[Waryverse #4] HARD MODE (MM/MM), the sequel to RANSOM (COMPLETE 8/31) + *POLL*

[blackbound]

This story is a sequel to RANSOM, and it probably makes sense to read that first.

For more about the characters, you are cordially invited to peruse my other stories:

• The Reward
• A Night to Remember, plus its sequel (in the same thread), Karma.

[blackbound]

HARD MODE

CHAPTER 1

"Hey, sorry I'm late," I called out as I closed the door behind me. No answer from Loum - was I in trouble from second one of this weekend? I carried the bags into the kitchen and started unpacking the groceries and putting them away. When I was nearly done, I thought I heard a thumping sound. The door?

"Hello?" I called.

No response.

I resumed putting away the remaining things when I heard the sound again. No, it was coming from the direction of the living room. I finished up quickly and went there to check.

Loum was home after all - he was just roughly trussed up with hemp rope and wrapped head to foot in clingfilm. A tightly knotted cleave gag with a gargantuan knot silenced him, a pair of ear muffs deafened him, and his eyes were covered by a blindfold. Standing over him were two men in black suits, with hoods obscuring their features, looking at me expectantly.

Neurons fired. It had been a while, but... "you're the escape room guys?"

A nod.

"But w—" I didn't get to finish the sentence as the taller of the two pounced, pressing his hand over my mouth and pulling me to the ground with him. Shortly after, I was snugly bound hand and foot with the same type of rope and gagged with every kidnapper's favorite, tergaderm. I was confused as to why Loum was restrained, given that I had entered myself as the victim for hard mode, but my ability to ask questions had been swiftly curtailed by the attack.

The shorter man pulled out a walkie-talkie. "The dom's finally here, we got them both ready to go."

Had they confused the two of us? I started making noise through the gag to alert the kidnappers about the mistake, but was ignored. They loaded both of us into the van I remembered well from my first rodeo, strapping us in securely, and off we were. I could see Loum struggle in his bonds, but his escape attempts were as futile as mine; these people knew what they were doing after all. Except, that was, for the mix-up.

Eventually, the van came to a stop and they unloaded Loum first. Several minutes later, one of the kidnappers returned, approaching me with a blindfold. Again, I made noises into the gag and bucked against the restraints.

"Look, Sir, if you're getting cold feet you're going to have to provide your safe word. We made the terms of hard mode very clear in our call." He waited for a moment but since I had absolutely no idea about Loum's safe word, on went the blindfold. I was unstrapped, and the man slung me over his shoulder and carried me off.

Some moments later, I was deposited on a cold, damp concrete floor. I felt something around my neck - a metal collar clicked shut tightly around it. Holding me by my braids with one hand, the kidnapper did something to the collar; spikes emerged from its inside that poked into my skin, not breaking it, but making the collar immovable. Pulling my hair to guide me, he forced me to the ground lying flat on my stomach, hands bound tightly behind me, and attached the collar to a hook screwed into the ground using a lock. He untied my legs, stripped me of pants, socks, and underwear, and finally ripped the shirt off my chest in an impressive show of strength.

He patted my head condescendingly, and just said "go". I could hear him walking away, the door opening and closing, and the muffled sound of the car driving off.

[Red86]

Wait, a possible mix up? I suspect there's more to that then meets the eye

Oh and that spiked collar! That sounds mighty rough to have locked on and locked the floor. I guess these guys really know how to make a game hard. And we're only just getting started!!

Looking forward to seeing this play out

[Pup Wingletang]

A great start. I particularly like the idea that the kidnappers may have got Loum and Wary mixed up. If that is the case let's hope Wary is as good at puzzles as Loum was otherwise Loum could be in for an unexpected and very uncomfortable time!

Hard mode is on!

[DeeperThanRed]

Ohoho, a kidnapping that's supposed to be predictable and fun goes awry!

These captors are so good at their jobs that our couple didn't even have a chance to correct them. After they get out, they'll probably need to report this safety issue... whenever that is.

[blackbound]

[mention]Red86[/mention], sometimes you don't even need the full overkill, and it's more about subverting expectations. Our boy Warmed is no less stuck than he was the first time, after all.

[mention]Pup Wingletang[/mention], the next instalment will demonstrate just how correct you are about that very uncomfortable time...

[mention]DeeperThanRed[/mention], you pinpointed a homage to other writers on here who love to frustrate their characters by denying them the simplest communication that would resolve their situation. You know who you are

[Xtc]

Hmmmm.
Perhaps customer service isn't as well-researched as it could be.
- - - or perhaps two gentlemen will be receiving services for which they have not payed.

[Guardianbound]

These kidnappers are a little too efficient can't wait to see the creative bondage scenarios you have in store for the pair.

[blackbound]

[mention]Xtc[/mention], one wonders if they "screw up" on purpose so they can lure their victims back with free coupons! Doesn't seem like the best business model, though.

[mention]Guardianbound[/mention] - wait no longer!

To make it fully clear, and apologies if this is clear to you anyway: text in italics is for a temporary perspective shift.

[blackbound]

{note: made a small edit here thanks to [mention]Pup Wingletang[/mention], so some comments below will no longer make sense}

CHAPTER 2

There I was, with my neck chained so tightly to the ground I could barely raise my head, every movement pressing sharp spikes into my skin. This was nothing like Loum's side of our first escape room had been! Was this some trick, making me think they thought I was the active participant while they were sitting somewhere with Loum, laughing their asses off at me? But then why had they restrained him so much more strictly than me?

I couldn't just keep lying there and thinking about machiavellian schemes; I had to do something. Rubbing the gag or blindfold off was out of the question due to the collar, so I would have to get my hands free first.

They'd tied my hands firmly in the classic X shape, palms up, but not secured them any further. Even though I was abysmal at escaping well-tied bonds, I thought I stood a chance here. The ropes weren't strict enough to prevent me from rotating my wrists, so I started to search along the rope for knots with my fingers. I encountered one pretty much right away and started picking at it as best I could. After some false starts, I managed to loosen the knot a little, which made it easier to painstakingly feed the rope through it, resolving that first knot and granting me access to a second. This continued for a while until I was suddenly able to unwind several loops without encountering further knots, which allowed me more freedom to move my hands. I worked the rope more forcefully, trying alternately to pull my hands apart and to slip them out of the remaining loops. I managed to get a loops over some of my fingers, twisted, pulled, and... I was out! Still shackled to the ground by the neck, but with my hands free, I could dispose of my gag and blindfold. I was in a dim room, walls and floor concrete as far as I could make out.

I could not directly see the padlock, but running my fingers over it did not reveal an obvious way to get it open - no wheels or dials, no keyhole.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a red light rapidly blinking, then remaining on, on the collar. At the same time, two screens flipped up from the ground in front of me. One showed a confusing diagram with various timers counting up and down; the other a live feed. It took me some time to decipher what was going on.

************************************

The *click* of the machine indicated that my time with fresh air was over again. I tested my bonds for the umpteenth time to no avail; I would not get off this bench before it was time, nor would the various implements tormenting me stop.

I had been forced into a neoprene suit covering me head to toe. Around the hands and feet, plastic was sewn into the neoprene, turning the ends of the arms and legs into stiff tubes. I could move my fingers and toes freely within those tubes, but was unable to actually use them to do anything, and would have been unable to walk if metal screw-down clamps didn't hold me immobile to an uncomfortable metal bench on my forearms and knees. An eyeless gas mask with built in gag covered my head entirely. Connected to it was a small rebreather bag with a hose leading into a machine that cut off the outside air supply at random intervals, for a random amount of time, with the air in the bag having to suffice until it decided to reopen its valve. When the valve was open, the hose connected to a blubber bottle partially filled with water that I had to work to breathe through.

The penis-shaped gag was on a different timer and automatically inflated, deposited some liquid down my throat to keep me hydrated in the most humiliating way possible, and deflated again after some time.

Speaking of penises, another one was mounted at my rear entrance, with a third timer causing it to do what you'd expect to happen there, while my own was inserted into a sleeve that stimulated it at the whims of a fourth timer, without ever allowing an orgasm. Additionally, some wheels with flexible spokes were mounted behind my balls and butt cheeks and turned on randomly to paddle either. A final eccentric motor turned on randomly to pull on my nipple chain. Whatever monster had programmed these timers had made sure that they would all coincide ever so often to cause an incredible sensory overload.

All I could do was wait and suffer the endless vortex of pleasure and pain.

************************************

I was aghast. The mix-up between me and Loum meant he was now being relentlessly fucked and tormented by this infernal machine instead of me, and - according to the big timer counting up - had been for the past 45 minutes. I had to clear this up, and... now hopefully I could.

"HEY!" I shouted, then "ah!" as the collar's spikes sent a painful electric shock through my body. My reaction immediately triggered a second, more intense shock, but my subsequent hiss of pain did not. So much for clearing anything up. I had to get out of my predicament myself, then get him out of his. But how?

I inspected the padlock again carefully with my fingers. The body and bottom felt weirdly plasticky, while the top and the shank were clearly metal. I gave the body an experimental pull while stabilizing the shank, and a cover slid off the lock. Now I could feel the classic combination lock wheels as well as a button at the bottom of the lock. I fiddled with the former for a bit. One position on each of the three wheels had a clearly elevated bump - presumably the zero position. Turning one of the wheels and counting the positions revealed that is was very likely the classic 0-9 configuration. But what was the combination?

I was relatively sure what would happen when I pressed the button with the wheels set an incorrect number, but had to be sure. I braced, pressed. A milder electric shock than expected was delivered to my neck, but presumably it would escalate as I got the combination wrong repeatedly. So much for brute-forcing it.

The only other option I had left was to explore the floor I could reach with my hands. And indeed, after a bit of feeling around, I discovered a groove with my left. I followed it to one end with my finger, then moved along it until I found the other. I believed it was in the shape of a 3. Heartened, I reached out with my right hand and quickly found a second groove, this one in the shape of a 7. Which meant I now needed to find the middle number, and I was probably lying right on top of it.

It took some effort to reposition myself to a very uncomfortable position on my knees without hurting myself. It was enough to hunt for the groove, which threw me for a (literal) loop until I realized it was an 8. Taking a guess at the direction of the number wheels, I carefully set the combination to 387, braced again, and pushed the button.

The lock sprang open. Relieved, I fumbled it out of the collar, and was finally able to stand up and take in my surroundings, which didn't take long: the room was barren but for a door with another bulky keypad and the two screens still displaying the feeds. The screens were housed in massive metal cases and thus likely not part of whatever solution was required to get out of here, so I focused my attention on the keypad.

My heart sank. On the front was a ten by ten grid of buttons, with another row of buttons above it. I pushed some at random but either it only accepted a completely correct solution or it wasn't powered at all - none of them lit up.

Upon inspecting the pad more closely, I figured out it could be opened. Doing so revealed a mess of wires, two of which were obviously only connected to the interior of the pad, but not the keys. They were tidily rolled up. Unwinding them, I found they were about a meter long each, with alligator clips on the end. I was getting into the groove of things now - I knew what was expected, but not too happy to have to do it. One glance at the video feed made it clear that I had no other choice if I ever wanted to get us out of this.

I attached one of the cables to one of the prongs of my collar, and the other to the one next to it, inhaled deeply, and let out a shout. The resulting shock was painful, but, even worse, nothing happened.

I had assumed that the prongs would alternate between positive and negative, but clearly the deviants running the show were too cruel for that. I pushed aside thoughts of what I wanted to do to the inventor of that collar, detached one of the clips, and moved it to the next prong.

I tried again with a more quiet exclamation, but the shock was nevertheless worse than before. I couldn't see the prongs so all I could do was keep going until I found the right one.

The fifth shock almost brought me to my knees, but the keypad finally lit up like a Christmas tree, and the door sprung open.

[george_bound]

Frick [mention]blackbound[/mention]! I strongly feel this story was specifically written for me! Not to sound vain at all but honestly this is exactly the type of story that I really, really enjoy (not that I don't enjoy the writings of the many, many other masterful storytellers on here )! The peril and the predicaments are similar to some of my own imaginations floating around in my head that I haven't been able to write yet but you're definitely giving me the push to do it soon! Very creative, engaging, suspenseful, sensual, perilous but not gory or raunchy. Love love love the predicament Loum finds himself in and that Warmed got a glimpse of it

And I'm in the camp that believes the "kidnapping" enterprise didn't get it mixed up but there's a creative twist coming... eagerly awaiting the next installment

[DeeperThanRed]

I hope Warmed rescues Loum soon but not too soon if you catch my drift.

The suit he's strapped into is genius, not giving him a single second to rest from all the stimulation. The activity planners must have gotten complaints about long-term bondage being boring after a while, haha!

[Pup Wingletang]

"The endless vortex of pleasure and pain." Brilliant! I love the idea of the various torments falling in and out of sync with each other, sometimes one at a time, sometimes all at once. One things for sure Loum won't get bored anytime soon! These guys and by extensiom our wounderful author are definitely very inventive.

Wary seems to be making good progress - he's working things out pretty quickly. I love the screens showing him what's happen to Loum - an added incentive to problem solve quickly.

I like the idea of using the shock collar to unlock the door although I'm not entirely sure the circuit you described would actually work. Just a nit picking engineer!

The mix up may be deliberate - possibly to entice them to repeat the experience the other way round.

[blackbound]

[mention]DeeperThanRed[/mention], surely hard mode doesn't involve just one solitary situation! As for the suit, be careful what you wish for - or, in this case, be careful what others wish for, I guess...

[mention]Pup Wingletang[/mention], I'm a computer toucher and terrible at anything involving electricity, so if you have any suggestion on how to fix it (I try to stay at least somewhat realistic), they are very welcome.

[mention]george_bound[/mention], I'm very happy that it speaks to you, and hope it will continue to do so! As for writing your own, I realize now that I probably held out far too long on doing so! Maybe this little peek behind the curtain can help.

As I've mentioned before, I've had some of the ideas and situations in my head for a long, long time, but never in a way that I thought worked. Some scenes I judged really hot, but the circumstances around them were too contrived, outlandish, restrictive.

I decided to finish writing an entire story before posting it; I always think it's a shame when stories die part-way through, and it's often the hottest ones. Since it worked so well for the first two, I've kept on doing so, and in fact have two other stories already written beyond this one, and one scenario idea for a ninth.

The first story I wrote, RANSOM, was the scenario I'd come up with not long before pushing myself to start writing. I'd been reading this site for a good while and - while many of my ideas remained untouched - some other stories came pretty close; that was one incentive to get going. The other was that writing things down would hopefully show me what worked and didn't work. I had the basic idea of "over the top kidnapping" and the twist. I filled in everything as I wrote, making sure to have it be absurdly over the top for a ransom kidnapping but never clearly stating the motivation before the twist reveal. This also finally made me settle on the protagonists. The hardest part was the opening bit.

The second one, The Reward, was much easier to write and went back to an idea I'd had much further back. It survives basically unscathed, but I changed the last part to introduce Rui, a completely new-to-me character that I could use to later integrate some of my oldest ideas without making them, well, bad. This was also where I decided to make it a "shared universe", allowing me to bring in additional characters. I think I rewrote that ending about 10 times before I was happy with it.

When starting A Night to Remember, I decided to ditch the entire framework of my ancient ideas except for the mansion that everyone would live in, and decided on the remaining two characters. I knew I wanted to distribute the remainder of the various ideas I'd had, plus some new stuff, over four sub-stories, with a frame story and an epilogue. The oldest bits that remain from my old ideas are the entirety of Kur's story. Parts of another form most of Loum's story, and Warmed's story is much expanded from its original inchoate kernel. The ice cube challenge and the isolation hood are the oldest remaining ideas. Rui and Faiz's story is also mostly made out of bits of old ideas. For this one, I completely rewrote the first sub-story after being unhappy with the original form, and kept expanding on the intermissions and epilogue as necessary.

At that point I'd finally gotten most of my original ideas out. I wrote the bonus story, Extraction, and - inspired by comments - Karma, at the same time. It's gotten a lot easier, I no longer need to go over a story three or four times to make all the parts fit, but I still do multiple passes to hopefully improve readability and eliminate clumsy phrasing or repetition.

After that, comments were the basis for this story as well as the next two. That's how important comments are; I would probably have stopped after A Night to Remember if nobody had bothered to leave any. Instead, everyone's enthusiasm has helped me come up with new ideas and scenarios, as well as ways to integrate some leftover oldies, like the overstimulation device in the chapter right above, as well as (EXCLUSIVE SNEAK PEEK) a conclusion to Tim's story and some more insight into Rui's mysterious past.

Another thing that's helped me is taking a page, or more likely just a discarded napkin, from Tolkien and having a more detailed background for the stories than the stories themselves let on. I won't say more about that yet as it would involve spoilers for the current story. Sometimes, of course, I actually don't know either - I had no idea what Tim's final fate would be before I wrote about it.

Finally, I go over each chapter one last time before posting it to give it one last polish.

All of this to say: Potential writers, don't be scared, people here are super kind and welcoming. And commenters, you're the reason I keep writing, and I can't thank you enough.

[george_bound]

Hey [mention]blackbound[/mention], thanks so much for the above post of support! I think we share a very similar writing process so thank you for giving me a glimpse into how you work through it!

[Pup Wingletang]

[mention]blackbound[/mention] thanks for sharing this insight into how you go about writing. I can definitely relate to the challenge of turning some hot ideas into a coherent and believable story. I also love the way things start to develop a life of their own once you start to write. Putting in the time and effort to proof read and refine the text is also well worth it.

With regards to the electrics - the classic shock collar has two electrodes - positive and negative - with the current running between the two to create the shock. They tend to be high voltage, low current and are battery powered. For Wary's collar I imagine you would probably alternate the prongs between positive and negative. The best way to create a circuit would be to connect the wires to these prongs. There isn't necessarily a circuit from the metal of the TV stand back to the battery. Batteries live in their own little electrical world! Anyway, science lesson over! Don't let it worry you!

[blackbound]

[mention]Pup Wingletang[/mention] oh, I was thinking about grounding it, I see how that makes no sense now. Thanks! Now to go back and edit it so none of this makes any sense

[Pup Wingletang]

@Pup Wingletang oh, I was thinking about grounding it, I see how that makes no sense now. Thanks! Now to go back and edit it so none of this makes any sense

If you really wanted to make life fun for Wary make all the prongs negative apart from one that is positive. Then he has to shock himself a few times before he finds the right pin!

[blackbound]

If you really wanted to make life fun for Wary make all the prongs negative apart from one that is positive. Then he has to shock himself a few times before he finds the right pin!

I started typing something about a random pattern but deleted it because I didn't know whether it would work. Good to know it does! For me, not poor Wary.

edit: updated! I hope it makes more sense now. Better hope he doesn't find you, [mention]Pup Wingletang[/mention] .

[Pup Wingletang]

If you really wanted to make life fun for Wary make all the prongs negative apart from one that is positive. Then he has to shock himself a few times before he finds the right pin!

I started typing something about a random pattern but deleted it because I didn't know whether it would work. Good to know it does! For me, not poor Wary.

edit: updated! I hope it makes more sense now. Better hope he doesn't find you, @Pup Wingletang .

Sorry Wary! But you did sign up for hard mode and those guys are devious. Scientifically more accurate and more fun all at the same time.

[blackbound]

CHAPTER 3

As I entered the next room, the door slammed shut behind me. Before me was a control panel right out of a James Bond movie, facing a large window. Behind that window, in a transparent box against the opposite wall, was the machine with Loum in it. I could see the various implements that had been shown on the live feed working away at him. It had been almost 90 minutes by now - my inability to make this mix-up clear to the operators was driving me crazy.

I inspected the control panel. It was full of small screens, switches, buttons, dials, and labels, with an almost comically large red button at the center. Below it was a row of LEDs, all currently unlit. This was closer to actual escape room fare than anything else so far; I guessed it was time to switch from physical to mental challenges.

I started by poring over the various readouts, trying to find the one to start with. In a small act of mercy, it turned out to actually be the one lit in green and displaying a wiring diagram. I found the switches it seemed to correspond to and set them up correctly; there was a satisfying click. One of the LEDs under the button came on while some of the previously useless displays flickered to new configurations.

This first puzzle had been more of a tutorial; the difficulty quickly ramped up from there. I solved the panel's various challenges as quickly as I could; fortunately, each of the puzzles was standalone and did not require retaining large amounts of information at once. Still, it was almost another hour before the big red button at the center lit up and I could finally push it.

The machine stopped. The box fell open. Two figures entered as a metal divider started descending from the ceiling in front of the control panel. As it closed, I could see them extract the limp form of Loum from the machine, dump him on a gurney, and wheel him off while I had to stand there, silent and fuming. They didn't look at me or react to my frantic gestures, and soon enough the divider was far enough down that the window was fully obscured. Shortly after, it touched the ground, and I was in complete darkness.

I could hear more clicking and scraping from the ceiling and walls. Yellowish lights came on, reminding me of those found at the bottom of a swimming pool - for good reason, it turned out, as (mercifully warm) water started raining down from the ceiling and filling the room. Behind me, a panel had opened in one wall, revealing swimming goggles, a nose clip, and a breathing apparatus with a flask attached. The mouthpiece wasn't a normal SCUBA one, though, but resembled a plug gag; and indeed, an illuminated illustration guided me to inserting the mouthpiece, fastening it behind my head and locking it with another padlock before putting on the nose clip and goggles. As soon as I had complied, the light on the collar winked out and it opened with a click. The illustration changed, and I placed the collar in the niche, which promptly closed again.

The flow of the water increased, and soon, the room was completely submerged. Yet another panel slid open near the bottom of the opposite wall. No way to go but in.

The panel slid shut as soon as I had passed under it. I was in a tube, diffusely lit, with rungs along either side to pull myself along. I did, and quickly came to an intersection; to my amazement, the entire thing turned out to be a complicated three-dimensional submerged maze. Placed throughout were additional flasks of air, should I be running out. Some of the tubes carried strong currents that would whisk me to the next stage of the labyrinth, like checkpoints in a video game.

Eventually I emerged into another room very similar to the one I'd started this underwater adventure in. There was another control panel, this one entirely mechanical, and a large window, behind which I could see three identical rubber sleep sacks suspended vertically in a veritable spiderweb of ropes; a raised platform was under each. A bubbling air hose at the panel helpfully connected to my breathing apparatus - no more flask swapping for now, but still a step down from the other half of the room, which had no water in it at all.

The various switches, levers and wheels all controlled the lengths of one or more of the ropes, rotating the sleep sacks three-dimensionally. My goal, it seemed, was to get all three of them to lay flat on the platforms under them. I felt bad for the way I spun the people inside around and upside down before I had fully figured out which control did what, but eventually managed to lower all three of the sacks to the platforms in the correct orientation.

The ropes detached and disappeared into the ceiling at the same time as the center platforms descended into the ground. I could feel the water moving - the room was draining - and the air hose cut off the flow. I quickly detached it and surfaced, removing the nose clip and breathing room air for the first time in... I didn't know how long. I had lost all sense of time and place. With the water completely drained, I was standing on firm ground again.

Yet another panel opened in the partition between me and the other half of the room and closed behind me once I had crawled through. I approached one of the sleeping sacks and unzipped it, only to discover a wooden dummy; there was also one in the remaining sack. I looked around for a key to unlock my gag, but saw none. Puzzled as to what to do next, I removed the dummies from the sacks and inspected them - nothing obvious caught my attention.

Standing or sitting on the platforms also did nothing. They had a weird grainy texture, like rice crackers, but if that held any hints, I did not see them. The only remaining interactable objects were the sleep sacks. I zipped one open fully; it was very much like the one I had spent a suspended night in, with sleeves to trap the arms. Experimentally, I slid inside; immediately, something dropped from the ceiling and stopped just above me. It was a small metal hook on a slightly elastic cable. I now noticed that a part of the platform had lit up to instruct me on how, exactly, to place the sack. I got out, arranged the sack, then slid back in and attached the hook to its zipper. The platform's light turned green.

I inserted my arms into the sleeves and lay back. There was the whirr of a motor and the hook moved, zipping the bag shut around me and over my head. The platform I was on descended; at the same time, its surface turned from hard to soft so the sack sank into it, then hardened again; I was now doubly trapped and once more immobile. Why that was became clear as the platform started to move horizontally and accelerated away.

[Pup Wingletang]

Wary's definitely getting a physical and mental work out. I'm not sure I could cope with the underwater section!

Poor Loum - 90 minutes plugged in to that machine and then I presume spun around as part of the sleepsack challenge. I like the way he is integrated into the challenges.

Looking forward to what challenges have to be overcome next.

[blackbound]

I presume spun around as part of the sleepsack challenge

You better believe everyone in those sacks got spun around good. I personally don't think I'd survive.

[george_bound]

There was another control panel, this one entirely mechanical, and a large window, behind which I could see three identical rubber sleep sacks suspended vertically in a veritable spiderweb of ropes; a raised platform was under each...

The various switches, levers and wheels all controlled the lengths of one or more of the ropes, rotating the sleep sacks three-dimensionally.

Holy cow, you had me big time with this set-up, I have a similar predicament in my bondage catalogue with a group of guys tied off and intertwined in a vast web of bindings whereby moving one's arm yanks on another's cock via a pulley on the ceiling, that guy's knee is attached to a third guy's collar via a hook on the wall, on and on until everyone's "key" body parts are lashed off in an endless maze of interconnected rope

I have no words for the sleepsack-spinning experience, only song lyrics: You spin me right round, baby, right round, like a record baby, right round, round round Poor Loum, I agree that I'd likely not be able to survive that either! But am really liking the glimpses that we, and Warmed, are getting of him in his perils... wonder how he's being kept right now.

And can I just briefly give a shout-out to the almost sarcastic, cartoonishly large red button in the centre of the panel... no set of controls is complete without one!

The water maze scene is awesome, especially with the gag attachment and padlock... and it now seems to be apparent to what the first image in your signature banner for this story references, eh! Therefore, I'm deducing from the second image that there will be a clue(s) in the frieze of a classical building or possibly the crown moulding in the room (my architecture senses are going off)? Haha, where do I sign up for this bondage escape challenge?

[DeeperThanRed]

These puzzles and traps are super creative! I love how you have gag and immobilize yourself to even move forward.