[ The decision to put the alchemist into the pillory was calculated. Made to seem, on the surface of things, like a relief. Humiliation and scorn and discomfort instead of more pain. Church officials, even the inquisitor and his men, ignored him entirely when not forcing meager amounts of food and water into him. Even the justice enacted by the people was half-hearted, most of them afraid to approach the man. The occasional kick or strike or attempt to knock his legs out from under him to force his neck and arms to bear his weight. Mud and stones and offal and jeers.
And then night. And silence. And the true nature of it all. Long hours of late October frost and the alchemist alone there with his hair and clothes damp with rain and mud and the 'mistakes' the guards had made when giving him water. Left to freeze. Left to know that whatever devil he served wouldn't be coming to save him. For the first night, the inquisitor leaves him be. On the second, he pays a drunk to douse him with ice water in the small hours of the morning. It's all calculated. The first night awful but bearable. The second worse. All to being the sense of dread to a height on the eve of the third.
On the third, the guards free him from the pillory and bring him to a new cell. Nicer than the first one. Dry and free of vermin, with straw for a bed. A small table in one corner with two stools. The inquisitor sits on one. In front of him is a plate of hot food and a mug of wine, and the confession papers. ]
I think that perhaps you have suffered enough, my son.
[ His voice is soft. Pain, and then kindness, and then pain again. The Inquisitor has never failed to get a confession like this, where his peers who use pain alone struggle the second a witch turns stubborn.
The charges on the paper range from the wilful spread of disease to consorting and laying with devils to treason against one's fellow man. The first, the man has already confessed to verbally. Offering healthy people what he called a weakened form of the plague that has done such evil to nearby towns. A vaccine, he called it. ]
believe it or not trevor has no icons appropriate for when I play characters who are not trevor
And then night. And silence. And the true nature of it all. Long hours of late October frost and the alchemist alone there with his hair and clothes damp with rain and mud and the 'mistakes' the guards had made when giving him water. Left to freeze. Left to know that whatever devil he served wouldn't be coming to save him. For the first night, the inquisitor leaves him be. On the second, he pays a drunk to douse him with ice water in the small hours of the morning. It's all calculated. The first night awful but bearable. The second worse. All to being the sense of dread to a height on the eve of the third.
On the third, the guards free him from the pillory and bring him to a new cell. Nicer than the first one. Dry and free of vermin, with straw for a bed. A small table in one corner with two stools. The inquisitor sits on one. In front of him is a plate of hot food and a mug of wine, and the confession papers. ]
I think that perhaps you have suffered enough, my son.
[ His voice is soft. Pain, and then kindness, and then pain again. The Inquisitor has never failed to get a confession like this, where his peers who use pain alone struggle the second a witch turns stubborn.
The charges on the paper range from the wilful spread of disease to consorting and laying with devils to treason against one's fellow man. The first, the man has already confessed to verbally. Offering healthy people what he called a weakened form of the plague that has done such evil to nearby towns. A vaccine, he called it. ]
Sign, and then we can eat.