B3: Palace of the Silver Princess

This article contains PROMOTIONS! Don't say we didn't warn you.

Palace of the Silver Princess or, as artist Bill Willingham dubbed it on his way out the door, Phallus of the Silver Princess, was a module written in 1980 - rather, two modules. Joan Wells, host to the design-department's only vagina at the time, wrote the first one. TSR then inflicted a total Moldvay rewrite on it, probably the version you could find over the 1980s.

Either way 'tis B3 in the Moldvay Basic line.

Orange Module Bad (and Porny)

In this version the party aims for the ruined castle of Argenta, a "long-dead" princess, rumoured to hold My Lady's Heart - a massive ruby. When they find the ruby they also find that Argenta is still here, along with her knight - both Chaotic (=evil) ghosts like in AD&D, with an aging effect. In this Basic adventure, that monster-type had to be included with the New Monsters.

There's an outdoor section that isn't bad actually. The domain is on a plateau overlooking the "Princes of Glantri" to the southeast. Yes, this is the first appearance of Glantri in what would become Mystara. It's dominated by the barony Gulluvia itself ruled by one (female) D'hmis, a truly vicious (and misandric) tyrant. Unfortunately D'hmis will have nothing to do with the plot of the adventure that follows.

As with B1 and, to a more-quarantined extent, B2 ("Caves Of The Unknown") and - soon - B4: B3 had left some of the dungeon details vacant for the DM to flesh out. This practice was however going out of fashion in the AD&D module-lines. And B3 already had a sizeable outdoors pocked with wilderness regions and adventure-ideas.

Anyway what wasn't in the module wasn't nearly as troublesome as what was. As artist Bill Willingham noted, much of the actual content was Society for Creative Anachronism fangurl gush. There's even a poem here.

Not to mention that there's a missing staircase so the princess and, one assumes, the party cannot actually reach the top floor. And the new monsters, besides the transplanted ghost, were silly: like the hermaphroditic ubues, or the six-legged platypus (wtf?). I mean, come on, it's not like early-'80s TSR would ever let shit like that loose.

Accounts differ on how Wells reacted to the criticism. Wells claimed to the end (she died 2012) that she had worked closely with her designated editor Sollers. Other designers claim that she went BAAWWWWW to her chum Gary Gygax, who resisted calls to change the content. And the management had pissed off the workers below decks, by firing a bunch of staff for instance.

So a revolt brewed in the art-department. Wells (and Sollers, and the TSR management) got TROLOLOed by Erol Otus who snuck portraits of the shitcanned ex-TSR staff into the artwork without Wells' consent. On those hermaphrodites no less. That's right up there with the best passive-aggressive dickmoves (and against an equally deserving target).

Willingham said fuck-this-noise and ragequit mid-drawing, leaving the rest of his artwork for someone else. Otus further slipped in some sexytimes elsewhere. Kevin Hendryx went Smithee and demanded his name go UNcredited. Laura Roslof for her own part just went full literotica, drawing in a woman tied by her own hair being pawed at by goblinoids or maybe demons (they didn't have devils in the Basic line).

And repeat: not that upper management cared or even had the wit to judge but, the content of the text was rotten.

Green Module... Okay I guess

TSR's suits took one look at the end-product and STOPPED THE PRESSES. OH NOES DEMONS! OH NOES SCANTILY CLAD BOOBIES! Even Frank Mentzer has observed that other modules were already out with much worse. [Tho', the altar-girl scene in 1976's Eldritch Wizardry aside, not in juxtaposition, and not lately.]

Tom Moldvay reissued a near-completely different version immediately after, with a dark green cover. Wells still got co-credit for the work.

As for the differences, besides the artwork: most of Wells' new monsters got buhleeted, excepting: the archer bush, the decapus, and the "Jupiter Blood Sucker" remade as vampire rose(s); and the ghost would be delayed for the Companion Set. The vacant spots in the text got filled in or killed off, too. The whole wilderness section? gone. Much of the plot also got redone: Argenta is still alive, and needs rescuing. Also My Lady's Heart turns out to the an evil artifact, the Eye of Arik; this is what has blighted the land.

In the end, B3 did notch up a win for TSR. Jim Bambra at White Dwarf liked the Moldvay version, suggesting it belonged in the Basic Set instead of B1 or B2.

Legacy

The orange version is a huge seller in the used-market.

As to where in canon it goes: Moldvay kept it for the Adri Varma plateau northwest of/in Glantri, which Glantri would join the Known World in his Isle of Dread. The later B1-9 omnibus shifted it to Karameikos. Wells herself might have intended that the outgoing river flow to B2's map, wherever that may be.

Further Reading

• The Secret History of the Racy Module That Almost Ruined D&D
• Introduction by John D. Rateliff