The Golarion Gazette

A sold-out crowd at the Grand Coliseum erupted in applause yesterday as the Katapesh Kineticists blasted into the arena with a narrow victory over the Shaguang Sorcerers in their debut match. The match was full of exciting action, with the Sorcerers coming out of the gate strong in the first encounter but the Kineticists catching up in the end as their preternatural constitution and never-ending kinetic auras enabled them to carry the day even after the Sorcerers were all out of spell slots. The audience was treated to a spectacle of wooden and metal barricades popping up out of nowhere and huge hails of stones crashing down to earth to defeat the Kineticists’ enemies. In the final play of the game, one of the Kineticists created a huge column of fire and another used a powerful gust of wind to send their opponent up through it, burning them both on the way up and the way down and turning them into ash.

Gladiator fans had been waiting for this moment for years. The former Kenabres Kineticists were a fan favorite in the league due to their signature kinetic blasts, and their ability to drain their own health to fuel their powers ensures that they were always operating on the edge of disaster. But the old Kineticists disbanded nearly five years ago following controversial changes to league rules that disallowed effects that spent an individual’s own life force for power in the interest  of “player safety.” Despite the loss of this source of tension, the new Kineticists exceeded fans’ expectations with their range of powers spanning six different elements.

The addition of the Katapesh Kineticists brings the gladiator league to a total of 23 total teams, up from 20 just two years ago before the debut of the Thuvia Thaumaturges and Pitax Psychics. The next matchups for the Kineticists are scheduled to be against the Fort Fang Fighters and Rahadoum Rogues, two teams near the top of the rankings in the boss pile-on rounds. “Fans have been waiting for another team to beat the current record for single-target burst damage, and we’ll see if the Kineticists can deliver,” said sports analyst Chris Goodberry. “But don’t forget that there’s a lot more to the competition than just that one event. We did see the Kineticists able to heal themselves in three completely different ways, which is going to be important in the endurance competitions.”