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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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Mauled to Death by a bear.. eh?

The Republic: Essos unlocked
The Old Gods: House Greyjoy unlocked
Charlemagne: Northern tribes and Mountain clans unlocked
Horse Lords: Dothraki unlocked
Conclave: Littlefinger and Varys unlocked

Reaper's Due: Greyscale disease and Vargo Hoat unlocked.
 
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Mauled to Death by a bear.. eh?

The Republic: Essos unlocked
The Old Gods: House Greyjoy unlocked
Charlemagne: Northern tribes and Mountain clans unlocked
Horse Lords: Dothraki unlocked
Conclave: Littlefinger and Varys unlocked

Reaper's Due: Greyscale disease and Vargo Hoat unlocked.

Well, the GoT mod is going to get a huge update soon.

Hopefully getting mauled by a bear always works..... unless Jamie Lanister is there to save the day.
 
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And here I thought you had to walk naked.

Well Cersei was a special case and also the punishment never really accounted for a Harlot Like her to be sleeping with her own brother and nephew. So I can see why they made her walk naked.. wish they added Hot coals under her feet though.. And maybe someone could of poked her with a Cattle Prod from behind to keep her moving. But yeah the punishment was just to make them feel Ashamed for what they have done.. To Humiliate them.. Which back then was a big thing

As you can see I hate Cersei with a passion.. Ever since those poor Direwolves she had killed.. and bran.. Lets not forget what happened to poor Bran thanks to her.

But yeah its interesting.. that it was based off a real punishment. and not made up. Then again GRRM did say that Westeros was based off Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. Well Western Part of it anyway.
 
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Mauled to Death by a bear.. eh?

The Republic: Essos unlocked
The Old Gods: House Greyjoy unlocked
Charlemagne: Northern tribes and Mountain clans unlocked
Horse Lords: Dothraki unlocked
Conclave: Littlefinger and Varys unlocked

Reaper's Due: Greyscale disease and Vargo Hoat unlocked.

What did Legacy of Rome unlock..Since you forgot about :p.
I would think it unlocked Sell Swords.. Since they are a Retinue after all.

So
Legacy of Rome - SellSwords
 
So, due to popular request in this thread, I hope that paradox makes it so if you have the "Fantasy" modifier on, and you collect 10-20 skulls, your character receives a permanent modifier called "Skull Throne" which gives you 5 Prestige per month.

Overpowered? No, as you would need 10-20 skulls. Fun, hell yes!

the_phantom_skull_throne_by_aaronius85-d41siv5.jpg
 
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What did Legacy of Rome unlock..Since you forgot about :p.
I would think it unlocked Sell Swords.. Since they are a Retinue after all.

Nah, didn't forget LoR. Just couldn't think of anything Game of Thronesy to apply to it off the top of my head. I don't think anyone in westeros has a standing army, but I guess:

Legacy of Rome: Joffrey's dream army unlocked.
 
Sadly haven't played in a while, but I remember having fun torturing prisoners and killing them at blots and stuff. So glad the fun part of murder is getting expanded.

if you are a particular type of person you might sneak out and desecrate their corpse

Does this mean necrophilia is now officially in the game as more than just a bug? Like if you're a mad king, and you have a beloved spouse/lover who died recently, you can dig them up and "relive the good times" with them? I guess it would have chance of negative reputation as well chance to contract illness.
 
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Nah, didn't forget LoR. Just couldn't think of anything Game of Thronesy to apply to it off the top of my head. I don't think anyone in westeros has a standing army, but I guess:

Legacy of Rome: Joffrey's dream army unlocked.

It just came to me.. That the Lannisters are really the Karlings
Yep you just read that correct.. the Lannisters are the Karlings.
And what is everyone goal when you see the Karlings in your game


This DLC is going to make having prisoners interesting that is for sure.
I cant wait to play it.. And see what the HIP Team does with it.
 
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It just came to me.. That the Lannisters are really the Karlings
Yep you just read that correct.. the Lannisters are the Karlings.
And what is everyone goal when you see the Karlings in your game


This DLC is going to make having prisoners interesting that is for sure.
I cant wait to play it.. And see what the HIP Team does with it.
... What? How are they even remotly the same? I will give you Targeryens = Karlings has some validity, they are empire builders who have a problem holding on to the thrones they created, though the madness thing is more Habsburg than Karling.
 
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Alot of this stuff wasnt actually a thing in the middle ages just in post reformation depictions of it, torture devices get in every list of myths about the middle ages, and if it was done would have been massively unaccepted?
Torture should only be available to cruel or crazy characters, and should have consequences of everyone thinking badly of you, just not their family.
 
Nah, didn't forget LoR. Just couldn't think of anything Game of Thronesy to apply to it off the top of my head. I don't think anyone in westeros has a standing army, but I guess:

Legacy of Rome: Joffrey's dream army unlocked.
It unlocked Varys.

Tut tut.
 
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I've always studied man's inhumanity to another. It's pretty fascinating from a pyschological standpoint. *cue Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lector here* I mean, I've studied every single torture techinique used by the Inquisition and then some...even up to modern history. Not necessarily by the Spanish Inquistion - they've disappeared long before then. We're talking about things like the strappado, thumbscrews, hanging and quartering, waterboarding, stiff confinement, damn there's just a encylopedia of torture going on. But my favorite is the Pope's Pear. If you've ever watched Borgia: Faith and Fear, then you have some idea of what I'm talking about. Anyhow..I find man's inhumanity to one another to be pecuilarly fascinating as it relates to how you all relate to each other.

The funny thing is..it's the Catholic Church and to a lesser extent, Christanity, that's uh..practiced the pratical applications of torture, particularly in the Middle Ages. The Spanish Inquisition in Spain with regards to heretics and "Marranos" and Moroscos" (relapsed Jews and Muslims respectively) were quite...insistent in making them recant.
 
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if you have studied them? then why do you think the popes pear was real?
when its, like the iron maiden, one of the famously made up ones..

The Pear was definitely made for using on the mouths of victims. As for other orifices, purely circumstantial but given human ingenunity, I wouldn't put it past humans to try it out on other orifices. So there might be some historical support for it's use anally and genitally (for female victims) This is after all, a human race that's invented poison gas and the atomic bomb that we're talking about after all. Man is about the only species on Earth that's actually employed torture as a technique unlike the rest of the animal kingdom - you might find it unpalatable, but that's the truth.

The Iron Maiden is definitely confirmed as a torture device and definitely not made up. You have to keep in mind that the object of the Iron Maiden was to prolong the torment of the victim..the spikes weren't meant to pierce vulnerable organs..just to pierce shallowly and plug the puncture points so blood wouldn't flow out too copiously. The idea was to really draw out the death as long as you could.

The greatest irony was that the Catholic Church played up many of their OWN tortures in pamphlets on Christian martyrs by having their victimizers employ them on those "Christian martyrs"
 
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The Pear was definitely made for using on the mouths of victims. As for other orifices, purely circumstantial but given human ingenunity, I wouldn't put it past humans to try it out on other orifices. So there might be some historical support for it's use anally and genitally (for female victims) This is after all, a human race that's invented poison gas and the atomic bomb that we're talking about after all. Man is about the only species on Earth that's actually employed torture as a technique unlike the rest of the animal kingdom - you might find it unpalatable, but that's the truth.

The Iron Maiden is definitely confirmed as a torture device and definitely not made up. You have to keep in mind that the object of the Iron Maiden was to prolong the torment of the victim..the spikes weren't meant to pierce vulnerable organs..just to pierce shallowly and plug the puncture points so blood wouldn't flow out too copiously. The idea was to really draw out the death as long as you could.

The greatest irony was that the Catholic Church played up many of their OWN tortures in pamphlets on Christian martyrs by having their victimizers employ them on those "Christian martyrs"

Give me a source that iron maiden and the pear were used in the middle ages. They were inventions of the 16th century.
And actually... most of the torture was not used by the Church inquisition but by secular courts in the Early Modern Era. The Catholic Inquisition wasn't that harsh like the Humanists want them to be seen.
 
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Despite who needs all these imaginative forms of torture when a simple heated iron were available. As for punishments who needed these when you had flogging.
 
I don't know if this has been proposed before but could you make it possible to do something like shift-clicking on the ransom button to instantly ask for it instead of having to click there and then click send. I think that would save a bit of effort and time from the whole process.
 
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I just don't know why some small faction of people feel the need to be so... hostile, it seems, to Paradox.

If you wanted new mechanics (like I did) - you're getting those with Reaper's Due. Prosperity, Crown Focus, Royal Physicians, Game Rules, and Hospitals are all things that really excite me a lot. But I know that Paradox employs people who don't know how to code but CAN write events - it's nice to see them getting to please other people by adding more events and written content (which isn't a big deal for me but it IS for some people). And I know Paradox employs people who can't code but CAN make sound effects - so it's nice to see them making deathrattles and other nice sounds. I'm buying the expansion for those other nice features, but I sure don't mind other content that gets added in. It seems like every single dev diary where they announce new events, SOMEONE has to groan that "there are already mods that add events!"
 
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