User blog comment:TheAmericanDream/Arena Hunters/@comment-25065826-20150904094119

A deciduous arena for 32 tributes, arena wear, a few muttations. I’m glad I had two days.

The Arena: 12 miles diameter, and an uneven, round shape.

The cornucopia; a massive tree, bearing fruits, backpacks and… weaponry, for the climbers. Surrounding the massive trunk and in between the buttress roots are more supplies, but if you’re clever or brave enough, there are multiple entrances well hidden in the trunk and roots leading into the middle of the tree, where all of the supplies of great value can be found. With a 12 metre diameter, the Cornucopia is generous. But you better watch out for the swords and weapons that fall with the moving branches, because the cornucopia is a Whomping Willow, taken from J.K.Rowling’s fiction and projected into reality.

Leading on from there, immediately surrounding the Cornucopia is long grass, which spreads for 100 metres. And it’s just past there you would meet the forest. Thick with a variety of deciduous trees, leaf litter like a carpet on the floor, the trees are green on the first day. The odd one is a smaller, better concealed version of the Cornucopia, without the supplies and with more force.

And between the trees, the odd path is cleared along the ground. An absent minded tribute might instinctively follow these, and whilst the end of some might reward tributes, many lead to the lair of a Capitol creation, or to the edge of the arena, where a cliff ledge awaits the unfortunate ones. Some are even engineered to move, shift through the leaves on the ground and lead to alliances of other tributes, or any particularly bloodthirsty tributes. Some trees are heat seeking, and their roots grow towards any warm body, and fast – grappling at their ankles, constricting any fallen tributes.

From above, the arena looks very much like a high-altitude forest, with the edges of it being a long drop from a cliff. Forest covers most of the arena, moving in swathes across the landscape, with fields in between them. The Cornucopia isn’t in the centre of the arena, it’s one third in from the eastern edge. The whole arena is beautiful, but danger hides everywhere within it. A few large lakes are present, all clean and drinking water. At the start of the Games, anyway.

As previously mentioned, as the tributes enter the arena, the trees will be green, and the path clearer than it becomes later. It’s spring. Every day, a minor earthquake rumbles through the arena, unnoticeable unless you can see the signs. Every day, this earthquake pushes the arena an equivalent of 1 and a half months forward, season-wise. After 2 days, it’s mid-summer climate, and a further 3 days, approaching mid-winter, which means the deciduous arenas’ leaves are replaced by snow, fairly soon. But another effect of these quakes is the edge of the arena falling away, making the arena smaller every day, by around a mile. Each earthquake gets more powerful as more days pass, and after 4 days, these are strong enough to cause canyons and fissures to form and sprawl across the ground.

Arena Wear.

Arena wear: For males, a cotton, v-neck short sleeved shirt of a corresponding color to their district, cotton jumper, with a waterproof, insulating jacket (with the tribute’s district printed on the back) to ward off the infrequent rain, and brown walking trousers, to offer more protection than shorts but remain practical. For female arena wear, a short-sleeved shirt and jacket matching the males’(obviously with shape differences), with a cotton cardigan and black leggings. And for both, brown and black trainers, not waterproof but lighter than boots.

Mutts.

Muttation-wise, the arena isn’t short of them. I’ll go into detail about 2 of them. The first one I have called the ‘Tipula-Mutt’. Imagine a crane-fly, the size of a car and 70kg. That’s the basis of it. One power it has is an odd one. The mutt can divide itself into smaller (though otherwise identical, proportionate) versions of itself and reform. The more there are, the smaller each is, as the insects’ weight stays the same whether in one body or spread between a few thousand. Initially, these mutts hide in the grass around the cornucopia in a small form, clouding around the tributes who leave the cornucopia. Then the second power – skin contact with any part of the bug causes blisters. As the cloud brings down a tribute, the insects morph together and the large Tipula can pierce right through the tributes’ body with its enlarged mouthparts. After the bloodbath, the insects move around the arena, waiting for tributes to stumble across them.

Muttation 2 is a lot rarer. In fact, there’s only one in the arena. A giant panther. Black as night and with cold blue eyes, the big cat measures 3.5 metres long and a metre tall. And along with its 4 inch teeth and matching claws, the ‘Panthera-Mutt’ has a few more tricks up its sleeve. Its breath, whilst odourless, poisons whatever absorbs it, whether it be water, fruit, plants, etc. Lingering for 48 hours, the poison causes delusions and hallucination if ingested, inhaled or otherwise taken into the body, along with a deep sleep. Two days later, and there is no sign of the poison, assuming the cat or another tribute didn’t kill you. Looking at the cat, the tribute feels great fear, but looking away from it, and you forget it was even there.

And that is my deciduous Arena. Good luck to you, Max, too :)