Self "Torture"

Taking a sip on his recaf as he ducked under the cordon, Ul-nuzi Arnogaur surveyed the scene. Shabby hab, single occupancy; small cot in one corner, cooking apparatus in the opposite, basic ablutionary facilities in a side-room. The one discordant element was The Device in the room's centre, within which lay the former hab-occupant's body - utterly charred.

Ul-nuzi's equerry, Zizi, was already here; and, accompanying her, a pale-faced logistician decked out in the robes of the Office for Ceremonial Calculations. The logistician was doing his best to somehow avoid looking at the body even as the device obviously fascinated him. Unfortunately, since the device was basically just a fancy chair with bondage straps and electrodes connecting it up to the heat-fused-corpse therein, they rather came as a package deal.

"Who am I looking at?" Ul-nuzi directed his question to Zizi.

"Mornin' Arn," Zizi responded, "right mess we got today. Deceased was one Thumperspad Qu'inn, lowgrade clerk from the Office for Social Reproduction. Written-up for absenteeism by his comptroller, mashers popped round to administer the punishment beating this morning and, well, here's how they found him."

"Who's the nerd?" Ul-nuzi jerked his head at the logistician.

"This would be Dullû, leading expert on these Devices, and--"

--but Dullû cut in:

"It was I who insisted we call in the Arnogaurite! The presence of this Device is evidence an insidious cult operates in the area!"

Behind Dullû Zizi rolled her eyes. Ul-nuzi ignored Zizi and prompted Dullû to speak on.

"These Devices are warp-infused, distributed by cults in thrall to the first-impediment. Once users strap-in, the Device immediately delivers a constant but imperceptible electric shock. Invidious warp-whispers then continually beguile the enseated user with an offer: their personal credit-account will receive a large sum of ration-scrip if they agree to raise the device's voltage by a marginal, imperceptible, amount."

Zizi muttered:

"Strap in and get zapped? I've friends who'd pay good scrip to get a go with that"

-- prompting an outraged glare from Dullû before Ul-nuzi hushed her. Dullû continued:

"At each stage the User should raise the voltage; after all, each rise in voltage makes at most a marginal difference in pain, yet offers a fortune in ration-scrip. But they thereby eventually find themselves in unbearable pain, and gladly return all of the ration-scrip, even pay some in addition, to be restored to the initial setting!"

Ul-nuzi asked the obvious: "well if people pay to take it all back how'd Qu'inn here end up deep-fried?"

Dullû breathlessly replied: "That's just the thing, these devices are tools of perversity, most insidious means of corruption! Users come to associate gain with the electro-shock - a disgustingly bloodless means of injury, I note - and seek it out in ever more extreme forms. Eventually they're offering themselves body and soul to Slaanesh!"

Those present instinctively made the sign of the Mighty to ward off that accursed name.

All eyes turned on Zizi, who awkwardly cleared her throat before saying

"... well, I wouldn't call them close friends."