The Iron Virgins are the canon's largest, slowest, most clinically theological torture device-enemies, great iron sarcophagi the height of two men, hollow in the middle, lined inside with flesh-flaying blades whose design is borrowed directly from a single human torturer's invention. The Ghiza's Wheel description states the design lineage without softening : 'Great iron wheel lined with flesh-flaying blades. Device of torture used by Inquisitor Ghiza. As the wheel spins it causes severe pain and blood loss. The design was adopted for use as the iconic weapon wielded by Iron Virgins.' Ghiza is a man, a recusant of Volcano Manor's older days. The Virgins are women-shaped engines that took up his weapon after he was through with it.

Their patrol-zone is the Volcano Manor's basement and a few of the Subterranean Shunning-Grounds beneath Leyndell, the same sites where the Inquisitor's Girandole, a candlestick-spike-rack 'used on nobles behind the curtain at the Volcano Manor of Mt. Gelmir,' is also stationed. The flavour text gives the Manor's interior atmosphere in a single line : 'A candlestick conceived by a thorough mind.' The Iron Virgins are the canon's quiet acknowledgement that Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy, ran his manor as a working interrogation-house long before he became the God-Devouring Serpent. The Virgins still spin in his absence.