Punishment that is actually a punishment

Hi everyone,

I'm writing about a character who was once the Big Bad. He was deeply in love with an angel that taught him some Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, and she foolishly trusted him not to twist her teachings. So, it so happens that this angel is in fact an Eldritch Abomination of great power, and she is [[Understatement outraged]] over his misuse of power. Can you guys think of something that goes into And I Must Scream territory while also giving him a chance at redemption?

I was thinking about turning him into a hideous beast and leaving him alone in the wilderness, forever abandoned by his people and friends and family... but then I realized that being a Big, Badass Wolf is awesome, so it would be more of an Unishment if I did that.

Turn him into a tree, which has the same effect but also a more literal case of And I Must Scream?

I was thinking more along the lines of a curse that would take away something important.

Originally, I was going to go the whole way with turning him into a wolf, except he'd still have a human mind and personality. Except he can no longer communicate with other humans, or read, or speak, or write, because his brain is not set up that way. (Wolves do not have the same capacity for language that humans do.) Furthermore, everyone who meets him will try to shoot him or turn him into a pack animal, because wolves are used for stuff like that in this universe. Of course, being continuously followed by ravenous spectral hounds might work too, keeping him running away forever...

He had a family and he had colleagues who respected him very much. They assume that he is dead, and he can never go back. And just the thought of incurring his "true love's" rage is unbearable to him.

If the experience actually changes his brain, then that changes his capacity to learn from his mistakes. If her goal is to punish him and make sure he's fully aware of the implications of that punishment, then altering his mind in any way is possibly not the best way to do it.

What did he do with the stuff she taught him? For what goal did he misuse it? Knowing these things might help think of better options.

Make him incapable of dying and chain him to the bottom of a lake of fire (magma, bottom of a volcano?) for a term of 10-1,000 years, making sure that he will remain concious for all of them, and that the agony he experiences will not dull over time. Turn his family that he loves against him, and make sure that he knows they know despise him. Destroy or turn against him everything else he cares about. Ensure that he is aware of this fact. When his sentence is up, do not remove his immortality, and leave him with the sensation of burning to death, even as he walks on the Earth once more, until he atones for his crimes, and give him a deadline by which he must do so under penalty of returning to the fires for all eternity.

Now that is a punishment that an Eldritch Abomination would give out.

edited 8th Aug '11 3:51:08 PM by Archereon

He "used" (read: twisted) her Magitek technology to give himself immortality and make himself perpetually young. It was Powered by a Forsaken Child kind of technology.