We all know the imperial city arena, a good way to make money and get some combat experience. What you might not realize, is by participating in the arena you are taking part in a massive scale genocide.

You may remember how advancement works in the arena. 3 wins advances you to the next level, and all fights are to the death. So if you advance from Pit Dog to Brawler it means 3 people had to die. To advance from Brawler to Bloodletter a combatant must kill 3 more people, but remember that combatants only fight others of the same rank, so to get to bloodletter requires the death of at a bare minimum 9 competitors (3 brawlers with 3 kills each), and this is assuming that each combatant has the minimum kills required to enter each rank.

And there are 7 ranks plus a champion.

Each Hero rank combatant required the death of at the very least 2187 participants, and there are at very least 3 heroes and one champion (requiring 6561 deaths minimum) on the yellow team. Again, this is assuming ideal progression.

Since matches between high rank combatants seem to happen fairly often (you can get a match set up whenever you want), I think we're looking at a wholesale slaughter on the scale of hundreds of thousands or millions per year.

I never had thought about it like that, when you put it that way they should be paying us more to do there dirty work

I'm not surprised. I bet most of my characters kill more animals and people and Daedra than that during the course of a 50-level game. I shudder to even consider the sum total of life all of my characters have taken over the course of four and a half years of playing. It amazing that none of them have been executed.

Another possibility is that there where fewer ranks but with the new affluence of fighters, new lesser ranks has been added. The same could apply to the requirements to progress in ranks. These cases aren't very probable but are by far less disturbing.

This is the typical case where reality applied to a setting left more questions than answers.

The colosseum of ancient rome likely wasn't much different except they more often used slaves or prisoners instead of real warriors. Maybe that's way there are so many freakin' bandits in Cyrodiil. All of the warriors and heroes in the country got themselves killed in the arena. That would also explain why everybody would be so willing to put the nation's security in the hands of an escaped prisoner, there's no one else!

I just noticed the "reload this page" part in the title, I made this topic on another forum and copied the title, obviously I copied the page reload button as well haha.

Is there a way to delete that part, or get a mod to delete it?


Moderator: Fix'd.

That's actually amusing.

Technically it's not genocide unless you're trying to wipe out a specific ethnic group, but it is mass slaughter.

I was just about to post this, but you beat me to it :yes:

No genocide here, move along.

But yes it's mass slaughter. Then again I probably kill something like many people with even a good character. I haven't checked my Oblivion stats, but I'm pretty sure my Fallout 3 stats are like around 2000 people killed. Lot's of Bandits, Marauders, Necromancers and Conjurers in the game - not to mention vampires.

Now a days, I tend to avoid the arena with good characters now for just that reason - it's slaughter for entertainment. Just like Ancient Rome.

I would argue that they are trying to wipe out every ethnic group, considering the Arena would require hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths a year to function as it does.


I suspect the Arena to be a front for a very successful Deadric cult to Boethiah or Molag Bal.

I prefer the phrase Population Control.

And this is why I'd use the Arena as a good example to point out why having a high fame in Oblivion really does not equal to being good, since fighting in the Arena makes you famous, though this thread does put it more in perspective. It's one of those things you might not think about much when you're playing since you're already killing people a lot outside of the Arena too, it really doesn't seem that different in practice except you get spectators cheering for you.

Although to be fair, everyone fighting in the Arena is there by choice, so the people who die in it presumably realize the risk they're taking, thus, it's certainly not murder, still, it is a lot of killing, all for the entertainment of the masses.

Not all, there are at least three argonians you fight in the same combat, that are prisoners.

I think is stated that they had the choice of fighting for her freedom, but the pitmaster may be ill informed. Besides the choice question is more ambiguous there.

Still not genocide.

If the Imperials were forcing only other races to fight to the death it could be argued to be an absurdly slow and ineffective form of genocide...but that's not the case.

No, you are not partaking in a massive scale genocide. You're partaking in a event called "fighting for fame and glory", a concept known in both Tamriel and the real world for centuries.

Genocide, as defined by the dictionary is the deliberate attempt to wipe out an entire group of people based on race, six, nationality, religion, or creed.

This is what a massive scale genocide would look like, and for an example we'll use Orcs.

If you were partaking in genocide, you wouldn't be fighting in an arena with throngs of people cheering. You'd be conducting raids where you slaughter innocent orcs by the dozen. We're talking women and children and the elderly who can't fight back. Taking those who survived as prisoners and executing those deemed unfit for slave labor. You'd be going out torching everything that the Orcs may have held dear. You'd be aiding the leaders in spreading propaganda about how the Orcs are "dumb, unintelligent, barbaric animals and should be treated as such". You'd be rooting out any and all people who sheltered Orcs and killing them as examples to others.

If the emperor/leader/whatever thought this was taking too long, he would likely skip the slave labor and go directly to ordering his soldiers to kill any and all Orcs indiscriminately. No hestitation, no mercy. See that little Orc boy sobbing for his life on the edge of a pit of burning Orc bodies? Kill him and dump him in. It wouldn't be about fame and glory, but for the simple mission of cleansing Tamriel of the Orc race.

THAT, my friend, is a genocide.

SERIOUS BUSINESS

I know very well it's not by dictionary definition genocide, it's just an eye catching word for a funny topic.

By the way, on the world of Nirn women are just as capable of fighting back as men, clearly there are some biological and evolutionary differences between humans on Earth and humans/other humanoids on Nirn.

Also the deaths of possibly millions of people per year on a continent with populations likely anologous to medieval Europe is certainly more than just "fighting for fame and glory".

Well, apologise if I took it too seriously. :3 I thought you really assumed that fighting in the arena = genocide.

Still an amusing topic though. Carry on.

Hold on, this is a world where people re-spawn. Especially unnamed ones just called "Yellow team member", "Bandit", "Marauder" etc.

Making a NAME for yourself is the path to permanent death!

The arena should be like in Mount&blade

Well sign me up as unnamed NPC # ? :biggrin:

edit: No wait, please don′t

:rofl:

Too late:

six/Race: Female Breton
Name: Courier
Class: Respawning Immortal
Occupation: Works for the newspaper
Equipment: One very fast black horse

Bazinga :tongue:

Well the people can't complain about the IC not being populated enough anymore.

Only if you do not know the SetEssential command. :wink_smile:

By Mara! You're right. I think I recall hearing something about that during the tutorial:

Baurus: "Most people think of the Red Dragon Crown, but that’s just jewelry. However, if you can get a Gold Crown placed over your head, you'll be immortal. Why do you think I'm the only Blade to survive these assassins down here?"

:mohawk: