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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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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.

The evilness of Crusader Kings players has no bounds.

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.

Damn, beat me to that joke.
 
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This feature alone is what I will buy The Reapers Due for. :D
 
Nah...the Disney switch would just make your princesses sing every now and then and add death by poisonous apple (for characters having the attractive trait)
 
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Hooray for automatic -300 to -400 prestige penalty! YAY!
BUT: You can always win the heart of the aztec's invasions daughter and have peace. Btw.: Can we have the old ewok victory song after winning a crusade now? And besides the Templars, Hospitallers and stuff have Jedi knights? Should be possible now with Disney owning that stuff.
 
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I'd prefer an India switch
 
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For players using Sunset Invasion, will our dear Aztec friends get any methods of execution, torture, and whatnot associated to their religion?
 
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it wouldnt work as a switch
its not an on off mechanic but a major part of the map. to turn it off you need a mod, you need to reload the whole game, remake the map cache, everything. not just switch off a setting.
You cant even change resolution in paradox games without reloading even
 
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"What is best in life?
To compose iambic pentameters, read them to your enemies and hear the lamentations of their english professors".

I think I've found my new calling in CK2.
 
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