(no subject)

[aedifica]

Thank you, Hydra! (So, in our world, thank you Hydra's player and Tosha's player.) Your post about what you saw when you legilimised Dolohov* answers a lot of questions for me--especially the question of what Selwyn's request to him was.

* Apparently I can't call him one thing, either!

Comments

[kiya]

I can only assume they are, being wizards (of the particularly smug asshole kind, for the most part), completely ignorant of muggle knowledge that torture produces unreliable results, or believe that magical torture is more effective, or believe that if you just apply enough torture the results improve. But yeah, that's something I'd love to see them get bitten on the ass by a few times.

On the abstract thing, I'm wondering what gives him the high. Clearly, massive blood magic rituals do it for him for quite some time; I'd read this bit as suggesting that crucio also does it for him. Is it specifically magic-causing-suffering that does it? I don't think so, that seems more like Barty's bag and maybe Bella's, and in the wards ritual with Seamus he said that if someone had to die (which was the crux of that) it was better they not suffer, right? Magic-of-power-over-others might be a better read? He misses the challenge of the early days?

(Fuck, now I'm wondering if he gives particular reverence to Set, because as a Setian I'm suddenly going, "If it's a display of strength or a proof of competence to face up to a challenge that he gets off on, um, I... ... suddenly get it. In that kind of awkward, embarassing, 'please knock before coming in next time' kind of way.")

What else gives him the high? (I have weird fantasies of someone coming up with a way of, like, growing crops with "Dark Magic" or at least something else that sends him on a happy trip, and setting him to getting his fix in a way that makes sure nobody in the Protectorate gets scurvy or something. Like the folkloric thing about cursing the basil. Shit, now I want to get the book called "Cursing the Basil" immediately and theorise about Noble Arts Involving Herbology. What the fuck is wrong with my brain? ;) )

[alt_player]

It is, in fact, understood by many wizards that torture does not produce reliable results in interrogation. From Sally-Anne's post about the Cruciatus Curse, some years back:

There's pretty much nothing the cruciatus curse can accomplish that another spell can't do more effectively, except cause pain for its own sake. If you want to distract someone there are about a million possible spells. If you want to get information out of somebody, legilimency and veritaserum will get it much more quickly than cruciatus and people are less likely to lie. One of the books I read for Dark Arts had a chapter on the cruciatus curse and its use during interrogations, and the author thought using cruciatus was a bad idea -- not because he objected to it morally, but because he said people who are being tortured will say whatever they think will make the torture stop. He said five minutes of cruciatus will make most people claim to be a basket of dried peas, if they think their interrogator wants them to be a basket of dried peas. And the object of interrogation is supposed to be USEFUL information. He thought it was far more worthwhile to learn how to brew veritaserum but he seemed to have a bias towards potions generally.

Hydra has suggested that Bellatrix uses torture in conjunction with legilimency because pain weakens people's resistance to having their mind read. Although Minerva's comments today (and Hydra's experience) suggest that nonconsensual telepathy is ALSO not as reliable as one might assume. (It can be hard to show this on the surface of the game, though.)

[kiya]

Rereading the memory post, I suddenly wonder if Selwyn was being tortured for compliance rather than information, which would be more consistent.

(Unfortunately, 'many wizards' isn't going to be universal, though I suspect Dolohov does in fact have that knowledge because Dolohov knows a fuckton of things.)