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Rat Pit, Skin-purging and Deathmasking

Started by Drubbels, February 06, 2011, 02:50:30 PM

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Drubbels

Hey everyone - a fluff question, out of curiosity: in the Inquisitor rulebook, on the page right before the Arco-flagellant archetype, several methods of extravagant punishment in the Imperium are described: the Rat Pit, Skin-purging, Deathmasking and Arco-flagellation. Now, of course I know what an Arco-flagellant is, but what the heck are the other three?

Hope anyone can help me, and apologies if I sound like a complete idiot.
Previously "Adeptus Noob"

Frostspear

Sounds fairly intuitive...I would have assumed dropping somebody in a pit of voracious hive rats, flaying somebody alive and encasing somebody's head permanently in a mask.
Be not so swift to embrace us as allies.

Auspicious fate dictated that we should fight side-by-side this day, but fate is a fickle creature.

At our next encounter, it will be my fists that bear the stain of your blood.

Flinty

#2
Humm, I thought Deathmasking was a further stage in the consignment as an Arco-Flagellant. Presumably some Flagellants and Chrono-Gladiators are left with some semblance of thier original brain tissue, they may just be mind-wiped or otherweise 'conditioned' for thier future role.

I thought Deathmasking was for those cases in a perpetual state of uncontrolled rage or madness, the mask allowing some form of control by a handler; by which I imagine some sort of physical or chemical restraint can be removed or inserted into thier brains. Lovely...of course, I stand ready to be corrected on this, I could be totally wrong.

Skinpurging sounds like a straight, very painful and drawn out punishment to me; although I imagine there may be lots of uses for large scale skin-grafts or components for servitors as a result.  

Rat pits are presumably exactly as they sound. There was a Victorian record of men fighting sewer and farm rats on the same bill as dogs in the rat baiting rings, which I think was later taken up and exaggerated by at least one modern Gothic horror author whose name completely escapes me.
Neanderthal and Proud!

Drubbels

Ah, thanks, just curious. Couldn't find info on them anywhere on Lexicanum, except Simeon 38X was supposedly almost sentenced to Deathmasking, or something like that, but they didn't explain what it meant. On a sidenote, does anyone happen to know how sane an Arco-flagellant is when not "activated"?
Previously "Adeptus Noob"

MarcoSkoll

Quote from: Adeptus Noob on February 06, 2011, 06:39:39 PMOn a sidenote, does anyone happen to know how sane an Arco-flagellant is when not "activated"?
Comparable to anyone who's undergone a lobotomy, I imagine.
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

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Drubbels

Previously "Adeptus Noob"

Stormgrad

The Pacifier Helm is supposed to beam calming images and thoughts into the wearers brain imagine a child with some kind of brain injury sat mindlessly in front of a tv blaring  Barney the Dinosaur

Morcus

An intresting aside, there are huge amounts of records of victorian and earlier blood sports like dog fights and rat baiting and such and they make for intresting, if disturbing, reading. If you gather enough you can know pretty much how any animal will fair in a fight against another.

Death masking puts me in mind of things like iron maidens and heating up metal hats on peoples heads, but that isn't based on anything.

Ulgavitch

Death masking to me always suggested something quite unpleasant. Death masks, according to the wiki:

Quoten Western cultures a death mask is a wax or plaster cast made of a person's face following death. Death masks may be mementos of the dead, or be used for creation of portraits. It is sometimes possible to identify portraits that have been painted from death masks, because of the characteristic slight distortions of the features caused by the weight of the plaster during the making of the mold. In other cultures a death mask may be a clay or other artifact placed on the face of the deceased before burial rites. The best known of these are the masks used by ancient Egyptians as part of the mummification process, such as Tutankhamon's burial mask.

I had imagined it was having the process of the cast of a death mask, without actually being dead. To have a mask pressed permanently to your face and either to suffocate or to merely live, trapped behind the hideous unfeeling layer.

Or, if you are really vicious, to be masked and then interred as one who is dead, but be kept alive throughout the experience. It's not quite as horrible as arco-flagellation but still deeply unpleasant, as it should be.   

Drubbels

Previously "Adeptus Noob"