Black Pit of Filishar

Gladitorial prison near Filishar

History

The Black Pit started as an organised brawl in a field outside of Filishar. It was meant to be a way to make some quick money by taking a percentage of the bets on the fight but when the organisers, Ellie and Rutgar, realised just how much they could make from fights they decided to make a more permanent spectacle.  Land wasn't hard to come by, especially when the rulers of Filishar were just as interested in betting on contests as the regular folk.  An arena with tiered seating was built to allow larger crowds to watch, and the siblings were soon seeing impresive profits.
However, the crowd turned out to be fickle and profits began to drop as people grew bored of the brawls.  In order to drum up interest, the fights were changed to include weapons, and Ellie and Rutgar soon realised that they made the most on the matches that were to the death.  They also found that paying people to fight to the death was eating into their profits.  Ellie's solution was to make an offer to the lord of Filishar.  They would agree to house dangerous criminals as long as they could be used in the matches.  This would save the lord the costs of feeding and executing the condemed, and provide a supply of people who would fight to stay alive.
A deal was struck and a new prison was added onto the arena.  Rutgar and Ellie didn't cut corners in building the prison as they knew how much trouble they would have if any of the prisoners escaped.  Despite the expense of the new stone building, and the additional guards they had to hire, the popularity of the fights thanks to the lengths the prisonsers would go to to survive, meant that they back to making a profit inside a year.