Post by Wolfe on Apr 12, 2020 19:08:37 GMT -5
The Amity Colosseum was a real marvel of modern engineering. Introduced six years ago at the 10th Vytal Festival, the structure is an enormous levitating arena that can move vast distances, making the journey to the host Kingdom every time the festival is held, so this time floated all the way from its home base in Atlas to Mistral for the Thirteenth Vytal Festival. The architectural marvel has a distinctive inverted cone shape that tapers to a point at the bottom where an enormous dust crystal powers the structure. Located above the main dust crystal are two levels of docking bays for air buses and other transportation to receive and offload passengers. Large archways lead passengers to the seating area which surrounds the arena. The seating area is the largest of any permanently airborne structure in the world, comfortably able to seat eighteen thousand people from across Remnant. The closest ring of seating to the arena itself are red seats reserved for contestants of the Vytal Festival itself along with other VIPs that typically include faculty members of both combat schools and Huntsman Academies along with the occasional politician or high flight businessman.
Above the seating area are huge holographic screens, which display the aura monitors for tournament matches, as well as videos of the matches in progress to include action replays and commercials. The tournament presenters in a small booth above the top level of the seating area, and for this tournament rotate out but always form some combination of two individuals who are either current faculty members of a Big Four Academy, or former finalists of the tournament itself.
The audience is protected by an invisible force field which prevents projectiles and other objects from leaving the fighting area powered by hard light dust. When hit, the force field pulses a light blue color and ripples around the impact. It can prevent flying contestants from smashing into the spectator stands and is also able to absorb stray bullets or semblance attacks.
The tournament matches themselves take place in a large octagonal arena measuring 150 meters in diameter. The arena can change its environment into several different "biomes", including grasslands, forest, fire, ice, geyser fields, stormy mountains, desert, an ocean and beach with a wooden ship, city ruins, gravity arenas, and a swamp. The arena also has artificial weather effects, such as thunderstorms and an artificial sun. In all matches, the central octagonal section measuring 50 meters in diameter remains the same regardless of the biome.
During the team round, the arena is split evenly into two biomes, which are chosen randomly at the beginning of every fight for each half of the arena. For this round of the Wild Card bracket, the volcano biome got chosen to fill both edges of the arena.
To all sides outside of the center starting region of the arena the combatants could see a hellish landscape of steamy black and red rocks along with a constant expulsion of steam due to the immense heat in the Volcano biome. Thank the gods for aura, because hot plumes of boiling hot liquid and ash rocket out of the handful of geysers in the ground that shoot up easily ten meters high that have been placed around the entire biome. Smog fills the acrid air with the scent of sulfur and also obscures vision on this edge of the arena, making it harder to aim ranged attacks or even see long distances due to the haze.
This particular match would be fought between two Haven Academy teams, Team MARS coming off their loss to Team MRLT (Merlot) in the first year bracket and Team MSRA (Mysteria) who was a last minute team taking the place of Class Blue’s Team NAGA who was unfortunately afflicted by Typhoid Fever at the moment. Team MSRA was thrown up at the last moment, but it would soon become apparent that the new trainees who comprised this team fell victim to one of the classic blunders.
The follow graphic flashed up on the big screens as the introductions began, with the aura levels of each student being displayed under their names. On the commentary team for this particular match was current Beacon Academy faculty member Caerwyn Erez and her former teammate and current Vale Huntress Bianca Hunter. They were teammates on Team CBLT (Cobalt) who were finalists in the Eighth Vytal Festival Tournament.
The first voice over the mic was much more boisterous and animated than some of the other announcers at the tournament, and it showed from the second her voice was on the mic. ”Hello, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Wild Card rounds of the Thirteenth Vytal Festival Tournament! What we have here is a couple of first year teams who for one reason or another got slipped down to the secondary bracket, duking it out for one of two guaranteed spots in the final eight where the best two teams of every year along with two wild cards will duke it out for the title of Vytal Festival Champion!”
The woman was really animated, and it was clear that she was no stranger to speaking on a live mic. ”Huntress Bianca Hunter here and I happy as heck to say that I am joined by my former team leader and current Beacon Academy faculty member Caerwyn Erez to bring all of you live commentary on this match between Teams MARS and MSRA this fine and sunny day. The biomes selected for this match by the rolly-spinny thingy or as my colleague Thelly likes to call them ‘Random Number Generators’ are geysers, heat, and more geysers! This means that long range fighting will be a bit of a challenge, and the fighting may be condensed in the middle of the arena due to the danger of going outside it!”
A more measured and silvery voice came through the mic next. ”Professor Erez of Beacon here working color for this match. The team you see coming out now is Team MARS. They had an… interesting go in the first round and showed… a unique perspective on team combat tactics that I can truthfully say I’ve never seen before. Their leader is Arno Mach, the tall blonde guy. Alice Stribog is the dark haired wolf faunus behind him. Ruqa Reyes, Founder of the Internet, is behind her with literally four arms – you actually can’t mistake her for anyone else if you tried. The last member of the team is the short dark haired boy, Alexandros Skouria.”
”And next up we have Team MSRA, who got disqualified due to illness troubles from their original spot and thus haven’t actually seen combat yet in this tournament. The first one coming in is… wait a second, why are there only three?” There was a pause lasting several seconds, then, before Erez filled the silence.
”Well, their team leader Reynard Marshall seems to not be present. The other members are in order Bianca Sabbato with the big tail, Ryan Vas with the glasses and the brunette hair, and Arturian Cerule with the sword and the blonde hair.”
It was said earlier that the rest of Team MSRA had fallen for one of the classic blunders, so that requires some explaining. The classic blunder that they fell for was being too new or out of the loop to actually trust one Reynard Marshall of Class Blue when he said he’d take care of everything when it came to signup and preparing for the tournament. After proclaiming himself team leader in the sheet a day ago, none of the other members had seen hide nor hair of the guy and all efforts to communicate with him went to a voicemail or an empty dorm room. Rumor had it that he went to some high school party the night after signing the team up and hadn’t come back since… which left the other members in a bit of a bind. Seemingly everyone at Haven had some sort of story about being burned when trusting Reynard with something other than looking for pictures to put on the internet, and unfortunately for this new crop of students their story would be broadcast internationally.
They could have forfeited, sure, but perhaps they still had faith in their team leader to not ghost them on the day of the Vytal Festival. Maybe they thought that they could give it a solid effort as a team of three rather than four, or maybe they hadn’t even noticed that Reynard was gone at all. Whatever the reason or logic behind them being here, however, they were here and had an opportunity to make the best of a bad situation with this match.
”Well, this is a bummer. Being outnumbered by one is a big advantage, and since the door shut behind Team MSRA it looks like their fourth isn’t coming at all. I do respect the guts of the three who came out here anyway, though, so I think I’m going to root for them this match.”
”And there we have it, an admission of biased commentary from the play by play!” Erez announced, and when Bianca tried to argue she was cut off by the continuing color commentary: ”And now we’ll see how the teams set up for the final thirty seconds or so before match start. Two volcano biomes is really rough luck for Team MSRA, due to the fact that falling backwards and ambushing their enemy to make up for their lack of numbers is much harder when the environment burns away at your aura just by being nearby.”
Above the seating area are huge holographic screens, which display the aura monitors for tournament matches, as well as videos of the matches in progress to include action replays and commercials. The tournament presenters in a small booth above the top level of the seating area, and for this tournament rotate out but always form some combination of two individuals who are either current faculty members of a Big Four Academy, or former finalists of the tournament itself.
The audience is protected by an invisible force field which prevents projectiles and other objects from leaving the fighting area powered by hard light dust. When hit, the force field pulses a light blue color and ripples around the impact. It can prevent flying contestants from smashing into the spectator stands and is also able to absorb stray bullets or semblance attacks.
The tournament matches themselves take place in a large octagonal arena measuring 150 meters in diameter. The arena can change its environment into several different "biomes", including grasslands, forest, fire, ice, geyser fields, stormy mountains, desert, an ocean and beach with a wooden ship, city ruins, gravity arenas, and a swamp. The arena also has artificial weather effects, such as thunderstorms and an artificial sun. In all matches, the central octagonal section measuring 50 meters in diameter remains the same regardless of the biome.
During the team round, the arena is split evenly into two biomes, which are chosen randomly at the beginning of every fight for each half of the arena. For this round of the Wild Card bracket, the volcano biome got chosen to fill both edges of the arena.
To all sides outside of the center starting region of the arena the combatants could see a hellish landscape of steamy black and red rocks along with a constant expulsion of steam due to the immense heat in the Volcano biome. Thank the gods for aura, because hot plumes of boiling hot liquid and ash rocket out of the handful of geysers in the ground that shoot up easily ten meters high that have been placed around the entire biome. Smog fills the acrid air with the scent of sulfur and also obscures vision on this edge of the arena, making it harder to aim ranged attacks or even see long distances due to the haze.
This particular match would be fought between two Haven Academy teams, Team MARS coming off their loss to Team MRLT (Merlot) in the first year bracket and Team MSRA (Mysteria) who was a last minute team taking the place of Class Blue’s Team NAGA who was unfortunately afflicted by Typhoid Fever at the moment. Team MSRA was thrown up at the last moment, but it would soon become apparent that the new trainees who comprised this team fell victim to one of the classic blunders.
The follow graphic flashed up on the big screens as the introductions began, with the aura levels of each student being displayed under their names. On the commentary team for this particular match was current Beacon Academy faculty member Caerwyn Erez and her former teammate and current Vale Huntress Bianca Hunter. They were teammates on Team CBLT (Cobalt) who were finalists in the Eighth Vytal Festival Tournament.
The first voice over the mic was much more boisterous and animated than some of the other announcers at the tournament, and it showed from the second her voice was on the mic. ”Hello, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Wild Card rounds of the Thirteenth Vytal Festival Tournament! What we have here is a couple of first year teams who for one reason or another got slipped down to the secondary bracket, duking it out for one of two guaranteed spots in the final eight where the best two teams of every year along with two wild cards will duke it out for the title of Vytal Festival Champion!”
The woman was really animated, and it was clear that she was no stranger to speaking on a live mic. ”Huntress Bianca Hunter here and I happy as heck to say that I am joined by my former team leader and current Beacon Academy faculty member Caerwyn Erez to bring all of you live commentary on this match between Teams MARS and MSRA this fine and sunny day. The biomes selected for this match by the rolly-spinny thingy or as my colleague Thelly likes to call them ‘Random Number Generators’ are geysers, heat, and more geysers! This means that long range fighting will be a bit of a challenge, and the fighting may be condensed in the middle of the arena due to the danger of going outside it!”
A more measured and silvery voice came through the mic next. ”Professor Erez of Beacon here working color for this match. The team you see coming out now is Team MARS. They had an… interesting go in the first round and showed… a unique perspective on team combat tactics that I can truthfully say I’ve never seen before. Their leader is Arno Mach, the tall blonde guy. Alice Stribog is the dark haired wolf faunus behind him. Ruqa Reyes, Founder of the Internet, is behind her with literally four arms – you actually can’t mistake her for anyone else if you tried. The last member of the team is the short dark haired boy, Alexandros Skouria.”
”And next up we have Team MSRA, who got disqualified due to illness troubles from their original spot and thus haven’t actually seen combat yet in this tournament. The first one coming in is… wait a second, why are there only three?” There was a pause lasting several seconds, then, before Erez filled the silence.
”Well, their team leader Reynard Marshall seems to not be present. The other members are in order Bianca Sabbato with the big tail, Ryan Vas with the glasses and the brunette hair, and Arturian Cerule with the sword and the blonde hair.”
It was said earlier that the rest of Team MSRA had fallen for one of the classic blunders, so that requires some explaining. The classic blunder that they fell for was being too new or out of the loop to actually trust one Reynard Marshall of Class Blue when he said he’d take care of everything when it came to signup and preparing for the tournament. After proclaiming himself team leader in the sheet a day ago, none of the other members had seen hide nor hair of the guy and all efforts to communicate with him went to a voicemail or an empty dorm room. Rumor had it that he went to some high school party the night after signing the team up and hadn’t come back since… which left the other members in a bit of a bind. Seemingly everyone at Haven had some sort of story about being burned when trusting Reynard with something other than looking for pictures to put on the internet, and unfortunately for this new crop of students their story would be broadcast internationally.
They could have forfeited, sure, but perhaps they still had faith in their team leader to not ghost them on the day of the Vytal Festival. Maybe they thought that they could give it a solid effort as a team of three rather than four, or maybe they hadn’t even noticed that Reynard was gone at all. Whatever the reason or logic behind them being here, however, they were here and had an opportunity to make the best of a bad situation with this match.
”Well, this is a bummer. Being outnumbered by one is a big advantage, and since the door shut behind Team MSRA it looks like their fourth isn’t coming at all. I do respect the guts of the three who came out here anyway, though, so I think I’m going to root for them this match.”
”And there we have it, an admission of biased commentary from the play by play!” Erez announced, and when Bianca tried to argue she was cut off by the continuing color commentary: ”And now we’ll see how the teams set up for the final thirty seconds or so before match start. Two volcano biomes is really rough luck for Team MSRA, due to the fact that falling backwards and ambushing their enemy to make up for their lack of numbers is much harder when the environment burns away at your aura just by being nearby.”
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