Lancer Gladitorial League

The Lancer Gladitorial League is a professional sporting organization that originates from the Urean Kingdom, that focuses on gladiatorial combat between pilots of specialized walkers called Lancers. It has come to dominate the field in blood sports becoming one of the few broadly accepted combat sports leagues with broad appeal in an era where, for the most part combat sports have been greatly reduced in cultural relevance, in most areas close to the heart of human civilization, with most of its competition reduced largely to underground or highly localized events. Indeed, despite said galactic cultural trends the league has become one of the most influential sporting leagues and entertainment corporations in Civilized Space.

Structure

The Lancer Gladiatorial League operates 6 separate sub-leagues one for Civilized Space, one for the inner Jred Frontier, one for the inner Pardian Frontier, one for the Rift Frontier, one of the Quiet Frontier, and the last one "the Outlands League" is nominally for the outer frontier but operates in Civilized Space. Each sub-league is expected to operate on its own for the most part, however, once a decade, there is an event called the Galaxy Cup where the sub-leagues compete in a competition to send one of their teams to a League wide competition. Each subleague operates either twenty-four, forty-eight, or ninety-six Lancer teams that compete with each other on a monthly basis, when not in the run up to the Galaxy Cup. What passes as a central authority are is the LGLGC (Lancer Gladiatorial League Governance Commission), which establishes the rules that each team must follow, typically these are weapons restrictions and the like in order to minimize to some extent, casualties from the competition.

Structure of a Lancer Gladiatorial League Team

In order to keep some level of regulation while providing variety for the sake of entertainment, the LGL provides a semistandardized team roster, limits on the weight of lancers allowed, and the overall tonnage of the team. Each league compliant team is expected to have fifteen Lancers and thirty support staff (mechanics, reloaders, etc.). Each team has a "budget" of 150 shipping tons with which to construct a team of Lancers, and may not include any individual vehicle with more than four legs or weighing in at more than 50 shipping tons. This has given rise to a number of team archetypes. Most noteworthy of these are the "big three", 'Tank and Flank' investing in a small number of superheavy lancers and a large number of supporting Jinetes (which always are classed at 1 shipping ton no matter their weight), 'The Swarm' investing in a full team of light Lancers, and the 'Mecha Medley' which invests in a relatively even mixture between light, medium, and heavy Lancers, and Jinetes, in order to compensate for one another's weaknesses.

Structure of a Subleague

Each of the LGL's subleagues operates in a semi-standardized manner. Each must either have twenty-four, forty-eight, or ninety-six Lancer teams. Subleagues are expected to have monthly competitions, and indeed each one carefully orchestrates their game rotations to ensure that jump delays rarely, if ever impact the tempo of events. However, once a decade, subleagues switch to a bracketed elimination tournament (often hosted in a handful of centralized locations to speed up proceedings for the larger subleagues), with the final surviving team going to the grand tournament of tournaments, the Galactic Cup. As many pilots without reliable access to anagathics will likely age out of their ability to pilot after one, or maybe two cycles, competitions for the Galactic Cup are fierce and even deadlier than usual.

The Governing Commission

The LGL Governing Commission was established in the late 44th century as the League began to consolidate a centralizing control over Lancer Gladiators throughout the galaxy. It sought to 'tame' the deadlier aspects of the gladiatorial games by reducing the overall power (and particularly area of effect) of the weapons used in league battles and restricting the size of lancers in order to slow the steady arms race which had resulted in vehicles that were starting to seriously endanger live audiences. The Governance Commission therefore is responsible for establishing the rules of engagement, weapons restrictions, and weight limits, and enforcing these rules with fines, sanctions, and temporary (or in one instance where a team committed a literal galactically recognized war crime permanent) bans for teams that decide to cheat, or act in a needlessly dangerous manner.

Type

Entertainment, Sports team