Need an Introduction to Tiny Core? Or peruse Core Concepts.
Apparently there is no "PAM daemon", it's just supposed to work. I'm at a loss
The first thing to understand is that PAM is NOT something like tcpd (tcp wrappers) or xinetd that encloses and restricts access to some service. An application needs to be "PAM aware"; it needs to have been written and compiled specifically to use PAM. There are tremendous advantages in doing so, and most applications with any interest in security will be PAM aware.