The Pikeman's Hallway Trap

Also known as the Forest of Stakes.

This trap requires a delineated walkway and a floor with seams (or other "roughage"). It could work in a dense forest with narrow paths, an interior hallway with hardwood floors, or a tiled walkway through a garden. The example will use a hardwood floor.

For the intended effect, the planks that make up the floor travel lengthwise down the hallway, not across. Through a hidden trigger, the planks swivel at some point along their length to raise 6-10 sharpened stakes into the air. The angle and length of the stakes put all the points in a solid vertical column facing one way or the other down the hall. Since every other plank across the width swivels open, they form an effective wall of sharp points. Because they angle up from the floor, chopping at the points just makes the wall shorter at each swipe.

This trap works well when someone is fleeing around blind corners. Activate the trap and they duck right into a self-made shish kebab. Activating several in a row (three or four such 'walls' in a single hallway) effectively halts any fast progress without necessarily killing the interloper. On the other hand, adding a trip wire (or allowing a few of the boards directly before the trap to raise just a couple inches as a trip aid) would increase the change of a damaging or lethal encounter.

I view the trap as operating via a counterweight mechanism. Usually the weight (suspended by the far end of the plank) is supported, leaving the floor in the normal, flat, down position. Activating the trap releases the weight, causing the floorboards to swivel violently up, trailing the suspended bamboo stakes beneath them. The stakes could be rigidly fixed in their vertical pattern (requiring a lot of room beneath the floor to house them) or they could be collapsible while stowed underneath the floor and locking into place as the floor rises up. I much prefer the latter as it prevents the hollow sounds and space requirements of the former.

Also, as I mentioned above, only every other plank rises. Why? So the remaining planks can have the same trap facing the opposite direction.

Two More Terrible Tortures

Gleaned from real life:

1 - The Pear of Anguish. This was an iron, pear-shaped gag that was shoved into the victim's mouth. The end of the pear nearest the teeth had a keyhold that, when the key was inserted and turned, caused spring mechanisms within the pear to eject a number of iron spikes into the mouth. These spikes remained extended until the key was turned past the insertion point in the opposite direction (allowing the key to be removed without deactivating the torture). Use as anal or vaginal torture is easily imagined.

2 - Mancuerda. Cord was wound tightly around the victim's arm and then quickly pulled taught, forcing the cord to cut through the flesh and muscle right to the bone. This was repeated at several locations along the arm and produced extensive bleeding, often resulting in unconsciousness or death.

The Four Winds

This torture/execution device comes directly from Thundercats. The mutants used it when they captured Tigra but he got away before it went off.

The Four Winds is shaped like a giant X. Along each arm one of the victim's limbs is stretched and secured with leather straps and iron bars. When activated, the gears beneath the main body of the X cause the limbs to stretch away from the torso like four small versions of the Rack. Then, when the victim believes his arms and legs can stretch no further and must be ready to rip from his body, the catapults along each arm activate. These catapults have their head at the junction of the X and their fulcra at the ends of each arm and they thus swing up from the torso and tear the victim's limbs from his body. Whether this tearing is purely the result of the mechanical force of the gears on the metal arms or if the arms are also bladed is up to the individual designer. Regardless, the result is a painful death and a terrible mess.