Unfortunately, I haven't gotten my copy of TALES #13 yet, but from the
mocking of Peterson, it sounds like the TALES bunch did not include a
write up of the Comfy Chair. Sad. Personally, I feel that the Comfy
Chair (created for the "How the West Was One" LARP) is quite possibly
the key to understanding the Brookesian vision of Loskalm. I'd like to
rectify this oversight. (For anyone planning on playing HTWWO in the
future, you might want to skip the next few paragraphs, it could spoil
the fun.)
SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT
The Loskalmi Comfy Chair (not to be confused with the Rokari "Comfy
Chair" which is anything but Comfy) is a practical application of the
innovative sorcery spell "Relaxational Throne." It's a large
overstuffed chair, enchanted in such a way, that when active, anyone
sitting in it is quite immobilized, surrounded in extreme comfort. The
operators then mentally link the subject with a small non-sentient
man-like puppet called the Sympathetic Homunculus. Through sorcerous
amplification and "sympethetic vibrations," the subject in the chair
feels whatever the Homunculus feels, with an increased degree of
sensitivity. Thus, the Homunculus can be tortured, delivering intense,
yet non-damaging, feelings of pain to the subject. Properly
administered, the Comfy Chair (CC) induces cooperation in even the most
recalcitrant subjects.
The things to remember about the CC are:
- No permanent harm is done to the subject, thus allowing the
operators to circumvent the Loskalmi doctrine *not to harm* fellow
Hrestoli through use of sorcery.
- The Chair is intended only as a last resort. The WDC prefers to
use a sorcerously inhanced form of dualistic psychological interogation
jocularly known as the "Mister Nasty/Mister Nice" method.
- In the HTWWO run in San Francisco, the WDC field tested a new and
novel approach which proved most effective for inducing the cooperation
of subjects: substituting torturing the Homoculus with giving it drugs,
getting it drunk, and sexually stimulating it. This innovation,
proposed and empirically validated by Igora Cleanhands, an SCU medical
student and WDC employee, proved highly effective. To quote directly
from Igora's research notes: "Many of the subjects (and that is apt as
they were subjected to our will) were only too glad to be in the palm
of our hand. The university must study further the effects of
addiction and the anomaly of being a *coke whore* where the willing
exchange of information for stimulation was quite enlightening."
Igora's innovation had the added side benefit of being environmentally
conservative (particularly toward the homoculus).
All of which illustrates the single _most_ frightening thing about the
New Hrestoli Idealists, the Watchdog Council, and the Kingdom of
Loskalm... THEY MEAN WELL.