[Omega] Bloodsports to come to Omega under Chresk License

[Omega] Bloodsports to come to Omega under Chresk License

Redirected from Antares Sports Magazine

Written by: Chazrak "Ballbreaker" Massura

Time to pull out those banners, sharpen those pikes, charge those stunsticks and buy your tickets to Omega, dear readers! It looks like the Chresk Gaming Association has finally managed to corral Omega under its gaming banner! That's right - starting in just under a galstan month, Omega's first Chresk Franchise League will open up on the station in a specially built stadium deep in the abandoned mining complex at the station's cap!

Word has it that a special extraterritoriality agreement had to be signed in order to get Aria to agree to hosting the games on the station, but most of us in "the biz" know what really pushed the klixen over the cliff in getting the games to be hosted; money and talent. The Chresk games are one of the most hotly watched mixed bloodsport championships on the entire Undernet. With the relays going back up and more and more people having leisure time to spend, most folk are looking to the Chresk Gaming Association (CGA) for their good old-fashioned blood and guts.

Even here on Tuchunka, we've missed their semi-regular broadcasts - and so has the CGA. According to the latest numbers, the CGA lost 55% of its revenue in the past year or so as so-called "law enforcement" officials tried to shut down these broadcasts. It would appear that the Franchise League is CGA's first attempt in conquering new territory. Rumors have it that if the Omega Franchise goes off okay, that numerous other franchises will be opened on Illium, Noveria, Blackjack, Tuchunka, and even the Citadel.

But what's that mean to you, the viewer at home? It means that you will be getting unfiltered bloodsport action deep from the heart of Omega! That's right, the Omega Chresk Franchise League will be delivered live and with only a .003 second delay on channels 232 through 250 on the EVOX network starting next month! The CGA has managed to standard law enforcement issues by attaching a standard 25 credit fee to all games watched, but if you also have access to the gambling channel, you can negate that with a damned good bet or two. And oh, you'll be betting fast and heavy. The first fighters for the show's debut are the legendary Hormok the Conqueror from Alzban II, Comte St. Germain from Earth, Kuujo the Pit Droid from TerrorDyne Robotics, Kirok the Butcher from our very own slice of Tuchunka, Alizera from Illium, the legendary Blue Volus, and a special selection of amateur fighters from all the corners of known galaxy!

Right now, tickets for live seating are on sale at OmegaChreskFranchise.viv, but they're going fast. I managed to get a krogan-sized box seat for 300 credits, but the cheap seats are going for 50 credits each. You may want to get yours fast, by the way - rumor has it that there'll be a special "audience participation" round early on in the set before the big-name games, so make sure your carnifex has some fresh heat clips and don't spare the ammo! This is Antares Sports Magazine, signing off!

Disgusting


And that's such a shame. Just like how lives won't stop being cheap in the Terminus?

It's a pipe dream to think that they would ever allow this wasteful enterprise on the Citadel. Not even Omega deserves this swill.

You either work with some remarkably invasive corporations, or you are rather easily staggered and occasionally terrified. Then again, I suppose it does reveal a lot about a person if one were only to track what they bought, what they subscribed to, where, and when. For the most part, those four bits of data are the only ones uniformly collected among all corporations. There are other tidbits collected within smaller companies, such as the specifications of your OT, vehicle, home, and any other products you may have filed complaints about. As a general rule, this information is not to be shared, and in many places this rule is a law, although I'll grant that in many more that law is taken as lightly as any other.

If you are going to be alarmed about what information people you may never lay eyes on have on you, then it should be because you gave that information deliberately and of your own free will, for the sake of convenience. That said, I usually purchase within the corporation I work for, and as a subsidiary CEO, I receive weekly reports on the information that I distribute to facilitate me not making a fool of myself in places where it matters. And while I do enjoy watching shows centered around 'reckless driving' to see what the amateurs are up to, I have never taken or indicated a significant enough interest in pitfighting to merit an investment of the cost of the tickets sent to me.

Further, that still does not explain the lack of an indicated seat, or the presence of a contract.

....

My sister won't let me watch this, which usually means it's awesome, so I downloaded some footage of pre-war fights off the extranet and...

...

...sort of yuck

I know the best fighters make good money, but some of these fights are really uneven. And then I think, how desperate do you have to be to gamble your life against somebody with way more training and experience than you? You can see when you watch these guys, they don't wanna look too closely at the guy they're fighting, because they were probably hanging out together drinking the night before, then they both get pulled for the same match.

...Ew.


living on the Citadel is making me mulchy I think?

You'd be amazed at how porous those laws can be, especially when the term 'in public view' comes up. Ever had an ad kiosk call out to you by name? Even if you've got your omni-tool blocking, that can still happen - those things have a sensor range of, what, five spans or so? On most worlds (I believe this is even the case on the Citadel, although I wouldn't be surprised if the Presidium is more tightly controlled) they're allowed to use active sensing to customise their pitch, and thanks to various loopholes what that means is that they read your face, your clothes, your markings or tattoos or insignia, they note any 'public' conversation you may be having, they remember who you're walking with, what time and what direction, if you're carrying a labelled purchase - if somebody says your name, they hear it, and any other identifying detail as well - and every kiosk in a network collects all of this, all the time, for everyone who walks near it. Combine that with all the data that can be legally obtained through any public communication - like this very board - and you don't need to be the Shadow Broker to be able to identify everyone who fits your sales profile.

Or to just take the cheap option, and send out marketing to everyone who might fit your profile, even if it does mean annoying the heck out of 98% of your recipients, just to tag the other 2%. Maybe you just happened to be saying something about gladiators when you were passing by a kiosk one day, and now here we are.

Oh rest assured, lives are every bit as cheap in Citadel space, but a unified government permits the illusion of value. They rather have to, don't they, if they want to stay in charge? It's a false monopoly, of sorts! Quite ingenious, really, and not at all dissimilar from how the Hegemony used to handle things, albeit a tad more subtle. Probably the salarian influence.

If you don't agree with me, however, I'm sure there are some duct rats scurrying around your feet who'd be happy to agree in their educationally-deficient, malnourished fashion. Moan with hunger once for yes, twice for no, three times if you'd like to make some money by fighting another duct rat!

Oh, it's not so bad as all that. If the choice is between one particularly nasty fight or a lifetime of poverty or even slavery, which would you choose? If it's not the latter, be glad your ancestors had stronger stomachs than you, because literally every species in the galaxy (except possibly the elcor?) practices some form of slavery or has in the very recent past. A life worth living is a life worth fighting for, my dear!

Lives are only as cheap as you allow them to be. You say it's an illusion, but as the old Earth saying goes "if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck and it squawks like a duck..." Meanwhile, what you say speaks a lot more about you than any sort of truth.


Speaking as a man who works at one of the Citadel's largest schools and orphanages, you can go polish my javelin.


Because Chresk is about nothing but "choice".

Me specifically? Sir, I do believe you give me far too much credit.

It didn't take me long to find this. I trust you're not going to argue that that is in fact one of these 'ducks'?

My, my. A simple philosophical difference and we're jumping straight to sexually-charged abuse fantasies! And here I thought you were supposed to be the nice one.


I rest my case.

the choice between fighting and a lifetime of poverty or even slavery never gets solved by just one particularly nasty fight. if you survive your reward is going back to fight some other day. the only "choice" is to stop letting someone else hold ur leash.

It seems like you people already understand things, you just don't want to admit it. Let's discuss why! Getting elbow-deep into your brain matter would prove much more interesting than the Chresk Amateur Hour, I'm sure.

Sounds like good old-fashioned fun to me. I don't know what the rest of you are getting up in arms about. That's what gladiator slaves are for, right?

Cute. So you're trying to argue that it's not a duck? Because you'd look dumber than you already are.

because nobody is the best fighter their first time out, dumbass.

That "ew" feeling is your awareness of a rigged system.

Consider what would happen if a particularly skilled bunch of fighters came through this thing-like, they had excellent survival rates and were able to disable their opponents without necessarily killing them.

Well that's no fun for the bettors, is it? Management would instantly ratchet up the environmental hazards or unbalance the teams until the correct number of people started to dying again.

Everyone's talking on like, the level of the gladiators. The system doesn't exist to make the gladiators rich. There are these boardrooms full of rich assholes who are having conversations like "The krogan market loves to see a high-profile Salarian get killed" or "Can we make this trap a bit more dramatic on-screen? They're dying too fast."

Reduced to name-calling already? Here I was hoping the abuse fantasies would get increasingly graphic. 'Nice people' always have such interesting repressions!

Regardless, I was quite obviously pointing out that it was a facsimile of a duck. Just like life in Citadel space has a facsimile of value. A veneer, if you will. A glossy coat. Give it a tiny scratch, though, and you can see all the duct rats and secret, above-the-law police and general maltreatment you'd find in any Terminus state.

Yes, because the C-Space regularly pits slaves against each other in fights to the death while bloated polishers bet on them and repeat the same "you're no different!" line that they've been saying since the Rebellions.

I'll have you know that the finest cybernetics on any market regulate my metabolism and keep my body functioning like a well-oiled machine. There is no bloating here, sir.

Guys, your regions of space are both filled with corrupt systems of government and petty bureaucracy pretty.

Now kiss and make up.

oh thank the spirits Kayana that makes so much sense.

i was afraid i was starting to lose my combat high or something

We known each other for a couple of years now and you never let me polish your javelin, and now some random batarian comes along and it's all "polish my javelin Goronak".

It's the hair isn't it?