History AndIMustScream / TabletopGames

** ''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 HorusHeresy, the fate is up to 10,000 years and running.

* ''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 ''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 the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' campaign setting ''TabletopGame/TheForgottenRealms'', 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 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.

* ''DungeonsAndDragons'' 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 ''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.

**** People near death release endorphins to dull the pain he iss actually probably been high as a kite for the last 10000 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 (but thats 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...

*** Chaos Dreadnoughts were purposely built with this in mind, their sarcophagi reconfigured to drive the occupants into madness, which the occupants can never get used to because of the design.

** The supplement Book of Vile Darkness has the spell Eternity of Torture.

** The supplement Book of Vile Darkness has the spell Eternity of Torture. ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.

* ''{{Exalted}}'', like ''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.

** ''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 HorusHeresy, the fate is up to 10,000 years and running.

** There's the GodEmperor of Mankind, the MessianicArchetype of the setting. Reduced to a shattered husk, kept on life support for 10,000 years, 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:

** 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 all Eldar need to carry with them a [[SoulJar Spirit Stone]] (or Waystone in some versions) that absorb their soul upon death, preventing them from suffering that perpetual fate. 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.

** 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.
*** In ''Nightbringer'', the Ultramarines find a victim of a Haemonculus on Pavonis that was entirely dissected and hung piece by piece like a blown-apart cross section of a human being. Then they see that the various pieces and organs of the victim are still connected by veins and nerve strands. THEN they realize the victim is still alive and feeling every agonizing moment, and is trying to rasp "kill me" at the marines. It freaks them out so much they open fire and blast everything in the vicinity to splinters. High octane nightmare fuel indeed.
*** The Haemonculi arts are required by the Dark Eldar to survive (pain and the suffering of others apparently grants them youth). Needless to say, this may very well apply to every single slave of the Dark Eldar.
** Some Craftworld Eldar may befall this. All Eldar carry with them a Spirit Stone (or Waystone in some versions) that absorb their soul upon death, preventing it from being eternally tortured by Slaanesh. 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. This implies that they're still conscious even in death. 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.
*** A similar fate happens to Exarchs. These are warriors who are lost upon their path of war and unable to leave it, becoming instructors to others that want to learn the art as well as leaders in war. Each Exarch, upon death, would merge with their suit rather than their Spirit Stone, so that they may once again join the next generation of warriors when their suit is donned again (they merge spirits with whoever wears the suit). Phoenix lords go through the same thing, except that their personality completely dominates the other souls. Much like the Spirit stones, it's implied that many exarch, and some phoenix lords, now lay on some forgotten world, their suit lost forever and unable to communicate with anyone.

** 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.
*** Chaos Dreadnoughts were purposely built with this in mind, their sarcophagi reconfigured to drive the occupants into madness, which the occupants can never get used to because of the design.
*** 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.
** It's not emphasised, but the Emperor himself might be an example of this trope. Reduced to a shattered husk, kept on life support for 10,000 years, unable to move or communicate yet according to dogma still conscious, while the unified humanity he worked to build falls into dystopian ruin around him. A quote about the 40k universe sums it up:

*** It gets more into it when you realise that everything he aspired to accomplish (abolishment of religion and the destruction of Chaos altogether) is being defiled and torn down. ''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).
*** According to the ''Inquisition War'' trilogy, he actually ''is'' still conscious and aware of his status on life-support, and still somewhat capable of psychic communication to anyone in his closest vicinity and freezing time to that person if he so wishes. It is heavily implied, however, that he cannot focus too much attention to communicating with anyone who he is talking with, or he'd not be able to handle the most vital parts of the Imperium, such as the Astronomicron.

**** People near death release endorphins to dull the pain hes actually probably been high as a kite for the last 10000 years.

** Some Craftworld Eldar may befall this. All Eldar carry with them a Spirit Stone (or Waystone in some versions) that absorb their soul upon death, preventing it from being taken by Slaanesh. 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. This implies that they're still conscious even in death. 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.

* The canonical fiction of 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]".

** [[ItGotWorse 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 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 canonical fiction of 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 canonical fiction of Cyberpunk 2020 has Alt Cunningham's personality/mind transfered into cyberspace by the evil arasaka coporation. 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]".

** ''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 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...

** [[ItGotWorse 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 you crumble 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.

*** Any Daemon Weapon or a bound Daemon results in this on a EldritchAbomination. The daemon is so crazy that he will attempt to devour it's 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.

* ''{{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.

*** ''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.

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

*** Chaos Dreadnoughts were purposely built with this in mind, their sarcophagi reconfigured to drive the occupants into madness, which the occupants can never get used to because of the design.
*** Any Daemon Weapon or a bound Daemon results in this on a EldritchAbomination. The daemon is so crazy that he will attempt to devour it's 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.

*** It gets more into it when you realise that everything he aspired to accomplish (abolishment of religion and the destruction of Chaos altogether) is being defiled and torn down. ''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).

**** Again, point of view is everything. Guilliman is serving as inspiration to his chapter and their many many successors. While he might be suffering (but thats 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...

*** The Haemonculi arts are required by the Dark Eldar to survive (pain and the suffering of others apparently grants them youth). Needless to say, this may very well apply to every single slave of the Dark Eldar.

*** A similar fate happens to Exarchs. These are warriors who are lost upon their path of war and unable to leave it, becoming instructors to others that want to learn the art as well as leaders in war. Each Exarch, upon death, would merge with their suit rather than their Spirit Stone, so that they may once again join the next generation of warriors when their suit is donned again (they merge spirits with whoever wears the suit). Phoenix lords go through the same thing, except that their personality completely dominates the other souls. Much like the Spirit stones, it's implied that many exarch, and some phoenix lords, now lay on some forgotten world, their suit lost forever and unable to communicate with anyone.

** 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.

* 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 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.