Magical Torture Methods

[Zirrboy]

It's basically stripping someone of their own flesh, but without death from blood loss! 4/5.

Not just touch. All senses.

I have no mouth and I must scream.

I should have that lying around somewhere.

There's an anime called bludgeoning angel dokuro-chan, where the MC gets tortured, murdered, and revived regularly. In this universe their exists a type of sausage that makes you extremely sensitive, known as sensitive salaryman sausage, which of course the MC is forced to eat on many occasions.

Interestingly enough, I have watched said anime, but can't seem to remember this particular detail.

 

[GodlessEmperor]

waterboarding is already pretty magical if you ask me

 

[Lloyd]

Not just touch. All senses.


I should have that lying around somewhere.


Interestingly enough, I have watched said anime, but can't seem to remember this particular detail.

It is a meme anime from like 15 years ago so its understandable.

waterboarding is already pretty magical if you ask me

True

 

[greyblob]

Not just touch. All senses.

i have seen it done once in a novel. it was pretty gruesome but very well written.

 

[Jemini]

I was hoping for something more specific, but yes, healing magic. 5/5 when it comes to utility.

There's no need for specifics. The use of healing magic for the purpose of torture is the single most depraved and evil thing imaginable, just due to the sheer lengths you can go to with your torture methods if you can just heal them afterward, and the fact that you can then go ahead and repeat the torture all over again.

When it comes to healing magic for torture, "healing magic" is really all you have to say. From there, the imagination just runs wild at how far you can push it with such a thing.

(TL;DR, healing magic as a tool of torture is something that needs to be against the magical equivalent of the Geneva convention.)

 

[Anon_Y_Mousse]

Not just touch. All senses.

Now we're talking, best make sure their brain doesn't just shut itself down.

waterboarding is already pretty magical if you ask me

True, true, I've tried it with my family, was very magical.

There's no need for specifics. The use of healing magic for the purpose of torture is the single most depraved and evil thing imaginable, just due to the sheer lengths you can go to with your torture methods if you can just heal them afterward, and the fact that you can then go ahead and repeat the torture all over again.

When it comes to healing magic for torture, "healing magic" is really all you have to say. From there, the imagination just runs wild at how far you can push it with such a thing.

(TL;DR, healing magic as a tool of torture is something that needs to be against the magical equivalent of the Geneva convention.)

Honestly, I think time magic has more potential for torture, I mean just think of Love Town from Ruina. Better yet combine it with healing magic to heal the mind.

 

[greyblob]

for physical torture, you just have to control the pain receptors. you can simulate almost any form of pain this way without having to spill a single drop of blood. mental torture is much, much worse imo.

 

[Jemini]

Honestly, I think time magic has more potential for torture, I mean just think of Love Town from Ruina. Better yet combine it with healing magic to heal the mind.

Oh yes, Re:Zero shows us this pretty well. Thing is, though. Time magic is some of the absolute highest tier magic. More responsible authors will even place it at god-tier, or at the very least they will nerf the version available to normal humans to the point where you would be completely unable to do the sorts of things you are talking about here.

So, time magic as a torture method has several nasty implications for the writer that can blow up your entire story. Meanwhile, healing magic is often a pretty basic-tier magic. The availability of it thus makes it a far more viable torture method, especially with how nasty it can really be if used in that way.

In this light, it is a very good thing most magic systems associate healing magic with divine blessings. Having the healing magic come from a god means that said god can easily shut down this barbaric use of healing magic. If that's not something limiting characters in your world though, you get to see normal humans doing things like Demiurge's happy farm in Overlord.

 

[Reborn_Cat]

Illusion magic can de used to both break a guy mentally and emotionally, but some stories mention an illusion magic called phantom pain which can also be used for torture

 

[Anon_Y_Mousse]

Oh yes, Re:Zero shows us this pretty well. Thing is, though. Time magic is some of the absolute highest tier magic. More responsible authors will even place it at god-tier, or at the very least they will nerf the version available to normal humans to the point where you would be completely unable to do the sorts of things you are talking about here.

So, time magic as a torture method has several nasty implications for the writer that can blow up your entire story. Meanwhile, healing magic is often a pretty basic-tier magic. The availability of it thus makes it a far more viable torture method, especially with how nasty it can really be if used in that way.

In this light, it is a very good thing most magic systems associate healing magic with divine blessings. Having the healing magic come from a god means that said god can easily shut down this barbaric use of healing magic. If that's not something limiting characters in your world though, you get to see normal humans doing things like Demiurge's happy farm in Overlord.

Well, I was just curious about what humans could think of when it's no holds barred. Though I've been getting quite mundane answers so far. People on SH are quite sane.

Plus in some cases there are some deities who are bringing down divine punishment. Or some powerful civilization playing god.

Like the aforementioned love town, megacorps who have time and space tech that breaks physics itself. They offer it in public transportation but the price is a 2k year ride where you can't die and feel every injury as if it's fresh to the end with people that are bound to go insane.(with free mind wipe at the end!)


Edit: Simple usages of time would include acceleration and deceleration of time. If you could do it locally you could possibly make someone experience a cut for a crazy amount of time, or "time stop" an injury and make it always feel like the moment it was made. But that's assuming a lot about in-lore rules.

Interestingly, someone like Subaru could dedicate a lot of loops into making someone's life into a socially isolated hell and render all their hard work useless. In fact he kind of does in Pride IF with Reinhardt

 

[NotaNuffian]

Not just touch. All senses.


I should have that lying around somewhere.


Interestingly enough, I have watched said anime, but can't seem to remember this particular detail.

Now we're talking, best make sure their brain doesn't just shut itself down.


True, true, I've tried it with my family, was very magical.


Honestly, I think time magic has more potential for torture, I mean just think of Love Town from Ruina. Better yet combine it with healing magic to heal the mind.

Or Grey Boy in Worm.

Fucking hell is wrong with that twat.
https://www.reddit.com/r/horrorlit/comments/bpn57f

 

[Anon_Y_Mousse]

Or Grey Boy in Worm.

Fucking hell is wrong with that twat.
https://www.reddit.com/r/horrorlit/comments/bpn57f

Kids are already pretty demonic, now imagine giving them time powers...

 

[ThrillingHuman]

Oh, I also remembered that I have already written something of a proof of concept for a torture with magic in fantasy!
My character completely controlled the body of another two characters, down to their breathing, and that seems freaky enough, but can be taken far

 

[RepresentingSilence]

You don't really need magic to torture people. But i guess it would be pretty funny to necrosis someone's hand and bring it back from the dead as a zombie hand, then watch as they beat themselves up.

 

[Lloyd]

I've never seen this movie

 

[RepresentingSilence]

I've never seen this movie

OMG the Evil dead movies are classics that everybody should watch at least once
They have just the perfect amount of horror and comedy

 

[TroubleFait]

Anybody read A Journey of Black and Red?

Yeah, bad memories...

 

[Jemini]

Edit: Simple usages of time would include acceleration and deceleration of time. If you could do it locally you could possibly make someone experience a cut for a crazy amount of time, or "time stop" an injury and make it always feel like the moment it was made. But that's assuming a lot about in-lore rules.

Only if the author knows nothing about how the brain works.

It is 100% impossible via time magic to make a wound produce the same Lv of pain as was felt when it was freshly created. The reason for this is that the brain is designed to down-regulate any kind of consistent stimuli. In other words, simply having the brain active will cause the Lv. of pain to decrease over time.

This means that time magic of the level you are talking can only be used to make the pain less severe. If you accelerate the brain, it will learn to ignore the pain more quickly. If you slow down the brain to mitigate the effect I just described, you will slow down the rate at which it receives the pain signal.

Due the way neurons are structured, a slowed down pain signal will be perceived as less severe pain, causing something as severe as their skin being burned off to feel like nothing more than being exposed to the warmth of the sun on a nice day.

So, no, time magic is really not viable for that. However, illusion magic geared toward physical sensation, granting abilities like creating phantom pain or enhancing pain signals from real injuries, can achieve exactly the effect you were probably thinking about when you wrote that suggestion there.

 

[owotrucked]

Magic tax curse: 75% of your earnings magically disappear to finance affordable healthcare, but you can't benefit from it.

 

[Chaos_Sinner777]

Divination magic plus mind magic to FORCE the understanding of how impossibly VAST a single material Universe is into the mind of a person with the general education level of a Medieval peasant. It would be hilarious to see them melt down as they realize the very gods they worship are but motes of dust before the Cosmos. That and the human mind really isn't meant to comprehend things on that scale. Probably dangerous for the caster too, really.

Only if the author knows nothing about how the brain works.

It is 100% impossible via time magic to make a wound produce the same Lv of pain as was felt when it was freshly created. The reason for this is that the brain is designed to down-regulate any kind of consistent stimuli. In other words, simply having the brain active will cause the Lv. of pain to decrease over time.

This means that time magic of the level you are talking can only be used to make the pain less severe. If you accelerate the brain, it will learn to ignore the pain more quickly. If you slow down the brain to mitigate the effect I just described, you will slow down the rate at which it receives the pain signal.

Due the way neurons are structured, a slowed down pain signal will be perceived as less severe pain, causing something as severe as their skin being burned off to feel like nothing more than being exposed to the warmth of the sun on a nice day.

So, no, time magic is really not viable for that. However, illusion magic geared toward physical sensation, granting abilities like creating phantom pain or enhancing pain signals from real injuries, can achieve exactly the effect you were probably thinking about when you wrote that suggestion there.

There's an easy fix for that. A short, randomized time loop on the wound. Causing it to re-occur at random. Thirty seconds after gaining it, it disappears, then five minutes later it is freshly re-inflicted. An hour after that and it's gone again, twelve seconds later and there it is!