linking everything together, leading to further adventures.

3B is where it is at, smugglers, led by what appears to be a merchant, but actually an adept ‘of the Order of the Crimson Sash’ [definetely not any sort of Scarlet Brotherhood], a tamed formorian, a secret stash and a complicated lotus refinement process to turn it into a full blown medieval mythical meth lab, a captured Alchemist. There are prisoners to free (as there are in 2A now that I think about it), secrets to learn, and immense rewards for the best. The dullard and the brute is starved, the cautious but bold are rewarded. The description of the gang, led by a vaguely oriental merchant but actually martial artist in digsuise and his empire of opioids, is a delightful nod to the pulps, intentional or otherwise.

There is but one more place to cover. The 4th level underlies it all, and it is a place where men do not go, where torches flicker and grow dim. This is a place of shadows, literally. The ecosystem here is intruded upon by a nebulous thread. Beyond a great underground lake is a wall of mist, beyond which lies the Plane of Shadow. Trent has included a short appendix on its properties and inhabitants, and from his descriptions I glean he plans to one day to continue what Gygax set out to do, and recreate this realm, doing it the justice that 2e TSR could not or would not give him. Big, insanely big, if true.

Every level increases in deadliness, to the point where going venturing into the 4th level is fraught with peril for a party ready to tackle the 1st and 2nd level, and considering the traps that propel characters into the muddy lake at the bottom, Trent knows this. A full blown Shadow Dragon, the hideous Eyeless Stalkers and a particularly brutal encounter with 12 giant crabs near the lake, as well as a new breed of Siren (the Mud Siren) make venturing here quite hazardous, quite good.

I have conceived of another point of divergence. There is little in the way of riddling or puzzling elements. Any clues to secret doors must be gained holistically or by interacting with the natural environment. This is why I specified the G series, the zenith of Gygax’s career, as the point of greatest similarity. It adheres too closely to the dungeoneering format to merit comparison to WG4 or something like the D series, but this is hardly a fatal flaw. One would think pure dungeoncrawling in the grand, high style of the golden age is what is craved for, and this is delivered with virtuoso performance. I do not lie when I say none could approximate this style as closely as Trent.

As a No Artpunk entry, it must lamentably be disqualified, but as a shining beacon for the spirit of No Artpunk, it is a worthy adornment, worthy of study. If you are in the mood for Gygaxian D&D outside of Gygax, you aren’t going to get much closer then this. Call my scientists, nay, my philosopher-assassins, and have them bend their heads to the conundrum of the OSR: Can we have complexity without density?
This thing will be too heavy for anyone who is looking for something to just fuck in their campaign, but for the connoisseur it is spectacular. It is not convenient. Is its conveniance in proportion to its depth.
I think my only criticism would be that some of the monster lairs feel, not quite superfluous, nor quite disconnected (since they fit their environs quite well), but not particularly meaningful. But then again that is the lesson of TRV D&D perhaps, that we cannot have meaning without mundanity. Not everything is relevant. Only unique monsters and unique magic items renders everything boring. I must meditate on this.

Publish this.