Help with an Adventure: To the Salt Mines!

[The Wolfman]

So my players are headed to Sithicus and for an upcoming adventure, I'm thinking about sending them to one of the abandoned salt mines. I kind of want to base it roughly on the Wieliczka salt mine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieliczka_Salt_Mine), minus the modern health spa, of course, but large and carved with statues and cathedrals and other cool and hopefully creepy stuff. At the moment, my basic plot involves a small group of people trying to revitalize the mine, but are hindered by salt shadows killing/possessing the workers--also, the real power behind the new miners are a group of werefoxes who are looking to cash in on the money that can be potentially made (they aren't evil so much as greedy, although they'll gladly kill anyone who gets in their way, or get their charmed thugs to do it for them). The PCs will be hired or cajoled into exploring and rescuing who they can.

I'm curious, however, about the Engine House, with a "secret mechanism no one but Azrael was privy to" (Gaz 4). I'm torn between the obvious (a non-humanoid mechanical golem), having it be the giant, immobile phylactery of a kyton that somehow got brought into the Core, or...something else. I don't know.

Any thoughts?

[Dark Angel]

Wasn't the 'mechanism' a hobbled giant forced into perpetual slavery? I cannot recall what happened at the end,

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but I am pretty sure the giant was either killed or freed.

[The Wolfman]

Wasn't the 'mechanism' a hobbled giant forced into perpetual slavery? I cannot recall what happened at the end,

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but I am pretty sure the giant was either killed or freed.

What was that from? I haven't read any RL adventures and only 2-3 novels. I don't particularly like that idea, anyway.

[The Giamarga]

The salt mines were introduced in the excellent Soth/Sithicus novels by Jim Lowder: Knight of the Black Rose & Spectre of the Black Rose.

It was briefly discussed here:

if you have gaz- 4 I think, it has a rundown of Sithicus. A specific creature type in the mines are salt shades and they are or are the pawns of the darkness that Azrael Dak used to listen to. If you don't have gaz 4 or access to the monster; make a ghost with malevolence and a salt themed attack. Heck you could take shadows and give them malevolence to if you had to.
If they casually check out the mines- that is nigh on suicide IMO. I do not remember to well but from what I do there was a slave camp around the entrance of the mine. I would imagine it's abandoned by now. If your party is smart enough to ask about the mines they will probably not hear good things about it.
I don't know of any maps for the mines but it should be easy enough to map it out. I don't know how much I can say in regards to the chapel and lake but that they seem to have been there BEFORE the mine i.e. a shaft hit it by accident.

(bolding the important part)

The mines should be teeming with salt shadows (and maybe salt mummies), and also the new darklord herself might be sleeping down there in shadow form.

The author's notes on Gaz IV and the Dread Possibilities web enhancement for Gaz IV might yield a tidbit or two.

Finally there's a nice thread on salt monsters/an adventure in a saltmine on paizo here.

[Joël of the FoS]

Cool idea!

Monster: add the Dessicator (Libris Mortis), LIch Dry (Sandstorm)

Found this cool idea, could eb adapted to something else in your campaign:

Alkali salt: These tiny granules can be dissolved in
water, creating a slimy material used to coat metallic
items such as weapons or armor. Such a coating
neutralizes the metaleating acid of black puddings and
gray oozes, protecting the item from 1d3 contacts with
an ooze’s acidic touch. Cost 30 gp; Requirements
Craft (alchemy) DC 20.