The Grand Colosseum
The Grand Colosseum is a monumental fighting venue that surfaces on the overmap partway through a shift. It is the only place in the galaxy where crews can fight each other with no zone rules, no ship weapons and no consequences beyond what you walked in carrying. It is rare, one per round at most, and only if enough people are alive to fill a roster. Once it opens it stays open for the rest of the shift, running match after match.
Getting there
The venue surfaces no earlier than forty minutes into a shift and needs at least four players in the galaxy. It appears in the Contested band by preference (reachable from anywhere, not parked in the deep) and it announces itself galaxy-wide with its coordinates when it opens.
Dock like you would at a trader outpost: your ship takes a hangar berth and you ride the alcove elevator up to the concourse. The building itself cannot be damaged. The doors cannot be hacked, welded or emagged, and there is no way onto the fighting floor except through the gates.
Upstairs is an observation gallery behind a glass parapet, which is where you should be if you have not signed the ledger.
Signing up
Registration is not on a timer that runs by itself, anyone can walk to the concourse registration console and open the signup window, provided the venue is idle and the last match's cooldown has passed. Opening it broadcasts an invitation to the whole galaxy with the venue's position, so crews have time to fly in.
The window runs for six minutes. Register at the console; you can withdraw again at any point before it closes. If fewer than two people have registered when the clock runs out, the whole thing fizzles and the venue resets.
When the roster locks, the venue picks a game and an arena condition, announces both along with the prize pool, and starts a two-minute seating window. You do not have to walk anywhere: staying anywhere inside the venue is enough, and your berthed ship counts. The wardens teleport contestants into their cells or ready rooms when the seals close. Absentees are dropped from the roster and non-contestants are ejected from the staging areas.
Then a ten-second countdown, and the gates open.
You fight with what you brought
Nobody is issued a kit. Whatever is in your hands and on your back when the gates open is what you have got, and whatever you leave on the sand belongs to the vault, not to you.
The games
The mode is chosen at random from those eligible for the roster size.
| Game | Roster | How it's won |
|---|---|---|
| Free-for-All Deathmatch | 2–12 | Last fighter standing. Running out the clock pays nobody. Expiry is a draw. |
| Team Deathmatch | 4–16 | Red vs blue, wipe the other team. Shipmates are kept on the same side. At the bell, the team with more fighters standing takes it. |
| King of the Hill | 2–8 | Sixty cumulative seconds standing alone on the central dais. Sharing it with a rival accrues nothing for anybody. Eight-minute clock. |
| Capture the Flag | 4–16 | Carry the enemy banner to your own plinth. Two captures wins. Banners are heavy, slow you down, and return to their plinth if left lying on the sand. |
| Tournament | 6–16 | Rounds of elimination. Each round runs until its cut quota has fallen, then the wardens close the gates, carry the cut fighters out to spectate, sweep the arena and reseat the survivors. Last one standing takes a doubled prize pool. |
Arena conditions
Every match rolls a condition alongside the mode:
- Clean Sands: no tricks, no beasts.
- Beast Interlude: the undercroft cages open. Beasts on the sand with you, and every kill adds to the purse.
- Scorching Sands: the floor braziers are stoked white-hot and the sand cooks whoever stands on it.
- Freezing Gale: glacier-cold air through the vents. Keep moving.
- Shifting Walls: the arena floor rebuilds itself mid-match. No lane stays safe.
- Raining Steel: weapon crates keep falling all match. Control the drops, control the match.
Most modes also run a hazard scheduler during the fight, which rolls something every forty-five to ninety seconds: a weapon crate delivered by supply pod, a plus-shaped patch of sand that turns to lava for a few seconds, or destructible cover popping up out of the floor. All three are telegraphed by a warning marker on the tile a few seconds before they land. Watch the floor.
The spoils vault
When the match resolves, every gate opens, the winners are announced galaxy-wide, and the wardens sweep the arena. Everything loose on the fighting floor goes into the spoils vault: dropped items, the contents of weapon crates, and the corpses of the fallen. Living eliminated stragglers are carried off to the infirmary instead. Winners left standing on the sand are not touched.
The prize pool goes into the vault at the same time, scaled to how many people fought and doubled for tournaments. Each winner gets a champion's extraction case holding their share of the pot:
| Roster | Ship parts | Credits | Trade vouchers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to 3 | 2 | 500 | - |
| 4–5 | 3 | 1,000 | 1 |
| 6–8 | 5 | 2,000 | 2 |
| 9+ | 7 | 3,000 | 3 |
Ship parts lean heavily combat: this is the fighting venue. The champion's case is the useful part: it extracts in addition to your normal extraction case rather than competing with it, so a win is a genuine windfall for ship upgrades.
For five minutes after the match the vault and its chamber answer only to the winners. They take first pick of the whole pile, their prizes and the loser's gear alike. When the window closes the vault unlocks for anybody who walks in, and the dead are laid out in the infirmary for their crews to collect.
Losing is expensive
If you die on the sand, your body and everything on it end up in the vault, and the people who killed you get first refusal on all of it for five minutes. Do not enter carrying anything you cannot afford to lose.
Around the venue
The Lanista's Rack is a gear stall on the concourse selling nine bespoke pieces of arena kit: gladiator armour, pit weapons and corner-man tools. The stock restocks after every settled match. The gear cannot be duplicated; the only source is the venue.
The bookmaker's console in the wagering hall takes bets on contestants. Bets are cash in (hard-light holochips only) and pay out as physical betting slips, which means they can be stolen, traded and held to ransom like any other object. The book opens when the roster locks and closes when the gates open. Winning bets return the stake plus a share of the losing pool, minus a ten percent house rake taken from the losing side only, so a won bet never pays less than it cost. In team modes, a bet on any member of the winning side pays. Draws and cancelled matches refund at face value, and settled slips stay redeemable for the rest of the round.
Bets run from 10 to 5,000 credits, so a spectator who reads a match right can do better than some of the fighters.