I got these GFI recasts of Minifigs of some torture equipment a while ago and finally finished them. I didn’t realize the rack was missing the spokes or handles that would turn the top roller until I began painting it. I just added some with florist wire, so no problem. (I never did check a reference photo to make sure this is what they’d look like; it’s possible there should just be one long arm rather than three short ones.) Anyway they are the iron maiden I posted earlier; a rack; and a table with a cat-o-nine-tails, poker, and giant knife.
Here’s the denizens: an orc jailer by Ral Partha, a plastic WotC torturer, and an assortment of prisoners: two WotC prisoners, a Ral Partha victim from another set, and a plastic GW dwarf who has been securely bound by goblins.
There are many more, much more lurid torture chamber furnishings and victims that Citadel sold back in the early 1980s. [That link is NSFW, maybe!] I don’t know whether they were poor sellers or just garnered complaints but by the time the Armory (the major US distributor of fantasy miniatures) put out their big “Buyers Guide” catalog, they were listed as “out of production”. Ral Partha had some similar stuff too — not quite as misogynist though. As did Grenadier & Dragon Tooth.
So my question is: what’s up with this anyway? Why were torture chambers such a big thing in early D&D figures? Is it just the association of “dungeons” with imprisonment and medieval punishments, or something else? Do you put torture chambers in your D&D dungeons? I’m not sure if I ever have — if so it would have been in the context of some evil lord or mad scientist type wizard. Do they have a place “random” dungeons or “mythic underworld” style megadungeons?
Swords & Dorkery 
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