The Blade Verbena

Creator: Hiaen

Description:

I have no control over my life so I'm gonna make up a rough idea of the system of the Blade Verbena.

Does 16 contestants post-qualif rounds sound like not enough? It's more difficult than I thought to figure a system out because you have to make it entertaining for the audience, but also give reasonable and equal resting time to the contestants?

so how many ppl do you reckon enter. If 16 people are left after four fights it’s somewhere around 250. we can even bump that number up a bit since I assume some people will try entering without really knowing what they're doing and will give up after one fight, and some others will have to give up because of injury.

I'm gonna say it has goes over 4 days; first days had the qualif rounds, second day has the first round of fights (8 of them), third day has the second round (4 fights), last day has the semi-finals in the morning and final in the afternoon. The fights don't take that long, but then again most of the audience doesn't want to watch people fight all day for four days. Since it's such a big event I'm gonna assume there are other temporary attractions on the side. like a music festival! but with more swords

My guess is a lot of these contestants are either local or Rich too, because lots of poorer people who want to take part and live too far away can’t so there’s probably many people who want to take part but can’t. also poorer people are just going to not think there's any point. or not be able to take time off work.

There aren't only Rich people among the contestants - you have some middle-class people who can afford to take a few days off work, and some poor people who have fighting as part of their job and wanna try their luck. You can certainly find some lower guards, sailors, travelling merchants and criminals in the bunch. But nearly all of them would be locals.

Something I always wondered about the verbena is why people take part in it? Like we know that corvo got recruited from it but like, is that guaranteed? Like if you win is there a prize or just bragging rights?

one would assume there's a prize. there's a trophy lol. but tbh proving you're The Best is gonna get you a lot

there is little-to-no canon precision about it so I'm gonna guess that there's money at the end of it? Plus the fame that guarantees you a good employability. Also if the Guard offers the job of Junior Officer to 15yo poor-as-dirt Corvo on the sole ground that he won the tournament, I'm gonna assume that that particular job offer is guaranteed.