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Trope was cut/disambiguated due to cleanup
Changed line(s) 67,68 (click to see context) from:
* The [[ShoutOut ABC Warrior]] is a terrifying war-droid whose design combines the scariest elements of a typical TopHeavyGuy "big mook" and a SkeleBot9000, speaking in a GutturalGrowler version of a MachineMonotone. Despite this, it sounds almost ''satisfied'' when Rico informs it that its new mission is "War". Perhaps the scariest scene with it comes towards the film's climax, when Rico instructs it to [[AnArmAndALeg tear Judge Griffin limb-from-limb]], explicitly saying for it to save Griffin's head for last so he'll live through the pain of having his arms and legs ripped off. Griffin, already dangling in the ABC Warrior's grip can only scream, as the camera [[GoryDiscretionShot switches to a shot of blood raining down over the robot's feet]]...
to:
* The [[ShoutOut ABC Warrior]] is a terrifying war-droid whose design combines the scariest elements of a typical TopHeavyGuy "big mook" and a SkeleBot9000, speaking in a GutturalGrowler low version of a MachineMonotone. Despite this, it sounds almost ''satisfied'' when Rico informs it that its new mission is "War". Perhaps the scariest scene with it comes towards the film's climax, when Rico instructs it to [[AnArmAndALeg tear Judge Griffin limb-from-limb]], explicitly saying for it to save Griffin's head for last so he'll live through the pain of having his arms and legs ripped off. Griffin, already dangling in the ABC Warrior's grip can only scream, as the camera [[GoryDiscretionShot switches to a shot of blood raining down over the robot's feet]]...
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None
Added DiffLines:
[[/folder]]
[[folder:The Hundredfold Problem]]
* [[MeaningfulName Dennis the Complete Bloody Sadist]]; a Mega-City One criminal so awful that his sentence was to have his brain extracted from his body. His brain ''was'' to be installed in a urinal bot, sentencing him to an effective eternity of having people urinating into his "mouth" and being forced to drink it, but his men escaped with it before that could happen. Now he's become addicted to the sensation of being a BrainInAJar and spends most of his time like that, taking his body only when he has to.
** When we first meet Dennis, his office is described as being wallpapered in ''flayed human faces''.
** The later description of his rise to power notes that he literally murdered his way to the top, having the wives, mistresses and children of rival power-figures tortured to death to intimidate them into submitting to him.
** It's noted that Dennis introduced two rival militant atheists to the Donut to destroy the Nandies' faith in their goddess, Korax, seemingly for no reason other than to bring about the complete destruction of the Nandies and the Overlords both.
* The B-plot of the story is that, thanks to the bumbling of an enormously stupid but well-connected employee, Dredd is shattered into 100 physical and mental fragments, reduced to bizarre caricatures of himself just because one FatIdiot couldn't watch where he was putting his feet and so stepped on the chip containing Dredd's vital data.
* There's a scene early in the book where an obvious antagonist from later, Maraschino, subverts a character called Heidegger to become her sleeper agent. She does this by extending her fingers into long, worm-like tentacles that burrow into his brain through the corners of his eyes, the back of his throat, his sinuses and his ears. And all the while, Maraschino is cooing and acting like a sweet, motherly woman.
* The cruelty with which the humans, both the colonist "Overlords" and the deported criminal "nubugs", rule over the Donut's native population of [[HumanSubspecies Skysouls]] is made casually evident in the fact that there are ''multiple'' torture clubs -- businesses that torture, mutilate and murder "Nandies" (as they call them) on-stage for the entertainment of paying human customers. It's later established that these were created by Dennis the Complete Bloody Sadist, who killed any Overlord [[EvenEvilHasStandards who tried to stop them from going into business]].
* The description of the Donut beyond the slums of the Overlords paints a picture that is less pretty and more "DeathWorld". Local predators included ''giant'' sabertooth tigers, insects whose venom brings instant death, killer fish, a species of thorny plant that will try to rip apart any living creature it can reach, and a species of intelligent spiders that would construct cunning traps for larger mammals so they could be paralyzed and then implanted with eggs -- these last ones, the Nandies hunted to extinction. Environmental habits include random and deadly solar flares, and weeks-long windstorms where the gusts can reach up to five hundred kph.
* One of the rival atheist preachers, Reverend Dave 'No Messing' Fingers, attacks the congregation of his counterpart, Reverend Rick 'The Man' Hamfist, and begins using his powers to slowly peel strips of flesh and skin away from Hamfist's assistant, Maraschino. Protagonist [=MacTavish=] even notes in horror that she's being FlayedAlive, her life somehow prolonged even as every strip of meat and muscle is torn away and every organ ripped free until nothing but a jerking, twitching, gore-painted skeleton is left.
* The Skysouls repay Fingers in kind by tearing him apart with their psychic powers, telekinetically ripping him apart with their MindOverMatter ability.
* Korax, the PhysicalGod of the Skysouls, telepathically viewing a small glimpse of the suffering her people are experiencing at human hands, [[HumansAreBastards all in the name of entertainment]]: a mother and her child being whipped with a metal-studded bullwhip by some drunken farmhands, who delight in striking the boy's face; a Skysoul stretched on a rack and impaled with a thousand red-hot needles for the entertainment of the death-porn watchers; a Skysoul child with a rubber tire full of gasoline forced onto its neck by human youths and then set alight... This last one is particularly chilling, because it's a very real form of execution on Earth.
* Whilst most of the unholy miracles that take place around the story's midpoint are [[Funny/JudgeDredd comical]], the last of them is [[BreadEggsMilkSquick genuinely disturbing]], as it consists of every single teddy bear, doll or other cuddly toy in the city's limits being possessed by the vengeful soul of a recently executed psychopath.
* At the story's climax, Dredd confronts Dennis, only to find he has recently murdered his servant Becattini for perceived failure. The His nostrils have been slit open, his teeth, tongue and eyes ripped out, and his head cut off. His heart has been torn out of his chest and stuffed into the stump of his neck, and his feet severed. The whole mutilated corpse has also been arranged jauntily at Dennis' desk.
[[folder:The Hundredfold Problem]]
* [[MeaningfulName Dennis the Complete Bloody Sadist]]; a Mega-City One criminal so awful that his sentence was to have his brain extracted from his body. His brain ''was'' to be installed in a urinal bot, sentencing him to an effective eternity of having people urinating into his "mouth" and being forced to drink it, but his men escaped with it before that could happen. Now he's become addicted to the sensation of being a BrainInAJar and spends most of his time like that, taking his body only when he has to.
** When we first meet Dennis, his office is described as being wallpapered in ''flayed human faces''.
** The later description of his rise to power notes that he literally murdered his way to the top, having the wives, mistresses and children of rival power-figures tortured to death to intimidate them into submitting to him.
** It's noted that Dennis introduced two rival militant atheists to the Donut to destroy the Nandies' faith in their goddess, Korax, seemingly for no reason other than to bring about the complete destruction of the Nandies and the Overlords both.
* The B-plot of the story is that, thanks to the bumbling of an enormously stupid but well-connected employee, Dredd is shattered into 100 physical and mental fragments, reduced to bizarre caricatures of himself just because one FatIdiot couldn't watch where he was putting his feet and so stepped on the chip containing Dredd's vital data.
* There's a scene early in the book where an obvious antagonist from later, Maraschino, subverts a character called Heidegger to become her sleeper agent. She does this by extending her fingers into long, worm-like tentacles that burrow into his brain through the corners of his eyes, the back of his throat, his sinuses and his ears. And all the while, Maraschino is cooing and acting like a sweet, motherly woman.
* The cruelty with which the humans, both the colonist "Overlords" and the deported criminal "nubugs", rule over the Donut's native population of [[HumanSubspecies Skysouls]] is made casually evident in the fact that there are ''multiple'' torture clubs -- businesses that torture, mutilate and murder "Nandies" (as they call them) on-stage for the entertainment of paying human customers. It's later established that these were created by Dennis the Complete Bloody Sadist, who killed any Overlord [[EvenEvilHasStandards who tried to stop them from going into business]].
* The description of the Donut beyond the slums of the Overlords paints a picture that is less pretty and more "DeathWorld". Local predators included ''giant'' sabertooth tigers, insects whose venom brings instant death, killer fish, a species of thorny plant that will try to rip apart any living creature it can reach, and a species of intelligent spiders that would construct cunning traps for larger mammals so they could be paralyzed and then implanted with eggs -- these last ones, the Nandies hunted to extinction. Environmental habits include random and deadly solar flares, and weeks-long windstorms where the gusts can reach up to five hundred kph.
* One of the rival atheist preachers, Reverend Dave 'No Messing' Fingers, attacks the congregation of his counterpart, Reverend Rick 'The Man' Hamfist, and begins using his powers to slowly peel strips of flesh and skin away from Hamfist's assistant, Maraschino. Protagonist [=MacTavish=] even notes in horror that she's being FlayedAlive, her life somehow prolonged even as every strip of meat and muscle is torn away and every organ ripped free until nothing but a jerking, twitching, gore-painted skeleton is left.
* The Skysouls repay Fingers in kind by tearing him apart with their psychic powers, telekinetically ripping him apart with their MindOverMatter ability.
* Korax, the PhysicalGod of the Skysouls, telepathically viewing a small glimpse of the suffering her people are experiencing at human hands, [[HumansAreBastards all in the name of entertainment]]: a mother and her child being whipped with a metal-studded bullwhip by some drunken farmhands, who delight in striking the boy's face; a Skysoul stretched on a rack and impaled with a thousand red-hot needles for the entertainment of the death-porn watchers; a Skysoul child with a rubber tire full of gasoline forced onto its neck by human youths and then set alight... This last one is particularly chilling, because it's a very real form of execution on Earth.
* Whilst most of the unholy miracles that take place around the story's midpoint are [[Funny/JudgeDredd comical]], the last of them is [[BreadEggsMilkSquick genuinely disturbing]], as it consists of every single teddy bear, doll or other cuddly toy in the city's limits being possessed by the vengeful soul of a recently executed psychopath.
* At the story's climax, Dredd confronts Dennis, only to find he has recently murdered his servant Becattini for perceived failure. The His nostrils have been slit open, his teeth, tongue and eyes ripped out, and his head cut off. His heart has been torn out of his chest and stuffed into the stump of his neck, and his feet severed. The whole mutilated corpse has also been arranged jauntily at Dennis' desk.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
Added a section for NF from the novels plus entries from Cursed Earth Asylum.
Changed line(s) 67 (click to see context) from:
* The [[ShoutOut ABC Warrior]] is a terrifying war-droid whose design combines the scariest elements of a typical TopHeavyGuy "big mook" and a SkeleBot9000, speaking in a GutturalGrowler version of a MachineMonotone. Despite this, it sounds almost ''satisfied'' when Rico informs it that its new mission is "War". Perhaps the scariest scene with it comes towards the film's climax, when Rico instructs it to [[AnArmAndALeg tear Judge Griffin limb-from-limb]], explicitly saying for it to save Griffin's head for last so he'll live through the pain of having his arms and legs ripped off. Griffin, already dangling in the ABC Warrior's grip can only scream, as the camera [[GoryDiscretionShot switches to a shot of blood raining down over the robot's feet]]...
to:
* The [[ShoutOut ABC Warrior]] is a terrifying war-droid whose design combines the scariest elements of a typical TopHeavyGuy "big mook" and a SkeleBot9000, speaking in a GutturalGrowler version of a MachineMonotone. Despite this, it sounds almost ''satisfied'' when Rico informs it that its new mission is "War". Perhaps the scariest scene with it comes towards the film's climax, when Rico instructs it to [[AnArmAndALeg tear Judge Griffin limb-from-limb]], explicitly saying for it to save Griffin's head for last so he'll live through the pain of having his arms and legs ripped off. Griffin, already dangling in the ABC Warrior's grip can only scream, as the camera [[GoryDiscretionShot switches to a shot of blood raining down over the robot's feet]]...feet]]...
! The Novels
[[folder:Cursed Earth Asylum]]
* The backstory of the story's BigBad, Soon, is just a rollar-coaster of awfulness. The core of it is that he was created in a secret project by the Judges to bio-engineer a superior form of clone, a program that also incorporated engineering enhanced [[PsychicPowers psy-affinities]] and genetically removing "undesirable" traits such as doubt, fear, compassion and guilt. The Med-Judges involved came to ''proudly'' call themselves "The Eugenics Division", and the project's leader, whose journal serves as the book's introduction, even directly compares their work to the insane experiments of the infamous Nazi MadScientist, Dr. Mengele.
** Their first experiments with their bio-engineered clone embryos were disastrous failures... because every clone they created immediately [[BodyHorror mutated into a hideous abomination too deformed to survive]].
** Their solution? Use ''human surrogate mothers'' instead of {{Uterine Replicator}}s. But they didn't just take volunteers. No, they effectively ''kidnapped'' women for the role, selecting a mixture of women in carehomes for "mental defectiveness" and ultra-violent criminals.
** Three of the host-mothers bashed their brains out, trying to silence the telepathic screaming from their unborn children. A fourth bled to death after attempting to forcibly induce a miscarriage. A fifth died in her sleep, and when autopsied was found to be carrying a deformed embryo with two heads.
** When the seven survivors gave birth, one artificially engineered child was stillborn -- though the project's head insists it couldn't have been, the midwife asserts that the child ''deliberately strangled itself to death with its own umbilical cord''.
** Of the other six host-mothers who were delivered by Caesarean, three died, two went irretrievably insane, and the last -- Soon's mother, a SerialKiller named Doris "Driller Killer" Davison -- lasted long enough to curse the project manager for unleashing a monster on the world before she committed suicide by swallowing her tongue.
** In the end, it was all pointless, as the six surviving clone-babies were still all horribly deformed. Soon was the least deformed, and even he had [[FacialHorror a blank, featureless expanse of skin where his mouth should be]].
** For some reason, despite ascertaining that Soon had a perfectly formed set of jaws, teeth, tongue and vocal chords, just sealed-shut lips, the Eugenics Division decided not to bother surgically correcting his deformity, and instead just feed him intraveneously for his entire life.
** On his seventh birthday, Soon finally struck, slaughtering the entire team with his PsychicPowers -- mind-controlling one woman to cut her own throat, burning another with pyrokinesis, then slowly battering the others to death. The only one he left alive was the project's manager, Dr. Joseph Swale, because he wanted to gloat about his plan to create "a new world, where more like me can be created". If Dr. Swale hadn't managed to stick him with a lucky syringe full of psi-tranq, he would have escaped to begin his rampage then and there.
** Rather than execute Soon and his fellow failures, the Justice Department simply banishes them to Erebus, a secret asylum for lunatics, genetic abominations and sufferers of alien diseases hidden in the Cursed Earth, before proceeding to abandon them to the eternal care of robot doctors. Robots who can't realize that Soon is slowly growing immune to the PowerNullifier drugs they're using to keep his murderous desires in check...
* Our first introduction to Soon proper, he's using his telepathy to torment a fellow inmate in the Erebus asylum, driving her so insane with his telepathic assaults that she resorts to [[FacialHorror tearing the flesh off of her face with her bare hands]] because that's ''better'' than what she's experiencing under Soon's attention.
* The description of the biological degeneration produced as a side-effect of Soon's flawed genesis. His bones are said to be constantly reinventing themselves, spontaneously breaking, warping, and reknitting into new, unnatural shapes underneath his skin. The result is that Soon is in ceaseless pain, to the point he wishes he had a mouth so he could scream...
* Whilst preparing to battle against a pack of gila-munja, Dredd and his Hotdog Run -- Cadet Judges brought into the Cursed Earth for a trial by fire -- are caught in the Death Belt, a detritus-laden storm that periodically descends from high in the sky to the ground level. They're forced to remain perfectly still as hundreds of of the Devil's Lapdogs -- mutant rats with lethally venomous fangs -- start swarming the area. One errant twitch, and they'll be EatenAlive.
* One of the Cadet Judges, Agnew, ''does'' get EatenAlive -- in his case, by the cannibalistic mutants known as gila-munja -- when he tries to stop a fellow cadet named Kate Jenks from deserting in a panic.
* The description of the gila-munja's lair; a charnel-house filled with the remains of over a thousand human and mutant victims, ranging from cracked-bone skeletons to putrefying corpses with wounds writhing with maggots to fresh victims. The more intact corpses were clearly tortured to death, and every victim with a face intact enough to be recognizable has their features contorted in agony and terror.
* The description of Jenks' fate after the fight is over: having been failed for her cowardly abandonment of her fellow cadets, she is ordered to return to Mega-City One on her own and report for expulsion. Assuming she survives her solo trip through the DeathWorld that is the Cursed Earth, she'll be a social outcast for life, forbidden from ever being employed by any legitimate job, and may even face brain surgery to reduce aggression and "burn out" sensitive information she learned during her traineeship as a Cadet Judge. It's almost a CruelMercy that she ends up being cornered by surviving gila-munja and chooses to [[TakingYouWithMe commit suicide by Lawmaster self-destruct]] rather than suffer through the tortures and being EatenAlive that she would otherwise endure.
* Soon's murder of his blind seer, Blind Mary, which comes out of nowhere and [[ForTheEvulz serves no purpose]]. He orders her to kiss him, which she does in absolute terror, unable to hide her revulsion at what she feels when she presses her lips to the taut skin where Soon's mouth should be and feels him gnashing his deformed teeth beneath it. Then Soon molds his hands into talons and begins ripping and tearing at her, carving her up for his own cruelty before [[EyeScream driving his claws into her brain through her empty eyesockets]] and [[YourSoulIsMine devouring her psychic essence]]. Once her husk has dropped to the floor, he nonchalantly describes her as "an appetiser".
* The graphic description of Judge Emma Chung, mutilated at the hands of Soon and then sent back to Mega-City One in a bodybag made from her own uniform that'd been lashed to her autopiloted Lawmaster. Most of her left arm is missing, save for a flap of skin hanging from the stump. One leg has "ruptured", exposing muscles, tendons and bones. Burns run the length of her body, and great chunks of hair and even scalp have been yanked off. Her remaining right hand is a broken mess; fingernails torn off, fingers ripped backwards, a finger stabbed into her palm. Her left ear and right eye have been plucked off, and the skin around her mouth has been flawed away to expose teeth, jaw and gums. The word "Fodder" has been carved into her chest. And this is what she looks like ''after'' an hour of microsurgery! Little wonder that she's braindead, or near-enough to it.
* The NightmareSequence of "Jonah", actually an amnesiac Judge Dredd. Running desperately as he's pursued by a hideous, inexhaustible pursuer, who shoots and throws grenades after him just to torment him. Made to run until he can't run any more, and then thrown to the ground. Forced to confront his pursuer -- a vicious visage, all teeth and leering grin, as it sticks a gun under Jonah's jaw. The last thing he sees before the bullet tears through his gun and into his brain: a badge on his killer's chest, labled "DREDD".
* TheReveal that Soon ''[[ImAHumanitarian eats]]'' anyone who falls into his clutches, [[AnatomyArsenal morphing his hands into instruments of agony]] with which he tortures them to death before finally sucking out their blood, soul, psyche and life essence. Their blood to temporarily alleviate his own endless agony by reinforcing his corrupted essence with fresh genetic material. Their psyches to bolster and expand his knowledge and PsychicPowers. And their souls simply for the sake of collecting them. In an ImagineSpot, he contemplates these trapped souls as butterfly-winged versions of themselves pinned to a metaphorical wall inside his mind by giant steel needles, clutching at the impaling shafts and screaming in eternal agony. He's already consumed his "siblings" from the cloning experiment and is now devouring everyone else he can get his hands on to further augment his psy-abiliites.
* The fate of the three Cadet Judges who fall into Soon's hands; he shapes their living bodies into a single twisted altar of flesh and bone without letting them die, despite the incredible damage done to them. For his own amusement, he permits the altar a brief opportunity to scream... ''and scream it does''.
* The Map of Eyes, one of the key features of Soon's war room, is made up of hundreds of sliced-up human eyes squeezed together between two sheets of glasseen.
* Soon deciding to remold his underling Novar's face to let him serve as his emissary. He shapes his hands into tangles of scalpels and then [[FacialHorror rips Novar's face to shreds]] -- he hacks off the ears, [[EyeScream gouges out an eyeball]], mangles the cheekbones, and rips out teeth by the roots. Then he molds the ruin back together like clay, leaving Novar with a face that looks exactly like Soon's own deformed visage, save that he still has a mouth... if you can call a jagged circle in the center of his lower face with a flap of bloody skin dangling below it a "mouth".
* Soon's army comprises three major components. Firstly, there's the zombies; corpses ranging from skeletal remains to the newly dead to every stage of decaying cadaver in between, forced to walk through the sheer will of Soon's telepathic might. Then there's the Soonites; formerly human, Soon used his formidable powers to simultaneously burn their minds clean of every trace of personality and twist their genes, mutating them into hideous freaks of nature even fouler-looking than himself. Lastly, there's the gila-munja, mentioned in the Cursed Earth folder, who submit to Soon out of fear. In battle, all fight beyond their mortal limits, Soon puppetteering their bodies and forcing them to fight until totally destroyed, no matter how badly damaged they are or how much pain they feel before being put down.
* Soon's idea of home renovation; shrouding the exterior of Erebus in walls of fused human bones and rotting meat taken from his countless victims, save for that spared to erect great windmills of bones, with sails of flayed human skin.
* The very last passage of the the book; Soon has been left alive in the ruins of Erebus after Hope completely wiped away his mind. Except that, in the darkest corners of his psyche, Soon's murderous mania still lingers, building strength, vowing to seek revenge...
[[/folder]]
! The Novels
[[folder:Cursed Earth Asylum]]
* The backstory of the story's BigBad, Soon, is just a rollar-coaster of awfulness. The core of it is that he was created in a secret project by the Judges to bio-engineer a superior form of clone, a program that also incorporated engineering enhanced [[PsychicPowers psy-affinities]] and genetically removing "undesirable" traits such as doubt, fear, compassion and guilt. The Med-Judges involved came to ''proudly'' call themselves "The Eugenics Division", and the project's leader, whose journal serves as the book's introduction, even directly compares their work to the insane experiments of the infamous Nazi MadScientist, Dr. Mengele.
** Their first experiments with their bio-engineered clone embryos were disastrous failures... because every clone they created immediately [[BodyHorror mutated into a hideous abomination too deformed to survive]].
** Their solution? Use ''human surrogate mothers'' instead of {{Uterine Replicator}}s. But they didn't just take volunteers. No, they effectively ''kidnapped'' women for the role, selecting a mixture of women in carehomes for "mental defectiveness" and ultra-violent criminals.
** Three of the host-mothers bashed their brains out, trying to silence the telepathic screaming from their unborn children. A fourth bled to death after attempting to forcibly induce a miscarriage. A fifth died in her sleep, and when autopsied was found to be carrying a deformed embryo with two heads.
** When the seven survivors gave birth, one artificially engineered child was stillborn -- though the project's head insists it couldn't have been, the midwife asserts that the child ''deliberately strangled itself to death with its own umbilical cord''.
** Of the other six host-mothers who were delivered by Caesarean, three died, two went irretrievably insane, and the last -- Soon's mother, a SerialKiller named Doris "Driller Killer" Davison -- lasted long enough to curse the project manager for unleashing a monster on the world before she committed suicide by swallowing her tongue.
** In the end, it was all pointless, as the six surviving clone-babies were still all horribly deformed. Soon was the least deformed, and even he had [[FacialHorror a blank, featureless expanse of skin where his mouth should be]].
** For some reason, despite ascertaining that Soon had a perfectly formed set of jaws, teeth, tongue and vocal chords, just sealed-shut lips, the Eugenics Division decided not to bother surgically correcting his deformity, and instead just feed him intraveneously for his entire life.
** On his seventh birthday, Soon finally struck, slaughtering the entire team with his PsychicPowers -- mind-controlling one woman to cut her own throat, burning another with pyrokinesis, then slowly battering the others to death. The only one he left alive was the project's manager, Dr. Joseph Swale, because he wanted to gloat about his plan to create "a new world, where more like me can be created". If Dr. Swale hadn't managed to stick him with a lucky syringe full of psi-tranq, he would have escaped to begin his rampage then and there.
** Rather than execute Soon and his fellow failures, the Justice Department simply banishes them to Erebus, a secret asylum for lunatics, genetic abominations and sufferers of alien diseases hidden in the Cursed Earth, before proceeding to abandon them to the eternal care of robot doctors. Robots who can't realize that Soon is slowly growing immune to the PowerNullifier drugs they're using to keep his murderous desires in check...
* Our first introduction to Soon proper, he's using his telepathy to torment a fellow inmate in the Erebus asylum, driving her so insane with his telepathic assaults that she resorts to [[FacialHorror tearing the flesh off of her face with her bare hands]] because that's ''better'' than what she's experiencing under Soon's attention.
* The description of the biological degeneration produced as a side-effect of Soon's flawed genesis. His bones are said to be constantly reinventing themselves, spontaneously breaking, warping, and reknitting into new, unnatural shapes underneath his skin. The result is that Soon is in ceaseless pain, to the point he wishes he had a mouth so he could scream...
* Whilst preparing to battle against a pack of gila-munja, Dredd and his Hotdog Run -- Cadet Judges brought into the Cursed Earth for a trial by fire -- are caught in the Death Belt, a detritus-laden storm that periodically descends from high in the sky to the ground level. They're forced to remain perfectly still as hundreds of of the Devil's Lapdogs -- mutant rats with lethally venomous fangs -- start swarming the area. One errant twitch, and they'll be EatenAlive.
* One of the Cadet Judges, Agnew, ''does'' get EatenAlive -- in his case, by the cannibalistic mutants known as gila-munja -- when he tries to stop a fellow cadet named Kate Jenks from deserting in a panic.
* The description of the gila-munja's lair; a charnel-house filled with the remains of over a thousand human and mutant victims, ranging from cracked-bone skeletons to putrefying corpses with wounds writhing with maggots to fresh victims. The more intact corpses were clearly tortured to death, and every victim with a face intact enough to be recognizable has their features contorted in agony and terror.
* The description of Jenks' fate after the fight is over: having been failed for her cowardly abandonment of her fellow cadets, she is ordered to return to Mega-City One on her own and report for expulsion. Assuming she survives her solo trip through the DeathWorld that is the Cursed Earth, she'll be a social outcast for life, forbidden from ever being employed by any legitimate job, and may even face brain surgery to reduce aggression and "burn out" sensitive information she learned during her traineeship as a Cadet Judge. It's almost a CruelMercy that she ends up being cornered by surviving gila-munja and chooses to [[TakingYouWithMe commit suicide by Lawmaster self-destruct]] rather than suffer through the tortures and being EatenAlive that she would otherwise endure.
* Soon's murder of his blind seer, Blind Mary, which comes out of nowhere and [[ForTheEvulz serves no purpose]]. He orders her to kiss him, which she does in absolute terror, unable to hide her revulsion at what she feels when she presses her lips to the taut skin where Soon's mouth should be and feels him gnashing his deformed teeth beneath it. Then Soon molds his hands into talons and begins ripping and tearing at her, carving her up for his own cruelty before [[EyeScream driving his claws into her brain through her empty eyesockets]] and [[YourSoulIsMine devouring her psychic essence]]. Once her husk has dropped to the floor, he nonchalantly describes her as "an appetiser".
* The graphic description of Judge Emma Chung, mutilated at the hands of Soon and then sent back to Mega-City One in a bodybag made from her own uniform that'd been lashed to her autopiloted Lawmaster. Most of her left arm is missing, save for a flap of skin hanging from the stump. One leg has "ruptured", exposing muscles, tendons and bones. Burns run the length of her body, and great chunks of hair and even scalp have been yanked off. Her remaining right hand is a broken mess; fingernails torn off, fingers ripped backwards, a finger stabbed into her palm. Her left ear and right eye have been plucked off, and the skin around her mouth has been flawed away to expose teeth, jaw and gums. The word "Fodder" has been carved into her chest. And this is what she looks like ''after'' an hour of microsurgery! Little wonder that she's braindead, or near-enough to it.
* The NightmareSequence of "Jonah", actually an amnesiac Judge Dredd. Running desperately as he's pursued by a hideous, inexhaustible pursuer, who shoots and throws grenades after him just to torment him. Made to run until he can't run any more, and then thrown to the ground. Forced to confront his pursuer -- a vicious visage, all teeth and leering grin, as it sticks a gun under Jonah's jaw. The last thing he sees before the bullet tears through his gun and into his brain: a badge on his killer's chest, labled "DREDD".
* TheReveal that Soon ''[[ImAHumanitarian eats]]'' anyone who falls into his clutches, [[AnatomyArsenal morphing his hands into instruments of agony]] with which he tortures them to death before finally sucking out their blood, soul, psyche and life essence. Their blood to temporarily alleviate his own endless agony by reinforcing his corrupted essence with fresh genetic material. Their psyches to bolster and expand his knowledge and PsychicPowers. And their souls simply for the sake of collecting them. In an ImagineSpot, he contemplates these trapped souls as butterfly-winged versions of themselves pinned to a metaphorical wall inside his mind by giant steel needles, clutching at the impaling shafts and screaming in eternal agony. He's already consumed his "siblings" from the cloning experiment and is now devouring everyone else he can get his hands on to further augment his psy-abiliites.
* The fate of the three Cadet Judges who fall into Soon's hands; he shapes their living bodies into a single twisted altar of flesh and bone without letting them die, despite the incredible damage done to them. For his own amusement, he permits the altar a brief opportunity to scream... ''and scream it does''.
* The Map of Eyes, one of the key features of Soon's war room, is made up of hundreds of sliced-up human eyes squeezed together between two sheets of glasseen.
* Soon deciding to remold his underling Novar's face to let him serve as his emissary. He shapes his hands into tangles of scalpels and then [[FacialHorror rips Novar's face to shreds]] -- he hacks off the ears, [[EyeScream gouges out an eyeball]], mangles the cheekbones, and rips out teeth by the roots. Then he molds the ruin back together like clay, leaving Novar with a face that looks exactly like Soon's own deformed visage, save that he still has a mouth... if you can call a jagged circle in the center of his lower face with a flap of bloody skin dangling below it a "mouth".
* Soon's army comprises three major components. Firstly, there's the zombies; corpses ranging from skeletal remains to the newly dead to every stage of decaying cadaver in between, forced to walk through the sheer will of Soon's telepathic might. Then there's the Soonites; formerly human, Soon used his formidable powers to simultaneously burn their minds clean of every trace of personality and twist their genes, mutating them into hideous freaks of nature even fouler-looking than himself. Lastly, there's the gila-munja, mentioned in the Cursed Earth folder, who submit to Soon out of fear. In battle, all fight beyond their mortal limits, Soon puppetteering their bodies and forcing them to fight until totally destroyed, no matter how badly damaged they are or how much pain they feel before being put down.
* Soon's idea of home renovation; shrouding the exterior of Erebus in walls of fused human bones and rotting meat taken from his countless victims, save for that spared to erect great windmills of bones, with sails of flayed human skin.
* The very last passage of the the book; Soon has been left alive in the ruins of Erebus after Hope completely wiped away his mind. Except that, in the darkest corners of his psyche, Soon's murderous mania still lingers, building strength, vowing to seek revenge...
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