(TFT) Raw Text, Arena

["Jay Carlisle" <selfinflicted_wounds@boardermail.com>]

A dull throbing...

An aching darkness.

Pounding, pounding, pounding...

Your shattered senses tumbel from the spaceless void back into yourself, filling your rapidly returning conconious with a thousand little agonys of pains.

Your eyelids flutter open, only to screw tight against the assualt of light.

You become aware of the hard pressure of a wooden floor against your body and you stir to a sitting posistion, rubbing life back into your protesting limbs.

What the hell?

Where are you?

What's going on?

You squint your eyes.

Slowly, hazy images begin to form and then resolve as your vision swims into focus.

You are sitting in the middle of a bare, ten foot square room walled in black flecked granet.
Light shines down on you from a thick wroght grate that makes up the cealing of your enclosure, well above your reach.

A rythmic chant rings through your cell.
The cry of thousands of voices, thrice calling together followed by a reverberating boom that shakes the walls,and then a cheer.

You scrambel about the space, runninging your hands over the cool, rough stone of the walls and the solid wooden floor.
There is no door.

A shadow flicks breifly across you and you peer up in time to glimps a dim silouete through the gate, passing from view.

The figure calls a few words in a language you do not understand, and you hear muffled voices reply.

Your confused mind trys to reach back for connections.

What's happining?

How did you get here?

Nothing comes.

Who are you?

A vague panic builds in your chest.

You don't know.

Suddenly the strange background noise swells to an excited creshendo of cheers, puncituated by bells and horns.

As the noise slowly receeds, you become aware of a flurry of activity above you.
Voices call to each other in the unmistakeable cadience of command and adknowledgement and the thumps, creaks and rattles of machinery intermixes.

Once again shadow falls across you and you gaze up upon the backlit form above you.

As he turns and raises his hand, you catch a glimps of his face in the light.
Surely this must be a man, he stands as tall as you, yet his face is as bare as a childs.

With this thought his hand falls, and as his hand falls so does the floor.

You feel the decent in the pit of your stomach as the floor plumits away.
Your limbs flail despertly for purchace as the platform crashes to a rest at a steep angle and you half drop half slide through an opening filled with blinding light. 

Your fall is quick and a covering of straw on the ground beneath helps to break your mometium.

Your eyes roll wildly in panic as you take in your suroundings.

You are in a large, circular area, perhaps 50 yards in diameter with a hardpacked earthen surface of an orange-red hue, and gleaming white, smooth surfaced walls, enclosing you to a height of twenty feet.
There are openings every 20 yards or so about 15 feet up the walls.
It seems that you've been dumped from one of these openings, but your eyes have been drawn to the sea of people that encircles the walls above you, more people than you have ever seen before, riseing in row upon row, ridiculasly adorned and beardless all.
A voice booms out, imposabally loud, cutting clearly through the noise of the crowd in its oddly lilting tounge, and the crowd responds.

"Blood, blood, BLOOD!" they cry in the old tounge, and then in a single, unified motion they rise to thier feet with a stamp and let out a cheer like a roar.

There is a flash above you and you watch several metal objects glint in the sun as they arc down from the walls to land, scattered about you.
A short bronze sword.
A small leather shield.
A broad tiped spear.
The blade lies at the center of a damp, rust coloured stain in the dirt.

"Blood, blood, BLOOD!" comes the chant again, and as the crowd roars their cry the muted sound of a platform dropping reaches you from across the way, drawing your fractured attention to the angry Lion that plumits through the breach.

The mighty cat twists its body through the air, gracefully landing on its feet, and you can empathise with its frightend, confused whall.
Empathise that is until the Lion turns its paniced gaze on you.
As you meet its stare there is no doubt.
Your about to be attacked.

The feline snarls as the drums begin to pound.

Welcome to the Arena.
Your not gonna survive.

< Star Trek generic fight music >



Okay, the above is an introduction for my Campagin.
It's for the Medeiteranian region, around 600 B.C.
I'm serious about the "Your not gonna survive" bit.
Their first Figure or two won't.
Period.

It's a "Kobyashie Mariou".
They are in an arena pit and they will be killed.
The idea is a first session that teaches the basics of TFT, namely Combat.

I run the critters for the first couple of Melees, then I put two of them together (beserker magic), then end up in a free for all that is finished by the winner being struck down by the Kings guard.

Details on the Arena/Coliseum follow in Buildings.

In the start of the second session, Players make Figures whos origions are rooted in the tribe that their first Figures came from.
They realise that their first Figures were kinsmen, captured by their enemeys, and if they are captured by these people then that will be their fate.

At this point, Players still have a very good chance of loosing Figures before they have established a family, seeing as this is a period of wars of conquest (Rome under Etruscan Kings) and whole populations can be destroyed along with the cities that house them.

A Player who has no heirs (of playable age) has one of several choices.
First, they may take control of any "generic" NPC & family still available.
See Population.

They may create a Figure from a region one layer removed from this one, i.e. a distant trade region, etc.
In other words, a fish out of water such as a sailor from across the sea.

They can create a Figure from the Enemy culture, gone "rogue".
A disgraced military officer or the like.

They may choose to come from a disenfranchised portion of society, such as a slave or beggar.
The idea here is to offset experience of the workings of the gameworld the Player has gained via play, by cutting off direct support in the region for the Figure.

Halfway down the Italian peninsula, on the west coast, is a small river called the Tiber. The coastal plain south of the river was known as Latium in ancient times, after the people who lived there--the Latins. These people were shepherds and farmers.
In the hill country to the west lived the Sabines, distant kinsmen of the Latins. They had moved into the peninsula from central Europe before 1000 BC and had vanquished the original inhabitants, a dark people. The people conquered by the Sabines had probably begun to move from Africa about 10,000 BC as the Sahara gradually turned to desert.
On the banks of the Tiber River rise seven low hills. At this point the river is shallow and easy to cross. Latin merchants built a village on one of the hills--called the Palatine--in order to trade with the wealthy Etruscans, who lived north and west of the Tiber (see Etruscans). Settlements were later built on the other hills also. The towns on the seven hills finally joined to make one city, Rome.

Zoroastir

Artimeasus and Masolius (moslueium)
Built as a monument and a public works project for Masoluis' new city.
He forcabilly moved people from thier ancestorial homes to populate the new city.

Romulas slays Rhemus and builds on Palantine hill instead of Aventine hill.
To increase the population Romulas offers scantuary to "criminals" from other cities.
He then holds a festival and invites the Sabines, from the hill country to the south, to attend.
At the festival he orders the singel women to be kidnaped, and war is avearted only by the women coming between the two sides and offering to stay with the Romans.
Thus Rome was populated.



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