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Outfitting a torture chamber is not an easy task, especially if one wants to do a proper job of it. It was not a task whose importance Naggamanteh the torture-master could really impress upon his fellow denizens in the Mampang Fortress. Inured to everything from Mutant Meatballs to the most horrifying privies in Kakhabad, it took true artistry to draw any sort of response from the types of people who either dwelled in the Fortress or attempted to breach it.
Oh, certainly he could have gone the tried, tired route the way other torture-masters did. His wife (bless her) often remarked that instead of expending so much effort on brutes who wouldn't appreciate it, why not settle for the usual kicking and beating and cauldrons of boiling oil. She was especially fond of cauldrons of boiling oil, but that might have been because she also liked deep-frying bristle-beasts for snacks.
He'd seen other torture chambers in the past travels of his youth, and witnessed the work of torture-masters who had less pride in their work. Kakhabad is home to many cruelties both profound and glancing, and most of them go unremarked even by Adventurers from the more civilized nations. He'd known one torture-master, a fellow Ogre, who used her fists. Certainly she got results, but while he had no inherent objection to the mess, the lack of artistry bothered him.
But even if others didn't appreciate the subtleties of his tools, he did. He had spent years accumulating the tools of his trade, from the racks and iron maidens to the strappados and spikes. The glass bottles full of fetid potions, the stoppered vials seething with fermented poisons. Ground glass that glittered like Minimite wings. Even the preserved eyeball of a Red-Eye, shorn of its eyelid, in a specially sealed jar. He took that one out when he wanted to cauterize wounds with more precision than a torch permitted.
And of course there was his whip, the weapon he took greatest pride in. The axe was for more brutal contests of strength, but the whip demanded delicacy. Finesse. On the rare occasions that he encountered an Adventurer worthy of a fight, it was the whip that he took up.
This last Adventurer, now. This Adventurer had seen--and understood. Had looked past the personal threat (after all, suicidally brave Adventurers could be had for the whistling wherever Gold Pieces were to be found) and recognized the devotion Naggamanteh had to his work. Even his wife seemed to forget that sometimes, although from time to time she gave him the small gifts that Ogres do: small knives crafted from the teeth of Firefoxes (they left horrifying third-degree burns when you cut someone with them), blood candles (gifts for pathetically grateful prisoners thrown into dark cells elsewhere in the Fortress, half-mad with the desire for light, only to have their minds warped further and further by the candles' influence), and hearty Vittles, because she claimed that he got cranky when he didn't grab a bite to eat between torture sessions. For his part, Naggamanteh returned the gestures with whimsies of his own. His wife collected weapons of all sorts, so he kept an eye out for unusual examples, chakrams and axes engraved with strange runes, and oddities like Galehorns, although he stayed away when she felt musical because a Galehorn is deafening even by Ogre standards. (Even if Naggamanteh was accustomed to the screams and cries of the tormented, this is quite a different music from the elemental bellow of a Galehorn.)
But the Adventurer had given him a particular gift that his wife couldn't, almost by definition: the sincere compliment of a stranger. The words had taken Naggamanteh by surprise. He had met Adventurers from Analand before. Some of them turned rogue out of lust for money or treasure, like the Sightmasters who hung around the Mampang Fortress. (Not that he was judging. He appreciated Gold Pieces as much as anyone else.) Some of them swaggered, drunk on their own dreams of glory. Others took upon their quests as though failure would kill them inside.
(Oh, yes. A good torture-master pays attention to these matters of the psyche, even though he may choose to employ scourge and rope and chain instead of flaying the victim with words. It always helps to consider the available options.)
What had motivated this Adventurer to make that remark--a remark that Naggamanteh would cradle close in his Ogrish heart--he would never know. It was a pity they couldn't have chatted longer. But he could tell that the Adventurer, for all their good manners, had some greater purpose in mind. What they wanted with the Throben Doors wouldn't long remain a mystery, he reckoned. Perhaps the Adventurer would succeed, in which case there would be the usual bristling security meeting with the Seven Serpents flitting here and there giving out the Archmage's directives, and Valignya and the Lord Treasurer fussing about the cost of hiring more Goblins and Birdmen sentries, and Captain Cartoum attempting to organize the perennially disorganized Fortress patrol schedules.
Or the Adventurer would fail, and the Fortress would eat their bones, as it had devoured those of so many before. Naggamanteh found himself hoping that the Adventurer would meet with some measure of success without upending Mampang. After all, home was home.
He looked about his torture chamber with renewed energy. He'd always wanted proper drowning-casket, and he thought one would do very nicely across from the spiked chair. That spiked chair was an heirloom. He hadn't inherited it--the Ogres of his lineage had, on the whole, preferred terrorizing Goblin tribes to more intellectual endeavors--but he'd special-ordered it through one of the merchants who made the dangerous journey to the Mampang Fortress. Five years of emptying prisoners' pockets and saving everything from Gold Pieces to Sun Jewels, and he'd been at pains to find a reliable source. But every Gold Piece had been worth it. The craftmanship that had gone into the chair was obvious even from cursory inspection: the joins, the way the grain of the wood made dark labyrinths, the luster it took on from having drunk the blood of countless victims, the agony-curves of the spikes.
Naggamanteh poked his head out the door and roared for a Goblin. One arrived in short order; they knew not to keep him waiting. It brought him a palimpsest and a graphite stick when he demanded drawing supplies. (He had to explain what he wanted first, which took some doing, as the Goblin he got was intimidated by the thought of requisitioning something as un-Goblin-like as paper. "Just say it's for the torture-master," Naggamanteh said at last, in irritation, and that did the trick.)
Once he had something to write on, he did a rapid sketch of the room and its devices. He was reasonably good at sketching, although best at capturing internal anatomy; he was quietly proud of the studies he had made of the different creatures he had tortured and dissected over the years. With quick sure strokes, he drew several smaller thumbnails--best not to waste the parchment--and pondered different layouts. He continued humming to himself long into the night as he visualized an even better torture chamber. Perhaps the Adventurer would even come by to see it on their way out of the Fortress.