Torture, Executions, and Punishment oh my!

What torture devices or execution methods do you have in your setting?

Death by bone-worm.

Given unto the Iron Crows.

Getting dumped into the bottomless sea while being tied to something heavy.

Getting thrown into the spitter-hive

the rat in flaming box on belly whatever the fuck that's called was pretty rad

They look for cherished memories of people or things and rip them out of you. For example, you might remember making a very important promise to your friend or loved one, but not remember what it was, or who they were. You might remember the pain of losing your dog without knowing what a dog is. Or maybe they just slowly remove all the little happy moments that made your life bearable until all you can remember is the sad and dull aspects of your existence.

No methods exactly but if I ever run a superhero rpg, I'd play some villains like the Eames that design and sell high-end, stylish torture devices to the discerning villain

being kicked by guys with heavy boots, or if i'm feeling particularly fancy, being hit by guys with sticks

My favorite: The Etruscan method - You chain the victim to a rotting corpse of a family member, face to face and limb to limb until the living person perishes by the decay of the corpse. Only when the the victim was blackened by putrefaction, the Etruscan torturers freed the two corpses, from the chains.

wtf i love rome now

Go read The Book of the New Sun and stop posting in this thinly veiled magic realm thread.

Subject has their arms and legs amputated, is affixed to a metal chair with large screws going from braces into their stumps, and is then fitted with a breathing apparatus with enough air to last them a few minutes and enough stimulates to keep them from passing out, then ejected out of the airlock towards the nearest planet.

Anybody listen to the latest episode of Hardcore History? Carlin, man, the guy is fucking brilliant.

that is awfully complicated when you could just kick them out an airlock

But how else are you going to make sure they're awake during re-entry?

Do this after casting an immortality spell on the poor bastard and you got yourself the worst punishment ever.

I like the classics.

How do you include torture in your campaign without the players thinking it's edgy?

The Comfy Chair

No! Not the Chair of Reasonable Comfort, the chair which nearly reaches maximum comfy but never does, instead only achieving a reasonable comfort level!

I once had a villain that would entomb her enemies inside a small stone vault and bury them with a ring of regeneration.

I've always liked shoving needles under the victim's fingernails.

Perhaps one would wonder why you would amputate a man before throwing him out of a plane.

The same reason you do any particularly execution: it makes for a grander spectacle. You're trying to make it as obvious as possible that whatever this guy did to deserve this punishment, you don't want any part of it.

Since this has derailed from executions you'd actually use in a setting to "what's the most fucked up execution method," none of this has anything on scaphism.

It was used by the Persians. They would put you between two boats, and cut out holes for your head and limbs to stick out through. They fed you a mixture of milk and honey over and over until you were really sick. They'd slather some on your face and limbs too. Then they'd float you out on a disgusting, stagnant pond full of horrible insects in the scorching heat.

Some accounts say that for really heinous criminals they'd pull you in and feed you more, so that you didn't die from dehydration and instead became infested by all kinds of intestinal parasites as you inevitably filled the boats with diarrhea.

Fuck that.

I slowly froze a guy over in Reign of Winter. Him answering in Russian really didn't help.

fun fact: scholars now think that the blood-eagle wasnt a thing, that it was all misinterpretation from a poetic turn of phrase

All these, but also Scaphism is fucking terrifying. Scaphism, crucifixion, impalement, rat-box-stomach ... probably the worst.

That said, if we're talking non-fatal torture ... tourniquet a given limb, let's say the leg. Numb it up so they can't feel it, but can watch. Then go to work on it, letting them watch themselves be permanently maimed. Crush the kneecap, sever tendons, throw shit around without precision or delicacy. Maybe they feel no pain, but I think that'd add to the psychological distress. I'm a pretty physically capable/fit guy, and my greatest fear is losing that. I think having to watch yourself be painlessly crippled and maimed would be pretty fucking bad.

I remember reading a book where a guy's limbs were surgically detached but the nerves and blood vessels were still connected and lengthened, so he was trapped in a room filled with a massive tangle of his exposed veins and nerve endings with his arms and legs at the far corners of the room and he could actually see them twitch from time to time.

Man, Etruscans were just the worst. Fuck that civilization! I'm glad they're gone.

All of them

There's a reason why the roman empire or the roman empire themed dudes are usually the good guys. For all it's problems, Rome was still the greatest empire of all times and as such had to deal with all sorts of savages and madmen who'd see it destroyed.

4u

Nothing worse than scaphism. Although torture is forbidden by law. One shouldn't give reasons for vengeful ghosts to appear.

lol, latin speaker detected.

While we're on the subject what kind of fucked up shit did Carthage do to its enemies? Surely Rome wasn't the most kinky empire in all the land

Execution method for my bronze age magic civilization;

>Drill hole in criminal/enemy of the state's head
>Pour in molten bronze
>They die from this and rise up instantly as a bronze-skull zombie
>If you pour water into the head hole the zombie does physical labor for you, pouring in a mix of blood and water makes the zombie aggressive and used as a weapon of war

Hello, fellow Gunnm fan.

Worm. Grue's second trigger.

Not really an execution but Shadow of the Demon Lord has a spell that makes the target’s genitals explode.
>cast water breathing
>dump into water with weights on their feet
>they die by being crushed by the pressure
Leave them alive and some adventurers will rescue them

The amputations aren’t part of the execution. They were necessary to restrain the prisoner for trial since she was a extremely dangerous cyborg martial artist.

Tie them to a post upside down, wrap in dry straw, and set the feet on fire.

Being sent to Ashralak or Gehrax for a life of evil deeds.

1/2

Ashralak is the utter torment. The floors of Ashralak are made of bodies so heavy with evil that they have putrefied & petrified, scalding hot & spewing flames & magma suddenly & regularly. The west wall is scalding inward-pointing blades, the north wall is red hot salt masses, the south wall is salted red-hot glass powder piles, & the east wall is salted white-hot slag. Darkness there scalds the body like acid, light scalds the body like fire, simply existing burns the skin off slowly. The lifespan of an inmate is no longer than 4 breaths before death comes swiftly, inmates spend every waking moment screaming in pain & begging for nonexistence, darkness is heavier than lead, scalding vapors of burning putrescent bodies leak from the ground so thickly that sight is useless, & there is so much sound that hearing leaves the inmate only a few seconds after arrival, such heat assails the inmate that the body becomes writhing masses of pulp which simply drop to the floor, fluid glass rains torrentially, and every cursed weapon rains torrentially. Fires so hot they make inmates vomit fire & explode burn continuously, scalding salt hailstones pummel inmates, & spews of ice-slurry blast up from the floor with no warning. Sentences in Ashralak are the amount of time it takes for 1 pebble to become a plane, then for 1 plane to become a single pebble, though 1/50 of a second of real-time passes each release-date.

pt 2 of 2

Gehrax is the extreme torment. The floor of Gehrax is made of rust-powder & crushed bones, the east wall is freezing tombstones, the west wall is blade fragments frozen in sleet, the north wall is icy tears frozen-solid, & the south wall is frozen bodies & hailstones. Pain & Hunger are the constant companions of those villains who inmate there, fluid bodies rain torrentially upon them as they suffer leprosy, plagues, blisters, gout, dysentery, gangrene, frostbite, syphilis, ebola, dry mouth, and pink eye. Giant brass wolves and hell beings torment all who exist in Gehrax. There is nothing to eat or drink in Gehrax except the bodies of slain inmates, inmates spend the entire sentence without ever knowing where they are or what they were sentenced for, & any time an inmate stops moving, for even a moment, brass wolves & hell beings appear instantly to rip the inmate apart in a bloody, cruel, excruciating death. Sentences in Gehrax are between 30 million and 180 million lifetimes, usually a lifetime is about two weeks, before death from injuries results. 1/100th of a second of real-time passes each release-date.

Carthage wasn't particullary fucked up, but it did stand against the Roman empire and give them a pretty hard time.

The Brass bull, basically.
Getting slowly roasted inside a tight, cramped metal environment while naked.
The worst part is when you start choking on the smoke from your own burning body
Now that's gotta sting.

The 'release dates' mean that no matter how long you were in either Ashralak or Gehrax, once your sentence is complete, you return to normal existence, and the fractions of time mean that real-time (in the material world) passed that much during your sentence, so no matter how long your sentence in ashralak, when you proceed to a new life, only 1/50th of a second of material-realm time has passed, and for gehrax only 1/100th of a material-realm-time second has passed.

They are eastern reincarnate a bunch of times type hells, thats why their sentences are so long, you're born there over and over until you eventually get out.

Trust me, it SUCKS to be there.

All of them.

So feeling in a somewhat morbid mood I got to thinking how some kind of space based colony would handle these sorts of things and rather than go the route of just chucking you out of an airlock or tying you to the thrusters and cutting them on I took some inspiration from that animated mini movie Adam where if you commit a crime bad enough to warrant execution you get harvested for your organs and other usable bits and especially if it can be used to help with whatever damage you did (i.e. you raped and injured a girl causing her to be paralyzed your tissues will be used to help heal her, whether she wants to keep your shit baby is entirely her choice)

Fun fact, Carthage once had a ritual of feeding their newborn with sweets and then throwing them into a fire pit believing that they were sent to a better place.

Inhumanity is a very human trait.

One more ((fun)) and by ((fun)) I mean ((horrible)) detail.

Hell beings are effectively evil elementals, these beings screaming in pure ptsd pain, rage, grief, sorrow, and horror as they blindly attack without mercy anyone near them. Hell beings born into existence wielding sawtooth, salted, glass-dripping, scalding, steaming, blood drenched, poisonous weapons (all weapons have all traits), their armor covered with sawtooth spikes, blades, and rough spots, square edges, and all sharing the weapon traits (each armor feature is sawtooth salted glass dripping etc).

Hell beings armor and weapons so extremely hot that their armor releases visible blood-smoke from it’s chinks and crevices and hell being’s hands make a scalding sizzling sound and weep blood. 100% of a hell being’s exterior is covered with scars, boils, rashes, pimples, acne, blisters, sores, sweat-rash, warts, wrinkles, first degree burns, and ceaselessly flowing blood, puss and tears, which they sweat out from every part continuously. Hell beings lifetimes range from millions of years to only a few intense moments of existence before death and rebirth.

In ashralak hell beings are quantum (they are solid matter for interacting with inmates, but a form of illusion the torments simply pass through, both states going on at the same time), so they are found in both ashralak and gehrax.