Whereas the early levels of Merryland are full of whimsical nonsense—corresponding to Prince Flippityflop’s clown coaching floor, the Valley of Bonbons, and the puppet-like Queen of Merryland—the journey concludes within the somber “Valley of Misplaced Issues”. This can be a silent purgatory coated in tens of millions of pins, needles, thimbles, buttons, lead pencils, and overshoes. It represents a psychological house of loss, nostalgia, and the passage of time. It is also an incredible place to run a junkpunk marketing campaign.
What’s Junkpunk?
Also referred to as salvagepunk or scrappunk, junkpunk is a gritty, inventive aesthetic centered round tradition and expertise constructed fully from discarded refuse. Not like conventional fantasy the place gadgets are merely repaired, junkpunk depends on the subversion of an object’s authentic intent: damaged gears turn into deadly hidden blades, boiler plates are layered into armor, and discarded thimbles, buttons, and keys are woven into chainmail. In a setting just like the Valley of Misplaced Issues, this fashion creates a stark world of survival the place society’s forgotten castoffs are stitched again collectively into makeshift instruments, weapons, and mechanical constructs. It’s an surroundings outlined by a “do-it-yourself” spirit, the place all the pieces is mismatched, uncovered wiring or inside clockwork is normal, and the road between a treasure and trash is skinny.
Junk does not imply rubbish, by the way. Certainly, a part of junkpunk is that one man’s trash is one other’s treasure. Probably the most memorable junkpunk fashion scenes in a film is the Junk Woman in Labyrinth, who bodily carries her hoard on her again, utilizing bodily junk to govern reminiscences and distract intruders—an ideal template for magical traps that appeal gamers with misplaced gadgets. Star Wars supplies a singular imaginative and prescient for what lurks in trash compactors (spoiler alert: a dianoga). And naturally, the unhappy state of earth is established by the relentless work of WALL-E, full of towering, compressed trash cubes.
Watch The place You Step
Baum makes it some extent of stating that the heaps within the Valley of Misplaced issues are rife with needles (a generally misplaced merchandise), and so navigating them is a harmful proposition. Queen Dolly advises the kids to discover a pile of thicker sneakers that match them (mismatched, natch), earlier than shuffling into the piles.
There are a quite a few issues that may go unsuitable with kids navigating large trash heaps of pins, toys, and hats, however Baum’s much less enthusiastic about these penalties. The heaps are piled excessive sufficient that they themselves are possible a priority if toppled, however there’s loads of different worries too. Clearly, the misplaced stuff arrives in some way; falling from the sky signifies that a hairpin hailstorm will be lethal if the PCs are on the proper place on the unsuitable time. Mud and particles can blind if wind kicks up, and sink holes possible abound from the unstable floor — probably touchdown in a thicket of sharp pencils or pins.
The terrain alone is dangerous sufficient. However absolutely, worse issues lurk within the stacks…
Stilts, Slime, and Artificial Monsters
Impressed by the Junk Woman and the Crow Fishers from Mad Max, I created trash hags. These specialised hags navigate the jagged, unstable mounds by strolling on lengthy picket or rusted steel stilts. This easy device permits them to disregard the troublesome terrain of the piles. They sift the piles of particles with lengthy, telescoping hooks, in search of issues to commerce with the opposite valleys. To guard themselves, they use the burrows of different creatures who’ve cleared out the mountains of trash to create properties secure from falling particles above.
Talking of tunnels, normally digging right into a heap can be unattainable. I got here up with the rubbler, a man-sized dung beetle, digging 10-foot huge tunnels to create 10-foot spherical rumbleballs the place it deposits it is eggs. These rubblers make it doable for all kinds of creatures to dwell contained in the usually unstable Heaps.
The hags stroll on stilts not simply to keep away from the pins littering the valley flooring, but in addition as a result of there are massive, ooze-like sticky monsters slithering alongside the Heaps, amassing particles on their our bodies. Natives name it “Edgar” however there’s a couple of, and they’re interested in heavy footsteps, leaving Small characters, stilt-walkers, and youngsters secure from their discover.
That stated, D&D is rife with junk monsters: otyughs, rust monsters, oozes, shambling mounds (much less plant, extra junk), and golems of quite a lot of sorts, plus environmental smog creatures like mud, smoke, steam, and dirt mephits.
Are You Misplaced?
There’s a melancholic component to the Valley of Misplaced Issues:
In my marketing campaign the Heaps are an unstable however essential a part of the encompassing world, an indication that Merryland is really a fey place full of the forlorn and the forgotten. And because the PCs negotiate with the trash hags and search for a means out, it is simple to neglect: the lifetime of an adventurer means being misplaced too.
Your Flip: What settings do you draw on for junkpunk inspiration?
The Merryland Collection
This concludes all seven valleys in Merryland. I encourage you to learn the ebook if you have not.
