The Dust Town Arena

The Dust Town Arena (#7/30, #97/365)

The Arena of Dust Town is located in a natural bowl-shaped depression on the northern edge of the settlement, where tiers of seating have been loosely constructed from ruins-scavenged rubble. The Arena Master is a Half-Giant called Fen-Kla (bald, honest), who was an ex-gladiator himself, and now owns a stable of savage beasts and battle-captives (usually criminals serving a sentence), who live in a low clay-brick building next to the arena. These combatants are pitted against each other several times a week in the Arena for the entertainment of Dust Town's more bloodthirsty denizens, usually on Fireday, Windsday or Seaday. On these days, the stone tiers around the Arena will be three quarters-full of paying rubber-neckers, food-vendors, grog-sellers, local thieves and bravoes, and many others. The rest of the week, the Arena will be used for combat practice by Fen-Kla's battle-captives and training with his monster-wranglers.

In addition, professional pit-fighters, who work the gladiatorial circuit from the Arena of Death on Blood Island to the Fighting-Pit of Azgrul (see #64), and from Sapphire City's underground melee-dens to the legendary Sports Arena of Port Blacksand, have been known to make an appearance, including Scythos of Shazaar, Emeranth Crystalfist, and Grokkar the Quick. Rarely, even the Caarth may send a delegation of warriors, fresh from their exertions in the Sacred Games of the Serpent Gods, to see how they fare against the petty try-hards of the lands outside the desert sands. These bouts are completely packed out, and scalpers will patrol the front of the Arena selling both real and fake tickets at exorbitant prices, while keeping a steady lookout for the Autarch's mercenaries who will likely demand a cut from every ticket sold.

The winner's purse for professional gladiators varies between 100-600GP, depending on what (or who) is being fought.

Rules of the Dust Town Arena:

• No magic or firepowder weapons
  
• Any armour or melee weapons can be used, as long as they are not magic
• Use of magic will forfeit the winner's purse.
• A losing combatant can beg for the mercy of the crowd; thumbs up means they will live, thumbs down means they will not - the sentence must be carried out immediately by the victorious combatant
  
• The winner must be alive and conscious at the end of the battle to claim the prize
  

Bets are taken by wandering  itinerant bookies in the crowd (who all pay a cut to Fen-Kla) on everything from the fight outcome to things like 'first hit', 'first blood', 'first critical (i.e. decapitation or evisceration), etc. Odds are fair but weighted slightly towards the house (so an obviously powerful hero may be rated as 3:2 to beat a monster, but the bookie will offer 1:3 for a monster victory). The bet limit is 20GP, anyone offering larger sums may be looked upon with interest by the patrons as a target to 'rough up' as they exit the Arena.