Mighty Marn the Mangler was an Ogre pit fighter. At the climax of his hundredth victorious pit fight in 542 IC, after a particularly spectacular bout, Marn was struck by a staggering thought: he doesn’t have to eat his fallen opponent. Perhaps just tired of the taste of Ogre, this was swiftly followed by another equally powerful notion: all sorts of different creatures could be introduced into the pit, leading to wildly different and interesting fights and a wide variety of victuals.
At first, many thought Marn had just been struck in the noggin one too many times, but while it took some time, his strange ideas eventually caught on, even amidst the slims, changing pit fighting forever. Pit fighting eventually evolved to encompass a wide variety of styles, many of which aren’t always to the death. However, Tileans infamously still pay top coin for the ‘rare honour’ of getting to watch a ‘proper’ Ogre mercenary pit fight.[1a]