Kumite

The Kumite is a martial arts competition that takes place every 24 months, in mid-January, at a different (generally urban) location in Oyashima. It is held by the Kokuryukai, and typically involves more than 1,000 applicants (winnowed down to about 160 certified competitors), who fight over the course of a three-day period.

Any style of unarmed combat is allowed - all magic items, spells, and weapons are barred from the competition. Gambling is rife and officially tolerated, but cheaters of any stripe are viewed in a dim light, and rarely if ever emerge from the hall of the Kumite alive.

The winner of the single elimination bracket competition takes home a prize of 10 koku and immense honor (+25 points). Even making it to the final group of 20 merits a 1 koku prize and a significant honor boost (10 points). Match ups are determined randomly (by tossing numbered sticks in a circle) but any competitors who have placed in the top 20 before are separated out from intial matchups.

Fighters can win by one of three ways - by pitching their opponents out of the ring, knocking them unconscious, or getting them to yield by yelling "matae!" It is not uncommon for fighters to be killed in the ring, and killing one's opponent is not illegal so long as they were not already unconscious or yielded. It is possible for both fighters to lose (a double knockout, both falling out of the ring), and doing so means a free win for whomever was the next scheduled opponent. If the fight was the penultimate in the tournament, however, it yields a rematch.

All four yakuza families take a great interest in the Kumite and manage bets on the various fighters (and sponsor many of them), but it is the Sugimoto-Gumi who control the betting in the hall, which is the most lucrative. All bets are done with chits that are cashed in at the end of any given day. More than once, robberies have been attempted on the Kumite vault, but all save one (in 970) were foiled. More than 100,000 yen reputedly went missing.

There is all manner of nonsense surrounding the Kumite in terms of fight fixing and corruption, but most of what goes on in the hall is tightly regulated by the Kokuryukai, who generally manage to squelch the worst of it. Nearby inns fed information by runners (and, indeed, inns in entirely different cities with scrying pools or magic mirrors) generally have no such protection.

The current reining champion of the Kumite is a hard-kicking Tae Kwon Do master from Kara Tur named Chong Rae. He has won two consecutive Kumite and killed seven opponents in the ring. Other notables include Taraku Jin, a Myriad Islands warrior who stands seven feet tall and is famous for throwing opponents from the ring into the crowd, Aso Tanaka, a disgraced monk with a stunning palm strike, and Running Eagle, a native from across the eastern ocean whose iron punching style is regarded as the most lethal in the competition; several fighters have resigned rather than fight him, much to their dishonor.