Tag: tw: ainuvore

Judas Cradle: Would your muse rather suffer physically, or be humiliated?

While Sauron will occasionally allow himself to be humiliated for the sake of a Long Con (see: Numenor), I think he’d rather suffer physical pain than be humiliated. He had the chance to repent before Manwë, and for various reasons, he chose to stay in Middle Earth rather than submit to judgement. 

Melkor, however, gets to do both kinds of suffering with alarming frequency! Evidence suggests that, unlike Sauron, Melkor would rather humiliate himself than suffer physically. He’s done his time in shackles, and he’d MUCH prefer to put his face in the dirt and grovel than have them put back on him for any reason. Also, given the fact that he is stuck in a body that is unhealing, he has to be careful how much physical damage he sustains.

Garrote: Your muse must kill someone. How do they do it?

Must kill someone? You make it sound like such a chore! 

They are both fairly creative sadists, but Sauron is practical where Melkor is flippant. On the field, I imagine Sauron will go for an efficient, brutal killing stroke, unless there is a chance to do something truly gory and flamboyant that will lower morale of the enemy (see: burning people’s faces off, turning friends into battle standards). Otherwise, I think he finds a punishment that fits the crime, reserving especially poignant deaths for especially memorable or irritating foes. 

Melkor I think is more prone to casual murder and crimes against humanity when he’s bored or angry. He’s the more likely to behave like an enormous, shark-toothed toddler pulling the wings off of beetles and zapping ants with a magnifying glass for his own amusement, only to forget about them as soon as something else catches his attention. This can lead to prisoners being horribly mangled and then forgotten about, or just left waiting for the day he remembers they exist and hoping they die before then.  He’s also not above snacking on people for fun, preferably whole and wriggling. 
His method of dispatching foes won’t be premeditated, unless someone does something particularly attention-worthy, like refusing to tell him where Gondolin is. Then he’ll cook up something really interesting and hand-crafted to make that person miserable for as long as possible.