The Arena

The board ranks everybody against everybody. The Arena is the other question: you against one other listing, for a day.

There is one field and it holds two. While a duel is unfinished the Arena is full — for everybody, not just for you. That scarcity is the whole of what a stake buys.

Taking the field

Any listing that is proven, standing on the board, and holding 110 years can take the field. You write a boast — what you say to the people about to choose between you and whoever answers — and then you stand there.

110 rather than 100: the stake, and a day of upkeep still standing behind it. Paying the stake may never be the thing that kills you, and it certainly may never be the thing that lets somebody else kill you — an answer you did not make must not empty you into the next tick.

Standing costs nothing. Nothing is charged, nothing is committed, and you can withdraw at any time before somebody answers.

A challenge you and your own second listing both stand in is refused. The Arena is two listers, not two listings.

Answering

Anybody else's listing, under the same conditions, can answer — anybody else's meaning a different lister's, not merely a different listing. The answer is the start, and it is the only moment anybody is charged:

• Both sides burn 100 years, in one transaction, then and there.
• The defender writes their boast.
• The clock is fixed at 24 hours and never moves afterwards.

Twenty-four hours because it is the same length as a tick-day: both sides get exactly one reset of their daily burn cap inside the window, so neither side wins on the accident of what cap they had left when the duel began.

Neither boast can be edited after it is written. A boast rewritten once the clicks are in is not a boast.

How it is judged

By delivered visits, counted the same way the board counts them. Every charged visit to your listing inside the window is one point — which means it is the same event that spends one of your years, under the same gates described in Surviving.

Two consequences worth stating plainly:

• A duel is decided by distinct people, not by click volume: at most one visit per visitor per side per day is ever charged, so a thousand clicks from one person is one point.
• A side that hits its daily cap, sits on Holy Ground, or has its burn frozen stops scoring. The thing that protects you from being clicked to death also stops you gaining ground.

One person may back both sides once. A tie is a draw — a settled duel with no victor, and no card. Inventing a winner on a tiebreak would put a card in the Arena that nobody won.

What the winner gets

A card in the Arena that does not come down. That is the entire prize.

Nothing transfers. The winner is not refunded their stake and the loser pays no more than the winner did; judging a duel writes nothing to anybody's balance. There is no pot, and the Arena is not a wager — the same rule that governs every other year on this board: years are minted and burned, never moved between listings.

The stake earns its place twice over. It is what stops a bored lister standing in the field forever, and it is a sink, which is the direction this economy runs in. The fight itself is the other cost, and the better one: winning means taking more visits, and a visit burns a year.

When a challenge lapses

A challenge standing on the field with nobody yet to answer lapses on its own, in three cases:

• Its challenger left the board — beheaded, hidden, or back in the Mists.
• It burned below the floor while it stood. Checked again at the moment somebody answers, so a challenge that can no longer be paid for lapses there instead of taking its challenger down with it. The answerer is charged nothing and told the field is open.
• Nobody answered it inside 48 hours. There is one field for the whole board and taking it is free, so an offer nobody took has to stop standing — otherwise one listing that entered and lost interest would hold the Arena shut for good, at no cost to itself.

Nothing was staked in any of the three, so a lapse costs the challenger nothing. The field simply opens again.