History AndIMustScream / TabletopGames

*** ''TabletopGame/VampireTheRequiem'' somehow manages to make torpor worse; when you go into torpor, your memories tend to... [[TheFogOfAges 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.

* In ''TabletopGame/BurningEmpires'', [[PuppeteerParasite 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.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}}'': The canonical fiction ''Cyberpunk 2020'' has Alt Cunningham's personality/mind transferred into cyberspace by the evil Arasaka Corporation. When the connection to her lifeless body is severed, she becomes permanently trapped in there: "Behind the walls of monitors, a disembodied Alt screams to [her boyfriend]".
** Made even worse for 'Borgs. Many full body conversions have a human brain as a plug-n-play WetwareCPU. They are like the Servitors of Warhammer 40K, but the brains can be put into another body. One conversion, the Dragoon, combines this trope with AndIMustScream. The cyberware and the drugs keep the thing (barely) controlled. It acts almost like a dumb robot. But your character can recover some humanity loss by moving into another body. Just now he/she has horrible nightmares and flashbacks from having been a 7 foot tall killing machine.

* In the ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'' campaign setting for ''Dungeons & Dragons'', this is the fate of all souls that are judged to be Faithless or False (that is, being a FlatEarthAtheist or subverting the faith you profess to) without another god interceding on their behalf: Their souls are stuck in the Wall of the Faithless, to spend eternity as mortar for the Wall while their souls are slowly digested into nothingness. The Wall was constructed by [[JerkassGods Myrkul]], former God of the Dead, simply because it was his prerogative to decide what would happen to souls that no-one else would take responsibility for. By the time Myrkul was dethroned many centuries later, the Wall had become a necessity because GodsNeedPrayerBadly.
* The Transmogrification spell from ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}: Magic'' keeps the target's mind intact and active but makes them in to an inanimate object for a while. The Entombment spell traps the target in a tiny bubble deep beneath the earth for eternity unless it is somehow undone.

** The dragon Miirym in the catacombs under Candlekeep is another prime example. Once a noble silver dragon who got a little greedy and attempted to loot Candlekeep's books for her hoard, she was punished to serve Candlekeep for a number of years as penance for her crimes. The kicker was the mage that enchanted her died before he could lift the binding enchantment off her and as it was a personal spell he never wrote down, no one else could lift the curse. She served Candlekeep, defending it until she was killed in battle. But the enchantment was so strong, even death couldn't break it and her ghost returned to inhabit the body and continue her service. Every time she is killed, she loves more of her mind and reforms days later to continue her eternal vigil. But it gets '''worse'''. After he started getting hostile in her mission to protect the books of Candlekeep, the mages had to lure and imprison her in the catacombs under Candlekeep where she remains, naught more than a spirit and a couple of bones. She longs for conversation and to be told of life on the outside, dreaming and wishing to soar under the sun again, feeling the warmth on her scales... Yet her torment continues as they still haven't found a way to end the enchantment centuries later.

*** In ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' vampires that are staked or starve for long enough, rather than dying, are sent into torpor, a kind of stasis. This is far from mercy, as vampires in this state experience the world more or less in real-time, but suffer terrifying nightmares. And considering that very few kindred would willingly starve themselves into this kind of state, this probably means that said vampire is trapped somewhere, meaning that this state can go on indefinitely. No wonder a great many ancient vampires (and possibly the antediluvians and Caine in the original series) have been driven utterly insane when revived. 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 savior devours everything that made you who you are and all your memories, before you crumble into a pile of ash. And that ''still'' doesn't end your torment, because it is rather heavily implied that you survive within your devourer's body for the rest of eternity.

*** Similarly, the Hierarchy in ''TabletopGame/WraithTheOblivion'' does this to whoever causes too much trouble. Their ghostly corpus is "soulforged," boiled down and rendered into a permanent shape, be it a sword, a coin, or an ashtray. A similar process exists through the arts of Moliate, where the wraith is effectively lobotomized and turned into something more suitable, be it a barghest for Legionnaire patrols or a high-ranking wraith's chaise lounge. However, official word as of the 2nd edition is that Soulforging destroys the consciousness of the ghost being soulforged... though wraiths don't know that for sure, as there are magical arts that let them extract knowledge from the forged soul. Oh, and the fact that soulsteel occasionally weeps and moans.

** There's the GodEmperor of Mankind, the MessianicArchetype of the setting. Reduced to a shattered husk, kept on life support for 10,000 years ([[HumanSacrifice powered by the lives of 1,000 psyker every day]]), unable to move or communicate yet [[PoweredByAForsakenChild his living consciousness is used as a psychic navigation system]] [[HyperSpaceIsAScaryPlace for Faster than Light travel through what is basically Hell]], and also while the unified humanity he worked to build falls into a {{dystopia}}n hell around him. It gets more into it when you realise that everything he aspired to accomplish (secular humanism and the destruction of Chaos altogether) is being defiled and torn down by the CorruptChurch. ''In his name''. On top of that, the supposed preachers of his word are also the ones possibly conspiring to keep him in the vegetative state, as they're all paranoid and believe that if he is allowed to die and reincarnate, he'll be gone forever and the Imperium will plunge into darkness forever (Inquisitor Lord Karamazov was famous for executing one of the supposed "reincarnations" of the Emperor, much to the chagrin of his colleagues). A quote about the 40k universe sums it up:

*** Being put into a Dreadnought is an honour for regular Space Marines as they can fight the Emperor's enemies even after death, albeit with slowly degrading mental faculties. Chaos Marines however, being {{Sense Freak}}s taken to the literal utter screaming extreme, consider it to be the worst punishment imaginable, as even while battling they can't feel [[AxCrazy the joy of slaughter]] and while inactive their brethren have to ''chain them to a wall'' to prevent Marine from breaking loose and killing everyone.

*** Any Daemon Weapon or a bound Daemon results in this on an EldritchAbomination. The daemon is so crazy that he will attempt to devour its wielder just so it can get some sort of outside contact, even though such an act would result in the weapon being rendered inert again.
** ''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. While his soul was trapped inside a portrait.]]

AndIMustScream in Tabletop Games.

** The splatbook ''Hordes of the Abyss'' from 3.5 edition expands upon DemonicPossession and what it entails. One in particular, the [[BalefulPolymorph transformer]] possession, allows the possessing demon to transform part of their host's body into a demonic shape. This trope comes into play when the demon completely transforms the victim; the book says "the demon has essentially replaced" the victim, leaving them trapped inside with no way to communicate or even [[FightingFromTheInside fight from within]] AND having [[ForcedToWatch to see every atrocity the demon is committing]].
** The accompanying ''Tyrants of the Nine Hells'' describes a variety of Baatezu called the Nupperibo. These unfortunate devils have [[YouHaveFailedMe failed]] their superiors in some way, so they're carted off to be tortured and mutilated as part of their demotion to a lower form of fiend. They get their [[EyeScream eyes]] and {{mouth stitched shut}}, their ears are filled with lead, their bodies are pumped full of all manner of foulness until they're bloated with corruption, and finally their brains are extracted through their nostrils. The result is a blind, deaf, mute, mindless wretch that can serve as CannonFodder in the Blood War, a beast of burden/slave laborer, and a very potent reminder of the price of failure.
** Levistus, Lord of the Fifth, has been stripped of his lordship and imprisoned inside a chunk of ice by Asmodeus for killing the Queen of Hell. After awhile, for reasons of his own, Asmodeus restored Levistus to his former position... without freeing him from the ice.
** Kyuss, an Elder Evil, is fully awake and aware within the obelisk where he's inprisoned, and has been such for all the millennia he has spent within it. He has never been able to breach it or escape, and can do nothing but beat against its walls, scream in impotent fury, and go more and more insane.

*** In ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' vampires that are staked or starve for long enough, rather than dying, are sent into torpor, a kind of stasis. This is far from mercy, as vampires in this state experience the world more or less in real-time, but suffer terrifying nightmares. And considering that very few kindred would willingly starve themselves into this kind of state, this probably means that said vampire is trapped somewhere, meaning that this state can go on indefinitely. No wonder a great many ancient vampires (and possibly the antediluvians and Caine in the original series) have been driven utterly insane when revived. 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 you crumble into a pile of ash. And that ''still'' doesn't end your torment, because it is rather heavily implied that you survive within your devourer's body for the rest of eternity.
*** 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 in their face, Vykos just simply smudged their hand over the mortal's face, crafting bone and flesh over all his facial features. Just as he was about to die, Vykos made one of their 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...

*** 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 in its face, Vykos just simply smudged its hand over the mortal's 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...

* ''TableTopGame/WorldOfDarkness''
** ''TableTopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness''
*** In ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' vampires that are staked or starve for long enough, rather than dying, are sent into torpor, a kind of stasis. This is far from mercy, as vampires in this state experience the world more or less in real-time, but suffer terrifying nightmares. And considering that very few kindred would willingly starve themselves into this kind of state, this probably means that said vampire is trapped somewhere, meaning that this state can go on indefinitely. No wonder a great many ancient vampires (and possibly the antediluvians and Caine in the original series) have been driven utterly insane when revived. 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 you crumble into a pile of ash. And that ''still'' doesn't end your torment, because it is rather heavily implied that you survive within your devourer's body for the rest of eternity.
*** 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 in its face, Vykos just simply smudged its hand over the mortal's 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...
*** Similarly, the Hierarchy in ''TabletopGame/WraithTheOblivion'' does this to whoever causes too much trouble. Their ghostly corpus is "soulforged," boiled down and rendered into a permanent shape, be it a sword, a coin, or an ashtray. A similar process exists through the arts of Moliate, where the wraith is effectively lobotomized and turned into something more suitable, be it a barghest for Legionnaire patrols or a high-ranking wraith's chaise lounge. However, official word as of the 2nd edition is that Soulforging destroys the consciousness of the ghost being soulforged... though wraiths don't know that for sure, as there are magical arts that let them extract knowledge from the forged soul. Oh, and the fact that soulsteel occasionally weeps and moans.
*** ''TabletopGame/DemonTheFallen'' defines Hell very succinctly. Imagine you could see every single dimension - all of them. You can see all the colors in the spectrum, every atom in every mote of dust... You are a being of all of reality. Got that? Shut that all off in a fraction of a second. And then keep it off. ''For millennia''. It's just you, the others who were on your side, and the thought that everything you worked for has failed and can never be regained. Yeah, there's a reason the ''Demon'' KarmaMeter is called '''''Torment'''''.
** ''TabletopGame/ChroniclesOfDarkness''
*** ''TabletopGame/VampireTheRequiem'' somehow manages to make torpor worse; when you go into torpor, your memories tend to... [[TheFogOfAges 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.
*** ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'' does this to all changelings -- your player character is someone who, by whatever scraps of luck, managed to somehow ''escape''. And you have no idea if maybe, just maybe, you were actually ''let go''. You may have been the pot in which a twining, bloodsucking rose was grown, your Keeper gently watering you with arcane acids and admiring the beauty of the flowers growing out from the slits in your lungs. You may have been twisted to have the body of a hound and the mind of a man, then the body of a man and the mind of a hound, over and over and back and forth until you couldn't tell which was which. You may have had to spend a hundred years walking along the razor edges of a network of swords, suspended high above a valley of crackling flames or gnashing rocks. The True Fae have such a wide variety of ways to "play" with humans...
*** In ''TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening'', if an Abyssal entity doesn't simply kill you in horrible fashion or corrupt the next seven generations of your family to its service, it will likely inflict this upon you. Abyssal creatures are less than pleasant.

*** Speaking of Slannesh, there's also his champion, Lucius the Eternal. If you kill him and feel the smallest amount of satsifaction for your deed, you will ever so slowly be transformed into Lucius. Eventually nothing will be left of you, except for a new, throbbing face with an eternal scream fixed onto it on Lucius' armor, and in the 10,000 or so years that he has been killing (And been killed) he has dozens, if not hundreds of those faces covering his armor.

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'':
** The Imprisonment spell entombs the subject for an indefinite amount of time somewhere "far beneath the surface of the earth". Normally, this spell is not an example as the victim is put in [[HumanPopsicle Suspended Animation]] and won't remember any part of its imprisonment when released. However, in ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'' this is not the case as the player is threatened with this spell (and the emphasis of ''suffering'') by a [[KnightTemplar Harper]], and one can free a number of people from an artifact that imprisons users in the Underdark; all but two (one who'd only been in there for days, and another who was TheUndead and presumably too crazy to be affected) are alive but incurably insane. In 5e, Imprisonment can be cast by Warlocks and Wizards as a 9th level spell. The effect vary, but each one is what-the-fucktopus territory. '''Burial''' is the classic version, '''Chaining''' and '''Slumber''' is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, '''Hedge Prison''' throws the target in a PocketDimension of whatever the caster wants, be it a tower, a cage, another confined structure, or, if you're feeling especially sadistic, a labyrinth, and '''Minimus Containment''', which shrinks the target down to 1 inch, and places them in a gemstone for your viewing pleasure. Every version can only be dispelled by the caster, if a condition set by the caster is fulfilled or if someone wastes a 9th level spell slot on Dispel Magic, requiring a level 17 spell caster at least. If you don't have that, and really want your friend back, have fun searching down that ''Wish'' scroll...
** A ''Mirror of Life Trapping'' can be used as a trap, a prison, or both. If a sentient being sees his reflection, he's drawn inside it, and kept in one of several cells, which can theoretically hold him forever. Even worse, a command word (usually known by the mirror's owner) can call a prisoner's image forth to be questioned. (The potential for abuse by diabolical villains is great; fortunately, ''all'' prisoners in a mirror can be released by breaking it, which is rather easy.)
** The second ''Monster Manual'' in the 4th Edition describes a specific case, the fate of the Primordial Storralk, who challenged Demogorgon for the title of Prince of Demons and came very close to winning. Demogorgon spared him, but ripped his body to pieces, and used the still-living pieces to construct his throne room. Storralk still lives in this state, and the two-headed giants called ettins were originally spawned from his body, including Demogorgon's powerful [[TheDragon Exarch]] Trarak. (Legend says that Storralk can be released from his imprisonment if Tharak is slain and her heart burned upon Demogorgon's throne; the freed Primordial could prove a valuable ally for anyone who would challenge the Prince of Demons.)
** The splatbook ''Faces of Evil: The Fiends'' mentions the Tower of Incarnate Pain, under construction by the yugoloths on Carceri. It is made of both dead souls and any mortal beings who come too close to it; they are absorbed by the Tower and turned into bricks. Fortunately, all victims have been allowed to die eventually, because the yugoloths can't seem to keep the thing up. Three times, the geheleths have attacked the Tower and torn it into pieces, the absorbed victims screaming in the process.
** It's hard to feel sorry for an [[EldritchAbomination aboleth]], but as aquatic creatures, they can't breathe air for very long, but they do ''not'' "drown" if they are separated from the water too long. Instead, they enter a state called the "long dreaming", which they consider far worse than death; a thick membrane forms around the aboleth, and it enters a state of suspended animation where -- depending on the edition -- it either experiences hideous nightmares or remains fully aware and cognizant of the world around but unable to move or use its psionic powers; an aboleth can survive forever in this state, remaining in the long dreaming however long it takes for it to become submerged again. (Of course, an aboleth in such a state is a sitting duck if an enemy -- which is most other races -- finds it, so it's usually killed soon anyway.)
** The splatbook ''Hordes of the Abyss'' from 3.5 edition expands upon DemonicPossession and what it entails. One in particular, the [[BalefulPolymorph transformer]] possession, allows the possessing demon to transform part of their host's body into a demonic shape. This trope comes into play when the demon completely transforms the victim; the book says "the demon has essentially replaced" the victim, leaving them trapped inside with no way to communicate or even [[FightingFromTheInside fight from within]] AND having [[ForcedToWatch to see every atrocity the demon is committing]].
** The accompanying ''Tyrants of the Nine Hells'' describes a variety of Baatezu called the Nupperibo. These unfortunate devils have [[YouHaveFailedMe failed]] their superiors in some way, so they're carted off to be tortured and mutilated as part of their demotion to a lower form of fiend. They get their [[EyeScream eyes]] and {{mouth stitched shut}}, their ears are filled with lead, their bodies are pumped full of all manner of foulness until they're bloated with corruption, and finally their brains are extracted through their nostrils. The result is a blind, deaf, mute, mindless wretch that can serve as CannonFodder in the Blood War, a beast of burden/slave laborer, and a very potent reminder of the price of failure.
** Levistus, Lord of the Fifth, has been stripped of his lordship and imprisoned inside a chunk of ice by Asmodeus for killing the Queen of Hell. After awhile, for reasons of his own, Asmodeus restored Levistus to his former position... without freeing him from the ice.
** Kyuss, an Elder Evil, is fully awake and aware within the obelisk where he's inprisoned, and has been such for all the millennia he has spent within it. He has never been able to breach it or escape, and can do nothing but beat against its walls, scream in impotent fury, and go more and more insane.
** ''The Book of Vile Darkness'' has a charming spell called ''eternity of torture''. It makes its subject immortal, [[TheNeedless while also making it so that they no longer need to eat or drink]]. Oh, and it subjects them to unimaginable agony in the process. The perfect tool for that 17th-level wizard who [[FateWorseThanDeath thinks just killing their enemies is too good for them]].
* ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' 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 this fate. Elise Mordenheim, trapped in a decaying and shattered body that her MadScientist husband struggles in vain to restore, is perhaps the most prominent example.
* In the ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'' campaign setting for ''Dungeons & Dragons'', this is the fate of all souls that are judged to be Faithless or False (that is, being a FlatEarthAtheist or subverting the faith you profess to) without another god interceding on their behalf: Their souls are stuck in the Wall of the Faithless, to spend eternity as mortar for the Wall while their souls are slowly digested into nothingness. The Wall was constructed by [[JerkassGods Myrkul]], former God of the Dead, simply because it was his prerogative to decide what would happen to souls that no-one else would take responsibility for. By the time Myrkul was dethroned many centuries later, the Wall had become a necessity because GodsNeedPrayerBadly.
* The Transmogrification spell from ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}: Magic'' keeps the target's mind intact and active but makes them in to an inanimate object for a while. The Entombment spell traps the target in a tiny bubble deep beneath the earth for eternity unless it is somehow undone.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'', like ''TabletopGame/WraithTheOblivion'', has soulforging as a common practice in the Underworld. It goes past "common" -- soulsteel is considered one of the [[ElementalCrafting five magical materials]], and the Deathlords are all too willing to make their undead subjects into arms and armor for their Abyssal soldiers.
** Made worse in that soulsteel was around before there was an Underworld. [[spoiler:Autochthon, the great maker, had a race he made that pissed him off so much that he melted their entire civilization into slag and removed all references to them, and THEN took their souls and forged them into soulsteel inside his body.]]
** 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 ''TabletopGame/BurningEmpires'', [[PuppeteerParasite 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 ''TabletopGame/MonstersAndOtherChildishThings'', the empty skin of a person an Excruciator has hollowed out into a LivingBodysuit is explicitly mentioned to be still be alive and conscious. No, the game doesn't even ''hint'' that there's any way to restore a person from this.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}}'': The canonical fiction ''Cyberpunk 2020'' has Alt Cunningham's personality/mind transferred into cyberspace by the evil Arasaka Corporation. When the connection to her lifeless body is severed, she becomes permanently trapped in there: "Behind the walls of monitors, a disembodied Alt screams to [her boyfriend]".
** Made even worse for 'Borgs. Many full body conversions have a human brain as a plug-n-play WetwareCPU. They are like the Servitors of Warhammer 40K, but the brains can be put into another body. One conversion, the Dragoon, combines this trope with AndIMustScream. The cyberware and the drugs keep the thing (barely) controlled. It acts almost like a dumb robot. But your character can recover some humanity loss by moving into another body. Just now he/she has horrible nightmares and flashbacks from having been a 7 foot tall killing machine.
* While the Immortality gift from ''TabletopGame/{{Nobilis}}'' explicitly protects you from attempts to pull this, this doesn't stop it being played straight in some of the border fictions.
* ''TabletopGame/BleakWorld'': The [[GoneHorriblyWrong Experiments Gone Horribly Wrong]] are defined by multiple different personalities that cannot directly control the body, but can talk to the prime consciousness. However, various perks allow experiments to silence, but not outright destroy, these personalities. Essentially this traps them in a state where they can see and experience everything they do, but never even affect the decision.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'':
** In its natural form, the Great Old One Mhar is composed entirely of molten rock. Its most commonly depicted, mountainous appearance is the result of its lava cooling and solidifying in response to less-than-infernal temperatures, a process that Mhar finds agonizing. It tries to alleviate its suffering by sleeping within planetary cores, but these inevitably cool and reawaken it to its pain. Its current residence on Golarion is the result of a failed attempt to escape into the Plane of Fire, which left it trapped within Golarion's crust. As a result, Mhar has spent the last several thousand years trapped in a prison it cannot escape, being driven ever more insane by the agony of its solidified state.
** One of the potential results of failing your save when using the Codex of Infinite Planes is to have your soul permanently bound to your body and cut off from the normal cycle of life and death. If you die after this happens, your consciousness remains trapped within your body, which no longer decays but which you lose all ability to control.

* In ''TabletopGame/MonstersAndOtherChildishThings'', the empty skin of a person an Excruciator has hollowed out into a LivingBodysuit 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.

* Both the old and new ''Vampire'' games (''[[TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade Masquerade]]'' and ''[[TabletopGame/VampireTheRequiem Requiem]]'') had a variation on this. When Vampires are staked or starve for long enough, rather than dying, they are sent into torpor, a kind of stasis. This is far from mercy, as vampires in this state experience time more or less in realtime, but suffer terrifying nightmares. And considering that very few kindred would willingly starve themselves into this kind of state, this probably means that said vampire is trapped somewhere, meaning that this state can go on indefinitely. No wonder a great many ancient vampires (and possibly the antediluvians and Caine in the original series) have been driven utterly insane when revived.
** 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 you crumble into a pile of ash. And that ''still'' doesn't end your torment, 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... [[TheFogOfAges 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 in their face, Vykos just simply smudged their hand over the mortal's face, crafting bone and flesh over all his facial features. Just as he was about to die, Vykos made one of their 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...
** Similarly, the Hierarchy in ''TabletopGame/WraithTheOblivion'' does this to whoever causes too much trouble. Their ghostly corpus is "soulforged," boiled down and rendered into a permanent shape, be it a sword, a coin, or an ashtray. However, official word as of the 2nd edition is that Soulforging destroys the consciousness of the ghost being soulforged.
** ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'' does this to all changelings -- your player character is someone who, by whatever scraps of luck, managed to somehow ''escape''. And you have no idea if maybe, just maybe, you were actually ''let go''. You may have been the pot in which a twining, bloodsucking rose was grown, your Keeper gently watering you with arcane acids and admiring the beauty of the flowers growing out from the slits in your lungs. You may have been twisted to have the body of a hound and the mind of a man, then the body of a man and the mind of a hound, over and over and back and forth until you couldn't tell which was which. You may have had to spend a hundred years walking along the razor edges of a network of swords, suspended high above a valley of crackling flames or gnashing rocks. The True Fae have such a wide variety of ways to "play" with humans...
** In ''TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening'', if an Abyssal entity doesn't simply kill you in horrible fashion or corrupt the next seven generations of your family to its service, it will likely inflict this upon you. Abyssal creatures are less than pleasant.
** ''TabletopGame/DemonTheFallen'' defines Hell very succinctly. Imagine you could see every single dimension - all of them. You can see all the colors in the spectrum, every atom in every mote of dust... You are a being of all of reality. Got that? Shut that all off in a fraction of a second. And then keep it off. ''For millennia''. It's just you, the others who were on your side, and the thought that everything you worked for has failed and can never be regained. Yeah, there's a reason the ''Demon'' KarmaMeter is called '''''Torment'''''.

** There's the GodEmperor of Mankind, the MessianicArchetype of the setting. Reduced to a shattered husk, kept on life support for 10,000 years ([[HumanSacrifice powered by the lives of 1,000 psyker every day]]), unable to move or communicate yet [[PoweredByAForsakenChild his living consciousness is used as a psychic navigation system]] [[HyperSpaceIsAScaryPlace for Faster than Light travel through what is basically Hell]], and also while the unified humanity he worked to build falls into a {{dystopia}}n hell around him. It gets more into it when you realise that everything he aspired to accomplish (secular humanism and the destruction of Chaos altogether) is being defiled and torn down by the CorruptChurch. ''In his name''. On top of that, the supposed preachers of his word are also the ones possibly conspiring to keep him in the vegetative state, as they're all paranoid and believe that if he is allowed to die and reincarnate, he'll be gone forever and the Imperium will plunge into darkness forever (Inquisitor Lord Karamazov was famous for executing one of the supposed "reincarnations" of the Emperor, much to the chagrin of his collegues). A quote about the 40k universe sums it up:

*** Unless Guilliman is still human enough to have the same endorphins as humans (and we're pretty sure he is). The human body actually dulls your pain in the moment of death, see, so in the words of 4chan "Guilliman's been high as a kite for the last ten thousand years."
*** Again, point of view is everything. Guilliman is serving as inspiration to his chapter and their many many successors. While he might be suffering (and even that's quite a noble thing in the Imperium), he is also watching over his sons as they fight for the Emperor as he did. Even in their darkest days, Guilliman is standing vigil...
** A spinoff short story ''Into the Maelstrom'' has a traitor SpaceMarine 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}}s taken to the literal utter screaming extreme, consider it to be the worst punishment imaginable, as even while battling they can't feel [[AxeCrazy 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. Note that in all cases, the occupant of a Dreadnought ''can'' scream, it's just that in the case of Chaos Dreadnoughts, there's no one around that cares.

*** Any Daemon Weapon or a bound Daemon results in this on a EldritchAbomination. The daemon is so crazy that he will attempt to devour its wielder just so it can get some sort of outside contact, even though such an act would result in the weapon being rendered inert again.
** ''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. While his soul was trapped inside a portrait.]] As this occurred during the Literature/HorusHeresy, 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.
*** Then its revealed that [[spoiler:Fulgrim had successfully regain control of his body, and he trapped the deamon in the portrait he was trapped in, and is fully embraced his new form as a Daemon Prince.]]
*** This could be a case of CursedWithAwesome, as all fallen Primarchs are now [[PhysicalGod Daemon Princes]].
*** The primarch Lorgar spends his entire time thinking about the true nature of Chaos.
** Haemonculi do this 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. The Haemonculi arts, however, are in fact required by the Dark Eldar to survive (pain and the suffering of others apparently grants them immortality so that they in turn do not suffer AndIMustScream under [[EldritchAbomination Slaanesh]]). Needless to say, this may very well apply to every single slave of the Dark Eldar.

** The Eldar as a whole. Once Eldar die, their souls are still fully conscious in the Warp and then immediately sucked into a hellish disgusting vortex by [[EldritchAbomination Slaanesh]] to eternally torture and rape them in countless different ways day and night forever and ever. Thus it is completely necessary for them to make [[MoralEventHorizon gut-wrenching sacrifices]], including manipulating entire civilizations into destroying each other (and in the case of the Dark Eldar, torturing other species as sacrifice to appease said god of pain), just so that they can save one of their own. All Eldar need to carry with them a [[SoulJar Spirit Stone]] (or Waystone in some versions) that absorb their soul upon death, preventing Slaanesh from getting his hands on them. These same stones can be used to revive them in the form of a Wraithguard or Wraithlord or (in the case of farseers) put into the craftworld to join a crystal wall of seers for all of eternity, sharing their knowledge with their descendants. However, it's known that several craftworlds are desolate and completely devoid of life, as well as eldar falling on foreign worlds, their stones remain unretrieved for possibly many years, or never. They will be stuck alone, unable to communicate with anyone (it's stated that they only join their ancestors once their spirit stones are attached to the infinity circuit), for all that time. And you know what? This fate is still ''far'' better than the other gruesome alternative.

*** Speaking of Slannesh, there's also his champion, Lucius the Eternal, a complete monster by many people's standards (Even his fellow Chaos Space Marines consider him a monster amongst monsters), who cannot die. To be specific if, by some rare chance you do kill him, if you feel the smallest amount of satsifaction for your deed, you will ever so slowly be transformed into Lucius. Eventually nothing will be left of you, except for a new , throbbing face with an eternal scream fixed onto it on Lucius' armor, and in the 10,000 or so years that he has been killing (And been killed) he has dozens, if not hundreds of those faces covering his armor.

** 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.

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''
** The setting has the Imprisonment spell, which entombs the subject for an indefinite amount of time somewhere "far beneath the surface of the earth". Normally, this spell is not an example as the victim is put in [[HumanPopsicle Suspended Animation]] and won't remember any part of its imprisonment when released. However, in ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'' this is not the case as the player is threatened with this spell (and the emphasis of ''suffering'') by a [[KnightTemplar Harper]], and one can free a number of people from an artifact that imprisons users in the Underdark; all but two (one who'd only been in there for days, and another who was TheUndead and presumably too crazy to be affected) are alive but incurably insane.
** The magic item the ''Mirror of Life Trapping'' can be used as a trap, a prison, or both. If a sentient being sees his reflection, he's drawn inside it, and kept in one of several cells, which can theoretically hold him forever. Even worse, a command word (usually known by the mirror's owner) can call a prisoner's image forth to be questioned. (The potential for abuse by diabolical villains is great; fortunately, ''all'' prisoners in a mirror can be released by breaking it, which is rather easy.)
** The supplement Book of Vile Darkness has the spell Eternity of Torture, which is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. Like most Vile Magic, only wizards who have already fallen past the MoralEventHorizon would consider using it.
** The second Monster Manual in the 4th Edition describes a specific case, the fate of the Primordial Storralk, who challenged Demogorgon for the title of Prince of Demons and came very close to winning. Demogorgon spared him, but ripped his body to pieces, and used the still-living pieces to construct his throne room. Storralk still lives in this state, and the two-headed giants called ettins were originally spawned from his body, including Demogorgon's powerful [[TheDragon Exarch]] Trarak. (Legend says that Storralk can be released from his imprisonment if Tharak is slain and her heart burned upon Demogorgon's throne; the freed Primordial could prove a valuable ally for anyone who would challenge the Prince of Demons.)

** It's hard to feel sorry for an [[EldritchAbomination aboleth]], but as aquatic creatures, they can't breathe air for very long, and they do ''not'' "drown" if they are separated from the water too long. Instead, they enter a state called "Long Dreaming" which they consider far worse than death; a thick membrane forms around the aboleth, and it enters a state of suspended animation where it experiences hideous nightmares. (Of course, an aboleth in such a state is a sitting duck if an enemy - which is most other races - finds it, so it's usually killed soon anyway.)
* The ''Dungeons & Dragons''' setting ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' 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 AndIMustScream fate. Elise Mordenheim, trapped in a decaying and shattered body that her MadScientist husband struggles in vain to restore, is perhaps the most prominent example.

** 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.
** There is also the relatively mundane and often contested example from the First Age, where a Solar made an instrument that works by torturing various mortals, their screams made supernaturally beautiful, and the mortals are not allowed to die.
* Ravi, a planeswalker in the [[TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering world of Ulgrotha]], was desperate to end a huge war. She did so by ringing the Apocalypse Chime, which wiped out the whole battlefield of its warring parties, and put herself in a magic coffin designed by her mentor to avoid the destruction. Unfortunately, she didn't ascertain how to get OUT. [[spoiler:She was eventually found by Baron Sengir, becoming the "delightfully" mad Grandmother Sengir.]]
* In Burning Empires, [[PuppeteerParasite 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.

* The canonical fiction of [[TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}} Cyberpunk 2020]] has Alt Cunningham's personality/mind transfered into cyberspace by the evil Arasaka Corporation. When the connection to her lifeless body is severed, she becomes permanently trapped in there: "Behind the walls of monitors, a disembodied Alt screams to [her boyfriend]".

* The [[GoneHorriblyWrong Experiments Gone Horribly Wrong]] of ''TabletopGame/BleakWorld'' are defined by multiple different personalities that cannot directly control the body, but can talk to the prime consciousness. However, various perks allow experiments to silence, but not outright destroy, these personalities. Essentially this traps them in a state where they can see and experience everything they do, but never even affect the decision.
* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'''s exile mechanic tend to use this trope (or otherwise a FateWorseThanDeath) or CessationOfExistence to remove a creature from the game, such as the case with [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=368514 Unmake]]
** On Kamigawa, the corrupt emperor [[LightIsNotGood Konda]] attained immortality, and was promptly imprisoned indefinitely as punishment.
** Daxos of Meletis was killed by a BrainwashedAndCrazy Elspeth, who later strikes a deal with the god of the Theros Underworld Erebos, trading her soul for Daxos to return to life [[spoiler:before she is killed by Heliod]]. Unfortunately, Erebos cheats her out of this deal by bringing Daxos back to life as a [[OurZombiesAreDifferent Returned]], eternally bound to seek out Elsepth [[spoiler:even though she is dead]].

*** 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 in its face, Vykos just simply smudged its hand over the mortal's 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...

* {{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?

** The supplement Book of Vile Darkness has the spell Eternity of Torture.(Like most Vile Magic, only wizards who had already fallen past the MoralEventHorizon would consider using it.)

* The [[GoneHorriblyWrong Experiments Gone Horribly Wrong]] of ''TabletopGame/BleakWorld'' are defined by multiple different personalities that cannot directly control the body, but can talk to the prime consciousness. However, various perks allow experiments to silence, but not outright destroy, these personalities. Essentially this traps them in a state where they can see and experience everything they do, but never even affect the decision.

** A spinoff short story ''Into the Maelstrom'' has a traitor SpaceMarine 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}}s taken to the literal utter screaming extreme, consider it to be the worst punishment imaginable, as even while battling they can't feel [[AxeCrazy 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.

** 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 you crumble into a pile of ash. And that ''still'' doesn't end your torment, because it is rather heavily implied that you survive within your devourer's body for the rest of eternity.

** The second Monster Manual in the 4th Edition describes a specific case, the fate of the Primordial Storralk, who challenged Demogorgon for the title of Prince of Demons and came very close to winning. Demogorgon spared him, but ripped his body to pieces, and used the still-living pieces to construct his throne room. Storralk still lives in this state, and the two-headed giants called ettins were originally spawned from his body, including the Demogorgon's powerful[[TheDragon Exarch]] Trarak. (Legend says that Storralk can be released from his imprisonment if Tharak is slain and her heart burned upon Demogorgon's throne; the freed Primordial could prove a valuable ally for anyone who would challenge the Prince of Demons.)
** The Splat book ''Faces of Evil: The Fiends'' mentions the Tower of Incarnate Pain, under construction by the yugoloths on Carceri. It is made of both dead souls and any mortal beings who come to close to it; they are absorbed by the Tower and turned into bricks. Fortunately, all victims have been allowed to die eventually, because the yugoloths can't seem to keep the thing up. Three times, the geheleths have attacked the Tower and torn it into pieces, the absorbed victims screaming in the process.
** It's hard to feel sorry for an [[EldrichAbomination aboleth]], but as aquatic creatures, they can't breath air for very long, and they do ''not'' "drown" if they are separated from the water too long. Instead, they enter a state called "Long Dreaming" which they consider far worse than death; a thick membrane forms around it, and it enters a state of suspended animation where it experiences hideous nightmares. (Of course, an aboleth in such a state is a sitting duck if an enemy - which is most other races - finds it, so it's usually killed soon anyway.)

* One ''Dungeons & Dragons'' monster race, the Aboleth, are immortal abominations of the sea. Should they dehydrate, they don't die, but instead turn into an immobile shell, still aware but incapable of any sort of action. This is described in the Lords of Madness supplement as a FateWorseThanDeath.

* The [[GoneHorriblyWrong Experiments Gone Horribly Wrong]] of ''TabletopGame/BleakWorld'' are defined by multiple different personalities that cannot directly control the body, but can talk to the prime consciousness. However, various perks allow experiments to silence, but not outright destroy, these personalities. Essentially this traps them in a state where they can see and experience everything they do, but never even effect the decision.

* While the Immortality gift from ''TabletopGame/{{Nobilis}}'' explicitly protects you from attempts to pull this, this doesn't stop it being played straight in some of the border fictions.

* ''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.

* The Transmogrification spell from ''{{GURPS}}: Magic'' keeps the target's mind intact and active but makes them in to an inanimate object for a while. The Entombment spell traps the target in a tiny bubble deep beneath the earth for eternity unless it is somehow undone.

* Ravi, a planeswalker in the [[MagicTheGathering world of Ulgrotha]], was desperate to end a huge war. She did so by ringing the Apocalypse Chime, which wiped out the whole battlefield of its warring parties, and put herself in a magic coffin designed by her mentor to avoid the destruction. Unfortunately, she didn't ascertain how to get OUT. [[spoiler:She was eventually found by Baron Sengir, becoming the "delightfully" mad Grandmother Sengir.]]

* In ''MonstersAndOtherChildishThings'', the empty skin of a person an Excruciator has hollowed out into a LivingBodysuit 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.