And I Must Scream/Tabletop Games: Difference between revisions

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* [[Mortasheen]]'s most notable inflictor of this is [http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/willoweird.htm Willoweird], a nasty walking tree that hypnotizes you into eating one of its fruits. When then converts you into a tree, that the Willoweird then parasitically feeds upon. Did we mention that you can survive for ''decades'' in this state?

** [[It Got Worse|It gets worse]]. One sourcebook mentions that the nightmares tend to involve what put you into torpor in the first place, with kindred starving to torpor stuck in an eternal loop where they hunt a human and never reach them. Go into torpor through violence, or being staked, and god help you because you're going to relive that losing battle until someone finds it in their dead heart to revive you. That is if they don't decide to chow down on you instead, in which case, you'll simply scream inside your immobile body and watch as your saviour devours everything that made you who you are and all your memories, before crumbling into a pile of ash. Your torment isn't ended because it is rather heavily implied that you survive within your devourer's body for the rest of eternity.

*** ''Requiem'' somehow manages to make it worse; when you go into torpor, your memories tend to... [[The Fog of Ages|shift]]. It's not uncommon for an ancient vampire to come out of a long torpor wondering what really happened, what was a story he heard second-hand, and what was just idle fantasy. Oh, and it's suggested in some books that vampire souls actually manage to travel to the Underworld when they're in torpor... and there are ''things'' in the Underworld that don't like them.

** The Tzimisce in ''Vampire: The Masquerade'' do this ''for kicks'' to whoever screws with them, and a few who don't.

*** In the sourcebook ''Mexico by Night'' there is a character description of one Jaggedy Andy who, as a mortal, insulted Sasha Vykos, the infamous Sabbat Tzimisce. When Andy spit ''it'' in the face, Vykos just simply smudged its hand over the mortals face, crafting bone and flesh over all his facial features. Just as he was about to die, Vykos made one of its thugs Embrace him. Now he wakes up every night without facial features and every night he must open his mouth and eyes with a hammer and chisel, which is a very painful process. To add to the insult he is as good as grounded to the landfill in which he was left, because even poking his ''face'' outside could start an uproar both among Vampires and Mortals. Another thought to go through before messing with the Tzimisce...

* This trope nicely sums up the ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' universe. And then there are hundreds of orders of magnitude nadirs that really stand out...

** A spinoff short story ''Into the Maelstrom'' has a traitor [[Space Marine]] imprisoned in a Dreadnaught battle suit, normally an honor, but never released, so he is doomed to live forever in a small metal box, with no limbs. This is in fact the fate of ''all'' Space Marines encased in Dreadnaught armour, with the occasional mindless rampage, but it isn't always this trope (and is a good example of how a different attitude can affect the outcome). Regular Space Marines, both those encased and their brethren, consider it an honour as they can fight the Emperor's enemies even after death, albeit with slowly degrading mental faculties. Chaos Marines however, being [[Sense Freak|Sense Freaks]] taken to the literal utter screaming extreme, consider it to be the worst punishment imaginable, as even while battling they can't feel [[Axe Crazy|the joy of slaughter]] and while inactive their brethren have to ''chain them to a wall'' to prevent the completely bugfuck insane Marine (even by Chaos standards) from breaking loose and killing everyone.

** ''Fulgrim'' has an impressive one of these, {{spoiler|as the primarch Fulgrim is eventually completely possessed by the demon joyriding in him, who keeps him fully aware of its actions in his body, which is mutated by the demon into something more pleasing to it.}} As this occurred during the [[Horus Heresy]], the fate is up to 10,000 years and running.

*** Not necessarily; Horus vowed that he would free {{spoiler|Fulgrim}} from that particular fate, and there's a chance he managed it before dying. We'll have to wait and see.

**** The primarch Lorgar spends his entire time thinking about the true nature of Chaos.

** Still nothing compared to the Outsider and possibly some Necrons - they were imprisoned before humans ever arose, on the order of some ''60 million years''. When awake the Necrons fall into this trope, completely subservient automatons trapped within effectively immortal metal shells. Most Necrons are "fortunately" mindless and probably not aware of their situation, but Necron Lords most definitely are.

** Almost the entire Thousand Sons Legion suffers from this, as a screwed up spell caused most of them to be reduced to dust with their souls trapped in their armour. They can still move (and fight) but are utterly enslaved to Ahrihman and the other non-dusted leaders.

** Haemonculi do this sometimes to their victims, surgically altering their bodies until they are, say, a collection of organs still alive and sentient, or a sack of helpless flesh.

** A milder example occurred in the short story "Among Fiends". The Chaos Champion Scaevolla is forced by the gods to choose between hunting down the progeny of his former best fried for all eternity or spawnhood. He isn't pleased.

* ''[[Warhammer]] Fantasy'' has Count Mordrek the Damned, which under normal circumstances would be a redundant title for any Chaos warrior. This one suffers from constant and horrific mutations, but unlike most that suffer this fate, he remains sealed inside his armor, and his mind has been left intact. It's also mentioned that every time he dies the Chaos gods resurrect him, and this has been going on for so long that no one remembers which god he worshiped, or what he did to offend them.

* ''Dungeons & Dragons''' ''[[Ravenloft]]'' setting has a monster known as the Wall of Flesh. It's created when the rage and fear of a person who has been imprisoned within a wall mixes with Ravenloft's special flavor of magic.

** Several named NPCs of the Land of Mists have likewise suffered an [[And I Must Scream]] fate. Elise Mordenheim, trapped in a decaying and shattered body that her [[Mad Scientist]] husband struggles in vain to restore, is perhaps the most prominent example.

** The Ebon Dragon has Charms that allow him to banish victims to a horrifying darkness beyond reality where they are completely alone and from which there is no escape.

** The Neverborn, who are simply too powerful to die, are locked in an eternal nightmare from which there is no obvious escape. This is how they can be sympathetic despite their plan (insofar as they are sane enough to have one) being the complete obliteration of everything that exists - because this is quite possibly the only way for them to finally escape.

* In Burning Empires, [[Puppeteer Parasite|infection by a Vaylen]] is treated much the same way as character permadeath because the infected character is irreversibly rendered unable to control its own body, effectively comatose, ''even'' when there's no worm driving it around.

* In ''[[Monsters and Other Childish Things]]'', the empty skin of a person an Excruciator has hollowed out into a [[Living Bodysuit]] is explicitly mentioned to be still live and conscious. No, the game doesn't even ''hint'' that there's any way to restore a person from this.