The Vulture's Roost; Torture, Hangings, and Heaps of Fun

In the territory of Canderdale has not always been as peaceful and prosperous as it is now. Smuggling and thievery ran rampant in the alleyways and dark corners of taverns. It wasn't safe to travel over night. Lord Simeone, the duke of Canderdale at the time, noticed the corruption and decided that drastic measures were needed. 
He designed a tower next to the river that ran along the edge of his territory. Hanging from the tower was a multitude of cages, nooses, and shackles. Lesser criminals were hung from the nooses while more heinous ones were trapped in cages left to starve of be pecked to death by birds or suspended by their wrists by shackles that dug through flesh. Many of the torture device could rotate around the tower and even be lowered into the river for a watery death. The tower even had a water wheel that some wrong doers were tied to, slowly drowning as they kept cycling under the water again and again. 
Dubbed the Vulture's Roost because of all the scavenging birds that perched there, the tower worked wonders in deterring crime, and the corpses hanging from ropes, cages, and chains put off any would be criminals entering Canderdale. The next duke of Canderdale, Johnathan, or John the Jovial as many called him, saw the tower as a nefarious structure, stating that no man should ever have to endure such pain. He planned to demolish it, but came upon a rather strange idea. Instead of tearing down the monument of agony, he would have it rebuilt as a tower that would spread joy to others. He gathered his architects together and showed them his hastily made designs. After much tweaking and discussion, the plans were made, and the architects got to work to redesign the Vulture's Roost. 
Locks on cages were dismantled, shackles were connected with wooden planks and turned into swings, and the loops of the nooses were made of leather straps with buckles. The water wheel was put to good use to power a constant and swift rotation of the tower's devices, and a large wooden crank was attached that, if turned, sped up the rotation still. The ridiculous contraption was then introduced to the town's children. Younger children sat in the refurbished cages that circled the tower, while older and more daring ones sat on the swings. The bravest of the children would fasten one of their legs to the straps at the end of the nooses and swung around upside down as the tower spun them all in circles.
Thus Vulture's Roost was transformed from a tower of torture and corpses to a monument of mayhem that every child enjoyed. (Although Duke John renamed the tower the Ludacris Lookout, the original name stuck)

Type

Tower