Blood Ball

The sport of warriors

Blood ball is a violent and spectacular sport popular across Winval. Large scale games are carried out at stadiums in Arkun which attract spectators from across the world. Smaller scale games are played across the continent in towns and villages, it is also rumoured that some documents mentioning the sport made their way into The Underdark resulting in primitive games under the ground. A Blood Ball pitch is split width-wise into three thirds, one for each team and a centre one known as the "dead-zone" with the "barrel-spot" on the very centre of the arena.

Execution

There are many different variations of the rules to blood ball but the officially recognised rules for stadium torments are as follows: A barrel full of gunpowder, roughly 2 feet tall is placed on the "barrel-spot" with a long fuse. The match begins when the fuse is lit and the teams are allowed to leave their zones. A single point is awarded every time a team is able to roll the barrel off the opposite end of the court, and five points are awarded if the barrel explodes in the opponents zone. The game concludes when three barrels have exploded. Weapons are strictly forbidden from the blood ball pitch. Other than this there are no rules to blood ball meaning players will fight and attack each other mercilessly to get the barrel across.
A very common and less dangerous variation of blood ball played in cities and by children involves rules against causing serious harm to opponents and uses an empty barrel instead of an explosive one.

Participants

A team is comprised of six players in total, two "Knights" who are unable to leave their team's zone, and four "runners" who are free to move as they wish. Knights tend to wear heavy armour as they are in the most danger of being blown up and don't need as much freedom of movement as runners. Runners tend to wear light weight armour so that they aren't slowed down and can out - manoeuvre the opponent's knights. This however isn't always the case as some stronger races such as orcs may choose to have their runners in heavier armour, in the same way weaker knights such as tabaxi might choose to wear lighter armour in order to manoeuvre freely round their zone. Other than this there are no rules to blood ball meaning players will fight and attack each other mercilessly to get the barrel across. Due to the explosions and brutality of the game, each team is allowed up to three back up players who can be swapped in at any time and they can be of either role.
Blood Ball teams currently competing in stadium tournaments include:

• The Raging Boars
• The Bloody Squids
• The Sabreteeth
• The Horned Horrors
• The Thorny Owls
• The Lion's Paws
• The Stonebreakers