Retcon Discussion

This group will serve as the as-of-now temporary home to a special retroactive continuity, for those of us who are working towards strengthening our characters' stories and eliminating unnecessary (or unwanted) elements from our collaborative canon.

Please leave comments below with ideas on how to do this. And be careful about naming names. If you'd like to keep your ideas from being openly seen, please note us, or arrange to meet us in the chatroom available from the Afterrealm page. Any ideas will be appreciated.



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_{My thoughts on this are to change it from an OCT to something more akin to a gladiatorial tournament, where the objective is not necessarily to fight each other, but to do battle against assorted warriors, monsters, and whatever you can come up with to torment your character. The difference here is that it won't be in an arena, but a generally open, survival-of-the-fittest contest taking place all over the regions surrounding the main area (possibly a town?). This also allows our OCs to either collaborate with other characters by teaming up with them to overcome enemies, or try to eliminate the other competitors and soldier on alone.}

How This Works

The general idea now is that Bishop's Watch is a town built around this gladiatorial arena competition, where people from all dimensions can go to watch contestants run around and fight monsters in the large surrounding perimeter-- the arena area is actually outside the main town-- and the city's main income is the tourism that results from the bloodletting. Naturally, this also means that it's also a hotbed for organized crime and corruption, and while the kingdom's current leadership has no problem with this, its former ruler-- someone you might know, in fact-- is determined to shut down this barbaric blood sport, and is prepared to resort to less-than-honorable methods to achieve this.

The rules for the competitions are simple: once you enter, you are in for five rounds of fighting, to take place over a period of ten days; one round every other day, with length of each spanning about 2 hours. The days in between are set aside to rest, heal wounds, prepare for the next battle, and of course to meet with your adoring fans, should you have any. During the rounds themselves, competitors must, by any means necessary, survive whatever conflicts come their way. Any person who makes it through all five rounds without getting either killed or knocked out is deemed a winner, and is entitled to a free wish from a special apparatus in the center of Bishop's Watch. And of course, the more kills you make, the higher your monetary reward is.

Obviously, this is easier said than done. The arena specializes in bringing in some of the nastiest challenges they can find for the competitors to fight, both local creatures and monsters imported from other worlds-- this IS a universally televised event, and they have to keep raising the stakes-- and this includes everything from wild animals to attack dogs to convicted criminals with nothing to lose to even dragons (which they acquire on the rare occasions they can). Because there's safety in numbers (and also because it puts on a great show), fighters are encouraged to team up with other contestants during the battles. The tournament's organizers make a big fuss over the friendships forged during such trials by fire, since it gives their "game" an appearance of celebrating what is great about life and people in general. _{Nevermind that they make their money off of the loss of life that results from the competitions. Morality is relative as long as enough gold is involved!}

There are a couple of safety nets for contestants, naturally. In case anyone is knocked out or becomes too injured to fight, paramedics are on standby to whisk the person to safety (though naturally, they are also disqualified for a month's time). There is also excellent medical treatment free to all contestants. However, the dead cannot be raised (officially, anyway), which means that everyone who wishes to compete must sign a waiver absolving the arena's management of all responsibility for any deaths that might occur. And a lot of deaths occur. Anyone going in there had either be prepared for the worst to happen... or be already dead.

Suggestions:

Dadrick suggests that several of the crime lords operating in Bishop's Watch might "sponsor" certain contestants in the arena, hiring them to kill the champions for their rivals on the way to the prize.