J is For Jail

C. J. Sansom in Soverign, has the main character, Matthew Shardlake, wind up going to the tower of London.

For all intents and purposes, this is a confession house crossed with a jail. When you do in, you generally do not come out unless the country (the king), has what he wants out of you or at least has what he thinsk he wants out of you.

The jail should be everything that the players would like to avoid under more pleasant circumstances.

1. Cold and damp.

2. Expensive. Imagine that you get gruel and to get any food or clothes, you have to bribe the guards a little bit extra every time you'd like something outside of the gruel.

3. Dangerous. The guards may put you in with people who don't necessarily care about you or your causes or why you're in there because they have their whole slew of issues that's private to them that they are dealing with.

4. A bad place to die. Disease, rats, and other terrors lurk around every corner. There's no guarantee that you'll be getting out of this one.

In short, jail should be a place where if the players think they have a good change of going, that they should probably rethink what they're doing.