Gladiator's Guild

[b]Guild Name:[/b] Gladiator and Charioteer's Guild

[b]Guild Head:[/b] [url=http://safebooru.org/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=1230443]Sascha the Elvenblood, undefeated gladiator.[/url]

[b]Guild Description:[/b] The last remnant of blood sports to hang around until this civilised day and age, its methods have moved with the times and recruitment is no longer 'train slaves to fight, try and keep them alive as long as possible to earn the money back'. Instead, it is the single largest provider of non-religious orphanages and education in all of Karstberg, with recruits being those who show skill [i]and[/i] are willing to be trained.

Whilst its two main activities have dropped in power, the guild itself wields considerable economic power through property holdings gained in former days of prosperity, and donations from its more successful students and orphans. Thus, it is in no danger of disappearing without being completely criminalised--and it has the ability to buy both healing and extremely potent, but short lived, defensive charms in large quantities. Thus, whilst their battles (and races) end in 'death' even more than in times gone by, gladiator turnover is actually surprisingly low.

Many gladiators, not finding great success or tiring of the constant 'death' due to superior foes, instead re-purpose their talents--magic users go for scholastic studies, whilst the more martially inclined tend to become watchmen or military. Even those who drop out are still highly trained fighters.

Tradition still reigns in the arena itself: 'life' or 'death' is determined by crowd opinion, and gladiators are often described and matched up by their weapons. Indeed, it's still the tendency to deliberately underarm one side, or give them non-standard abilities. In recent times, this has expanded to include magic as an armament selection--though even then the gladiator is expected to stick to a few specialities and not use all their potential knowledge, for the sake of fair play.

---

Despite substantial pressure to move out of its original holdings in the Dream District, the gladiators have refused to bow to either the pressure to relocate to the 'guild' district, or to conduct their trade outside of city walls entirely. They have, however, moved all training and administrative facilities out to more up-to-date guild areas, whilst the main race course is still the streets of the city--making race days those times when everyone tries to stay out of the way.