Disclaimer
This article has graphic depictions of violence, and uses images portraying weaponry and blood. If this content is something you find disturbing or simply do not want to see, do not keep on reading.
SURVIVAL DIFFICULTY:
Class Varied
- Changing Safety
- Unpredictable Security
- Fluctuating Entity Count
"Arenas", being a colloquial term that has only been adopted due to a lack of a better name, is the term used to describe certain areas found in many levels that are the old battleground of preset battles between other wanderers.
Description
A found hatchet on Level 200, believed to highlight the former location of combat, and where a previous Arena is believed to exist in.
Arenas can exist anywhere within The Backrooms, and are only classed as a "Room" due to any other current designation in the Extended Database proves more inadequate than its current position. Arenas do not have their own unique appearance, as they simply take on the usual portrayal of the level any room parents in. As well as this, Arenas do not even exist in their own unique space like some other documented rooms did. Arenas are only known to even exist in the first place due to the remnants of combat that can be found within them, and occasional roadblocks when Arenas are in use.
Arenas themselves are used for a rather simple, yet ultimately brutal concept. For unknown reasons, and almost every single year,1 around 12-24 random Wanderers from The Backrooms are kidnapped from their usual position, usually during slumber, and are then taken to a random level of The Backrooms to fight others in combat.
Due to a lack information on this subject, no more information can be collected on differences between Arenas and the usual levels they parent in. It is unknown if the geometry, atomic composition, or any other form of clues can reveal any more clues about differences in the physical terrain of arenas due to a lack of advanced equipment needed to undergo such evaluations.
As well as this, the rules and usual happenings within Arenas is a perpetually unknown and undocumented phenomenon. For whatever reason, there are no notes, diaries, or exerpts from people within these Arenas, save for carvings on trees or walls. As well as this, no official documentation for the rules of these games have ever been found. It is unknown who or what organises these yearly events,2 and as such it is impossible to speak with them to understand the rules. Nor is it possible to read any documentation on these events to know how they went down, if such archival information exists at all.
Despite this, hard research that's been picked up from the work of The Leaders 1972, and subsequently carried by the M.E.G. before coming to the M.E.O.D. in 2022, has allowed us insight into a few select systems on how these annual games are believed to occur.
Rules and effects of the Arenas and combat
Another remnant of a previous arena within Level 186, where a car was presumably used to strike another individual.
From
Lifecycle of Arenas
An archival photo pulled from the Archway OS, depicting the missing posters within The Leader's first base that kickstarted the research into Arenas back in 1971.
A fully repaired arena, as constructed by Backrooms Remodeling Co, found within Level 88. As will be described in the following passage, the diagonally shaped geometry that differs from the usual appearances of Level 88 is believed to be a result of the games presumed host altering the level's landscape to bring participants together.
The remains of a participant found within The Shanty Lands of Level 230, as photographed by the currently unamalgamated F.T.B.
These three images displayed above and to the left each display the three proposed stages of how these games are set up, and how these arenas are subsequently used both during and after the events, using the best archival images the M.E.O.D. has at their disposal.
At an average of anywhere between 255 days and 355 days, around 12-24 random individuals from both our understood portion of The Backrooms and other less known sects of The Blue Channel are taken to participate in combat.
Arenas prior to their existence do not display any inherent qualities that would define them as a prime spot for fights to take place. However, whenever an arena is starting to be shaped and modified, mesh fences, roadworks, or any kind of barriers form and stretch up to five kilometers in diameter over a large, circular space will begin to appear. These barriers, much like the rest of the effects that are described in later passages, do not come into existence when the space is being observed.3 If one is stood inside of the area that the barriers are attempting to prohibit access to, then usually the individual inside of the space is given an exit to another level, or brought elsewhere in the same level through non-euclidian tunneling4
Whilst the circumference is decided and mapped out by these boundaries, the barriers will gradually undergo a process of becoming gradually unclimbable. Moving or dismantling any established walls become impossible, and at the time when the circumference meets end to end, a large, immovable barrier forms upwards and stretch to impossibly tall hights. These barriers behind the initial, physical blocks are invisible, and emit an effect that freeze the outside of the barrier from seeing artificial interactions that living beings cause from inside of the bubble. Trees will still sway, plants will continue to grow, and buildings will gradually show elements of age over the months these games take place over, but no living soul can be witnessed through this barrier, nor can any damage to the natural environement they cause.
After the environment is created, the 12-24 random individuals are plucked for participating in combat. These fights, given the utter size of the selected arenas, can go on from anywhere between a single week, to multiple months. However all games wrap up before the next one begins. During this time, as one could expect, various fights occur between wanderers. Remnants of such are often blood, more detailed viscera, or marks and cracks in an arena's geography from where weapons had struck surfaces.
After the games themselves are over, and after the aforementioned mesh-changing effects
Bases, Outposts and Communities
M.E.O.D. and The Unaffiliated's5 research stations
Within various arenas, research stations are occasionally and temporarily built up with the goal of examining combat sites and the general architecture within areas rumoured to be Arenas. The M.E.O.D. holds the largest monopoly of sites, having active ones stationed within the following spaces as of 2024:
These fifteen locations contain Arenas for previous games that have occured in around the last twenty to twenty five years. Though other locations within scapes such as level C-490, Level α, and The World Factory have minute, small evidence to point towards the existence of games that have occurred in the past two decades, the above fifteen levels all have stationed bases by the M.E.O.D. due to their higher presence of combat remains.
These bases are not a permanent fixture, and will undoubtedly be moved to newer arenas once they're discovered and/or when all current research in the operating bases has been concluded. The list of inactive bases from both the current M.E.O.D. and former M.E.G., B.N.T.G., CBS, and Kalag Institute are as follows:
As well as the above locations, various bases owned by The Unaffiliateds are documented in the M.E.O.D.'s census, map and geography divisions. Though not every single base can possibly be known about, the ones documented in the current systems are as follows:
Level -3
Currently in ownership of the Backrooms Remodeling Co.
Level 15
Currently in ownership of the Backrooms Remodeling Co.
Level 70
Level 87
Level 88
Currently in ownership of The U.E.C.
Level 106
Currently in ownership of the Backrooms Remodeling Co.
Level 145
Currently in ownership of The Toy Addicts.
Level 170
Level 230
Currently in ownership of The Free Traders of the Backrooms(F.T.B.)
Level 448
Level 500
Level 999
Currently in ownership of unaligned wanderers.
The Electroscape
Initial discovery
There are countless moments in history where each group of The Backrooms has discovered the existence of Arenas. Below is the various catalogues and archives that have been pulled from various groups prior to their conglomeration.
The B.N.T.G.
The Leaders
Masked Maidens
The M.E.G.
The U.E.C.
Entrances And Exits
Due to the fact that Arenas do not exist as their own individual space for the reasons described prior, entering and exiting an Arena is a rather easy, simple task as many arenas can be found randomly when exploring in any Backrooms level, and are presumed to exist in a possibly infinite plethora of other, currently undiscovered levels.