Welcome to the
Zuddha Yuddha!
The
malla-yuddha is an ancient South Asian combat sport consisting primarily of full contact wrestling. It has declined under the Mughals however, and is nearly unknown in the north. In the small northern princedom of Zailazekhara however, it has lived on. The raja of Zailazekhara, Hemu Chandra, has grown bored with the traditional event as many of his contemporaries have. His solution was not to eliminate it but to transform it.
Over the past year, word has spread to the far corners of the world of the raja's plans. Warriors from far away Europe, China, Japan, Africa and even the Americas have joined the Indians in flocking to Hemu Chandra's court for the rumors of gold and high station available to the winners of this mysterious new contest. As the modern-day gladiators trickled in, they learned of the raja's changes to the ancient
malla-yuddha tradition.
No more was this a mere unarmed contest. Raja Hemu Chandra has decreed this to be an armed struggle for glory or death. No longer a
malla-yuddha but the
Zuddha Yuddha, the True Combat.
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Why Zuddha Yuddha?
India in the 17th century is a place where you might find warriors of any culture. This is the era in which European colonization (in the form of joint stock companies) is just beginning, and the Portuguese have already been here for a hundred years. Africa and the Middle East are both close by, for characters of those extractions. This is also true of SE Asia; it is easy to imagine Chinese, Koreans or Japanese here at this time. The whole area was tied together by trade.
Additionally, India has the advantage of being both rich and political fractured. This allows us to create the fictitious princedom of Zailazekhara which is wealthy enough to sponsor interesting events for the amusement of a bored monarch without stretching disbelief. This is much more difficult in the rest of the world. An arena is a ludicrous thought in Europe, Russia or the Ottoman Empire of this time. The Barbary chiefdoms might qualify the same way India does but they are not as conveniently located. China, Japan and Korea lack arena traditions. An island ruler in SE Asia might work as well, but India's location is more central.
Timeline:
The middle of the 17th century is a time of great world conflict. You see the English Civil War, rebellions in France and Ukraine (the latter of which damages Russia and devastates Poland-Lithuania), and the end of the Thirty Years War in the rest of Europe. The Ming Dynasty has just fallen to the Manchu in China, but isolated pockets of resistance remain. The Shaolin Temple is destroyed. The Manchu also invaded Korea repeatedly in this timespan. The Shimabara Rebellion in Japan spells the end of serious, large-scale resistance to the Tokugawa Shogunate; you'd expect to see many Japanese in exile after this. Given the time period, there are many famous teachers that exiles may have learned from, including Miyamoto Musashi. This is also the Golden Age of Piracy, allowing for scurvy seadogs. Many pirates set up shop around Madagascar, possibly even founding their own republic (Libertatia).
Equipment:
TL 4 allows access to virtually every piece of melee fighting equipment in the Basic Set, Martial Arts and Low Tech. While the battlefield in this period is dominated by muskets and pikes (in the West; forces elsewhere use other melee formations), armor is still worn and martial arts have not yet passed from use. India is a center of world trade; it is not improbable for a character to buy an English forest bill and a Manchu repeating crossbow in the same marketplace.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:16, Tue 18 Jan 2011.
