7 Special Prisons

1-Statue Garden

Most statues are of great heroes and heroines or of legendary beings from the past, but King Robert's statue garden is different, very different. The statues are all of traitors, rapists and murderers. In fact, the statues are said traitors, rapists and murderers. The royal mages turn them to stone and set them on a plinth in the royal statue garden. They are not dead or unconscious, far from it. They can see, hear, feel, but cannot speak or move. Their muscles are cramped and aching, they suffer itches that they cannot scratch, birds defecate on them, and they bake in the heat and freeze in the cold. But the biggest punishment is that of boredom-there is nothing to do but stare at the same place for eternity, for the same spell that turns them to stone halts the aging process.

2-Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

The Vice-Chancellor of a powerful university of magic wanted to take it over, and so enchanted the Headmaster's bedroom mirror without him knowing it, then pushed him inside the mirror on the most magical night of the year, trapping him there. Inside the mirror is a reflection of the original room, but there is no exit, as the mirror cannot be walked through, and the door in the room when opened, only leads to a second identical room. Calls for help no matter how loud cannot be heard in the real world, and spells only bounce back on the caster. Worse, the portal and the trapped person are only visible for one day a year, during which the person can reach out of the mirror. During the rest of the year even the finest scrying spells will fail to detect the trapped occupant or the fact that the mirror is anything but a mirror. The occupant does not need to eat, drink or go to the toilet, although he or she does age at a normal rate. The only way out, is to grab someone and drag them inside on the most magical night of the year, leaving the other person trapped inside. Smashing the mirror will trap whoever is inside eternally.

3-Trapped in their own body

In a High Magic or very high-tech world, what better place to trap someone then in their own body? A ring placed on the person's finger intersects with their nerves and forces them to act in the way their captor wants them to. If extra discretion is needed, it can also change the person's gender and to an extent their age. It is not allways used with malevolent intent-it can for example be used to keep someone in witness protection safe for their own good, and in the hands of a kind captor it can be less nasty then a regular prison. There are limits, the person cannot be made to kill or hurt themselves or break the law, but they can be humiliated or used as a sex toy by an unpleasant captor.

4-Pod prison

The prisoner is kept imprisoned in a pod, drugged by the liquid he or she is floating in. The liquid can be breathed like air, and prevents pressure sores from forming or insects from landing on the person. A skilled techie or mage depending on the world can make the person dream-either good dreams, or bad ones. The prisoner can stay up to three months with no ill effects except a little stiffness when they wake up, longer then that and the muscles start to waste away. This can also be used for passengers and crew on star-ships who are undergoing a journey taking months, when there is not enough food for them in the normal way or they just want to avoid the boredom of deep space.

5-Model Fort

A court mage created this, originally to be used to kidnap the young son and heir of the king of a rival court, so that he could be kept as a hostage for the good behavior of his father. The fort was brilliantly made, with mini beds, a mini latrine, and bars on the windows. When the prince touched the door, a spell shrunk him down to an inch high and dragged him inside the fort, and the door shut and locked. His cries for help were unheard, as tiny as his mouth now was, and spies from the rival court spirited the fort away with him inside it. Food had been provided in the fort in tiny amounts, that were like normal sized pieces of food to him.

Alas for the rival king, his hopes of a royal hostage were not to be fulfilled, for a three-inch long spider had crawled inside and the shrinking magic was not meant to be used on spiders. Unarmed as he was, the young prince was fanged by the hungry spider that was now three times his size, and sucked dry leaving only a husk behind. When the fort reached the rival court, the spell was preformed to whisk the young prince out of the fort and return him to full size. The spell worked but instead of a living boy, out came a dead body that had been reduced to skin stretched taut over the bones. What's more, the spell was cast in front of the whole court, including foreign ambassadors. Furious and grief stricken that his son had been kidnapped and killed, the king declared war on his rival,annexed his kingdom after two years of sieges and skirmishes and battles, captured his rival and had him disarmed and placed in the fort with a hungry centipede which tore the prince-killer limb from limb.

6-Amusement Park

After the failure of an attempted coup against a rather eccentric dictator, the coup leader was shown mercy of a sort. Rather then execution or just being locked up, he was placed in the country's biggest amusement park. He can go on any ride he wants for free when the park is not closed for the night, and is given park food to eat, but he cannot leave. On the first day he actually enjoyed his imprisonment-going on multiple rides was so much more fun then toiling in a labour camp or sitting in a cell. But it soon got unpleasant when he could not leave and had to spend the nights sleeping in one of the rides. Also a diet of popcorn, ice cream, candy floss and the like is not good for the health in the long term, and even the best rides lost their fun after a few days.

7-Healing Pool

There was a seer who was renowned throughout the land for his prophecies coming true. He lived near a warm pool which had the strange powers to heal any wound short of death temporarily, for as soon as the immersed and magically healed wound got dry, it would reopen again. One day the king came to him and asked him what would happen if he invaded the neighboring kingdom. He replied 'An army will be destroyed and two provinces will be taken.' As it turned out, it was not the opposing army that was destroyed as the king thought it would be. Instead his own army was destroyed, he barely escaped with his life and was forced to hand over two provinces of his country as the price of peace.

Outraged with the seer, he considered executing him, but his ministers talked him out of it as they valued the seer's prophecies and their habit of coming true. So instead the unfortunate seer was covered with oil and burned alive, with only his head, neck and shoulders left unburned. Before he could die, he was thrown into the pool and at once his wounds healed on contact with the water.

Ever since then, the pool has been the seer's prison, as he cannot leave it for more then a couple of minutes without his skin cracking open from below his shoulders to his feet. He can sleep on a pillow by the side of the pool, as his head, neck and shoulders were left unburned, and has been given a rubber ring that keeps him from drowning. Also much of the pool is shallow and a couple of guards keep watch to prevent accidental drowning or suicide. He is too valuable to be killed or to be allowed to die.

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