The Fighting Slave

Male slaves, especially if they are particularly large and strong, are trained as fighters. Pitted against each other in an arena, wagers are made, and often the honor of a city or high-ranking family are at stake. These "fighting slaves" do at times duel to the death, mirroring the gladiatorial events of ancient Rome. Such were the infamous and notorious games of the Stadium of Blades.

.. what it is Not.

a) a slave that will be owned by a Mistress or Master - No, they are owned by the fighting school.

b) a slave that will sit in tower or nadu - No, they will stand and behave with respect to the Free.

c) they submit - No, they agree to fight when ordered for freedom, for honour, for the fame of the arena and the city and for their lives.

d) they wear silks - N0, the will wear a loin cloth or appropriate kilt.

e) they will wear a collar - Yes.

Purpose and concept of the fighting slave............

a) A free man enslaved through criminality, captive of war, debt.

b) they will be branded and wear slave attire.

c) their role is combat, to entertain, to kill those the city put in the arena to face them.

d) to afford the opportunity of an enslaved/captured man to earn his freedom.

Basic principles.....................

a) Captives will agree to accept a 3 day capture to fight and earn freedom or until they die and return home.

b) Those captives killed in the arena , upon returning to their homestone can return to life with no memory of the past events.

c) Fighting slaves killed in the arena.. will serve a 12 hour death.

d) They will not carry armed weapons, with the exception when they are in arena.

e) Anyone refusing to fight or carry out the order to kill in the arena...will receive stoning by slaves or impalement.

f) If a raid occurrs in the city - they can arm themselves and defend...and pay the consequences if they are captured,

to put this in the context of GOR

"Sometimes as often as every fourth or fifth day I was hooded and chained, and placed in a wagon, usually with some fellow slaves, fighters, too. I would then be unchained and unhooded, in my turn, in a shallow pit, about which free persons, almost always of low caste, would he gathered. In the pit, too, would be another slave. Our hands would be wrapped in leather that they might not he easily broken. One might kick but holds to the death were not permitted. One fought, with occasional rest periods, for this makes the fight last longer, the fighters being briefly refreshed, until one man or the other could no longer fight. There would be much shouting and betting. I had lost my first matches in our own stables but, in time, with training and advice, and pit experience, I had begun to do well. I had won my last seventeen bouts, five of which had been outside our own stables. I was usually one of a team of five fighters divided by weight. I was in the heaviest weight class. Some small men, as is well known, are extremely fine fighters, though, of course, they do not have the size and weight to consistently best larger men, assuming that the distribution of skills is similar. — Fighting Slave of Gor, pages 240-241

"Many slave fights are little more than bloody brawls, which free persons are pleased to witness. Kenneth and Barus, on the other hand, who bet on such matters, took these fights seriously. They had, over the years, devoted time and intelligence to the training and development of fighting slaves. The stables of the Lady Florence of Vonda had been, as a result of this, particularly in the last four or five years, unusually successful in the stable bouts. Indeed, Kenneth and Barus had accumulated small fortunes as a result of their efforts in this area." — Fighting Slave of Gor, page 240

The games in the Stadium of Blades finished their season at the end of Se'Kara, a month following the season of races. I attended the games only once, and found that I did not much care for them. To the credit of the men of Ar I point out that the races were more closely followed. I do not choose to describe the nature of the games, except in certain general detail. There seems to me little of beauty in them and much of blood. Matches are arranged between single armed fighters, or teams of such. Generally Warriors do not participate in these matches, but men of low caste, slaves, condemned criminals and such. Some of them, however, are quite skillful with the weapons of their choice, surely the equal of many Warriors. The crowd is fond of seeing various types of weapons used against others, and styles of fighting. Buckler and short sword are perhaps most popular, but there are few weapons on Gor which are not seen over a period of three or four days of the games. Another popular set of weapons, as in the ancient ludi of Rome is net and trident. Usually those most skilled with this set of weapons are from the shore and islands of distant, gleaming Thassa, the sea, where they doubtless originally developed among fishermen. Sometimes men fight locked in iron hoods, unable to see their opponents. Sometimes men wrestle to the death or use the spiked gauntlets. Sometimes slave girls are forced to fight slave girls, perhaps with steel claws fastened on their fingers, or several girls, variously armed, will be forced to fight a single man, or a small number of men. Surviving girls, of course, become the property of those whom they have fought; men who lose are, of course, slain. Beasts are also popular in the Stadium of Blades, and fights between various animals, half starved and goaded into fury by hot irons and whips, are common; sometimes the beasts fight beasts of the same species, and other times not; sometimes the beasts fight men, variously armed, or armed slave girls; sometimes, for the sport of the crowd, slaves or criminals are fed to the beasts. The training of slaves and criminals for these fights, and the acquisition and training of the beasts is a large business in Ar, there being training schools for men, and compounds where the beasts, captured on expeditions to various parts of Gor and shipped to Ar, may be kept and taught to kill under the unnatural conditions of the stadium spectacle. Upon occasion, and it had happened early in Se'Kara this year, the arena is flooded and a sea fight is staged, the waters for the occasion being filled with a variety of unpleasant sea life, water tharlarion, Vosk turtles, and the nine gilled Gorean shark, the latter brought in tanks on river barges up the Vosk, to be then transported in tanks on wagons across the margin of desolation to Ar for the event. "Both the games and the races are popular in Ar, but, as I have indicated, the average man of Ar follows the races much more closely. There are no factions, it might be mentioned, at the games. Further, as might be expected, those who favor the games do not much go to the races, and those who favor the races do not often appear at the games. The adherents of each entertainment, though perhaps equaling one another in their fanaticism, tend not to be the same men. The one time I did attend the games I suppose I was fortunate in seeing Murmillius fight. He was an extremely large man and a truly unusual and superb swordsman. Murmillius always fought alone, never in teams, and in more than one hundred and fifteen fights, sometimes fighting three and four times in one afternoon, he had never lost a contest. It was not known if he had been originally slave or not, but had he been he surely would have won his freedom ten times over and more; again and again, even after he would have won his freedom had he first been slave, he returned to the sand of the arena, steel in hand; I supposed it might be the gold of victory, or the plaudits of the screaming crowd that brought Murmillius ever again striding helmeted in the sunlight onto the white sand." — Assassin of Gor, pages 189-190.