Lets talk about torture.

[Grimmlore]

I'm looking for different methods of torture for my Villain.

So far I can think of:

• Chinese water torture
• Near death drowning
• skinned alive
• burning and branding
• whipping
• cutting off body parts

any more?

 

[CupofJoe]

Extreme cold
Rack
Iron Maiden
Isolation - physical or implied
Confinement - really small space - hard to breath
Seat-less chairs and "soft" truncheons
Insertion of small objects under nails or behind eyes
Insertion of larger object elsewhere [ahem - family friendly site...]
All of the above but on someone else...

 

[CupofJoe]

I'm looking for different methods of torture for my Villain.

So far I can think of:

• Chinese water torture
• Near death drowning
• skinned alive
• burning and branding
• whipping
• cutting off body parts

any more?

What I should have asked is: why is your villain torturing people/little fluffy animals?
It could be to extract information, for revenge, instil terror or for "fun".
Each if these will require different outcomes and therefore methods.
And I'm beginning to think about this far too much...

 

[MFreako]

If your villain uses torture to extract information, I think sleep deprivation is a good one. Combine it with a more painful form of torture and you have yourself one willing-to-divulge-secrets prisoner.

 

[Grimmlore]

He's teaching people a lesson and uses it as punishment. My mc caught him torturing a woman, well heard it happening from behind a closed door before he could leave fast enough my villain catches him spying and locks him in the room for a week chained to a wall. (with the tortured woman who has been flayed alive and left to hang upside down.) Sometimes he tortures them to death sometimes he lets them live.

 

[druidofwinter]

If he is teaching them a lesson or setting an example for others it seems to me he would chose the most brutal option available. If he is looking to kill them in the process he could crucify them. I think that would be pretty slow and painful.

 

[wordwalker]

I suppose there's acids, or bees and other moderately-poisonous creatures, or ants or other animals that slowly eat you.

My mc caught him torturing a woman, well heard it happening from behind a closed door before he could leave fast enough my villain catches him spying and locks him in the room for a week chained to a wall. (with the tortured woman who has been flayed alive and left to hang upside down.) Sometimes he tortures them to death sometimes he lets them live.

If the idea is teaching a lesson, there's more than one lesson that could be taught. There's a moment in the Guardians of the Flame books where a slavery-and-torture survivor teaches a group of newly freed slaves about freedom by handing over their their former masters in chains.

We never see what they do to them, but everyone but the women agree it's a very rough kind of empowerment lesson.

 

[Grimmlore]

Wordwalker Very interesting idea I hadn't thought about. Thank you for that one

 

[Butterfly]

Bone breaking, dislocation, smashed joints, the scavenger's daughter.

If he wants this lesson to be seen by others it would leave his victim with a clear and permanent disablement and can potentially cause other infections such as pneumonia if not treated in time.

It depends on what your villain has in his arsenal though. The weapons he carries and motives and whether your villain intends for him to live.

 

[Scribble]

If this is fantasy, or sci fi, why not go creative on the torture?

Psychic torture illusions:

- Fire that does not burn
- Ice that does not freeze
- Blades that do not cut

What about the creative use of magical or bizarre creatures. Here are some of the horrible things that have escaped from the darker dungeons of my mind:

Pain worms - you introduce them into the host and they feed on certain endorphins in a human host, and to elicit pain their chew on the ends of nerves.

Nighteel boots - large lamprey-like eel creatures are attached to each foot of the victim, who is immersed in a tank of water. The eels slowly digest the skin using acid but do not break the skin. The result is a wriggling creature that eventually engulfs the entire leg, in a searing, pin pricking pain.

Firemites - nasty little mites that burrow into the skin and live there rather peacefully - until you activate them. Spreading the oil of a certain plant on the skin causes the firemites to go into a frenzy, the males secrete a kind of oil that burns savagely. The plant oil mimics the mating pheromone of the female, and induces a frenzy in the males. The upshot is that they burst forth onto the skin to try to attract the horde of females that isn't really there, and in the process, a searing pain torments the host, but does not actually harm them.

 

[Grimmlore]

They are awesome ideas ill have to keep them in mind! I'm trying to aim for a fantasy/horror hybrid with this one I think the more realistic and achievable the better. I remembered seeing a movie once where a guy was tied to a pole. a tyre was lifted over him and the pole. the tyre had some fuel on it and it was lit on fire for a few minutes. Rubber burns crazy hot. Tyres and fuel just about everyone has so this one struck a chord and gave me a slight shiver.
oh and it was a small tyre so it sat around his tummy.

 

[brokethepoint]

I have been to a ren faire that had a medieval torture display, they were quite skilled at it.

The box around the head that a rat was placed in. That was a nasty one.

 

[Grimmlore]

what did the rat do?? was it the same as trapped rat on the stomach?

 

[brokethepoint]

as the rat would get hungry it would start eating

 

[Asura Levi]

One I saw in a film:

Put a rat in the victim bare belly, put a iron bucket over it (upside down, so the rat is inside the bucket), heat the bucket. To escape death, the rat will dig through the victim flesh. I bet this would be enough to get some info (^^x).

 

[CupofJoe]

... I bet this would be enough to get some info (^^x).

Probably... but would it be the right information or just want you wanted them to say...

 

[Asura Levi]

If turn out to be fake you can always left the rat finish its escape as a punishment.

I don't remember nothing more about the film where I saw it, just this scene.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

The rat in the bucket is from season two of Game of Thrones.

As far as torture goes, if you're not seeking information but only to "teach the victim a lesson" then what you want to do is psychologically break the victim. Offer them hope then take it away. Make them sacrifice what they hold dear like their genitals just to escape the pain. Make them believe that they have done things that they haven't. Get them to confess to a crime they haven't committed then punish them for lying. Make them beg and then show them that their lives weren't worth begging for. Torture is a mental thing as much as a physical thing.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Aprella]

I have a character that is being tortured twice: one by magic (it feels as all his bones are breaking and that every fibre of his body is on fire) and the second time by being locked up in a filthy dungeon for three weeks and at the end of that period, he's being flogged with a cat o'nine tails.
I was actually wondering what this does to someone mentally. I find it very hard to place myself into my characters positions because I never felt such excruciating pain.

@Psychotick: can you give some examples about such torture mental torture? I have this character who has committed murders when he's body was taken over by an evil witch but he stills blamed himself and took a memory potion to erase the memory... the person who's torturing (and he does it without the knowledge of the king, just because he dislikes the character) and I was thinking that perhaps I might be able to do something with it, though I'm not quite sure were to start. The only problem is that my characters has to stay sane and make a more or less full recovery (of course he would be changed).

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I have a character that is being tortured twice: one by magic (it feels as all his bones are breaking and that every fibre of his body is on fire) and the second time by being locked up in a filthy dungeon for three weeks and at the end of that period, he's being flogged with a cat o'nine tails.
I was actually wondering what this does to someone mentally. I find it very hard to place myself into my characters positions because I never felt such excruciating pain.

Well, having... ahem... used a plain leather cat o'nine tails, I can tell you from experience that they actually don't hurt all that much. Go buy one and play with it, and you'll see what I mean. They make a lot of noise, sure, but for actual torture I do not recommend it. Now, a hooked cat o'nine - think nine leather tails with small hooks on the ends - will tear through skin and flesh. That's pain. There is also the bullwhip. Several feet of braided leather on a long handle. In the hands of an experienced user, one of those things can cleave flesh from bone, or snuff a candle flame. Takes years of practice to get that good, though. They make a menacing hissing sound as they are swept back and forth across a floor.

You don't have to have ever actually experienced the pain yourself to place yourself in your character's shoes. Just close your eyes. Open your senses. Slip into your character's skin. What do you feel? The bite of the bindings on your wrists as you are bound to the whipping post? The stretching of your shoulder joints, aching from exhaustion and trying to sleep on a filthy dungeon floor? What do you smell? The first fresh air in weeks, or the reek of the prison sewer? The drying blood on the post under your face? Now, open yourself to the pain. The rip and pull as your flesh is torn by the whips. The burn in your throat as you scream, over and over, until you have no more screams to give.

Imagination gives us the best dreams.