Owner - Black Diamond Games
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Thought I would crowd source my attempt to populate a salt mine with monsters. There are a lot of creative ones out there already. We've got:
Salt Drake (My big bad guy)
Salt Wight (the former miners)
Salt Golem (Kobold Quarterly) (the engine for grunt labor)
Salt Mephit
I could use a few more. Any other ideas on creatures that would do well in a mostly lifeless, but relatively sterile environment? Undead are obvious, as well as constructs.
Giant spiders, scorpions, rats... anything left unattended long enough attracts vermin.
and after the vermin move in it's only a matter of time before the predators move in after them.
Also, any humanoid underground dweller might find the idea of having walls that they can use to spice up their humdrum food appealing.
How long has the mine been out of use?
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Owner - Black Diamond Games
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Giant spiders, scorpions, rats... anything left unattended long enough attracts vermin.
and after the vermin move in it's only a matter of time before the predators move in after them.
Also, any humanoid underground dweller might find the idea of having walls that they can use to spice up their humdrum food appealing.
How long has the mine been out of use?
A couple hundred years of disuse.
I'm planning to have the wights and drake run the show, so to speak. With the wights keeping out intruders (easy meals) and the drake (which eats salt), keeping all the "treasure" for itself. The rest of the monsters are either incidental or part of the original installation.
I like the spider idea. I put in some sand (salt) striders that I allowed to walk along an underground salt lake.
I'm wondering if there's anything else that might like the sterile environment, perhaps a gelatinous cube.
Giant spiders, scorpions, rats... anything left unattended long enough attracts vermin.
and after the vermin move in it's only a matter of time before the predators move in after them.
Also, any humanoid underground dweller might find the idea of having walls that they can use to spice up their humdrum food appealing.
How long has the mine been out of use?
A couple hundred years of disuse.
I'm planning to have the wights and drake run the show, so to speak. With the wights keeping out intruders (easy meals) and the drake (which eats salt), keeping all the "treasure" for itself. The rest of the monsters are either incidental or part of the original installation.
I like the spider idea. I put in some sand (salt) striders that I allowed to walk along an underground salt lake.
I'm wondering if there's anything else that might like the sterile environment, perhaps a gelatinous cube.
Is it a Wieliczka-like mine? Because I'm sure you could have some fun with things like caryatid golem or gargoyles (slap on some salt-based adaptations to 'em) in a mine where the miners carved structures into the walls.
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Owner - Black Diamond Games
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It is, in fact, based on the Wieliczka mine. I've got a little temple to a Norse mining god and an old sanitarium area. I like the caryatid column or gargoyle idea. I know just where to use them too.
Ropers do seem weird and cool, but I have that in a little mini adventure close by (before or after, depending on where they go).
Undead fish may have to replace the spiders....
Crysmals from B2 seem perfect for a crystalline hell-hole like a salt mine. The undead fish are a cool idea, but you could supplement/replace them with some weird oceanic creature that's migrated in from subterranean oceans.
Oozes, slimes, and jellies
You could add some fictional worm-like creatures that live in the salt. They wouldn't care about the players at all, but might freak them out a bit if a few fell out of the ceiling.
Ghost slugs, who are haunting what must have been a hell on earth for them before they died a horrible death.
Oo oo! A ghost slug variant of The Worm That Walks!
Salt-infused is an inherent template that can be added to an Animal, Humanoid, Magical Beast, Monstrous Humanoid, Plant or Vermin creature living in area with high concentration of salt. The creature skin is covered with shards of crystlized salt as its metabolizm adjusted to the local environment.
Type and subtype: The creature gains earth subtype. Animals and Vermin become Magical Beasts. Do not recalculate HD, BAB, saving throws or skills points.
Armor Class: Salt-infused creature increase its natural armor bonus by 2.
Defensive Abilities: Salt-infused creatures are immune to sickened condition, thirst and excees of salt in their diet or environment. Any living creature that bites the salt-infused creature has to make a Fortitude saving throw (DC 10+1/2 HD+Con modifier) or become sickened for 1d4 rounds.
Weakness: Salt-infused creatures suffer 1d6 points of nonlethal damage per minute of exposure to fresh water.
Special Attacks: All the natural attacks of salt-infused creature leave shards of salt in the inflicted wounds gaining salty wounds special attack.
Salty wounds: The victim of salty wounds suffers from bleed 1 that stacks with itself. the subject is sickened as long as the bleed continues. Creatures immune to pain do not become sickened. Creatures immune to extra damage from critical hits or bleed are unaffected.
Ability Scores: Salt-infused creatures are exceptionally tough gaining +4 to Constitution score.
Skills: +8 racial bonus to Stealth checks in areas with high concentration of salt crystals.
EDIT: Expanded the array of types that can inherit this template. After all it should suit gargoyle quite well. With a minor variation (dropping Con bonus and abilities related to surviving in salt-abundand environment) it could be added to Constructs, elementals and Undead too.
It is, in fact, based on the Wieliczka mine. I've got a little temple to a Norse mining god and an old sanitarium area. I like the caryatid column or gargoyle idea. I know just where to use them too.
WHAT?! Not under my very nose!
This thread makes me thirsty...thirsty with love for salt monsters.
What about a salt vampire a la Star Trek TOS? Or worse, something that likes to suck pure water from a victim, thus causing them to die from hypersalinity.
I think there were water-draining vampire-like undead in Dark Sun and in other settings too.
Hmmm. Water-draining vampires...
This acquired template works like regular Vampire template, except as noted.
Brine vampires are wretched, cursed beings that suffer from eternal, unquenchable thirst. They try to sate it by draining all traces of moisture from living beings leaving dessicated corpses.
CR: Brine vampires have CR of the base creature +1, being less powerful than regular vampires.
Armor Class: A brine vampire natural armor improves by 8.
Defensive Qualities: A brine vampire gains DR 10/magic and slashing instead of 10/magic and silver. A brine vampire reduced to 0 hit points assumes dust form.
Weakness: A brine vampire istarts to drink compulsively from any source of fresh water for 1d4 rounds (treated as fascinated).
Special Attacks: Brine vampires do not gain children of the night, dominate and energy drain special attacks. Instead they gain dessicating thirst.
Dessicating thirst: Any creature struck with the brine vampire's slam attack suffers additional 1d6 points of nonlethal damage from dehydration. This damage cannot be healed until the victim rehydrates oneself by drinking one pint of water per hit suffered and make the victim fatigued until healed.
Special Qualities: Brine vampires do not gain Change Shape and have Dust Form instead of Gaseous Form.
Dust Form (Su): This ability works like gaseous form spell, usable at will with indefinite duration, except the vampire takes form of cloud of fine salt and dust particles gaining a fly speed of 20 feet with perfect maneuverability. While in this form, the brine vampire can destroy liquids in open containers in the occupied square at the rate of 1 gallon per round.
Ability Scores: +4 Str, +4 Dex, +4 Cha.
Skills: +8 racial bonus to Acrobatics, Perception, Stealth and Survival.
Yup, here's that Dark Sun water vampire thingy. The Thrax.
I like the Brine Vampire template a lot!
Just make sure you don't have a 'salt lich', or your players may not be able to take it seriously.
Come up with a variant on the purple worm.
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Salt would be under the Earth subtype, so Earth elementals could fit right in if you want something straightforward.
Since elementals can take whatever shape they want, you could easily have an Earth elemental hiding amongst the sculptures camouflaged as one of them. Just about any other Outsider [earth] would fit in as well.
If you've got a salt lake, then mud elementals are technically the cross between earth and water elementals, but you could reskin them as brine elementals if you so chose.
Oozes, slimes, and jellies
Wouldn't really work, the air in the mine would dry them out.
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Owner - Black Diamond Games
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Maybe the "rumor" of a salt lich might be enough for the joke. As in, "and they say there's a lich in the salt mine, but that's just nonsense."
Good tip on the earth subtype. That opens up a lot of monsters.
I may need to steal "desiccating thirst" and give it to the kind of boring salt mummy.
Salt "Swarm",or salt-like creature, that Dehydrates people.
Salt Fairy's that contaminate the PC's water supply into salt water causing hallucinations and such bad things.
Since abandoned salt mines are being considered for use as toxic waste dumps how about stocking your mine with alchemical oozes, golems, zombies, etc....
Desiccators... I don't remember where you'd find them... Fiend folio?
Rust monster... cause salt rusts stuff.
Just make sure you don't have a 'salt lich', or your players may not be able to take it seriously.
You can always have a salt lick. As long as you don't lick the lich.
Salt mummies are completely ok, however. No one would like to lick them... Right?
For thirty gold coins (or $30, or 25 euro, or 20 pounds) I can accept the quest to do exploration, search for the actual monsters living in the salt mine and report my findings. With another $100 (for a total of $130, er, 130 gp) I could get cheap camera and make photos for you!
Desiccators... I don't remember where you'd find them... Fiend folio?
Libris Mortis.
Don't forget creatures from the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Salt (Negative Energy + Water), from the pre-3e cosmology - but I'm not sure where you'd find 3e+ stats form them. I think that they originally appeared in the 1e Manual of the Planes (pp. 58, 59, 120).
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Owner - Black Diamond Games
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For thirty gold coins (or $30, or 25 euro, or 20 pounds) I can accept the quest to do exploration, search for the actual monsters living in the salt mine and report my findings. With another $100 (for a total of $130, er, 130 gp) I could get cheap camera and make photos for you!
Love it!
I think I've got what I need at this point.
Also wanted to point out the "toxic waste dump" idea is an excellent one. If this were a bigger adventure/campaign, I might have a kind of Banewarrens built there, where all the dangerous magic items/magical creatures could be kept safe.
I'm running a sandbox campaign, so the primary motivation for going to the mine is to claim it for the local city-state. The Norse abandoned the area ages ago and now the local Celts are rising up and taking over. I want this to last about two, four hour sessions.
Here's what I've got:
So the Norse soldiers who worked the mine as punishment (it was a kind of wilderness prison) were left to die when their brethren abandoned the island. They're now angry salt wights. They wait for the return of their brothers at the mine entrance.
When the mine was operating, to make a little money the guards brought the sick (those who couldn't afford expensive clerical magic) to the mine's sanitarium. Here they were treated with various herbs and some actual magical remedies, including healing balms and creams. When the mine was abandoned, so were these patients. Most died, either because they couldn't escape or from the angry miners, except for one very sick fellow. Wrapped in magically treated bandages, his body was preserved by both the magic and the salt. He now haunts the sanitarium wing as a salt mummy, wanting nothing more than to enact his wrath on the miners.
When the mine was abandoned, various small battles for control/freedom took place, so there are barricaded hallways where miners made their last stand. They had some time (nobody wanted to dislodge them) and the tools, so they created several nasty traps, including giant blocks of falling salt. Those miners are dead now, many trapped by their own devices, but the hazards remain.
A salt drake, a creature that consumes salt, found a way into a top level of the mine where it made its lair, killing all the remaining miners and all other life, mostly out of spite and greed that they might take its precious salt. At one point some goblins tried to break into the mine, and their skeletal bodies still adorn the drake's lair, along with the semi caved in entrance the goblins had constructed. Their leader's glowing sword provide's an eerie light in the immense, salty cavern.
Through the small goblin tunnel, various other salt related creatures have made their way in, living in harmony with the drake. A couple Sand (Salt) Striders run across the underground lake, collecting stray vermin, like bats and insects. Salt Mephits patrol the other entrance to the mine for anything that gets past the angry salt wights who guard eternally.
Then there is the salt golem who turns the big wheel that crushes salt blocks and brings it to the surface via a series of pulleys from the master chamber. Its last order was to "guard."
Just make sure you don't have a 'salt lich', or your players may not be able to take it seriously.
It took me a while to figure out why this was funny. Then I remembered that some people pronounce it "likh" instead of "litch" like I do.
I like it, good idea. Great brain storming too, all. Let us know how it goes.
Salt was extremely valueable in the ancient world. There is a quote which refers to the value of a man's weight in salt. I forget the whole thing.
As far as monsters go I'd include anything that doesn't require water or at least very little water.
Undead of all kinds (perfectly preserved thanks to the environment)
Fire elemental's of all kind
earth elementals and various salt variants
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Owner - Black Diamond Games
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Salt was extremely valueable in the ancient world. There is a quote which refers to the value of a man's weight in salt. I forget the whole thing.
I've been hyping the salt mine in our group forum, something akin to discovering an abandoned gold mine. There's also a book entitled "Salt" that's a history of the world based on the value of salt. Wars were fought, empires built up and destroyed, etc.
Just make sure you don't have a 'salt lich', or your players may not be able to take it seriously.It took me a while to figure out why this was funny. Then I remembered that some people pronounce it "likh" instead of "litch" like I do.
The 3.5 splat book about the desert (I forget the name) had a Dry lich that was interesting. I can see one of those in a salt mine. They treat any water as holy water.
Of course you can't use that exactly, but you can use something similar.
Just make sure you don't have a 'salt lich', or your players may not be able to take it seriously.It took me a while to figure out why this was funny. Then I remembered that some people pronounce it "likh" instead of "litch" like I do.The 3.5 splat book about the desert (I forget the name) had a Dry lich that was interesting. I can see one of those in a salt mine. They treat any water as holy water.
Of course you can't use that exactly, but you can use something similar.
Sandstorm.
And since this isn't for PFS play he can use it all he wants, as is or with a little conversion if he thinks it necessary =) I do it all the time.
I've been hyping the salt mine in our group forum, something akin to discovering an abandoned gold mine. There's also a book entitled "Salt" that's a history of the world based on the value of salt. Wars were fought, empires built up and destroyed, etc.Salt was extremely valueable in the ancient world. There is a quote which refers to the value of a man's weight in salt. I forget the whole thing.
Exactly. ;-)
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If the nords are waiting for their brothers at the mine entrance perhaps if one of the pcs is a bird he can ""free" them / perform some burial right that will lay the wights to rest..... If he's smart about it. Have them call out to him and stuff...
**edit**
Also Romans at the entrance The legions were paid in salt.....
At the bottom of the lake is a dessecated pleasaur(sp) that has become a coffer corpse or ghoul of sorts. Look out for Old Salty!
Hey, magnesium is a salt. Well, MgCl2 is. I had an old Fiend Folio tingle.
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Thought I would crowd source my attempt to populate a salt mine with monsters. There are a lot of creative ones out there already. We've got:
Salt Drake (My big bad guy)
Salt Wight (the former miners)
Salt Golem (Kobold Quarterly) (the engine for grunt labor)
Salt MephitI could use a few more. Any other ideas on creatures that would do well in a mostly lifeless, but relatively sterile environment? Undead are obvious, as well as constructs.
Two words:
Giant. Slugs.
Funniest/strangest encounter ever.