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CK2 Dev Diary #16: Man's inhumanity to man

Hello and welcome back to another DD about The Reaper's Due! Ha! I can finally use the name! If all is going to plan you should be reading this while I am on my third, and sadly final, week of vacation, so I may or may not show up to answer questions. For this DD we are getting back to the core values of The Reaper's Due: Death and Suffering!

Being a prisoner is never a fun experience, and frankly, with The Reaper's Due it only gets worse. We have added several fairly unpleasant ways to interact with your captives:

  • Humiliate. The prisoner is degraded in some fashion; such as being tarred and feathered, or forced to do a “walk of shame”. This also causes them to lose prestige and be generally looked down on.
  • Torture. The prisoner is caused a certain amount of pain; such as being whipped, or stretched on the rack. May cause them to become Stressed or even Depressed, and can cause you to lose the Kind trait.
  • Mutilate. Only available to rulers with certain traits, such as Cruel or Impaler, this causes the permanent loss of a body part. May lead to you becoming Cruel if you are not already, and can cause them to gain Stressed or even Lunatic.
  • Bad poetry. Rulers with the Poet trait may deploy their very worst poems against a prisoner. While a comparatively mild punishment, it nonetheless has a slight chance to drive them mad.
  • Consume. Rulers who are either Possessed or Lunatic and also have the Cannibal modifier may simply eat their prisoners. If you haven’t disabled fantasy content, this may lead to you “gaining the power” of your victim.

All of these options, besides Consume, release the victim afterwards as they are considered to be their punishment, and while you choose the category you do not choose the exact method. Needless to say, your former prisoner will not think kindly of you after any of these punishments, and in the more extreme cases their close family may also be outraged.

Of course, sometimes a mere punishment is not enough and you simply have to Execute your prisoner. Well, we have added content for this eventuality too! You still simply press the Execute button, as before, but the actual execution method employed is chosen from a list based on your location/culture/religion/traits as well as the imprison reason you have on your prisoner, their religion/gender/traits, and things. Different execution methods come with different death reasons, and as you may have heard in an earlier DD, different death sounds. We have 31 execution methods, including Hanging, Crushing, Sawing, and Bear. It’s all in an easily moddable file too, just in case modders think we have been insufficiently creative.
deaths.jpg


I should also mention that with the 2.6 patch it is no longer possible to escape from House arrest unless someone with the Intrigue focus breaks you out, so if for some reason you want to be nice to your prisoners they are no longer virtually guaranteed to escape.

Since Death is a big theme for The Reaper's Due, we have also added several reactions events to the death of your lovers, friends, and rivals. For the first two, these can result in things like you turning to drink, finding a new friend, taking comfort in the arms of another, or finding a keepsake of them. For the latter, you may miss having a rival and start a new feud, resolve to become a better person, or if you are a particular type of person you might sneak out and desecrate their corpse. We don’t judge!
loss.jpg

skullsfortheskullthrone.jpg

skull2.jpg


That’s all for now. Next week I’ll be back at work and writing these “live” again, so I’ll decide the topic closer to the time. It's quite possible the subject will be cats though.
 
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I've just found this topic so sorry if it has already been addressed.

That list of things you can do to your prisoners has left me wondering, if you have a woman in your prison (or any man if the ruler is homosexual) can you rape them? Not like taking them as a concubine and keeping them I'm thinking if you've at war with a rival king and you capture his wife and/or daughter you can violate them, or have your soldiers or your hunting dogs do it as a way to annoy your enemy. I'm sure it happened at least once in the game's time frame especially in the more 'barbaric' parts of the world.
Ehhhhhh... too problematic. Will never happen.
 
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I wonder, is there an off chance that your bad poetry is actually good, or at least so bad it is amusing, resulting in YOU losing patience and your prisoner getting a small reward?
 
Naturally children are protected from such horrendous attrocities like bad poetry, right?




Right?
 
I can't help but feel like torture shouldn't mean the prisoner gets released immediately. The kind of ruler who tortures and mutilates to exert power isn't the kind that releases afterwords - that victim could become a powerful enemy. Especially if that victim is one of noble birth of backing.

Releasing the prisoner should be a choice, while repeated sessions of torture, humiliation, and on carry a "consecutive punishment" modifier or something.
 
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I can't help but feel like torture shouldn't mean the prisoner gets released immediately. The kind of ruler who tortures and mutilates to exert power isn't the kind that releases afterwords - that victim could become a powerful enemy. Especially if that victim is one of noble birth of backing.

Releasing the prisoner should be a choice, while repeated sessions of torture, humiliation, and on carry a "consecutive punishment" modifier or something.

110% agree. It should be a decision to release the character. I could even say this should be encouraged with a piety boost or the possibility of a good trait. At the moment it's a no-brainer to either release a prisoner or just let him go without torture, as you not only risk acquiring bad traits, but create a potentially dangerous enemy.

As Basileus it's frustrating when I blind a prisoner and he's immediately released; like my character tousles the prisoner's hair and tells him to be on his way, you little scamp. Look at the historical case of Isaac II, who was blinded when his brother usurped the throne and left to rot in prison for a decade. The same goes for the general, Alexios Philanthropenos, who headed a failed "...for the throne" faction and was similarly blinded and imprisoned.
 
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I should also mention that with the 2.6 patch it is no longer possible to escape from House arrest unless someone with the Intrigue focus breaks you out, so if for some reason you want to be nice to your prisoners they are no longer virtually guaranteed to escape.

What? So you've removed it completely, meaning that there's not even the slightest chance someone escapes on their own (in a loosely-guarded position)?
 
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You were never able to choose torture before. You can't take away something you never had.

You did recognise the wink smilie ?
 
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Can Bad Poetry punishment, be upgraded to Extremely Bad Poetry execution method? (or, if fantasy is enabled, Vogon poetry?)
With fantasy content enabled poetry can drive victims insane, I think that's good enough for the base game... I'd play a Vogon mod though =D
 
With fantasy content enabled poetry can drive victims insane, I think that's good enough for the base game... I'd play a Vogon mod though =D
Vogon Culture Effects: "Bad Poetry torture is always lethal."
 
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