Duels & PvP¶

Phoenix Sagas has exactly one way to fight another player, and it is built on consent: the duel. There is no open PvP, no flagging system, and no way to be attacked by another player without having agreed to it in your own words.

DUEL <player>

offers a duel to a player standing in the same room. The offer stands for 60 seconds; the duel exists only when the other player answers with the same command. CHALLENGE is an alias. While an offer is open:

DUEL DECLINE: refuse it.
DUEL (no argument) — show where you stand: offers made, offers received, or the bout you are in.

Once both sides have spoken, the pair, and only the pair — open to each other across all three attack systems: melee and ranged weapons (KILL, FIRE, THROW), targeted maneuvers (TRIP, TACKLE and kin), and magic. An unnamed INCANT will volunteer your duel partner as its target while the bout lasts; everyone else in the room stays exactly as protected as they were.

To the yield, never the grave¶

A duel cannot kill. The blow that would kill instead ends the bout with the loser beaten, alive, and standing — dropped to a sliver of health, never past it. The other ending is voluntary:

YIELD (alias CONCEDE) — concede the bout on the spot.

What a duel never does: award experience, drop loot, or cause a death. What it absolutely does: leave real wounds and bleeding that persist after the bout — the healer's trade is safe.

The boundaries, precisely:

No challenges in sanctuary rooms, and blows inside one are refused even mid-bout — the bout itself holds while you step back outside.
Five quiet minutes end the bout with no winner (the polite ending for a vanished or disconnected opponent).
A third party's killing blow is real. Only the pair is protected from each other; the world is still the world, and a bout dies with its victim.
A stun gates verbs as it always does — a stunned duelist cannot YIELD until the stun clears.

Stakes¶

DUEL <player> STAKE <amount>

puts silver on the line. The stake is part of the consent: the answering DUEL must name the same amount, and each side is told the price if their answer doesn't match. Both purses move into escrow the moment the duel is struck; the winner collects the whole pot at the yield or the deciding blow.

A lapsed bout refunds both sides in full. A stake orphaned by a disconnect or a restart is returned automatically the next time you log in or touch the duel commands — the ring holds nothing it is not owed.

The Ring¶

South off the Frozen Creek Crossing on the trail outside Coldhollow, a birchstand opens onto a floor of stamped earth. Maud Kettle keeps the gate with a ledger, a bell, and a whetstone, and explains the whole institution to anyone who asks — ASK MAUD ABOUT RULES, ABOUT STAKES, ABOUT YIELD, or ABOUT THE KETTLE.

Fights on her floor are the loud kind: a bout decided there sets the gallery roaring, and the gallery itself is sanctuary ground — spectators watch in perfect safety.

A duel won anywhere feeds the gossip ring like any other legend: ask a talkative local ABOUT the winner's name and hear exactly as much as the world has heard so far. Win in the Ring and Maud herself will carry the tale.

The book: betting on somebody else's bout¶

BET <silver> ON <fighter>

lays a wager on a duel you are not in (WAGER is an alias). Bare BET reads back what you have riding and on whom.

The book is parimutuel: everyone who backed the winner splits what everyone who backed the loser laid down, in proportion to what they each risked, less the ring's tenth. There is no house line and no bookmaker — the pot is exactly what the room put into it, so the ring can never mint silver and can never fail to cover a payout.

Three rules make it honest:

It runs at the Ring and nowhere else. Wagering is Maud's institution, not something you do to two strangers scrapping in a field.
The book closes on the first landed blow. You have until steel meets to make up your mind; after that you are a spectator. Otherwise you could wait until one fighter was a swing from the sand and back the other one, which is a wager on a result, not on a bout.
No fighter bets on their own bout, in either direction. Backing yourself is just a bigger stake; backing your opponent is selling the fight.

Everything ambiguous resolves toward the player:

Nobody backed the winner? The book voids and every purse goes home.
The bout ends undecided (a real death, the field deciding otherwise)? The same — every purse goes home.
Logged out mid-bout? You are skipped at settlement and refunded the next time you log in. A wager left behind by a restart is returned the moment you next touch the ring's business.

A yield and a killing-blow conversion settle through exactly the same path, so the two endings can never pay differently.

What a win is worth¶

Duels won is a column in the Tallyman's ledger, with marks at 1, 10 and 50:

Duels won	Feat
1	The First Yield
10	Ten Yields
50	Fifty Yields — carries the title the Duelist

Only the winner marks anything — a yield costs the yielder nothing but the bout. And it is deliberately a tally, not a ladder: a lifetime count of what you have done, never a ranking of players against one another. The gossip ring remains the only place the world keeps score, and it fades, because legends need retelling. See The Saga, Feats & Titles.

The law and reckless casting¶

Area magic thrown around a watched town square with no lawful target climbs the same two-strike ladder as assault: a warning the first time, WANTED the second — see Law & Honest Work. Defense is exempt: casting at invaders during a raid, in the wilds, or inside a live sanctuary's protection is not a crime. A duel partner counts as a lawful target in the wilds, but town walls refuse duel blows anyway, so a vortex in the square still earns its citation.