Syron gazed down at the groupings. There were a few issues, but nothing that he couldn’t resolve by being heavy handed and forcing the stragglers together. The children, minus the one that looked like he could be of upper nobility, became two of the groups. Two of the nicer dressed grown men joined with the last remaining boy as well as the woman that agreed to become contestant thirty-two. There were then two groups comprised completely of men, and three groups of women.

The men had attempted to join the women’s groups at first, but when it became clear that it wasn’t going to happen, they gave up and banded together. One man in particular seemed to be married to one of the women on an opposing team and was rather forcefully rejected by her teammates. She just laughed as she shrugged and chose a different person to take his place. Because of this, only the group with the noble looking child took longer to band together, as they refused any and all people that requested to join them until Syron was forced to make them accept the young woman. The men tried to get her to join their groups, but she looked uncomfortable. The women looked at her almost scornfully and refused to let her join them. The children didn’t notice she was left alone until after they had already decided their lineup.

“I believe that is enough time! Are you all satisfied with your groupings? I hope so, as you are stuck with them for the duration of the first challenge.”

Six humongous spinning cards appeared, three to each side of his seat. Their backs were stylized like everything else Forrester, so in black and green with monsters all over it. Though, the monsters in this case were more cartoonish than realistic, and only their outlines were shown in monochrome black or green. As the cards spun, their fronts revealed six different weapons.

The first card depicted a sword with an ornate guard and a sturdy circular wooden shield reinforced with a metal ring around the edge. The sword appeared to be stabbed into an undefined surface with the shield resting against it from the opposite direction. Beneath the picture on the card were the words “Physical Melee” in gold lettering, surrounded by a black background and emerald embellishments meandering around the edges of the card.

The second card was much the same in appearance to the first, but instead of a sword and shield it depicted a long bow resting against a nondescript tree and a quiver full of feathered arrows laying on the ground beneath it. The words on the card read simply “Physical Ranged”.

The third card depicted a shepherd’s cane hanging from a pair of hooks in a blurry room with a bed and a workshop for alchemists with rows of bottles, alembics, mortars and pestles, retorts and burners. The words on the card read “Physical and Magical Healing”.

The fourth card depicted a long, single edged curved sword and its accompanying sheath laying crisscross upon a pyre. Around the shadows of the pyre were vaguely humanoid shapes wearing hoods in a circle. The words shown on the card were “Magical Melee”.

The fifth card displayed a wooden rod with a crystal attached at the end, floating between a fire, a snowflake, a lightning bolt, and a small cloud of what might have been pebbles. Behind the rod was a blurry hellscape of tornados, volcanos and thunderstorms. The words on the card were “Magical Ranged”.

The sixth and final card was a heater shield and a bladed ring surrounded by a bubble with hazy fire, lightning, arrows, and swords crashing against the bubble to no apparent effect. The words on the card were “Physical and Magical Protection”.

The cards had started spinning when they appeared at a pace too quickly to read them easily, but the longer they were displayed the slower the spinning became until they eventually stopped with their images facing the crowd.

“Due to both the number of contestants and the difficulty in keeping thirty-two people engaged in what should be a story driven game, as well as the imposed time restraints… we’ll be playing war games! There will be a bracket style tournament with single elimination rules for the teams. If your team wins a match, you move on to the second round of the tournament. If your team loses, your whole team is out. With eight teams total, you only have to win three matches for your team to be the champions. At that time, you can either choose unanimously to split the reward four ways, or I will designate the winner based on my own judgement. After the first round I will spice things up a bit, so wait until then for the surprise.” Syron paused at this point to allow both the participants to fully comprehend what he had just declared, as well as for the obvious dramatic effect. Once enough time had elapsed and the mutterings had died down somewhat, he continued.

“Now discuss with your party mates what role each of you will be filling from the six classes you can choose from. My assistant there can hand you a personal sheet describing your class’ particulars, as well as statistics and skills. Once you have chosen your class, choose one of three abilities to add to your character to give a bit more customization so every person doesn’t necessarily have an identical copy of your character. Once your choice is finalized, my assistant will make a copy of the sheet for me and we can get things ‘rolling’. Pun intended, of course. You have five minutes.”

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At this point Syron flashed a huge smile and made a pair of enormous six-sided dice roll from the shadows behind him and land on double fives a few feet from the contestants. They poofed into smoke and revealed a floating “300” that went down by one every second.

Stop with the theatrics Dude! I don’t want to run out of juice halfway through this thing! Syron chided himself before changing absolutely nothing about what he was doing.

The groups huddled together to discuss their team compositions, though there was one troubling outlier. The young woman that got paired with the two well-to-do men and the even better-to-do boy was completely sidelined by them. She tried to offer input and the men rather rudely shut her down. They even seemed to be discussing things equally with the boy, but the woman just awkwardly waited off to the side while they decided everything themselves.

Are they nobles and they don’t want to interact with a commoner? Are they male chauvinists? Do they already know each other from before they came? It sort of makes sense since they banded together so quickly and then for some reason wouldn’t let anyone else on their team… Well, hopefully she isn’t too upset for agreeing to participate when originally she didn’t want to.

When the timer ran down to zero, Syron was just waiting for the butler to hand him the last team’s roles and ability choices. He accidentally made it ring slightly louder than he originally meant to and then had the timer poof into smokey nothingness. The cards that he had been maintaining the whole time seemed to catch fire from their bottoms and quickly burnt to nothingness after a few seconds.

“Now, I promised an advantage to the teams that picked their members the fastest. The first two to finalize were the groups of children. Team… what did you pick… Fiery Inferno Blaze… Team F.I.B. gets to choose who they are competing against in the first round. Which team do you kiddos want?”

Syron asked as a huge eight-pronged bracket appeared behind him with “Team Fiery Inferno Blaze” marked down in the first spot. A kid that might have been the oldest stepped forward and shouted “We’ve decided to take on that group of women over there! One of them beat me once for stealing some bread.” The kid answered with too much honesty. Syron rifled through the papers and found the team in question.

“Very well, Team Fiery Inferno Blaze will be facing off against… Housewives United? It’s apparently a grudge match, so it should be intense!” Slot two on the bracket filled in.

“The second team to pick was you kids. Who’s your target? Ahem… choice?”

“Miss Shuuko’s team! She taught us how to play so we’re going to beat her to show how good we listened!” A girl that looked no older than six pointed at the troublemaker team’s black sheep. Syron found the appropriate sheets.

“Okay… Team Future Wardens will be facing off against Team Royal Harbingers.” Syron quickly marked them down for three and four.

“The remaining four teams will just be placed in order of when they managed to finalize, so it would be Team Handsome Bachelor Society versus Team Hydrangea. Hydrangea is a strange name for a group of burly lumberjack looking men if you ask me, but who am I to judge, people? Finally, Team Solidarity will face off against… nope. Not saying those words in public. You’ll just have to be Team Seven. Why would you think that name was appropriate ladies? I’m twelve, you know. Gotta protect my ears from words like that. If my mother sees what you wrote I’ll have to wash my eyes with soap. Have some mercy on me, would you?” Syron fully knew that he was perhaps hamming it up too much, but he was intentionally trying to come across as quirky and fun for the slightly warming audience. Apparently, a number of people were still pretty cross about his illusions, even if they weren’t any where near them or harmful in any way. Twelve people had actually already left the venue.

Besides… that name really was foul. Even the middle-aged man in him blushed a bit reading it.

“Brackets three through eight, go ahead and head back to the stands. Teams Fiery Inferno Blaze and Housewives United, please make your way to your tables.” Syron had their team names appear as shining, ghostly floating letters above their tables with huge arrows pointing downward. They made their way to their seats and looked at Syron expectantly.

“First, we’ll roll to see which arena you will be fighting in. I’ve prepared four different places to fight. The first is a coliseum style circular sand pit with a few rock emplacements on either side for limited cover. The second is a flat forest with ample coverage. The third is a mountainous foothill, with a moderate amount of coverage in the form of medium sized to huge rocks, as well as various height differences. The fourth and final is a small scaled city scape on the side of a mountain, so there is both heavy coverage as well as height advantages to exploit. I’ll roll a six-sided die. If I get a one through four, I’ll automatically assign the stage based on the order I told you about them. If I get a five, the higher seeded team can pick. If I get a six, the lower seeded team can pick. Rolling now…”

Syron rolled the die into a little bowl in front of him, but he sent the image down to the floor below so everyone could see the result.

“The first arena.” Syron said with his voice amplified and booming like when he first entered the venue. The grid patterned map before him altered like a mirage before it turned into the sandy coliseum ‘map’ he had outlined in his notes before him. Four spots on each end of the map started glowing with numbers one through four.

“Fiery Inferno Blaze chose to go with four magical ranged units, so their name makes quite a bit of sense now. Housewives United chose two healers, a protector, and a physical melee. Choose your starting points for each avatar. This bread larceny induced grudge match showdown is about to begin! I hope you didn’t pay for the whole seat people… because you’ll only need the edge!”