Week 9 Story Planning: Into the Arena

This week, I decided to prepare to write a story about The Martial Exhibition Chapter of Krishna Dharma's Mahabharata.  This chapter, with its medieval-like descriptions of the training and combat games, reminded me a lot of some of the gladiators of old, with less lethal consequences.  This led me to research the background of gladiator type games in ancient India, from Wikipedia, and it turns out that it did briefly become a thing around the last century B.C-first Century A.D.  This led down a trail exploring historical time periods of the Mahabharata and its significance.  However, this Roman influence is too late to be in the original Mahabharata but is definitely something that could influence later renditions and retellings of the chapter, and definitely a theme I can write into my own story.   One final note of this research path is that I didn't realize different parts of the Mahabharata were written in different era's, which actually could put a new angle into the meaning of Divine weapons, as in they could just be meaning weapons better than others (steel swords instead of iron, for example).  Now, this is not a guarantee, because I do not know the author's original intent, but could be one take on this. 

Colosseum, from pinterest

I like the thought of this arena as my setting because it the type of epic venue that these stories deserve.  While impractical and certainly not something that would actually exist, it creates such an amazing image in the reader's mind it is worth their suspension of belief.  Besides, it is a D&D story anyway so it already is asking for some suspension of belief.  Finally, I plan on making the main character a ranger, because his general skills, in addition to the archery, make that class the best fit for Arjuna.  For his challengers, I still need to do more consideration, and in the end might need to go for a multi-class, in order to make them just right. 




Bibliography:
Krishna Dharma,Mahabharata,  The Martial Exhibition