Tyr’s gladiatorial stadium sits between the walls of the Golden City and Kalak’s Ziggurat. A special viewing balcony, once reserved for the king and highranking templars, is set halfway up the Golden City’s walls. On the opposite side of the stadium, a great stairway climbs from the gladiatorial floor to the top of the ziggurat. Mosaics depicting Kalak as a warrior god adorn each step facing the stadium.
The spaces below the spectators’ seats are a maze of cells and passageways that hold prisoners and monsters destined for the arena. A wide avenue leads from the stadium’s north side to the nearby Stadium Gate in the city walls. This gate is carved to resemble the gaping jaws of the Dragon, and it is used to transport monsters captured in the mountains or the desert to holding cells until they are brought out for combat in the arena.
The Master of Games, a high-ranking templar, stages games on ten days out of each month and during festivals. Anyone can enter the games, although in practice, most entrants are professionals who win purses to support themselves or gladiators sponsored by a noble family or merchant house. Slaves are no longer conscripted to compete in the stadium. Deaths are far less common than they were under Kalak’s reign; most contests now end when one gladiator yields or is too badly wounded to continue. Any gladiator who performs a coup de grace on a downed opponent is exiled from Tyr. However, battles against desert monsters or savage foes are always to the death.
On days when no games are held, the stadium serves as an impromptu market of jumbled stalls, hide tents, and blankets where vendors offer goods and services. The sellers who display their wares need not pay any fee for the space they occupy as long as it is no more than two wagons wide. King Tithian was pressured by the freed slaves into making this decree to give ex-slaves a place to offer their services without going into debt.