#scaphism

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

Scaphism was a supposed Persian method of execution that was designed to inflict a lingering, painful, and humiliating death on those who were unfortunate enough to experience it. The victim would be trapped between two boats or other hollow objects, and their exposed head, arms, and legs would be covered in honey. They would then be force-fed only milk and honey before being left in the sun or a stagnant pool. Flies, other insects, and rodents would be attracted to the victim and would slowly eat them. The only evidence for this comes from Greek historical texts, which had a lot of bias towards the Persians.

[disease]

SCAPHISM

Scaphism (from Greek σκάφη, meaning ‘boat’) also known as the boats, is an alleged ancient Persian method of execution mentioned by Plutarch in his Life of Artaxerxes. It ostensibly entailed trapping the victim between two boats, feeding and covering them with milk and honey, and allowing them to fester and be devoured by insects and other vermin over time. [wikipedia]

[beeboxx0]

"Kill them with kindness" WRONG! SCAPHISM 🍯🐀🕷🥛🍯🍯🥛🪳🕷🐀🍯🍯🍯🐀🐁🥛🍯🪳🪳🕷🥛🍯🍯🍯🕷🐀🐀🥛🐁🥛🕷🍯🪳🕷🍯🥛🐀🥛🐀🥛🍯🍯🍯🥛🐀🪳🍯🪳🪳🍯🍯🍯🕷🕷🐁🐁🥛🕷🕷🕷🍯🍯🍯🍯🍯🕷🍯🐁🕷🪳🥛🕷🐀🍯🥛🐁🥛🐀🐀🍯🍯🪳🪳🐀🐀🍯🍯🐁🍯🍯🕷🪳🍯🍯🍯

[thatstargazingaquarius]

Thoughts on Scaphism??

Such a waste of honey 😔 what would Winnie the Pooh think?

Seriously though it’s so brutal like for what? If you don’t die to the bugs you’d waste away to starvation in milk and honey. Absolutely horrible

[talesofmetalandmagic]

BadThingsHappenBingo – Episode II (part 3)

@badthingshappenbingo

Fandom: League of Legends (Shurima)

Characters: Emperor Omah Azir, Xerath (+ extras)

Prompt: Forced to beg

Synopsis: Azir is an emperor, and as such, even a prisoner, he thinks himself ready to face anything. But Xerath has one advantage over him, his seemingly endless historical knowledge of him, and he's ready to use it. When the memory of an ancient, lethal ordeal springs back into Azir's mind, whatever remains of his imperial pride melts away in three dreaded words: "I beg you".

This one will be a three-parter because I let myself go and it’s too long for Tumblr posts

The next day, Shurima's sun appears so large that it covers the entire sky; beneath it extends a pall of calm, broad and thick as the mountains; and beneath it lies Azir, his head heavy, his beak just parted, his throat rasping with every breath, shedding great tears from his closed eyes every second. Flies are everywhere now: Xerath has not only covered him with milk and honey, carefully smearing them on his eyes with the fingers of one of his puppets – whereupon Azir, fearing that the stickiness of the stuff would close his lids forever, shook his head like a mad rat and took two backhands to remember them until the evening – but he also made him swallow it. He opened its beak with a stick sharpened on both ends, like river hunters do with crocodiles: now even breathing hurts, with the holes he left in it. The cursed concoction burned against the holes as it traveled down his throat, caressing the inside of his beak, and then down, down, until the oblique stomach had swelled under the hull and drops of white slime, returning up, had blown him away. smeared the chin. He was sweet, but in the wrong way: sticky, poisonous, lying sweet. And it was there that Azir, regurgitating yet another mouthful of that filth, collapsed. He remembers his face bathed in sweat, numb from immobility, with a bruise that has now blossomed on the back of his neck for two days leaning on the bag. He remembers his tears – he cried and vomited, vomited and cried, and his hands cupped away from his face trembled uselessly in their holes. Even his head seemed immersed in milk - light, cold, full of white noise; but he had thought something, and the fear had come a moment before the relief. I don't want to go like this. The sunset comes, and with it comes Xerath. Azir's hands and spurs sting with each breath, as if the insects' mouths had formed a hair shirt sewn around his flesh. Quick, be quick. He must have understood that he can't take it anymore and is walking slowly on purpose, to prolong his torture as much as possible. Only the ragged threads of his imperial dignity, combined with the hoarseness that grips his trachea like a garotte, prevent Azir from shouting and calling to him. And he stops, floats above him until he clouds the sky. He wipes away a tear with a metal finger: Azir would bite it if he were completely mad. Or is this madness, he thinks as he continues to cry. Let him rule over me as if I were not an emperor. Then he sees the cask of milk and honey, the rim framed with filthy dried drops, and his watery eyes widen in delirium. -Please, Xerath.- A hoarse, old wretch's voice comes out of him. It's not his. Indifferent tears roll down his soiled face, alone and only - or so Azir would like to believe - from the heat of the sun. And he's burning too, a skin-breaking rage. -I beg you. Get me out of here.- Xerath touches his face with one hand, testing its length. Even the feathers are disgusting, a sticky epidermis that tightens like the bandages of a mummy. A fly flies towards Azir's eyes: Xerath catches it between his fingers and squeezes it until he stops buzzing. He doesn't even look at him. -Xerath!- Panic rises like a wave, it fills his lungs and stomach and mouth, making him shiver down to his locked limbs. -I'm begging you, Xerath! Get me out of this wreckage, I beg you, beg you, beg you!- -I wish I could record this sound.- Xerath still doesn't look at him, hovering over him like a cleaver. He smears the corpse of the fly on his forehead. -Now don't fret while we pull you out, or you'll hurt yourself more. Then you'll come with me: you deserved a bath. Tell me thank you, of course.-

Azir keeps his head down for the rest of the evening; not because Xerath has bent him, may he rebuke his Ascension, but because the world itself seems to burn upon him and the neck long confined in the hole between the two hulls bends limp like a withered reed; and more than anything because he wants to be alone, away from Xerath and his flesh puppets, away from the light, the desert, even his consciousness, and immerse his brain in the mist until the sound of his please has disappeared forever. Keeping his gaze on his claws, away from Xerath's dull stares and migraine glare, is the best he can do to get out of there. The stairs he descended with his head held high, dragged by five men, he climbs them on trembling legs dripping milk and honey from his head and beak. With each step he rubs his numb arms, shakes his now stone shoulders, blinks eyes so burning they seem to melt into his skull. But I'm still alive, it was necessary. With each breath he fills his mouth with milk and honey. The bath promised by Xerath – thank you, he also said thank you, because it couldn't be worse than please – is so cold that it burns against the skin. Azir grits his teeth as he scrubs his face, limbs, chest and back. He's never washed himself, an emperor doesn't have to, and the numbness of immobility makes those gestures even stranger. When I've escaped, he'll pay for that too. After each scrub, he takes gulps of the same water in which he's immersed: it's cold, it weighs on the stomach like a mouthful of pebbles, but the taste of the milk and honey doesn't go away. -Enough, Azir. You are wasting my water. Get into your cage and woe to you if I hear half a noise. Tomorrow I'll take you to the quarry: I bet you'll be good this time.- I will fight instead, because I am an emperor and I am not afraid of you. But an emperor who says please, even if under torture… he's never read of anything like this – and certainly neither has Xerath. What does this say about him. It doesn't matter, not now: Azir is too tired to even think. He curls up in the cage with his head between his knees, still shivering, and closes his eyes longing for sleep. The cloying tint of milk and honey, like an evil fungus, still clings to his mouth and his throat. When he wakes up it's still there.

Part 1

Part 2

[bitter1stuff]

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

TODAY'S ENTRY: Scaphism

[ancalagonthedread]

men are so funny, “yes this lesbian definitely wants me I’m gonna reach out.” My Brother in Christ all I want is to have you bound in a small boat in my bog, force-fed -and covered- in milk and honey :/

[an-albino-pinetree]

Hits you with the creatureification beam-

[delicatewhumps]

cottagecore x whump

whumpee is all alone in their cottage, in the middle of nowhere, and something bad happens. maybe they get hurt, or someone dangerous shows up (a la hush). what do they do?

a record-breaking cold winter leaves them nearly hypothermic and shivering inside. maybe their heat source has failed

on the other end of the spectrum… a heat wave? heatstroke is no fun when you’re surrounded by people that can help, imagine facing it all alone

whumpee goes on a hike and falls down an embankment. now they’re trapped and injured at the bottom, and the forest is full of hungry things…

maybe they find the wrong mushrooms while foraging and accidentally poison themselves— and caregiver has to help them through it

this is very extreme, but scaphism. depending on how dark you want to go, you could increase or decrease the severity. maybe it’s just attempted, and someone saves them.

a cryptid or forest god starts stalking whumpee. they only have so many chickens left to sacrifice before that creature gets hungry, and who knows what will satiate it…

speaking of chickens, caretaker nurses a sick whumpee back to health with bowls of chicken noodle soup. this could be pure fluff if you want it to be

think…..ophelia. drowning in a river, surrounded by flowers.

bees? bees.

….snakes? are snakes cottagecore? i guess that depends on where you live.

caretaker lives in a cottage, and one day someone collapses on their doorstep. a stranger— injured, bloody, covered in dirt, branches tangled in their hair, clothes torn. they beg caretaker to help them

[tiercel]

Enjoying my cheerios with honey on them then randomly remembering the way they used milk and honey to torture people

[averysaurus]

Harlan in the interview episode, with genuine joy in his voice: For instance, have you ever heard of scaphism??

Me: oof I'll have to remember to keep an ear out for that episode so I can mute it when it comes up

Me listening to 41: Damn, diving right into it, I see

[alisoncooper]

now, i’m not an expert in encasing people in cement but wouldn’t sitting in a bath of cement like that just asphyxiate you??? like with all that hardened cement on you, you wouldn’t be able to expand your chest and lungs eough to breathe, let alone scream. i guess what i’m saying is the scaphism bit is a little dramatic and definitely counts as overkill

[wir3-r0t]

Bored so im reseraching torture methods :D

[talesofmetalandmagic]

BadThingsHappenBingo – Episode II (part 1)

@badthingshappenbingo

Fandom: League of Legends (Shurima)

Characters: Emperor Omah Azir, Xerath (+ extras)

Prompt: Forced to beg

Synopsis: Azir is an emperor, and as such, even a prisoner, he thinks himself ready to face anything. But Xerath has one advantage over him, his seemingly endless historical knowledge of him, and he's ready to use it. When the memory of an ancient, lethal ordeal springs back into Azir's mind, whatever remains of his imperial pride melts away in three dreaded words: "I beg you".

This one will be a three-parter because I let myself go and it’s too long for Tumblr posts

They go down the stairs to the edge of the quarry, to the bottom. The sand is different, under the spurs: it has a clayey, ductile consistency, and the humidity remains on the cartilage with each step. A river, or its vestiges: where once some stream must have flowed, all that remains is a ravine with wavy edges, like the trail of an immense snake, which disappears on the horizon in the ocher mist of sunset. They lead him along the bank, holding him by the elbows of his handcuffed wrists, Xerath floating behind his head with that unbearable creaking. Perhaps they expect me to pan for gold, or gather clay for some garnish that pleases Xerath, but that would be far too light a punishment for the insubordinate madman. An image of Xerath flashes through his head trying to drown him in the river only to find him aground, and a half-smile creeps across his sore beak. Another pull of the wrists and they're around the corner. There is a platform of sun-grayed wood, a couple of much newer barrels – and a little further on, in the battered and worm-eaten remains of a landing stage, two perfectly identical wooden boats wait aground in the sand. Azir no longer smiles.

The condemned are placed in two identical boats, called twins, and they are sealed one over the other so that he cannot in any way free himself. Azir kicks the air with his claws, pecks at the void, throws his arms around as if to dislocate his shoulders. After that, they are served plenty of food and drink. If they refuse to eat, may their eyes be pricked and forcibly swallowed. The rune torc weighs on his chest like a hundred medallions, suffocating him. He grips their arms with feathered fingers as they roll him onto his back, when he slams into the wood he lets out a wounded pigeon screech. They hold a limb each, his arms and legs, pressing them against the grooves of the boats until his bones crackle. After each meal, his face and exposed limbs will be washed with a sweet mixture of milk and honey, so that even flies and other insects do not go hungry. It is Xerath himself who sets the hull above on him. He locks into the one he lies on with a heavy snap, and his tormentor's electric snares close the pulsing metal seals that anchor them to each other. Someone behind him places a sack full to the brim behind his head, a parody of a pillow. Azir opens his beak to breathe. It is as if the hull were placed directly on his chest and crushed his lungs and trachea; he struggles he twists his face and eyebrows, to square Xerath with all the hate inside him. -Are you comfortable, my dear?- the Magus asks. -No, and you know it. Get me out, it's not funny.- It's absurd, not being able to move. From that position Azir sees the tips of his arms, his fingers digging into the sand for anything to hold on to, and feels the wind resisting against his kicking legs. Yet he doesn't feel them as he does: they are inert tools, without blood and without flesh, more part of the boats that lock him up than of his now useless body. But that's not the cruel part. Scaphism, they call it; yet the hulls are ornamental. The true monster is underneath, and around, and behind the chains of Xerath. -Did you hear me, Xerath? Get me out of here. You can't do this for real.- -Indeed I can. Only you can stop me: have you thought about it, Azir?- -Yes, and I won't. An emperor does not beg.- Xerath sits on the hulls, crossing his legs, and slaps Azir's cheek gently. -You are no longer an emperor, and may you never forget that. It will be easier for you if you accept that you have fallen and start begging.- -Just try to bend me, scoundrel. I will never be less than I am.- -That is, nothing. But good for you: I will never cease to be surprised by your stupidity. Maybe a honey bath will be good for your brain. Azir gasps, lungs on fire under the hull. He's starting. -Don't you dare!-

Part 2

Part 3

[7-crows-in-a-trench-coat]

i know america has its problems and the 21st century has its problems but every now and then i like to take a moment to appreciate that it’s not the year of our lord 1531 and the king of england can’t have me boiled alive for the Treacherous Crime of making the royal court’s soup taste bad as a prank

[fadingxecho]

stigmata wouldn’t hurt that bad, im built different