You were sold onto the sand and walked off it free. Now you own men who stand where you stood. Buy them, train them, send them out to bleed. Every one of them wants what you were given, and however long you last, the sand is waiting.

BUY MEN

You start with a small school and not much coin. Buy men off the block. Arm them, feed them, drill them, stitch them up. Every one of them is the man you used to be. Some of them know it.

SEND THEM OUT

Towns send for your men. Name your price, choose who goes, and watch from the stands. When it goes wrong, take the blade yourself. The men who come home are worth more. The men who don't are cheaper to feed.

BURY THEM, SELL THEM, FREE THEM

Every man gets an ending. He dies, and his name goes on the wall. He's sold, and the chronicle says for how much. Or he earns the wooden sword, and it's up to you whether he gets it. The school has no ending. It runs until it falls.

THE WAR NEXT DOOR

Pompeii, 73 BC. Seventy gladiators break out of a school at Capua with kitchen knives. By summer they're camped on the mountain you can see from your yard. You never meet them. You just watch the prices move, the towns get nervous, and your men look at the mountain a little too long.

MERCY TAKES MANY FORMS

Not every lanista is a monster. Some free their best men and die poor. Some put a man to death in front of the yard and never have to do it twice. Nobody tells you which one you are. The chronicle just writes it down.