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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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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

Maybe the Impaler trait could be rebranded. How can someone without twenty skulls call himself an impaler?
 
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Please, please, have the German cultural execution as 'Breaking on the Wheel'.
 
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Please, please, have the German cultural execution as 'Breaking on the Wheel'.
Well...nowadys the cultural ways of execution in Germany would be "force to watch free-TV". Death by slowly melting brains.

SFX: "Welcome to 24hrs of celebrity cooking contest and shopping queen! RIGHT ofter those infomercials. EYAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHhhhh!!! *whimper, sob*"
 
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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.

Since the full sentence you're quoting pertains to rivals I imagine the event in the OP where you dig them up and cut off their heads is what counts as desecration.
 
Well...nowadys the cultural ways of execution in Germany would be "force to watch free-TV". Death by slowly melting brains.

SFX: "Welcome to 24hrs of celebrity cooking contest and shopping queen! RIGHT ofter those infomercials. EYAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHhhhh!!! *whimper, sob*"

That sounds like the worldwide most sever punishment nowadays, we've got more of the same here.
 
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Now I want a bear sawing off one's head while being stapped to the wheel and being forced to watch free-TV...
But really, I am very enthusiastic about the disease part of the game. Building hospitals is great - and the name 'knights hospitaller' rings somewhere in my head as well...
 
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... 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.

I was more or less thinking that the Lannisters are a family you just want to kill off.. In the same way that everyone hates the Karling. Although i do not think either family would really compare to the Karlings who love to back each other up. No idea if a Lannister would even back up one of there own unless it suits them.. And the Targeryens... Well No idea really.
 
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.
Which bug allows necrophilia?
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.
The wooden horse at least most certainly did exist and was commonly used. Though as mentioned I don't know if it was already used in the games time frame. I can give you a court protocol of its use if you want, though it will be in Danish and written in handwritten fraktur.
 
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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...

Oh, after eating you will also release them...just NOT from prison but your innards after digestion, so no need to say "besides". ;) /irony off
There is great stuff coming with this DLC and I am eager to hear more :)
 
Which bug allows necrophilia?The wooden horse at least most certainly did exist and was commonly used. Though as mentioned I don't know if it was already used in the games time frame. I can give you a court protocol of its use if you want, though it will be in Danish and written in handwritten fraktur.

Probably reffering to events that tell you that you had intercourse with Another character depite the fact that said character died a few days ago.
 
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The one thing that comes to mind with Walk of Shame is what Cersei did. Which according to some digging on the internet.. Is based on a Actually punishment for Adultery. And to site a historical example. Edward had fallen and Richard III—against whose rise she had conspired—took the throne that year. Though Richard’s reasons for hating her were largely political, her punishments were tied to her harlotry. So, as would have been a common punishment for adultery, she was made to walk through the city in her undergarments, with bare feet. ( They are talking about Jane Shore a Mistress of Edward of IV

So yeah i would say it counts as a Humiliation..It does not kill the person they just embarrassed in front of everyone.
In other words, it's being used as the term commonly is, you suppose. How does that make it comparable to losing chunks of your skin to hot tar? Like I said, a walk of shame is not particularly physically harming, doesn't cause scars, and is not at all likely to kill you via infection.
 
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In other words, it's being used as the term commonly is, you suppose. How does that make it comparable to losing chunks of your skin to hot tar? Like I said, a walk of shame is not particularly physically harming, doesn't cause scars, and is not at all likely to kill you via infection.

Well, realistically, it is quite likely to kill you via infection. In Cersei's case, her feet were broken and bleeding after the walk and given how poop-ridden medieval cities were, it would be almost incredible not to get one infection or another.
 
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Genocide? Who said anything about genocide? I said prisoners of war.

"You work, you eat. You don't work, you don't eat"
 
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Just Googled that. Brutal.
We had that here in Denmark too.
Also speaking of brutal execution methods then there is the Danish hjul og stejle. It existed until 1866. Before you got to it you might get tortured at the kag where you would be severely whipped (e.g. with a cat o' nine tails) and branded like you were cattle. You might also have your hands chopped off.
The execution itself varied. Sometimes you got beheaded first and then dissected. Other times you got dissected alive and then beheaded. You could also get the breaking wheel and then be dissected. Your limbs might be tied to four horses who then were set to walk in different directions to pull you apart alive. Your intestines could be put unto a hook on a wheel and then spun on the wheel like sausages---and that while you were alive. It was used to people like murderers, pirates, etc.

Oh and people gathered in crowds to see the criminal get dissected; just like how people these days gather in crowds to see lions, antelopes or giraffes get dissected in our zoos.

Contemporary drawing of Struensee and Brandt being executed by hjul og stejle in 1772 for having slept with the queen and made a de facto coup d'etat.
Forrige_Grev_Iohan_Frid._Struensee_og_Grev_Enevold_Brandt_forreffillet_og_afbildet_po_hiul_og_Steyler_d._28_Aprill_1772.jpg