In another thread I posted a rather twisted and sick thing to do with statues and a minor enchantment... reposted here to avoid confusion...
Get a very, very, very good sculpter to create several statues of "adventurer" type people, or theives, better yet. Have them carved in positions of shock and surprise, with possibly a tinge of horror on them.
Then enchant them. First of all, this makes them radiate magic, but second... what you do is, enchant them with a modified version of the "create water" spell... so that there is always a few drops of tears around their eyes. If your really sick, have a minor audible illusion enchanted on them so that if you get up within a foot or so of them, you can hear tortured screams.
Then put them out in front of the gates like gargoyles.
Where I got this from is that's something I did one time. I used to play a wizard back in 2E who was chaotic good... but most people thought he was chaotic evil, becuase of the way he acted in public. Eventualy, I built a tower.
I had a couple of robbery attempts. Failed, mind you, but it was annoying. It was the local theives guild, and they had been harrassing me because they saw me as very wealthy (which I was). Normaly I was rather gental, considering how I normaly acted... my normal responce was to use a modified version of polymorph to turn their skin bright purple with the word "theif" tatooed on their forhead. Still, my wealth was a bit too tempting.
So I sent away to a distant town for the scultpures. When I got them I hid them in my wine cellar for a while, and worked the enchantments. Once I finished that, I called together a couple friends and used an
alter spell to make them look like the fictional people carved into the statue. Then over the course of a month or so, I had them infiltrate the thieves guild. Then, the next time the theives guild put out a call for people willing to try to rob my tower, they went.
So, they "snuck" into my tower, where I had them loudly scream out in surprise and fear once, then dispelled the
alter spell on them.
Later that day, my servants and I drug the statues out front.
Never was robbed again.