Vox Extremis: Gladiators of Xothu I

 

Under the depraved rule of the rogue pysker lord Xothu the world of Helius-117 would languish for many years. With the liquidation of the planetary governor, control of the settlements was appointed to local chieftains and satraps. These were indigenous Heliusi - a brutal Iron age people with new found access to advanced technology and an enslaved populace at their will.

All but cut off from the galaxy at large, the screaming mobs were entertained by the ways of old, before the time of the off-worlders. When blade and axe sang songs of death across the howling Heliusian wastes and stone walls. In the great fighting pits, the Gladiators of Xothu would do mortal combat in the ancient ways for the prize of survival...

The ranks of the gladiators were myriad; savage tribesmen, condemned bandits, prisoner voidsmen - any who might entertain the baying masses and their overlords with blood and violence. Fighters would don whatever crude armor and weapons that could be pried from the dead. Many imbibed of the exotic chem elixirs provided by renegade alchemists, cocktails of combat drugs to further fuel the fighting.  

Many of the arena pits kept stocks of things other than man or mutant; wild ravenous beasts from the far hinterlands of Helius.117 would also take part in the fighting, voracious pack predators with a taste for man flesh.