[Prince Charon]

On Torture

Given the subsettings within this setting, it's a given that torture happens, so I might as well say something about it (though note that this is not about BDSM, which is a very different concept, and outside the scope of this article). This may be disturbing or triggering for some readers, so please read responsibly.


There are three problems with torture, but not everyone cares about all of them, and some really don't care about any of them:

* First, there's the moral/ethical issue. Torture is clearly wrong by most of the systems of morals and ethics that I'm aware of, but there's no way to explain why without people going into whataboutism, or saying 'some people just deserve it for <insert bad justification here>.' Also, some people reading this might not care, being evil, or sociopaths, or fetishizing Hard Men Making Hard Decisions While Hard. So, let's look at the practical reasons, both mainly related to using torture in interrogation.

* The second reason to not use torture is that it isn't a way to make people tell the truth, it's just a way to make them talk. Someone who has been tortured for long enough (too long) will say or sign anything to make it stop, but they'll be saying what they think the torturer wants to hear, regardless of how much or little truth there is to it. If you're evil and all you want is a confession so that you can move on to torturing the next victim, or you're hurting them because you hate them (or hate their ethnicity/religion/sex/whatever), or just like hurting people, that doesn't matter, because you don't care about the truth. If however you are genuinely trying to get to the truth of the matter, it's really the wrong way to go, and is often slower, not faster, than the more ethical interrogation methods that modern police forces actually use (so even if you're a sociopath, you still wouldn't want to use torture if you're trying to get to the truth, especially if you need it quickly).

* Third, prolonged torture can cause memory problems and make it difficult to tell the difference between reality and fantasy, so you end up with people believing what you've told them to believe. In-setting, this also means that torture makes accurate mind reading more difficult, even if your telepath is not also a reflexive empath; likewise, if you have the ability to perceive the truth or prevent lying, that will only be what the victim currently believes to be the truth. If you're evil and trying to brainwash them, then this is useful, but again, if you're trying to get to the truth, then it's directly counterproductive.

In conclusion, torture is both evil and impractical. It may still happen in-story, because some of the characters are evil and/or vicious idiots, but I don't intend to depict it as right or good to do so, and in case it needs to be said, I don't want other authors in this setting to do that, either.