Sports & Spectacle

This is an article of the Animalopedia, the citizens' encyclopedia of Animalia. Dates follow TMA-Timeline; the economics of gambling and promotion follow TMA-Economy-AMT; venues follow TMA-Landmarks.

Sports and spectacle in Animalia is the collective name for the competitive culture and show economy of the multispecies city. "In this town, contest was invented as a substitute for war — and is fought more seriously than war ever was." The founding editorial of the evening tabloid The Daily Fang (AE 76; → TMA-Media) hangs framed on the wall of every arena in the city 〔citation needed〕. The paper's usual beat is fixing scandals in the fight trade; this one editorial, nobody mocks. In a city that lived through the Decade of Blood (AE 38–49), the field of play is institutionalized as the safety valve of feud.

1. The Interspecies Olympics

The Interspecies Olympics is the city-wide games held every four years. The first was staged in AE 73 to mark the completion of the biome wards (→ TMA-Timeline), and it has never once been suspended. This year, AE 121, is the year of the 13th Games, and the city is already dressed for it.

1.1 The five events

Competition is divided by species aptitude into five events: Run, Swim, Fly, Dig, Climb. The physical-track system of the schools is the grassroots of these five (→ TMA-Education).

1.2 The five weight classes, and the Speed Dispute

To absorb differences of build, every event runs in five classes — heavyweight, middleweight, lightweight, featherweight, and minimumweight (Games Regulations, revised AE 81). Even so, the dispute over "what speed is" never dies: by the school that converts to body-lengths per second, nearly every champion of the Run in history would be a beetle. The Daily Fang prints this conversion table every Games as "the Other Podium," to the lasting satisfaction of minimumweight fans.

1.3 Famous moments

• AE 89 (5th Games): the year of the Burrow Panic. Cancellation seemed certain; the Games were held at reduced scale instead. It is remembered as the first time the city laughed out loud after the Sleepless Seventy-Two Hours (→ TMA-History-Goldfist) (TMA Times, Nov. AE 89: "And Still the City Ran").
• AE 117 (12th Games): the Fly circuit was rerouted away from its eastern leg, citing "turbulence." Commentators linked it to the accelerating spread of the Glitch Zone (→ TMA-Timeline); the organizing committee denies this 〔citation needed〕.
• The three-legged race is not an Olympic event. It belongs to the Balance Festival in the tenth month (→ TMA-Daily-Life). Confusing the two is the out-of-towner's classic disgrace.

2. The arena trade

2.1 Nocturne Arena

The underground arena of the neutral grounds; stage of the Families' "proxy bouts of honor," and long the safety valve that spares the city open feud (→ TMA-Landmarks). The grandstand code is threefold: "praise the winner, see off the loser, and never speak of the wager."

• Cards are drawn up by the phase of the moon; the main event falls on the full moon ("a full-moon contract cannot be broken" → TMA-Religion).
• The result of a proxy bout is held binding between the Families, and a fixing scandal is the only sporting matter that goes before the Tribunal (→ TMA-Justice) 〔citation needed〕.

2.2 Blood Arena

The illegal pit said to lie in the deepest reach of the Shadow Layer. If Nocturne Arena is "honor," this is the raw spectacle and the true home of the wager (→ TMA-Underworld). Those who know the way say little; those who talk have mostly never been 〔citation needed〕.

3. The wager — city of odds

The front door of gambling is the Gilt Mile (→ TMA-History-Animalia) — the "district without clocks," where meetings are set not by the hour but "after so-many hands."

• The public floor of the Oasis Casino starts at 1 AMT a bet, down to "no-stakes teaching tables" for families; it functions as the citizens' parlor (→ TMA-Daily-Life).
• The Century Odds: the public book opened by Goldfist at the Centennial of AE 100, on "the next hundred years" (→ TMA-History-Goldfist). It still takes bets; the uproar over removing the slip "Will this city still exist in AE 200?" is a standing story.
• The old men who wait for a miss: in a corner of the Gilt Mile sit regulars who bet, year upon year, on "the day the Tuning Forecast is next wrong." In a city where weather is delivered, it was held the one bet that could never win — until the four-minute squall delay of AE 119 (→ TMA-Nature), which rumor says produced the first payout in history. The house neither confirms nor denies. The neutrality of this section is disputed.

4. Cyber-competition

The public floors of the Azure Dragon Cyber-Castle are the city's largest VR gaming house (→ TMA-Daily-Life). Because size decides nothing there, it commands a devoted following among the small species; the league "Azure Dragon Cup" was founded in AE 112 〔citation needed〕. The reigning champion is a shrew called "Quart" — the lightest registered competitor in the city, ring-named "the Fist You Never See Coming." Inside the machine, minimumweight throws heavyweight.

5. A citizen's sporting calendar