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Final Exam in the Gladiators' Academy

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In case it's not obvious, this is going to be very explicit and bloody pretty much right away and will get worse before it's over.
Be warned.

Reader suggestions on gender, age, appearance, and other characteristics that haven't been specified are welcome!

All historical, cultural, and even physiological reality in this fiction is determined solely by what happens to seem hot as it's written.
Feel free to correct me if and only if you think something that's more realistic is also hotter.

This is planned as a short, sketched-in series of 4-6 posts that can be wrapped up in a month or so, less ambitious than the
extravagant Roman bloodbath contemplated in this thread. It's more a bit of world-building.

A "pre-ludus," if you will (and you probably shouldn't).


PROLOGUE: Final Exam

I of ?

Around the ludus, the incoming slaves are called "noxii" because slaves sent to a school for gladiators aren't expected to last more than a month, if that. Each of them is likely to get brutalized for a few days then chained together and taken to the arena to be slaughtered by trained fighters in pitched battles, torn by wild beasts, or dispatched in some other way. If they deserve any other status they have to win it.

Today's lot from the harbor district are especially unlucky; as they were chained in a line, those who knew Latin might have grasped that once sold to the ludus, they are all meant to die in the arena. The household slaves of the ludus, like the gladiators themselves, don't bother explaining anything to noxii. That's what chains are for. Ordinarily, new arrivals would be tossed into a morning workout for the fighters. Any that show spirit might end up sent into the arena with actual training or at least un-blunted weapons.

But at least one of the half dozen now shuffling up the hill to the ludus in chains will never get to the cells at the back where new arrivals can watch through the bars trainee gladiators wrestling and beating down the previous week's noxii and, if they are mastering the techniques and style the school drills into its fighters, being rewarded now and then with permission to tie up and use one or more of them into the night.

One of today's noxii at least will never be raped bloody by the three best wrestlers, or fight for life in the Colosseum with a wooden sword, or drown in the reenactment of some naval triumph.

Today one will die at your hands. Maybe more than one, if Fortuna requires it.

Fortuna has smiled on you. Should you pass this final test, you could win a household position and maybe someday die in a bed. Not bad for having arrived only months ago as a slave condemned, dead to Rome, and after earning through your desperate daily effort enough life to take a chance today to be the assistant to the city's new Lictor.

You have been trained in throwing the whip and the scourge, in restraining a desperate victim so the scene can go on, in humiliating captives by rape, in certain tortures and mutilations that can be employed for interrogation or bloody punishment. You have even assisted in the Colosseum itself, just a week ago, before the old Lictor's sudden death. There you took life for the first time, but without style; already raped and castrated by a gladiator of your school, the poor man might have suffered for a day if you hadn't slit his throat before the cheering crowd,

Impressing the new Lictor is important, so the master of the ludus has created today's test of proficiency in the ghastly practices and variations of crucifixion. You have supervised the other household slaves in laying out seven patibula from the back storeroom on the sand of the school's courtyard arena. To qualify for assisting the Lictor in carrying out the full range of his civic power to torture, maim, and kill for the edification and amusement of the Senate and People of Rome, you must devise a fate for one of these new condemned slaves and do the bloody work to prove your choice. Whatever sentence you are ordered to carry out, you must find a way. Rome keeps her promises.

There will be wagering on the outcome, as the ludus thrives on all competition, and you have been told that the honor and position of the ludus is at stake. That's why you have six victims to arrive, but seven beams piled up. In this test, there is only one alternative to winning: being immediately subjected to the same fate you have selected. The slaves of the ludus who have worked and eaten and slept beside you will not hesitate to grab you, strip you, and hang you up to die slowly beside your own victim. They know the only thing worse than death for the subservient is death for the disobedient.

Rome keeps her promises.

Introduction of the chained slaves and the rules of the test will be Friday.
Again, suggestions for characteristics of the victims are welcome.
 
You're kind to say so! My fantasy victims tend to be male-bodied (as I am, not coincidentally).

But my tastes are broad. If I think a reader wants a woman (or two...) suffering among the subjects, I'm game! That's why I encourage suggestions...

What kind of suffering appeals?
The arrogant maid of a great lady, condemned for stealing?
An innocent creature seized in war, who knows no Latin and has never seen a cross?
The faithful servant of a forbidden religion, sure of her holy reward?
The broken prostitute who can no longer earn coin in the street?
Or what you will...

I'm not interested in playing into racism, beyond accepting the Romans' easy contempt for all non-Romans, but I'm open-minded with regard to physical attributes in general (with a weakness for redheads).
 
You're kind to say so! My fantasy victims tend to be male-bodied (as I am, not coincidentally).

But my tastes are broad. If I think a reader wants a woman (or two...) suffering among the subjects, I'm game! That's why I encourage suggestions...

What kind of suffering appeals?
The arrogant maid of a great lady, condemned for stealing?
An innocent creature seized in war, who knows no Latin and has never seen a cross?
The faithful servant of a forbidden religion, sure of her holy reward?
The broken prostitute who can no longer earn coin in the street?
Or what you will...

I'm not interested in playing into racism, beyond accepting the Romans' easy contempt for all non-Romans, but I'm open-minded with regard to physical attributes in general (with a weakness for redheads).
I like the first two ideas
 
You're kind to say so! My fantasy victims tend to be male-bodied (as I am, not coincidentally).

But my tastes are broad. If I think a reader wants a woman (or two...) suffering among the subjects, I'm game! That's why I encourage suggestions...

What kind of suffering appeals?
The arrogant maid of a great lady, condemned for stealing?
An innocent creature seized in war, who knows no Latin and has never seen a cross?
The faithful servant of a forbidden religion, sure of her holy reward?
The broken prostitute who can no longer earn coin in the street?
Or what you will...

I'm not interested in playing into racism, beyond accepting the Romans' easy contempt for all non-Romans, but I'm open-minded with regard to physical attributes in general (with a weakness for redheads).
Hmmm, the first two perhaps.
 
Sei gentile a dirlo! Le mie vittime fantasy tendono ad avere un corpo maschile (come lo sono io, non a caso).

Ma i miei gusti sono ampi. Se penso che un lettore voglia una donna (o due...) che soffra tra i soggetti, sono a posto! Ecco perché incoraggio i suggerimenti...

Che tipo di sofferenza attrae?
La serva arrogante di una grande signora, condannata per furto?
Una creatura innocente presa in guerra, che non conosce il latino e non ha mai visto una croce?
La fedele serva di una religione proibita, sicura della sua santa ricompensa?
La prostituta distrutta che non riesce più a guadagnare soldi per strada?
O quello che vuoi...

Non mi interessa giocare al razzismo, oltre ad accettare il facile disprezzo dei romani per tutti i non romani, ma sono di mentalità aperta riguardo agli attributi fisici in generale (con un debole per i rossi).

You're kind to say so! My fantasy victims tend to be male-bodied (as I am, not coincidentally).

But my tastes are broad. If I think a reader wants a woman (or two...) suffering among the subjects, I'm game! That's why I encourage suggestions...

What kind of suffering appeals?
The arrogant maid of a great lady, condemned for stealing?
An innocent creature seized in war, who knows no Latin and has never seen a cross?
The faithful servant of a forbidden religion, sure of her holy reward?
The broken prostitute who can no longer earn coin in the street?
Or what you will...

I'm not interested in playing into racism, beyond accepting the Romans' easy contempt for all non-Romans, but I'm open-minded with regard to physical attributes in general (with a weakness for redheads).
the third
 
At first blush: Here's a sketch for a deeply wronged maid.

A handsome woman near forty, she wears deep bruises from manhandling and a black eye. Stripped to a loincloth like all the slaves bought for the ludus, she has been cleaned up for the auction block but is tightly gagged with a strip of filthy rag. The guards from the slave market, used to handling those whose names they don't know or care to know, call her "Clausa" ("closed") in amusement at her muffled pleading through the gag, incessant and futile, and her fierce struggles when they yanked her legs open for rape.

Clausa had been well-dressed, oiled and scented, her masses of dark curls pinned up with jeweled pins, when her ordeal began. She had started her rise as a dresser, bought as a wedding present for a lady called Cornelia when a Senator favored by Caesar took her (and her family's last estates) as a child bride. Sharing her younger lady's tall frame, high-waisted and broad-hipped, she had years of usefulness as a living model and became a confidante and eventually a kind of secretary, minding the household affairs in the years-long absence of her lady's husband.

Returning a Proconsul from the provinces, the husband became convinced the maid could identify her lady's paramour. Apparently someone agreed; grabbed on the street as the household was leaving for a villa outside the city, where she might be interrogated at length in private, she at first thought she was being rescued... but she has been gagged tightly ever since her abduction.

After a long day bound and a night of being roughed up and raped in a bare cellar under an inn near the river by a trio of thugs who never seemed to consider unbinding her wrists or removing her gag, she has come to worry that being kept silent might be as deadly as being made to speak.

Once she was chained in line with five other unfortunates bound for the ludus, she knew she had been betrayed to death. Her only hope is that her lady might have servants seeking her, that she might be rescued somehow from a violent end in the arena.
 
And our innocent, brought up the river from a military transport: A little slip of a thing, not yet twenty, who was sent back by legionaries to be sold as a slave after attempting to steal food from their encampment in a far province. She is called "Querenda" ("complaining" or "negotiating") because everyone has been amused by her continual attempts to plead with her captors despite not having a word of Latin.

In the field, the soldiers quickly gave up on questioning her. But in the course of the interrogation they discovered that despite her wailing, rough treatment made her wet--so they sent her on the long voyage back to Rome in the hope that her exotic yellow hair and slim figure would make her valuable to a brothel.

The wounds of her brief torture have healed over the voyage; but the captain, a rough giant who had been deprived of a sexual outlet for months, kept her chained by his bunk to be ravished several times a day. At the market, the slavers washed away the dried blood and gave her a clean loincloth, but she still wears dark bruises from the captain's thick fingers where they gripped her small, pale breasts as he pounded her.

She weeps and babbles almost nonstop, and the procurers passed her over as a pleasure slave because months of the captain's hard use have spoiled her for the refined tastes of the Eternal City. Wanting to get rid of her quickly to avoid the risk of a pregnant woman in the slave-pens, the dealer offered to throw her in with the others for a single copper if he was allowed to have his way with her first. That's why she has been paraded up the hill with the other chained slaves wearing his dried seed on her face.
 
Side Note: This writer has ideals and opinions that are represented by absolutely none of the fictional characters herein: neither those who arrive dead to Rome, nor those who appear to destroy the bodies and drag them away, nor those who watch for the thrill.

Everything is thrown together for show, out of sensational and lurid tropes. This writer reserves the right to retroactively improve the level of detail or the action, especially when something gets forgotten between chapters.

If anybody reads any of this nonsense and feels some kind of way, my own opinions can be engaged by private message.

Or just write about it as pleases you! Maybe the ludus has a neighborhood, who knows?

This writer has in mind one backstory (cheating by having two noxii share one backstory) and part of another, so only one more is needed for a round half-dozen, unless...

This writer is bored by innocence but wonders if the faithful servant might get thrown in after all.
 
You'll know the twins have names, Gnaeus and Gaius, as soon as they arrive at the ludus because they keep yelling them. Gaius wants to tell everyone what Gnaeus will do to them and Gnaeus wants to tell everyone what they can't do to Gaius.

Unlike the poor women, they have had plenty to say for themselves since their arrest; like the women, they have been imprisoned without food for two days, with most of that time spent in chains, or getting raped, or both.

Though all four of the others had been bought outright, a week ago these young toughs from an old family were wealthy and untouchable... they still think of themselves as citizens and even believe they've beaten the odds by trusting Fortuna. But they have been betrayed.
 
Thanks! In addition to the physical elements of torture, which this writer doesn't plan to skip, there can be a kind of thrill in the humiliation, horror, dread, and eventual despair of the victims.
 
Hecabe the Phrygian is our devoted sacrifice. (Getting into Christian pseudo-history is beyond the scope of this prelude, and this writer has some specific interests near these pagan practices.) She is generously built and dark-haired.

But that leaves one more, and this writer raided the last round of backstories to connect this thread to what comes before.

Here's the full cast thus far:

Hecabe the Phrygian, the priestess who has refused to betray the secrets of her fanatical Order

Clausa the maid, kidnapped in the street to protect the identity of Cornelia's lover

Querenda, the lost, innocent foreigner who knows nothing of her fate

Gnaeus and Gaius, men barely of age trying to escape justice for a brutal assault

And you. You, the one-time prisoner. You have one day to demonstrate your abilities, your creativity, your cruelty, and your obedience by satisfying the master of the ludus, at peril of losing your position and your life.

Who is missing? A burly bear from the docks? An old scholar? A good man wronged, or a bad man captured?

This writer imagines himself having a drink by the river, with one iron collar left on the table as the other five are being fitted by a smith. It has four heavy rings evenly spaced around it.

The one sent to choose today's noxii knows they are different. Noxii are mostly practice dummies for the trainees or food for exotic beasts, with a few surviving as abject slaves or even taking up the sword. These noxii face hours of sexual degradation and torture, and some will be forced to bear much more. What slave can be found who would make such a monstrous event more exciting to witness and more thrilling to those who wager?
 
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